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.[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.[2]

[1. "Shakespeareana i Danmark"--_Dansk Minerva_, 1816 (III) pp. 151 ff.]

[2. _Illustreret Nyhedsblad_, 1865, pp. 96 ff.]

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_.[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.

[3. See Vol. III (1855), pp. 378 ff.]

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 aquitted 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_[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[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."

[4. Vol. XII (1863), pp. 199 ff.]

[5. Vol. XIII (1864), pp. 65 ff.]

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_,[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:

I disse Dage gaar et vældigt Navn Fra Mund til Mund, fra Kyst til Kyst rundt Jorden-- Det straaler festligt over fjernest Havn, Og klinger selv igjennem Krigens Torden, Det slutter alle Folk i Aandens Favn, Og er et Eenheds Tegn i Striden vorden-- I Stjerneskrift det staaer paa Tidens Bue, Og leder Slægterne med Hjertelue.

[6. Vol. V, p. 572.]

and, after four more stanzas, he concludes:

Hos os har ingen ydre Fest betegnet Vort Folks Tribut til denne store Mand. Er vi af Hav og Fjelde saa omhegnet, At ei hans Straaler trænge til os kan? Nei,--Nordisk var hans Aand og netop egnet Til at opfattes af vort Norden-Land, Og mer maaske end selv vi tro og tænke, Har Shakespeare brudt for os en fremmed Lænke.

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_[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_.

[7. Vol. XIV, p. 96.]

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.[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.[9] It is worth while to review the controversy in some detail.

[8. Blanc. _Christianias Theaters Historie_, p. 196.]

[9. April 26-27, 1865.]

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_[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.

[10. April 28. Reprinted in Bjørnson's _Taler og Skrifter_. Udgivet af C. Collin og H. Eitrem. Kristiania. 1912. Vol. I, pp. 263-270.]

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_[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.

[11. Vol. VII, pp. 1-12.]

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_[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.

[12. 1880, pp. 61-71.]

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[13] a crushing reply to all these cryptogram fantasies. And that is all that was ever published in Norway on a foolish controversy.

[13. _Kringsjaa_. Vol. XII, pp. 777 ff. The article upon which this reply was based was from the _Quarterly Review_.]

It is a relief to turn from puerilities of this sort to Theodor Caspari's article in _For Kirke og Kultur_ (1895)[14]--_Grunddrag ved den Shakespeareske Digtning, i særlig Jevnförelse med Ibsens senere Digtning_.

[14. Vol. I, pp. 38 ff.]

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_,[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.

[15. Vol. VI, pp. 49 ff.]

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.[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_.[17]

[16. Cf. Vilhelm Møller in _Nordisk Tidskrift för Vetenskap, Konst och Industri_. 1896, pp. 501-519.]

[17. _Samtiden_, 1896. (VII), pp. 382 ff.]

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_.[18] This, however, belongs to the study of Shakespearean criticism in Denmark.

[18. Copenhagen, 1898.]

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_[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.

[19. Vol. VI (1899), pp. 400 ff.]

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_[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.

[20. Vol. XII, pp. 61 ff.]

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.

It seems clear from all this that the sonnets cannot be placed so late as 1598-1600. They do not fit the facts of Shakespeare's life at this time. But they do fit the years from 1591 to 1594, and especially the years of the plague, 1592-3, when the theaters were generally closed, and Shakespeare no doubt had to battle for a mere existence. In 1594 Shakespeare's position became more secure. He gained the favor of Southampton and dedicated the _Rape of Lucrece_ to him.

Collin develops at this point with a good deal of fullness his theory that the motifs of the sonnets recur in _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_--in _Venus and Adonis_, a certain crass naturalism; in _Lucrece_ a high and spiritual morality. In the sonnets the same antithesis is found. Compare Sonnet 116--in praise of friendship--with 129, in which is pictured the tyranny and the treachery of sensual love. These two forces, sensual love and platonic friendship, were mighty cultural influences during Shakespeare's apprentice years and the young poet shows plainly that he was moved by both.

If all this be true, then the Herbert-Fitton theory falls to the ground, for in 1597 Herbert was only seventeen. But unquestionably the sonnets are autobiographical. They reveal with a poignant power Shakespeare's sympathy, his unique ability to enter into another personality, his capacity of imaginative expansion to include the lives of others. Compare the noble sonnet 112, which Collin translates:

Din kjærlighed og medynk dækker til det ar, som sladderen paa min pande trykket. Lad andre tro og sige, hvad de vil,-- du kjærlig mine feil med fortrin smykket.

Du er mit verdensalt, og fra din mund jeg henter al min skam og al min ære. For andre er jeg død fra denne stund, og de for mig som skygger blot skal være.

I avgrunds dyp jeg al bekymring kaster! for andres røst min høresans er sløv. Hvadenten de mig roser eller laster, jeg som en hugorm er og vorder døv.

Saa helt du fylder ut min sjæl herinde, at hele verden synes at forsvinde.

At this point the article in _Samtiden_ closes. Collin promises to give in a later number, a metrical translation of a number of significant sonnets. The promised renderings, however, never appeared. Thirteen years later, in 1914, the author, in a most interesting and illuminating book, _Det Geniale Menneske_,[21] a study of "genius" and its relation to civilization, reprinted his essay in _Samtiden_ and supplemented it with three short chapters. In the first of these he endeavors to show that in the sonnets Shakespeare gives expression to two distinct tendencies of the Renaissance--the tendency toward a loose and unregulated gratification of the senses, and the tendency toward an elevated and platonic conception of friendship. Shakespeare sought in both of these a compensation for his own disastrous love affair and marriage. But the healing that either could give was at best transitory. There remained to him as a poet of genius one resource. He could gratify his own burning desire for a pure and unselfish love by living in his mighty imagination the lives of his characters. "He who in his yearning for the highest joys of love had been compelled to abandon hope, found a joy mingled with pain, in giving of his life to lovers in whom the longing of William Shakespeare lives for all time.

"He has loved and been loved. It was he whom Sylvia, Hermia, Titania, Portia, Juliet, Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola, and Olivia loved,--and Ophelia, Desdemona, Hermione and Miranda."

[21. Chr. Collin, Christiania. 1914. H. Aschehoug & Co.]

In the second chapter Collin argues, as he had done in his essay on _Hamlet_[22] that Shakespeare's great tragedies voice no pessimism, but the stern purpose to strengthen himself and his contemporaries against the evils and vices of Jacobean England--that period of moral and intellectual disintegration which followed the intense life of the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare battles against the ills of society as the Greek dramatists had done, by showing sin and wickedness as destroyers of life, and once this is done, by firing mankind to resistance against the forces of ruin and decay. "To hold the mirror up to nature," that men may see the devastation which evil and vice bring about in the social body. And to do this he does not, like some modern writers, shun moralizing. He warns against sensual excess in Adam's speech in _As You Like It_, II, 3:

Let me be your servant; Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty; For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility;

[22. See pp. 71 ff. below.]

Or, compare the violent outburst against drunkenness in _Hamlet_ Act 1, Sc. 4, and the stern warning against the same vice in _Othello_, where, indeed, Cassius' weakness for strong drink is the immediate occasion of the tragic complication. In like manner, Shakespeare moralizes against lawless love in the _Merry Wives_, in _Troilus and Cressida_, in _Hamlet_, in _Lear_.

On the other hand, Shakespeare never allows artistic scruples to stand in the way of exalting simple, domestic virtues. Simple conjugal fidelity is one of the glories of Hamlet's illustrious father and of the stern, old Roman, Coriolanus; the young prince, Malcolm, is as chaste and innocent as the young barbarians of whom Tacitus tells.

In a final section, Collin connects this view of Hamlet which he has developed in his essay on _Hamlet_ and the Sonnets, with the theory of human civilization which his book so suggestively advances.

The great tragedies from _Hamlet_ to _Timon of Athens_ are not autobiographical in the sense that they are reflections of Shakespeare's own concrete experience. They are not the record of a bitter personal pessimism. In the years when they were written Shakespeare was contented and prosperous. He restored the fortunes of his family and he was hailed as a master of English without a peer. It is therefore a priori quite unlikely that the tragic atmosphere of this period should go back to purely personal disappointments. The case is more likely this: Shakespeare had grown in power of sympathy with his fellows and his time. He had become sensitive to the needs and sorrows of the society about him. He could put himself in the place of those who are sick in mind and heart. And in consequence of this he could preach to this generation the simple gospel of right living and show to them the psychic weakness whence comes all human sorrow.

And through this expansion of his ethical consciousness what had he gained? Not merely a fine insight as in _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and _Coriolanus_, an insight which enables him to treat with comprehending sympathy even great criminals and traitors, but a high serenity and steady poise which enables him to write the romances of his last years--_Cymbeline_, _A Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_. He had come to feel that human life, after all, with its storms, is a little thing, a dream and a fata morgana, which soon must give place to a permanent reality:

We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

In 1904 Collin wrote in _Nordisk Tidskrift för Vetenskap, Konst och Industri_[23] a most suggestive article on Hamlet. He again dismisses the widely accepted theory of a period of gloom and increasing pessimism as baseless. The long line of tragedies cannot be used to prove this. They are the expression of a great poet's desire to strengthen mankind in the battle of life.

[23: This article is reprinted in _Det Geniale Menneske_ above referred to. It forms the second of a group of essays in which Collin analyzes the work of Shakespeare as the finest example of the true contribution of genius to the progress and culture of the race. Preceding the study of _Hamlet_ is a chapter called _The Shakespearean Controversy_, and following it is a study of Shakespeare the Man. This is in three parts, the first of which is a reprint of an article in _Samtiden_ (1901).

In _Det Geniale Menneske_ Collin defines civilization as that higher state which the human race has attained by means of "psychic organs"--superior to the physical organs. The psychic organs have been created by the human intellect and they are controlled by the intellect. Had man been dependent upon the physical organs solely, he would have remained an animal. His psychic organs have enabled him to create instruments, tangible, such as tools and machines; intangible, such as works of art. These are psychic organs and with their aid man has become a civilized being.

The psychic organs are the creation of the man of genius. To create such organs is his function. The characteristics, then, of the genius are an immense capacity for sympathy and an immense surplus of power; sympathy, that he may know the needs of mankind; power, that he may fashion those great organs of life by which the race may live and grow.

In the various chapters of his book, Collin analyzes in an illuminating way the life and work of Wergeland, Ibsen, and Bjørnson as typical men of genius whose expansive sympathy gave them insight and understanding and whose indefatigable energy wrought in the light of their insight mighty psychic organs of cultural progress.

He comes then to Shakespeare as the genius par excellence. The chapter on the _Shakespearean Controversy_ gives first a survey of the development of modern scientific literary criticism from Herder to Taine and Saint Beuve. He goes on to detail the application of this method to the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Furnivall, Spalding, and Brandes have attempted to trace the genesis and the chronology of the plays. They would have us believe that the series of tragedies--_Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, _Lear_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _Coriolanus_, and _Timon_ are the records of an increasing bitterness and pessimism. Brandes and Frank Harris, following Thomas Tyler have, on the basis of the sonnets, constructed a fascinating, but quite fantastic romance.

Vagaries such as these have caused some critics, such as Sidney Lee and Bierfreund, to declare that it is impossible on the basis of the plays to penetrate to Shakespeare the man. His work is too purely objective. Collin is not willing to admit this. He maintains that the scientific biographical method of criticism is fundamentally sound. But it must be rationally applied. The sequence which Brandes has set up is quite impossible. Goswin Kønig, in 1888, applying the metrical tests, fixed the order as follows: _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _Measure for Measure_, _Othello_, _Timon_, and _Lear_, and, in another group, _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and _Coriolanus_. These results are confirmed by Bradley in his _Shakespearean Tragedy_.

Collin accepts this chronology. A careful study of the plays in this order shows a striking community of ethical purpose between the plays of each group. In the plays of the first group, the poet assails with all his mighty wrath what to him seems the basest of all wickedness, treachery. It is characteristic of these plays that none of the villains attains the dignity of a great tragic hero. They are without a virtue to redeem their faults. Shakespeare's conception of the good and evil in these plays approaches a medieval dualism. In the plays of the second group the case is altered. There is no longer a crude dualism in the interpretation of life. Shakespeare has entered into the soul of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, of Antony and Cleopatra, of Coriolanus, and he has found underneath all that is weak and sinful and diseased, a certain nobility and grandeur. He can feel with the regicides in Macbeth; he no longer exposes and scourges; he understands and sympathizes. The clouds of gloom and wrath have cleared away, and Shakespeare has achieved a serenity and a fine poise.

It follows, then, that the theory of a growing pessimism is untenable. We must seek a new line of evolution.]

We need dwell but little on Collin's sketch of the "Vorgeschichte" of _Hamlet_, for it contributes nothing that is new. _Hamlet_ was a characteristic "revenge tragedy" like the "Spanish Tragedy" and a whole host of others which had grown up in England under the influence, direct and indirect, of Seneca. He points out in a very illuminating way how admirably the "tragedy of blood" fitted the times. Nothing is more characteristic of the renaissance than an intense joy in living. But exactly as the appetite for mere existence became keen, the tragedy of death gained in power. The most passionate joy instinctively calls up the most terrible sorrow. There is a sort of morbid caution here--a feeling that in the moment of happiness it is well to harden oneself against the terrible reaction to come. Conversely, the contemplation of suffering intensifies the joys of the moment. At all events, in such a time, emotions become stronger, colors are brighter, and contrasts are more violent. The "tragedy of blood," therefore, was more than a learned imitation. Its sound and fury met the need of men who lived and died intensely.

The primitive _Hamlet_ was such a play. Shakespeare took over, doubtless with little change, both fable and characters, but he gave to both a new spiritual content. Hamlet's revenge gained a new significance. It is no longer a fight against the murderer of his father, but a battle against "a world out of joint." No wonder that a simple duty of blood revenge becomes a task beyond his powers. He sees the world as a mass of faithlessness, and the weight of it crushes him and makes him sick at heart. This is the tragedy of Hamlet--his will is paralyzed and, with it, his passion for revenge. He fights a double battle, against his uncle and against himself. The conviction that Shakespeare, and not his predecessor, has given this turn to the tragedy is sustained by the other plays of the same period, _Lear_ and _Timon of Athens_. They exhibit three different stages of the same disease, a disease in which man's natural love of fighting is turned against himself.

Collin denies that the tragedy of Hamlet is that of a contemplative soul who is called upon to solve great practical problems. What right have we to assume that Hamlet is a weak, excessively reflective nature? Hamlet is strong and regal, capable of great, concrete attainments. But he can do nothing except by violent and eccentric starts; his will is paralyzed by a fatal sickness. He suffers from a disease not so uncommon in modern literature--the tendency to see things in the darkest light. Is it far from the pessimism of Hamlet to the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Tolstoi? Great souls like Byron and Heine and Ibsen have seen life as Hamlet saw it, and they have struggled as he did, "like wounded warriors against the miseries of the times."

But from this we must not assume that Shakespeare himself was pessimistic. To him Hamlet's state of mind was pathological. One might as well say that he was a murderer because he wrote _Macbeth_, a misogynist because he created characters like Isabella and Ophelia, a wife murderer because he wrote _Othello_, or a suicide because he wrote _Timon of Athens_ as to say that he was a pessimist because he wrote _Hamlet_--the tragedy of an irresolute avenger. This interpretation is contradicted by the very play itself. "At Hamlet's side is the thoroughly healthy Horatio, almost a standard by which his abnormality may be measured. At Lear's side stand Cordelia and Kent, faithful and sound to the core. If the hater of mankind, Timon, had written a play about a rich man who was betrayed by his friends, he would unquestionably have portrayed even the servants as scoundrels. But Shakespeare never presented his characters as all black. Pathological states of mind are not presented as normal."

Collin admits, nevertheless, that there may be something autobiographical in the great tragedies. Undoubtedly Shakespeare felt that there was an iron discipline in beholding a great tragedy. To live it over in the soul tempered it, gave it firmness and resolution, and it is not impossible that the sympathetic, high-strung Shakespeare needed just such discipline. But we must not forget the element of play. All art is, in a sense, a game with images and feelings and human utterances. "In all this century-old discussion about the subtlety of Hamlet's character critics have forgotten that a piece of literature is, first of all, a festive sport with clear pictures, finely organized emotions, and eloquent words uttered in moments of deep feeling." The poet who remembers this will use his work to drive from the earth something of its gloom and melancholy. He will strengthen himself that he may strengthen others.

I have tried to give an adequate synopsis of Collin's article but, in addition to the difficulties of translating the language, there are the difficulties, infinitely greater, of putting into definite words all that the Norwegian hints at and suggests. It is not high praise to say that Collin has written the most notable piece of Shakespeare criticism in Norway; indeed, nothing better has been written either in Norway or Denmark.

The study of Shakespeare in Norway was not, as the foregoing shows, extensive or profound, but there were many Norwegian scholars who had at least considerable information about things Shakespearean. No great piece of research is to be recorded, but the stimulating criticism of Caspari, Collin, Just Bing, and Bjørnson is worth reading to this day.

The same comment may be made on two other contributions--Wiesener's _Almindelig Indledning til Shakespeare_ (General Introduction to Shakespeare), published as an introduction to his school edition of _The Merchant of Venice_,[24] and Collin's _Indledning_ to his edition of the same play. Both are frankly compilations, but both are admirably organized, admirably written, and full of a personal enthusiasm which gives the old, sometimes hackneyed facts a new interest.

[24. _Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice. Med Anmærkninger og Indledning_. Udgivet af G. Wiesener. Kristiania, 1880.]

Wiesener's edition was published in 1880 in Christiania. The text is that of the Cambridge edition with a few necessary cuttings to adapt it for school reading. His introduction covers fifty-two closely printed pages and gives, within these limits, an exceedingly detailed account of the English drama, the Elizabethan stage, Shakespeare's life and work, and a careful study of _The Merchant of Venice_ itself. The editor does not pretend to originality; he has simply tried to bring together well ascertained facts and to present them in the simplest, clearest fashion possible. But the _Indledning_ is to-day, thirty-five years after it was written, fully up to the standard of the best annotated school editions in this country or in England. It is, of course, a little dry and schematic; that could hardly be avoided in an attempt to compress such a vast amount of information into such a small compass, but, for the most part, the details are so clear and vivid that their mass rather heightens than blurs the picture.

From the fact that nothing in this introduction is original, it is hardly necessary to criticise it at length; all that may be demanded is a short survey of the contents. The whole consists of two great divisions, a general introduction to Shakespeare and a special introduction to _The Merchant of Venice_. The first division is, in turn, subdivided into seven heads: 1. _The Pre-Shakespearean Drama_. 2. _The Life of Shakespeare_. 3. _Shakespeare's Works--Order and Chronology_. 4. _Shakespeare as a Dramatist_. 5. _Shakespeare's Versification_. 6. _The Text of Shakespeare_. 7. _The Theatres of Shakespeare's Time_. This introduction fills thirty-nine pages and presents an exceedingly useful compendium for the student and the general reader. The short introduction to the play itself discusses briefly the texts, the sources, the characters, Shakespeare's relation to his material and, finally, the meaning of the play. The last section is, however, a translation from Taine and not Wiesener's at all.

The text itself is provided with elaborate notes of the usual text-book sort. In addition to these there is, at the back, an admirable series of notes on the language of Shakespeare. Wiesener explains in simple, compact fashion some of the differences between Elizabethan and modern English and traces these phenomena back to their origins in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Inadequate as they are, these linguistic notes cannot be too highly praised for the conviction of which they bear evidence--that a complete knowledge of Shakespeare without a knowledge of his language is impossible. To the student of that day these notes must have been a revelation.

The second text edition of a Shakespearean play in Norway was Collin's _The Merchant of Venice_.[25] His introduction covers much the same ground as Wiesener's, but he offers no sketch of the Elizabethan drama, of Shakespeare's life, or of his development as a dramatic artist. On the other hand, his critical analysis of the play is fuller and, instead of a mere summary, he gives an elaborate exposition of Shakespeare's versification.

[25. _The Merchant of Venice_. Med Indledning og Anmærkninger ved Chr. Collin. Kristiania. 1902.]

Collin is a critic of rare insight. Accordingly, although he says nothing new in his discussion of the purport and content of the play, he makes the old story live anew. He images Shakespeare in the midst of his materials--how he found them, how he gave them life and being. The section on Shakespeare's language is not so solid and scientific as Wiesener's, but his discussion of Shakespeare's versification is both longer and more valuable than Wiesener's fragmentary essay, and Shakespeare's relation to his sources is treated much more suggestively.

He points out, first of all, that in Shakespeare's "classical" plays the characters of high rank commonly use verse and those of low rank, prose. This is, however, not a law. The real principle of the interchange of prose and verse is in the emotions to be conveyed. Where these are tense, passionate, exalted, they are communicated in verse; where they are ordinary, commonplace, they are expressed in prose. This rule will hold both for characters of high station and for the most humble. In Act I, for example, Portia speaks in prose to her maid "obviously because Shakespeare would lower the pitch and reduce the suspense. In the following scene, the conversation between Shylock and Bassanio begins in prose. But as soon as Antonio appears, Shylock's emotions are roused to their highest pitch, and his speech turns naturally to verse--even though he is alone and his speech an aside. A storm of passions sets his mind and speech in rhythmic motion. And from that point on, the conversations of Shylock, Bassanio, and Antonio are in verse. In short, rhythmic speech when there is a transition to strong, more dramatic feeling."

The use of prose or verse depends, then, on the kind and depth of feeling rather than on the characters. "In Act II Launcelot Gobbo and his father are the only ones who employ prose. All the others speak in verse--even the servant who tells of Bassanio's arrival. Not only that, but he speaks in splendid verse even though he is merely announcing a messenger:"

"Yet have I not seen So likely an ambassador of love," etc.

Again, in _Lear_, the servant who protests against Cornwall's cruelty to Gloster, nameless though he is, speaks in noble and stately lines:

Hold your hand, my lord; I've served you ever since I was a child; But better service have I never done you Than now to bid you hold.

When the dramatic feeling warrants it, the humblest rise to the highest poetry. The renaissance was an age of deeper, mightier feelings than our own, and this intense life speaks in verse, for only thus can it adequately express itself.

All this is romantic enough. But it is to be doubted if the men of the renaissance were so different from us that they felt an instinctive need of bursting into song. The causes of the efflorescence of Elizabethan dramatic poetry are not, I think, to be sought in such subtleties as these.

Collin further insists that the only way to understand Shakespeare's versification is to understand his situations and his characters. Rules avail little. If we do not _feel_ the meaning of the music, we shall never understand the meaning of the verse. Shakespeare's variations from the normal blank verse are to be interpreted from this point of view. Hence what the metricists call "irregularities" are not irregularities at all. Collin examines the more important of these irregularities and tries to account for them.

1. Short broken lines as in I, 1-5: _I am to learn._ Antonio completes this line by a shrug of the shoulders or a gesture. "It would be remarkable," concludes Collin, "if there were no interruptions or pauses even though the characters speak in verse." Another example of this breaking of the line for dramatic purposes is found in I, 3-123 where Shylock suddenly stops after "say this" as if to draw breath and arrange his features. (Sic!)

2. A verse may be abnormally long and contain six feet. This is frequently accidental, but in _M of V_ it is used at least once deliberately--in the oracular inscriptions on the caskets:

"Who chooseth me shall gain what men desire." "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves." "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he has."

Collin explains that putting these formulas into Alexandrines gives them a stiffness and formality appropriate to their purpose.

3. Frequently one or two light syllables are added to the close of the verse:

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster.

or

Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice.

Again, in III, 2-214 we have two unstressed syllables:

But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel?

"Shakespeare uses this unaccented gliding ending more in his later works to give an easier more unconstrained movement."

4. Occasionally a syllable is lacking, and the foot seems to halt as in V, 1-17:

As far as Belmont. In such a night, etc.

Here a syllable is lacking in the third foot. But artistically this is no defect. We cannot ask that Jessica and Lorenzo always have the right word at hand. The defective line simply means a pause and, therefore, instead of being a blemish, is exactly right.

5. On the other hand, there is often an extra light syllable before the caesura. (I, 1-48):

Because you are not merry; and 'twere as easy, etc.

This extra syllable before the pause gives the effect of a slight retardation. It was another device to make the verse easy and unconstrained.

6. Though the prevailing verse is iambic pentameter, we rarely find more than three or four real accents. The iambic movement is constantly broken and compelled to fight its way through. This gives an added delight, since the ear, attuned to the iambic beat, readily recognizes it when it recurs. The presence of a trochee is no blemish, but a relief:

Vailing her high tops higher than her ribs. (I, 1-28)

This inverted stress occurs frequently in Norwegian poetry. Wergeland was a master of it and used it with great effect, for instance, in his poem to Ludvig Daa beginning:

Med døden i mit hjerte, og smilet om min mund,--

All this gives to Shakespeare's verse a marvellous flexibility and power. Nor are these devices all that the poet had at his disposal. We frequently find three syllables to the foot, giving the line a certain fluidity which a translator only rarely can reproduce. Finally, a further difficulty in translating Shakespeare lies in the richness of the English language in words of one syllable. What literature can rival the grace and smoothness of:

In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

Ten monosyllables in succession! It is enough to drive a translator to despair. Or take:

To be or not to be, that is the question.

To summarize, no other language can rival English in dramatic dialogue in verse, and this is notably true of Shakespeare's English, where the word order is frequently simpler and more elastic than it is in modern English.

Two reviews of Collin quickly appeared in a pedagogical magazine, _Den Höiere Skole_. The first of them,[26] by Ivar Alnæs, is a brief, rather perfunctory review. He points out that _The Merchant of Venice_ is especially adapted to reading in the gymnasium, for it is unified in structure, the characters are clearly presented, the language is not difficult, and the picture is worth while historically. Collin has, therefore, done a great service in making the play available for teaching purposes. Alnæs warmly praises the introduction; it is clear, full, interesting, and marked throughout by a tone of genuine appreciation. But right here lies its weakness. It is not always easy to distinguish ascertained facts from Collin's imaginative combinations. Every page, however, gives evidence of the editor's endeavor to give to the student fresh, stimulating impressions, and new, revealing points of view. This is a great merit and throws a cloak over many eccentricities of language.

[26. Vol. 5 (1903), pp. 51 ff.]

But Collin was not to escape so easily. In the same volume Dr. August Western[27] wrote a severe criticism of Collin's treatment of Shakespeare's versification.

[27. _Ibid._ pp. 142 ff.]

He agrees, as a matter of course, that Shakespeare is a master of versification, but he does not believe that Collin has proved it. That blank verse is the natural speech of the chief characters or of the minor characters under emotional stress, that prose is _usually_ used by minor characters or by important characters under no emotional strain is, in Dr. Western's opinion, all wrong. Nor is prose per se more restful than poetry. And is not Shylock more emotional in his scene (I, 3) than any of the characters in the casket scene immediately following (II, 1)? According to Collin, then, I, 3 should be in verse and II, 1 in prose! Equally absurd is the theory that Shakespeare's characters speak in verse because their natures demand it. Does Shylock go contrary to nature in III, 1? There is no psychological reason for Verse in Shakespeare. He wrote as he did because convention prescribed it. The same is true of Goethe and Schiller, of Bjørnson and Ibsen in their earlier plays. Shakespeare's lapses into prose are, moreover, easy to explain. There must always be something to amuse the gallery. Act III, 1 must be so understood, for though Shakespeare was undoubtedly moved, the effect of the scene was comic. The same is true of the dialogue between Portia and Nerissa in Act I, and of all the scenes in which Launcelot Gobbo appears.

Western admits, however, that much of the prose in Shakespeare cannot be so explained; for example, the opening scenes in _Lear_ and _The Tempest_. And this brings up another point, i.e., Collin's supposition that Shakespeare's texts as we have them are exactly as he wrote them. When the line halts, Collin simply finds proof of the poet's fine ear! The truth probably is that Shakespeare had a good ear and that he always wrote good lines, but that he took no pains to see that these lines were correctly printed. Take, for example, such a line as:

As far as Belmont. In such a night

This would, if written by anyone else, always be considered bad, and Dr. Western does not believe that Collin's theory of the pauses will hold. The pause plays no part in verse. A line consists of a fixed number of _heard_ syllables. Collin would say that a line like I, 1-73:

I will not fail you,

is filled out with a bow and a swinging of the hat. Then why are the lines just before it, in which Salarino and Salario take leave of each other, not defective? Indeed, how can we be sure that much of what passes for "Shakespeare's versification" is not based on printers' errors? In the folio of 1623 there are long passages printed in prose which, after closer study, we must believe were written in verse--the opening of _Lear_ and _The Tempest_. Often, too, it is plain that the beginnings and endings of lines have been run together. Take the passage:

_Sal_: Why, then you are in love.

_Ant_: Fie, fie!

_Sal_: Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad--

The first line is one foot short, the second one foot too long. This Collin would call a stroke of genius; each _fie_ is a complete foot, and the line is complete! But what if the line were printed thus:

_Sal_: Why, then you are in love.

_Ant_: Fie, fie!

_Sal_: Not in Love neither? Then let us say you are sad.

or possibly:

Love neither? Then let's say that you are sad.

Another possible printer's error is found in I, 3-116:

With bated breath and whispering humbleness Say this; Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last.

Are we here to imagine a pause of four feet? And what are we to do with the first folio which has

Say this; Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last.

all in one line? Perhaps some printer chose between the two. At any rate, Collin's theory will not hold. In the schools, of course, one cannot be a text critic but, on the other hand, one must not praise in Shakespeare what may be the tricks of the printer's devil. The text is not always faultless.

Finally, Dr. Western objects to the statement that the difficulty in translating Shakespeare lies in the great number of monosyllables and gives

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad

as proof. Ten monosyllables in one line! But this is not impossible in Norwegian:

For sand, jeg ved ei, hvi jeg er saa trist--

It is not easy to translate Shakespeare, but the difficulty goes deeper than his richness in words of one syllable.

With the greater part of Dr. Western's article everyone will agree. It is doubtful if any case could be made out for the division of prose and verse based on psychology. Shakespeare probably wrote his plays in verse for the same reason that Goethe and Schiller and Oehlenschläger did. It was the fashion. And how difficult it is to break with fashion or with old tradition, the history of Ibsen's transition from poetry to prose shows. It is equally certain that in Collin's _Introduction_ it is difficult to distinguish ascertained facts from brilliant speculation. But it is not easy to agree with Dr. Western that Collin's explanation of the "pause" is a tissue of fancy.

In the first place, no one denies that the printers have at times played havoc with Shakespeare's text. Van Dam and Stoffel, to whose book Western refers and whose suggestions are directly responsible for this article, have shown this clearly enough. But when Dr. Western argues that because printers have corrupted the text in some places, they must be held accountable for every defective short line, we answer, it does not follow. In the second place, why should not a pause play a part in prosody as well as in music? Recall Tennyson's verse:

Break, break, break, On thy cold, grey stones, o sea!

where no one feels that the first line is defective. Of course the answer is that in Tennyson no accented syllable is lacking. But it is difficult to understand what difference this makes. When the reader has finished pronouncing _Belmont_ there _must_ be a moment's hesitation before Lorenzo breaks in with:

In such a night

and this pause may have metrical value. The only judge of verse, after all, is the hearer, and, in my opinion, Collin is right when he points out the value of the slight metrical pause between the bits of repartee. Whether Shakespeare counted the syllables beforehand or not, is another matter. In the third place, Collin did not quote in support of his theory the preposterous lines which Dr. Western uses against him. Collin does quote I, 1-5:

I am to learn.

and I, 1-73:

I will not fail you

is a close parallel, but Collin probably would not insist that his theory accounts for every case. As to Dr. Western's other example of good meter spoiled by corrupt texts, Collin would, no doubt, admit the possibility of the proposed emendations. It would not alter his contention that a pause in the line, like a pause in music, is not necessarily void, but may be very significant indeed.

The array of Shakespearean critics in Norway, as we said at the beginning, is not imposing. Nor are their contributions important. But they show, at least, a sound acquaintance with Shakespeare and Shakespeareana, and some of them, like the articles of Just Bing, Brettville Jensen, Christen Collin, and August Western, are interesting and illuminating. Bjørnson's article in _Aftenbladet_ is not merely suggestive as Shakespearean criticism, but it throws valuable light on Bjørnson himself and his literary development. When we come to the dramatic criticism of Shakespeare's plays, we shall find renewed evidence of a wide and intelligent knowledge of Shakespeare in Norway.

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