The Pillars Of The Community The Wild Duck Hedda Gabler

The three plays in this volume cover the period during which Ibsen (1828-1906) was preoccupied with realistic problems of personal and social morality. In The Pillars of the Community, partly by means of symbolism, he exposes the effects of a lie told to preserve a man's public reputation. The solution - to admit the truth - scarcely seemed so simple seven years later, when Ibsen completed The Wild Duck in apparent disillusionment. Hedda Gabler, the latest of these plays, is both a drama of individual conflict and partial return to social themes.