Ibsen:'A Dolls House' Critics

Henrik Ibsen: Experience

"Everything that I have written has had the closest possible relation to what I have experience inwardly"

Henrik Ibsen: Approval

"When liberal-minded men want to bring about some improvement in the position of women in society, they first inquire whether public opinion [men] will approve."

Henrik Ibsen: Male laws

"A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men, and with counsel and judges who judge feminine conduct from a male point of view."

Henrik Ibsen: Women's rights

"I am not a member of the Women's Rights League... I am not even quite clear as to just what this women's rights movement really is. To me it has seemed a problem of humanity in general."

Ben Brantley: Nora's female role

"[Nora is] a fluttery geisha in overdrive, on call to entertain and make merry whenever her husband chooses to appear from his invisible fortress of a study."

Sally Ledger: Ibsen's influence on Britain

"Given the profound cultural influence he exerted on late nineteenth-century London, the Norwegian playwright never set foot on British soil."

Edith Lees Ellis: Sorcery

"That a woman should demand her own emancipation and leave her husband and children in order to get it, savoured less of sacrifice than sorcery?"

Clement Scott: Nora's actions

"[abandon] her innocent children and become absolutely inhuman, simply because she discovers her husband is an egoist and that she has been a petted little fool"

1973 adaptation of A Doll's House directed by Patrick Garland: Setting

grand house, shows exterior views, enclosed, many doors, feeling of entrapment, safe domestic environment contrasted with cold wintery exterior.

Elizabeth Robins: Ibsen's influence

"No dramatist has ever meant so much for the women of stage as Henrik Ibsen."

Catherine Clement: Tarantella

"[Discussion of] the tarantella's origins in Southern Italy, where it serves as a form of hysterical catharsis, permitting women to escape temporarily from marriage and motherhood into a free, lawless world of music and uninhibited movement."

Michael Billington: Performance in July 2012, use of revolving stage on Nora

"The endlessly mobile set symbolises the restlessness of Hattie Morahan's suberb Nora"

Michael Billington: Performance in July 2012, use of revolving stage

"The revolving set forces the Young Vic to sacrifice its usual intimacy by adopting a straight-edged, picture frame stage."

Michael Billington: Performance in July 2012, Nora and money

"Morahan presents us with a Nora who exists from the start in a state of barely controlled hysteria... reflects with excitement to every mention of the word 'money'."

Eric Bentley: Ibsen's separations

"The glory of Ibsen is that he refused to make certain fatal separations. He refused to separate the individual from the collective, the personal from the social"

George Bernard Shaw: Ibsen's message

"Ibsen's message to you is: if you are a member of society, defy it; if you have a duty, violate it; if you have a religion, stand on it instead of crouching under it"

James Joyce: Ibsen's knowledge of women

"Ibsen's knowledge of humanity is nowhere more obvious than in his portrayal of women. He amazes one by his painful introspection; he seems to know them better than they know themselves. Indeed, if one may say so of an eminently virile man, there is a curious admixture of the woman in his nature."

Gail Finney: Ibsen's supporters

"his strongest supporters were found in socialist circles"

Gail Finney: Gender

"His concern with the human soul cut across class and gender lines."

Nick & Non Worrall: Structure of play

"Places emphasis on psychology rather than action and intensifies the force of the drama."

Nick & Non Worrall: Mrs Linde vs Nora

"Mrs Linde greater experience and steadier personality throw Nora's frenzied girlishness into greater relief."

Nick & Non Worrall: Truth

"Stresses the danger of avoiding the truth."

Nick & Non Worrall: Krogstad

"[Krogstad] seems to blame others for his low status in society."

Nick & Non Worrall: Setting

"Cosy environment has been created to suit her husband's tastes."

Nick & Non Worrall: Setting of stove

"[The warmth of the stove] represents the security she so urgently craves."

Erik Boegh: Premiere performance in 1879, impact of play

"It is beyond memory since a play so simple in its action and so everyday in its dress made such an impression of artistic mastery"

Henrik Ibsen: The state

"The state is the curse of the individual. The state must be abolished! ... Undermine the idea of the state... and you have the beginning of a liberty that is of some value."

Newspaper critic after premiere: Nora

"Nora has only shown herself as a little Fordic 'Frou-Frou' and as such she cannot be transformed in a flash to a Soren Kierkegaard in skirts."

Maurice Baring: Betty Hennings as Nora

"She made the transformation of the Nora of the first act into the Nora of the last act seem the most natural thing in the world."

Marker and Marker: Actress playing Nora in Berlin 1889

"a sleepwalker dancing on the edge of the abyss."

Simon Williams: Actress in Vienna playing Nora

"Compared the contrast between her martyred feelings and her calm self-possession to that of a passion-play actor in the role of Jesus Christ."

Henrik Ibsen: Alternative ending

"An act of barbarous violence against the play."

Michael Billington: Ibsen's plays

"[Ibsen's plays were a] dramatic revolution."

Joan Templeton: Ibsen & feminism

"[Ibsen said he] did not stoop to 'issues' [about feminism]." Ibsen was but a "part of the truth of the human soul."