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Ghosts (original Norwegian title: Gengangere) is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882.^[1]

Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th century morality.

Ghosts was written during the autumn of 1881 and was published in December of the same year. It was not performed in the theatre till May 1882^[1], when a Danish touring company produced it in the Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago. Ibsen disliked Archer's use of the word 'Ghosts' as the play's title. There is no English equivalent for the Norwegian title, which literally translated would mean "Againwalkers" or "Returners". The French 'Les Revenants' is more accurate.

The play achieved a single private London performance on 13 March 1891 at the Royalty Theatre. The Lord Chamberlain's Office censorship was avoided by the formation of a subscription-only Theatre Society, which included Thomas Hardy and Henry James among its members^[2].

Helene Alving, the widow of Captain Alving, is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in his memory. She reveals to her pastor that she has hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration, and has built the orphanage to deplete her husband's wealth so that their son, Osvald, might not inherit anything from him. Pastor Manders had advised her to return to her husband despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But her husband's philandering continued until his death, Mrs. Alving was unable to leave him because of the constraints of 19th-century morality, and during the action of the play she discovers that her son Osvald (whom she had sent away so that he would not be corrupted by his father) has congenital syphilis, and has fallen in love with Regina Engstrand, Mrs. Alving's maid, who is revealed to be an illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving, and thereby Osvald's half-sister.

The play concludes with Mrs. Alving deciding whether to euthanize her son Osvald in his madness in accordance with his wishes.

Much like A Doll's House, Ghosts was deliberately sensational. What most offended Ibsen's contemporaries was what they regarded as its shocking indecency, its more than frank treatment of a forbidden topic. An English critic was later to describe it as "a dirty deed done in public,"^[3] and to many it must have seemed simply shocking rather than in any profound intellectual sense revolutionary.

At the time, the mere mention of venereal disease was scandalous, but to show that even a person who followed society's ideals of morality had no protection against it was beyond scandalous. Hers was not the noble life which Victorians believed would result from fulfilling one's duty rather than following one's desires. Those idealized beliefs were only the "ghosts" of the past, haunting the present.

The production of Ghosts scandalised Norwegian society of the day and Ibsen was strongly criticised. In 1898 when Ibsen was presented to King Oscar II of Sweden, at a dinner in Ibsen's honour, the King told Ibsen that Ghosts was not a good play. After a pause, Ibsen exploded "Your Majesty, I had to write Ghosts!".

1. ^ ^{a b} http://www.ibsen.net/index.gan?id=471&subid=0
2. ^ Theatreland Timeline (London Metropolitan Archives) accessed 11 Oct 2007
3. ^ Krutch, Joseph Wood. "Modernism" in Modern Drama: A Definition and an Estimate. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1953. Page 9.

• Mrs. Helene Alving, a widow.
• Oswald Alving, her son, a painter.
• Pastor Manders.
• Jacob Engstrand, a carpenter.
• Regina Engstrand, Jacob Engstrand's daughter (Mr. Alving's daughter), Mrs. Alving's maid.

• Ghosts, available at Project Gutenberg. (translated by R. Farquharson Sharp)
• Ghosts, available at Project Gutenberg. (translated by William Archer)

• Book Background, Penguins Classics, Henrik Ibsen: Ghosts and Other Plays ISBN 0-140-44135-2