HEDDA GABLER

By Henrik Ibsen


Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer


Introduction by William Archer





INTRODUCTION.


From Munich, on June 29, 1890, Ibsen wrote to the Swedish poet, Count
Carl Soilsky: "Our intention has all along been to spend the summer
in the Tyrol again. But circumstances are against our doing so. I
am at present engaged upon a new dramatic work, which for several
reasons has made very slow progress, and I do not leave Munich until
I can take with me the completed first draft. There is little or no
prospect of my being able to complete it in July." Ibsen did not
leave Munich at all that season. On October 30 he wrote: "At present
I am utterly engrossed in a new play. Not one leisure hour have I
had for several months." Three weeks later (November 20) he wrote
to his French translator, Count Prozor: "My new play is finished; the
manuscript went off to Copenhagen the day before yesterday. . . . It
produces a curious feeling of emptiness to be thus suddenly separated