Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen

Hedda Gabler (1891) is Ibsen's greatest tragedy. Victorian actresses adored Ibsen's plays as ‘glorious actable stuff’, in the words of suffragette actress Elizabeth Robins, but Hedda herself was reviled as ‘a malicious woman of evil instincts’ by conservative critics.

Ibsen is important to the development of theatrical naturalism. Developing from realist drama's depiction of everyday life, naturalism added a scientific approach to character, eschewing the supernatural. Naturalistic characterisation emphasises characters’ heredity and environment. Hedda's father's portrait looms symbolically over the set; she kills herself beneath it. Playing with his pistols and controlling in her relationships, Hedda is a true general's daughter. But melodrama also shapes the plot featuring blackmail, two suicides, mislaid documents, and climaxes in a dramatic tableau around a corpse.