Written in 1881 and first performed in 1882, Ghosts is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Like most of Ibsen’s work, the play is a bruising indictment on nineteenth-century morality. Set in Norway, the three-act tale centers on the widow Mrs. Helen Alving who continues to grapple with her late husband’s chronic infidelity. A decade after her husband’s death, Helen is to memorialize an orphanage is his name. Helen’s son Oswald, who remains unaware of his father’s womanizing ways, returns home for the ceremony. Upon his return, Oswald is attracted to the housemaid, Regina Engstrand, who happens to be his half-sister. The troubled romance forces Helen to confront her own marital “ghosts.” The play was negatively received at the time it was produced due to the controversial subject matter that includes religion, incest, illegitimacy, sexually transmitted disease, assisted-suicide, and other taboo topics. The play has since been recognized as a major dramatic achievement. In 1963, theater critic Maurice Valency said, “Ghosts strikes off in a new direction…Regular tragedy dealt mainly with the unhappy consequences of breaking the moral code. Ghosts, on the contrary, deals with the consequences of not breaking it.”