Of the three plays in this volume, Ghosts and A Public Enemy are social dramas of his middle period; and the former, described by one London critic as "an open sewer," raised the greatest outcry of all Ibsen's attacks on convention. When We Dead Wake, his last play, handles in a symbolic manner the individual's inner conflict and, incidentally, provides the dramatist's own comment on his lifework and his renunciation of work.(less)