The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian
playwrightA playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works are usually written to be performed in front of a live audience by actors...
Henrik IbsenHenrik Johan Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family...
. It was first published in
1892The year 1892 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Shadows Uplifted by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper becomes the second novel by an African-American woman published in the United States-New books:...
and first performed in
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
on 19 January 1893.
Characters
- Halvard Solness, master builder.
- Aline Solness, his wife.
- Doctor Herdal, physician.
- Knut Brovik, formerly an architect, now in Solness' employment.
- Ragnar Brovik, his son, a draftsman.
- Kaia Fosli, a book-keeper.
- Ms.
The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian
playwrightA playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works are usually written to be performed in front of a live audience by actors...
Henrik IbsenHenrik Johan Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family...
. It was first published in
1892The year 1892 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Shadows Uplifted by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper becomes the second novel by an African-American woman published in the United States-New books:...
and first performed in
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
on 19 January 1893.
Plot summary
Characters
- Halvard Solness, master builder.
- Aline Solness, his wife.
- Doctor Herdal, physician.
- Knut Brovik, formerly an architect, now in Solness' employment.
- Ragnar Brovik, his son, a draftsman.
- Kaia Fosli, a book-keeper.
- Ms. Hilda Wangel, a character introduced earlier, in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea
The Lady from the Sea is a play written in 1888 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.-Plot:Ellida Wangel is married to the much older Doctor Wangel, a widower who already has two daughters not much younger than Ellida. After some years, Doctor Wangel finds his wife increasingly strange and anxious...
.
The action of the play occurs in the home of Halvard Solness, a middle-aged
architectAn architect is trained and licensed in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e. chief builder...
who has clawed his way to prominence. His single-minded focus on his job, however, has hardened him and prevented him and his wife Aline from having a meaningful private life. The costs of Solness' ambition are also symbolized in Solness' assistant, Knut Brovik, Solness' former employer whom he "scalped" to reach the top. Brovik, now dying, wants his son Ragnar to have more independence in the firm. Solness, however, fears that he will be eclipsed by a younger generation of architects, and refuses to allow Ragnar either to design original houses or to leave the firm and strike out on his own. (This has by many historians been viewed as Ibsen's way of admitting his own inadequacy, and his fear of being defeated by the young, up-and-coming author
Knut HamsunKnut Hamsun was a Norwegian author. He was considered by Isaac Bashevis Singer to be the "father of modern literature", and by King Haakon to be Norway's soul. In 1920, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil"...
, who in time would overshadow his countryman. Hamsun wrote after experiencing success with his novel
PanPan is a 1894 novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. Written while he lived in Paris, France, and in Kristiansand, Norway, Hamsun was directly influenced by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky...
.)
Into this tension comes Hilda Wangel, a vivacious young woman who has idolized Solness since ten years before, when, in the early stages of his career, he had built a large church in her hometown and climbed to the top of its tower during its dedication ceremony. While in town, Solness had promised Hilda, then a girl of twelve, "a kingdom". Now, Hilda says earnestly, she has come to collect her kingdom. In long conversations with Hilda, Solness describes his career and his frustration with how his ambition has kept him from achieving true satisfaction. Hilda urges him to allow Ragnar Brovik to leave the firm; Solness eventually acquiesces.
The play's final part deals with a new house that Solness has been building for himself and his wife. Now nearly complete, the house features a tall tower that both Solness and his wife fear is too great for him to climb in the dedication ceremony (like the one in Hilda's hometown). However, at Hilda's repeated requests, Solness agrees to make the climb, telling her that the two of them will together build "castles in the air ... the most wonderful thing in the world". In the play's final scene, Solness climbs to the top of the tower, but then falls to his death.
Criticism
The Master Builder was the first work Ibsen wrote upon his return to
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
from
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
in July 1891. It is generally grouped with the three other works written during this late period of Ibsen's life –
Little EyolfLittle Eyolf is an 1894 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play was first performed on January 12, 1895 in the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.-Plot:...
,
John Gabriel BorkmanJohn Gabriel Borkman is the penultimate composition of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, written in 1896.-Plot:The play is based on an incident that Ibsen recorded from an earlier period in his life, the attempted suicide of an army officer who had been accused of embezzlement...
, and
When We Dead AwakenWhen We Dead Awaken is the last play written by Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It was first published in 1899, and first staged in Stuttgart in 1900.-Plot summary:...
– as "symbolic plays" that lack the thematic clarity of such earlier works as
Hedda GablerHedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...
. Early reactions to the play by Ibsen's critics were mixed, probably due its heightened
symbolismSymbolism is the use of symbols to represent things such as ideas and emotions. Symbolism is sometimes used to refer specifically to totemic symbols that stand on their own, as opposed to linguistic symbols....
, much of which is unclear. Hilda, for example, seems to alternate roles between an inspiring force, urging Solness to temper his rampant ambition and pursue real happiness, and a temptress, pushing Solness to commitments he cannot possibly make. English critic
William ArcherWilliam Archer may refer to:* William S. Archer , U.S. Senator and Representative from Virginia* William Archer , Scottish dramatic critic and translator of Ibsen* William Reynolds Archer, Jr., U.S...
, however, has suggested that the play is not as completely symbolic as some have maintained, interpreting it instead as "a history of a sickly conscience, worked out in terms of pure psychology". He notes that in this regard the play is similar to earlier Ibsen works that deal mainly with a retrospective look at a character's psyche.
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/hibsen/bl-hibsen-master-intro.htm
External links