This Day in History: 1828-03-20

Heinrik Ibsen, author of Enemy of the People is born this day in Norway in 1828. One of the world’s great playwrights, Ibsen wrote Ghosts, Dolls House and Master Builder among others. Enemy of the People was an assault on Victorian era political hypocricy. It concerns a doctor who discovers that the mineral water in a town’s famous health spa is being poisoned by waste products from a leather tannery. Rather than forcing the tannery to move, as the doctor naively expects, everyone in the town denounces the doctor for interfering with their main source of income. It’s clear at the end of the play that disaster is looming for the doctor as well as the entire town.