Mr Punch's Pocket Ibsen - A Collection of Some of the Master's Best Known Dramas

Key themes

Social Hypocrisy and Critique of Bourgeois Society

Anstey, like Ibsen, exposes the superficiality and moral compromises of Victorian bourgeois society. However, Anstey's approach is to highlight these flaws through exaggeration and humor, making the characters' adherence to social norms, their hidden vices, and their self-deception overtly comical. He strips away the subtle layers of Ibsen's critique to present a more direct, often farcical, indictment of societal expectations.

Individual Freedom vs. Societal Expectation

This central Ibsenian theme is presented by Anstey with a blend of earnestness and satire. He lampoons the dramatic struggle of characters like Nora and Hedda to assert their individuality against the rigid expectations of their time. The humor often arises from the clash between the characters' grand aspirations for freedom and the mundane, often absurd, realities of their restrictive environments. Anstey condenses these struggles, making the characters' epiphanies and acts of rebellion feel both profound and comically abrupt.

The Burden of the Past

Anstey deftly captures Ibsen's preoccupation with how past actions, secrets, and inherited beliefs haunt the present. In his parodies, the weight of the past is often presented as an almost comically inescapable force, with characters constantly referring to ancestral ghosts, old scandals, and long-held family secrets. The humor often comes from the characters' melodramatic grappling with these historical specters, which Anstey condenses to highlight their inescapable, often ridiculous, influence.

Worth discussing

How does Anstey's parody alter or illuminate our understanding of Ibsen's original plays?