Act IV.

Wildenvey's last act (IV) opens with Shakespeare's IV, 2 and

continues: IV, 3, V, 1, V, 2, V, 3, V, 4.

A study of this scheme shows that Wildenvey has done no great violence

to the fable nor to the characters. His shifts and changes are sensible

enough. In the treatment of the text, however, he has had no scruples.

Shakespeare is mercilessly cut and mangled.

The ways in which this is done are many. A favorite device is to break

up long speeches into dialogue. To make this possible he has to put

speeches of his own invention into the mouths of other characters. The

opening of the play gives an excellent illustration. In Wildenvey we

read:

_Orlando_: (kommer ind med tjeneren Adam)

Nu kan du likesaa godt faa vite hvordan alle mine bedrøveligheter

begynder, Adam! Min salig far testamenterte mig nogen fattige tusen

kroner og paala uttrykkelig min bror at gi mig en standsmæssig

opdragelse. Men se hvordan han opfylder sin broderpligt mot mig!

Han lar min bror Jacques studere, og rygtet melder om hans store

fremgang. Men mig underholder han hjemme, det vil si, han holder mig

hjemme uten at underholde mig. For man kan da vel ikke kalde det at

underholde en adelsmand som ellers regnes for at staldfore en okse!

_Adam_:

Det er synd om Eder, herre, I som er min gamle herres bedste søn!

Men jeg tjener Eders bror, og er alene tjener...

_Orl_:

Her hos ham har jeg ikke kunnet lægge mig til noget andet end vækst,

og det kan jeg være ham likesaa forbunden for som hans husdyr hist

og her. Formodentlig er det det jeg har arvet av min fars aand som

gjør oprør mot denne behandling. Jeg har ingen utsigt til nogen

forandring til det bedre, men hvad der end hænder, vil jeg ikke

taale det længer.

Orlando's speech, we see, has been broken up into two, and between the

two new speeches has been interpolated a speech by Adam which does not

occur in the original. The same trick is resorted to repeatedly. Note,

for instance, Jacques first speech on the deer (Act II, 7) and Oliver's

long speech in IV, 3. The purpose of this is plain enough--to enliven

the dialogue and speed up the action. Whether or not it is a legitimate

way of handling Shakespeare is another matter.

More serious than this is Wildenvey's trick of adding whole series of

speeches. We have noted in our survey of the "bearbeidelse" that the

second act opens with a dialogue between the Duke and Amiens which is a

gratuitous addition of Wildenvey's. It is suggested by the original,

but departs from it radically both in form and content.

Den Landflygtige Hertug (kommer ut fra en grotte i skogen)

Vær hilset, dag, som lægges til de andre

av mine mange motgangs dage.

Vær hilset nu, naar solen atter stempler

sit gyldne segl paa jordens stolte pande.

Vær hilset, morgen, med din nye rigdom,

med dug og duft fra alle trær og blomster.

Glade, blanke fugleøines perler

blinker alt av sol som duggens draaper,

hilser mig som herre og som ven. (En fugl flyver op over hans hode.)

Ei, lille sangerskjelm, godt ord igjen?

_Amiens_:

(hertugens ven, kommer likeledes ut av hulen).

Godmorgen, ven og broder i eksilet.

_Hertugen_:

Godmorgen, Amiens, du glade sanger!

Du er vel enig i at slik en morgen

i skogen her med al dens liv og lek

er fuld erstatning for den pragt vi tapte,

ja mer end hoffets smigergyldne falskhet?

_Amiens_:

Det ligner litt paa selve Edens have,

og trær og dyr og andre forekomster

betragter os som Adamer, kanhænde.

_Hertugen_:

Din spøg er vel en saadan sanger værd.

Du mener med at her er alting herlig,

sommer, vinter, vaar og høsttid veksler.

Solen skinner, vind og veiret driver.

Vinterblaasten blaaser op og biter

og fortæller uden sminket smiger

hvem vi er, og hvor vi os befinder.

Ja, livet her er ei ly for verdens ondskap,

er stolt og frit og fuldt av rike glæder:

hver graasten synes god og kirkeklok,

hvert redetræ er jo en sangers slot,

og alt er skjønt, og alt er saare godt.

_Amiens_:

Du er en godt benaadet oversætter,

naar du kan tolke skjæbnens harske talesæt

i slike sterke, stemningsfulde ord...

(En hofmand, derefter Jacques og tjenere kommer.)

_Hertugen_:

Godmorgen, venner--vel, saa skal vi jage

paa vildtet her, de vakre, dumme borgere

av denne øde og forlate stad...

_Jacques_:

Det er synd at søndre deres vakre lemmer

med pile-odd.

_Amiens_:

Det samme sier du altid,

du er for melankolsk og bitter, Jacques.

A careful comparison of the translation with the original will reveal

certain verbal resemblances, notably in the duke's speech:

Din spøk er vel en saadan sanger værd, etc.

But, even allowing for that, it is a rephrasing rather than a

translation. The stage action, too, is changed. Notice that Jacques

appears in the scene, and that in the episode immediately following, the

second part of the first lord's speech is put into Jacques' mouth. In

other words, he is made to caricature himself!

This is Wildenvey's attitude throughout. To take still another example.

Act IV, 2 begins in the English with a brief dialogue in prose between

Jacques and the two lords. In Wildenvey this is changed to a rhymed

dialogue in iambic tetrameters between Jacques and Amiens. In like

manner, the blank verse dialogue between Silvius and Phebe (Silvius and

Pippa) is in Norwegian rendered, or rather paraphrased, in iambic verse

rhyming regularly abab.

Occasionally meanings are read into the play which not only do not

belong in Shakespeare but which are ridiculously out of place. As an

illustration, note the dialogue between Orlando and Rosalind in II, 2

(Original, III, 2). Orlando remarks: "Your accent is something finer

than could be purchased in so remote a dwelling." Wildenvey renders

this: "Eders sprog er mer elevert end man skulde vente i disse vilde

trakter. De taler ikke Landsmaal." Probably no one would be deceived by

this gratuitous satire on the Landsmaal, but, obviously, it has no place

in what pretends to be a translation. The one justification for it is

that Shakespeare himself could not have resisted so neat a word-play.

Wildenvey's version, therefore, can only be characterized as needlessly

free. For the text as such he has absolutely no regard. But for the fact

that he has kept the fable and, for the most part, the characters,

intact, we should characterize it as a belated specimen of Sille Beyer's

notorious Shakespeare "bearbeidelser" in Denmark. But Wildenvey does not

take Sille Beyer's liberties with the dramatis personae and he has,

moreover, what she utterly lacked--poetic genius.

For that is the redeeming feature of _Livet i Skogen_--it does not

translate Shakespeare but it makes him live. The delighted audience

which sat night after night in Christiania and Copenhagen and drank in

the loveliness of Wildenvey's verse and Halvorsen's music cared little

whether the lines that came over the footlights were philologically an

accurate translation or not. They were enchanted by Norwegian verse and

moved to unfeigned delight by the cleverness of the prose. If Wildenvey

did not succeed in translating _As You Like It_--one cannot believe that

he ever intended to,--he did succeed in reproducing something of "its

imperishable woodland spirit, its fresh breath of out-of-doors."

We have already quoted the opening of Act II. It is not Shakespeare but

it is good poetry in itself. And the immortal scene between Touchstone

and Corin in III, 2 (Shak. III, 2), in which Touchstone clearly proves

that the shepherd is damned, is a capital piece of work. The following

fragment must serve as an example:

_Touchstone_:

Har du været ved hoffet, hyrde?

_Korin_:

Visselig ikke.

_Touch_:

Da er du evig fordømt.

_Korin_:

Det haaber jeg da ikke.

_Touch_:

Visselig, da er du fordømt som en sviske.

_Korin_:

Fordi jeg ikke har været ved hoffet? Hvad mener I?

_Touch_:

Hvis du ikke har været ved hoffet, saa har du aldrig set gode seder,

og hvis du ikke har set gode seder, saa maa dine seder være slette,

og slette seder er synd, og syndens sold er død og fordømmelse. Du

er i en betænkelig tilstand, hyrde!

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:

Fra øst til vest er ei at finde

en ædelsten som Rosalinde.

Al verden om paa alle vinde

skal rygtet gaa om Rosalinde.

Hvor har en maler nogensinde

et kunstverk skapt som Rosalinde?

Al anden deilighet maa svinde

av tanken bort--for Rosalinde.

Or Touchstone's parody:

Hjorten skriker efter hinde,

skrik da efter Rosalinde,

kat vil katte gjerne finde,

hvem vil finde Rosalinde.

Vinterklær er tit for tynde,

det er ogsaa Rosalinde.

Nøtten søt har surhamshinde,

slik en nøtt er Rosalinde.

Den som ros' med torn vil finde,

finder den--og Rosalinde.

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:

Under de grønne trær

hvem vil mig møte der?

Hvem vil en tone slaa

frit mot det blide blaa?

Kom hit og herhen, hit og herhen,

kom, kjære ven,

her skal du se,

trær skal du se,

sommer og herlig veir skal du se.

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:

Blaas, blaas du barske vind,

troløse venners sind

synes os mere raa.

Bar du dig end saa sint,

bet du dog ei saa blindt,

pustet du ogsaa paa.

Heiho! Syng heiho! i vor skog under løvet.

Alt venskap er vammelt, al elskov er tøvet,

men her under løvet

er ingen bedrøvet.

_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.[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.