About the work
Henrik Ibsen wrote Ghosts in Rome in 1881; the play was published in Copenhagen that December in an edition of 10,000 copies. Because every major Scandinavian theatre refused to stage it, the world premiere took place far from home: on 20 May 1882 at the Aurora Turner Hall, a suburban Chicago venue, performed by Danish-Norwegian immigrants. The European premiere followed only in August 1883 in Helsingborg, directed by August Lindberg.
Plot
The widowed Mrs Alving has spent years covering up her late husband’s dissolute life by funding an orphanage built in his memory. When her son Osvald returns from Paris, it emerges that he carries his father’s inherited disease. The maid Regine, secretly his half-sister, flees in horror once his illness comes to light. In the end, Mrs Alving must decide whether to grant her dying son the fatal release he begs for.
Cultural significance
The premiere triggered one of the great theatrical scandals of the nineteenth century: critics condemned the play’s treatment of heredity, incest and free love, and unsold copies were returned to the publisher. After its 1887 Berlin production, Ghosts inspired writers such as Gerhart Hauptmann and has since stood as a founding work of modern naturalistic theatre.