Chapter 12

answer are hurled at us in the same speech?"

In the same year, 1895, Georg Brandes published in _Samtiden_,[15] at that time issued in Bergen, two articles on _Shakespeare's Work in his Period of Gloom_ (Shakespeare i hans Digtnings mørke Periode) which embody in compact form that thesis since elaborated in his big work. Shakespeare's tragedies were the outcome of a deep pessimism that had grown for years and culminated when he was about forty. He was tired of the vice, the hollowness, the ungratefulness, of life. The immediate cause must remain unknown, but the fact of his melancholy seems clear enough. His comedy days were over and he began to portray a side of life which he had hitherto kept hidden. _Julius Caesar_ marks the transition. In Brutus we are reminded that high-mindedness in the presence of a practical situation often fails, and that practical mistakes are often as fatal as moral ones. From Brutus, Shakespeare came to Hamlet, a character in transition from fine youth, full of illusions, to a manhood whose faith is broken by the hard facts of the world. This is distinctly autobiographical. _Hamlet_ and Sonnet 66 are of one piece. Shakespeare was disillusioned. Add to this his struggle against his enemy, Puritanism, and a growing conviction that the miseries of life bottom in ignorance, and the reason for his growing pessimism becomes clear. From Hamlet, whom the world crushes, to Macbeth, who faces it with its own weapons, yet is haunted and terrified by what he does, the step is easy. He knew Macbeth as he knew Hamlet.

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

The scheming Iago, too, he must have known, for he has portrayed him with matchless art. "But _Othello_ was a mere monograph; _Lear_ is a cosmic picture. Shakespeare turns from _Othello_ to _Lear_ in consequence of the necessity which the poet feels to supplement and round out his beginning." _Othello_ is noble chamber music; _Lear_ is a symphony played by a gigantic orchestra. It is the noblest of all the tragedies, for in it are all the storm and tumult of life, all that was struggling and raging in his own soul. We may feel sure that the ingratitude he had met with is reflected in Goneril and Regan. Undoubtedly, in the same way, the poet had met the lovely Cleopatra and knew what it was to be ensnared by her.

Brandes, as has often been pointed out, did not invent this theory of Shakespeare's psychology but he elaborated it with a skill and persuasiveness which carried the uncritical away.

In his second article Brandes continues his analysis of Shakespeare's pessimism. In the period of the great tragedies there can be no doubt that Shakespeare was profoundly pessimistic. There was abundant reason for it. The age of Elizabeth was an age of glorious sacrifices, but it was also an age of shameless hypocrisy, of cruel and unjust punishments, of downright oppression. Even the casual observer might well grow sick at heart. A nature so finely balanced as Shakespeare's suffered a thousandfold. Hence this contempt for life which showed only corruption and injustice. Cressida and Cleopatra are sick with sin and evil; the men are mere fools and brawlers.

There is, moreover, a feeling that he is being set aside for younger men. We find clear expression of this in _All's Well That Ends Well_, in _Troilus and Cressida_. There is, too, in _Troilus and Cressida_ a speech which shows the transition to the mood of _Coriolanus_, an aristocratic contempt for the mass of mankind. This is the famous speech in which Ulysses explains the necessity of social distinctions. Note in this connection Casca's contemptuous reference to the plebeians, Cleopatra's fear of being shown to the mob. Out of this feeling grew _Coriolanus_. The great patrician lives on the heights, and will not hear of bending to the crowd. The contempt of Coriolanus grew to the storming rage of Timon. When Coriolanus meets with ingratitude, he takes up arms; Timon is too supremely indifferent to do even this.

Thus Shakespeare's pessimism grew from grief over the power of evil (Othello) and misery over life's sorrows, to bitter hatred (Timon). And when he had raged to the uttermost, something of the resignation of old age came to him. We have the evidence of this in his last works. Perhaps, as in the case of his own heroes, a woman saved him. Brandes feels that the evolution of Shakespeare as a dramatist is to be traced in his women. We have first the domineering scold, reminding him possibly of his own domestic relations (Lady Macbeth); second, the witty, handsome women (Portia, Rosalind); third, the simple, naive women (Ophelia, Desdemona); fourth, the frankly sensuous women (Cleopatra, Cressida); and, finally, the young woman viewed with all an old man's joy (Miranda). Again his genius exercises his spell. Then, like Prospero, he casts his magician's staff into the sea.

In 1896 Brandes published his great work on Shakespeare. It arrested attention immediately in every country of the world. Never had a book so fascinating, so brilliant, so wonderfully suggestive, been written on Shakespeare. The literati were captivated. But alas, scholars were not. They admitted that Brandes had written an interesting book, that he had accumulated immense stores of information and given to these sapless materials a new life and a new attractiveness. But they pointed out that not only did his work contain gross positive errors, but it consisted, from first to last, of a tissue of speculations which, however ingenious, had no foundation in fact and no place in cool-headed criticism.[16] Theodor Bierfreund, one of the most brilliant Shakespeare scholars in Denmark, almost immediately attacked Brandes in a long article in the Norwegian periodical _Samtiden_.[17]

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

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

He acknowledges the great merits of the work. It is an enormously rich compilation of Shakespeare material gathered from the four corners of the earth and illuminated by the genius of a great writer. He gives the fullest recognition to Brandes' miraculous skill in analyzing characters and making them live before our eyes. But he warns us that Brandes is no critical student of source materials, and that we must be on our guard in accepting his conclusions. It is not so certain that the sonnets mean all that Brandes would have them mean, and it is certain that we must be cautious in inferring too much from _Troilus and Cressida_ and _Pericles_ for, in the opinion of the reviewer, Shakespeare probably had little or nothing to do with them. He then sketches briefly his theory that these plays cannot be Shakespeare's, a theory which he later elaborated in his admirably written monograph, _Shakespeare og hans Kunst_.[18] This, however, belongs to the study of Shakespearean criticism in Denmark.

[18. Copenhagen, 1898.]

So far as I have been able to find, Bierfreund's review was the only one published in Norway immediately after the publication of Brandes' work, but in 1899, S. Brettville Jensen took up the matter again in _For Kirke og Kultur_[19] and, in 1901, Christen Collin vigorously assailed in _Samtiden_ that elaborate and fanciful theory of the sonnets which plays so great a part in Brandes' study of Shakespeare.

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

Brettville Jensen praises Brandes highly. He is always interesting, in harmony with his age, and in rapport with his reader. "But his book is a fantasy palace, supported by columns as lovely as they are hollow and insecure, and hovering in rainbow mists between earth and sky." Brandes has rare skill in presenting hypotheses as facts. He has attempted to reconstruct the life of Shakespeare from his works. Now this is a mode of criticism which may yield valuable results, but clearly it must be used with great care. Shakespeare knew the whole of life, but how he came to know it is another matter. Brandes thinks he has found the secret. Back of every play and every character there is a personal experience. But this is rating genius altogether too cheap. One must concede something to the imagination and the creative ability of the poet. To relate everything in Shakespeare's dramas to the experiences of Shakespeare the man, is both fanciful and uncritical.

The same objection naturally holds regarding the meaning of the sonnets which Brandes has made his own. Here we must bear in mind the fact that much of the language in the sonnets is purely conventional. We should have a difficult time indeed determining just how much is biographical and how much belongs to the stock in trade of Elizabethan sonneteers. Brettville Jensen points out that if the sonnets are the expression of grief at the loss of his beloved, it is a queer contradiction that Sonnet 144, which voices his most poignant sorrow, should date from 1599, the year, according to Brandes, when Shakespeare's comedy period began!

It is doubtless true that the plays and even the sonnets mark great periods in the life of the poet, but we may be sure that the relation between experience and literary creation was not so literal as Brandes would have us believe. The change from mood to mood, from play to play, was gradual, and it never destroyed Shakespeare's poise and sanity. We shall not judge Shakespeare rightly if we believe that personal feeling rather than artistic truth shaped his work.

Two years later Collin, a critic of fine insight and appreciation, wrote in _Samtiden_[20] an article on the sonnets of Shakespeare. He begins by picturing Shakespeare's surprise if he could rise from his grave in the little church at Stratford and look upon the pompous and rather naive bust, and hear the strange tongues of the thousands of pilgrims at his shrine. Even greater would be his surprise if he could examine the ponderous tomes in the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Birmingham which have been written to explain him and his work. And if any of these volumes could interest him at all it would doubtless be those in which ingenious critics have attempted to discover the poet in the plays and the poems. Collin then gives a brief survey of modern Shakespearean criticism--Furnivall, Dowden, Brandl, Boas, ten Brink, and, more recently, Sidney, Lee, Brandes, and Bierfreund. An important object of the study of these men has been to fix the chronology of the plays. They seldom fully agree. Sidney Lee and the Danish critic, Bierfreund, do not accept the usual theory that the eight tragedies from _Julius Caesar_ to _Coriolanus_ reflect a period of gloom and pessimism. In their opinion psychological criticism has, in this instance, proved a dismal failure.

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

The battle has raged with particular violence about the sonnets. Most scholars assume that we have in them a direct presentation (fremstilling) of a definite period in the life of the poet. And by placing this period directly before the creation of _Hamlet_, Brandes has succeeded in making the relations to the "dark lady" a crisis in Shakespeare's life. The story, which, as Brandes tells it, has a remarkable similarity to an ultra-modern naturalistic novel, becomes even more piquant since Brandes knows the name of the lady, nay, even of the faithless friend. All this information Brandes has, of course, taken from Thomas Tyler's introduction to the Irving edition of the sonnets (1890), but his passion for the familiar anecdote has led him to embellish it with immense enthusiasm and circumstantiality.

The hypothesis, however, is essentially weak. Collin disagrees absolutely with Lee that the sonnets are purely conventional, without the slightest biographical value. Mr. Lee has weakened his case by admitting that "key-sonnet" No. 144 is autobiographical. Now, if this be true, then one must assume that the sonnets set forth Shakespeare's relations to a real man and a real woman. But the most convincing argument against the Herbert-Fitton theory lies in the chronology. It is certain that the sonnet fashion was at its height immediately after the publication of Sidney's sequence in 1591, and it seems equally certain that it had fallen off by 1598. This chronology is rendered probable by two facts about Shakespeare's work. First, Shakespeare employs the sonnet in dialogue in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and in _Romeo and Juliet_. These plays belong to the early nineties. Second, the moods of the sonnets exactly correspond, on the one hand, to the exuberant sensuality of _Venus and Adonis_, on the other, to the restraint of the _Lucrece_.

An even safer basis for determining the chronology of the sonnets Collin finds in the group in which the poet laments his poverty and his outcast state. If the sonnets are autobiographical--and Collin agrees with Brandes that they are--then this group (26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 49, 66, 71-75, 99, 110-112, 116, 119, 120, 123, and 124) must refer to a time when the poet was wretched, poor, and obscure. And in this case, the sonnets cannot be placed at 1598-99, when Shakespeare was neither poor nor despised, a time in which, according to Brandes, he wrote his gayest comedies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster.

or

Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice.

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

But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As far as Belmont. In such a night

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

I will not fail you,

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

_Sal_: Why, then you are in love.

_Ant_: Fie, fie!

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

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

_Sal_: Why, then you are in love.

_Ant_: Fie, fie!

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

or possibly:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In such a night

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

I am to learn.

and I, 1-73:

I will not fail you

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

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