An Enemy of the People an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, followed his previous play, Ghosts, which criticized the hypocrisy of his society's moral code. Ibsen, Ellen Mortensen (Ibsen Studies v.7, 169) argues, wrote An Enemy of the People in response to the public outcry against Ghosts, which openly discussed adultery and syphilis. That response included accusations of both Ghosts and its author being "scandalous," "degenerate," and "immoral." In An Enemy of the People, a man dares to expose an unpalatable truth publicly and is punished for it. However, Ibsen took a somewhat skeptical view of his protagonist, suggesting that he may have gone too far in his zeal to tell the truth.