It was on this day in 1881 that Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts opened on the London stage. Ghosts was a revolutionary and controversial play with references to incest and sexually transmitted diseases, and Ibsen refused to give his audiences the happy endings they were used to. The play had already been banned in St. Petersburg on religious grounds when it premiered in London.
The first performance alone of Ghosts caused more than 500 printed articles to be written in response to it, and Ibsen became a household name even to people who had never seen the play or read a book. He died a national hero in 1906 when he was 79. He was given a state funeral, and King Haakon of Norway attended.
Ghosts is an amazing play. I used to collect in a notebook interesting and thought provoking quotes, and one of the is from Ghosts in Act 2: "I almost think we're all of us Ghosts. ... It's not only what we have invited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light."
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