Talk by Raymond Williams
Ibsen's plays ' Brand ' and ' Peer Gynt,' neither of them written for the theatre, present a kind of dramatic poem very different from the generally accepted idea of Ibsen as a realist and playwright of social issues. The social plays, in fact, are only a part of Ibsen's work-according to Raymond Williams , perhaps not the most important part. The last plays are as much poetic drama as Brand ' and ' Peer Gynt,' and the same recurrent themes run through the whole of Ibsen's work from ' Brand ' onwards.