The innovative dramas of Henrik Ibsen created a sensation among nineteenth-century audiences with their mordant attacks on social conventions. Among the finest of these ground-breaking works was ' Ghosts', first performed in 1881. In it, the playwright assailed the hypocrisy of moral codes, offering a daring treatment of such then-taboo issues as infidelity, veneral disease, and illegitimacy. Ibsen substituted the modern scientific idea of heredity for the ancient Greek concept of fate, exposing hidden sins of the past as the roots of corruption.