History Theatre / PeerGynt

** A minor one doubles as a CrowningMomentOfFunny: Peer lures TheDevil away to Cape Town, telling Satan to look for him there. The funny part occurs when the Devil clearly avoids the place, because Cape Town harbours some "nasty missionaries from Stavanger". That line is ''still'' funny after 150 years - but when you know that the town of Stavanger was mainly known for a missionary school in Ibsen's lifetime, this gets pretty hilarious.

** To {{Faust}}. Solveig is the Margrethe equivalent of the play.

Returning to Norway an old man, he ends up shipwrecked off the western coast, and comes home as an unknown 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.

** Two other arc symbols is worth mentioning: The cabin Peer built, which ends up as the abode of Solveig, ends up as a symbol of Peer`s soul as well (or his "self"). Also: the reindeer, starting with the tall tale Peer delivers at the very opening of the play. This reindeer can be said to symbolize Peer`s creative and imaginative side.

* BadassNormal: A young boy Peer sees in act three, is dead by the fifth. A priest relates his life in a long eulogy, telling the story of the man, who cut off his index finger to avoid being proscribed to the army, then living his life on a secluded mountain farm (he had to rebuild the farm twice, because of flood, and then because of a glacier), working his ass off to get his sons to school, and seeing them off as unthankful adults in America. As the priest puts it, "he strove and fell in the farmer`s small struggle". Peer relates to this man, although it is lampshaded that he lived a more meaningful life than the title character.

* BigDamnHeroes: Peer`s mother saves him from the trolls before the literally smash him to pieces, by chiming the church bells. One scene later, Solveig does the same, saving Peer from the Boyg by singing hymns.

--> '''Begriffenfeldt''': The pure common sense succumbed to death last night at eleven o`clock.

* BlatantLies: Lampshaded in the very first line: "Peer, you`re lying!" Of course he answers "No, I`m not!" And it escalates from there.

* ChekhovsGun: The Silver Button, handed over to Solveig´s sister in the second act, is often seen as a foreshadowing of the button moulder in the fifth. Being a symbol of Peer´s soul, {{it makes sense in context}}.

* CourtlyLove: Peer`s attitude to Solveig in the third act. Before this, he has had his way with no less than five girls (Ingrid and the hulder, and the three dairy maids). When Solveig arrives on the scene, he goes courtly, defining her high above the other girls. OOCIsSeriousBusiness indeed.

* DeadGuyOnDisplay / {{Mummy}}: The second of the three loonies Peer encounters in the Cairo Asylum carries a mummy on his back. He is called a "Fellah", that would be a carrier. And he claims he carries "king Apis" with him. Peer suggests the fellah should hang himself to be like his king, and the fellah does. This suicide begins Peer`s {{heel realization}}.

* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Peer - who is far from a good person - has a bit of a love-hate relationship with Aase, but when he learns that she is dying he apologetically admits his flaws, comforts her the only way he knows how (by making her the central character in one of his fanciful stories), and kisses her lifeless body on his way out.

* 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 its 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.

* HamToHamCombat: Peer vs his mother. Peer vs the mountain king, Peer vs almost everybody else currently on stage. Also Aase vs the Hægstad farmer. Apparently no combat with Solveig and her little sister.
* HearingVoices: In the second act, when the Boyg calls on "birds" or whatever, to consume him. And later in the fifth act, alone in the wilderness, a number of voices call to him to remind him on all the tasks and works he didn`t do, the songs he never sung, and the tears he never shed. In the end, his mother calls to him, complaining that his way of "comforting" her on her deathbed in fact [[NiceJobBreakingItHero led her straight to hell]].

* HeelRealization: Peer doubled out of the slaving business, and flatly states that he understood "that business was wrong". Possibly the ''only'' point in the play where he actually tried to make up for his mistakes. May be an example of EvenEvilHasStandards, although Peer isn´t actually ''evil'', just a jerk.

* UsefulNotes/NorwegianLanguageStruggle: Ibsen couldn`t resist it. He had to put in a big {{shout out}} to this. When Peer is in the Cairo madhouse, he encounters a being who claims to fight for the Malabar orangutans and their right to make their own noises after four hundred years of portuguese suppression. ''Really''? Another {{take that}} from Ibsen. The man is a parody of a known language struggler at the time.

* OutOfCharacterMoment: The end of the fourth act. At this point, we have met a middle aged Peer who has been bluffing on self confidence all the way, who always seems to be on top of things, and never seems to mess up, even when he actually does. In the madhouse, he is shocked out of his wits, has a visual breakdown, and starts to present himself as a more sincere, and rather helpless person. He even speaks of Solveig with reverence: "In the possesion of one woman, I was a book laid with silver. [[TheCloudCuckoolanderWasRight It is the same typo to be wise and mad]]." Sadly, it doesn`t last that long.

* 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 UsefulNotes/{{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 {{Dramatically missing the point}}. And somewhere, Ibsen is laughing his heart out...

** A minor one doubles as a CrowningMomentOfFunny: Peer lures TheDevil away to Cape Town, telling Satan to look for him there. The funny part occurs when the Devil clearly avoids the place, because Cape Town harbours some "nasty missionaries from Stavanger". That line is ''still'' funny after 150 years - but when you know that the town of Stavanger was mainly known for a missionary school in Ibsen`s lifetime, this gets pretty hilarious.

** The whole line underscores Solveig`s ultimate choice as SeriousBusiness UpToEleven. Made ''even worse'' for her when Peer ultimately ''leaves'' her there.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: The essence of the Button Moulder`s definition of "self" can be boiled down to this trope.

** For that matter: One of the people he meets when arriving in his home community flatly tells him that he was "hanged many years ago" in a foreign country. One could interpret the entire fifth act as a combination of a DyingDream and a GhostAmnesia. His fellow men clearly doesn`t recognize him.

** Also invoked by Peer Gynt himself the first time he spots his own cabin with Solveig singing inside: "Never look that way - it is deserted. [[MindScrew I´m afraid I am dead long before I died"]].

* 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 phrazing when leaving her own family behind to live with Peer.

* BadassBoast: Peer rips one off while fighting the Boyg, and does a ShoutOut to TheBible in the process:

** Doubles as a ShoutOut to ImmanuelKant, who wrote a "criticism on the common sense".

* TheDevilIsALoser: Lampshaded by Peer Gynt in a tale he tells of how the Devil tried his luck as a street artist in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, and later on when the two actually meet. Peer manages to trick the Devil when he realizes the Devil is after his soul - and sends him on a wild goose chase to SouthAfrica (Actually PlayedForLaughs).

* {{Inversion}}: Of Theatre/{{Brand}}. The two characters are polar opposites.

* AccidentalMurder: Peer hangs on the keel of a boat for sheer life after his ship has gone down. He shares the space with the ship`s cook, and they fight over a place to hang on. Peer manages to shove the cook down, and accidentally drowns him.

* AncientEgypt: The last part of the fourth act takes place in Egypt, with Peer commenting on the Sfinx and the bust of Memnon.

* TakeOverTheAsylum: The inmates ''and'' the keeper do this at the end of the fourth act during the asylum scene.

* TakingOverTheAsylum: The inmates ''and'' the keeper do this at the end of the fourth act during the asylum scene.

---> '''Begriffenfeldt''': The pure common sense succumbed to death last night at eleven o`clock.
And later:

* HannibalHasAPoint: The Mountain King knows probably more about the human condition than Peer himself. He spouts wisdom in both scenes he takes part in, and even tries to straighten up Peer at the end of the play. Although he orders Peer smashed against the wall when he is tired of arguing with him, he acts fairly decent for a troll. [[FridgeLogic The troll king has lived long enough to observe a number of human flaws in his lifetime - those creatures live longer than humans, all things considered]].

* Series/SavedByTheBell: Literally inside the mountain, as {{the Fair Folk}} can't endure the sound of churchbells. And Peer in the end, though it is the singing of hymns that does the trick.

* SavedByTheBell: Literally inside the mountain, as {{the Fair Folk}} can't endure the sound of churchbells. And Peer in the end, though it is the singing of hymns that does the trick.

* FollowTheLeader: ''Literature/TheNeverendingStory'' has Bastian, the titular character. He expies Peer Gynt on several occasions: Bastian is known for his tall tales, is called a liar, and has, like Peer, a gift of fantasy. When slipping away to Fantasia, he piles up several wishes to hide his true self, gradually losing it, and is at the end of the story, about to lose himself completely, ending up in a city of madmen. Oh, and before ''that'', he was about to proclaim himself emperor. Like in the Cairo madhouse, the people of the city of madmen see nothing but themselves. At the end, with his memory of his human life totally gone, Atreju intervenes on behalf of him, doing the part of Solveig (replacing love with ThePowerOfFriendship), giving Bastian the insight he needs to return home.

* BrokenEcho: Peer comes across The Sphinx, and decides that it must represent the Boyg. When he calls out to it, "Who are you?", he is surprised to hear his words echoed in German‚Berlin dialect, he notes.

* NapoleonicWars: The historical background, set in the early nineteenth century, as the beginning of the play. Later events shout out to the Greek rebellion (1825) and the San Francisco Gold Rush in 1848. Peer returns several years after this, sometime before 1865.

** The BadassNormal farmer also counts, as the loss of his index finger made him unfit to go to war (underscoring the 1864 point). Serves as an even greater TakeThat when one considers that the boy avoided drafting during the crucial fights for Norwegian independence in The NapoleonicWars (possibly [[UsefulNotes/NorwegianConstituentAssembly 1814]]). As a consequence, Ibsen hints of a "common flaw" in the Norwegian national build-up, surfacing in the time of independence.

* MoralEventHorizon: Peer secures himself by acting in a way that keeps him from crossing it. This is lampshaded heavily in the fourth act, when he explains his philosophy to his friends. This trait gains him a position on the list of the Button Moulder, however, and Peer gets a HeelRealization, making him cross the DespairEventHorizon instead.

* TeasingCreator: The "unknown passenger". Oh boy. Peer believes himself to be the only passenger on the ship that carries him home at the beginning of the fifth act. Then, a MysteriousWaif pops up from nowhere, and ''everybody else'' is ignorant of him. The passenger states that he is interested in Peer`s body, is rejected on this and quietly leaves. When he shows up again, Peer is hanging on for dear life on a turned life boat. He once again brings up the topic of Peer`s body, and from here on, [[MindScrew the dialogue gets positively weird]]. To this day, scholars have been totally in disarray about who or what this "passenger" is, or what he really means. Knowing Ibsen, he could have pulled TheWalrusWasPaul on us - but he never actually stated it.

* AdaptationDisplacement: The "In the Hall of the Mountain King" music by Grieg has become a well-known StandardSnippet, and is much more popular and well-known than the play it was written for.