the English press reaction to Ibsen's "Ghosts"

sionnach commented on the word the English press reaction to Ibsen's "Ghosts"

From Wikipedia:

"Ibsen's positively abominable play entitled Ghosts....An open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly....Gross, almost putrid indecorum....Literary carrion.... Crapulous stuff" - Daily Telegraph

"Lugubrious diagnosis of sordid impropriety....Characters are prigs, pedants and profligates....Morbid caricatures.... Maunderings of nookshotten Norwegians" – Black and White

"As foul and filthy a concoction as has ever been allowed to disgrace the boards of an English theatre....dull and disgusting....Nastiness and malodorousness laid on thickly as with a trowel." – Era

"Ninety-seven percent of the people who go to see Ghosts are nasty-minded people who find the discussion of nasty subjects to their taste, in exact proportion to their nastiness" – Sporting and Dramatic News

"The socialistic and the sexless....The unwomanly women, the unsexed females, the whole army of unprepossessing cranks in petticoats....Educated and muck-ferreting dogs.... Effeminate men and male women..... They all of them–men and women alike–know that they are doing not only a nasty but an illegal thing.... The Lord Chamberlain (the censor) left them alone to wallow in Ghosts.... Outside a silly clique, there is not the slightest interest in the Scandinavian humbug or all his works.... A wave of human folly" – Truth

(And, no, thank you, Wordnik genie, I was not looking for the English press reaction to ibsen's ghost)

May 25, 2011