It explores the complexities of truth and illusion through the story of a family torn apart by secrets and the intrusion of an idealistic outsider.

It focuses on the Ekdal family, whose fragile peace is shattered by Gregers Werle, an idealist who insists on exposing hidden truths, leading to tragic consequences.

[1] The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm are "often to be observed in the critics' estimates vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works".

[4] The character "Gregers Werle" represents the spirit of the Paus family and Upper Telemark, a broader theme that is found in many of Ibsen's plays.

Gregers, whose mother died believing that Gina and Håkon had carried on an affair, becomes enraged at the thought that his old friend is living a life built on a lie.

While talking to Hedvig, she explains that Hjalmar keeps her from school because of her eyesight, but he has no time to tutor her, leaving the girl to escape into imaginary worlds through pictures she sees in books.

In the midst of the argument, Gregers returns, stunned to find that the couple are not overjoyed to be living without such a lie hanging over their heads.

Hedvig is desperate to win back her father's love, and agrees to have her grandfather shoot the duck in the morning.

He is appalled at what Gregers has done, and he reveals that he long ago implanted the idea of the invention with Hjalmar as a "life-lie" to keep him from giving in to despair.

Guided by a fervent strain of idealism, Gregers endeavors to reveal the truth to Hjalmar, and thereby free him from the mendacity which surrounds him.

Over the course of the play the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal".

This family has achieved a tolerable modus vivendi by ignoring the skeletons (among the secrets: Gregers' father may have impregnated his servant Gina then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child, and Hjalmar's father has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle contributed to but allowed Ekdahl alone to take the blame) and by permitting each member to live in a dreamworld of his own—the feckless father believing himself to be a great inventor, the grandfather dwelling on the past when he was a mighty sportsman, and little Hedvig, the child, centering her emotional life on an attic where a wounded wild duck leads a crippled existence in a make-believe forest.

When the skeletons are brought out of the closet, the whole dreamworld collapses; the weak husband thinks it is his duty to leave his wife, and the little girl, after trying to sacrifice her precious duck, shoots herself with the same gun (overhearing the fatal words from Hjalmar: "Would she lay down her life for me?").

One of the famous quotes from the doctor Relling who built up and maintained the lies the family is founded on is "Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness."

In Eva le Gallienne's translation, Relling says "I try to discover the Basic Lie – the pet illusion – that makes life possible; and then I foster it."

Before the play starts, Gregers worked on a plant in the mountains, and is accused by Relling (present there as well), of "intriguing" with the local serfs (actually commoners).

From a social rather than a symbolic point of view, Gregers is trying to root out an unhealthy system, arguing that "truth shall set you free".

One could argue that Gregers would feel responsible for the Ekdal family and their plight, as this is an apparent consequence of his father's manipulations and schemes.

On 8 November 1894, the first English translation of The Wild Duck by William Archer was performed at the Novelty Theatre in London, England.

[12] The play's first performance in the UK was well-received, and it further contributed to Ibsen's growing reputation as a prominent playwright in English-speaking countries.

Produced by Arthur Hopkins, the first English-language production of The Wild Duck opened on March 11, 1918, at the Plymouth Theatre in New York City.

On 7 March 1968, Irish national public television, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, broadcast a new production starring Ann Rowan, Marian Richardson, Christopher Casson, T. P. McKenna, Blánaid Irvine, Geoffrey Golden, and Maurice Good.

[16][17][18] In 1971, a television adaptation by Max Faber, directed by Alan Bridges, was broadcast in the BBC's Play of the Month series.

[20] A 1983 film version in English by Tutte Lemkow, directed by Henri Safran, with the characters' names completely anglicized, starred Jeremy Irons and Liv Ullmann.

[21] In 1989 Bo Widerberg directed a three-part Swedish TV series starring Tomas von Brömssen, Pernilla August and Stellan Skarsgård.