Ibsen and the Actress

This 1928 essay, delivered as part of the British Drama League's honoring of the centennial of Ibsen's birth and then published by the Hogarth Press, was a significant landmark for Robins. See in the list of ER's Stage Essays other Ibsen pieces that appeared at this time, https://www.jsu.edu/robinsweb/erplays.

  • For better readability of the scanned images, these are presented in this local file: Images Ibsen and the Actress.
  • Text version with annotations of Ibsen and The Actress
  • The audio recording of the complete text of Ibsen and the Actress is available at JSU Digital Commons, https://digitalcommons.jsu.edu/fac_pres/27/
    This is an MP4 file which is best experienced as a full download. The text of the Imaged files scrolls with the audio, thus substituting for captions. The audio plays with the selection of the arrow button within the preview frame. However, without downloading, the text will be fuzzy and one may not have the option to play at variable speeds. Select the title or the blue download button. In the MP4 box, open the three dots to select different speed.
  • Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) created the illustration for for the dust jacket of Ibsen and the Actress, as she did with many of the Hogarth Press essays and VW's novels. The image remains restricted and under copyright.
  • Works from the composite bibliography at the Robins Web which make important references to Ibsen and the Actress:
    • Cima, Gay Gibson. "Elizabeth Robins: The Genesis of an Independent Manageress." Theatre Survey 22, no. 2 (1980), pp. 145-63.
    • Egan, Michael. Ibsen: The Critical Heritage.
    • Franc, Miriam A. Ibsen in England. Four Seas, 1919. Available at Internet Archive.
    • Gates, Joanne E. "Elizabeth Robins and the 1891 Production of Hedda Gabler." Modern Drama 28.4 (December 1985): 611-619. Originating from a paper for a Special Session, "Ibsen Campaign in London," Modern Language Association Convention; New York, New York, December 1983.
    • Gates, Joanne E. Introduction to an excerpt from Ibsen and the Actress by Elizabeth Robins. In The Routledge Anthology of Women's Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Edited by Catherine Burroughs and J. Ellen Gainor. Routledge, 2023. Entry 35, pp. 238-244. Taylor and Francis Database DOI: 10.4324/9781003006923-36.
    • Gates, Joanne E. "The Theatrical Politics of Elizabeth Robins and Bernard Shaw." In 1992: Shaw and the Last Hundred Years. Edited by Bernard F. Dukore. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. A specifically titled volume of Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, vol. 14, 1994, pp. 43-53.
    • Heath, Mary. T. "A Crisis in the Life of the Actress: Ibsen in England." PhD diss. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1986.
    • Hill, Leslie Anne. “Theatres and friendships: the spheres and strategies of Elizabeth Robins.” University of Essex Dissertation, 2014. Available from Open Research Exeter, ORE, https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/17879.
    • Farfan, Penny. "From Hedda Gabler to Votes for Women: Elizabeth Robins's Early Feminist Critique of Ibsen." Theatre Journal 1 (Mar. 1996), pp. 59-78.

       Also note:

    • Maria Irene Fornés draws inspiration from Robins' essay and concludes her 1988 play, The Summer in Gossensass, with excerpts from Robins' essay. Published in the collection What of the Night?: Selected Plays, 2008, pp. 47-95.

    • Public domain image of Robins as Hilda Wangel in The Master Builder, from Internet Archive edition of Cassell's universal Portrait Gallery, https://archive.org/details/cassellsuniversa00londiala/page/188/mode/2up?view=theater.

    • Public domain image of Robins as Hedda Gabler, from The Critic 9 April, 1898, New York City, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.74708366&seq=268.