An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway Part 10

Act I, Sc. 2.

Outside of Duke Frederik's Palace.

Begins with I, 2 and goes to I, 3. Then follows without change of scene, I, 3. and, following that, 1, 3.

Act II.

In Wildenvey this is all one scene.

Opens with a rhapsodical conversation between the banished duke and Amiens on the glories of nature and the joys of out-door life. It is fully in Shakespeare's tone, but Wildenvey's own invention. After this the scene continues with II, 1. The first lord's speech in Wildenvey, however, is merely a free adaptation of the original, and the later speech of the first lord, describing Jacques' reveries on the hunt, is put into the mouth of Jacques himself. A few entirely new speeches follow and the company goes out upon the hunt.

There is then a slight pause, but no scene division, and Shakespeare's II, 4 follows. This is succeeded again without a break, by II, 5, II, 6, and II, 7 (the opening of II, 7 to the entrance of Jacques, is omitted altogether) to the end of the act.

Act III.

This act has two scenes.

Sc. 1. In Duke Frederik's palace. It opens with II, I and then follows III, 1.

Sc. 2. In the Forest of Arden. Evening.

Begins with III, 2. Then follows III, 4, III, 5, IV, 1.

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 ill.u.s.tration. In Wildenvey we read:

_Orlando_: (kommer ind med tjeneren Adam) Nu kan du likesaa G.o.dt faa vite hvordan alle mine bedrveligheter begynder, Adam! Min salig far testamenterte mig nogen fattige tusen kroner og paala uttrykkelig min bror at gi mig en standsmaessig 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 sn!

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

_Orl_: Her hos ham har jeg ikke kunnet laegge mig til noget andet end vaekst, og det kan jeg vaere ham likesaa forbunden for som hans husdyr hist og her. Formodentlig er det det jeg har arvet av min fars aand som gjr oprr mot denne behandling. Jeg har ingen utsigt til nogen forandring til det bedre, men hvad der end haender, vil jeg ikke taale det laenger.

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) Vaer hilset, dag, som laegges til de andre av mine mange motgangs dage.

Vaer hilset nu, naar solen atter stempler sit gyldne segl paa jordens stolte pande.

Vaer hilset, morgen, med din nye rigdom, med dug og duft fra alle traer og blomster.

Glade, blanke fugleines 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, G.o.dt ord igjen?

_Amiens_: (hertugens ven, kommer likeledes ut av hulen).

G.o.dmorgen, ven og broder i eksilet.

_Hertugen_: G.o.dmorgen, 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 traer og dyr og andre forekomster betragter os som Adamer, kanhaende.

_Hertugen_: Din spg er vel en saadan sanger vaerd.

Du mener med at her er alting herlig, sommer, vinter, vaar og hsttid veksler.

Solen skinner, vind og veiret driver.

Vinterblaasten blaaser op og biter og fortaeller 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 glaeder: hver graasten synes G.o.d og kirkeklok, hvert redetrae er jo en sangers slot, og alt er skjnt, og alt er saare G.o.dt.

_Amiens_: Du er en G.o.dt benaadet oversaetter, naar du kan tolke skjaebnens harske talesaet i slike sterke, stemningsfulde ord...

(En hofmand, derefter Jacques og tjenere kommer.)

_Hertugen_: G.o.dmorgen, venner--vel, saa skal vi jage paa vildtet her, de vakre, dumme borgere av denne de og forlate stad...

_Jacques_: Det er synd at sndre 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 spk er vel en saadan sanger vaerd, 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 att.i.tude 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 d.a.m.ned, is a capital piece of work. The following fragment must serve as an example:

_Touchstone_: Har du vaeret ved hoffet, hyrde?

_Korin_: Visselig ikke.

_Touch_: Da er du evig fordmt.

_Korin_: Det haaber jeg da ikke.