The three plays in this volume all deal with the moral courage needed to tell the truth. They are peopled by complex individuals pitted against, or part, of a society that Ibsen felt was morally abhorrent.

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'The Wild Duck' is an unsettling play of profound, keen psychology and absolute truth. Gregers Werle is an uncompromising idealist, and invites himself into the house of Hjalmar Ekdal, his childhood friend. His intention is to free the Ekdal family from the mesh of lies on which their contented lives are based. But Gregers drowns the family even as he is trying to raise them up, his well-meaning investigations shredding the lies they have told themselves in order to live. 'The Wild Duck' was published in 1884 and premiered in 1885 at Bergen in Norway. This version, translated by Michael Meyer, was first performed in 1963 at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham.

Edited and translated by Kai Jurgensen and Robert Schenkkan, this edition of The Wild Duck for performance and study has been translated by John Simon and features a sixteen-page introduction, a list of principal dates in the life of Ibsen, and a selected bibliography.