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"In the English-speaking world today Henrik Ibsen has become one of the three major classics of the theatre," wrote Martin Esslin in an essay included in Ibsen and the Theatre: The Dramatist in Production. "Shakespeare, Chekhov and Ibsen are at the very centre of the standard repertoire, and no actor can aspire to the very first rank unless he has played some of the leading roles in the works of these three giants." Esslin further noted that, of the three, "Ibsen occupies a central position which marks the transition from the traditional to the modern theatre." Hailed as one of the pioneers of modern drama, Ibsen broke away from the romantic tradition of nineteenth-century theater with his realistic portrayals of individuals, his focus on psychological concerns, and his investigation into the role of the artist in society. Ibsen was a revolutionary in approach. As James Huneker noted in his Essays, Ibsen transposed themes "hitherto treated epically, to the narrow, unheroic scale of middle-class family life." He brought tragedy to the quotidian in what Huneker referred to as a "tuning down of the heroic." Although Ibsen himself denied advocating political and social movements, concentrating instead on the importance of personal development, his plays were interpreted by his contemporaries as promoting feminism and free love while decrying middle-class hypocrisy and social conventions, many of which were of religious origin.
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