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    The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
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    The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    By Henrik Ibsen

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    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Ibsen includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Ibsen’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781788775915
    The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Author

    Henrik Ibsen

    Born in 1828, Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and poet, often associated with the early Modernist movement in theatre. Determined to become a playwright from a young age, Ibsen began writing while working as an apprentice pharmacist to help support his family. Though his early plays were largely unsuccessful, Ibsen was able to take employment at a theatre where he worked as a writer, director, and producer. Ibsen’s first success came with Brand and Peter Gynt, and with later plays like A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and The Master Builder he became one of the most performed playwrights in the world, second only to William Shakespeare. Ibsen died in his home in Norway in 1906 at the age of 78.

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      Book preview

      The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) - Henrik Ibsen

      The Complete Works of

      HENRIK IBSEN

      VOLUME 21 OF 29

      The Master Builder

      Parts Edition

      By Delphi Classics, 2013

      Version 1

      COPYRIGHT

      ‘The Master Builder’

      Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition (in 29 parts)

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2017.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78877 591 5

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition

      This eBook is Part 21 of the Delphi Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen in 29 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Master Builder from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Henrik Ibsen, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

      Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Henrik Ibsen or the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen in a single eBook.

      Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

      HENRIK IBSEN

      IN 29 VOLUMES

      Parts Edition Contents

      The Plays

      1, Catiline

      2, The Burial Mound

      3, Lady Inger of Oestraat

      4, The Feast at Solhaug

      5, Olaf Liljekrans

      6, The Vikings at Helgeland

      7, Love’s Comedy

      8, The Pretenders

      9, Brand

      10, Peer Gynt

      11, The League of Youth

      12, Emperor and Galilean

      13, Pillars of Society

      14, A Doll’s House

      15, Ghosts

      16, An Enemy of the People

      17, The Wild Duck

      18, Rosmersholm

      19, The Lady from the Sea

      20, Hedda Gabler

      21, The Master Builder

      22, Little Eyolf

      23, John Gabriel Borkman

      24, When We Dead Awaken

      The Poems

      25, The Poetry

      The Norwegian Texts (De norske tekster)

      26, The Original Texts

      The Non-Fiction

      27, Speeches and New Letters

      The Criticism

      28, The Criticism

      The Biography

      29, The Life of Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse

      www.delphiclassics.com

      The Master Builder

      Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer

      In July 1891, Ibsen returned to Christiania after 27 years abroad and The Master Builder was written the following year, though he was influenced by his previous experiences with 18-year-old Emilie Bardach. Bardach inspired the character Hilde Wangel, though she is presented as far more calculating and coquettishly in the play than she was most likely to have acted towards Ibsen. A friend of the playwright once wrote of Ibsen’s encounter with Bardach: Ibsen related how he had met in the Tyrol, where she was staying with her mother, a Viennese girl of very remarkable character, who had at once made him her confidant. The gist of it was that she was not interested in the idea of marrying some decently brought-up young man; most likely she would never marry. What tempted, fascinated and delighted her was to lure other women’s husbands away from them. She was a demonic little wrecker; she often seemed to him like a little bird of prey, who would gladly have included him among her victims. He had studied her very, very closely.

      On August 9, 1892 Ibsen began work on what was to be the final version of the play, published by Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag in Christiania on December 12th and in Copenhagen on December 14th 1892 in an edition of 10,000 copies. The play had a mixed reception, though it received on the whole a more positive response than with the preceding plays. The first public performance of The Master Builder was a reading in Norwegian at the Theatre Royal in the Haymarket in London on December 7th 1892, five days before the play was even published, as part of William Heinemann’s strategy to secure the copyright for himself. The first professional staging of the play was on January 19, 1893 at the Lessing-Theater in Berlin, with the director Emanuel Reicher playing the title role.

      The action concerns Halvard Solness, the master builder of the title, who has become the most successful builder in his home town by a fortunate series of coincidences. He had previously conceived these events and wished for them to come to pass, but never actually did anything about them. By the time his wife’s ancestral home was destroyed by a fire in a clothes cupboard, he had already imagined how he could cause such an accident and then profit from it by dividing the land on which the house stood into plots and covering it with homes for sale. Between this fortuitous occurrence and some chance misfortunes of his competitors Solness comes to believe that he has only to wish for something to happen in order for it to come about. He rationalises this as a particular gift from God, bestowed so that, through his unnatural success, he can carry out His ordained work of church building. The plot also concerns the destructive outcome of a middle-aged, professional man’s infatuation with a young and flirtatious woman.

      The first edition

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      CHARACTERS.

      ACT FIRST.

      ACT SECOND.

      ACT THIRD.

      Ibsen, close to the time of writing this play

      INTRODUCTION

      With The Master Builder — or Master Builder Solness, as the title runs in the original — we enter upon the final stage in Ibsen’s career. You are essentially right, the poet wrote to Count Prozor in March 1900, "when you say that the series which closes with the Epilogue (When We Dead Awaken) began with Master Builder Solness."

      Ibsen, says Dr. Brahm, "wrote in Christiania all the four works which he thus seems to bracket together — Solness, Eyolf, Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken. He returned to Norway in July 1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined to leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in Love’s Comedy] now, on his return, gazes into the secret places of human nature and the wonder of his own soul."

      Dr. Brahm, however, seems to be mistaken in thinking that Ibsen returned to Norway with no definite intention of settling down. Dr. Julius Elias (an excellent authority) reports that shortly before Ibsen left Munich in 1891, he remarked one day, I must get back to the North! Is that a sudden impulse? asked Elias. Oh no, was the reply; I want to be a good head of a household and have my affairs in order. To that end I must consolidate may property, lay it down in good securities, and get it under control — and that one can best do where one has rights of citizenship. Some critics will no doubt be shocked to find the poet whom they have written down an anarchist confessing such bourgeois motives.

      After his return to Norway, Ibsen’s correspondence became very scant, and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on The Master Builder. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him; but the following is the only one of these keynote poems which has been published. I give it in the original language, with a literal translation:

      DE SAD DER, DE TO —

      De sad der, de to, i saa lunt et hus

      ved host og i venterdage,

      Saa braendte huset.  Alt ligger i grus.

      De to faar i asken rage.

      For nede id en er et smykke gemt, —

      et smykke, som aldrig kan braende.

      Og leder de trofast, haender det nemt

      at det findes af ham eller hende.

      Men finder de end, brandlidte to,

      det dyre, ildfaste smykke, —

      aldrig han finder sin braendte tro,

      han aldrig sin braendte lykke.

      THEY SAT THERE, THE TWO —

      They sat there, the two, in so cosy a house, through autumn

      and winter days.  Then the house burned down.  Everything

      lies in ruins.  The two must grope among the ashes.

      For among them is hidden a jewel — a jewel that never can burn.

      And if they search faithfully, it may easily happen that he

      or she may find it.

      But

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