Reviews for Maria Stuart

The average rating for Maria Stuart based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-10 00:00:00 Robert Herrick Great!

Review # 2 was written on 2016-04-20 00:00:00 Chris Bennett Warning: This is NOT the tidy Delphi ebook edition but a similar Amazon Kindle version that includes much of the same material and many of the same translations, but is poorly organized - almost non-organized - with the plays distributed helter-skelter, ignoring most chronology. That said, you get all of Ibsen, from the earlier socially active (even socially violent - "An Enemy of the People") screeds, through the middle period intense character studies ("Hedda Gabler") to the later mildly unhinged mysticism ("When We Dead Awaken"). Most of the translations, from the turn of the 20th century, are quite good. A special word for "Catiline," Ibsen's first play and one that most of us would never run across. It's nothing like his later work, a poetic drama set in ancient Rome, featuring a complex character, Catiline, who may be a traitor to the Republic, its would-be savior - or both. Hedonistic yet tortured, he tumbles through competing calls for leadership and abandonment of the cause. The surrounding characters are superb: Aurelia, his gentle, devoted wife: Furia, the vestal non-virgin who fuels his fantasies, undermines his decency and rules his desires; and a medley of conspirators who range from noble to scumbag. Unlike Ibsen's constrained drawing-room settings, the action roams the countryside at a dizzying pace, likely rendering any actual production a hair-pulling futility. The translation by Anders Orbeck is remarkable for a poetic drama.