Emperor and Galilean

Emperor and Galilean was published in 1873 when Ibsen was at the height of his creative powers. He saw it as the cornerstone of his entire dramatic output. This book will be my masterpiece, he declared. He had completed the two great poetic dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt and was about to embark on the Cycle of twelve modern plays, beginning with Pillars of Society and concluding with When We Dead Awaken which were to establish his unrivaled international fame. While the plays of the Realist Cycle are well known, Emperor and Galilean still awaits discovery by modern readers, actors and directors. The major Shakespearean scholar, G. Wilson Knight has written of the play, it is certainly the greatest dramatic document of its century..it is stageworthy...(it is) conceived dramatically, even theatrically... under a spectacular production the result could be triumphant. Dramatizing the tragic career of Julian the Apostate, the play presents Western Civilzation itself at a most crucial point. It is indispensable for understanding the later plays: themes, situations, and characters from Emperor and Galilean continually reappear in the modern realist plays.