The Master Builder

The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's most significant and revealing works. The setting and plot of The Master Builder can be taken as one of unrelenting, "frock-coated realism": the destructive outcome of a middle-aged, professional man's infatuation with a younger, teasing woman or, as critic Desmond MacCarthy prosaically describes this concept of the work: the tragedy of an "elderly architect who falls off his scaffold while trying to show off before a young lady". If, however, we take Solness's belief in his powers at their face value, the play can also be a lyrical and poetic fairytale, in the manner of Peer Gynt travelling the Earth in his magical adventures while the faithful Solveig waits for his return. On stage both interpretations are possible, although it is difficult to give equal weight to both meanings in the same production.