Reading Order
The Master Builder Reading Order
The Master Builder (1892) by Henrik Ibsen is the most symbolically charged of the late Ibsen plays — the architect Halvard Solness, who has built his career on the ruins of others (his wife's family, his junior architect Ragnar Brovik), haunted by the fear that youth will come and take everything from him, and the arrival of Hilde Wangel, who ten years earlier watched Solness climb the tower of a new church in Lysanger, claims he kissed her and promised to come back, and now demands that he prove himself by climbing again. The master builder climbing the tower he fears and then falling to his death is Ibsen's most explicit investigation of the relationship between art, ambition, the guilt that success requires, and the woman who demands that the artist be as great as she imagined him. The play is often read as autobiographical — Ibsen was sixty-four when he wrote it, and the fear of being overtaken by the young, and the arrival of young women (specifically the actress and writer Emilie Bardach, who claimed an intense relationship with Ibsen during the summer of 1889) are directly reflected in the play's central concerns.
Where to start
The Master Builder (1892) — any modern translation; Michael Meyer's is the standard. Best Ibsen reading order: A Doll's House → Ghosts → The Wild Duck → Hedda Gabler → The Master Builder → When We Dead Awaken
Complete The Master Builder Book List
- 1Buy
The Master Builder
Henrik Ibsen·1892·Ibsen's most symbolically charged late play — Halvard Solness, Hilde Wangel, and the tower. The play that established Ibsen's late symbolic manner and the most explicitly autobiographical of his works; Solness climbing the tower and falling is Ibsen's image of the artist who meets the impossible demand of the young woman who believes in him - 2Buy
Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen·1890·The companion late Ibsen play — Hedda Tesman, the pistols, and the offstage shot. Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder are companion late Ibsen plays organized around people destroyed by the gap between their aspirations and what their circumstances allow: Hedda by her society's refusal to give her any legitimate channel for her desire for power; Solness by his own terror of the height he has committed himself to reaching - 3Buy
When We Dead Awaken
Henrik Ibsen·1899·The final Ibsen play and the direct companion — the sculptor Rubek and Irene, the model he used and discarded, who confronts him with what his art cost her. When We Dead Awaken and The Master Builder are companion late Ibsen plays about the guilt of the great artist: Solness's guilt about what his success cost those around him; Rubek's guilt about what his art cost Irene - 4Buy
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen·1879·The earlier companion — Nora Helmer's departure. Reading A Doll's House before The Master Builder shows the arc of Ibsen's development: from the play about a woman finding the courage to leave a constraining relationship, to the play about the man who built his success on constraining relationships and is finally destroyed by the demand to be as great as the woman who believes in him - 5Buy
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann·1912·Mann's companion in the literary tradition of the great artist destroyed by the impossible demand of beauty — Gustav von Aschenbach and Tadzio in Venice. Death in Venice and The Master Builder are companion investigations of the same problem: what happens to the artist who has built his life on a principle of restraint and control when confronted with a desire (for beauty, for height, for the impossible) that the principle cannot contain - 6Buy
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce·1916·Joyce's companion in the literary tradition of the investigation of the artist's ambition and its costs — Stephen Dedalus's development from Catholic schoolboy to artist who will 'forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.' Both The Master Builder and Portrait of the Artist investigate the question of what art costs and who pays for it - 7Buy
Rosmersholm
Henrik Ibsen·1886·The companion Ibsen play — Rosmer and Rebecca West, the progressive project that destroys them both. Rosmersholm and The Master Builder are companion late Ibsen plays about the guilt of people who have used others (Rebecca has manipulated Beata Rosmer; Solness has suppressed Ragnar Brovik) to achieve their own ends, and the woman who arrives to demand that the man be equal to her belief in him - 8Buy
The Magus
John Fowles·1965·Fowles's companion in the tradition of the man who meets the impossible demand of a woman who wants him to be greater than he is — Nicholas Urfe and the elaborate games of Maurice Conchis and the women on Phraxos. The Magus and The Master Builder are companion investigations of the relationship between a man's ambition, his guilt, and the woman who demands that he live up to the self she has imagined for him
The Master Builder — Frequently Asked Questions
What does the tower symbolize in The Master Builder?
The tower in The Master Builder works on several levels simultaneously. Literally: Solness's terror of heights is real, and the demand that he climb the tower of the new house he has built is a demand that he face and overcome his most intimate fear. Symbolically: the tower represents the impossible aspiration of the artist — the thing that is required of greatness that the person with ordinary human frailties cannot actually achieve. Autobiographically: Ibsen was sixty-four when he wrote the play, and Solness's terror of being overtaken by the young (the play's opening concern) is directly autobiographical — Ibsen feared that the new naturalists and symbolists would make his kind of theater obsolete. The tower is the height of achievement that Ibsen demands of himself and that the young (the Ragnar Broviks, the Hilde Wangels) demand of their heroes. When Solness climbs the tower at Hilde's demand and falls to his death, Ibsen is showing what it costs to try to be as great as the woman who believes in you, and what the alternative (not climbing) would have meant: the betrayal of everything Hilde had believed in, the final proof that the master builder is not the master builder anymore.
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