Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, in Skien, Norway, to Knud (a businessman) and Marichen (Altenburg) Ibsen. His wealthy family was thrown into poverty in 1834 when his father lost his store. As a result, Ibsen was forced to leave school at age fifteen and accept a position as a pharmacist's assistant. The humiliation his family suffered as they sold off most of their property to pay off debts became a dynamic in his later plays, especially in A Doll House (1879) and John Gabriel Borkman (1896). Fire, which was a constant threat to Skien's wooden shacks, was another subject in some of his plays, including Ghosts (1881) and The Master Builder (1892). In the early 1850s, Ibsen attended Christiania University in what is now Oslo and began writing poetry. In 1850, he wrote his first play, Catiline, but it did not appear on the stage for several years. Soon after completing...