ABSTRACT
Ibsen's A Doll's House was written fourteen years before Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, but the relationship between convention and innovation in its stagecraft is much more complex. A Doll's House seems to summarize in a single action Nora's rejection of her husband, her children, her home and her social position, along with the society that had taught her to need such things. As Meyer puts it: The terrible offstage slamming of that front door which brings down the curtain resounded through more apartments than Torvald Helmer's. No play had ever before contributed so momentously to the social debate, or been so widely and furiously discussed among people who were not normally interested in theatrical or even artistic matters. It is also important not to overlook the fact that it is not just at the beginning and ending of the play, but at the beginning and ending of each act, that action and attention are focused on a doorway.
