Dramatizing Biographers: Michael Meyer’s A Meeting in Rome and Robert Ferguson’s Dr. Ibsen’s Ghosts

Using two plays that fictionalize the life of Henrik Ibsen, Michael Meyer’s A Meeting in Rome (1991) and Robert Ferguson’s Dr. Ibsen’s Ghosts (1999), as its primary texts, this article examines the broader ethical implications of staging the lives of real people and the implications, in particular, of inserting biographer–characters into dramatic works about the lives of real people. It aims to bring to light the ways in which biographer–characters in dramatic works written by biographers complicate the status of the biographer as a historical authority. Whereas Meyer actively seeks to strengthen his authoritative voice, constructing his mastery over Ibsen’s life story rhetorically through the figure of the biographer–narrator, Ferguson undermines the authority of the biographer by underscoring, through the dramatic action, how easily crucial information about Ibsen is both concealed from and overlooked by the biographer–character.