From Act II

GREGERS
(looking sympathetically at him). And now you never get any shooting?

EKDAL.
Can’t just say that, sir. Get a shot now and then perhaps. Of course not in the old way. For the woods, you see – the woods, the woods -! (Drinks.) Are the woods fine up there now?

GREGERS.
Not so fine as in your time. They have been thinned a good deal.

EKDAL.
Thinned? (More softly, and as if afraid) It’s dangerous work that. Bad things come of it. The woods revenge themselves.

Transl. by Frank Wadleigh Chandler.

Hjalmar Ekdal and Gregers Werle, who have been friends in their youth, meet again after many years. Gregers’ father Werle, the merchant, once had Hjalmar’s father put in prison for a crime he himself committed, and then made Hjalmar marry his own pregnant maid and mistress. Hjalmar is the happy-go-lucky kind and lives blissfully unaware of this. He runs a photographer’s business with his wife Gina and the 14 old daughter Hedvig who he believes to be his own. Gregers Werle breaks with his father when he realizes these ugly truths, and ever the idealist, he reveals all to Hjalmar, hoping to help him start a new and better life. He triggers a terrible family crisis, and when Hjalmar disowns his daughter Hedvig, she becomes desperate. Gregers asks her to sacrifice the beloved wild duck that lives up in the dark loft together with other animals in the family’s dream world. But Hedvig takes her own life instead.