The Wild Duck
Henrik Ibsen · 1884
A self-righteous idealist insists on telling a family the truth about their past and destroys them. Ibsen wrote it as a corrective to his own reputation: after A Doll's House made him the champion of truth-telling, he wrote a play arguing that some people need their illusions to survive. It's his most ambiguous work, and maybe his best.
The case against
That duck works hard. Wounded bird, dark attic, the wing-clipped family above it: Ibsen presses the symbol until it teeters at the edge of self-parody. The first act is a long dinner of exposition, Gregers is less a character than a thesis with legs, and Hedvig's death is engineered with audible stage machinery.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
