An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway Part 12

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 traenge 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 taenke, Har Shakespeare brudt for os en fremmed Laenke.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 ac.u.men. 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 _Ill.u.s.treret 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 t.i.tles. 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 Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson at Christiania Theater, April 17, 1865. The story belongs rather to the history of Shakespeare on the Norwegian stage, but the doc.u.ments of the affair are contributions to Shakespearean criticism and must, accordingly, be discussed here. Bjrnson's fiery reply to his critics of April 28 is especially valuable as an a.n.a.lysis of his own att.i.tude toward Shakespeare.

Bjrnson became director of Christiania Theater in January, 1865, and the first important performance under his direction was _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (Skjarsommernatsdrommen) in Oehlenschlager's translation, with music by Mendelssohn.[8] Bjrnson 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 superst.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.n.a.lysis. 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, Bjrnson must feel that he has a.s.sisted at the mutilation of a master.

Bjrnson 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 Bjrnson's polemical prose--fresh, vigorous, genuinely eloquent, with a marvelous fusing of power and fancy.

[10. April 28. Reprinted in Bjrnson's _Taler og Skrifter_.

Udgivet af C. Collin og H. Eitrem. Kristiania. 1912. Vol. I, pp. 263-270.]

He begins with an a.n.a.lysis 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 a.s.ses' 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 G.o.d 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 pet.i.tions, 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 pa.s.sions, you, walking in perfect confidence at the side of your beloved. They (the thoughts and pa.s.sions) 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 a.s.s 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.s'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 a.s.s's head, and do not be so blase that you reject the performance because it does not command the latest electrical effects."

Bjrnson 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.

Bjrnson 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 Bjrnson's work, and we are, therefore, doubly glad to have his own eloquent acknowledgement of his debt to Shakespeare. The closing pa.s.sus of Bjrnson'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 n.o.ble, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sured 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 Bjrnson 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 Bjrnson 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 Bjrnson's declarations about the pa.s.sions of the hour have nothing to do with the case.

This ended the discussion. At this day, of course, one cannot pa.s.s judgment, and there is no reason why we should. The two things which stand out are Bjrnson's protest against spectacular productions of Shakespeare's plays, and his ardent, almost pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sume 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, l.u.s.t, cruelty, are always punished; sympathy, love, kindness are everywhere glorified. The writer ill.u.s.trates 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 circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.sured 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 Bjrnson'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.

Moliere is the cla.s.sical example of the first type; Shakespeare of the second. To him a chance utterance reveals feelings, pa.s.sions, 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 saerlig Jevnforelse med Ibsens senere Digtning_.