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Gender and Melodrama in Ibsen's Lady Inger

In Ibsen's early history play Lady Inger, the protagonist appropriates to her own ends one of the cliches of nineteenth-century melodrama. Early on during the night that brings three mysterious visitors to her castle, Inger gives two of them goblets of wine. The stakes are high — the fate of Norway and Scandinavia hangs in the balance — and at least one of the visitors is probably hostile. The knowing reader or spectator expects a violation of the laws of hospitality. At the very least, one of the visitors will soon begin to feel faint from the effects of the substance slipped into one of the goblets. Possibly both, or the wrong individual, will fall victim to the hostess's treachery. Instead, Inger calls attention to the function of the device she uses[…]This self-conscious scene suggests that Ibsen is using melodrama against itself, to point beyond the limits of the genre and the cliches it implies.