[2][3] The play was published by Gyldendal AS in Copenhagen in 1892 and its first performance was on 19 January 1893 at the Lessing Theatre in Berlin, with Emanuel Reicher as Solness.

When Solness does not respond immediately, she reminds him that at one point during their encounter he had made advances to her, had offered her a romantic interlude, and promised her "a kingdom", all of which she believed.

Solness also has a complicated relationship with his wife Aline, and the two are revealed to have lost twin sons some years ago.

Solness, inspired by her words, achieves the top of the tower, when he suddenly loses his footing and crashes to his death on the ground before the spectators who have arrived for the opening of the new building.

She waves her shawl and cries out with wild intensity “My—my Master Builder!” The search for a meaning or interpretation has engaged and often bewildered audiences and critics all over the world.

[9] The setting and plot of The Master Builder can be taken as one of realism: the destructive outcome of a middle-aged, professional man's infatuation with a younger, teasing woman[10] 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".

[11] 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.

[5] Theatre director Harold Clurman notes that many interpreters of Ibsen's text have associated his frequent references in the play to Hilda as a "bird of prey" with Bardach's predatory behaviour.

Ibsen took this tale, a common legend at many German churches, as evidence of a pervasive human belief that a man could not achieve success without paying a price.

[16] An equally obvious influence is Ibsen's relationship with Hildur Andersen, whom he met as the 10-year-old child of friends and who, when she had reached the age of 27, became his constant companion.

That Ibsen was offering a parable was noted in a review of the first London staging, when the joint translator, Edmund Gosse, was asked to explain the meaning of the work.

[19] Following the controversy attached to Ghosts, with its sensitive topic of inherited syphilis, the play's reception in London was not favourable.

[20] Even The Pall Mall Gazette, a champion of Ibsen's work, offered sympathy to the "daring" actors whose mediocre talents were unable to relieve the tedium of this lapse on the part of the "northern genius".

[22] The Master Builder was the first work Ibsen wrote upon his return to Norway in July 1891 after many years spent elsewhere in Europe.