And the mocking verses all rhyming in in-ind in III, 3 (Shak. III, 2): "From the East to western Ind," etc., are given with marvelous cleverness:

Or Touchstone's parody:

With even greater felicity Wildenvey has rendered the songs of the play. His verses are not, in any strict sense, translations, but they have a life and movement which, perhaps, interpret the original more fully than any translation could interpret it. What freshness and sparkle in "Under the Greenwood Tree!" I give only the first stanza:

Or what could be better than the exhilirating text of "Blow, blow, thou winter wind," as Wildenvey has given it? Again only the first stanza:

Livet i Skogen, then, must not be read as a translation of As You Like It, but is immensely worth reading for its own sake. Schiller recast and rewrote Macbeth in somewhat the same way, but Schiller's Macbeth, condemned by its absurd porter-scene, is today nothing more than a literary curiosity. I firmly believe that Wildenvey's "bearbeidelse" deserves a better fate. It gave new life to the Shakespeare tradition on the Norwegian stage, and is in itself, a genuine contribution to the literature of Norway.

SUMMARY

If we look over the field of Norwegian translation of Shakespeare, the impression we get is not one to inspire awe. The translations are neither numerous nor important. There is nothing to be compared with the German of Tieck and Schlegel the Danish of Foersom, or the Swedish of Hagberg.

But the reason is obvious. Down to 1814 Norway was politically and culturally a dependency of Denmark. Copenhagen was the seat of government, of literature, and of polite life. To Copenhagen cultivated Norwegians looked for their models and their ideals. When Shakespeare made his first appearance in the Danish literary world—Denmark and Norway—it was, of course, in pure Danish garb. Boye, Rosenfeldt, and Foersom gave to their contemporaries more or less satisfactory translations of Shakespeare, and Norwegians were content to accept the Danish versions. In one or two instances they made experiments of their own. An unknown man of letters translated a scene from Julius Caesar in 1782, and in 1818 appeared a translation of Coriolanus. But there is little that is typically Norwegian about either of these—a word or a phrase here and there. For the rest, they are written in pure Danish, and but for the title-page, no one could tell whether they were published in Copenhagen or Christiania and Trondhjem.

In the meantime Foersom had begun his admirable Danish translations, and the work stopped in Norway. The building of a nation and literary interests of another character absorbed the attention of the cultivated world. Hauge's translation of Macbeth is not significant, nor are those of Lassen thirty years later. A scholar could, of course, easily show that they are Norwegian, but that is all. They never succeeded in displacing Foersom-Lembcke.

More important are the Landsmaal translations beginning with Ivar Aasen's in 1853. They are interesting because they mark one of the most important events in modern Norwegian culture—the language struggle. Ivar Aasen set out to demonstrate that "maalet" could be used in literature of every sort, and the same purpose, though in greatly tempered form, is to be detected in every Landsmaal translation since. Certainly in their outward aim they have succeeded. And, despite the handicap of working in a language new, rough, and untried, they have given to their countrymen translations of parts of Shakespeare which are, at least, as good as those in "Riksmaal."

Herman Wildenvey stands alone. His work is neither a translation nor a mere paraphrase; it is a reformulating of Shakespeare into a new work of art. He has accomplished a feat worth performing, but it cannot be called translating Shakespeare. It must be judged as an independent work.

Whether Norway is always to go to Denmark for her standard Shakespeare, or whether she is to have one of her own is, as yet, a question impossible to answer. A pure Landsmaal translation cannot satisfy, and many Norwegians refuse to recognize the Riksmaal as Norwegian at all. In the far, impenetrable future the language question may settle itself, and when that happy day comes, but not before, we may look with some confidence for a "standard" Shakespeare in a literary garb which all Norwegians will recognize as their own.

CHAPTER II

Shakespeare Criticism in Norway

The history of Shakespearean translation in Norway cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called distinguished. It is not, however, wholly lacking in interesting details. In like manner the history of Shakespearean criticism, though it contains no great names and no fascinating chapters, is not wholly without appeal and significance. We shall, then, in the following, consider this division of our subject.

Our first bit of Shakespearean criticism is the little introductory note which the anonymous translator of the scenes from Julius Caesar put at the head of his translation in Trondhjems Allehaande for October 23, 1782. And even this is a mere statement that the passage in the original "may be regarded as a masterpiece," and that the writer purposes to render not merely Antony's eloquent appeal but also the interspersed ejaculations of the crowd, "since these, too, are evidence of Shakespeare's understanding of the human soul and of his realization of the manner in which the oration gradually brought about the result toward which Antony aimed."

This is not profound criticism, to be sure, but it shows clearly that this litterateur in far-away Trondhjem had a definite, if not a very new and original, estimate of Shakespeare. It is significant that there is no hint of apology, of that tone which is so common in Shakespearean criticism of the day—Shakespeare was a great poet, but his genius was wild and untamed. This unknown Norwegian, apparently, had been struck only by the verity of the scene, and in that simplicity showed himself a better critic of Shakespeare than many more famous men. Whoever he was, his name is lost to us now. He deserves better than to be forgotten, but it seems that he was forgotten very early. Foersom refers to him casually, as we have seen, but Rahbek does not mention him.^II.1 Many years later Paul Botten Hansen, one of the best equipped bookmen that Norway has produced, wrote a brief review of Lembcke's translation. In the course of this he enumerates the Dano-Norwegian translations known to him. There is not a word about his countryman in Trondhjem.^II.2

After this solitary landmark, a long time passed before we again find evidence of Shakespearean studies in Norway. The isolated translation of Coriolanus from 1818 shows us that Shakespeare was read, carefully and critically read, but no one turned his attention to criticism or scholarly investigation. Indeed, I have searched Norwegian periodical literature in vain for any allusion to Shakespeare between 1782 and 1827. Finally, in the latter year Den Norske Husven adorns its title-page with a motto from Shakespeare. Christiania Aftenbladet for July 19, 1828, reprints Carl Bagger's clever poem on Shakespeare's reputed love-affair with "Fanny," an adventure which got him into trouble and gave rise to the bon-mot, "William the Conqueror ruled before Richard III." The poem was reprinted from Kjöbenhavns Flyvende Post (1828); we shall speak of it again in connection with our study of Shakespeare in Denmark.

After this there is another break. Not even a reference to Shakespeare occurs in the hundreds of periodicals I have examined, until the long silence is broken by a short, fourth-hand article on Shakespeare's life in Skilling Magazinet for Sept. 23, 1843. The same magazine gives a similar popular account in its issue for Sept. 4, 1844. Indeed, several such articles and sketches may be found in popular periodicals of the years following.

In 1855, however, appeared Niels Hauge's afore mentioned translation of Macbeth, and shortly afterward Professor Monrad, who, according to Hauge himself, had at least given him valuable counsel in his work, wrote a review in Nordisk Tidsskrift for Videnskab og Literatur.^II.3 Monrad was a pedant, stiff and inflexible, but he was a man of good sense, and when he was dealing with acknowledged masterpieces he could be depended upon to say the conventional things well.

He begins by saying that if any author deserves translation it is Shakespeare, for in him the whole poetic, romantic ideal of Protestantism finds expression. He is the Luther of poetry, though between Luther and Shakespeare there is all the difference between religious zeal and the quiet contemplation of the beautiful. Both belong to the whole world, Shakespeare because his characters, humor, art, reflections, are universal in their validity and their appeal. Wherever he is read he becomes the spokesman against narrowness, dogmatism, and intolerance. To translate Shakespeare, he points out, is difficult because of the archaic language, the obscure allusions, and the intense originality of the expression. Shakespeare, indeed, is as much the creator as the user of his mother-tongue. The one translation of Macbeth in existence, Foersom's, is good, but it is only in part Shakespeare, and the times require something more adequate and "something more distinctly our own." Monrad feels that this should not be altogether impossible "when we consider the intimate relations between England and Norway, and the further coincidence that the Norwegian language today is in the same state of flux and transition, as was Elizabethan English." All translations at present, he continues, can be but experiments, and should aim primarily at a faithful rendering of the text. Monrad calls attention to the fact—in which he was, of course, mistaken—that this is the first translation of the original Macbeth into Dano-Norwegian or into Danish. It is a work of undoubted merit, though here and there a little stiff and hazy, "but Shakespeare is not easily clarified." The humorous passages, thinks the reviewer, are a severe test of a translator's powers and this test Hauge has met with conspicuous success. Also he has acquitted himself well in the difficult matter of putting Shakespeare's meter into Norwegian.

The last two pages are taken up with a detailed study of single passages. The only serious error Monrad has noticed is the following: In Act II, 3 one of the murderers calls out "A light! A light!" Regarding this passage Monrad remarks: "It is certainly a mistake to have the second murderer call out, "Bring a light here!" (Lys hid!) The murderer does not demand a light, but he detects a shimmer from Banquo's approaching torch." The rest of the section is devoted to mere trifles.

This is the sort of review which we should expect from an intelligent and well-informed man. Monrad was not a scholar, nor even a man of delicate and penetrating reactions. But he had sound sense and perfect self-assurance, which made him something of a Samuel Johnson in the little provincial Kristiania of his day. At any rate, he was the only one who took the trouble to review Hauge's translation, and even he was doubtless led to the task because of his personal interest in the translator. If we may judge from the stir it made in periodical literature, Macbeth fell dead from the press.

The tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth (1864) aroused a certain interest in Norway, and little notes and articles are not infrequent in the newspapers and periodicals about that time. Illustreret Nyhedsblad^II.4 has a short, popular article on Stratford-on-Avon. It contains the usual Shakespeare apocrypha—the Sir Thomas Lucy story, the story of the apple tree under which Shakespeare and his companions slept off the effects of too much Bedford ale—and all the rest of it. It makes no pretense of being anything but an interesting hodge-podge for popular consumption. The next year, 1864, the same periodical published^II.5 on the traditional day of Shakespeare's birth a rather long and suggestive article on the English drama before Shakespeare. If this article had been original, it might have had a certain significance, but, unfortunately, it is taken from the German of Bodenstedt. The only significant thing about it is the line following the title: "Til Erindring paa Trehundredsaarsdagen efter Shakespeares Födsel, d. 23 April, 1563."

More interesting than this, however, are the verses written by the then highly esteemed poet, Andreas Munch, and published in his own magazine, For Hjemmet,^II.6 in April, 1864. Munch rarely rises above mediocrity and his tribute to the bard of Avon is the very essence of it. He begins:

and, after four more stanzas, he concludes:

One has a feeling that Munch awoke one morning, discovered from his calendar that Shakespeare's birthday was approaching, and ground out this poem to fill space in Hjemmet. But his intentions are good. No one can quarrel with the content. And when all is said, he probably expressed, with a fair degree of accuracy, the feeling of his time. It remains but to note a detail or two. First, that the poet, even in dealing with Shakespeare, found it necessary to draw upon the prevailing "Skandinavisme" and label Shakespeare "Nordisk"; second, the accidental truth of the closing couplet. If we could interpret this as referring to Wergeland, who did break the chains of foreign bondage, and gave Norway a place in the literature of the world, we should have the first reference to an interesting fact in Norwegian literary history. But doubtless we have no right to credit Munch with any such acumen. The couplet was put into the poem merely because it sounded well.

More important than this effusion of bad verse from the poet of fashion was a little article which Paul Botten Hansen wrote in Illustreret Nyhedsblad^II.7 in 1865. Botten Hansen had a fine literary appreciation and a profound knowledge of books. The effort, therefore, to give Denmark and Norway a complete translation of Shakespeare was sure to meet with his sympathy. In 1861 Lembcke began his revision of Foersom's work, and, although it must have come up to Norway from Copenhagen almost immediately, no allusion to it is found in periodical literature till Botten Hansen wrote his review of Part (Hefte) XI. This part contains King John. The reviewer, however, does not enter upon any criticism of the play or of the translation; he gives merely a short account of Shakespearean translation in the two countries before Lembcke. Apparently the notice is written without special research, for it is far from complete, but it gives, at any rate, the best outline of the subject which we have had up to the present. Save for a few lines of praise for Foersom and a word for Hauge, "who gave the first accurate translation of this masterpiece (Macbeth) of which Dano-Norwegian literature can boast before 1861," the review is simply a loosely connected string of titles. Toward the close Botten Hansen writes: "When to these plays (the standard Danish translations) we add (certain others, which are given), we believe that we have enumerated all the Danish translations of Shakespeare." This investigation has shown, however, that there are serious gaps in the list. Botten Hansen calls Foersom's the first Danish translation of Shakespeare. It is curious that he should have overlooked Johannes Boye's Hamlet of 1777, or Rosenfeldt's translation of six plays (1790-1792). It is less strange that he did not know Sander and Rahbek's translation of the unaltered Macbeth of 1801—which preceded Hauge by half a century—for this was buried in Sander's lectures. Nor is he greatly to be blamed for his ignorance of the numerous Shakespearean fragments which the student may find tucked away in Danish reviews, from M.C. Brun's Svada (1796) and on. Botten Hansen took his task very lightly. If he had read Foersom's notes to his translation he would have found a clue of interest to him as a Norwegian. For Foersom specifically refers to a translation of a scene from Julius Caesar in Trondhjems Allehaande.

Lembcke's revision, which is the occasion of the article, is greeted with approval and encouragement. There is no need for Norwegians to go about preparing an independent translation. Quite the contrary. The article closes: "Whether or not Lembcke has the strength and endurance for such a gigantic task, time alone will tell. At any rate, it is the duty of the public to encourage the undertaking and make possible its completion."

We come now to the most interesting chapter in the history of Shakespeare in Norway. This is a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream under the direction of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson at Christiania Theater, April 17, 1865. The story belongs rather to the history of Shakespeare on the Norwegian stage, but the documents of the affair are contributions to Shakespearean criticism and must, accordingly, be discussed here. Bjørnson's fiery reply to his critics of April 28 is especially valuable as an analysis of his own attitude toward Shakespeare.

Bjørnson became director of Christiania Theater in January, 1865, and the first important performance under his direction was A Midsummer Night's Dream (Skjärsommernatsdrömmen) in Oehlenschläger's translation, with music by Mendelssohn.^II.8 Bjørnson had strained the resources of the theater to the utmost to give the performance distinction. But the success was doubtful. Aftenposten found it tiresome, and Morgenbladet, in two long articles, tore it to shreds.^II.9 It is worth while to review the controversy in some detail.

The reviewer begins by saying that the play is so well known that it is needless to give an account of it. "But what is the meaning," he exclaims, "of this bold and poetic mixture of clowns and fairies, of mythology, and superstition, of high and low, of the earthly and the supernatural? And the scene is neither Athens nor Greece, but Shakespeare's own England; it is his own time and his own spirit." We are transported to an English grove in early summer with birds, flowers, soft breezes, and cooling shadows. What wonder that a man coming in from the hunt or the society of men should fill such a place with fairies and lovely ladies and people it with sighs, and passions, and stories? And all this has been brought together by a poet's fine feeling. This it is which separates the play from so many others of its kind now so common and often so well presented. Here a master's spirit pervades all, unites all in lovely romance. Other plays are mere displays of scenery and costume by comparison. Even the sport of the clowns throws the whole into stronger relief.

Now, how should such a play be given? Obviously, by actors of the first order and with costumes and scenery the most splendid. This goes without saying, for the play is intended quite as much to be seen as to be heard. To do it justice, the performance must bring out some of the splendor and the fantasy with which it was conceived. As we read A Midsummer Night's Dream it is easy to imagine the glorious succession of splendid scenes, but on the stage the characters become flesh and blood with fixed limitations, and the illusion is easily lost unless every agency is used to carry it out. Hence the need of lights, of rich costumes, splendid backgrounds, music, rhythm.

The play opens in an apparently uninhabited wood. Suddenly all comes to life—gay, full, romantic life. This is the scene to which we are transported. "It is a grave question," continues the reviewer, "if it is possible for the average audience to attain the full illusion which the play demands, and with which, in reading, we have no difficulty. One thing is certain, the audience was under no illusion. Some, those who do not pretend to learning or taste, wondered what it was all about. Only when the lion moved his tail, or the ass wriggled his ears were they at all interested. Others were frankly amused from first to last, no less at Hermia's and Helen's quarrel than at the antics of the clowns. Still others, the cultivated minority, were simply indifferent."

The truth is that the performance was stiff and cold. Not for an instant did it suggest the full and passionate life which is the theme and the background of the play. Nor is this strange. A Midsummer Night's Dream is plainly beyond the powers of our theatre. Individual scenes were well done, but the whole was a cheerless piece of business.

The next day the same writer continues his analysis. He points out that the secret of the play is the curious interweaving of the real world with the supernatural. Forget this but for a moment, and the piece becomes an impossible monstrosity without motivation or meaning. Shakespeare preserves this unity in duality. The two worlds seem to meet and fuse, each giving something of itself to the other. But this unity was absent from the performance. The actors did not even know their lines, and thus the spell was broken. The verse must flow from the lips in a limpid stream, especially in a fairy play; the words must never seem a burden. But even this elementary rule was ignored in our performance. And the ballet of the fairies was so bad that it might better have been omitted. Puck should not have been given by a woman, but by a boy as he was in Shakespeare's day. Only the clown scenes were unqualifiedly good, "as we might expect," concludes the reviewer sarcastically.

The article closes with a parting shot at the costuming and the scenery. Not a little of it was inherited from "Orpheus in the Lower World." Are we so poor as that? Better wait, and for the present, give something which demands less of the theatre. The critic grants that the presentation may prove profitable but, on the whole, Bjørnson must feel that he has assisted at the mutilation of a master.

Bjørnson did not permit this attack to go unchallenged. He was not the man to suffer in silence, and in this case he could not be silent. His directorate was an experiment, and there were those in Christiania who were determined to make it unsuccessful. It was his duty to set malicious criticism right. He did so in Aftenbladet^II.10 in an article which not only answered a bit of ephemeral criticism but which remains to this day an almost perfect example of Bjørnson's polemical prose—fresh, vigorous, genuinely eloquent, with a marvelous fusing of power and fancy.

He begins with an analysis of the play: The play is called a dream. But wherein lies the dream? 'Why,' we are told, 'in the fact that fairies sport, that honest citizens, with and without asses' heads, put on a comedy, that lovers pursue each other in the moonlight.' But where is the law in all this? If the play is without law (Lov = organic unity), it is without validity.

But it does have artistic validity. The dream is more than a fantasy. The same experiences come to all of us. "The play takes place, now in your life, now in mine. A young man happily engaged or happily married dreams one night that this is all a delusion. He must be engaged to, he must marry another. The image of the 'chosen one' hovers before him, but he can not quite visualize it, and he marries with a bad conscience. Then he awakens and thanks God that it is all a bad dream (Lysander). Or a youth is tired of her whom he adored for a time. He even begins to flirt with another. And then one fine night he dreams that he worships the very woman he loathes, that he implores her, weeps for her, fights for her (Demetrius). Or a young girl, or a young wife, who loves and is loved dreams, that her beloved is fleeing from her. When she follows him with tears and petitions, he lifts his hand against her. She pursues him, calls to him to stop, but she cannot reach him. She feels all the agony of death till she falls back in a calm, dreamless sleep. Or she dreams that the lover she cannot get comes to her in a wood and tells her that he really does love her, that her eyes are lovelier than the stars, her hands whiter than the snow on Taurus. But other visions come, more confusing. Another, whom she has never given a thought, comes and tells her the same story. His protestations are even more glowing—and it all turns to contention and sorrow, idle pursuit and strife, till her powers fail (Helena).

"This is the dream chain of the lovers. The poet causes the man to dream that he is unfaithful, or that he is enamored of one whom he does not love. And he makes the woman dream that she is deserted or that she is happy with one whom she cannot get. And together these dreams tell us: watch your thoughts, watch your passions, you, walking in perfect confidence at the side of your beloved. They (the thoughts and passions) may bring forth a flower called 'love in idleness'—a flower which changes before you are aware of it. The dream gives us reality reversed, but reversed in such a way that there is always the possibility that it may, in an unguarded moment, take veritable shape.

"And this dream of the lovers is given a paradoxical counterpart. A respectable, fat citizen dreams one night that he is to experience the great triumph of his life. He is to be presented before the duke's throne as the greatest of heroes. He dreams that he cannot get dressed, that he cannot get his head attended to, because, as a matter of fact, his head is not his own excellent head, but the head of an ass with long ears, a snout, and hair that itches. 'This is exactly like a fairy tale of my youth,' he dreams. And indeed, it is a dream! The mountain opens, the captive princess comes forth and leads him in, and he rests his head in her lap all strewn with blossoms. The lovely trolls come and scratch his head and music sounds from the rocks. It is characteristic of Shakespeare that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue the life of waking. But the good weaver who lives thoroughly content in his own self-satisfaction and in the esteem of his neighbors, who has never reflected upon anything that has happened to him, but has received each day's blessings as they have come—this man sees, the moment he lays his head on the pillow, the fairies and the fairy queen. To him the whole circle of childhood fantasy reveals itself; nothing is changed, nothing but this absurd ass's head which he wears, and this curious longing for dry, sweet hay.

"This is the dream and the action of the play. Superficially, all this magic is set in motion by the fairies; Theseus and his train, with whom come hunting horn and hunting talk and processional—are, in reality, the incarnation of the festival. And the comedy at the close is added by way of counterpiece to the light, delicate fancies of the dream. It is the thoughts we have thought, the painfully-wrought products of the waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the background of nightly visions. See the play over and over again. Do not study it with Bottom's ass's head, and do not be so blasé that you reject the performance because it does not command the latest electrical effects."

Bjørnson then proceeds to discuss the staging. He admits by implication that the machinery and the properties are not so elaborate as they sometimes are in England, but points out that the equipment of Christiania Theater is fully up to that which, until a short time before, was considered entirely adequate in the great cities of Europe. And is machinery so important? The cutting of the play used at this performance was originally made by Tieck for the court theater at Potsdam. From Germany it was brought to Stockholm, and later to Christiania. "The spirit of Tieck pervades this adaptation. It is easy and natural. The spoken word has abundant opportunity to make itself felt, and is neither overwhelmed by theater tricks nor set aside by machinery. Tieck, who understood stage machinery perfectly, gave it free play where, as in modern operas, machinery is everything. The same is true of Mendelssohn. His music yields reverently to the spoken word. It merely accompanies the play like a new fairy who strews a strain or two across the stage before his companions enter, and lends them wings by which they may again disappear. Only when the words and the characters who utter them have gone, does the music brood over the forest like a mist of reminiscence, in which our imagination may once more synthesize the picture of what has gone before."

Tieck's adaptation is still the standard one. Englishmen often stage Shakespeare's romantic plays more elaborately. They even show us a ship at sea in The Tempest. But Shakespeare has fled England; they are left with their properties, out of which the spirit of Shakespeare will not rise. It is significant that the most distinguished dramaturg of Germany, Dingelstedt, planned a few years before to go to London with some of the best actors in Germany to teach Englishmen how to play Shakespeare once more.

Bjørnson closes this general discussion of scenery and properties with a word about the supreme importance of imagination to the playgoer. "I cannot refrain from saying that the imagination that delights in the familiar is stronger and healthier than that which loses itself in longings for the impossible. To visualize on the basis of a few and simple suggestions—that is to possess imagination; to allow the images to dissolve and dissipate—that is to have no imagination at all. Every allusion has a definite relation to the familiar, and if our playgoers cannot, after all that has been given here for years, feel the least illusion in the presence of the properties in A Midsummer Night's Dream, then it simply means that bad critics have broken the spell." Why should Norwegians require an elaborate wood-scene to be transported to the living woods? A boulevardier of Paris, indeed, might have need of it, but not a Norwegian with the great forests at his very doors. And what real illusion is there in a waterfall tumbling over a painted curtain, or a ship tossing about on rollers? Does not such apparatus rather destroy the illusion? "The new inventions of stage mechanicians are far from being under such perfect control that they do not often ruin art. We are in a period of transition. Why should we here, who are obliged to wait a long time for what is admittedly satisfactory, commit all the blunders which mark the way to acknowledged perfection?"

It would probably be difficult to find definite and tangible evidence of Shakespeare's influence in Bjørnson's work, and we are, therefore, doubly glad to have his own eloquent acknowledgement of his debt to Shakespeare. The closing passus of Bjørnson's article deserves quotation for this reason alone. Unfortunately I cannot convey its warm, illuminating style: "Of all the poetry I have ever read, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has, unquestionably, had the greatest influence upon me. It is his most delicate and most imaginative work, appealing quite as much through its intellectual significance as through its noble, humane spirit. I read it first in Eiksdal when I was writing Arne, and I felt rebuked for the gloomy feelings under the spell of which that book was written. But I took the lesson to heart: I felt that I had in my soul something that could produce a play with a little of the fancy and joy of A Midsummer Night's Dream—and I made resolutions. But the conditions under which a worker in art lives in Norway are hard, and all we say or promise avails nothing. But this I know: I am closer to the ideal of this play now than then, I have a fuller capacity for joy and a greater power to protect my joy and keep it inviolate. And if, after all, I never succeed in writing such a play, it means that circumstances have conquered, and that I have not achieved what I have ever sought to achieve.

"And one longs to present a play which has been a guiding star to oneself. I knew perfectly well that a public fresh from Orpheus would not at once respond, but I felt assured that response would come in time. As soon, therefore, as I had become acclimated as director and knew something of the resources of the theater, I made the venture. This is not a play to be given toward the end; it is too valuable as a means of gaining that which is to be the end—for the players and for the audience. So far as the actors are concerned, our exertions have been profitable. The play might doubtless be better presented—we shall give it better next year—but, all in all, we are making progress. You may call this naivete, poetic innocence, or obstinacy and arrogance—whatever it is, this play is of great moment to me, for it is the link which binds me to my public, it is my appeal to the public. If the public does not care to be led whither this leads, then I am not the proper guide. If people wish to get me out of the theater, they may attack me here. Here I am vulnerable."

In Morgenbladet for May 1st the reviewer made a sharp reply. He insists again that the local theater is not equal to A Midsummer Night's Dream. But it is not strange that Bjørnson will not admit his own failure. His eloquent tribute to the play and all that it has meant to him has, moreover, nothing to do with the question. All that he says may be true, but certainly such facts ought to be the very thing to deter him from giving Shakespeare into the hands of untrained actors. For if Bjørnson feels that the play was adequately presented, then we are at a loss to understand how he has been able to produce original work of unquestionable merit. One is forced to believe that he is hiding a failure behind his own name and fame. After all, concludes the writer, the director has no right to make this a personal matter. Criticism has no right to turn aside for injured feelings, and all Bjørnson's declarations about the passions of the hour have nothing to do with the case.

This ended the discussion. At this day, of course, one cannot pass judgment, and there is no reason why we should. The two things which stand out are Bjørnson's protest against spectacular productions of Shakespeare's plays, and his ardent, almost passionate tribute to him as the poet whose influence had been greatest in his life.

And then there is a long silence. Norwegian periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift^II.11 published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph he commends his soul to God, his body to the dust. Shakespeare's extreme objectivity makes snap judgments unsafe. We cannot always be sure that his characters voice his own thoughts and judgments, but, on the other hand, we have no right to assume that they never do. The tragedies especially afford a safe basis for judgment, for in them characterization is of the greatest importance. No great character was ever created which did not spring from the poet's own soul. In Shakespeare's characters sin, lust, cruelty, are always punished; sympathy, love, kindness are everywhere glorified. The writer illustrates his meaning with copious quotations.

Apparently the good Lutheran who wrote this article felt troubled about the splendor which Shakespeare throws about the Catholic Church. But this is no evidence, he thinks, of any special sympathy for it. Many Protestants have been attracted by the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic Church, and they have been none the worse Protestants for that. The writer had the good sense not to make Shakespeare a Lutheran but, for the rest, the article is a typical example of the sort of criticism that has made Shakespeare everything from a pious Catholic to a champion of atheistic democracy. If, however, the readers of Luthersk Ugeskrift were led to read Shakespeare after being assured that they might do so safely, the article served a useful purpose.

Eight years later the distinguished litterateur and critic, Just Bing, wrote in Vidar^II.12, one of the best periodicals that Norway has ever had, a brief character study of Ophelia, which, though it contains nothing original, stands considerably higher as literary criticism than anything we have yet considered, with the sole exception of Bjørnson's article in Aftenbladet, twenty-three years earlier.

Bing begins by defining two kinds of writers. First, those whose power is their keen observation. They see things accurately and they secure their effects by recording just what they see. Second, those writers who do not merely see external phenomena with the external eye, but who, through a miraculous intuition, go deeper into the soul of man. Molière is the classical example of the first type; Shakespeare of the second. To him a chance utterance reveals feelings, passions, whole lives—though he probably never developed the consequences of a chance remark to their logical conclusion without first applying to them close and searching rational processes. But it is clear that if a critic is to analyze a character of Shakespeare's, he must not be content merely to observe. He must feel with it, live with it. He must do so with special sympathy in the case of Ophelia.

The common characteristic of Shakespeare's women is their devotion to the man of their choice and their confidence that this choice is wise and happy. The tragedy of Ophelia lies in the fact that outward evidence is constantly shocking that faith. Laertes, in his worldly-wise fashion, first warns her. She cries out from a broken heart though she promises to heed the warning. Then comes Polonius with his cunning wisdom. But Ophelia's faith is still unshaken. She promises her father, however, to be careful, and her caution, in turn, arouses the suspicion of Hamlet. Even after his wild outburst against her he still loves her. He begs her to believe in him and to remember him in her prayers. But suspicion goes on. Ophelia is caught between devotion and duty, and the grim events that crowd upon her plunge her to sweet, tragic death. Nothing could be more revealing than our last glimpse of her. Shakespeare's intuitive knowledge of the soul was sure. The determining fact of her life was her love for Hamlet: it is significant that when we see her insane not a mention of it crosses her lips.

Hamlet and Ophelia are the delicate victims of a tragic necessity. They are undone because they lose confidence in those to whom they cling with all the abandon of deep, spiritual souls. Hamlet is at last aroused to desperation; Ophelia is helplessly crushed. She is the finest woman of Shakespeare's imagination, and perhaps for that reason the most difficult to understand and the one least often appreciated.

The next chapter in Norwegian Shakespeareana is a dull, unprofitable one—a series of articles on the Baconian theory appearing irregularly in the monthly magazine, Kringsjaa. The first article appeared in the second volume (1894) and is merely a review of a strong pro-Bacon outburst in the American Arena. It is not worth criticising. Similar articles appeared in Kringsjaa in 1895, the material this time being taken from the Deutsche Revue. It is the old ghost, the cipher in the first folio, though not Ignatius Donnelly's cryptogram. Finally, in 1898, a new editor, Chr. Brinckmann, printed^II.13 a crushing reply to all these cryptogram fantasies. And that is all that was ever published in Norway on a foolish controversy.

It is a relief to turn from puerilities of this sort to Theodor Caspari's article in For Kirke og Kultur (1895)^II.14—Grunddrag ved den Shakespeareske Digtning, i særlig Jevnförelse med Ibsens senere Digtning.

This article must be read with caution, partly because its analysis of the Elizabethan age is conventional, and therefore superficial, and partly because it represents a direction of thought which eyed the later work of Ibsen and Bjørnson with distrust. These men had rejected the faith of their fathers, and the books that came from them were signs of the apostasy. But For Kirke og Kultur has been marked from its first number by ability, conspicuous fairness, and a large catholicity, which give it an honorable place among church journals. And not even a fanatical admirer of Ibsen will deny that there is more than a grain of truth in the indictment which the writer of this article brings against him.

The central idea is the large, general objectivity of Shakespeare's plays as contrasted with the narrow, selfish subjectivity of Ibsen's. The difference bottoms in the difference between the age of Elizabeth and our own. Those were days of full, pulsing, untrammeled life. Men lived big, physical lives. They had few scruples and no nerves. Full-blooded passions, not petty problems of pathological psychology, were the things that interested poets and dramatists. They saw life fully and they saw it whole. So with Shakespeare. His characters are big, well-rounded men; they are not laboratory specimens. They live in the real Elizabethan world, not in the hothouse of the poet's brain. It is of no consequence that violence is done to "local color." Shakespeare beheld all the world and all ages through the lens of his own time and country, but because the men he saw were actual, living beings, the characters he gives us, be they mythological figures, Romans, Greeks, Italians, or Englishmen, have universal validity. He went to Italy for his greatest love-story. That gave him the right atmosphere. It is significant that Ibsen once thought it necessary to seek a suggestive background for one of his greatest characters. He went to Finmarken for Rebecca West.

Shakespeare's characters speak in loud, emphatic tones and they give utterance to clear, emphatic thoughts. There is no "twilight zone" in their thinking. Ibsen's men and women, like the children at Rosmersholm, never speak aloud; they merely whimper or they whisper the polite innuendos of the drawing room. The difference lies largely in the difference of the age. But Ibsen is more decadent than his age. There are great ideas in our time too, but Ibsen does not see them. He sees only the "thought." Contrast with this Shakespeare's colossal scale. He is "loud-voiced" but he is also "many-voiced." Ibsen speaks in a salon voice and always in one key. And the remarkable thing is that Shakespeare, in spite of his complicated plots, is always clear. The main lines of the action stand out boldly. There is always speed and movement—a speed and movement directly caused by powerful feelings. He makes his readers think on a bigger scale than does Ibsen. His passions are sounder because they are larger and more expansive.

Shakespeare is the dramatist of our average life; Ibsen, the poet of the rare exception. To Shakespeare's problems there is always an answer; underneath his storms there is peace, not merely filth and doubt. There is even a sense of a greater power—calm and immovable as history itself. Ibsen's plays are nervous, hectic, and unbelieving. In the words of Rosmer: "Since there is no judge over us, we must hold a judgment day for ourselves." Contrast this with Hamlet's soliloquy. And, finally, one feels sure in Shakespeare that the play means something. It has a beginning and an end. "What shall we say of plays like Ibsen's, in which Act I and Act II give no clue to Act III, and where both question and answer are hurled at us in the same speech?"

In the same year, 1895, Georg Brandes published in Samtiden,^II.15 at that time issued in Bergen, two articles on Shakespeare's Work in his Period of Gloom (Shakespeare i hans Digtnings mørke Periode) which embody in compact form that thesis since elaborated in his big work. Shakespeare's tragedies were the outcome of a deep pessimism that had grown for years and culminated when he was about forty. He was tired of the vice, the hollowness, the ungratefulness, of life. The immediate cause must remain unknown, but the fact of his melancholy seems clear enough. His comedy days were over and he began to portray a side of life which he had hitherto kept hidden. Julius Caesar marks the transition. In Brutus we are reminded that high-mindedness in the presence of a practical situation often fails, and that practical mistakes are often as fatal as moral ones. From Brutus, Shakespeare came to Hamlet, a character in transition from fine youth, full of illusions, to a manhood whose faith is broken by the hard facts of the world. This is distinctly autobiographical. Hamlet and Sonnet 66 are of one piece. Shakespeare was disillusioned. Add to this his struggle against his enemy, Puritanism, and a growing conviction that the miseries of life bottom in ignorance, and the reason for his growing pessimism becomes clear. From Hamlet, whom the world crushes, to Macbeth, who faces it with its own weapons, yet is haunted and terrified by what he does, the step is easy. He knew Macbeth as he knew Hamlet.

The scheming Iago, too, he must have known, for he has portrayed him with matchless art. "But Othello was a mere monograph; Lear is a cosmic picture. Shakespeare turns from Othello to Lear in consequence of the necessity which the poet feels to supplement and round out his beginning." Othello is noble chamber music; Lear is a symphony played by a gigantic orchestra. It is the noblest of all the tragedies, for in it are all the storm and tumult of life, all that was struggling and raging in his own soul. We may feel sure that the ingratitude he had met with is reflected in Goneril and Regan. Undoubtedly, in the same way, the poet had met the lovely Cleopatra and knew what it was to be ensnared by her.

Brandes, as has often been pointed out, did not invent this theory of Shakespeare's psychology but he elaborated it with a skill and persuasiveness which carried the uncritical away.

In his second article Brandes continues his analysis of Shakespeare's pessimism. In the period of the great tragedies there can be no doubt that Shakespeare was profoundly pessimistic. There was abundant reason for it. The age of Elizabeth was an age of glorious sacrifices, but it was also an age of shameless hypocrisy, of cruel and unjust punishments, of downright oppression. Even the casual observer might well grow sick at heart. A nature so finely balanced as Shakespeare's suffered a thousandfold. Hence this contempt for life which showed only corruption and injustice. Cressida and Cleopatra are sick with sin and evil; the men are mere fools and brawlers.

There is, moreover, a feeling that he is being set aside for younger men. We find clear expression of this in All's Well That Ends Well, in Troilus and Cressida. There is, too, in Troilus and Cressida a speech which shows the transition to the mood of Coriolanus, an aristocratic contempt for the mass of mankind. This is the famous speech in which Ulysses explains the necessity of social distinctions. Note in this connection Casca's contemptuous reference to the plebeians, Cleopatra's fear of being shown to the mob. Out of this feeling grew Coriolanus. The great patrician lives on the heights, and will not hear of bending to the crowd. The contempt of Coriolanus grew to the storming rage of Timon. When Coriolanus meets with ingratitude, he takes up arms; Timon is too supremely indifferent to do even this.

Thus Shakespeare's pessimism grew from grief over the power of evil (Othello) and misery over life's sorrows, to bitter hatred (Timon). And when he had raged to the uttermost, something of the resignation of old age came to him. We have the evidence of this in his last works. Perhaps, as in the case of his own heroes, a woman saved him. Brandes feels that the evolution of Shakespeare as a dramatist is to be traced in his women. We have first the domineering scold, reminding him possibly of his own domestic relations (Lady Macbeth); second, the witty, handsome women (Portia, Rosalind); third, the simple, naive women (Ophelia, Desdemona); fourth, the frankly sensuous women (Cleopatra, Cressida); and, finally, the young woman viewed with all an old man's joy (Miranda). Again his genius exercises his spell. Then, like Prospero, he casts his magician's staff into the sea.

In 1896 Brandes published his great work on Shakespeare. It arrested attention immediately in every country of the world. Never had a book so fascinating, so brilliant, so wonderfully suggestive, been written on Shakespeare. The literati were captivated. But alas, scholars were not. They admitted that Brandes had written an interesting book, that he had accumulated immense stores of information and given to these sapless materials a new life and a new attractiveness. But they pointed out that not only did his work contain gross positive errors, but it consisted, from first to last, of a tissue of speculations which, however ingenious, had no foundation in fact and no place in cool-headed criticism.^II.16 Theodor Bierfreund, one of the most brilliant Shakespeare scholars in Denmark, almost immediately attacked Brandes in a long article in the Norwegian periodical Samtiden.^II.17

He acknowledges the great merits of the work. It is an enormously rich compilation of Shakespeare material gathered from the four corners of the earth and illuminated by the genius of a great writer. He gives the fullest recognition to Brandes' miraculous skill in analyzing characters and making them live before our eyes. But he warns us that Brandes is no critical student of source materials, and that we must be on our guard in accepting his conclusions. It is not so certain that the sonnets mean all that Brandes would have them mean, and it is certain that we must be cautious in inferring too much from Troilus and Cressida and Pericles for, in the opinion of the reviewer, Shakespeare probably had little or nothing to do with them. He then sketches briefly his theory that these plays cannot be Shakespeare's, a theory which he later elaborated in his admirably written monograph, Shakespeare og hans Kunst.^II.18 This, however, belongs to the study of Shakespearean criticism in Denmark.

So far as I have been able to find, Bierfreund's review was the only one published in Norway immediately after the publication of Brandes' work, but in 1899, S. Brettville Jensen took up the matter again in For Kirke og Kultur^II.19 and, in 1901, Christen Collin vigorously assailed in Samtiden that elaborate and fanciful theory of the sonnets which plays so great a part in Brandes' study of Shakespeare.

Brettville Jensen praises Brandes highly. He is always interesting, in harmony with his age, and in rapport with his reader. "But his book is a fantasy palace, supported by columns as lovely as they are hollow and insecure, and hovering in rainbow mists between earth and sky." Brandes has rare skill in presenting hypotheses as facts. He has attempted to reconstruct the life of Shakespeare from his works. Now this is a mode of criticism which may yield valuable results, but clearly it must be used with great care. Shakespeare knew the whole of life, but how he came to know it is another matter. Brandes thinks he has found the secret. Back of every play and every character there is a personal experience. But this is rating genius altogether too cheap. One must concede something to the imagination and the creative ability of the poet. To relate everything in Shakespeare's dramas to the experiences of Shakespeare the man, is both fanciful and uncritical.

The same objection naturally holds regarding the meaning of the sonnets which Brandes has made his own. Here we must bear in mind the fact that much of the language in the sonnets is purely conventional. We should have a difficult time indeed determining just how much is biographical and how much belongs to the stock in trade of Elizabethan sonneteers. Brettville Jensen points out that if the sonnets are the expression of grief at the loss of his beloved, it is a queer contradiction that Sonnet 144, which voices his most poignant sorrow, should date from 1599, the year, according to Brandes, when Shakespeare's comedy period began!

It is doubtless true that the plays and even the sonnets mark great periods in the life of the poet, but we may be sure that the relation between experience and literary creation was not so literal as Brandes would have us believe. The change from mood to mood, from play to play, was gradual, and it never destroyed Shakespeare's poise and sanity. We shall not judge Shakespeare rightly if we believe that personal feeling rather than artistic truth shaped his work.

Two years later Collin, a critic of fine insight and appreciation, wrote in Samtiden^II.20 an article on the sonnets of Shakespeare. He begins by picturing Shakespeare's surprise if he could rise from his grave in the little church at Stratford and look upon the pompous and rather naive bust, and hear the strange tongues of the thousands of pilgrims at his shrine. Even greater would be his surprise if he could examine the ponderous tomes in the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Birmingham which have been written to explain him and his work. And if any of these volumes could interest him at all it would doubtless be those in which ingenious critics have attempted to discover the poet in the plays and the poems. Collin then gives a brief survey of modern Shakespearean criticism—Furnivall, Dowden, Brandl, Boas, ten Brink, and, more recently, Sidney, Lee, Brandes, and Bierfreund. An important object of the study of these men has been to fix the chronology of the plays. They seldom fully agree. Sidney Lee and the Danish critic, Bierfreund, do not accept the usual theory that the eight tragedies from Julius Caesar to Coriolanus reflect a period of gloom and pessimism. In their opinion psychological criticism has, in this instance, proved a dismal failure.

The battle has raged with particular violence about the sonnets. Most scholars assume that we have in them a direct presentation (fremstilling) of a definite period in the life of the poet. And by placing this period directly before the creation of Hamlet, Brandes has succeeded in making the relations to the "dark lady" a crisis in Shakespeare's life. The story, which, as Brandes tells it, has a remarkable similarity to an ultra-modern naturalistic novel, becomes even more piquant since Brandes knows the name of the lady, nay, even of the faithless friend. All this information Brandes has, of course, taken from Thomas Tyler's introduction to the Irving edition of the sonnets (1890), but his passion for the familiar anecdote has led him to embellish it with immense enthusiasm and circumstantiality.

The hypothesis, however, is essentially weak. Collin disagrees absolutely with Lee that the sonnets are purely conventional, without the slightest biographical value. Mr. Lee has weakened his case by admitting that "key-sonnet" No. 144 is autobiographical. Now, if this be true, then one must assume that the sonnets set forth Shakespeare's relations to a real man and a real woman. But the most convincing argument against the Herbert-Fitton theory lies in the chronology. It is certain that the sonnet fashion was at its height immediately after the publication of Sidney's sequence in 1591, and it seems equally certain that it had fallen off by 1598. This chronology is rendered probable by two facts about Shakespeare's work. First, Shakespeare employs the sonnet in dialogue in Two Gentlemen of Verona and in Romeo and Juliet. These plays belong to the early nineties. Second, the moods of the sonnets exactly correspond, on the one hand, to the exuberant sensuality of Venus and Adonis, on the other, to the restraint of the Lucrece.

An even safer basis for determining the chronology of the sonnets Collin finds in the group in which the poet laments his poverty and his outcast state. If the sonnets are autobiographical—and Collin agrees with Brandes that they are—then this group (26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 49, 66, 71-75, 99, 110-112, 116, 119, 120, 123, and 124) must refer to a time when the poet was wretched, poor, and obscure. And in this case, the sonnets cannot be placed at 1598-99, when Shakespeare was neither poor nor despised, a time in which, according to Brandes, he wrote his gayest comedies.