Perhaps no writer has created more fascinating and complex females than the great Scandinavian playwright Jorgen Lovberg, known to his contemporaries as Jorgen Lovberg. Tortured and embittered by his agonizing relationships with the opposite sex, he gave the world such diverse and unforgettable characters as Jenny Angstrom in Geese Aplenty and Mrs. Spearing in A Mother’s Gums. Born in Stockholm in 1836, Lovberg (originally Lövberg, until, in later years he removed the two dots from above the o and placed them over his eyebrows) began writing plays at the age of fourteen. His first produced work, brought to the stage when he was sixty-one, was Those Who Squirm, which drew mixed notices from the critics, although the frankness of the subject matter (cheese fondling) caused conservative audiences to blush. Lovberg’s work can be divided into three periods. First came the series of plays dealing with anguish, despair, dread, fear, and loneliness (the comedies); the second group focused on social change (Lovberg was instrumental in bringing about safer methods of weighing herring); finally, there were the six great tragedies written just before his death, in Stockholm, in 1902, when his nose fell off, owing to tension.
Taken from the book Woody Allen Complete Prose
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