Trivia / Peer Gynt

• Referenced by...: Israeli poet Rachl Bluwstein originally wanted to add a reference to this play in her famous poem Doleful Song: the last lines originally read, 'I shall wait for you until my life is put out / As Solveig waited for her lover!' but were changed in the final draft to 'As Rachel waited'.
• Teasing Creator: 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 Mysterious Waif 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, 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 The Walrus Was Paul on us - but he never actually stated it.

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