THE MASTER BUILDER

by Henrik Ibsen


Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer


Introduction by William Archer




INTRODUCTION.


With _The Master Builder_--or _Master Builder Solness_, as the title
runs in the original--we enter upon the final stage in Ibsen's career.
"You are essentially right," the poet wrote to Count Prozor in March
1900, "when you say that the series which closes with the Epilogue
(_When We Dead Awaken_) began with _Master Builder Solness_."

"Ibsen," says Dr. Brahm, "wrote in Christiania all the four works
which he thus seems to bracket together--_Solness_, _Eyolf_,
_Borkman_, and _When We Dead Awaken_. He returned to Norway in July
1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over
Europe was destined to leave his home no more. . . . He had not
returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of
the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his
old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had