Opening night of Hedegabla would have been an unforgettable experience.

The world premiere was staged on the 31st of January, 1891 in Munich,

and whilst the audience may not have come with vine leaves in their hair, a good proportion of them

came with a copy of the play in book form, which was published at the end of the previous year,

the lengthy dramatic exposition and stage directions begging begging for the play to be read, almost like a novel.

And indeed, despite Ibsen's international renown, and despite the popularity of his works in performance,

his works were most certainly more popular as red forms of entertainment.

And so many theatre goers would have brought a copy of the play with them and they would

have had it open in their laps. They were the great dramatists fans, Henrik Ibsen, who was himself in attendance during that first performance.

But there were plenty of theatre goers who most certainly were not a fan of the play that unfolded before them,

and they would leave the theatre disgusted, shocked and

scandalised. Even into the early 20th century, scandal would be attached to Ibsen's plays. One reviewer

called Hedda Gables, a hideous nightmare of pessimism, whilst another would

label the star role of the show to be a hopeless specimen of degeneracy and a vicious, heartless,

cowardly, unmaral, mischief-making vixen.

And this was very much par for the course when it came to Ibsen's dramas,

works that are now second only to Shakespeare's when it comes to the most performed plays.

I think of how George Bernard Shaw

detailed the reception of Ibsen's ghosts in London the same year that Hedegabler opened in Munich.

After the first act, Bernard Shaw wrote, the applause was immense. After the second, a third of the applauders were startled

into silence. After the third act, four fifths of the audience were awe-struck. Someone cried out,

it's too horrible. And the next day, the devil was to pay in the papers.

...