Love‘s Comedy

Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 153K words
Chapters: 16

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Love's Comedy by Henrik IbsenAuthor: Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906,Language: English, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Jun 22, 2006

Editor's review

Love's Comedy is a much-discussed yet less widely known work in Ibsen's career than A Doll's House. Written in verse, it explores the tensions between love, marriage, and ideals, bearing the speculative temperament and symbolic coloring evident in Ibsen's early works. Reading this play reveals many seeds of his later problem plays: scrutiny of the institution of marriage, inquiry into individual freedom, and exposure of the gap between romantic imagination and reality. Its language is poetic, its dialogue often sharp and witty, and its stage presence strong, making it well suited to being staged in the mind as a script. As a public-domain electronic text, it is convenient for comparative reading and citation, but lacks production notes and background introduction, so readers must supply the context of Norwegian society in Ibsen's time on their own. Overall, it is not light entertainment but a classic text that requires quiet rumination, suited to readers interested in dramatic literature and the evolution of Ibsen's thought.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Ibsen's plays and Nordic literature
Students of dramatic literature who need to study classic scripts
Speculative readers concerned with marriage, love, and individual freedom
Literature lovers with good English reading ability willing to read verse drama in the original

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking light love stories or popular fiction
Readers unaccustomed to verse drama and symbolic expression
Beginners with weak English needing line-by-line Chinese comparison

Reading tips

Learn about Ibsen's early creative background before entering the text
Reconstruct the play in the mind as a stage performance and note the subtext of dialogue
After reading, compare with A Doll's House to see thematic continuity and change
Read the verse passages aloud to feel the rhythm and tone

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What is the relationship between this book and A Doll's House?

Love's Comedy predates A Doll's House and can be seen as Ibsen's early exploration of marriage and individual freedom. Both plays examine the gap between the institution of marriage and romantic imagination, but Love's Comedy uses verse drama, with a stronger speculative flavor and more symbolism and debate. Comparative reading shows Ibsen's trajectory from verse drama to social problem plays.

Can I read this work without a background in drama?

You can, but it takes some patience. It is advisable to first understand the basic format of a script and the background of Ibsen's time, then focus on the conflicts and subtext in dialogue. If the verse language feels difficult, read a Chinese translation first to familiarize yourself with the plot, then return to the English original, which will be much smoother.

Why is this work less famous than Ibsen's other plays?

This relates to the work's verse form and speculative style; on stage it is less direct and powerful than A Doll's House, and discussion of it is relatively limited. Yet it remains valuable for understanding the formation of Ibsen's thought—a secondary classic worth close reading, rather than a first choice for beginners.

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About the author

Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906 Author

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was a Norwegian playwright best known for his problem plays on social issues. His works often center on marriage, family, gender roles, and individual freedom, exposing the contradictions beneath respectable surfaces through tight dialogue and steadily unfolding plots. The collection holds 51 of his works, including A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, and Rosmersholm, as well as dramatic collections and translations into Finnish and Esperanto. Written in a realistic style, these plays probe their characters' inner lives, with spare dialogue rich in subtext, and helped shape modern European drama; they are still staged worldwide. Because public information is limited, biographical details are omitted here.