For a year, Ibsen contemplated the theme of A Doll's House in his mind. During this time, as was his custom, he gradually built up the characters, piece by piece, illuminating them from various angles, seeking the reactions that suited them best, and the words that defined them in a vivid, definitive manner.

When the moment comes to finally compose his material, he remembers that someone had told him about an old monastery, converted into a hotel, near Amalfi. He leaves Rome and withdraws there. It will take him more than four months to write A Doll's House from the first draft to the final text.

And during these four months, Ibsen will solidify, even if with some remaining instabilities or callbacks to some old methods, the new form of dramatic work, the "Ibsenian."