The title of this study of the artist in Ibsen"s work is taken from Hedda Gabler"s ambitions for the heroic death of her former lover, Ejlert Lovborg, and points to a cultural inheritance from both Greek tragedy and Romanticism"s concept of the artist-as-rebel. In his great sequence of prose plays the figure of the artist (or would-be artist) is of the greatest importance to Ibsen in his presentation of the tensions inside contemporary society. His empathy with his `dramatis personae" and his exact and scrupulously accurate placing of them in context means that we need to appreciate his artist-characters in relation to their respective pursuits if we are to see those plays in which they appear in all their depth.