When a capricious Gubrandsdale bride refuses to come out to be married, the rollicking "Peer Gynt" pretends to lend a hand, but once he has coaxed the girl out of the cabin he claps the bridegroom in, and locking the door on the howling swain, spirits the not unwilling girl away to a cave in the mountains. Banished for the "bride theft," Peer begins a worldwide wandering, and his susceptibility to beautiful women plunges him into thrilling experiences. But one after another they reveal selfish ends and work to his undoing. He loses his sailing ship and narrowly escapes irons when his beautiful Annabel Lee turns out to be an agent of the secret service on his trail for slaving. By mere luck he emerges unscathed from the duel he is dragged into by an aristocratic little flirt of old Virginia. An Indian girl in the north woods inveigles him out of his precious pelt of silver fox and then deserts him, and his escape from lurking redskins is by such a hair that a rifle bullet knocks the very paddle out of his hands. Years pass but do not bring him any better women, and he falls victim to the voluptuous charm of Anitra a soulless dancing girl of the desert, only to have her strip him of the very gems in his turban and the rings upon his fingers. Age finds him an embittered, cynical old man, and "Peer Gynt" drifts back to Gubrandsdale to die, but he finds waiting there the faithful sweetheart of his wild youth, the pure, gentle Solveig. So when the Button Moulder, personifying the Saver of Souls, comes to cast Peer back into the Melting Pot to be molded over because his wasted life proves him without design, it is Solveig's devotion which saves him. The good in him has lived after all in her faith, in her hope and in her love.