Hilda: My Master Builder!
A Voice: Mr. Solness is dead. He fell right into the quarry.
Ragnar: So, after all, he could not do it.
Hilda: But he mounted right up to the top. And I heard harps in the air. (Waves her shawl, and shrieks with wild intensity) My—my Master Builder!
FOOTNOTES:
[N] Henrik Ibsen, poet and the creator of a new type of drama, was born at Skien, in South Norway, on March 20, 1828. Apprenticed first to a chemist at Grimstad, he next entered Christiania University, but speedily wearied of regular academic studies. He then undertook journalistic work for two years, and afterwards became a theatrical manager at Bergen. In 1857 he was appointed director of the National Theatre at Christiania, and about this time wrote, at intervals, plays in the style of the ancient Norse sagas. "The Master Builder" ("Bygmester Solness") belongs to his later efforts, and was completed in 1892. In it many critics discern the highest attainments of Ibsen's genius, and its realism is strangely combined with romance. It is a plea for the freedom of the human spirit; and the terrible drama is wrought out in language of extraordinary symbolism. Hilda Wangel is the "superwoman," who will suffer nothing to stand between her and the realisation of herself. Had Solness been as strong a spirit, the end might have been different. But he has a "sickly conscience," unable to bear the heights of freedom. Here again Ibsen is unique in his estimate of mankind. Nevertheless, his characters are all actual personalities, and live vividly. Ibsen died on May 23, 1906.