Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828 in Skien, Norway. The oldest of five children, Ibsen's family lived on a farm by the shore until poverty struck when he was eight and they were forced to move. Ibsen dropped out of school when he was only fifteen, finding work as an apothecary's apprentice for six years. It was then in 1849, at the age of 21, when Ibsen wrote his first play, Catilina, based on the style of one of his muses, William Shakespeare.

Ibsen traveled to the town of Bergan in 1851 where he met Ole Bull, a violinist and theater manager who gave the young Ibsen a crash course in everything theatrical and tips on honing his craft. Ibsen even studied abroad before returning in 1857 to manage a theater which proved to be a tiresome and frustrating task. Then, in 1862, Ibsen left Norway and settled in Italy where, three years later, he wrote the first piece which gained him attention, Brand, a five-act tragedy telling of a clergy so devoted to his faith it costs him his wife and children. The play made Ibsen famous in Scandinavia.

Ibsen moved to Germany in 1868, where, in 1879, he wrote one of his most famous pieces, A Doll's House, which stirred up controversy for how it questioned social practices. His next work, 1881's Ghosts, was even more of a shock, tackling themes of incest and venereal disease. The next year, he wrote another well-known play, An Enemy of the People, which was thought to be a response to the backlash he received from Ghosts, as this play was much more relaxed in theme. Ibsen wrote one more play in 1888, The Lady from the Sea, before returning to Norway where he crafted one of theater's most notorious characters in 1890's Hedda Gabler.

Ibsen's final years were spent writing plays involving mature characters dealing with their earlier life choices, such as 1899's When We Dead Awaken. Ibsen experienced a series if strokes in 1900 which left him incapable of writing. His last words, in Norwegian, were to a nurse commenting that he looked much better recently, to which Ibsen responded with "To the contrary!", and promptly died on May 23, 1906 in Oslo, Norway.