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View allA Doll's House
Ibsen
1879
The play that ended with a door slam heard round the world.
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen · 1879
In 1879, plays about troubled marriages ended in reconciliation or in death. Ibsen ended his with a wife quietly walking out of her own front door — an exit so scandalous that theaters across Europe demanded, and briefly got, a softened alternative ending. That door slam killed off the nineteenth century's marriage plot on stage and opened the way for modern drama about ordinary households. Read here in R. Farquharson Sharp's classic English translation, it is still what it was on opening night in Copenhagen: two hours of Christmas cheer curdling into the most famous exit in theater.
4 chapters · 26,473 words · ~2 hr read
Contents
Before the Curtain
Ibsen's cast list — the Helmer household and the visitors whose arrivals set the play in motion.
The Play
Three acts across three days — Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the night after — all in one room of the Helmers' flat.