Henrik Ibsen's ideas startled, and often revolted, the complacent Victorian society of his day — and some of his plays would seem avant garde even today. He was a master craftsman, whose style, in the original, is spare, deceptively simple, but powerful. Yet this least Victorian of men has become familiar to us in English translations made in Victorian times. Eva Le Gallienne says, "The great Viking ship, with its clean, eliminated, uncompromising lines, has been muffled under Victorian drapery."  Miss Le Gallienne began making her own translations of Ibsen (in addition to those published here, six others have already been published in the Modern Library) in order to produce versions that would be readable and, above all, actable, today. But she has succeeded in far more than that: By eliminating a barrier between the modern reader and the plays, she has restored Ibsen to his place as a man who spoke not only to his own time, but to the future.