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In respect of language, Ibsen stands at a unique disadvantage. Never before has a poet of world-wide fame appealed to his world-wide audience so exclusively in translations.

William Archer

Ibsen knew that he wrote in a ‘small language’ and that if his plays were to have an impact, they would have to be translated.

Ibsen’s Norwegian is remarkably spare and direct. Indeed, some early critics dismissed his naturalistic plays as having little literary value. But that is to misunderstand Ibsen’s intentions, as he wrote in a letter of 1883:

In the last seven or eight years, I have hardly written a single line of verse; instead I have exclusively studied the incomparably more difficult art of writing in the straightforward honest language of reality.

Furthermore, Ibsen specified that his plays should be translated into the everyday language of the audience to whom they are played. My aim has been to give the actors space and not load them down with too many words.

But Ibsen was a great poet and very particular in his intentions. I’ve resisted the temptation to use English’s huge vocabulary to soften the pattern of repeated words that creates the text’s allusive character, and I’ve tried to ensure that the more poetic phrases arise from the character’s responses to the situation and don’t feel imposed. I’ve avoided English Victorianisms or additional explanatory phrases. I’ve also tried to retain a sense of nineteenth-century social mores and convey something of the play’s particular Scandinavian atmosphere.

Like many translators of Ibsen, I’m dependent on others. I’ve drawn on several translations, especially early ones, and Sue Prideaux has helped me with dozens of details. And then, of course, there are the actors: in just a few short days of rehearsal they helped me improve it enormously. To all, our thanks.

Translation is always and inevitably a compromise. I hope I’ve created something which the actors will enjoy playing and the audiences will want to engage with. Ibsen’s great play deserves no less.

Stephen Unwin