30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play #23 "The Master Builder" by Henrik Ibsen

 

Henrik Ibsen, a master builder of plays

I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #23

The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen

There is a reason that we call the great ones the great ones (hint: it's because they are great). Henrik Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare (his play A Doll's House was the most performed play in the world in 2006). The Norwegian playwright and theater director is rightfully considered one of the founders of modern theater as we know it. Although his early verse play Peer Gynt has some surreal elements to it, after that he largely was interested in writing only realistic prose. His influence is clear in writers like G.B. Shaw, Eugene O'Neill, and even James Joyce. he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904.

And yet, for whatever reason, I have not read all of his works. Before today, I had read his play Ghosts while a student at Boston University (a play in which we know a character has syphilis without the word every being said), Hedda Gabler (I don't know many people who have studied theater haven't read that one) and A Doll's House. 

I absolutely loved reading The Master Builder today. While it feels strange I that it took me this long, I also like to believe we read the things we read when we do for a reason, and it is possible that I might not have loved this play as much had I read it as a young man (or, younger man, right?) as an assignment. In many ways, Ibsen is the master builder, or at least the master craftsman, with so many playwrights like myself discovering that they are eager apprentices. 

The play was first published in 1892, and while it continues his quest for realism, it is also deeply infused with symbolism. Halvard Solness is the title character--- a middle-aged man, desperately afraid of the younger generation of builders, to the extent that he has kept one in his employ to clip his wings and keep him from rising, going so far as to encourage the young man's fiance to fall in love with him to use her to keep him in his employ. Solness lost his two young sons in what he thinks is the direct aftermath of a fire--- a fire he believes he may have had the power to will. In fact, Solness believes that he has this power in other ways, to bend people in a sense because of his will. That the "trolls" and "devils" help in this way. 

Along comes Hilda Wangel, who I have learned is a character who appeared in Ibsen's earlier play The Lady From the Sea as well. I hope to read that play, too, because I think Hilda is an amazingly drawn character. She talks of having seen the Master Builder when she was but a child of 12 or 13, when he climbed to the top of a church, to the highest tower, to adorn it with the traditional wreath upon completion of the project. She also tells Solness how he had promised to make her a princess one day and had even kissed her (gross). He told her in ten years he would come and take her away. And now she has come to him for the kingdom he promised her. 

The dynamic between Solness, afraid of his middle-age and relevancy and Hilda, the one aspect of the younger generation he is drawn to, is the heart of the play. And while sometimes Hilda's motivations seem a bit inconsistent--- does she want him to find happiness by being more grounded, or is she the temptress bird of prey who wants him to build the castles in the sky even if it means crashing down?--- it is often "quite thrilling" (as Hilda would say) to read their back and forth. 

There is much more I could write about this play, but I encourage you all to read it for yourselves if you haven't yet. You'll be glad you did...

One last note:  The play has very obvious biographical elements, as Ibsen had a brief affair with an 18 year-old woman who apparently delighted in stealing husbands (but he was in his early 60s, so maybe it was more his responsibility), of who he said gave him a "high, painful happiness". And while she didn't "steal" him, he said he stole her--- for his play.