Various Golden Bestsellers

or widely read ...
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-7364-1840-0
Verlag: anboco
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 51559 Seiten

The famous and most read works of Charles Dickens, David Hume, Mark Twain, Henrik Ibsen, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Ambrose Bierce, H. C. Andersen, Leo Tolstoy, L. M. Montgomery, Plato, Benjamin Franklin, Lew Wallace, Lesslie Hall, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Voltaire, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Thomas Paine, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Bram Stoker, Jane Austen, Michel de Montaigne, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Jacob Grimm, Joseph Conrad, Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Malory, Walt Whitman, Victor Hugo, Thomas Hobbes, Louisa May Alcott, Marcus Aurelius, Herman Melville, Mary White Rowlandson, Frederick Douglass, John Milton, J. M. Barrie, Sophocles, Bernard Shaw, John Locke, Marcel Proust, Edgar R. Burroughs, Kate Chopin, Jack London, William Shakespeare, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Saint Augustine, Alexandre Dumas, Immanuel Kant, Homer, Olaudah Equiano, Upton Sinclair, Vatsyayana, Washington Irving, Daniel Defoe, Niccolò Machiavelli, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Anton P. Chekhov, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Robert L. Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Christopher Marlowe, Wilkie Collins, L. Frank Baum, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jerome K Jerome, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Brontë: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Sherlock Holmes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Anna Karenina, Ben-Hur, Beowulf, Candide, Crime and Punishment, The Time Machine, Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Dracula, Dubliners, Emma, Faust, Frankenstein, Gulliver's Travels, Heart of Darkness, Ivanhoe, Les Misérables, Leviathan, Little Women, Meditations, Moby Dick, My Secret Life, Notre-Dame De Paris, Oliver Twist, Peter & Wendy, Oedipus, Sense and Sensibility, Swann's Way, Tarzan, Brothers Karamazov, The Count of Monte Cristo, Kama Sutra, Ulysses, Iliad ...

Autoren/Hrsg.

Various

Leseproben

A DOLL'S HOUSE

by Henrik Ibsen

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Torvald Helmer.
Nora, his wife.
Doctor Rank.
Mrs Linde.
Nils Krogstad.
Helmer's three young children.
Anne, their nurse.
A Housemaid.
A Porter.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

A DOLL'S HOUSE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

A DOLL'S HOUSE

ACT I

[SCENE.--A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not extravagantly. At the back, a door to the right leads to the entrance-hall, another to the left leads to Helmer's study. Between the doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door, and beyond it a window. Near the window are a round table, arm-chairs and a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another door; and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy chairs and a rocking-chair; between the stove and the door, a small table. Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small objects; a small book-case with well-bound books. The floors are carpeted, and a fire burns in the stove.

It is winter. A bell rings in the hall; shortly afterwards the door is heard to open. Enter NORA, humming a tune and in high spirits. She is in outdoor dress and carries a number of parcels; these she lays on the table to the right. She leaves the outer door open after her, and through it is seen a PORTER who is carrying a Christmas Tree and a basket, which he gives to the MAID who has opened the door.]

Nora. Hide the Christmas Tree carefully, Helen. Be sure the children do not see it until this evening, when it is dressed. How much?

Porter. Sixpence.

Nora. There is a shilling. No, keep the change. Yes, he is in.

Helmer. Is that my little lark twittering out there?

Nora. Yes, it is!

Helmer. Is it my little squirrel bustling about?

Nora. Yes!

Helmer. When did my squirrel come home?

Nora. Just now. Come in here, Torvald, and see what I have bought.

Helmer. Don't disturb me. Bought, did you say? All these things? Has my little spendthrift been wasting money again?

Nora. Yes but, Torvald, this year we really can let ourselves go a little. This is the first Christmas that we have not needed to economise.

Helmer. Still, you know, we can't spend money recklessly.

Nora. Yes, Torvald, we may be a wee bit more reckless now, mayn't we? Just a tiny wee bit! You are going to have a big salary and earn lots and lots of money.

Helmer. Yes, after the New Year; but then it will be a whole quarter before the salary is due.

Nora. Pooh! we can borrow until then.

Helmer. Nora! The same little featherhead! Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds today, and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New Year's Eve a slate fell on my head and killed me, and--

Nora. Oh! don't say such horrid things.

Helmer. Still, suppose that happened,--what then?

Nora. If that were to happen, I don't suppose I should care whether I owed money or not.

Helmer. Yes, but what about the people who had lent it?

Nora. They? Who would bother about them? I should not know who they were.

Helmer. That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept bravely on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for the short time longer that there need be any struggle.

Nora. As you please, Torvald.

Helmer. Come, come, my little skylark must not droop her wings. What is this! Is my little squirrel out of temper? Nora, what do you think I have got here?

Nora. Money!

Helmer. There you are. Do you think I don't know what a lot is wanted for housekeeping at Christmas-time?

Nora. Ten shillings--a pound--two pounds! Thank you, thank you, Torvald; that will keep me going for a long time.

Helmer. Indeed it must.

Nora. Yes, yes, it will. But come here and let me show you what I have bought. And all so cheap! Look, here is a new suit for Ivar, and a sword; and a horse and a trumpet for Bob; and a doll and dolly's bedstead for Emmy,--they are very plain, but anyway she will soon break them in pieces. And here are dress-lengths and handkerchiefs for the maids; old Anne ought really to have something better.

Helmer. And what is in this parcel?

Nora. No, no! you mustn't see that until this evening.

Helmer. Very well. But now tell me, you extravagant little person, what would you like for yourself?

Nora. For myself? Oh, I am sure I don't want anything.

Helmer. Yes, but you must. Tell me something reasonable that you would particularly like to have.

Nora. No, I really can't think of anything--unless, Torvald--

Helmer. Well?

Nora. If you really want to give me something, you might--you might--

Helmer. Well, out with it!

Nora. You might give me money, Torvald. Only just as much as you can afford; and then one of these days I will buy something with it.

Helmer. But, Nora--

Nora. Oh, do! dear Torvald; please, please do! Then I will wrap it up in beautiful gilt paper and hang it on the Christmas Tree. Wouldn't that be fun?

Helmer. What are little people called that are always wasting money?

Nora. Spendthrifts--I know. Let us do as you suggest, Torvald, and then I shall have time to think what I am most in want of. That is a very sensible plan, isn't it?

Helmer. Indeed it is--that is to say, if you were really to save out of the money I give you, and then really buy something for yourself. But if you spend it all on the housekeeping and any number of unnecessary things, then I merely have to pay up again.

Nora. Oh but, Torvald--

Helmer. You can't deny it, my dear little Nora. It's a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of money. One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are!

Nora. It's a shame to say that. I do really save all I can.

Helmer. That's very true,--all you can. But you can't save anything!

Nora. You haven't any idea how many expenses we skylarks and squirrels have, Torvald.

Helmer. You are an odd little soul. Very like your father. You always find some new way of wheedling money out of me, and, as soon as you have got it, it seems to melt in your hands. You never know where it has gone. Still, one must take you as you are. It is in the blood; for indeed it is true that you can inherit these things, Nora.

Nora. Ah, I wish I had inherited many of papa's qualities.

Helmer. And I would not wish you to be anything but just what you are, my sweet little skylark. But, do you know, it strikes me that you are looking rather--what shall I say--rather uneasy today?

Nora. Do I?

Helmer. You do, really. Look straight at me.

Nora. Well?

Helmer. Hasn't Miss Sweet Tooth been breaking rules in town today?

Nora. No; what makes you think that?

Helmer. Hasn't she paid a visit to the confectioner's?

Nora. No, I assure you, Torvald--

Helmer. Not been nibbling sweets?

Nora. No, certainly not.

Helmer. Not even taken a bite at a macaroon or two?

Nora. No, Torvald, I assure you really--

Helmer. There, there, of course I was only joking.

Nora. I should not think of going against your wishes.

Helmer. No, I am sure of that; besides, you gave me your word-- Keep your little Christmas secrets to yourself, my darling....