Act I

The play opens with Peer telling his mother, Ase, about the deer hunt he has just returned from. After delivering an exciting story filled with details from the hunt, Peer, who has no deer carcass in sight, admits that he fabricated the whole story. Ase accuses her son of being a lazy liar who is doing nothing to save them from poverty. After she tells him that he might have had a fine dowry if he'd chosen Ingrid as he wife, Peer agrees to marry her. But Ase replies that she is already promised to another, with the wedding scheduled for the next day. Peers states that he intends to stop the marriage, and when Ase protests, he picks her up and places her on a roof. On the way to the wedding, Peer overhears some guests talking and thinks they are speaking of him. He...