From your new best friend, Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedda_Gabler]: Warning: spoilers ahead. "The action takes place in a villa in Kristiania (now Oslo). Hedda Gabler, daughter of an aristocratic General, has just returned from her honeymoon with Tesman, an aspiring young academic — reliable, but not brilliant, who has combined research with their honeymoon. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she has never loved him, but has married him for reasons pertaining to the boring nature of her life, and it is suggested, but repudiated that she may be pregnant. The reappearance of George Tesman's academic rival, Ejlert Lövborg, throws their lives into disarray. Lövborg, a writer, is also an alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), he shows signs of rehabilitation, and has just completed a bestseller in the same field as Tesman. The critical success of his recently published work transforms Lövborg into a threat to Tesman, as Lövborg becomes a competitor for the university professorship which Tesman had been counting on. The couple are financially overstretched and Tesman now tells Hedda that he will not be able to finance the regular entertaining or luxurious housekeeping that Hedda had been looking forward to. Upon meeting Lövborg however, the couple discover that he has no intention of competing for professorship, but rather has spent the last few years labouring with Mrs. Elvsted over what he considers to be his masterpiece, the 'sequel' of his recently published work.
Hedda, apparently jealous of Mrs. Elvsted's influence over Ejlert, hopes to come between them. Tesman, returns home from a party and reveals that he found the manuscript of Ejlert Lövborg's great work, which the latter has lost while drunk. When Hedda next sees Lövborg, he confesses to her, despairingly, that he has lost the manuscript. Instead of telling him that the manuscript has been found, Hedda encourages him to commit suicide, giving him a pistol. She then burns the manuscript. She tells her husband she has destroyed it to secure their future.
When the news comes that Lövborg has indeed killed himself, Tesman and Mrs. Elvsted are determined to try to reconstruct his book from what they already know. Hedda is shocked to discover, from the sinister Judge Brack, that Ejlert's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental (this 'ridiculous and vile' death contrasts the 'beautiful and free' one that Hedda had imagined for him). Worse, Brack knows where the pistol came from. This means that he has power over her, which he will use to insinuate himself into the household (there is a strong implication that he will try to seduce Hedda). Leaving the others, she goes into her smaller room and ends the play by shooting herself in the temple."
