The Master Builder

The Master Builder Synopsis

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price

Ibsen's study of the corrosive effects of a guilty conscience.

Solness, the master builder of the title, is a self-made and successful businessman. He has stopped building the churches and towers of his youth in order to concentrate on ordinary houses for people, ever since the home that his wife inherited burnt down, with their own children inside. His guilty feelings of worthlessness spur him into absurd power struggles in his office, but he is forced to face his guilt when the provocative Hilde arrives with her story from the past...

Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder was first published in 1892 and first performed in January 1893 at the Lessing Theatre in Berlin.

This English version, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish.