Ibsen’s Life and Works: What is the Connection? A Review of Evert Sprinchorn Ibsen’s Kingdom. The Man and his Works

Abstract

The answer is that Ibsen’s reputation has outlived his popularity. Nowadays, most American theatergoers regard his dramas of ideas as both painfully verbose (he never settled for four words when he could think of 10) and all too obvious, crumbling monuments to an age of innocence and inhibition that he longed to overturn and whose time, in part because of the widespread influence of those same plays, has come and gone. (2021)