Research Publications of the University of JVIinnesota Studies m Language and Literature Numoer 8 AN ESSAY TO^VARD A HISTORY OF SHAKESPEARE IN DENMARK BY MARTIN B. RUUD, PL.D. Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Minnesota Puhlished hy tTie University of J^innesota 7^inneaj>olis, February, 1920 RESliARCH PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA These publications contain the results of research work from various depart- ments of the University and are oflFered for exchange with universities, scientific societies, and other institutions. Papers will be published as separate monograplis numbered in several series. There is no stated interval of publication. Application for any of these publications should be made to the University Librarian. STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIEN'CES !. Thompson and Warper, Social and Economic Survey of a Rural Township m oouthern Minnesota. 1913. $0.50. 2. 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Lodge, The Meaning and Function of Simple Modes in the Philosophy of John Locke. 1918. $0.75. 13. Florence R. Curtis, The Libraries of the American State and National Institutions for Defectives, Dependents, and Delinquents. 1918. $0.50. 14. Louis A. Boettiger, Armenian Legends and Festivals. 1920. $0.75. STUDIES IN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS 1. Fkankforter A-ND Frarv, Equilibria in Systems Containing Alcohols, Salts, and Water. 1912. $0.50. 2. Frankforter and Kritchevsky, A New Phase of Catalysis. 1914. $&[m> (Continued inside back cover) , xnoians: ResearcK Putlications of the University of Minnesota Studies m Language and Literature Number 8 AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF SHAKESPEARE IN DENMARK BY MARTIN B. RUUD, PL.D. Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Minnesota PuhJt'thed hy the University of J^innesota Minneapolis, Fehruary, 1920 Copyright 1920 BY THE University of Minnesota LIBRARY P 1? CmrVERSITY OF CALIPORNTiT ' 'X^ / ^^^'^^ BARBARA an/ PREFACE The present study, like my Shakespeare in Norway^ to which it is properly a complement, is an attempt to trace the history, of Shakespeare in Denmark as it is found in translations, criticism, and stage performances. I am aware that in thus limiting myself to external history, I am evading the most interesting part of such an investigation — the tracing of Shake- speare's influence on Danish literature. That, however, can hardly be done till we know something of the ways by which a knowledge of Shakespeare came to Denmark and the impress which the plays made upon Danish criticism and stage history. I have therefore passed over even such well ascertained facts as the influence of Shakespeare on Ewald, Oehlenschleeger, and Christian Hviid Bredahl, except so far as it may be inferred from their own critical dicta. That there are gaps and errors, I am well aware. It could hardly be otherwise in a field so little explored. I venture to point out also that the monograph has been written thousands of miles from the sources at a time when the lines of communication have been worse than uncertain. It has been impossible, therefore, to verify many statements, or to subject others to a new scrutiny. My thanks are due to the American-Scandinavian Foundation and to the University of Chicago, whose generous support made my studies abroad possible, to the authorities of the Royal and University libraries at Copenhagen for their courtesy and helpfulness, and to my wife, who relieved me of most of the drudgery of copying materials. M. B. R. The University of Minnesota October, 1918 CONTENTS Pages Chapter I. Translations of Shakespeare 1-44 Chapter II. Shakespearean criticism in Denmark 45-83 Chapter III. Shakespeare on the Danish stage 84-113 Appendix . 114-16 AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF SHAKESPEARE IN DENMARK CHAPTER I TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE We shall probably never know when Shakespeare first came to Den- mark. That his name at least was known to scores of young Danish scholars who visited England in the early years of the eighteenth century is probable enough; Holberg must have heard of him, and one of Holberg's contemporaries definitely mentions his name. Other statements are unsafe. Toward the middle of the century, as we shall see, there is evidence of fuller knowledge, even of real understanding, but before 1777, when Johannes Boye published his translation of Hamlet,^ the thread is uncertain and tenuous. Boye was bom in 1756, matriculated at the university in Copenhagen in 1772, and devoted himself eagerly to the study of philosophy and modern languages. In later life, indeed, he was to gain a certain distinction as a political economist and as the protagonist of the old Enlightenment against the new philosophy of Kant. But his political economy was antiquated, and his philosophy, even as he wrote, was dead. Boye lives, like so many others, not through his magnum opus, but through the accidental fact that he was the first Danish translator of Shakespeare. The translation is in prose, and the reader may be curious to see what he did with Shakespeare's verse in a prose so tmformed and heavy as was that of Danish before the wizardry of Jens Baggesen had taught his coimtry- men how to use it with grace and flexibility. O! at dette alt for haarde haarde Eaod vilde smelte, toe op og henflyde i Dug! eller at den Evige ey havde stilled sin Torden mod Selvmorderen ! O Gud ! O Gud ! hvorlangvilligt, slset, afnytted og ubrugelig er all denne Verdens Gode for mig ! O Fyh I O Fyh ! den er en uluged Hauge, der skyder i Froe, fyldt med lutter uhyre vaextgiaerrige Ting. — At det skulde gaae saa vidt ! kun to maaneder dod ! ney ikke saa laenge ! ikke to — Saa ypperlig en Konge, mod denne som Hyperion mod en Skovtrold: Saa kiaerlig mod min Moder, at han ey taalte at Vindene blaeste paa hendes Ansigt. O Himmel og Jord! hvorfor skal jeg erindre dette? Hun hang om ham, som om Begiaerlighed voxte ved det den nod; dog inden en Maaned! o! lad mig ey taenke derpaa — Svaghed, dit Navn er Qvinde ! En lille Maaned ! — eller forend de Skoe vare gamle, med hvilke hun fulgte min arme Faders Liig, som Niobe, lutter Taarer — Og hun, just hun — O Gud! et ufornuftigt Dyr vilde have sorget laengere — gifter sig med min Farbroder, men ey liigere min Fader, end jeg Hercules. Inden een Maaned — hendes Oyne endnu rode af Taarer. ! forbandede Hastighed, at fahre med saadan » Hamlet, Prinz af Danmark. Oversat af Johannes Boye. Xiobenhavn. 1777. 2 MARTIN B. RUUD Ficrdighed til blodskiaendig -lEgteseng. Det er ey godt, og kan ey heller give Godt af sig. O brist mit Hierte, thi jeg maae nu tie.* Perhaps one other specimen should be given, and I choose, for obvious reasons, the great soliloquy, than which there can be no severer test of a translator's powers: At vaere eller ikke vaere, det er Sporsmaalet — om det er aedlere at taale en grum Skiacbnes Piile og Slynger med ubevaegeligt Sind, eller at gribe til Vaaben mod en H^r af Ulykker og ved Modstand ende dem — At doe — at sove — ei meer; og som ved en Sovn at ende all den Hiertevee og Livets tusinde Anstod, sora ere Kiodets Ar- vedeel; det er en Ende man bor onske andaegtig. At doe — at sove — at sove — maaske at dromme; ah der er Knuden — thi hvad Dromme der monne komme i Dodens Sovn naar vi bar slidt os fra denne dodelige AUarm, maae holde os tilbage. Dette er Udsigten, som txanger os til at leve et langt elsendigt Liv. Thi hvo ville taale Tiidens Svobe og Spot; Undertrykkerens Uraetfserdighed, den Stoltes Foragt, afslagen Kia;r- ligheds Qvaal, Lovens Tilsidesaettelse, de Maegtiges uforskammede Hovmod, og de Foedstod taalmodig Fortieneste maae tage af den Uvaerdige; naar man med en usel Dolk kunne forskaffe sig Hvile? hvo ville under svare Byrder sukke og svede et moysommeligt Liv igiennem, naar ikke Villien blev tvungen af Frygt for noget efter Doden (det skiulte Land, hvorfra ingen Reysende vender tilbage) og gior at vi bellere bser de Ulykker vi har, end Aj'^er til andre vi ikke kiender? Saaledes gior Tvivl OS alle feige; og saaledes besmittes vor Beslutnings naturlige Farve af Eftertaenk- nings morke Anstrog, og saa bliver vigtige Forsaetter stodte tilbage af denne Udsigt, og kommer aldrig til Handling.^ Malthe Conrad Bruun, who never said or did things by halves, pronounced this translation so bad that one could fairly say of it that it is no translation at all.'* It is prosy, no doubt, and without the slightest suggestion of imaginative power, but the sense is reasonably clear; Shake- speare's meaning is correctly given, even though the poetry is fled. Too often, indeed, Boye takes refuge from the difficulties of his task in the blankest kind of paraphrase. Note, for example, how flat is his rendering of Shakespeare's lines : Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes. (Hendes Oyne endnu rode af Taarer) Or, when Shakespeare has it . . . there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; Boye paraphrases: Dette er Udsigten som tvinger os til at leve et langt elendigt Liv — ' Hamlet, Print af Danmark pp. 22-24. *lbid. pp. 124-26. • Stada, 1796. p. 122. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 3 as if Shakespeare had written : . . . there's the consideration that makes us live a long and wretched life. Shakespeare: the insolence of office. Boye: de Masgtiges uforskammede Hovraod. Some glosses, nevertheless, which seem to us today downright blunders, are not blunders at all, for Boye was simply following the standard com- mentators. Thus, farther along in the play, (Boye, III, 8, Variorum, III, 2) where the Danish translation has the phrase — ''sort som en Solsort" (black as a blackbird) for our standard ''black like a weasel," — the translator is faithftil to Theobald's text of 1773,^ which we know he used.^ At times, too, the style is amorphous and ungainly; for example, the last lines of "At vsere eller ilcke vaere." But when all is said and done, the fact remains that Boye's work is a' distinctly creditable performance — intelligent, readable, and free from that wooden slavishness which is the curse of translations. It was well received. Lcerde Efterretninger, the oldest of contemporary critical periodicals, honored it with an extended if not very significant review. The critic gives a two-page summary of the plot, criticises the diction, and remarks rather naively that the play is full of anachronisms.^ On the other hand, Nye Kritiske Tilskuer gives a long, searching, and extremely laudatory review.* After a rhapsody about the wonderful, the unrivalled Shakespeare, the writer declares that translations of his work should ever be welcome. The undertaking, however, is a daring one. "A young compatriot has ventured to give us this elevated, difficult, in many respects this well-nigh untrans- latable poet, in Danish." The result, he continues, is, on the whole good, and suggests much of the splendor of the original. By way of illustration, he quotes a part of the soliloquy "To be or not to be" and Hamlet's speech to the players. The review is not all praise; the author criticises sharply many of Boye's renderings, suggests improvements, and calls attention to certain omissions which seem to point back to a defective original. The point is not well taken. Boye has omitted nothing; but his manner of paraphrasing instead of translating often makes it appear that some- thing in the original has been slurred over. The article closes with a » Vide letter of Boye's great-grandson, Provst M. A. Boye, in Poliiiken newspaper (Copenhagen), May 27, 1913. Provst Boye says: "I have in my possession the edition of Shakespeare which he used, Theobald's of 1773, in eight volumes." • Theobald, following Pope, reads "black like an ouzle." Cf. Hamlet (New Variorum Ed.) 1:272, note. ' Kiobenhavnske llflerrelninger om Larde Sager, October 9, 1777. 8 Volume for 1777, nos. 23 and 24. 4 MARTIN B. RUUD sketcli of Shakespeare's life which shows a good acquaintance with results of contemporary scholarship. There is nothing here to suggest that note of mingled condescension and hostility whicli characterized, for example, Voltaire's critical dicta on Shakespeare. The deficiency, however, is more than made good by the article in Nye Kritiske Journal.^ The opening is amicable enough. Hamlet should interest Danish readers, since the characters are Danes, though certainly it is plain that, save for the carousing, for which Danes were long famous, Shakespeare had in mind rather Englishmen of his own day. The worship of Shakespeare in England and Germany, says the reviewer, goes to the length of idolatry, but whether patriotism or literary fashions or a real imderstanding of the poet has led the translator to his work, he does not know. He finds much to admire in Shakespeare — elevation of thought and richness of fancy — and he quotes, as a particularly notable passage, the dialogue between Hamlet and the king (IV, 3, 21-31) : "Your worm is your Emperor for diet," etc. "For the rest we are very far from joining the chorus of praise in which Shakespeare is exalted and lauded as the paragon of dramaturgists. He is the wildest and most untamed genius one can imagine, in whom is found in full measure that mingling of lunacy and wisdom which one of the ancients demanded in a genius. One might almost say of him what he said of the world : . . . 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely." The translation, as a whole, is praised ; but the writer would not have been a true son of the eighteenth century if he had missed this opportunity for minute verbal criticism. Thus he reads Poleaxe, not, with Theobald and Boye, Polak. It is possible that he is right ; the only trouble is that he insists upon being dogmatic about it. In one instance, however, he catches Boye tripping. Boye translates: A double blessing is a double grace; Occasion smiles upon a second leave (I, 3, 53-54) as follows: "See her kommer min Fader. Jeg vil anden Gang faa hans Velsignelse. Jo storre Tilladelse, des hehageligere er Leiligheden/' Which, as the writer says, is complete nonsense. Boye had reason to feel satisfied with his work and with the recep- tion which the public had given it. He did not, however, carry it forward. The second Danish translation of a play of Shakespeare's was Rosen- feldt's Macbeth of 1787. This book has completely disappeared from •Volume for 1777, pp. 221 ff. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 5 Danish public libraries, and but for a review by J. C. Tode in Kritik og Antikntik,^^ we should not know that it had ever existed. Rosenfeldt himself has been forgotten. The standard Danish encyclopedia and bio- graphical dictionaries are silent about him; only in the all but obsolete Literaturlexikon by Nyerup and Kraft (1820) do we find a short account of his life and works. Y/hat the Macbeth of 1787 was like we shall prob- ably never positively know, but the fact that it was in prose, .and the fact that isolated lines quoted in Tode's review correspond closely with corre- sponding lines in the later edition, lead one to believe that Rosenfeldt in 1790 simply reprinted the text of the first edition. In his review, Tode says: "We have long wished that we, too, might have a translation of one of the great dramatic poets of the world, but a translation that might open the eyes of those who will not accept him for what he is because they can not read him in the original. Such a translation was never more desir- able than at this moment when English literature is becoming increas- ingly popular among us, and we are beginning to appreciate this great creative genius for what he is." The writer regrets that Rosenfeldt cast the translation into prose, for in prose the pedestrian passages seem to have no excuse for being, and the strong and poetic parts lose much of their dignit3^ "A poet should be translated in verse; rather adapt than imitate and vitiate. To turn what is essentially poetry into prose is, accordingly, a great wrong." The remainder of the review is occupied with a close examination of the translation of single lines in the first two scenes of Act I. It may be said, without entering into the matter further, that Tode's strictures are nearly always justified. We know so little of Rosenfeldt's life that we can only speculate about his mode of work, but it seems altogether likely that Macbeth was put out as a feeler. At all events, two years after Tode's review appeared the first part of William Shakespeares Skuespil. Oversatte paa Dansk efter de engel- ske Originaler aJN. Rosenfeldt}^ This volume contains three plays, Macbeth, Othello, and AlVs Well That Ends Well. The second part, containing King Lear, Cymbeline, and The Merchant of Venice, was published in 1792. Tode had advised Rosenfeldt to study Eschenburg, and he had done so to such good purpose that he took over Eschenbiu-g's notes, with some conden- sation, to be sure, and he quite plainly had the German text before him as he worked. Of this matter I shall speak in a moment. On page ii is a pompous dedication to "Herr Christian Colbiornson, Hans Kongelige Majestets Etatsraad, General-Procureur — Deputeret i det Kongelige Danske Cancellie — ^Assessor i Hoisteret, etc., etc.," and following this, on pages iii and iv, a dedicatory note to Colbjornson. After a deferential, almost servile apology for the liberty he has taken in claiming the interest of the 10 October, 1787-May, 1788, no. 1. " Kiobenhavn, 1790. 6 MARTIX B. RUUD distinguished statesman in his work, Rosenfeldt continues: "Indeed, it is solely the genius and extraordinary natural powers of the original author — of the application of which to the increase of knowledge and the improvement of manners his works exhibit so many examples — ^which war- rant me in inscribing [this translation] to you, whose noble and successful labors have been constantly directed toward the awakening of sympathy for virtue and righteousness, the defense of human rights, and the cause of truth." Is not this the unmistakable voice of the eighteenth century? Shakespeare, if he is to be at all significant to the men of that generation, must be enlisted in the cause of virtue, enlightenment, and social and polit- ical reform. From the patron, Rosenfeldt tiirns, in a short preface, to the reader. He apologizes for errors, trusts that they are not so serious that they will militate against the usefulness of the translation, and defends the use of prose on the ground that, save in the so-called "syngestykker," that curious hybrid of opera and spoken drama, the Danish public is not accustomed to the mingling of prose and verse on the stage. "In The Tempest and A Midsummer Niglifs Dream I have attempted a verse translation of the passages written in verse, for they would otherwise have lost too much of their essential beauty without any corresponding gain in accurac3^" Following this comes a translation of Pope's introduction to his edition (xi-xxxii) and, last of all, pages xxxiii-1, a conventional but well in- formed sketch of Shakespeare's life. I have compared this biographical essay with that in Eschenbiu-g's edition of 1783, and it seems clear that Rosenfeldt's is an independent compilation. The notes, which in both parts (1790 and 1792) are massed at the back of the volumes, are, however, frankly translated from Eschenbiu-g.^^ It is not easy to find purple passages in Rosenfeldt. The even medioc- rity of the translation makes selection difficult ; but perhaps a scene from the first act of Macbeth will serve oiu: pru-pose : Dersom det var afgjort naar det er gjort, da vilde jeg onske det nu snart var gjort; kunde Drabet alene hegne for Folgerne og indhente de seendrsegtige Fordele, maatte dette Dolkestik her vEere alt og ende alt, kun her, saa vilde jeg paa dette Tidens Skjaer modig springe det tilkommende Liv forbi. Men i slige Tilfaelde have vi allerede her vor Dom; saasnart vi ikkun give andre blodige Anslag, vende de ufortovet tilbage for at plage Opfinderen. Retfasrdigheden med upartisk Haand forer Giftbaege- ret tilbage til vor egne Laeber. Her burde han have dobbelt Beskyttelse; forst fordi jeg er hans beslsegtede og Undersaat, tvende stserke Grunde imod denne Handling. Saa og som hans Vert burde jeg holde Morderne ude, og ikke selv gribe Dolken. Duncan bar desuden udvist saa megen Mildhed, forholdt sig saa Himmelreen paa sin vigtige Post, at hans Dyder, liig Engle, vil udbasunere dyb Fordommelse over hans Ombringelse. Ja, Medynk selv, i Skikkelse af et nogent nyfodt Barn vil bestige Stormen, eller og Himlens Cheruber ride paa Luftens usynlige Lobere for at blasse '2 William Shakespeare: Schauspiele. Neue Ausgabe von Joh. Joach. Eschenburg. Bd. 1-12. Zurich, 1775-77. There was a new edition, Strassburg, 1778; reprinted, Mannheim, 1783. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 7 denne afskyelige Gjerning i enhvers Oren, indtil Vinden selv skal drukne i Taarer. Jeg har ingen Braad hvormed jeg kan anspore mit Anslag, uden den toylelose ^r- gjerrighed, der forspringer sig selv, og falder'ind paa en Anden — Nu, hvad Nyt! [Lady Macbeth kommer ind] Lady Macbeth: Han har naesten afspist; hvorfor forlod du Vaerelset? Macbeth: Spurgte han efter mig? Lady Macbeth: Ja, er det ikke bleven dig sagt? Macbeth: Vi vil ey gaa vider i denne Sag; nu nylig har jeg modtaget ^res- bevisninger og indkjobt kostbare Agtelses Tegn af alle Slags Folk, som nu maa baeres i deres kostbareste Glands, og ikke kastes bort saa hastig. Lady Macbeth: Var da Haabet drukken, som dengang beskjeled dig? Er det siden faldet i Sovn og vaagner nu, forat blegne og forfaerdes over, hvad det gjorde saa frimodigen? Fra dette Ojeblik af, haver jeg samme Tanker cm din Kjerlighed. Frygter du for i Gjerningen at vise den samme Behjertighed som i dine Onsker? Vil du erholde det, som du agter for Livets storste Klenodie, og dog i dine egne Tanker leva som en Kujon, ladende — 'jeg tor ikke' vente paa 'jeg vilde,' Hgesom Katten i Ordsproget? Macbeth: Kjere, tal ey mere derom. Jeg tor gjore aU, hvad der tilkommer en Mand; den er ingen, der vover at gjore mere — ^^ And so on. It would be wearisome to quote further. Rosenfeldt's translations were promptly reviewed in Lcerde Eftenetninger }'^ The reviewer is conscientious, but insufferably pedantic and trivial. His admiration for Shakespeare is unstinted: "One can give dramatic poets no better counsel than, in the words of Horace, to give their days and nights to Shakespeare." For he is, and will continue to be, the great master in showing forth the actions of men and the hidden springs of conduct. The value of a translation, even to one who plans to read Shakespeare in the original, is indisputable, for if one knows the drift of the action and has an intelligent understanding of the characters, a great many of the difficulties in the English text disappear. But to produce a really useful translation, the translator niust have a sound knowledge of the languages in which he is working. And this knowledge, he maintains, Rosenfeldt does not possess. To prove his contention he cites a ntnnber of inacctiracies in translation and still others in Danish idiom and diction. The inaccu- racies are indubitable, and the abundance of German words, but both are venial faults. The critic, however, was keen enough to hit upon the fatal weakness of Rosenfeldt's translation. After pointing out the inadequacy of a prose rendering, and the flimsiness of the translator's explanation of his course, he writes: "In translating into prose, Hr. Rosenfeldt assumes the right to resolve the metaphors, and this it is which makes of the vig- orous dialogue of the original fiat, trivial, and garrulous Danish." That is exactly the point. To an even greater extent than in Boye, prosy paraphrase is made to do duty for translation. The following pas- sage offers a good example : " I, 6. n Nyesle Kibbenhavnske Eflerrelninger om Lcerde Soger no. 27. 1790. MARTIN B. RUUD Helena: . . . Then I confess, Here on my knee, before high Heaven and you. That before you, and next unto high Heaven, I love your son. — My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love: Be not offended; for it hurts not him That he is loved of me. I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him; Yet never know how that desert should be.^^ Rosenfeldt translates thus: Nu saa bekjender jeg her paa mine Knaee for Himmelen og for Dem, at jeg frem- for Dem og naest efter den hoie Himmel elsker Deres Son. Mine Venner vare fattige men aerlige; saaledes er ogsaa min Kjerlighed. Fortornes ei, thi det skader ham ikke, at han er elsket af mig. Jeg forfolger ham ei med mindste Tegn af forvoven Efterstrasbelse; ei heller vil jeg have ham forend jeg kan fortjene ham; og dog ved jeg ikke hvorledes jeg kan forskaffe mig denne Fortjeneste. Note the bald prosiness of the last three lines. The translation of the lines that follow is perhaps even more typical of the fashion in which Rosen- feldt emasculated Shakespeare's figures. Compare the following passage with the original : Jeg veed jeg elsker ham forgjeves, og kjemper imod Haabet. Dog alligevel lader jeg min Kjerligheds Strom i dette bedragelige og usikkre Sold, og mserker slet intet Savn, omend^kjont jeg bestandig taber. Here the translation is not merely pure periphrasis, it is positively misleading. Again, in Act II, the original has: King: Thou knowest she has raised me from my sickly bed. Bertram: But follows it, my lord, to bring me down Must answer for your raising? . . . Rosenfeldt renders Bertram's speech: Men folger det deraf, naadige Konge, at Deres Opreisning skal drage mit Fald efter sig? Now and again we encounter eccentricities that are worse than mere watery paraphrases. Two occur very close to each other in Macbeth. Compare Macbeth's speech (III, 4, 38) : Now, good digestion wait on appetite. And health on both — with the Danish Nu lad da FornSyelse vaere Appetitens Befordrer og Sundhed begges. Or, Still better, this gem of misimderstanding : « All's Well That Ends Well, I, 3. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE Lady Macbeth: . . . O, these flaws and starts, (Impostors to true fear) would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire Authoris'd by her grandam — In Danish: . . . O! denne Forbauselse, disse Syner, som ere blotte Indbildninger, vilde vaere vel anbragte i en gammel Kjellings Eventyr en Vinteraften for at moere Sin Bed- stemoder. How any one who could read English at all could shoot so wide of the mark is past understanding. A final question presents itself in connection with Rosenfeldt's trans- lation. To what extent did he depend on Eschenburg? From Eschen- burg he borrowed his notes, and it might be supposed that he used him as a gtiide in translating. Unquestionably he did so use him. Eschen- burg, for instance, has grossly mistranslated Helena's words in All's Well That Ends Well (I, 3, 162): ... or were you both our mothers . . . Oder waren Sie beyde meine Mutter and Rosenfeldt, not understanding the English, has adopted, with a slight modification, Eschenburg's reading : eller vare de mig begge i Moders Sted Again, the countess says: God shield, you mean it not ! daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse. Eschenburg renders this: Machen die Worte Tochter und Mutter solchen gewaltsamen Eindruck auf dein Blut. And Rosenfeldt: Kunde de Ord Moder og Svigerdatter have saamegen Indflydelse paa dit Blod. And notice how much closer to the German than to the English is Rosenfeldt's translation in the passage given above (page 8) : Ich folge ihm nicht mit irgend einem Zeichen einer zudringlichen Bewerbung, auch wunsche ich ihn nicht eher zu haben, bis ich ihn verdiene, wiewohl ich nicht absehe, wie ich mir dies Verdienst je erweben kann. I hope there will be no misunderstanding. Rosenfeldt translates straight from the English and uses the German simply as an occasional guide. Occasional — for it is plain that in many cases he did not consult Eschenburg at all. We can infer this from the fact that in some cases where Eschenburg translates correctly, Rosenfeldt goes astray. We have 10 MARTIN B. RUUD already quoted as an instance of his inaccuracy Macbeth's speech: "Let good digestion," etc. Eschenburg translates correctly: Jetzt bcgleite gute Verdauung den Appetit und Gesundheit beyde. He also translates correctly the speech of Lady Macbeth which Rosen- feldt mistranslates (see page 9) : Weibermarchen — wofur ihre Grossmutter Gewahr leistet. And other examples are abundant. On the whole, the Danish translator would have fared better if he had followed the German text even more closely than he did. An interesting speculation remains. Did Rosenfeldt translate the fragments of Julius Caesar which appeared in Trondhjem's Allehaande in 1782?^^ Information about him is scant3^ My only authority is Nyerup and Kraft's Almindeligt Litter aturlexikon (1820), which says that he was bom in Christiania, educated at the university of Copenhagen, and in 1796 made prociu-ator at the superior court in his native city. He died as bailiff of Stromso (now a part of Drammen) in 1805. Most of his life, then, was spent in Norway and it is entirely possible that he may have published a specimen of his Shakespearean translations in Trondhjem's Allehaande. It is true that Julius Caesar is not one of the plays in the volumes of 1790 and 1792, but this objection is not fatal, since we know from his preface to the first volume^^ that he was busied on certain other plays of Shakespeare's which are not found in his published works. The Tempest and A Midsummer Nighfs Dream. This, of course, is mere con- jectiire. In 1794 Hans Wilhelm Riber translated for the Royal Theatre Nahum Tate's stage version of King Lear. Inasmuch as this belongs to the history of Shakespeare on the Danish stage, it had best be discussed in another chapter. Two years later, in 1796, the celebrated Malthe Conrad Bruun tried his hand^^ at two passages already translated — Hamlet's soliloquy, by Boye; and Macbeth's "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" by Rosen- feldt. His judgment on their efforts was certainly not complimentary. It may be seriously questioned, however, whether Bruim's work is so im- mensely superior to them as he seems to think. Since these translations have never been reprinted, I give one, the soliloquy from Hamlet, in full:i* " See my Shakespeare in Norway. Scandinavian Studies and Notes 4:92 S. 1917. " Forste Deel, pp. vii-x. " In Stada. Et Magatin for Theater, Philosophie, Litteratur og Historie. Udgivet af M. C. Bruun. " Cf. with Boye's translation of the same passage, p. 2. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 11 At vsere eller ikke vasre? Det er Sporgsmaalet ! Er det asdlere at taale en uretfserdig Skjasbnes Rasen, eller imod den hele Smerte Hsr at gribe til Vaaben og ved Modstand ende dem? At doe ! — at sove ! — mere er det ikke. Eet Blund kun, saa at sige, frelser os fra den Hjerteqval, den Kiasmpen mod Naturen, som faldt i Stovets Arv. Det er en Ende andasgtigt Onske vard ! — At doe ! — At sove ! — At sove! Men kanske at dromme? Ah, j a her er Knuden; hvilke Dromme os vil mode i Dodens Sovn, naar Dodeligheds Kjortel vi kasted' af, det, det, maa standse os. Ja, det er den Betaenkning som opholder endog Elendighedens Liv saa Isenge. Hvo vilde ellers baere Lykkens Snert og Haan, Tyrannernes Uretfasrd, Ringeagt af den Hovmodige, foragtet Elskovs Sjelsmserter, Lovens Seendra^gtighed og Ovrighedens Uforskammethed, den Spot Fortjenesten maa taalig lide af de Uvaerdige? Hvo bar det, naar han blot med en Dolk sig kunde skaffe Roe? Hvo vilde Isenger sukke, svede under det Livs Moisommelige Byrde? — Men den Angest for noget after Doden (dette TJkjendte Land fra hvilket ingen Reiser tilbagekom) forvirrer vor Beslutning og gjor at hellere vi lide den bekjendte Qval, end til en ukjendt fiyve, Saa gjor Samvittighed os alle feige ! Saa sygner Kisekhedens medfodte Farve ved Overveielsens det blege Anstrog. Ja, store dia;rve Foretagender bortdreies derved fra det raske Lob og doe uvirksomt hen. In No. 36 of his magazine Tilskueren for 1804, Rahbek tells us that he has long contemplated a translation of Shakespeare, but that he has given it up, since "a young man of unquestionable ability" has submitted to him some specimen scenes of distinct promise. The ''young man of unquestionable ability" was Foersom, who had just sent to Rahbek some sheets of his translation of Julius Caesar. Rahbek, who was nothing if not generous, was quick to see the excellence of Foersom's work and the immense inferiority of his own. One essay had already appeared. In 1800 Rahbek published in Miner- va^^ a translation of Mark Antony's oration at Caesar's funeral (III, 2, 2" 4:295 ff. 1800. 12 MARTIN B. RUUD 75-262). Rahbek has acquitted himself well. The translation is almost minutely accurate, smooth and flowing, but without a spark of poetic fire. The fluent Danish verses do not move the reader with anything of the insin- uating cunning of the original. But so superior is it to the commonplace prose of Boye and Rosenfeldt, that one is tempted to emphasize it more, perhaps, than it deserves. The reader can easily form his own estimate from the following passage: I Venner, Landsmaend, Romere ! O laaner Mig Eders Ore! her jeg kommer for At jorde Caesar, ei at prise ham, Det Onde Maend her gjore, overlever dem ! Det Gode jordes tit med dares Been. Saa vaere det med Caesar ! Mdle Brutus Fortalte Eder, han var herskesyg. Ifald saa var, det var en grusom Feil, Og grusomt har og Caesar bodet for den. Her jeg — med Bruti Minde og de Andres — (Thi Brutus er en hagdervaerdig Mand, Det er de alle, Haedersmasnd.) Fremstaaer at tale ved hans Jordefaerd. Han var min Ven, var tro og retviis mod mig; Men Brutus siger: Han var herskesyg; Og Brutus er en haedervaerdig Mand. Han bragte mange Fanger her til Rom, Hvis Losepenge fyldte Statens Giemmer, Mon dette syntes herskesygt af Caesar? Naar Armod grsed, grasd Caesar; Herskesyge Vel skulde vare giort af haardere Malm. Dog Brutus siger han var herskesyg, Og Brutus er en haedervaerdig Mand. I alle saae,. at ved Luperkals Fest Jeg treegang bod ham Kongekrone; som Han treegang afslog. Var det Herskesyge? Dog Brutus siger han var herskesyg, Og Brutus er en haedervaerdig Mand. Jeg taler ei at dadle Bruti Ord, Men jeg er her at sige hvad jeg veed; I alle elsked ham eengang, ei uden Foie, Hvad hindrer Eder da at sorge for ham ! Forstand ! du flygtet er til vilde Dyr, Og Maend har tabt dig ! baerer over med mig ! Mit Haab er i Kisten der hos Caesar Jeg dvaele maae, til jeg det har tilbage. Four years afterwards, in taking leave of Shakespearean translation, Rahbek published in Tilskueren his rendering of the entire first act of Julius Caesar.^^ I shall not tire the reader's patience and mine by further long quotations; except that I think it worth while to give a part of the speech « Tilskueren. Et Ugeskrift udgivet ved Knud Lyne Rahbek 1: nos. 36. 37, and 42. 1804. TRA NSLA TIONS OF SHA KESPEA RE 13 of the cobbler in scene 1 as an example of the inevitable failtire of one lan- guage to reproduce the subtleties of another : Second Citizen: Rigtig, Herre! Alt hvad jeg lever af er min Syl; jeg befatter mig ikke med nogen Haandtering, Mandsager eller Qvindesager, uden med Sylen. Jeg er, sandt at sige, Herre, en Feldskiser for gamle Skoe; naar de ere i stor Fare, curerer jeg dem. Saa smukke Folk som nogensinde have traad paa Oxehud har gaaet paa mine Hasnders Gierninger. Rahbek had a hand in one other Shakespearean translation — a ren- dering, in collaboration with Christian Levin Sander, of Macbeth. Sander, although by birth and education a German, had gained a position in Dan- ish letters by his patriotic tragedy, Niels Ebbesen af Norreriis (1789). He was appointed, in 1800, professor of pedagogy and German at the newly established Pedagogical Seminary. Here, in the winter of 1801-2, he delivered a series of lectures on "Shakespeare and His Tragedy Macbeth."^^ We shall consider the critical lectures when we come to discuss Shakes- pearean criticism in Denmark. For the moment we are concerned only with Lectiu-es XII, XIII, and XIV, which consist simply of a complete prose translation of the play by Rahbek and Sander. By Rahbek and Sander? A more accurate description would be "by Niels Rosenfeldt. Revised by Rahbek and Sander." Fully to realize this, one has only to compare the dialogue from Macbeth, already given, with the correspond- ing passage in Rahbek and Sander. Lady Macbeth: Var da dette Haab drukken som for besielede dig med Mod? Er det siden faldet i Sovn, og vaagner nu, for at blegne og forfaerdes over, hvad det nys besluttede med saa megen Manddom? Fra dette Oieblik af troer jeg det samme cm din Kjerlighed. Hvad? Frygter du for i Gjerningen at vise det samme Mod, som i dine Onsker? Vil du erholde det som du agter for Livets storste Klenodie, og dog i dine egne Tanker leve som en Nidding? Skal dette — jeg tor ikke — strax folge paa — jeg gad gjerne! Er du som Katten i Ordsproget? Macbeth: Jeg beder dig, hold op! Jeg tor alt, hvad der sommer sig for en Mand; den der tor mere er ingen. That the translators of 1801 had the earlier version before them is obvious. It would be quite unjust, however, to charge them with whole- sale plagiarism. They altered, and they altered nearly always for the better. Note how much simpler and clearer is Rahbek and Sander's rendering of the last three lines of Lady Macbeth's first speech ! And certainly : Jeg tor alt hvad der sommer sig for en Mand; den der tor mere er ingen is at once more direct and more nearly correct than Jeg tor gjore alt, hvad som tilkommer en Mand; den er ingen der vover at gjore mere. A bit further along, Rosenfeldt's meaningless and ridiculous phrasing: '2 Levin Christian Sander, Forelcesninger over Shakespeare og hans Sorgespil Marhcth. ITeri findes tillige det ved Sander og Rahbek oversatte Sorgespil Macbeth som ogsaa kan faaes sjerskildt. Kiciben- havn. 1804. 14 MARTIN B. RUUD Hvad var del da for ei Dyr, der kom dig til at fortroe mig et saadant Foretagende? is much improved by the revisers: Var det da el Uhyre, der bevsegede dig til at fortroe mig dette Foretagende? But their indebtedness to Rosenfeldt is indubitable, though the^'- fail to mention his name. Rahbek, at least, knew Rosenfeldt's translations, for he mentions them in 1816 in his valuable survey of Danish Shakespeariana. All these attempts are, however, essentially preliminaries. In com- parison ■\^ath the work of Peter Thun Foersom they are quite negligible. It was he who first gave to Denmark adequate translations of Shakespeare, so that the supreme dramatist of the world became a reality to the Dan- ish people. Foersom was born February 20, 1777, in Oster Lindet, near Ribe, in Jutland, where his father was rector. ^-^ In 1793 he matriculated at the university from the Latin school at Ribe, and passed the prelim- inary examinations with fair success. After 1795, however, he seems to have devoted most of his time to languages, belles lettres, amateur theatri- cals, and the innocent, if often boisterous fun of the Quartier Latin of Copenhagen. Before long his interest in the stage took him to the Royal Theatre, where, on October 18, 1798, he made his debut. Foersom was not a bom actor. His figure was unimpressive; his voice, low and indistinct; his stage presence, almost awkward. But he had an iron will which kept him at work, and he had an imagination which penetrated with perfect sureness to the heart of the role he was playing. Added to this was an un- usual mimetic power and an intensity of emotion which gave to his inter- pretations of complex characters an unforgetable beauty. His Hamlet is one of the great traditions of the Danish stage. These qualities of imagi- native power, artistic sympathy, and complete absorption in the task before him, which enabled him to overcome all physical handicaps as an actor, were, of coiirse, the very qualities which made him an ideal translator. He had begun the study of English in school days at Ribe. When he came home on his vacations his father often gave him a page or two of an English dictionary to memorize. So far from discouraging the school- boy this drastic discipline had but the effect of stimulating his eager desire to learn English as perfectl}^ as possible. He devoiu-ed dictionaries and grammars, and English books of all sorts. Perhaps aU this wotild have had no permanent effect had he not, in 1795, come upon Ossian in the original. It is difficult for us today to realize the magic effect of this curious compound of bombast and sentimentality on the men of the time. Foersom, " The chief source of the following account of Foersom's life is the excellent monograph by Nicolaj Bogh in Museum 2:223 £E. and 296 flf. 1895. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 15 like cotmtless others in every land, was carried completely away. He re- solved to know at first hand the masterpieces of this wonderful literature, and he was led, as Ewald had been, to Shakespeare. Exactly when he took up the study of Shakespeare we do not know, nor when he began the work of translation. But in 1803 he submitted Julius Caesar to the Royal Theatre. The directors quietly pigeon-holed it. That might have ended the matter, had not Foersom also sent his translation to Rahbek, who was quick to recognize its excellence, and in 1804 published in Mi- nerva the whole of Act V.^* From time to time Foersom pubHshed further specimens in periodicals and annuals. In his Nytaarsgave for Skiiespilyndere (1805) appeared a short passage from Act IV, 3 of Lovers Labour's Lost; in the same annual for 1807, under the title Dramaturgie in mice, Hamlet's speech to the players, and most of Romeo and Juliet, beginning with the ball at the Capulets'; finally, in 1811, in Theone, the Falstaff scenes from i Henry IV. In the meantime, however, Foersom had succeeded in getting, on what he calls "ubillig billige" terms, a publisher for the first volume of his translations, 2^ containing Hamlet and Julius Caesar. Both of these plays were ready earlier, the latter in 1803; Hamlet in ISOS.^^ And there- after the volumes appeared fairly regularly till shortly before Foersom's death; Part II, Lear, Romeo og Julie (1811); Part III, Richard II, i Henry 11/(1815); Part IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry F (1816); Part V, 1-2 Henry VI (1818). Of Part V Foersom translated i Henry VI and 2 Henry VI, Act I. The rest is by P. F. Wulff, who carried the work forward till 1825. Further, in 1811, Foersom published a revised edition of Hamlet, and in 1816 a translation and adaptation of Schiller's stage version of Macbeth. The reason for preparing a revised edition of Hamlet so soon after the first reveals in a very interesting way the spirit in which Foersom approached his great task. The translations of Part I had been based on Steevens' edition. But Foersom knew that the best text was Malone's, and as soon, therefore, as he could procure a copy, he undertook a revision of the plays already published. Apparently only Hamlet was ever finished, for there is no record of a second edition of Julius Caesar from Foersom's hand. As a matter of fact, the changes in the second edition of Hamlet are the slightest possible, and absolutely without significance. Foersom, indeed, did not pretend to philological accuracy. What he did pretend to do he has himself clearly stated in the preface to Part I. ** Scener af Shakespeare's Sdrgespil Julius Caesar. May, 1804. The text has been collated for me with that of 1811 by Caad. phil. Poul Poulsen. Hr. Poulsen writes: "The text in Collected Works is essen- tially the same as that of the specimen. The orthography, however, is not identical; something hardly to be expected at that time." w William Shakespeare: Tragiske Vcerker. Oversatte af Peter Foersom. 1-4. KiObenhavn. 1807-16. Femte Deel, Oversat af Peter Foersom og P. F. Wulff. KiObenhavn. 1818. " Cf. Foersom's letter to Rahbek, September 29, 1805. Bogh, op. cil. p. 302. 16 MARTIN B. RUUD "The cardinal principle which I adopted for this translation was to repro- duce the words of the poet in a manner worthy of him, to repeat as faith- full}' as Echo what his Genius imparted unto me. Wherever I have failed to achieve this goal, though I have kept it faithfully before me, as on a high mountain, and have remained wandering about on the plains, the failure is due to simple want of capacit3^" The reader must not look, he continues, for strict metrical regularity — Shakespeare himself is often irregtdar — nor for exact renderings of puns and wordplay and disputed passages. Occasionally, indeed, such passages, when they defied explana- tion, have been silently omitted. We cannot be sure, then, that in reading Foersom we are reading Shake- speare's very words. Critics, from the first reviewer, Werner Abrahamson, to Edvard Brandes in our own day, have not failed to point out the mis- takes. I open my book absolutely at random and light upon such an unin- telligible jargon as the following in the translation of Hamlet's cryptic speech to Polonius (II, 2) : Lad hende ei gaa i Solen; Frugtbarhed er en Velsignelse; men da Jeres Datter kan bjere Frugt — min gode Mand ! hav et Oie paa hver Finger. 2" The fact remains, of course, that he who would have the ipsissima verba of the author has no recourse but to turn to the original. Of a trans- lation we ask only an approximation. The glory of Foersom's translations is not philological, but poetic. Edvard Lembcke, who revised and com- pleted his work many years later, said truly that "there are passages in which Foersom's poetic genius has asserted itself in such a way that it has found the living and vivid phrase" which cannot become archaic and which caimot be improved.^s No better example of the sureness with which Foersom entered into the spirit of Shakespeare, or of the miraculous felicity with which he repro- duced his poetry can be instanced than the superb translation of the bal- cony scene in Romeo and Juliet: Han leer af Skrammer som blev aldrig saaret ! — {Julie lader sig see oppe i sit Vindue ] Men tys! Hvad gjennemstraaler Vinduet hist, Det Osten er, og Julie er Solen ! Staae op, o favre Sol! og drasb Diana; at Du skjondt hendes Tempelvogterinde, er skjonnere end hun, det harmer hende. O, tjen ei hende; hun er fuld af Nid: see hendes Vestalindedragt er gusten og bleg, kun skabt for Daarer; derfor kast den. — Det er min Elskte. Det er min Udvalgte! " Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may conceive: — friend, look to 't. " Quoted by Bogh, op. cit. p. 305. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 17 O, vidste hun hun var det ! Hun taler, dog hun siger Intet; — Intet? Jo, hendes Oie taler, jeg vil svare — Jeg er for dristig, ei til mig hun taler; Det Skjonneste af Himlens Stjernepar er bortsendt og har bedet hendes Oine at skinne, til de kom, i deres Baner. O, vare handes Oine der, og de i hendes Ansigt, hendes Kinders Glands beskjsemmed' Stjernerne, som Dagens Lys en Lampes Skin; fra hendes Oie strommed et Straalehav igiennem Luftens Riga, saa Fugle sang, og meente det var Morgen. See, hvor sin Kind hun stotter paa sin Haand ! O, var jeg Handsken blot paa hendes Haand, saa rorte jeg hiin Kind! Julie: Vee mig! Romeo: Hun taler! — Tal atter, Lysets Engel, thi Du straaler i Natten saa hoiherlig over mig, som en af Herrens vingede Cheruber for Dodeliges himmelvendte Oine, naar underslagne de tilbage segne, og stirre paa dens Gang blandt stille Skyer mens over Luftens morke Barm den seller. Julie: O, Romeo! hvi est du, Romeo? afsiig din Fader og forsvaerg Dit Navn; vil Du ei det, da svaerg Du er min Elsker og jeg ei mer en Capulet vil vsere! In rhythm, melody, beauty of imagery and phrase, this is well-nigh perfect. So nearly flawless, indeed, is it, that when Lembcke attempted to revise it in 1861, he all but ruined it: Tal atter, Lysets Engel, thi saa herlig Du straaler her i Natten over mig som en af Herrens vingede Cheruber for Dodeliges himmelvendte Oine, der stirre med tilbageboiet Hoved imens imag han rider Skyens Ganger og seller sagtelig paa Luftens Barm. Since Lembcke obviously spared himself no pains, it is passing strange that he did not correct the errors that fairly stared him in the face, e.g., the line to which Foersom gives a decidedly ambiguous turn: O, var jeg Handsken blot paa hendes Haand, saa rorte jeg hiin Kind. Equally fine is the translation of the passage in Richard II, V, 1, be- ginning : Queen: What, is my Richard both in shape and mind Transformed and weakened? etc. 18 MARTIN B. RUUD The queen's WTath and contempt for the king's pusillanimity are no less adequately put in Foersom's Danish: Dronningen: Hvad! Er min Richard da paa Sjael som Legem, omskabt og svaekket? — Siig, har Bolingbroke afsat din Hjeme, gravet i dit Hjerte? I Do den selv slaar Loven Kjaempekloen og saarer Jorden, om ei andet, harmfuld, at den er overvunden, og vil Du, paa Pogeviis fromt doie Straf. Riis kysse, for ham, den glubende dybt ydmygt krybe, Du, Love! Konge over Dyrene. Kong R.: Ret! Konge over Dyr! Ja, var' de bedre var jeg end over Folk en seirsael Konge. Min elskte Fordums-Dronning! drag til Frankrig, tasnk jeg er dod, og at nu her Du tager som paa min Dodseng ! evig Afsked fra mig ! I kjedsom Vinteraften sid ved Arnen hos gode, gamle Folk; lad dem fortaelle Dig Sagn om bittre, laengst forsvundne Tider; og for god nat Du siger, saa til Gjengaeld for deres Sorg fortael mit Sorgefald; send dem saa graedende til deres Senge, thi selv de dode Brande ville stemme i Din sorgstemte Tunges Sorgetone, de vU.de grsede Ilden ud af Medynk, og sorge her i Aske, hist i Kulsort, fordi en sal vet Kong saa blev afsat. Nor was Foersom less happy in his rendering of Shakespeare's lighter passages, as witness this spirited and dashing translation of the immortal scene between Prince Hal and Falstaff in the Boar's Head Tavern : Falstaff: Fanden tage alle Kujoner og det med Hud og Haar; nu og i al Evighed, Amen! Det er mine Ord. — Giv mig et Glas Sask, Dreng! — For jeg laenger skal ved- blive dette Liv, for skal jeg knytte Stromper og stoppe og saale dem ovenikjobet. — Fanden tage alle de Kujoner! — Giv mig et Glas Saek, Esel. Er der da ingen Dyd mer paa Jorden? Prinds H.: Saae du da aldrig Titan kysse et Fad Smor? den blodhjertede Titan som smeltede ved Sonnens blode Fortaelling! Gjorde du det, saa betragt engang denne Masse ! Falstaff: I Esel! Ogsaa i dette Glas Ssk er der Kalk! Der er ikke andet end Kjeltringer at finde blandt de syndige Mennesker — Dog — en Kujon er to Gffinge vaerre end Saek med Kalk i ! en skjasndelig Kujon ! — Gaae din Vei, gamle Hans ! Doe naar Du vil! dersom Mandsmod, aegte Mandsmod ikke er udslettet af Jordens Ansigt, vil jeg passere for en suur Sild. Der leve ikke tre brave Mand uhsng- te i hele England; og den ene af dem er feed og bliver til Alders; Gud see i Naade til os; Det er en slem Verden, siger jeg. Gid jeg var Vaever! saa kunde jeg sidde og synge Psalmer eller saadant noget! — Fanden tage alle Kujoner, siger jeg endnu engang. Prinds H: Hvad nu, I Uldsask, hvad mumler I der? TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 19 Falstaff: Du, en Kongeson! Hvis jeg ikke med en Narrebrix prygler Dig ud af Dit Kongerige, og driver alle dine Undersaater foran Dig som en Flok Vildgjses, saa gid der aldrig mere voxe Skjseg i mit Ansigt! — I Prinds af Wales! Prinds H: Hvad! I forbandede Kanonprop ! Hvad gaaer der af Jer ! Falstaff: Er I ikke en Kujon? svar mig paa dette? og Poins der? PoiNS: For Djaevelen i Istervom? Kalder I mig Kujon, render jeg Dig med Kaarde gjennem Livet. Falstaff: Jeg kalder Dig Kujon? Jeg vil for see Dig i Helvede, end jeg vilde kalde Dig Kujon; men jeg vilde give tusinde Pund til, at jeg kunde rende saa staerkt, som Du kan. I har en smuk Hge Ryg; I bryder Jer ikke om at Folk seer Eders Bag. — Kalder I det at vasre i Baghold for Eders Venner? Fanden i Void med sligt Baghold ! Lad mig faae Nogen for mig som tor see mig under Oine. Lad mig faae et Bseger Saek; — jeg er en Skjelm, har jeg smakt Vaadt endnu i Dag. Prinds H: O Gavtyv! Dine Lasber er knap torre endnu af det sidste Du drak. Falstaff: Ligemeget er det! Fanden tage all Kujoner siger jeg syvende og sidste Gang. [Han drikker] Foersom's success was decisive from the first. His good friend Werner Abrahanison reviewed Part I in two long articles in Lcsrde Efterretninger P Good translations are rare, he writes, and good translations of Shake- speare even rarer. In Danish, with the exception of one or two fragments, there is not a single one, for certain others — undoubtedly Rosenfeldt's, though he does not say so — are worthless. He then points out with a good deal of insight certain of the external difficulties in the way of a satisfactory translation — the abundance of monosyllables and of archaisms. Foersom has done his work admirably, however, and it is not creditable to the Dan- ish public that he should have had such difficulties in obtaining a publisher. "Can it be that our host of readers read but to kill time, never suspecting that they have a head and heart, both in need of sound sustenance." The remainder of the very long review is concerned with the translation of single words and lines. Here he does not usually fare so well, and Foer- som, in a later number of Lcsrde Efterretninger,^^ has no difficulty in dis- arming his critic. Thus, when Abrahamson suggests that, instead of Foersom's . . . hvi dine hellige bisatte Been, the line should read Hvorfor dit Legeme, lagt i hellig Jord, Foersom answers that the reading which Abrahamson has in mind, Why thy bones, hears'd in canonized Ep,rth — is a commentator's guess, probably Pope's. And so in many other in- stances. » Pp. 289 ff. and 364 ff. 1807. 20 Pp. 364 ff. 1807. 20 MARTIN B. RUUD A reviewer in Nyeste Skilderier aj Kjohenhavn?^ was as emphatic in his praise as Abraliamson. After a thoughtful and intelligent comment on Leer, he continues, "To translate all this so as to give to the Danish reader a play of Shakespeare's as little removed from the original as a trans- lation can be, is a work of genius." He enumerates, as Abrahamson had dor.e, the difficulties of translating Shakespeare: the superabundance of monosyllables in English, the numerous obsolete and obsolescent words, the indi^^duality, the eccentricity, indeed, of Shakespeare's diction; and, finall}', the extreme condensation of phrase, w'hich tempts to paraphrase or silent omission of the knotty verses. "To steer clear of Scylla, and yet not fall into Charybdis, is the problem that Foersom has so beautifully solved," After Foersom's death, in 1817, the recognition of the greatness of liis achievements grew ever deeper and finer. Rahbek, who had been the first to welcome it, wrote with perfect truth: "He was a poet in the finest and truest sense of the word. ... I speak not merely of his translation of Shakespeare, although it is doubtless upon this that his reputation must rest; ... it is one of the exceeding few translations in which spirit interprets spirit, and not letter, letter; and reveals in so many respects That his soul with Shakespeare lives. '^ Molbech wrote about the same time: "The difference between Foer- som's translation and those that preceded it is that his foUow^s Shake- speare's form, whereas they are in prose. Even one who can not read the original will understand how difficult his task was. It is true that it some- times led him away from the literal translation; but the instances are not mam-, and even when he is farthest away, he still preserves the spirit of Shakespeare. Certain it is that he is not alw^ays equal to Schlegel; but it is equally certain that he is often superior to him."^^ Two years later, Meisling, who himself translated The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice, and was, therefore, in some sense, a rival, paid Foersom generous tribute. "Without troubling ourselves with a microscopic analysis of petty errors ... of which there are but few, we are of the opinion that this trans- lation must be considered one of the best. . . which Danish literature possesses. Ntunerous and maddening as are the bltmders of oiu: recent translations, they but reveal in sharper light his work, wrought with a clear conception of what he was doing, love for his poet, and competence of soul. Surely, if these qualities can make it one, this must be called a work of art."34 There were other tributes, in prose and in verse, so kindly meant that it seems the part of charity not to reprint them here.^^ 2= 15:55 fl. and 69 ff. 1811. »2 Tilskueren no. 25. 1817. "Athene 9 AOiS. 1817. " Dansk Lileralurtidende no. 17. 1819. Quoted by Bogh, op. cit. p. 304. »See Tilskueren no. 15. 1817. Ibid. nos. 25 and 26. Cf. also Bogh. of. cit. p. 305, note 2. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 21 As was to be expected, there were voices of dissent; and one was so insistent that it can not be passed over.^^ Thomas Thaarup is known in Danish Hterature for his little idyllic interlude Hostgildet. In private life, however he is said to have been hot-tempered and sharp-tongued. At all events, he was in politics and in literatiire incredibly parochial and bigoted. In 1813 he gave the impulse to the so-called "Jodefeiden" — an outbreak of Anti-Semitism — by a translation of Bucholtz' Moses and Jesus, and in 1816 he added fuel to the fire by his translation of Riih's On the Claim oj the Jews to German Citizenship. In an appendix to the work, Thaarup refers to a Gennan play, Unser Verkehr, a satire on the Jews. This play he had translated into Danish, but had not sent it to theatre, "although I cannot understand why it should not be performed there, as it has been elsewhere." A few lines further on he continues: "Of a truth, the stage is in as great need of such plays as the public of amuse- ment ; there is nothing which we lack so little as material for dolorous medi- tation; and we do not have to create it by massacres on the stage. Our [romantic] poetry will, outside the playhouses, foster the superstition so dear to many, without its being necessary to frighten weak women and helpless children by hollow strokes of a midnight bell — or by the ghost of a murdered king with crown and sceptre, in papier-mache armor from head to foot. Badly chosen and morally offensive expressions are so com- mon in daily speech and in print, that it is quite superfluous to present a crazy king who curses his daughter in words which might be pardoned in a lecture to midwives, but are utterly inappropriate in a tragedy." The address is plain as could be desired, and Foersom did not allow the attack to go unchallenged. He published anonymously in Molbech's Athene^' a long letter from "William Shakespeare in Elysium to Thomas Thaarup in Smidstrup."^^ First of all, he tells the disgruntled Thaarup that he is very weU satisfied in Elysium, more content than on earth, ! although, thank God, he was very well satisfied there, and never affected ; the distressing grouch which leads only to the misery of oneself and one's ! friends. He says that for a long time after his death he was considered ! a madman, with certain gleams of sanity and imagination, to be sure, but , without learning or taste. Then it was that David Garrick made him i presentable for "nice people." Since then many of Garrick's most learned ' countrymen have racked their brains to interpret him, not without success. 1 "One cannot please every one — not even you, Tom: and sometimes it seems ''i'j me that you can not even please yourself." Voltaire, too, had ridiculed him; but he had known him, and feared him so much that he sought to Imake his influence innocuous on the continent, "in punishment for which •''- The following account is based on Bogh, op. cit. pp. 308 ff. ■ 7:349ff. ' Thaarup owned a farm at Smidstrup, near Vedbsk, in North Sjajlland. 22 MARTIN B. RUUD crime he must now listen to my tragedies in Elysium." He accuses Thaarup of kno^s-ing but little of Shakespeare, whereas he knows his French authors excellently well. "If it were not now too late, and you cared to be about it, I should coimsel you to learn to know them a trifle better, that 3'ou might see that your Voltaire was not ashamed to steal my gold in the very moment that he was reviling me as a boor. In that coiuitr^' in which the Gallo- German Wieland dismembered me, there arose some excellent folk who read me and understood me before they cudgelled me, or, like street arabs, pointed their fingers at me because my foreign garb was strange to them. Take do\\Ti from your shelf in your lovely Smidstrup, Lessing and Herder, and Goethe and Garve, and read them; for later writers, I suppose, you would condemn imread. When you have read them, I dare say you will judge more generously of me. But what do I say? Judge? Obviously you can not judge in a case in which you are entirely'- ignorant. . . . From what source do j^^ou know me, Tom? My peculiar ancient speech it is too late for 3^ou to learn. . , . You know me through cut- tings and adaptations, wherein my spirit and the form which houses it are alike destroyed. Or you know me from Wieland, whom I have mentioned before; or from Eschenbiu-g, to whom I owe much; or from A. W. Schlegel, to whom I owe most of all; or from my Danish translators, Rosen- feldt, Rahbek, Sander, Meisling, and Foersom. Of a truth, Tom, I think 3^ou are talking sheer stuff about me, or that you know me only through the old translation of Hamlet, and in Rosenfeldt's more com- mendable than successful effort to translate several of my plains for his cotmtr>^men." . . . "In the last of your books against the Jews, 3"ou have contemptuously dismissed two of my plays which have not only been my own favorites, but dear also to others, namely King Lear and Mac- beth. This is not strange, since j'^ou do not know me, and consider your- self quite a different being, as, indeed, you are. When I died at fifty-two, I had written only thirty-six great plays, besides many sonnets. You had written at the same age three farces which the occasion favored and the music improved." . . . "Your talk about King Lear is far from being as 'sharp as the sting of a bee' ; it is duU, and the noise of it is like the slow and lazy hum of a drone. . . . You are not merely ignorant; you are coarse." After a passage hardly less coarse than Thaarup's oy^ti, "Shakespeare" closes in a more friendly tone of rmld correction. "Foer- som stiU retained his good temper. A few months later his work was done. It was incomplete, indeed, but it was splendid and permanent. "He was a poet," says Oehlenschlager of him in his Memoirs; "his translation of Shakespeare marks an epoch. "^^ " OehlenschlcBgers Erindringer. Sammendragne og udgivne ved F. L. Liebenberg og Otto Borchsenius, p. 311. Kjobenhavn. 1872. TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 23 After his death, Foersom's work was continued by P. F. Wulff, a captain in the navy. The first volume, containing one play and part of another from Foersom's hand, appeared in 1818; the remainder irregu- larly from that date till 1825.^" Perhaps the fairest judgment on Wulff's danishing of Shakespeare is that of his biographer in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon — "a creditable performance for its day." More can hardly be said. He is faithful, competent, and usually a little pedestrian, though now and then the original inspires him to something not far below Foer- som's level. This is particularly true of the following from Cymbeline — lachimo's description of Imogen in her bed. Hvor skjon Du er paa Leiet ! Friske Lilie, Langt hvidere end Dit Lagen! Gid jeg torde! — et Kys, kun Eet ! — Rubiner uden Lige, I smykke Laeben — Hendes Aande.spreder sin Vellugt overalt, og Lysets Flamme mod hende boier sig, og titter under de lugte Oielaag, for der at mode det skiulte Lys, som under disse Vinduer er funklende: Azur i Snee indfattet, det Blaae af Himlens Blaae. Nu til mit Vasrk ! til min Erindring jeg nedskriver alt: Saadanne Malerier — Vinduet der — og Sengens Pryd — Tapeter med Figurer — Saa og saaledes — samt Historiens Indhold. — Blot et naturlig Tegn paa hendes Legem, meer end ti tusinde Optegnelser af Huusgeraad, var stscrkere Beviis. O Sovn, du Dodens Abe, lul du hende ! Gior hendes Sandser liig et Monument som ved et Gravsted hviler ! — Vser Du mit ! [tager et Armbaand af hendes Arm] The only review of Wulff I have been able to find is one by Dr. Simon Meisling, in Dansk Liter aturtidende}^ In this article occurs the fine eulogy of Foersom already quoted; but Meisling is more than fair also to Wulff. He dismisses as mere peccadillos slight verbal inaccuracies. "Such blun- ders are inevitable in the very nature of the language and the metre. He who succeeds in giving us all of Shakespeare with the accuracy and spirit of Foersom and his successor, will merit the ungrudging thanks of the nation." Kritiske Efterretninger om den kongelige danske Skucplads, etc. 1778-1780. Udgivet med Fortale og Anmserkninger af C. Molbech. Kjobeahavn. 1839. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 49 out, one of the reviewers of Boye felt it necessary to protest. The domi- nant enthusiasm finds a characteristic expression in Baggesen, more than most men responsive to the influences about him. In 1789 he made a tour through Germany to Switzerland and France, the first part of which he has recorded in the two voltmies of Ldbyrinthen. At the very threshold of his "grand toiir," at Hamburg, he happened to see the famous actor, Schroder, in Lear. Baggesen's impressionable soul took fire, and he pours 'forth his enthusiasm over the player and the play. After an almost ec- static rhapsody on Schroder's entrance, and an analysis of the threefold source of his pleasiu^e in the performance, he continues -y^ I had read and re-read, felt, thought through, treasured, admired, and wor- shipped the divine Shakespeare; I had acknowledged in his majestic genius the king of poets, the sovereign of imagination, but never till this occasion had I known his full worth. This was the masterpiece of dramaturgy presented with supreme histrionic art, the human soul to its innermost fibres revealed for the delight of our intellect and our appreciation of art's ideal. A human action with cause and effect stood revealed . . . living before the very eyes of the spectator, and his heart entranced marvelled at the Providence visible in its least detail. King Lear is in my opinion Shakespeare's, that is to say, the world's greatest tragedy. The poet seems in this wondrous beautiful play to have exhausted all Melpomene's heart-searching, terrifying, moving magic. In no other play known to me is mingled as here everything that awakens curiosity, arouses suspense, holds the attention, and in constantly increasing interest hurries the spirit from one passion to another. The chief character is, perhaps, the most interesting of which one can conceive as the center about which everything turns, at which every detail, however subordinate, meets to make of the whole an heroic-tragic drama. He is an unhappy king, at war with himself, his ungrateful family, and the raging elements. His tragic character is surrounded in nearly every possible tragic situation by purely tragic circumstances. In this one person alone are portrayed all the most pitiable sufferings of a prince, a father, and a man. Like a second Laocoon he is entangled more and more at every movement in the serpentine coils of his sufferings; and alas, his children do not share, but cause, his agony. All the other characters and conditions in the play, even the most episodic, manifold and distinct as are the contrasts between them, serve but to throw his into sharper relief. They are as indispensable as the children [in the Laocoon group]. To set forth the numberless beauties of detail, the new and significant thoughts, the phrases newer and more vivid still, the sparkling wit, and penetrating observations, would require a separate work thrice the volume of this. The whole is, from beginning to end, nature in tumult. The spirit sees it not, hears it not, but lives with it, a prey to fear, hatred, pity, rage, hope, and despair. 2 This, of course, is not criticism, but rhapsody, more valuable as a revelation of Baggesen than as an interpretation of Shakespeare or of King Lear. Of quite another character is Professor Levin C. Sander's Lectures ^^ Jens Baggesens Danske Vctrker. Udgivne af Forfatterens Soncr og E. J. Boye. 8:170 ff. Kjoben- havn. 1839. 50 MARTIN B. RUUD on Shakespeare and His Tragedy Macbeth.^- These lectures were delivered at the Pedagogical Seminary in the winter of 1801-1802, and they repre- sent the first attempt at a comprehensive and systematic analysis in Dan- ish of the work of Shakespeare. Sander's plan at the outset was even more ambitious. "This first series of lectures had for its purpose to char- acterize Shakespeare the man, to assemble literary criticism of the plays, to analyze his tragedy Macbeth, and, as a subordinate but closely related purpose, after a comparison with Balder' s Death, Wallenstein, and Oedipus, to study fatalism as a principle of tragedy. The first lecture outlines this part of my plan, and the book itself, which, nevertheless, is a complete whole, will show how much of it I have been able to accomplish." Onl}^ a fragment, indeed, of this huge design was ever carried out. The study of the remaining plays, the comparison of Macbeth with the other great tragedies of fate, and the analysis of fate itself as a tragic principle — this larger part of the work he had outlined remained a pious wish. The lectures as we have them deal with the life of Shakespeare, his genius, the history, plan, and characters of Macbeth. And even in this we need not, after the author's own frank confession, look for ami;hing of originality. It is a painstaking, immensely circumstantial compilation from Herder, Gerstenberg, Rowe, Richardson, and Malone. Of an}i;hing approaching style there is as little as there is of originality or critical independence. The sole merit of the work, and, perhaps, considering the time and place, no mean one, is that it brings together without illimiination, but system- atically and skillfull}^ the best that had been said by English and German scholars of Shakespeare and Macbeth}^ Sander's failure to carry out his program was in some measure made good by his friend and collaborator Rahbek. In October, 1802, he pub- lished in Minerva^^ a long, rather rambling article on Macbeth. It is con- cerned almost entirely with the supernatural element and the soliloquies. Rahbek justifies the witch scenes by pointing out that Macbeth is a weak man with impulses for good, who can be driven into crime only by some external, even supematiiral, powers. In this he is a contrast to Richard III who is intrinsically and inherently wicked. Rahbek then takes up the so- liloquies. Instead of laying bare the inner conflicts of the tragic char- acters by means of the Greek chorus, Shakespeare causes them to reveal " Forelmsninger over Shakespeare og hans Sorgespil Macbeth. Heri findes tillige det af Sander og Rahbek oversatte Sorgespil Macbeth, som ogsaa faaes sarskildt. Kiobenhavn. 1804. " The twentieth lecture was published also in Rahbek's Minerva for May, 1802. The first, introductory lecture, was published in Tode's Iris og Hebe 1:71 ff. 1802. The whole work is reviewed in Lcerde Efltr- retninger nos. 14, 17, and 18. 1804. "4:57 ff. 1802. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 51 themselves in their secret self -communings. He quotes Wolsey's solil- oquy to show the dramatic effectiveness of this method. In Macbeth, where the monologues are used with remarkable effect, they make us see the character of the hero in all its slightest nuances of good and bad. "It is of course true that characters must not announce to themselves who or what they are; they must not narrate or declaim in the closet, as in Greek or Latin drama; but the monologue is here employed as imitation of the most difficult kind; namely that which depicts the inner life of the soul in mom.ents of reflection." In two extremely verbose articles in Minerva of the following year,^^ Rahbek compares the witch scenes of Macbeth with the Valkyrie scenes of Ewald's Balder^ s Death. Rahbek thinks it certain that Ewald had Shake- speare's play in mind. There is, however, a distinct difference between the two plays in the use of the supemattiral. Shakespeare uses the witch scenes to give the atmosphere at the beginning ; Ewald, the Valkyrie scenes to bring about the tragic catastrophe at the end. The second article is a refutation of the criticism that Shakespeare has made the witches too repulsive. Rahbek contends that the horrible should not be excluded from a work of art simply because it is horrible, but only because it is improbable. Are the witch scenes improbable? Rahbek thinks that they are not. For even if we do not believe literally in the witches, as the folk of Shakespeare's day did, can we not surrender ourselves to the illusion? When, as a matter of fact, does such a fabulous imagining pass its appropriate limit? To this he answers, "When it forces upon us not an idea or a feeling, but a physical fact, as when the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood devoiurs the grandmother, dons her cap, and waits to devour the child." The most valuable of Rahbek's articles I have already freely drawn upon, his Shakespeare in Denmark (1816).^® The first part of the article amounts to a discussion of the still unsettled question. Did Holberg know Shakespeare? Rahbek admits that there is no evidence that he did, but, as I have already indicated, shows that Toger Reenberg, one of Holberg's best known contemporaries, expressly mentions Shakespeare as one of the great poets of the world. That Holberg knew Reenberg's poem is, according to Rahbek, intrinsically so probable as to amount to a certainty. There is still another indication that Holberg must have known Shake- speare. The translation of the Spectator by P. KJraft received its "Impri- mattir" from Holberg's friend and deputy, Professor Anchersen. Kraft himself later became personally known to Holberg when he was appointed inspector at the academy which Holberg had founded at Soro. These circumstances prove merely that Holberg could hardly have failed to know "3:65-93,209-20. 1803. " Cf. pp. 45-46. 52 MARTIN B. RUUD something of Shakespeare. They do not prove that he had read the plays. Nor is the argument strengthened by Scheibe's contention in the preface to his German translation of Peder Paars, that since Holberg in the intro- duction to Mindre Poetiske Skrifter shows that he knew Ben Jonson, he must also have known Shakespeare. Rahbek rightly remarks that if Scheibe, who knew Holberg personally, can adduce no better evidence, then the case is weak indeed. Finally Holberg's Epistle 241, in which he discusses a number of English comedies, does not give the slightest hint of any acquaintance with Shakespeare. Rahbek returned to the question in Om Ludvig Holberg som Lystspil- digtcr. His words here are so often misinterpreted, that it seems desir- able to give them in full : I would on this occasion mention the curious idea which flashed upon me at the name "Trinculo" — that many of the Spanish names which Don Ranundo rattles off in the third act [of Don Ranundo], Antonio, Prospero, Alphonso, Gonsalvo, Sebastiano, Trinculo, as well as Ariel — one of the names of the Prince of Moriand — , seem to be taken straight from Shakespeare's Tempest, which, at either first or second hand, possibl}'^ in Dryden's adaptation, Holberg seems to have known. It will be noted that Rahbek expressly emphasizes the fact that Hol- berg may have got these names at second hand, from Dryden's opera. It is curious, therefore, that H. H. Nyegaard in his article, Har Holberg Kjendt Shakespeare,^"^ in which he covers almost precisely the same ground as Rahbek and arrives, nattfrally, at the. same conclusion, should so com- pletel}^ have mistmderstood Rahbek's allusion to The Tempest. After citing Scheibe's argument, which he at once dismisses, he writes: "By a similar process of loose reasoning Rahbek comes to the same conclusion [that Holberg knew Shakespeare]. He concludes from the Spanish names which Don Ranundo enumerates that Holberg knew The Tempest.''^ Of course Rahbek concludes no such thing. ''Moreover," continues Nye- gaard, "from the striking similarit}'' between the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew and Jeppe on the Hill, one might infer such an acquaintance, if Holberg had not expressly mentioned his soiu-ce." The question is perpetually tiurning up. Skavlan treated it briefly and concisely in his Holberg som Komedieforfatter,^^ and very lately Dr. Oscar James Campbell has taken it up in his valuable book The Comedies of HolbergP Skavlan pointed out, indeed, that Shakespeare was so often played, adapted, and commented between 1685 and 1709, that Holberg must have heard about him and even read about him; but it is doubtftd if he read anything of him, and certain that he borrowed nothing. Dr. I'For Romantik og Ilislorie 10:671-79. 1873. Cf. Rahbek: Om Ludvig Holberg som Lyslspildigter 3:432. Kjobenhavn. 1817. 1' Kristiania. 1872. ^'Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. 3. Cambridge. '1914. Cf. J. G. Robertson in Modern Language Review 11:1 S. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 53 Campbell ventures to believe, on the basis of three slight details, that Jeppe on the Hill is influenced by the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. The argument is rather frail, and until ftirther evidence is forthcoming, most of us will prefer to leave the problem where Skavlan left it in 1872. But to return to Rahbek. In 1828, less than two years before he died, he translated for A. P. Liunge's review, Hertha, a chapter of Boa- den's Life of Ketnhle?^ He accompanied it with a little preface, half crit- icism, half an old man's retrospection. He is talking about the different Hamlets which he has seen, or of which he has read. We can not, he says, lay down dogmatic rules for the interpretation of characters on the stage, a conviction in which he has been strengthened by reading Boa- den's classic biographies of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. "Two most instruc- tive works, which no student of dramatic art should fail, I will not say to read, but thoroughly to study." He wishes to give specimens of this work, especially since it has called up memories of the Hamlets he has seen and dreamed, Opiz, Klingmann, Foersom, and Foersom's successor. How different they were from each other and from the Hamlet he had thought of for Rosing, for whom, forty 3^ears earlier, he planned to translate the play. And how different from all of these his own Hamlet would have been, if his highest aspiration through all the years, a talent for the stage, had been granted him! Then follows the translation, — about forty pages. One feels the pathos of Rahbek's Vale. He had planned as early as 1 788 to translate Hamlet; it was never done : he had longed with boyish ardor to be an actor; he could never become one. And now he looks back over his failures, a little regretful, but with his appreciation of others as generous as ever, and his old enthusiasm in nowise abated. For the Christmas season of 1802, Oehlenschlasger sent out the little volume of Digte which, like the Lyrical Ballads in England, but even more decisively, marks a turning point in Danish literature. With it began the Golden Age, to last almost an even half century. But the old age did not pass without a protest. The Norwegian, Claus Pavels, later Bishop of Bergen, who Hves because, like Pepys, he kept a diary, wrote a typical review of the familiar sort in Lcerde Efierret- ninger.^^ After a curiously uncomprehending analysis of the poems, he proceeds : In regard to the models which Hr. OchlenschlEeger clearly follows, instead of keeping to exemplaria graeca, like Schiller, Herder, and the unjustly despised Voss: it cannot be denied that Shakespeare and Goethe are great poets, but the former should never be taken as a model, since his lack of culture and good taste is as obvious " 1:269 ff. 1828. 21 Xos. 21 and 22. 1803. 54 MARTIN B. RUUD as his genius is high and incomparable, — and this one had better not try to imitate unless Nature has endowed one with the power to do so. Oehlenschlseger answered in a long poem of no very great merit, but of a certain interest, since he ironically apologizes for the "barbarous" Shake- speare : At Shakespeare, skiondt han havde Hierne, Var uden Smag, det tror jeg gierne; Han skrev vist ei slig Recension; Han vilde studse ved at smage Paa Smagen nu i vore Dage, Den ubehovlede Patron.^^ In the autumn of 1807 appeared Oehlenschlseger's Nordiske DigteP They have lost much of the romantic exuberance of Sanct Hansaften- Spil and the first fine careless rapture of Aladdin. He had come under the influence of Goethe; he had studied the tragedies of Schiller, and he had drunk in the riches of the art galleries of Dresden. There is a surer touch now, and a firmer restraint. All this, revealed clearly enough in the poems, Thors Reise, an epic; Bladur hin Code, sl Greek tragedy; and Hakon Jarl hin Rige, a tragedy profoundly influenced by Schiller, is plainly avowed in the preface, and implicit in the comment on Shakespeare: Since Aristotle's day, three unities have been held essential in drama — the unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of action. Far from objecting to these rules in themselves, I would merely interpret them in a somewhat broader sense than is usual. If by unity of time is meant the age; by unity of place, the region; and by unity of action, the completely rounded out event [Bedrift], then these canons will hold for anything which can by any possibility be called a play. In this broader sense, they become not merely rules for the art of any given period, still less the formulations of its prejudices, but the eternal and essential conditions of the two fundamental qualities of every work of art, harmony and independence. Having then briefly discussed Greek and French dramatic poetry, he comes to Shakespeare: As a model for the new dramatic poetry stands the immortal William Shakespeare like a Colossus in the background. Through his lofty genius he was able to raise the Gothic world to the plane of Art, as the Greeks had raised the ancient world. His power did not lie in a gift of Nature which chooses the wrong course ten times for every time that it chooses aright. In every genius, there is as great desire to gain culture and knowledge as there is aptness and dexterity in acquiring them. The tree, excellent by nature, stands suddenly loaded with flowers, and the flowers grow rapidly into fruit. That was Shakespeare's history, and whoever cannot discover in him knowledge and ripe judgment, "sehn wir, worans ihm gebricht, und heissen ihn die Zeitung lesen," as the editor of Ewald once remarked. But just as certain as genius is a sudden gift from heaven, independent of time and circumstances, unpredictable and unanalyzable, there is, nevertheless, in the " The poem, twenty stanzas in all, was published in Dagen newspaper. It is quoted here from the reprint in Liebenberg, Bidrag etc. pp. 5-9. M Kiebenhavn. 1807. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 55 esthetic as in the moral world, a certain perfectibility, developed by industry, learn- ing, and example, which is the highest glory of mankind. — . . . One finds here the unmistakable note of an apologia pro vita sua, but Oehlenschlseger applies it to Shakespeare : Heaven alone knows if there will be again such another genius as Shakespeare: but it is certain that we moderns with all our love and respect for this our ancestor can find faults and imperfections in him. It cannot be denied that many of Shake- speare's plays lose themselves in spaciousness and aimlessness; and although the great dramatist never permits this expansiveness to evaporate, in turn, into air, although he never ceases to be dramatic, we do find the rule we have posited as essen- tial, unity of action, violated more than once. This is a fault which must be forgiven Shakespeare, in whom one must rather wonder at the marvels which he, the pioneer . , . was able to accomplish; but in us, his successors, who stand on his broad shoulders, it cannot be forgiven. Oehlenschlseger then points out that in respect to the unities of time and place, we are bound by the mechanical conditions of the modem stage as Shakespeare was not. Hence the frequent shifts of the Elizabethan drama are neither possible nor desirable. As he continued to read Shakespeare, and no doubt, in the course of his work on the translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oehlen- schlseger discovered that what seemed inharmonious and inorganic was in very truth pervaded by an inner unity which often escaped critics trained in classic and neo-classic poetics. His long, illuminating preface to that translation is, like that to Nordiske Digte, a confession of spiritual growth.2* But he has travelled farther since then, and he has seen more: Ought it really be necessary to defend one of Shakespeare's finest comedies against . . . wrong-headed criticism? Yet this play judged by French rules would be condemned as barbarous; it possesses, indeed, certain beauties of detail, but is without harmony or coherence. . . . Who is the hero? What is the main action? He points out some of the grotesque juxtapositions, the complete lack of anything like historical verisimilitude, the riotous confusion of men, events, and chronology. But he reminds the reader that it is always to be borne in mind that the play is a dream "in which one age and one pic- ture alternate with and fuse with another. Unless we deny that a poet can dream cunningly and beautifully, wc will not deny ourselves the joy of sharing the vision." This is not to say that the play has not unity and coherence. These are immutable principles, and no work of art can be without them. But there is an outward unity of form, and there is a more important inward unity of tone and spirit. This is the unity of Shakespeare's comedy. The poet purposes ... to show the erotic-heroic, the comic-burlesque, and the supernatural poetic worlds in sharp contrast, that thereby he may reveal the dis- tinctive character of each. These three worlds (the two opposite poles of mankind, " Cf. p. 54. 56 MARTIN B. RUUD high and low, between which an invisible Genius hovers and works) are beautifully bodied forth in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In no more effective way could high rank and love, power and grace, be set off against clownishness, stupidity and in- competence. When in certain scenes, eloquence, and enthusiasm, and grace have found utterance through characters of high station; when this enthusiasm and grace have risen, in the fairy scenes to the loveliest lyric poetry, comes the comic contrast of the tradesmen, incarnating the very opposite of what we have just looked upon, and so heightening the impression. . . . Could the snow white chin and rosy lips of a Venetian girl be more strikingly set off by her black mask, than is Titania's as she strokes Bottom's ass' head with her alabaster hands? Here, as, indeed elsewhere, Shakespeare has employed with high genius the art of gaining effects, of illumi- nating the picture and emphasizing the impression, by contrasts. Not gods only, heroes, and honest citizens intermingle here, but Ages. On the wings of fancy we float lightly from classic Greece to the fairy-world of Asia, and thence to the trade- guilds of London. And from all this we gain a distinct feeling and clear picture of classes, ages, virtues, faults. . . . Finally, Oehlenschlceger points out that the play is not so devoid of formal coherence as the superficial reader thinks. An unimportant quarrel among the fairies brings about the confusion of the lovers. It is their wedding which the tradesmen would honor with their interlude. There is, accordingly, a kind of external unity in the plot, if it be not considered too strictly. Indeed, as a curiosity in Shakespeare, it may be mentioned that we have here unity of time and very nearly unity of place. The play constantly parodies itself within itself, and the parody does not weaken it, but shows the beautiful yet more beautiful. The sublime is not ridiculed; the ridiculous becomes sublime in this poetic-philosophic contrast. The interlude in the fifth act is capital comedy. I do not believe that any poetic reader will scorn it, like Hippolyta, but rather say, with Theseus: "The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them." To which one should add . . . , not our imagination, but the poet's. Possibly the play has become in Oehlenschlasger's analysis too much a philosophical document and too little a dream; yet it is certainly some- thing more than an exquisite tissue of gossamer and moonbeams. Oehlenschlseger's remaining contributions to Shakespearean criticism are rather slight and unimportant. The}^ consist of three articles in Pro- metheus, a literary and critical magazine which he edited in 1833.^'^ The first is a long article on the witch scenes and the porter scene in Mac- hethP The witches of Shakespeare, Oehlenschlseger writes, are ugly and dis- gusting creatiu-es, fitting embodiments of the Christian idea of sin and retri- bution. Schiller, under the influence of Greek tragedy, has transformed them into beautiful and dignified goddesses of fate. Shakespeare's is a moral and Christian conception; Schiller's ethical and Hellenic. He then quotes in full Schiller's porter scene, ^nd asks, "But is not the ironical humor of the orig- inal much more dramatic and poetic? Up to the moment when the crime ^Prometheus. Maanedsskrijl for Poesie, Aesthetik og Krltik. U'dgivet af Oehlenschlaeger. ^Ibid. 3:42-84. J SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 57 is discovered, everything in the castle must follow its normal course. And has not the porter been drinking and carousing with the rest? This certainly is more rational than the idealized scene in Schiller. It is a jest, but a grewsome jest with hell." Shakespeare never made a mistake in min- gling tragedy and low comedy. Could anything be truer dramatically than the grave-diggers in Hamlet, the fool in Lear, or the nurse in Romeo and Juliet? In a closing paragraph, Oehlenschlasger remarks that it is impos- sible to read the witch scenes of Macbeth without thinking of the Valkyrie scenes of Ewald's Balder' s Death. Ewald is certainly influenced by Shake- speare, but in borrowing he is only claiming back what Shakespeare took from Scandinavian mythology, for the conception of the function and being of the witches is thoroughly Norse. Ewald makes his Valkyries purely tragic, with no suggestion of the grotesque. Nor does he mix Greek and Germanic mythology as Shakespeare does in introducing Hecate in a company of Scotch witches — a confusion by no means happy. In the second^'' article Oehlenschlasger compares Shakespeare's Joan of Arc with Schiller's. He is unable to agree with Schlegel that Shake- speare's character is more convincing and more true to history than Schil- ler's. Surely, if Shakespeare had had any conception of the real Jeanne d'Arc, he would not have made her out a liar and a cheat. Oehlenschlaeger thinks that the mistake was due not, as Schlegel holds, to patriotic prej- udice, but to ignorance. Shakespeare was misled by wretched (slette) English chronicles. It thus remained for a great German, with aU the capa- cities of the German tongue for heroic themes at his command, to rescue the Maid of Orleans. The third article^^ is simply a reprint of the Amleth saga from Saxo, in Vedel's noble translation. "Much has been written about Shakespeare's Hamlet,'" says Oehlenschlaeger, "but I desire to add a word, since it is taken from the history of oiu" fatherland." The story, however, is left to tell its own tale without comment. Foersom was not in any real sense a literary critic; his genius was creative and poetic rather than analytical. But on occasion he could speak up manfully in defense of Shakespeare, as in his stinging reply to Thaarup, and his fine enthusiasm and sound knowledge made him a glorious mission- ary. In 1811, when he lived in high hopes of soon producing Hamlet at the Royal Theatre, he wrote an article, obviously a kind of glorified press notice, on "Hamlet" on the London StageP He gives an accurate account ^■> Ibid. 4:34-63. 2»Z6icf. 4:350-59. ^^ LcBsning for Dyrkere og Yndere af Skuespilkunslen. 1811-1812. Udgivcn af Peter Thun Foersom. Kiabenhavn. 58 MARTIN B. RUUD of the cuttings and alterations made for stage purposes, discriminating criticism, of course at second hand, of the great actors who had played in the title-r61e, and other information which might prepare the Danish public for the great venture that so completely absorbed his own inter- ests and energies. He sharply criticises the English managers for their cutting of the grave-diggers scene and for the uniformly wretched ver- sions in which they permit Hamlet to be played. The closing paragraph, with its strictures on the English and American star system, has a certain point even today: Shakespeare's best days are doubtless over in England. He cannot be studied, not to say sacred, in a country which calls Kotzebue Germany's Shakespeare! Like several of his plays, Hamlet is not performed as it came from his hand, but in cuttings, adaptations, and so-called "improvements." Such stage adaptations may possibly be necessary, but it is a fact, never- theless, that Hamlet is rareh^ well played in London. Only the important roles are placed in good hands. Whether or not this has been true for a long time, I do not know, but so far as Hamlet is concerned, it seems to me strange that both Lichtenberg and Davis mention only the important roles, Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, the Ghost, and entirely pass over r61es equally important, at least in their place — the king, Fortinbras, Horatio, Rosen- crantz, Guildenstern, the queen, the grave-diggers, and others, a proof, it seems to me, that there was nothing to say about the actors who played these parts, and therefore it was best to remain silent. The dramatic tradition which Foersom knew demanded that Osric be as well done as Hamlet, that the part of the queen be entrusted to as competent hands as that of Ophelia. Fortunately that is still the tradition on the Danish stage. The example of Germany, the propaganda of Foersom, the criticism of Rahbek, Oehlenschlaeger, Abrahamson, Meisling, and many others, had not quite destroyed the old conception of Shakespeare as an inspired barbarian, even in 1816. Pavels and Thaarup had probably not altered their opinions. But it is a bit odd, in the same year as Oehlenschlgeger's preface to A Midsummer Night's Dream to come upon the following anti- quated criticism in Nyeste Skilderier af KjohenhavnP The writer, who is anonymous, tells us that his purpose is to strike a balance between the extravagant praise of those to whom Shakespeare is in all respects admir- able, and the iconoclasm of those, who, like Voltaire, take a delight in finding fault. The writer is ready to make allowances for the fact that Shakespeare wrote for a stage different from our own; he is willing to " 25:1479 ff. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 59 admit that much of the criticism of his anachronisms, his lack of learn- ing, and his blunders in history, is beside the point, but he still insists that Shakespeare has serious and radical weaknesses. The real point of the essay, which, despite its lack of insight, is excellently written, is summed up in a single paragraph. Great, indeed, [Shakespeare] must be called, since the range and force of his native genius, both in tragedy and in comedy, are unexcelled. But it is a wild and stormy genius, which offends good taste and is unsustained by knowledge of art. He has long been worshipped by the English people; much has been said and written about him; oceans of criticism have been expended in explaining his words and his "conceits," and yet there remain even now serious doubts whether his faults or his merits are the greater. Admirable scenes and passages without number are to be found in his plays — passages which surpass anything to be found in any other dram- atist; but hardly one of the plays can be read with unbroken pleasure from beginning to end. Besides excessive irregularity of plot, there are often strained ideas and coarse expressions, a certain turgid bombast, and bits of word-play which he takes a strange delight in following up. And these things interrupt us precisely when we least wish it. For these, faults, however, Shakespeare atones by two of the greatest excellences a dramatic poet can possess — his power of lively and varied characterization, and his strong and vivid delineation of human passion. These are cardinal virtues. Of course this sort of criticism was already obsolete. Shakespeare had become, in Foersom's translations, a possession of the Danish people, not to be disturbed by echoes of Voltaire. Popular periodicals contain from now on numerous little articles on Shakespeare — his life, his family history, his birthplace, and retellings, in more or less lively fashion, of the familiar apocryphal anecdotes which so long embellished his biography. They are absolutely without value; but the fact that they were published in journals addressed to the lower stratum of readers makes it clear that by the year of Foersom's death, Shakespeare was as firmly intrenched in Denmark as he had long been in Germany. The old tradition, however, died hard. Thus, more than a decade later, in 1828, we find no less a person than Professor Odin WolfE writing in Journal for Psychologi, Historie, Literatur og Kttnst,^^ "Ben Jonson says that Shakespeare did not know how to blot. In other words, a charge that he lacked a critical sense. A serious defect; due in part, no doubt, to his not having studied the an- cients." More pretentious than these fugitive pieces and of distinct merit, is an article on Hamlet by the historian Ludwig Helwig in For Literatur og Kritik.^^ The conception of Hamlet as a dual nature destroyed by the conflict between duty and pale reflection, is not new, but Holweg pre- sents it with skill and eloquence and with no little insight into the most elusive of tragic characters. "2:283. 1828. w Udgivet af Fyns Stifts Literare Forcning. Redigeret af L. Helweg. pp. 317-54. 1817. 60 }rARTIN B. RUUD Literary criticism is of the greatest service to us when it seeks to pene- trate in the glow of imagination to the life-giving principle of a work of art, to interpret this truthfully, and to show forth its presence at every point and in each detail. A play, for instance, reveals from the angle of the dram- atist's choosing a segment of life. What is the angle? What is the conception at the heart of it all? How has the artist builded that the dominant conception may be communicated unimpaired to him who reads ? These questions the critic will feel, and the value of his criticism depends upon the truth and illumination of his answers. Carsten Hauch has become a classic in Danish literature, and he has gone the way of every classic, much talked about and seldom read. I suppose that this is true even more of his critical writings than of his plays and historical romances. But that criticism is as fresh today as the day it was written, for it is the record of the efforts of a sympathetic imagination to see, to understand, and to interpret honestly. His critical method, abstracted from the essays, seems, like Arnold's, a little cold. It is sound and right, however, beyond all cavil. To Hauch the first duty of the critic was to discover the basic idea (Grundide), and then to show how consis- tently the basic idea was felt from first to last in the work before him. This is his method in his essays on the plays of Shakespeare; and even if it be true that his personal idiosyncrasies and his passion for symmetry some- times lead to violent interpretations, the reader for the moment is carried away and ready to yield. Consistent methodology, a firm technique, sympathy, and persuasive style make his criticism of Shakespeare alto- gether the best in Danish before Brandes. To Hauch, Shakespeare vras a great conscious artist who knew precisely what he wanted to do and precisely how to do it. No one had discovered it in Denmark, and no one anywhere had demonstrated it so symmetrically, so consistently, so mi- nutely in single plays. The first of these essays, on Macbeth, appeared in Nordisk Univer- sitets-Tidsskrift, in 1854.^^ In the opening paragraph Hauch remarks that just as each of Shakespeare's plays uncovers new deeps in the hiiman soul, so each one is distinguishec? by a new diction and stjde. In Macbeth, the style, in the speeches of the two chief characters, has a twofold quality. "When Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are in the company of others, their speech is, as a rule, disguised, flattering, affected, so that they seem to be putting into practice the maxim of the French statesman that language is given not to reveal but to conceal thought. . . . When Macbeth is alone, however, or with his w^ife, or when he is overwhelmed by some 2^ Isogle Kritiske Undersogelser med Hensyn til Tragedien Macbeth. Af Etatsraad Professor Hauch. Nordisk Universiielslidsskrifl 1:21 ff. Kjobenhavn-Lund-Christiania-Upsala. 1854-55. Reprinted in Aesthetiske Afhandlhiger og Recensioner pp. 163 £f. Kjobenhavn. 1861. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 61 secret power within him, the style changes completely : at times it is like the sighs and lamentations of a lost soul, or like defiance and gnashing of teeth in the depths; at times, of a truth, it is as though a volcano opened, and flame from the nether world burst up into light to bring fear and despair to the souls of men." Now this duality in the character of the speeches corresponds to the significance of the play : Macbeth is a tragedy of demon- iacal powers in human life. They remain hidden in guarded moments, but at times in secret, or when they are evoked by outside forces, or when, in course of time, they gain the mastery, they burst forth to wreak ruin on themselves and the world. Macbeth himself bodies forth a demon, one who, like Lucifer, has fallen from heaven, but who still bears about him gleams of his original lustre. "This drama, so far as it is at all possible within the limitations of human work, reproduces for us the Pri- meval Tragedy when the demons rebelled against the Most High. Mac- beth resembles the Prince of Demons at least in this, that although at the outset he shines with a light brighter than the light of thousands, he is not contented, but is seized by that spirit of contradictions which shows him his greatness in his ruin. When he stretches out impious hands after the highest things, and turns against the gracious ruler who has showered him with benefits, he is plunged down into a bottomless abyss. And still there shines a light out of the abyss, and sighs rise out of it, as though he were seeking once more the world from which his crimes have cast him out." This thesis of Macbeth as the microcosm of sin and all our woe, Hauch then tries to establish by a minute examination of the play. For each detail subserves the great design. "As the mature plant is hidden in the seed, so that nothing can come forth which is not latent in the seed, so, too, with a work of art; for this also is an organism, in which the end must be potentially present from the beginning." In AJhandlinger eg Aesthetiske Betragtninger is an essay on King Lear,^'^ written in 1851, but apparently not published till 1885. Hauch conceives of Lear as the tragedy of unbridled passions, and this conception, as in the case of Macbeth, he supports by a microscopic examination. In Lear, in Goneril and Regan, in Gloster and Edmund, these passions are nursed by flattery and self-indulgence, and at the critical moment they sweep away all bounds and hurry them to their destruction. In the old king, however, and in Gloster, are elements of nobility, which, when sin begotten of passion has done its worst, assert themselves, and make possible final peace and reconciliation and the entrance to a new life. The analysis of Cordelia's character and Edgar's is admirable, and familiar as is the dem- onstration of the interaction of the two plots, Hauch carries it out to such minute detail that the reader is made to see, as perhaps he has never seen "Kritiske Bemaerkninger med Hensyn til Kong Lear. In Afhandlingcr og Aesthetiske lietraglninget. Af C. Hauch. Kjobenhavn. 1855. 62 MARTIN B. RUUD before, how cunning and conscious a craftsman Shakespeare was. There is a fine differentiation, too, between the real madness of Lear and the feigned madness of Edgar. It seems, at least at the outset, that Edgar's madness, although assumed, has a greater verisimilitude than Lear's; for at first the latter does not talk so wildly, and there is greater consecutiveness in his ideas. To this it may be replied that the king is still [in the scene on the heath] at a turning point, and not yet completely under the spell of madness. Edgar, on the other hand, has learned his r61e by heart; he has gone from town to town rattling off his jargon, and he carries off his part with perfect naturalness. The Icing, moreover, has a fixed obsession; Edgar merely pre- tends that he is possessed by certain devils whose names he has learned .... Edgar, in a conscious and reasoned way, has gained a virtuosity in his art. . . . In Lear's madness there is no art; it is tragically real. A third essay, Shakespeare^ s Skjarsommernatsdrom, in Aesthetiske Afhandlinger og Recensioner,^^ interprets this play more simply than Oeh- lenschlaeger's preface of 1816. Hauch considers A Midsummer Ntghfs Dream a flawless example of romantic drama. Not only that; it is one of the great fountainheads of modern romanticism. "The essential thing in any romantic work is, I doubt not, the idea of a greater and more glo- rious world behind the present, which, whether made visible in a poetic embodiment, or merely felt in dim moods, or perceived through mar\^elous coincidences. . . throws its light on the life of man, and gives to it its significance." If we examine A Midsummer Night's Dream from this point of view, we shall find that it is the very essence of romance. But what problem of life does it illuminate? What, indeed, but youthful and imre- flective love? The mazes of the love story weave themselves against a background of well ordered society (Theseus and his Athens) on the one hand, and, on the other, the twilight and starlight and dawn of fairyland. Hauch shows how dexterously the three worlds of the Athenians, the fairies, and the tradesmen are interwoven. Theseus represents the estab- lished order with which the unpremeditated love of the young men and maidens collides; the fairy world not onl}'- incarnates the lyric poetrj'- of love, but directs the forttines of the lovers; and the tradesmen, besides being drawn skilfully into the main plot, serve admirably the piu-pose of contrast. And again Hauch insists that this seemingly chaotic comedy is an organic work of art, not one detail of which can be taken awa3^ Clever and interesting is a review which Hauch imagines a critic might write if A Midsummer Night's Dream were to be performed today as a new work. Such a reviewer, of course, would roundly denounce the ana- chronisms, the disregard of history and objective truth. To all of which Hauch answers that if a work of art, once you grant the premises, is poet- ically true and is consistent throughout, literality is of no consequence. «5 Pp. 232-301. Kjobenhavn. 1861. OriginaMy published in Nordisk Universitetstidsskrift. 2:36 ff. 1856. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 63 And in his essay his aim has been to show the poetic truth and the inter- nal consistency. A third volume of Hauch's essays, AJhandlinger og Aesthetiske Be- tragtninger. Ny RcBkke,^^ contains two further essays on Shakespeare, Ro- meo og Julie and Nogle Bemcsrkninger om en Charaktergruppe i Shakespeares "Hamlet." In the study of Romeo and Juliet, Hauch first briefly accounts for the sources, and then goes on to demonstrate the remarkable par- allelism between the main plot and the old story of Pyramus and Thisbe, a parallelism which he had already pointed ou.t in his essay on A Midsummer Niglifs Dream. The resemblance was mentioned, but not developed, by Carl Simrock, in 1831.^'' It is not clear, however, that Hauch knew Char- acters of Shakespeare's Plays. If he had, he would certainly have credited Simrock with the suggestion. The tone, moreover, of Hauch's demon- stration, leaves little doubt that he believed the observation to be original. We see in Pyramus and Tliisbe two lovers who are kept apart by the enmity of their parents. At last they appoint a tryst at the grave of an ancient king. Thisbe comes first, but, pursued by a lioness, drops her veil, which the lioness tears to pieces. Now comes the lover, who, when he sees the veil bloody and torn, naturally believes that his beloved has been slain, and kills himself. Thisbe, in the meantime, has sought refuge in a cave. When she returns, she sees the body of her lover, and follows him in death. In Romeo and Juliet, too, the lovers are separated by a feud between the parents; here, too, the lovers are to meet at a grave (or, rather, in the vault itself) ; here, too, the maiden comes first to the trysting place; here, too, the lover is deceived by appearances into believing that his sweetheart is dead, and, in his despair, kills himself; and when Juliet sees the body of Romeo, she, too, like Thisbe, kills herself. In this way, the one story, step by step, parallels the other. There are differences, of course, which the critic is careful to indicate . The progress of the Pyramus and Thisbe story depends largely upon external conditions in nature. Thisbe, pursued by a lioness, seeks refuge in a cave. In Romeo and Juliet the human will asserts itself. Juliet goes deliberately into the vault that she may keep faith with her lover. From this point, then, Hauch proceeds to his analysis of the play, and toward the close discusses the question of whether or not Romeo and Jtiliet is to be considered a tragedy in the true sense, or a romantic play with an unhappy ending, since the two lovers are not the victims of their own guilt. His answer sums up also his interpretation of the play. If it can be shown that Romeo and Juliet, as Lessing has said, is a play on which love itself has wrought; wherein, in other words, one of the mightiest of human passions is exemplified in the characters, in all its depth and felicity and fullness, in all the fresh spring beauty that accompanies it, and in all its devastating agony, — then we must be grateful to the poet for it, whether it fits into our schemes of classification or not. ^ Kjobenhavn. 1869. Romeo og Julie pp. 201 fT. Hamlet pp. 271 ff. " See New Variorum Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet p. 400 note. 64 MAIU'iy B. RUUD No^^• and again in this study the reader will find some of that fine- spun theorizing which is the bane of other critics besides Hauch. Thus his passion to find everj^iere the perfect symmetry of the pattern leads him into such aberrations as the following: The fifth act opens in Mantua. Romeo enters, his heart lighter, for he has had a happy dream. It seemed to him that he was dead, but that his beloved called him back to life with a kiss, and that he then became an emperor. This premonition of good fortune on the eve of misfortune is extremely beautiful. Perhaps a deeper thought is concealed here, namely that in death he is really to be united with his beloved, and raised to a higher, hitherto unknown, glory. The second essay in the volimie concerns itself only with one group of characters in Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia. The substance will be foimd in two paragraphs : I shall try to show, what in my opinion is indisputable, that there is one funda- mental idea in which the explanation of their fate is to be sought. We shall find once more that Shakespeare never introduces characters merely for their own sake, but in accordance with a basic principle, without which no tragic whole is possible. Polonius' whole strength and energy are concentrated on the object of raising the fortunes of his family; and precisely because they are so concentrated, he plunges himself and his family into disaster. This is the basic idea which the poet in masterful fashion and with rigid consistency presents to us in concrete images. The reader will not always agree with Hauch; he will sometimes think him fanciful and over-methodical, but he will not fail to respect his method, his intelligence, and his sttirdy honesty. Some years after Hauch's study of Macbeth in Nordisk Universitets- tidsskrift, Clemens Pedersen published in the same magazine a char- acteristic essay on King Lear.^^ He finds the theme of Lear in the Old Testament doom, "I will visit the sins of the fathers on the children, even imto the fourth generation." This is a solemn and terrifying judg- ment, and it is not strange that commentators have, in one way or another, sought to evade it. But it can not be evaded. In it is expressed the continuity of law and the iron sequence of cause and effect. If the prin- ciple itself has been misunderstood, it is not strange that Lear, in which the same moral law is embodied, should be misinterpreted. Tate, for example, has not tuiderstood the play, and ior King Lear he has substi- tuted a romance, with love and marriage, and poetic justice. Roscher's interpretation of Lear's weakness, "Er hat das Wort an die SteUe der That, die Rede an die SteUung der Gesinnung gesetzt," is too vague to mean anything, and Ulrici's, that the tragedy depends on Lear's demand for the love of his daughters, "nicht als Vater, sondern als Liebender," is blasphemy or nonsense. Equall}^ mistaken is the view that it is a trag- edy of imnatural daughters, for in that case Goneril and Regan would '• III (1857). pp. 59 ff. Reprinted in Dramaturgisk Kritik pp. 150-96. Kjobenhavn. 1850. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 65 be mere personifications of evil, and then we should have no play at all. No; the crux of the tragedy of Lear lies simply in this: he is a creature of fantasy, self-will, and vanity. Undoubtedly these qualities had governed his training of his children. It had bred in the elder sisters contempt and hate, and in Cordelia, a dislike for Goneril and Regan, and a determination not to be as they. The sins of the father are visited on him and on his chil- dren. Since a Danish actor in his time plays many parts, and is identified in the popular mind with many roles, though these as a rule are of one type, he can not become so intimately associated with one character as do some English and American actors. The life and work of Frederick Hoedt, however, is bound up with the plays of Shakespeare as intimately as that of Sothern, and his one great triumph was the title-role in Hamlet. Hoedt was decidedly more than a professional actor; he was, if not a distinguished philosopher, at least a serious thinker. He had come to the stage compar- atively late in life, after years of hesitation and reflection; he had dis- tinct theories of his art, and he meant, as a conscientious artist, to carry these out. Very soon, however, he found that they did not square with those of the director, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, and in the end he was forced to leave the stage long before his time. The history of all this had best be left to another chapter, but it is necessary at this point to look for a mo- ment at the little book in which he laid down his esthetic creed — Om det Skjonne. Udkast til en Christelig MsthetikP The essay is an attempt to define the basis of our appreciation of the beautiful, to differentiate the forms of art, and to define art itself. It is dogmatically theological, and aims frankly at the formulation of a system of Protestant esthetics. Protestantism and Luther, according to Hoedt, first made secular art possible by accentuating the reality and legitimacy of the physical world; whereas Catholicism had made art ascetic and tran- scendental. The post-Raphaelites he explains by saying that they were merel}^ nominal Catholics. The distinctly dogmatic theological premise is found in the assumption that man can not attain the ideal nor embody it in art because of original sin. Hoedt begins with two postulates: first, that Faith is the root of all the branches of spiritual activity; the soul of all spiritual life. Second, that Christianity is, if not the true, although he believes it is the true, at least that form of religion which is nearest the true form — a reserva- tion, however, which, as he says, he makes only that his postulate may be unassailable. " Kjobenhavn. 1856. A second edition in 18S7. (,6 MARTIN B. RUUD He then goes on to define art by comparison with the other forms of presenting truth : Faith is the personal expression of the Ideal, particularly in the form of the Good; Science, the rational expression of the Ideal, particularly in the form of the True; and Art the imaginative [billedlige] expression of the Ideal, particularly in the form of the Beautiful. From this it is self-evident that the man of science, as well as the artist, must be a man of faith. The purpose of all art, then, is the expression of the ideal, but not of an ideal which has no real existence. It must be the Ideal in the Real, the Real in the Ideal. "He [the artist] must show us the truth in reality, so that every work of art must be at the same time real and true, or, as it may also be phrased, concrete and ideal." To the possible objection that Truth, to find expression in a work of art, must in itself be beautiful, Hoedt answers with the Keatsian maxim that truth is always beautiful. The artist "reveals the world by the aid of the ideal, and the world thus illu- minated reflects the light and discovers the Ideal, which is Christ." As an example of the illimiination of life through the Ideal, and of the Ideal through life thus illtmiinated, Hoedt selects Shakespeare's Rich- ard III: The problem here, as always, was to show us the Ideal [Christ], and the means is Richard, one of the greatest scoundrels who ever lived. One cannot deny that the problem was interesting. And what does Shakespeare do? He glorifies, idealizes him. But how? Does he make Richard better or more beautiful? Does he make of him, for instance, a sentimental scoundrel, like Bertram in Robert le Diable? By no means. He portrays him precisely as he was. It is impossible to conceive of a more bitter dose and a more disagreeable mouthful for all false idealists, all sugary estheticians, and all worshippers of traditional art than the palsied, lame, hunch- backed criminal who in this play is the tragic hero. So far from apologizing for him, Shakespeare has made him even more hideous than he really was, a fact which Bulwer has commented on in The Last of the Barons — although Bulwer has misunderstood Shakespeare. In reality Shakespeare has not magnified Richard's physical deformity — only poor actors do that — he has merely strongly accentuated it, partly through the mouths of others, as an expression of their repugnance, and partly through Richard's own, to motivate his hate of God and man. . . . Shakespeare has done Reality full justice; how does he show us Truth, the Ideal? First of all, through Richard's hypocrisy. Richard cloaks himself, as he confesses, with rags of scripture, acknowledg- ing thereby the validity of the very law [Fordring] to which he does not conform. In the second place, through Richard's fear. A sound frightens him. An old bard has prophesied that Richmond shall be king, and Richard is so terrified that he shudders at hearing a name — Rougemont — which resembles Richmond. Finally, the theme is borne out through Richard's despair. When panic-stricken to the very soul at the curses of those he has murdered, he rushes out of his feverish sleep the night before the battle, and exclaims: I shall despair, — There is no creature loves me — who does not feel the force of that love, so necessary to everyone, which Richard has cast aside, and for which he now longs? He is even driven to call upon God: SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 67 Have mercy, Jesu ! — He checks himself promptly; Soft! I did but dream. But the very correction testifies doubly of the power of Christ, for it shows that Richard has invoked Him against his will. And when, later, he tells Catesby of the awful dreams he has had, he exclaims involuntarily : By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers. This is extraordinarily beautiful. Christ is so irresistible that he is proclaimed through the mouth of Richard, that He compels this colossal demon, against his will, to become His apostle. And when Richard, after his horse is shot from under him, and after he has fought like a lion and slain five Richmonds, exhausted and pale, totters on to the stage with the ever misunderstood words, A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse ! — that is. Am I to lose, then, for a miserable horse, this crown which I have bought with my soul's salvation? Is the greatest of human power so helpless against the slightest touch of the Almighty's finger? — who does not then see the Eternal Judge in a glory of majesty that causes one to forget the criminal? Never has a great artist presented a more splendid figure of Christ through a greater sinner. And Richard III is therefore Shakespeare's, that is to say the world's, greatest tragedy." The remainder of the essay does not concern us. Hoedt goes on to discuss Genius — the ability to see the Ideal, and Talent, the power of giving visible outward expression to the vision; and he closes with an analy- sis of Sacred Art — the direct embodiment [Fremstilling] of the Divine, to which no human power attains. In a long footnote, Hoedt advances his original interpretation^ of the words, A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse ! He quotes IV, 4, and continues: The interpretation of these words up to the present has been that Richard would exchange his crown for a horse; and I do not think that I err when I say that those, and they are many, who know and quote this speech, in ignorance of its context, believe also that it is Richard's intention to flee, that he has lost his crown, and now seeks to escape, so that he may at least save his life. But the most casual glance at the context will show that this interpretation is wrong. When Catesby, who so well understands him, tries to get him away, he exclaims: Slave ! I have set my life upon a cast And I will stand the hazard of the die. *" Pp. 32-38. «I note, however, that a writer in Notes and Queries (February 11, 1893) has advanced the same theory. See New Variorum Richard III p. 422, note. 0.S MARTIN B. RUUD That is to say, he will not flee. But what would he? Back to the battle? That is possible. If, however, that be Richard's purpose, if he has not yet given up the fight, if he does not yet consider the crown lost, how can it ever enter his head to give it away for something that he seeks in order to save it? . . . Richard might have said, "Half my kingdom for a horse," for if he won, he could keep the rest; but he would never dream of saying, "My kingdom for a horse!" that is, "Since I desire above all things to preserve my crown, 1 will give it away for a horse, by which I might possibly save it." Richard, this worshipper of the crown, would be the last man to whom such an idea could occur. And if he would, for whatever reason, return to the battle, why does he not accept Catesby's offer? If that were his meaning, he would of course have answered, "You misunderstand me. I do not want to flee. On the contrary, I will keep on fighting. Bring me the horse you talk about." Instead of saying this he falls into self-communing: I think there be six Richmonds in the field, etc. And once more, without motivation, he exclaims, A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse ! Another explanation of these words is that Richard is mad and does not know what he is saying. But this is no explanation. If, on the contrary, we clearly realize the situation and the fundamental idea of the play, the correct interpretation, it seems to me, will come of itself. Richard has by means of bloody crimes usurped the crown; the Eternal Justice, through the shades of those whom he has murdered, has threatened him. with vengeance; and the first words he utters when he wakes from his dream are: Give me another horse ! — Bind up my wounds ! He has dreamed that his horse would be shot from under him. That is the ven- geance which the spirits threaten; trivial as it seems, probably the worst that could come to him, since he is lame, and possibly cannot fight on foot. The scene is now changed to the battlefield. Catesby rushes in and calls for help, tells us that the horse is shot, that Richard in spite of it is fighting with supernatural strength, but the battle is lost if he does not receive reinforcements. This is the second time the horse is mentioned. It is plain that Shakespeare has given it special emphasis. And now when Richard at last comes himself, and his first words are A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse ! does it not flash at once upon the mind that it is the same horse which has been referred to all the way through, that the words are a bit of reflection, and that the meaning is, "A horse, a miserable horse, is to lose me my crown?" Catesby, who, like the commentators, misunderstands him, answers: Withdraw, my lords; I'll help you to a horse. Richard scorns him, and is lost once more in meditation: I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain today instead of him — a reflection which is closely related to the preceding, for Richard plainly means that it is the Spirits who have slain his horse and deceived his eyes, — and closes, still more softly and introspectively. with an involuntary, echo-like repetition of the idea of which he cannot rid himself: A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse. SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 69 Hoedt closes by saying that he does not doubt that everyone who really knows Shakespeare will accept his interpretation. He shows by an example from Hamlet: But two months dead! — nay, not so much, not two. So excellent a king that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr. to show that Shakespeare frequently gave reflection the form of an ex- clamation. "It is difficult enough to understand how the true interpre- tation has been lost. But even this is comprehensible if we remember that Shakespeare was forgotten for over a century and a half. It was Garrick who once more made England and Europe familiar with the creator and master of the Protestant drama. Some player, doubtless to gain effect, started the misunderstanding; and it would be only just if another actor should remove it." Now whatever one may think of the soundness of this explanation, there is no doubt that the man who advanced it had thought deeply and independently on matters of dramatic interpretation, and that he was capable of contributing to the stage something of distinction. That con- tribution Hoedt never made, partly because of a combination of untoward circumstances, partly because of faults inherent in himself — lack of energy and self-discipline, and a challenging pride of opinion. Annotated school editions of the English text of Shakespeare are as rare in Denmark as in Norway. Indeed, only Macbeth has been so edited; once in 1855, by A. Stewart MacGregor and Mrs. S. Kinney ;*2 later, in 1903, by N. Bogholm and Otto Madsen."'^ In the first of these the editing is confined to glosses on words unusual or unknown in modern English, and notes on difficult passages. The second is quite a different affair, fully up to the standard of the best school edi- tions in this country. There is an adequate essay on the pre-Elizabethan and Elizabethan drama, and an exhaustive and really illuminating body of notes. Certainly the book accomplishes what the editors intended that it should accomplish — the removal of every serious obstacle in the way of a Danish reader of Macbeth in English. Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare have likewise been twice rendered into Danish; first, anonymously, in 1866,"* then by L. Bagger in 18S4.« « Macbeth. Edited with Glossary and Notes by A. Stewart MacGregor and Mrs. S. Kinney. Kj6ben- havn. 1885. " The Tragedy of Macbeth. Med Indlcdning og Kommentar. N. B6(rholm og Otto Madsen. Kjaben- havn. 1903. " Charles Lamb, Shakcspeareske Forlallinger. Efter Talcs from Shakespeare. KjObenhavn. 1866. « Charles Lamb, Shakes peareske FortceUinger. Oversatte af L. Bagger. Bibliothek for Ungdommen III . Kjobenhavn. 1884. 70 MARTIN B. RUUD Both translations are extremely free; large parts of the first, indeed, are rather a retelling than a translation. Finall3^ in this short list of editions and paraphrases, should be men- tioned George Stephens' The Shakespeare Story Teller. ^^ Stephens was for many years professor of English at the University of Copenhagen. He gave unsparingly of his time and energy and liberal private foi-tune toward the promotion of English and Scandinavian studies. His mon- umental work on the runic inscriptions is still, for many purposes, inval- uable. That this doughty old scholar shoiild give precious time to pre- pare a Shakespeare primer for the Danish youth will surprise those who know only the fruits of his serious research, not those who know the fidel- ity with which he gave himself to the routine of his university teaching. The plays analyzed are The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado about Nothing. Each play is preceded by a list of characters together with a short characterization of each. Then follows a running sketch of the action, pieced together and amplified by liberal quotations from the play. 10 In recent years there has appeared a number of popular treatments of the life and work of Shakespeare. By far the best of these are the short articles by Niels Moller in Frem, a sort of Danish Sunday magazine.*'^ The first is a charming little essay on the time, the character, and the work of the great dramatist. Entirely unpretentious, it betrays, none the less, the competent scholar and investigator. The same quality shows even more strikingly in the second article, on the busts and portraits of Shake- speare, and in the last, an account of the structure and stagecraft of the English theatre in Shakespeare's time. Altogether a series of popular articles of the best sort. Ludvig Schroder, one of the leaders of the important "Folkehojskole" movement, addresses himself to the Danish yeomanry. His article (orig- inally a lecture) in Den danske Hojskole^^ is well informed and readable. One is struck, of course, by the deep religious tone, and the honest effort to read into Shakespeare's lines a religious m.eaning which the writer takes to be the immediate expression of the poet's own feeling. The same quality is found in his book, Shakespeare og Prover af hans Digtning.*^ The over-sophisticated reader will probably smile at the naivete of it all; •• The Shakespeare Story Teller. Introductory leaves or outline sketches, with choice extracts in the words of the poet himself. By George Stephens, Professor of Old English and of the English Language and Literature at the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen. 1855. " Frem. Et Ugeskrift. Udkommer hver Sondag. En Rsekke Populaere Artikler om Shakespeare af Niels Moller, 1900. 1. no. 29; 2, no. 31; 3, no. 35. "1 (1900-1901) :16ff. Kolding. 1903. *» Trykt som Manuskript (published for private circulation). Kolding. 1903, SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM IN DENMARK 71 but a thoughtful student of Danish life will remember the tremendous influence of the movement which Schroder represents, and be grateful to him for bringing a poet of the English renaissance so tactfully before the farmers and cottagers of Denmark. Naturally he emphasizes Shake- speare's "Folkelighed" ( Volkstiimlichkeit) , his lack of learning, and his intimate contact with the people of the English countryside. He sug- gests that Shakespeare's prodigious vocabtdary is due in some measure to this familiarity with the life of the plain people. He was not hampered, as Milton was, by book-learning. It is possible that the great dififerences in the conditions under which these poets grew up had some influence on their vocabularies. Milton, who had received a Latin school and university education was poorer in impressions of nature and life than Shakespeare, who knew "little Latin and less Greek," but the more of his mother-tongue as it was spoken by farmers, and in the market towns by towns- people and yeomen from other districts, by well-to-do citizens, and by poorer folk. Bogholm has shown, in a study to which I shall refer later, that, as compared with Bacon, Shakespeare is decidedly popular in diction and syntax, so that Schroder's ex parte guess proves to have the sanction of philological scholarship. Of still another character are the manuals for home study published by Universitetsudvalget, a body corresponding to the older extension divi- sions of our universities before they became correspondence study depart- ments. Of these manuals there are two, one edited by J. Borup in 1901;^" another, somewhat more schematic, by P. A. Rosenberg, in 1908.^^ Both are models of their kind, neither too scanty, nor so complex as to defeat the end for which they were prepared. 11 There is no occasion to enter into an examination of the Shakespearean studies of Georg Brandes, so well are the most important of them, embody- ing his ripest thought, known to the English-speaking world. Many, however, are still untranslated, and it seems desirable to treat briefly those which have a claim to remembrance. In 1870 Brandes published Kritiker og Portrcstter,^^ in which he lirought together some thirty-eight reviews of plays, published, originally in Illus- treret Ttdende, and six analytic essays on Hans Christian Andersen, Rubens, Meyer Goldschmidt,' Sainte-Beuve, Kamma Rahbek, and Merimde. The reviews have been stripped of all allusions to the performances on the '" William Shakespeare. Ved J. Borup. Grundrids ved folkelig Universitetsundervisning, no. 43. Udgivet af Universitetsudvalget. Kjobenhavn. 1901. 22 pp. " William Shakespeare. Ved. P. A. Rosenberg. Udgivet af Universitetsudvalget. Kj» November 15, 1851. » November 15, 1851. "7:324. October-December, 1851. » Edvard Brandes, Dansk Skuespilkunsl p. 56. Kjobenhavn. 1880. "Cf. Gro. Till, 1:4-5; 220. 88 MARTIN B. RUUD was too small a world for two such men as Frederik Hoedt and Johan Lud- N-ig Heiberg, particularly since both were blessed with theories and deter- mined to give them effect. The collision was not long in coming. In the summer of 1852, Hoedt proposed to the director that Richard III be placed in the repertory for the following season, with Hoedt, of course, as Richard. Heiberg peremptorily refused in a letter which as Dr. Edvard Brandes says,^^ does him little honor, but which does throw a good deal of Hght on his attitude toward Shakespeare: The gloomy atmosphere of the plaj^ is distinctly foreign to the temperament and character of the Danish people, who, even in tragedy, demand a lighter tone. Preciselj- in proportion as the national theatre is regarded as an institution for the esthetic education of the people is it important that in this, as in all education, the point of departure be the native gifts and talents of the people, and that no attempt be made to graft upon it anything foreign which is incompatible with their natural sympathies. If, therefore, Richard III were to be produced, I fear that, after the first curiosity had been satisfied, I should be charged with a failure to recognize the national mission of the theatre, and, what is more, I should feel conscious in that case, that I could not meet or disprove the charge. That this tragedy is played in England, where it is probably in harmony with the hypochondriac character of the English people, is no argument for us; quite as little the fact that it is given in Germany, since Germany, having no genuine dramatic literature of its own, but determined to have a stage, is forced to found one on loans from foreign literatures. In Denmark, however, where there is and can be a national theatre, since there exists this prerequisite national dramatic literature, a good deal may be lost by an un- fortunate selection of foreign plays. Here in Denmark the tragedy of Oehlen- schlaeger, despite all its faults, has struck the national chord and appealed to national feelings, and I doubt very much if we shoidd ever accustom ourselves to seeing Mel- pomene's dagger transformed into a butcher knife. ^^ A second, and undeniably much sounder, reason for declining Richard III Heiberg finds in the fact that since it is onl}^ a fragment of a very long cycle of chronicle plays dealing with a remote period of English history, the Danish public can hardly be supposed to have the historical knowl- edge necessary to understand and appreciate it. Nor was this all. Heiberg refused Hoedt permission to appear as Marinelli in Emilia Galotti and as Figaro in Beaimiarchais' comedy. He insisted, in short, that Hoedt's business was to play what he was told to play, that the player existed for the theatre, and not the other way around. Of coiu-se Hoedt resigned; and he did so in a caustic letter in which he did not hesitate to say what he thought of Heiberg's judgment on Shake- speare : Such a play no director has the right to judge, for the world has already judged, without awaiting a reexamination. . . . Just as Luther is not merely a German " Op. cit. p. 49. 8 First published by Heiberg himself in Berlingske Tidende for December 2, 1852. Reprinted in Hei- berg's Prosaiske Skrifter 8:394-99; H. Christensen, Del kongelige Theater 1852-1859 pp. 61 fif.; Fru Heiberg's Erindringer 3:12iS. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 89 theologian, but the fountainhead of protestant theology, Mozart not merely a German or Italian composer, but an Ideal in music, so Shakespeare is not merely an English poet, but the teacher and master of the modern protestant drama. *^ We recognize here, of course, the theory so elaborately set forth in On the Beautiful. An explosion was averted for the moment through the intervention, it is said, of certain persons in very high station, and Hoedt remained. Hamlet was placed on the repertory again for the season of 1853, but very great changes had to be made in the cast. Nielsen, who had played the Ghost so successfully in 1851, had left the theatre in anger; his wife, next to Fru Heiberg herself, the leading actress on the stage, was ill. Heiberg gave Nielsen's role to an inconspicuous actor namied Ferslev, entirely incom- petent, according to Edvard Brarldes, with a poor voice and no ability in reading Shakespeare's blank verse. Fru Nielsen's part as the queen was assigned to a rather mediocre young actress, Froken MoUer. With such a cast Hoedt refused to play. He asked Heiberg to postpone the performance until Fru Nielsen's return. Heiberg refused, and appointed the rehearsals. Then, as Overskou solemnly says, "the impossible hap- pened" — Hoedt cut the rehearsal. The director made another appoint- ment for the following day ; Hoedt again stayed away. His friend Michael Wiehe, to whom the situation was becoming just a bit ludicrous, began cutting up, and Overskou, who was in charge, horror-stricken at this pro- fanation of the sacred precincts of the Royal Theatre, cut short the re- hearsal and reported to Heiberg. The latter, of course, cotild brook no such breach of discipline, and by exerting every ounce of his authority, almost forced the Minister of Education and Public Worship, under whose juris- diction the theatre comes, to dismiss Hoedt incontinently. Three years later Heiberg resigned his office, and the new administration prevailed upon Hoedt to return. But his stay was short. The public, which, on the whole, had taken his part in the controversy, had become obsessed with the idea that he was responsible for the retirement of their idol, Fru Heiberg. It was utterly false, but it did the work. The audiences were at first cool, then openly hostile, and one night they hissed him off the stage. Hoedt's career as an actor was over. For a time he served as stage manager, then as instructor at the dramatic school, maintaining in this way a loose con- nection with the theatre. But more and more he withdrew from public notice, being heard from now and then when he assisted in staging a new play at the Royal Theatre or at the unpretentious Folkethcatrct, situated directly across the street from his house. We shall follow him no further — an actor of vision and serious purpose, even if no genius of the first order — whose career interests us of the English-speaking world because it is bound " Christensen, loc. cit. p. 73. Originally published by Dr. Edvard Brandes in Del Nillende Aarhundrtde ior April. 1875. 90 MARTIN B. RUUD up SO intimately. with the production of Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps, too, even more than Foersom, he suggests Hamlet, appointed to a mission he had not the strength and energy to accomplish.^^ Since Hoedt's day, Hamlet has been played, among others, by Nicolai Neiiendam and Emil Poulsen, and Ophelia by Fru Hennings. During the century following its premier, the play has been given at the Royal Theatre eighty times. In addition it has been played nineteen times at Dagmar Theatret, the most important of the private theatres in Copenhagen. Three years after Foersom's debut in Hamlet, the theatre opened the season with King Lear (September 2, 1816). Dr. Ryge played the king, and Foersom himself, Edgar. It was a flat failure. Overskou attri- butes the lack of success to the inability of the audience to grasp the meaning of the play;^^ accustomed to the rhetoric of Oehlenschlasger and Kotzebue, it seemed to them nothing more than one horror piled on another. The failure of the public to understand was not due altogether to perverted taste, but to inadequate interpretation on the part of the cast. Ryge was superb in the first scene, but he failed utterly to bring out the pathos of the king's fate after his daughters have tiuned him away; and Foersom was physically so weak that he merely suggested the character of Edgar. Ryge's state of mind is weU illustrated by a remark which Overskou reports: "The part is good enough; I realize, too, that if they mean to give the piece, I must play it ; but it goes against my grain to play mad kings who do not turn on their enemies." "When Lear was revived in 1851, with Nielsen as Lear and Michael Wiehe as Edgar, it had an altogether different effect. The great artists carried it through twenty performances from January 29, 1851, to No- vember 8, 1860. FcBdrelandef^ hailed the performance with enthusiasm. "The theatre is entitled to oiir gratitude for putting on this great tragedy, and Hr. Nielsen for the painstaking study he has obviously devoted to his part." Berlingske Tidende^^ points out that Lear is a tragedy which so severely taxes the resources of a theatre that it is rarely played in Ger- many, and almost never in England. It is not astonishing therefore that the performance here was not in every respect ideal. But Nielsen's Lear was a revelation, by all odds the best thing he has done. His playing in the scene on the heath and in the last scene, where he appears bearing Cordelia's body, were bits of acting worthy of any theatre in the world. Wiehe as Edgar and Mad. Hoist as Cordelia were excellent, and Hoist as Kent and Phister as the Fool were almost as good. >8 For accounts, from all angles, of the Heiberg-Hoedt controversy, consult: Overskou, Den danske Skjieplads, 6:12 f[; Overskou, Oplysninger om Theaterforhold i 1849-1858, Kjobenhavn, 1858; Christensen, op. cit.; Johanne Louise Heiberg, op. cit. 3:68 ff., 123 fif., 164 ff.; Edvard Brandes, op. cit. pp. 35-60. >«Cf. Nyeste Skilderier af Kjobenhavn. 25:1203 £f. 1816. 20 January 30. 1851. s> January 31, 1851. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 91 After 1860, Lear was not played again for more than a generation. At length, on November 22, 1901, Dr. Mantzius brought it out once more on a specially designed Shakespearean stage. "It was not quite Shake- speare's elemental tragedy of storm and passion," says Vilhelm Ander- sen in Tilskueren, "but it was a fine piece of work," with Dr. Mantzius as the unifying force. "At spille en saadan Elementar-Tragedie lyldcedes natiirligvis ikke helt. Men hvor det bristede var det oiensynlig paa Evne, ikke paa Arbeide. Stemningen var rigtignok fra Kjobenhavn, men Blikket var virkelig fra Shakespeare. "^^ Macbeth, in Foersom's adaptation of Schiller's version,23 was played for the first time on November 15, 1817, at a benefit performance for Foersom's widow. It was not successful. Dr. Ryge, as usual rendered the kingly and regal in Macbeth, and his terror and rage, superbly, but the subtle passions of the first part, in which the thought of the murder takes shape in his mind, lacked discernment and convincingness. I have deemed it worth while in this connection to compare Foer- som's adaptation with Schiller's and with the original. It follows Schiller closely. The stage arrangement, the business, and the sequence of scenes are Schiller's. In the fourth act, for instance, where, to secure greater continuity of action, Schiller manipulated scenes with sovereign freedom, Foersom follows him in every detail. So also in Act V, where the changes are even more radical. Schiller's famous porter scene and his denatiured witch scenes have been variously treated. The first witch scene in Schil- ler, Foersom has stricken out, and substituted Shakespeare's. Only one line: Anden Hex: Samles efter Svsrdstorms Stunden is from the German. Foersom has eliminated also Schiller's second witch scene, up to the point at which Macbeth and Banquo enter, after which both follow Shakespeare with unimportant changes. The third witch scene — the Hecate episode, which Schiller takes over from the original, Foersom omits. The fotirth, that in which Macbeth comes to inquire into the future, is in both Danish and German essentially Shakespeare's, except that Hecate does not appear, Foersom again eliminates her entirely, and in Schiller she has become an invisible presence. Foersom, then, had the tact and judgment to reject Schiller's transformation of the witches, but he fell a victim to the exquisite lyric verse of his porter scene, for this he has taken over bodily, adding, however, five lines in which something of Shakespeare's conception shines through : Saa, siig mig nu engang, vaager ikke en Konges Die for hans Folk; nu tror jeg " Theater Rev y for 1901. 1902. » William Shakespeare: Macbeth. Tragedie i 5 Acter efter Shakespeare og Schiller bcarbeidet til Opferelse paa den danske Skueplads ved Peter Thun Foersom. Kiobenhavn. 1816. 92 MARTIN B. RUUD at Kongen vel end ei er rigtig livlig men gnider sig vel lidt i Oinene saa efter Gaarsdagsviren. Foersom's Macbeth, accordingly, is a free translation from Schiller, influenced at certain points by the original. I may mention in passing one curious instance of the confusion to which this double source occasionally leads. In the porter scene (F. II, 5) Foersom has, "Enter Macduff and Ross" [as in Schiller]. The scene now follows Schiller to the point where IMacduff goes to call the king. At this juncture, however, Foersom has looked over on his copy of Shakespeare, for in the ensuing dialogue, the speeches that should go to Ross are assigned, as in Shakespeare, to Lenox — who does not appear at all ! Macbeth continued to be played in the Schiller-Foersom adaptation down to 1860. And it was decidedly popular, being given no less than thirty-eight times. On the occasion of two performances in 1827, Johan Ludvig Heiberg wrote in his Flyvende Post a review which, better than anything else, shows what cultivated playgoers of the time thought of it.^* He condemns Schiller for having altered the witches into goddesses of fate, like the Erinys of Greek tragedy, instead of leaving them as they are, personifications of those elemental forces from which no m-an ever quite emancipates himself. "But in their vulgar realism, as they appear in Shakespeare, with all their coarse and repulsive stories, . . . they wotild certainly be ridiculous and mar the effect of the play. Foersom, therefore, [who, it will be remembered, cuts the second witch scene] is to be praised for giving them a vague, indefinite character, of which one can make what he will." Further on he praises Foersom's judicious cuttings, suggesting, however, that he might well have cut more, notably the ridic- ulous dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff (IV, 5), "a veritable mar- ionet scene, one that could not possibly have taken place between real, living characters." This criticism, and one which Heiberg passed, not unjustly, on much of Foersom's metre, was answered with greater zeal than knowledge by a writer in Kj bhenhavnsposten over the signature Inlmmanus }^ Heiberg, in his reply, of course had no difficulty in burying his adversary'' under a storm of raillery,^^ particularly as he singles out Foersom's lame lines ; but he has no need thereafter to assure us, as he did in a review of Hamlet, that he is no blind admirer of Shakespeare. 2" His obliquity of vision and the fatal limitations of his sympathy are never more glaring than when he deals v/ith a play of Shakespeare's. M Three articles. January 19, 22, and 26, 1827. Reprinted in Prosaiske Skrifler 7:3 ff. M February 13, 17, 1827. ^ Kjobenhavns Flyvende Post, February 23 and 26, 1827. Reprinted in Prosaiske Skrifler 7:18 ff. " Kjdbenhavns Flyvende Post, March 30, April 2, 1827. Reprinted in Prosaiske Skrifler 7:24 ff. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 93 After the season of 1859-60, Macbeth disappeared from the playbills for more than thirty years. On January 21, 1893, it made its reappear- ance on the stage in a new cutting based on Lembcke, with Emil Poul- sen as an unforgetable Macbeth. A full decade after the premier of Macbeth, the theatre ventured upon its fourth Shakespearean production, The Merchant of Venice, in a new translation by A. E. Boye (and K. L. Rahbek).^^ With an excellent cast centered about Dr. Ryge as Shylock the play was at least adequately done. Overskou reports, too, that it was well received. The fact that it was given only four tim.es and then dropped for thirty-eight years, together with the tone of svich reviews as have come to my notice, might point to a different conclusion. Nyeste Skilderier aj Kjobenhavn^^ says frankly that whatever suc- cess Shakespeare's plays have had in Denmark is due rather to his fame than to any pleasure in the performance. He regrets, therefore, that The Merchant of Venice should be one of the first offered to the Danish public. The play is indeed borne by Shakespeare's mighty spirit, but the trial is cannibalistic and Shylock a monster. But, he adds, "the blind idolatry of Shakespeare covers every sin." J. L. Heiberg in the Flyvende Post^^ concealed his impatience under a cloak of light mockery of the "critical playgoer." The Merchant of Venice is a piece to tickle the mob, but to your discriminating spectator, it must be a strange thing. For it is neither comedy nor tragedy but an impossible neither-one-nor-the- other. That, to begin with, is disconcerting. But there is further the fact that the play is strangely impersonal, bearing upon it no sign of the poet's zeal and passion, that it is loaded down with an inconsequential subplot and a totally superfluous fifth act. The critical playgoer gives it up. Heiberg then wittily outlines a scheme for recasting the puzzling play into a domestic melodrama of which such a spectator would whole-heartedly approve. All this is light mockery, but one has an uneasy suspicion that Heiberg sympathizes with the object of his satire, and this suspicion be- comes a certainty before the close of the essay: "Although in the pre- ceding I have allowed myself a little innocent raillery at the expense of the public, I fully recognize the hidden good sense in even the most self- contradictory demands. For the reason that great masterpieces do not please, — although, since they are known to be great masterpieces, they are greeted with dutiful applause, — docs not lie in a perverted love of poor 28 The title paye, however, reads: Kjobmanden i Vencdig. Ly.'itspil i 5 AcIlt. Fordansket til Skucp- ladsens Brug ved K. L. Rahbek (og Ad. E. Boye). Kjdbenhavn. 1827. As to Rahbck's and Doyc's shares, see Nik. Bogh, art. Ad. E. Boye, in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. 2» May'l, 10, 1828. 30 May 28, 1828. Reprinted in Prosaiske Skrifkr 7:157 fl. 94 MARTIN B. RUUD work, but in a feeling that good work should find new forms, whereby it may become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone."^^ Heiberg is himself this "cultivated playgoer" of whom he speaks with S3^npathetic irony. His system of esthetics, a basic principle of which is that dramatic forms should be kept distinct, made him incapa- ble of sympathizing with Shakespeare or of really understanding him. Fru Heiberg says, indeed, that he called 7/ain/^/ the greatest of tragedies; if he did, we may be certain that in his heart he made a good many qual- ifications. When he reviewed a production of Hamlet in 1827, he confined himself almost altogether to the character, and said little about the play. Upon The Merchant of Venice followed, at short intervals, Romeo and Juliet (September 2, 1828) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (March 9, 1829). Romeo and Jtdiet was played in a discreet cutting of Foersom, made by A. E. Boye.^^ If the premier were interesting for no other reason, it would be notable in the history of the Danish stage for the debut of Jomfru Johanne Louise Patges (Fru Heiberg), most famous of all Dan- ish actresses, as Juliet. She was then only sixteen, a mere slip of a girl, but she revealed unmistakably her marv^elous powers. Juliet's youth and innocence and simplicity were perfectly done. One may well believe Fru Heiberg, however, when, years later, she writes in her Memoirs that in 1828 she played Juliet as a child would, with no comprehension of the subtleties of the role, without reflection, and almost without design.^' She could not possibly have been a perfect Juliet, as Overskou and certain reviewers would have us believe. But her success was undoubted; she established herself as the most promising of the younger actresses, and began that long series of -triumphs which makes her as unique a figure in the history of the Danish stage as Mrs. Siddons in that of Britain or Charlotte Cushman in that of America. Twenty years later, on January 23, 1847, Fru Heiberg played Juliet once more. She was conscious of a surer art, of finer discernment, of incom- parably greater truth in her interpretation. In after j^ears she liked to think of her Juliet of 1847, and in particidar of the exquisite essays of Soren Kirkegaard, Krisen og en Krise i en Skiiespillerindes Liv, to which it gave rise.^* Kirkegaard points out the folly of criticising on artistic grounds an actress who is scarcely more than a girl. She is spiritually as well as physically immature. The great actress emerges only through the development and experience of the years. But this growth of power '1 Quoted from Prosaiske SkrifUr. See preceding note. A much more favorable review will be found in A. P. Liunge's Thealerblad January 25, 1828. '* Romeo og Julie. Sorgespil i 5 A cter. Indrettet for den danske Skueplads (af Peter Thun Foersom og Ad. E. Boye). Kjobenhavn. 1828. Del kongelige Theaters Repertoire no. 6. " Et Liv gjenoplevet i Erindringer 1 :96-98. ** Padrelandel July 24. 25, 26, 27, 1848. Reprinted in SHren Kirkegaard's Bladartikler. Udgivne af Rasmus Nielsen. Kjobenhavn. 1857. pp. 173 flf. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 95 means a crisis, for the uncritical public worships at the shrine of the young- est goddess. Romeo and Juliet was played for the last time at the Royal Theatre on April 22. 1874. It was given at Dagmartheatret dm-ing the seasons of 1899-1900 (fourteen times) and 1907-8 (twelve times). In 1899-1900 the title-roles were played by Martinius Nielsen and Fru Augusta Wiehe. The reviewers were mildly favorable.^^ The reviews of the performances of 1907-8 are merely tolerant, but Adam Poulsen as Romeo and Fru Anna Larsen as Juliet receive recognition for careful, well planned, and well worked out interpretation.^^ The Merry Wives of Windsor^'' was a failure. The drastic humor rather took the breath away from polite Copenhagen,^^ and Overskou's opinion that the play ought not to have been attempted at that time, since it demands of the spectaitor a better knowledge of English life than a Dan- ish audience in 1830 could be expected to have, probably is well founded. It has never since been given at the Royal Theatre, but in December, 1899, Folketheatret, one of the popular houses in Copenhagen, presented it in a new cutting by P. A. Rosenberg. The critics call the performance noisy and crude ;^^ but it was a great success none the less, and ran for two weeks (December 26 to January 9) to the huge delight of the public. Whether or not, as Arthur Aumont suggests,^" the failure of The Merry Wives discouraged the theatre from attempting another Shakespearean production, certain it is that none was essayed for eighteen years. Curious enough, it was Heiberg himself who revived Shakespeare on the stage, but in a form so garbled that, save for the names of the characters and the general fable, there is little of the original left. On September 20, 1847, accordingly, Viola^^ (Twelfth Night), the first of Sille Beyer's egre- gious adaptations of Shakespeare, w^as produced. Overskou, naturally, in his ponderous "Kanzleisprache" calls it, — "en mcd megen Smag og god Sans for theatralsk Virkning af Sille Beyer udfort Bearbeidelse af Shake- speare's What You Will.^'^^ That the cutting was theatrically effective, may be conceded; that it was done with good taste is more dubious. The "■ Politiken January 7, 1900. Berlingske Tidende January 8, 1900. >« See particularly an admirable review by Oskar V. Andersen, Varden 5:486. 1907. " De Munlre Koner i Windsor. Et Lystspil i S Acter. Oversat af Ad. 'E. Boye. Med Anmaerkningcr. Kjobenhavn. 1829. Det kongelige Theaters Repertoire no. 24. Boye also prepared a translation of Twelfth Night {IJellig Tre Kongcrs A/ten. Del kongelige Theaters Repertoire no. 22. KjiJbenhavn. 1822). It was, apparently, never used. »8 Kjobenhavnsposten March 10, 13, 18J0. " Berlingske Tidende December 27, 1899. Politiken same date. The review is by Edvard, Brandes. *o William Shakespeare paa den danske Skueplads. Politiken May 11, 1913. « Viola. Lystspil i 3 Acter. En Bearbeidelse af W. Shakespeares Twelfth Night dUr What Yon Will. ved Sille Beyer. Kjobenhavn. 1850. "Op. cit. 5:779-80. 96 MARTIN B. RUUD adaptor has condensed the five acts into three. This necessitated, of course, merciless cuts, the rearrangement of scenes to obviate unnecessary shifts, and the addition of new hnks to hold the composite together. The main plot is preserved, but the IVIalvolio plot is eliminated altogether, save that certain of Maria's activities are transferred to thfe Sir Toby-Sir Andrew- Fabian intrigue, and she now takes the lead in gulling Sir Andrew. It is characteristic of Sille Beyer's method that she thinks it necessary to inform us expressly (I, 1) that a package of Sebastian's clothes has providentially drifted ashore, and later (II, 2), better to motivate the love story, that Viola has already been at court "several weeks." The fable has a faint flavor of Shakespeare, indeed; it is even fainter in the style. To begin with, Froken Be^^er has paraphrased Shakespeare's blank verse into sugary Danish pentameters, and the lovely songs, as a rule, she has done into watery l3^rics of her own, either based on Shakespeare, or entirely original. This parody on one of the greatest of romantic comedies was, as Over- skou truly sa3?s, an extremely successful theatre-piece. Sustained by Fru Hciberg's wonderful Viola, it held its own in the repertory down to IS 69, with a total of no less than fifty-two performances. In 1892 Twelfth Night was taken up again, but in a sane cutting based on Lembcke's trans- lation. The new version has been even more successful than the first, thanks mainly to Olaf Poulscn's now historic Sir Tob3^ Edvard Brandes in his review of the premier complained that the lyric beauty of the play had been sacrificed.^ And Vilhelm Moller in Tilskueren agrees with him, but he can not refrain from unqualified admiration for this glorious Sir Toby: "Nej, saadan en sej og but Drukkenskab, saadan en staedig Drilsk- hed, saadan en aa-gaa-Fanden-i voldsk Ligegladhed der kom frem i hele hans Legcme naar han dansede. Det er at skabe en historisk Skikkelse paa Scenen."-" No wonder that Hellig Tre Kongers Aften has been per- formed sixty-five times, a total for the two versions of one hundred seven- teen. Only A Midsummer height's Dream surpasses this record. A whole series of Sille Be3^er's "Bearbeidelser" followed in the train of Viola. The}^ differ only in the respect that some are worse than others. The worst of all is Livet i Skoven,^^ an adaptation of As You Like It, which opened the season of 1849-50. That Heiberg, who objected to Hoedt's comparative^ innocent cutting of Hamlet, should have allowed it, passes comiprchension. For all that is left of Shakespeare's play when Sille Beyer is through with it, is the general outline of the action, some of the names, and the setting. That the exiled duke is called Robert, and the usurper, Philip, that Le Beau is omitted and his speeches given to Touchstone, — « Poliliken November 26, 1892. " 10:94. 1893. *^ Livel i Skoven. Romaatisk Lystspii i 4 Acter. En Bearbeidelse af V/. Shakespeares As You Like It, ved Sille Beyer. Kjobenhavn. 1850. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 97 these are not significant changes. But the adaptor has not been content with such trifles. As in Viola, she is obsessed with the notion that every- thing must be expressly motivated. Orlando is in love with Rosalind be- fore the play opens; Duke Frederik (Philip) goes out into the Forest of Arden to hunt down the exiles, falls asleep, is attacked by a wild boar, miraculously saved by Orlando, and, of course, experiences a change of heart and surrenders his usurped crown. Some changes can not be ac- counted for at all. Thus the Oliver of A 5 Yott Like It is eliminated in Livet i Skoven; his name, office, and speeches are given — mirahile dictu — to Jaques ! Oliver's role as villain goes to the servant Dennis. Most startling of all is the effort to equalize the roles of Rosalind and Celia. This is done by giving the initiative and most of the witty speeches to Celia, and mak- ing Touchstone the deus ex machina who arranges the denouement in the last act. For this shift of emphasis, however, there was a very practi- cal reason. Rosalind is tall and fair; Celia is "low and browner than her brother." Now Fru Heiberg was low and dark, and must accordingly, play Celia. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to exalt Celia at the expense of Rosalind. It may be that the trickery was unconscious, for even Fru Heiberg seems not to have known that the slightest violence had been done to the play.^^ Nor were the critics of 1849 much more acute. Berlingske Tidende" praises Livet i Skoven as a thoroughly successful theatre-piece, arranged with fine knowledge of stage effects. Something of the beauty of the orig- inal may, indeed, be gone, but this is compensated for by the gain in sim- plicity, clearer motivation, and, as a result, the greater intelHgibility. Even Meyer Goldschmidt praised it as a skilful adaptation, though he was too keen not to see that a great deal had been lost in the process of amputation and arrangement.^^ In 1874, however, when the Sille Beyer version was revived, the tone of the press reviews was greatly clianged. Fcsdrelandet*^ says that although a reader of As You Like It is confused by the glowing colors, the many episodes, and the interwoven sub-plots, two characters stand out — Rosa- lind, the half-girlish lover, and the melancholy Jaques. In a stage version, cuttings and shifts are to be expected, but we have a right to ask that characters remain clear and distinct. If an adaptor is so blind that he will change Jaques into a sentimental lover in the middle of the play, and assign to the rather cold and commonplace Celia many of the speeches that most finely reveal the character of Rosalind, then one can compare him only to a woodsman who levels'^^the forest, leaving only clumps of ^'■Op.ciL 3:22. " September 3, 1849. «!>Nord og SydX-M. 1849. " January 26, 1874. 9S MARTIN B. RUUD underbnish, where, to be sure, one detects the odor of flowers, but misses the great trees that once stood there. The best that can be said of Livet i Skovcn is that it reminds us of Shakespeare. Dagbladet^^ is even more severe. The reA^ewer calculates ironically how many characters Sille Beyer has saved. "First of all, the wicked Oliver, Orlando's brother, is con- verted into an admirable fellow, whose sins are poured on the devoted head of Duke Philip, and who is merged with the melancholy Jaques. Second, such of Le Beau's speeches as are needed are given to Touchstone, while Sir Oliver Martext, Sylvius, William, and certain other minor characters are eliminated. Of the servants, Dennis becomes steward to Orlando, a back-biter and traitor — a character not found in Shakespeare at all." The rest, too, are painfully transformed — Rosalind, from a witty, lively, romantic girl in love to a highly proper young lady; Corin from an ami- able and interesting fool to an elephant in love, etc. The attempt to moti- vate the usurping duke's change of heart, the writer calls "crude and mxechanical." Berlingske Tidende°^ remarks that the result of the revamp- ing is a thinness and uncertainty of characterization which makes it impos- sible to follow the characters at all. They are one thing at one moment, quite another the next. Yet this odd caricature reached the comparatively high total of forty performances between the premier in 1847 and the collapse in 1874, after which the national theatre abandoned it. In May, 1913, Dagmartheatret brought out Wildenvej^'s adaptation of As You Like It^"^ with Johanne Dybwad herself as Rosalind. It scored in Copenhagen quite as decided a hit a^ it had already scored in Christiania. From May 8 to May 31 — the end of the season — it was played twenty-two times to crowded houses. Lixet i Skoven was followed in due course by Kongens LcBge, an adapta- tion after the usual Sille Beyer pattern of All's Well That Ends Well.^^ This metamorphosis is not quite so complete as that of As You Like It, but it is exceedingly characteristic. Froken Beyer's chief aim seems to have been to preserve Helena's maiden modesty. She is changed from a rather robust Elizabethan to a sentimental love-lorn lass in the first three acts, and to a fascinating country girl who wins Bertram by her own charms, in the last two. Every precaution has been taken to pro- tect the virgin reserve of the heroine. Thus it is Parolles, not Helena, who suggests following Bertram to the court, and it is the king who, quite as a stroke of genius, fixes her reward for curing him of his illness. This, *" Same date. w Same date. '2 See Shakespeare in Norway. Publications of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian •Study 4:136 £E. " Kongens Lcege. Romantisk Lystspil i 5 Acter. Efter W. Shakespeares All's Well That Ends Well. Bearbeidet af S. Beyer. Kjobenhavn. 1850. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 99 of course, is not Shakespeare's Helena, but a young lady of the upper mid- dle class of Sille Beyer's Copenhagen. Morgenposten^^ reviewed the production favorably, but Fcsdrelandet,^^ the organ of what Overskou and Fru Heiberg called the "Anti-Heiberg cHque," handled it severely. The reviewer remarks, very justly, that this is not Shakespeare, but a new play, in which the heroine has been converted into a love-sick girl who is one thing in the first half of the play, and quite another in the second. Liter airt Maanedsskrift°^ thinks that Kon- gens LcBge is pretty dilute stuff — a mild whiskey sling with generous por- tions of sugar and water. Overskou, of course, attributes the unfavorable criticism to Heiberg's enemies, and records as a matter of fact that the adaptation was received with great applause. The statement is confirmed in a measure by the press, and quite decisively by the theatre records, for it was performed fourteen times in its first season — an unusual record in those days — and remained popular for more than a decade. Up to May 21, 1863, when it was played for the last time, it had been given forty- five times. Lovhud og LovbriAd,^'' an adaptation, as fatuous as the others from Sille Beyer's hand, of Love's Labour's Lost, was put on the boards early in the season of 1853-54 (September 13), but met with a cool reception. Even Overskou can not claim more than that it escaped positive failure, in spite of Fru Heiberg's admirable interpretation of the princess, Michael Wiehe's of the king, and Rosenkilde's delicious Don Armado.^^ Berlingske Tidende,^^ nevertheless, says that the "Bearbeidelse" has been made with skill and tact, and results in an admirable play. It is not so well satisfied with Froken Beyer's poetic style, which sinks fre- quently to banal triviality. Literairt Maanedsskrijt,^^ on the other hand, criticised the play as an egregious display of bad taste. "A few fine bits of characterization — the only suggestions of Shakespeare's esprit — and a few piquant situations, sustain a body puffed up with unhealthy cor- pulence. The dialogue is horrible throughout — saturated with a lyricism which can only be described as in wretched taste." That this kind of stuff has been praised in some portion of the public press, the reviewer explains by saying that the pubhc may be so overwhelmed by spurious beauties that in the end they make an impression through sheer force of numbers. " September 26, 1850. '5 September 27, 1850. M 1 (October 1850-ApriI, 1851). " Lovhud og Lovbriid. Lystspil i 4 Acter. En Bearbeidelse af W. Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost ved Sille Beyer. Kjobenhavn. 1853. "O^. cit. 6:178. '» September 17, 1853. »o October, 1853. 100 MARTIN B. RUUD To this attack "E. S." replied in Kjdhenhavnsposien}^ He blames Adolph Hertz for making charges without sustaining them. And then he misses the point by assuming that Hertz had attacked Lovers Labour's Lost. "But this play is one of the most difficvilt of Shakespeare's to transplant, since so much is necessarily lost in the process. The adaptation, there- fore, must be judged in the Hght of this difficulty, and its fitness to be performed by the opportunities it gives to the actors." Hertz answered "Criticus E. S.," as he called him, in Literairt Maanedsskrijt for No- vember of the same year.®^ jje dismisses "E. S.'s" ^ieiense oi Love' s Labour' s Lost with the curt remark that he is concerned with Sille Beyer's play, not with Shakespeare's. He admits that an adaptor must have liberty to make necessary changes, but to alter as Sille Beyer has done, by elim- inating the page, the curate, and the schoolmaster, is to make a new play. As evidence of his statement that the play is "gjennemsivet af en 3'derlig smaglos Lyrik," he might offer much, but contents himself with the fol- lowing pearl of price : I hver en Taare praeget er et Billed — Thi uafbrudt belyst af Elskov's Lue, Har Phantasiens Pensel frem det stillet — Dog for dit Savn [Savnet af dig ] min Glasde skal f ordunkle ! Drag Ringen om din Arm dens hvide Bue, Da ser jeg Lykken's Maal i Haabet funkle. Now, he asks, what does this mean? The plea that the fitness of a play must be judged by the opportunities it affords to the staff of the theatre, is, of course, not sound, for either one is an artist or one is not, and pre- sumably a true artist can do as well in a good play as in a bad one. Lovbud og Lovbrud was withdrawn after six only moderately well attended performances. One might suppose that the Royal Theatre wotdd by this time have been surfeited with Froken Sille Beyer's adaptations. But not quite. When, on September 1, 1859, Much Ado about Nothing was played, it was in a version of the familiar sort under the title KjcBrlighed paa Vilds- porP FcBdr eland et^^ insists that it would have been the part of wisdom to write an entirely new play on one of the plots of Much Ado, rather than mxirder both and call the result Shakespeare. Morgenposten^^ says that the first performance was successful, but complains of the undue prominence which the cutting gives to the Dogberry-Verges episodes. Overskou^^ records that this last effort of Sille Beyer's was an unquali- 61 October 27, 1853. M P. 45. " Kjarlighed paa Vildspor has never been published. M September 5, 1859. M September 5, 1859. •« Op. cit. Review of season 1859-60. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 101 fied success, borne largely by Nielsen's Leonato, Wiehe's Benedict, and Phister's Dogberry. It achieved the distinctly creditable total of nine performances in the season of 1859-60. In the following season (1860-61) it was played only twice, but six times in the season 1861-62. It was then withdrawn permanently. In 1880, however, Much Ado was revived in a new stage version by H. P. Hoist. ' The final word on Froken Beyer and her crimes against Shakespeare was written by Georg Brandes in 1868 on the occasion of a performance of Viola.'' "Most people," says one of Tieck's characters apropos of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, "are too feeble to know the faith and humility necessary to an understanding of a piece of genuine literature." "You are right in using the word feeble," answers his interlocutor, "for genuine humility depends upon strength." We need not seek far for an application of these words. If a foreigner, an Englishman or a German, were to learn that we play Shakespeare's comedies on our stage in a series of wretched and garbled manglings, he might be disposed to believe that we Danes owed these adaptations to some coarse fellow who, in his brutality, without fear and without shame, had laid hands on the anointed of the muses; and he would doubtless be startled to learn that a modest little old lady had ventured on such a deed. But Tieck is right; imbecility has even less confidence in great souls than has arrogance and coarseness. The good old lady went about her work with the best of intentions. First of all, she divided Shakespeare's play into two parts, of which she rejected one, then tinkered a little with the characters of the other. "By the azure of my stockings," she declared, "I'll adapt these personages to modern dramatic requirements." And then she brought out a whole sack of fig leaves, and wherever Shakespeare had left the nude, she laid a fig leaf. She dressed up his nude figures; she made a few slight changes and alterations in them, and in her innocence she never suspected that the trifle she had taken away was the tip of their noses. Her old-maid nerves could not endure frank burlesque, and her dilute mentality could not comprehend what Malvolio had to do with the duke and Viola. The preface to her adaptation is commended to all lovers of the naive. "Of the double plot," she writes, "... I have been attracted more by the erotic-romantic, with its appurtenant comic characters, than by the Malvolio intrigue, however much I admire its force and its telling satire. It may easily be omitted, since it is without essential connection with the love story, and it may provide the material for another comedy, if anyone should care to use it." How generous! The old lady portions out Shakespeare's effects. She did not know what she was about. She had it on Heiberg's authority that what she did was very good. We know, of course, that Shakespeare lay beyond Heiberg's pale. He was too exclusively an admirer of Goethe to be able to share Goethe's boundless admiration for the English poet. He was too romance [romansk] in his sympathies and training, too moderate in his passions, ever to feel the divine shudder which the French call "ie frisson de Shakespeare." Assured by Heiberg, Froken Beyer applied a foreign standard to the romantic works of EngUsh genius, and the apparent duality of the action seemed to her a violation of the rules. But even from her own point of view it is difficult to defend what she has done. When anything is so colorful, so amusing, so perfect as that which she has omitted, who would not like to see it within the time demanded by En Sondag " Illuslreret Tidende 9:no. 45. Reprinted in Kriliker og Portrailer pp. 70 (I. 102 MARTIN B. RUUD paa Amager, and who would miss it for the sake of a rule? If the scenes are super- fluous, then how essential, as the proverb has it, is the superfluous! And if their presence in the play does violate the rules — what of it? Would any people sacrifice a victory because it had been won in defiance of the rules of war, or a hero because he was born out of wedlock? Sille Beyer passed, but there was still H. P. Hoist. As early as 1864 the theatre had planned to bring out his adaptation of A Winter's Tale in the German acting version by Dingelstedt.®^ For one reason or another, however, the production was postponed till the opening of the season 1868-69. One is glad to say that it met with a chilly reception. Over- skou saj^s that Dingelstedt and Hoist, seconded by Flotow's music, de- stroyed the idyllic atmosphere of the original, and attempted in vain to substitute for it the pomp and circumstance of the masque. This crit- icism is thoroughly right, and in different waj^s it is repeated b}^ the press — FcBdrelandet,^^ Berlingske Tidende,''^ and DagbladetJ^ In general it may be said that Hoist's version is simply a translation into Danish of Dingelstedt's. It foUows the German with only trifling variations. Mechanically the two are identical — four acts with ten scene- shifts. Hoist has even followed Dingelstedt's scene division, and has omit- ted only one scene (D. IV, 7) — that in which the shepherd and his son lord it over Autolycus. The dramatis personae are identical in the two versions: the shepherd and his son are given names — Tityrus and Mopsus respectivel}''; the two shepherdesses are merged in one, Mopsa; and the lords who have speaking parts are eliminated, their speeches, so far as they are retained, being assigned to Cleomenes and Dion. This latter arrange- ment is made possible by sending not Cleomenes and Dion, but a high priest of Apollo, to Delphi. Three principles lie at the bottom of the Holst-Dingelstedt version. First, Dingelstedt has aimed to reduce the number of scene-shifts to secure continmty of action. Thus I, 1; III, 1; and III, 3 are cut out, and the last replaced by a new scene in which Antigonus, who has been ordered simply to carry off Perdita to a desert place, appears in a wild of Sicily, not Bohemia, and then suddenl}' declares that he will take her to Arcadia, which, in Dingelstedt replaces the Bohemia of Shakespeare. A long time afterguards we learn incidentally that Antigonus has been killed by a bear. By this maneuvering we are spared an excursion to the coast of Bohemia (Arcadia). Second, Dingelstedt has undoubtedly sought to make the chain of causation more obvious and specific. In Shakespeare we are surprised •9 El Vintereventyr. Romantisk Skuespil i 4 Acter. Bearbeidet after Shakespeares The Winter's Tale og Dingelstedt's Ein Wintermarchen af H. P. Hoist. Kjobenhavn. 1868. " September 5, 1868. '0 September 4, 1868. n September 4, 1868. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 103 at the senseless jealousy of Leontes. In the German version we are prepared for it, mainly by stage directions, but also by some slight alterations in the text. The purpose is evident from the first piece of business in the play: Leontes [indent er, seiner Unruhe nicht mehr Herr . . . ] and further, after Hermione's speech, Ihr fasst ihn auch zn kalt. [Leontes zuckt zusamnien\ When Leontes and Polyxenes talk about their children, Leontes remarks maliciously to Polyxenes and Hermione: Dasselbe Amt hat dicser Schalk bei mir, Deswegen bleibe ich mit ihm. Ihr habt Wohl bessere Unterhaltung. In like manner, Polyxenes suspects at once that his son is in love with Per- dita. In the pastoral scene, where, in disguise, he talks with her of the grafted flowers, a stage direction reads, Polyxenes: Doch die Natur entartet, wenn sie nicht Gezuchtet und veredelt wird durch Kunst. [Sie {i.e., Perdita) forschend anblickend] Finally, to explain the activity of Autolycus in the denouement, Dingel- stedt makes him the runaway Fool of Florizel. In the third place, as I have already indicated, the adaptors make a show piece of it — a sort of gorgeous masque at court. The play opens in the banqueting hall of the palace. The stage direction reads: [Schauplaiz — Festhalle zu Konigspalaste in Syrakus. Jm Hintergrunde, zwischen Sdulen und erhoht, das Banket. Itn Vordergrunde Musiker und Tdnzer, beim Aufgehen des Vorhangs rnit Auffiihrung eines Waffentanzes, unter Begleitung von Blasinstrumenten und Saitenspielen, beschdftigt.] The trial is converted into an elaborate ceremonial. The First Officer of the Court (in Shakespeare) becomes the Senior Judge of a bench of six. Dion and Cleomenes as messengers to Delphi are replaced by a priest of Apollo with a numerous train of priests, acolytes, and virgins. The stage direction for their entrance will give some notion of the ceremony: [Hinter der Scene links, mdchtige selfsame Tone. Der Zugder Pricster naht schr lang- sam. Voraus: einige Tempeldiener mit Tuba oder Horn. DannKnaben, Weihrauchgefdsse schwingend. Vier Priester A polios bekrdnzt. Zwei Jungfrauen, nach der Art Pythia gekleidet, verhiillt, mit aufgelostem Haar, tragen zwischen sich z« den Hiinden einc Urne, mit vier grossen Siegeln verschlossen. Hinter ihnen der Oberpriester. Vier Pricster. Knaben. Bei seinem Eintritt stehen alle ehrfurchtsvoll auf, auch Leontes und Hermione. Das Volk wirft sich zum Teil nieder.] This ambitious piece, which savors a good deal of some English and American show productions of Shakespeare, survived only five perform- ances. Of it, Georg Brandes said in Illustreret Tidende:''^ "9 (1867-1868), September. Reprinted in Kritiker ag PorlraiUr pp. 3 ff. 104 MARTIN B. RUUD To waste any words on the acting version would be futile. What boots it to complain of the lack of respect we are in the habit of showing Shakespeare, when one has not the power to stop that thinning out and germanizing of the great Englishman, which apparently are deemed essential on our stage when a cutting is to be made. The character who has suffered most is Perdita. When a character is delineated in such few strokes, every speech is a treasure. But in the present version, the atmos- phere that hovered about her words is dissipated and fled. Her speeches are cut, shortened, filed away, and the word or two which in such masterly fashion reveals her feelings at the death of the queen, are gone. Only one who takes a positive delight in cutting up a living body can so mutilate a beautiful thing. For the rest, this version is constructed on the same principle as the others. Take away the spirit of the time; replace it by that of a vapid no-time. To this may be added that the interpolated processions convert the drama into a ballet in some places, while in others the deafening music turns it into melodrama. When one sees this hodge-podge of all the arts, one realizes for the first time with what ample justification and with what barren results J. L. Heiberg strove his whole life long to keep the form.s of art distinct. Early in the season of 1893-94, The Winter's Tale was revived in a less pretentious version based on Lembcke's translation. The comedy scenes were well done, but the reviewers agree that the performance, in the words of Politiken, lacked Festivatas — light, color, and the pulse of youth. It was too much like a "command" performance at court. '^^ To H. P. Hoist the Danish stage owes also acting versions of A Mid- summer Night's Dream and Much Ado about Nothing. The former"* was played for the first time on March 30, 1879. It is in a very tolerable and skilful cutting, preser\ang much more accurately than either of the others not the action merely, but the tone of the original. The translation un- doubtedly follows Oehlenschlasger, but not more closely than Oehlen- schlseger follows Tieck-Schlegel, or Lembcke, Foersom. It is certainly not, therefore, as a writer in Daghladet implies, ^^ a disingenuous plagiarism. At all events, Hoist had the satisfaction, after the disappointing failure of The Winter's Tale, of scoring an unqualified success. The performance was an artistic delight, says Berlingske Tidende;''^ music, acting, stage- setting — all combining to produce a thoroughly imified and organic whole. DagUadeP"^ speaks of the beaut^'' and fitness of Mendelssohn's music, and warmly congratulates the theatre on an admirable and satisfying piece of work. It rather objects to Hoist's translation, remarking that there is no excuse for using it when Lembcke is available. A Midsummer Night's Dream maintained its popularity. With one hundred and eighteen performances it heads the list of Shakespeare plays. "September 20, 21, 1893. Of. Berlingske Tidende September 21, 1893. '* W. Shakespeare: En Skjarsommernalsdrom. Romantisk Skuespil bearbeidet til Mendelssohn- Bartholdy's Musik og Indrettet til Brug for det kongelige Theater af H. P. Hoist. Kjobenhavn. 1879. ■6 Dagbladel April 22, 1880. " March 31, 1879. "April 1, 1879. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 105 Twelfth Night, however, with one hundred and seventeen, is a close second. Undoubtedly this popularity was due in great measure to the genius of Olaf Poulsen, of whose superb Bottom the town never tired. In 1903, moreover, its popularity secured further impetus through the appear- ance of Johanne Dybwad, from the National Theatre at Christiania, as Puck. Fru Dybwad instantly gained for herself that unique place in the hearts of the playgoers of Copenhagen which she had long since won in Norway, and which she has never lost. Berlingske Tidende''^ wrote in its review of the performance of September 23, at which Fru Dybwad made her debut before a Danish audience: "It may be said without exagger- ation that we really understood Puck for the first time last night — under- stood that he is the central figure of the play. It were too much to say that we had ever suspected it before. We really saw the fantastic Puck who plaj^s tricks all about him, and who literally snaps and sparkles out of pure joy in his deviltr}'." And PoHt-iken,'^^ usually a little super- cilious and hypercritical, was equally enthusiastic: "Fru Dybwad so com- pletely dominated the performance . . . that even in the scenes in which Puck does not appear, the memory of her sparkling presence lingered. Thus a play we have often merely endured was given a shimmer of roman- tic lunacy and deep human wisdom fused in one . . . and all because a little woman played about on the boards with gestures we had ne\'-er seen before . . . There was the jubilation at the theatre which one sees only on one of its great nights. Fru Dybwad's genius won Copenhagen definitively and decisively." In Tilskueren,^° Professor Vilhelm Andersen wrote a delightful and penetrating study of Fru Dybwad's art. "It was not art, or, rather, it was more than art, it was a bit of mythology. One saw a creature of nature; the player before the play, with all the possi- bilities of his art latent within him. Song and dance and acting in one and the same person— a creature without sex, a heartless thing, whose delight it was to toy with hearts . . . in short, art itself in its beginnings." Finally, in 1910, the exquisite comedy was played by actors from the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen's wonderful open-air theatre in Dyre- haven. Here under the old beeches, in the mingled moonlight and twi- light of a northern night— one can not conceive of a setting lovelier or more appropriate. Dr. Maurice F. Egan, who reviewed it for Theatret,^^ said truly: "Such a performance as this is conceivable only in a country in which there is a high civilization combined with a love of natiu-c and an intimate sense of its shifting moods." " September 24, 1903. '« September 24, 1903. 8» Pp. 48011. 1909. "9 (1909-1910):137. Mr. Egan was American minister to Denmark from 1907 to 1918. 106 MARTIN B. RUUD In April, 1880, the theatre brought out Hoist's version of Much Ado, Stor Staahei for Ingenting,^'^ to replace Sille Beyer's impossible Kjoer- lighcd paa Vildspor. This is based frankly on Oechelhauser's German adaptation, Viel Ldrmen wn Nichts. The departures are trifling. The translation, however, is a brisk colloquial rendering of the English original which goes admirably in the repartee between Benedict and Beatrice, and in the low comed}'' scenes, but which distinctly jars when one meets it in the arraignment of Hero. The new cutting met with but mediocre success. Certainly there is no enthusiasm about the press reviews, although the actors receive -credit for good work, and the theatre for an adequate staging. Dagbladet^ again takes occasion to remind the authorities that there is a standard Danish translation of Shakespeare, and insists that stage versions should be based upon it. Stor Staahei for Ingenting was given six times in April and May, 1880, and five times in September and October of the same year. It was then permanently withdrawn. In the meantime, while these adaptations of H. P. Hoist held the boards, the Royal Theatre had added two other of Shakespeare's plays to the repertoire — Cymheline^^ in a translation and "Bearbeidelse" by Julius Martensen, and Henry IV in a version practically identical with that performed in Christiania in Bjomson's time.^^ Martensen's Cymheline is important inasmuch as it is the first of the many and varied adaptations to be made with a clear knowledge of the Elizabethan stage and the limitations which it imposed upon the playwright. Most stage versions, as Martensen points out in the essay appended to his own,^^ have been made quite arbitrarily, and are as a result, inartistic and unsatisfactory. It is as though one were to translate a for- eign classic without knowing the language in which it is written! If, therefore, one knows the stage conditions which a play of Shakespeare's had to satisfy, it is possible that one can remove from it the purely acci- dental and ephemeral features without injiiry to substance or atmosphere, and so adapt it intelligently to the technical demands of our own theatre. The stage of Shakespeare, as he reminds us, was quite unlike the modem picture stage with its proscenium arch, its ctutain, and its imi- tative scenery. In consequence, there were no scene shifts and no regular pauses. The performance was to all intents and purposes continuous. '2 William Shakespeare. Stor Staahei for Ingenting. Romantisk Lystspil i 5 Acter. Oversat af H. P. Hoist og Indrettet til Theaterbrug efter Wilh. Oechelhauser's Viel Larmen urn Nichts (1878). Kjobenhavn. 1880. M April 22, 1880. Cf. also Berlingske Tidende April 21, 1880. '* Cymbeline. Eventyrligt Skuespil af Shakespeare, bearbeidet for den danske Scene. Med et Tillaeg om de shakespearske Skuespil og det moderne Theater. Kjobenhavn. 1871. '• Cf. Shakespeare in Norway p. 189. * Om de shakespeareske Skuespil, etc. See note 84. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 107 This is the fundamental peculiarity to bear in mind. An Elizabethan play is made up, from the modern point of view, of one act with many scenes. How is such a play to be performed on a present day stage? Martensen has small patience with the "romantic" protest against tamper- ing with the text of the plays. He has as little patience with the alter- native — to give them upon a specially designed Elizabethan stage. The stage of Elizabeth is dead; we have to meet the demands of the nine- teenth century theatre. And this we must do not by recldess and arbitrary cutting, but by a discreet removal of features which modem stagecraft renders superfluous. He then proceeds to a critical examination of his adaptation of Cymheline with a view to showing what elements are obsolete and unnecessary, and how they have been removed. The explan- ation is so long that I can give only its basic features. A few scenes widely separated in the original have been brought together to avoid unneces- sary scene-shifts; long explanatory speeches have been cut. For instance, Act I, 1 is omitted, and the material facts communicated incidentally in later scenes. And finally, what Martensen calls "intermezzo scenes," i.e., scenes which do not advance the action, the sole purpose of which is to give notice of shifts in time or place, or both, have been deleted, neces- sary information which they contain being given indirectly in other ways. Such "intermezzo scenes" are II, 1; III, 1 (which is fused with III, 5); III, 7; IV, 1. The discovery of these scenes seems to me of real impor- tance, and deserving of more attention than has apparently been given to it. At the close of the essay Martensen reinforces his argument by certain suggestions for stage versions of Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice. He would end Act I of Macbeth with scene 6; scene 7 may be fused with scene 5. Act II should close with the flight of the princes; scene 2 is a pure intermezzo scene to allow sufficient time to elapse between Macbeth's election and his coronation. On the Elizabethan stage, where the action went on uno tenore, such a filler was necessary; on our own it may well be omitted, since all that we need to know we learn from Banquo's so- liloquy at the opening of Act III. As to The Merchant of Venice, he holds that the common criticism of Act V as inorganic, could have no validity at the time the play was written. The unbroken progress of the action would effectually conceal any break between what we call Act IV and Act V. The same clTect of continuity can be secured on the modern stage by a division into three acts. The third act would then begin in the court and end in Portia's garden. Indeed, some such arrangement has been used with great suc- cess at the Burgtheater in Vienna. "This play is one of those which re- quire a thorough-going adaptation [Bearbcidelse], and which can not 108 MARTIN B. RUUD be performed in a mere cutting [forkortet Literaturoversaettelse], without reminding us of the old maxim, "summum jus, simima injuria." Cyrnheline was played for the first time at the Royal Theatre on Oc- tober 4, 1871, with decided success, being given no less than nineteen times the first season. The press, however, is hardly more than mildly approv- ing. Fcrdrelandet^'' remarks that Cyrnheline presents unusual difficulties to theatregoers of our day. It is frankly a romantic play, with none of that brilliant dialogue and those revealing glimpses of life which one so often finds in Shakespeare. Savte for the closing scene, there is hardly a dramatic episode in it, and even here the supra-natural is dominant. The result to a casual reader and spectator is stark confusion. Beneath this romantic waywardness, however, lies penetrating characterization — of the loyal and lovely Imogen, of Posthumus, lachimo, and of Cloten, sordid and earthly in all his desires and appetites. The reviewer finds Martensen's adaptation on the whole excellent. The acting was uni- formly good; the staging magnificent. Berlingske Tidende^^ thinks that the conventions of a Shakespearean romance are an effective barrier to real enjoymeiit by a modem audience — the sudden and violent shifts in time and place, the improbable wager between Posthumus and lachimo, and lachimo's trick. The play is one which necessitates the laying aside of our critical prepossessions and giving ourselves up to a fairy tale. And we are not accustomed to do this. Hence the tempered approval with which it was received. The reviewer feels that the cutting was too severe, and robbed the play of much of its Shakespearean quality. But the acting was good, and the setting extraordinarily beautiful. No sooner had the Royal Theatre brought Cyrnheline on the boards, than Lembcke sued it for improper use of his translation. Martensen, of course, was cited as co-defendant. Lembcke charged that Marten- sen had taken over bodily more than five hundred lines, that he had changed others only slightl}^ that his translation was ill-concealed plagiarism. ^^ To this Martensen replied,^" first, that of the five hundred lines in ques- tion, many are radically different from. Lembcke's; second, a consider- able number of the verses can be translated in only one way if the trans- lator is to be reasonably faithful to the original; third, still other verses must be translated in only one way by everyone who has the slightest feeling for Danish. Martensen also makes much in his reply of the cor- respondences between Lembcke's translation and Hagberg's Swedish. "No. 233. 1871. 83 October 5, 1871. No. 237. 3' Til nermere Oplysning om TlieateroverscBltelsen af Cymbeline. Af Edvard Lembcke. Kjobenhavn. 1S72. *" Ilr. Lembcke og hans Eiendomsrei. I Anlednittg af Processen om Cymbeline. Af Julius Martensen. Kjobenhavn. 1872. SHAKESPEARE ON THE DANISH STAGE 109 There can, of course, be no doubt that Martensen has been mark- edly influenced by Lembcke. There can be even less doubt, however, that the resemblances do not constitute plagiarism. If they do, then Lembcke certainly plagiarized Foersom, Wulff, and Hagberg. It is ob\dous that when an earlier translation of a foreign original exists, later translations are certain to be influenced by it, so that resemblances between the two will be found. The number of these correspondences and their closeness will be greatly increased when the two translators are contemporaries. This was substantially the opinion of the coiu-t in its decision acquitting the director of the theatre, Conferentsraad Linde, and dismissing the charges.^'^ Cymbeline was played forty-three times, from October 4, 1871 to June 6, 1888. As in Norway, so in Denmark, the history of Henry IV is the history of the Falstaff scenes. The rest hardly mattered. Some of those from Part I were given by Lindgren at a private benefit performance on April 6, 1816, but the real credit of bringing Falstaff on the Danish stage belongs to Kristian Mantzius. In 1872 he brought out at the Casino Prinds Hen- rik og Falstaff, a more or less coherent arrangement of the appropriate scenes from Parts I and II, and scored, as the critics say, a conspicuous personal success as Falstaff. ^^ Six years later (September 23, 1877) he carried his Falstaff to the Royal Theatre in a new, more ambitious adaptation, Kong Henrik den Fjerde. The new cutting resembles somewhat Bjornson's of 1865: the first two acts of Part I are retained, though much shortened; of Act III, the first long scene is omitted ; Acts IV and V are combined to make the new Act IV by tacking Act V directly on to IV, 2 ; the fifth act is made up of the tavern scene (II, 3) and the death scene (IV, 4) from Part II. Both F