How to Live

"The old beauty is no longer beautiful and the old truth is no longer true" Henrik Ibsen

More than any other writer, Ibsen helped to create the modern drama as we know it today. In terms of technical innovation and subject matter his plays were revolutionary. Unfortunately this revolutionary legacy has been annexed by the guardians of our cultural heritage. For many years now, Ibsen has been read and interpreted as an acceptable voice in the development of a European tradition of drama committed to reason, reality and reform. As the canon of lireary and theatrical orthodoxy has extended, so Ibsen's work has come to seem more distant, historical and ultimately irrelevant.

We have not sought to "rescue" Ibsen from the condescension of posterity: that might, by now, be an impossible task. Rather, How to Live is a celebration of the extraordinary creativeness of Ibsen's dramatic method. It also insists, as Ibsen surely would have, that his characters are passionately driven, if not determined, by their sexual dreams and desires.

If we have at times extended the language of Ibsen in an attempt to express these dreams and desires, we have done so in a manner conscious of our debt to his achievement. A life lived uncorrupted by the social and sexual failures of the past might not exhaust the possibilities of the good life, but it is certainly a goal still worth striving for.

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