History Theatre / PeerGynt

* DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu: Peer gets a child with the greenclad woman, after romancing her alright If he actually slept with her physically is beside the point, as the Mountain King points out. In the secondary world, lust is enough to conceive. And Peer goes {{oh crap}} instantly.

* DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu: Peer actually has a child with the greenclad woman. If he actually slept with her physically is beside the point, as the Mountain King points out. In the secondary world, lust is enough to conceive. And Peer goes {{oh crap}} instantly.

* BangingCthulhu: Peer actually has a child with the greenclad woman. If he actually slept with her physically is beside the point, as the Mountain King points out. In the secondary world, lust is enough to conceive. And Peer goes {{oh crap}} instantly.

* DidYouJustSleepWithCthulhu: Peer actually has a child with the greenclad woman. If he actually slept with her physically is beside the point, as the Mountain King points out. In the secondary world, lust is enough to conceive. And Peer goes {{oh crap}} instantly.

* ItRunsInTheFamily: Both Peer`s grandfather and father were moulded by the Button Moulder, so Peer had it coming, from a genetic point of wiew.

* MamaBear: Peer`s mother Åse. She is rather arguable and dissatisfied with the ways of his son, but stands up for him when she believes him threatened - to the point where she tries to face down the local smith, arguably the strongest man in the community and Peer`s archnemesis in the first part of the play. Occasionally, she also acts like a {{jewish mother}}.

* SomewhereAnOrnithologistIsCrying: Peer claims to have encountered ''seagulls'' at 1500 meters above sea level in the mountains of Vågå. But then again, he was telling his mother a tall tale.

* {{Morality Play}}: To the point where {{death}} actually shows up to put the main character straight before he passes (Represented by the Button Moulder). The medieval Morality Play comes in {{up to eleven}} in this part of the play. In this case, Peer is {{the Everyman}} figure, and the people he meets in the fifth act are largely allegorical, and there to teach him of his errors.

* EternalLove in the form of Solveig, who unselfishly gave her life away to Peer, and waited for him for years, even if he himself did not exactly realize it, or even deserved it.

* LargeHam: The mountain king (usually played by a larger than life actor). Peer himself in several productions.

** Arguably, Solveig is in danger of being interpreted, and even played out as a {{Mary Sue}} character, making the trope {{older than television}}. Of course, she is a victim of {{memetic mutation}} as well, as the character stood out originally as good, but the megatons of memes coming along with movies and live action TV have all but ruined the interpretation, and made it hard to actually believe her.
* AntiHero: Played fairly straight with Peer.
* ArtisticLicenceGeography: When coming home in the fifth act, Peer is standing on deck of a ship and claiming to see the mountain Hallingskarvet, and the glacier Hardangerjøkulen. None of those can be seen from the western seas. It is also unclear whether the captain of the ship is right when stating that one can see Norway`s highest mountain from the top mast.
* SomewhereAnOrnithologistIsCrying: Peer claims to have encountered ''seagulls'' at 1500 meters above sea level in the mountains of Vågå. But then again, he was telling his mother a tall tale.

* ButNowIMustGo: Peer in the third act, running the hell away from everything that binds him. He leaves Solveig at the doorstep, telling her to wait, and argues that he has a heavy burden to shoulder, and must carry it alone. It takes the rest of his life to return to her. Solveig used the same phrsing when leaving her own family behind to live with Peer.

* IWillWaitForYou: Solveig again. Her famous song, set to music by Edvard Grieg points this out {{up to eleven}}:
--> Here I will wait, as I promised you last.
* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Peer annoys the mountain king and the entire troll community when he decides not to follow their last request. The beat him to kingdom come.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Mother Åse with the trolls, using church bells, Solveig with the Boyg, using bells and hymns.
--> The Boyg (finally defeated): He was to strong - he was backed by women.

* LeavingYouToFindMyself: averted, as Peer goes on a journey to get ''away'' from himself.

* LampShaded: With the "foreign passenger" musing that "one does not die in the middle of the fifth act", in the second scene of the same act.

* TakeThat: The play was a symbolical kick to the Norwegian and Swedish denial of fact at the Battle of Dybbøl in 1864, when Denmark had to fight {{Prussia}} all on their own and lost. Ibsen could not forgive the lack of principle he meant to see in his countrymen, and wrote a play containing a main character lacking almost every principle in the world. And ironically, it became Norway´s national play. The Norwegian elite who in time embraced the play, seems to have been {{completely missing the point}}. And somewhere, Ibsen is laughing his heart out...

* ShoutOut: To {{Faust}}, nontheless. Solveig is the Margrethe equivalent of the play.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: The historical Peer lived and died in the area of Gudbrandsdalen in Norway, was known for his abilities as a reindeer hunter, for his tall tales, and for several encounters with trolls. The boyg and the three dairy maids are all examples of {{Truth in Television}}.

* OurTrollsAreDifferent.: Coupled with the fair folk trope, as the inside of the mountain is populated with secondary world beings of every order possible: Witches, Goblins, trolls - They are all there. The main type of beings, including the king himself, is trolls, of course, and the main slogan is appointed to them: "Troll, be utterly thyself", as opposed to "Man, be thyself". Can be considered a combination of tropes, as the troll king is the father of the Hulder (not defined as such, only as "the greenclad woman, but her traits are likewise).

* MentalWorld: Most of the fifth act can be seen as this, as Peer`s inner turmoil tends to mirror the landscape he walks through, often a {{barren wasteland}} of sorts, until he hears the song of Solveig and gets a sense of direction.

* AntagonistProtagonist: Peer himself through the play.

* NoEnding: "We meet at the last cross-roads, Peer, and then we´ll see - I say no more..."

* OpenEnding: "We meet at the last cross-roads, Peer, and then we´ll see - I say no more..."

* IWillWaitForYou: Solveig again. Her famous song, set to music by {{Edvard Grieg}} points this out {{up to eleven}}:

'''Peer Gynt''' is an epic drama written by Norwegian playwright Creator/HenrikIbsen in 1867. The play is a {{verse drama}}, telling the life story of the {{farm boy}} Peer, an unreliable poet who is prone to make up {{tall tale}}s of his own experiences, often based on local folklore. This to the chagrin of the villagers, who have heard the stories before. Peer lives with his widow mother on a downtrodden farm, coming from a family who has seen better days. During his youth, he trespasses on a rural wedding and runs off with the bride, after being rejected by the chaste Solveig, who apparently made a lasting impression on him.

Peer, now an outcast and outlaw, tries to make a living in the mountains, and Solveig comes to live with him. She decided that he really needed it, and would not live with anyone else. At the same moment, the greenclad Hulder arrives with an offspring she claims is his, and the realisation makes Peer go {{face heel turn}} on Solveig, and he flees the country completely for several years. He only makes a brief stop to visit his dying mother.

Peer lives large in foreign lands, earns a lot of money on slave trade and missioning, and is abandoned by his foreign friends off the coast of Morocco. From there, he finds his way to Egypt, playing {{the prophet}} and seduces a beduin chieftain´s daughter who robs him, before he eventually tries his luck as an historian in Cairo. He ends up in a local madhouse, suddenly realizing how he got there.

'''Peer Gynt''' is an {{epic drama}} written by Norwegian playwright Creator/HenrikIbsen in 1867. The play is a {{verse drama}}, telling the life story of the {{farm boy}} Peer, an {{unreliable poet}} who is prone to make up {{tall tale}}s of his own experiences, often based on local folklore. This to the chagrin of the villagers, who have heard the stories before. Peer lives with his widow mother on a downtrodden farm, coming from a family who has seen better days. During his youth, he trespasses on a rural wedding and runs off with the bride, after being rejected by the chaste Solveig, who apparently made a lasting impression on him.

'''Peer Gynt''' is an {{epic drama}} written by Norwegian playwright Creator/HenrikIbsen in 1867. The play is a {{verse drama}}, telling the life story of the {{farm boy}} Peer, an {{unreliable poet}} who is prone to make up {{tall tale}}s of his own experiences, often based on local folklore. This to the chagrin of the villagers, who have heard the stories before. Peer lives with his widow mother on a downtrod farm, coming from a family who has seen better days. During his youth, he trespasses on a rural wedding and runs of with the bride, after being rejected by the chaste Solveig, who apparently made a lasting impression on him.

After having his will with the bride Ingrid, who was sweet on him, but had to marry someone else, he dumps her, only to get exceedingly drunk with three dairy maids in the mountain, and then finally to get abducted into the same mountain. Here, he encounters the Mountain king and his daughter, the greenclad Hulder, and has to pass some tests for the right to woo her. He goes some of the way, but rejects the trolls when they ask for permission to alter his eyesight for ever. Then the trolls beat him within an inch of his life before disappearing because of church bells, invoked by his mother, who seeks for him outside.

Returning to Norway an old man, he ends up shipwrecked off the western coast, and comes home as an unckown beggar. He sees his old farm fallen to total ruin, is mocked by the villagers who believe him dead, and returns to the mountains, where he finally realizes that his life is wasted. He meets {{the Devil}}, the Mountain king and a button moulder, who tells him to be reshaped, as his soul was squandered. He finally admits defeat and runs to the only one who can still save him: Solveig, still waiting in his old cabin. The play ends with a "we´ll see" from the Button Moulder.

** Ibsen also nods to other Norwegian authors, as contemporary poet {{Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson}} wrote of a [[HairOfGoldHeartOfGold golden haired girl]] in a largely successful story five years prior to the play. Like Solveig, this girl at first sight wore a hymn book and held "her mother´s skirt". ''And she had a similar name''. {{Henrik Wergeland}} used {{the cabin in the woods}} trope even before that, in an 1845 play called "The cabin in the mountains". The play in question also had [[IWillWaitForyou a young girl waiting]].

* TheCabinInTheWoods: Arguably "in the mountains". Peer´s refuge as an outlaw. Solveig´s actual home the bigger part of her life. A returning symbol of his actual "self" at the end of the play.

* MarySue: Solveig as handled in some literary criticism.

* EldritchAbomination: The Boyg. A Being, neither living nor dead, no exact shape, slimy, foggy...

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: Connected to the reception of the play and the position in the Norwegain national canon. Taken {{up to eleven}} when a prize is given up each year, bearing the name of the play. The Peer Gynt prize usually goes to a Norwegian who has broken through and made Norway more known. {{Fridge Irony}} at all costs.

* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Solveig. Also a girl with {{Hidden Depths}}. {{Incorruptible Pure Pureness}} also fits on her. Solveig does in fact invoke a number of tropes relating to the Romantic Heroine. The [[HeroicWillpower sheer willpower]] in her constant waiting for Peer to return, could arguably make her a passive {{power blonde}}.

* GenreDeconstruction: The fairy tale on several accounts. Also {{romanticism}} according to some scholars. Taken to the extreme, the play is a deconstruction of the Norwegian national myth. The play becoming a national myth in it´s own right, is a ''heavy'' historical irony on Ibsen´s behalf. Whether the play actually deconstructs romanticism is up to debate, as the structure of the play relies heavily on romantic troping. The "deconstructor" of the plot is Peer himself, as Solveig, invoking the {{Power Blonde}}, is there to save him. All the romantic tropes are in fact played straight with Solveig.