The Master Builder

The Master Builder (Norwegian: Bygmester Solness) was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's most significant and revealing works.

Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer. (1892.)

Halvard Solness is a master builder and self-taught architect who is married to Aline, a woman above his station. Through an ambitious career he has built himself up to be a man of power in his home town, and it is hinted that he founded his success on an incident in which his wife's childhood home burned down to the ground. Aline has never recovered from the loss of her childhood home and the death of her newborn twins soon after. Lately she has also been worried about her husband's mental health, as she confides to their family doctor and friend, Dr. Herdal. Solness has three employees: Ragnar Brovik, his father Knut Brovik who as a younger man trained Solness in his work and is now an ailing, bitter old man, and Kaja Fosli, who is engaged to Ragnar but deeply and unhappily in love with Solness. When Solness finds out that Ragnar wants to set up in business on his own, he is unwilling to help Ragnar, whom he tries to get Kaja to marry, in order to keep them both in his own employment. Solness has an unexpected visit by a young woman, Hilde Wangel, whom he met ten years earlier at a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the roofing of a church tower he had built in her home town. She tells him that on that occasion he had kissed her and promised to return in ten years' time to offer her a "kingdom", which she has now come to claim.--Submitted by MR-CORY.

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Recent Forum Posts on The Master Builder

Inspiration for the Play

Is the inspiration for 'Bygmester Solness', this quote from the Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whom Ibsen acknowledged reading? “Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.” Early in life, Solness was a man with ideals and dreams aplenty. As a master builder, he built churches and, later, 'houses for people to live in'. In his old age Solness is trapped in the detritus of these 'dreams of youth'. So the play begins. But Ibsen provides a surprising way out - a happy ending! And his solution is as subtle as the irony in the Kierkegaard quotation.

Posted By Gladys at Sun 8 Feb 2009, 9:29 PM in The Master Builder || 6 Replies

The Ending – Castles for which Princess?

With Halvard Solness fallen to his death from top of his own house, the play ends with: HILDA. But he mounted right to the top. And I heard harps in the air. My--my Master Builder! Clearly an elated Hilda has a 'castle in the air' fit for a princess. Earlier in the last Act, she and Solness talk of castles, plural. It would seem that the Master Builder has just built such a castle for Ragnar and his princess, Kaia Brovnik. What about his dutiful wife, Aline Solness, a woman steeped in tragedy after her beloved ‘castle’ burnt down, "But it's what came of the fire--the dreadful thing that followed---! That is the thing! That, that, that!"? We learn much later that 'the dreadful thing' is not the death of her twins, "That was a dispensation of Providence; and in such things one can only bow in submission--yes, and be thankful, too". When they married, Aline had long been a princess in a castle! Not for her, mere 'houses for people to live in', 'houses for strangers'. Yet for a decade, Aline has been trapped in a dreadful 'cage' of conjugal duty to Solness, a virtual stranger burdened with shattered dreams. It follows that in daring to climb to the pinnacle of his new house, in again talking face to face with almighty God and laying the wreath, the Master Builder builds a new castle (in the air) for Aline also. Hilda is understandably ecstatic: what is life for, if not to build castles in the air for princesses to live in?

Posted By Gladys at Thu 21 Aug 2008, 6:48 PM in The Master Builder || 1 Reply

'The poor little twins' - dead 12 years

Solness says to Hilda, 'And both our little boys, they-- --they--oh!' Whereas Aline Solness remarks, 'Oh, yes, the boys. But, you see, that was a thing apart. That was a dispensation of Providence; and in such things one can only bow in submission--yes, and be thankful, too.' and then, 'We ought to feel nothing but joy in thinking of them'. What exactly is it that has long alienated Aline from her husband, and how does his death set it right at the end?

Posted By Gladys at Sun 3 Aug 2008, 5:17 PM in The Master Builder || 2 Replies

Loved It

I just finished reading this play, and I have to say I loved it. Solness I found to be fascinating, and though in spite of his faults, and the fact that I did not agree with everything he did, I still could not help but to be drawn to him and to like him. He had a certain charisma I thought. The end was so terribly tragic. But this was such an interesting and moving work.

Posted By Dark Muse at Fri 11 Jul 2008, 12:59 PM in The Master Builder || 5 Replies

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