Peer Gynt Peer Gynt Peer Gynt (; ) is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1867. Written in Danish—the common written language of Denmark and Norway in Ibsen's lifetime—it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed "Per Gynt", the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modelled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845 ("Huldre-Eventyr
The Master Builder Builder" can be taken as one of realism: the destructive outcome of a middle-aged, professional man's infatuation with a younger, teasing woman or, as critic Desmond MacCarthy describes this concept of the work: the tragedy of an "elderly architect who falls off his scaffold while trying to show off before a young lady". If, however, one takes Solness's belief in his powers at their face value, the play also can be a lyrical and poetic fairy tale, in the manner of "Peer Gynt" travelling the Earth in his magical adventures while the faithful Solveig waits for his return. On stage,