Ghosts

About

Ibsen's 1881 play was the most scandalous of his career: a widow discovers that her dead husband's venereal disease has been passed to their son, who is now going blind and slipping into dementia. The play's attack on religious hypocrisy, its frank treatment of syphilis, and its portrayal of a woman trapped by duty to a dead man's reputation made it unprintable and unperformable in most countries for years. The first English production was in 1891, in a private members' club to circumvent censorship. Ghosts effectively invented the idea of drama as a vehicle for unspeakable social truth and made Ibsen the most controversial playwright in Europe.