An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway - Martin Brown Ruud (book club reads .TXT) 📗

felt

that I had in my soul something that could produce a play with a

little of the fancy and joy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_--and I made

resolutions. But the conditions under which a worker in art lives in

Norway are hard, and all we say or promise avails nothing. But this I

know: I am closer to the ideal of this play now than then, I have a

fuller capacity for joy and a greater power to protect my joy and keep

it inviolate. And if, after all, I never succeed in writing such a play,

it means that circumstances have conquered, and that I have not achieved

what I have ever sought to achieve.

 

"And one longs to present a play which has been a guiding star to

oneself. I knew perfectly well that a public fresh from _Orpheus_ would

not at once respond, but I felt assured that response would come in

time. As soon, therefore, as I had become acclimated as director and

knew something of the resources of the theater, I made the venture. This

is not a play to be given toward the end; it is too valuable as a means

of gaining that which is to be the end--for the players and for the

audience. So far as the actors are concerned, our exertions have been

profitable. The play might doubtless be better presented--we shall

give it better next year--but, all in all, we are making progress.

You may call this naivete, poetic innocence, or obstinacy and

arrogance--whatever it is, this play is of great moment to me, for it

is the link which binds me to my public, it is my appeal to the public.

If the public does not care to be led whither this leads, then I am not

the proper guide. If people wish to get me out of the theater, they may

attack me here. Here I am vulnerable."

 

In _Morgenbladet_ for May 1st the reviewer made a sharp reply. He

insists again that the local theater is not equal to _A Midsummer

Night's Dream_. But it is not strange that Bjørnson will not admit his

own failure. His eloquent tribute to the play and all that it has meant

to him has, moreover, nothing to do with the question. All that he says

may be true, but certainly such facts ought to be the very thing to

deter him from giving Shakespeare into the hands of untrained actors.

For if Bjørnson feels that the play was adequately presented, then we

are at a loss to understand how he has been able to produce original

work of unquestionable merit. One is forced to believe that he is hiding

a failure behind his own name and fame. After all, concludes the writer,

the director has no right to make this a personal matter. Criticism

has no right to turn aside for injured feelings, and all Bjørnson's

declarations about the passions of the hour have nothing to do with

the case.

 

This ended the discussion. At this day, of course, one cannot pass

judgment, and there is no reason why we should. The two things which

stand out are Bjørnson's protest against spectacular productions of

Shakespeare's plays, and his ardent, almost passionate tribute to him

as the poet whose influence had been greatest in his life.

 

And then there is a long silence. Norwegian periodicals--there is not

to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian--contain not a single

contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper,

_Luthersk Ugeskrift_[11] published an article which proved beyond cavil

that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians.

The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular

love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his

heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph he commends

his soul to God, his body to the dust. Shakespeare's extreme objectivity

makes snap judgments unsafe. We cannot always be sure that his

characters voice his own thoughts and judgments, but, on the other hand,

we have no right to assume that they never do. The tragedies especially

afford a safe basis for judgment, for in them characterization is of the

greatest importance. No great character was ever created which did not

spring from the poet's own soul. In Shakespeare's characters sin, lust,

cruelty, are always punished; sympathy, love, kindness are everywhere

glorified. The writer illustrates his meaning with copious quotations.

 

    [11. Vol. VII, pp. 1-12.]

 

Apparently the good Lutheran who wrote this article felt troubled about

the splendor which Shakespeare throws about the Catholic Church. But

this is no evidence, he thinks, of any special sympathy for it. Many

Protestants have been attracted by the pomp and circumstance of the

Catholic Church, and they have been none the worse Protestants for that.

The writer had the good sense not to make Shakespeare a Lutheran but,

for the rest, the article is a typical example of the sort of criticism

that has made Shakespeare everything from a pious Catholic to a champion

of atheistic democracy. If, however, the readers of _Luthersk Ugeskrift_

were led to read Shakespeare after being assured that they might do so

safely, the article served a useful purpose.

 

Eight years later the distinguished litterateur and critic, Just Bing,

wrote in _Vidar_[12], one of the best periodicals that Norway has ever

had, a brief character study of Ophelia, which, though it contains

nothing original, stands considerably higher as literary criticism than

anything we have yet considered, with the sole exception of Bjørnson's

article in _Aftenbladet_, twenty-three years earlier.

 

    [12. 1880, pp. 61-71.]

 

Bing begins by defining two kinds of writers. First, those whose power

is their keen observation. They see things accurately and they secure

their effects by recording just what they see. Second, those writers

who do not merely see external phenomena with the external eye, but

who, through a miraculous intuition, go deeper into the soul of man.

Molière is the classical example of the first type; Shakespeare of the

second. To him a chance utterance reveals feelings, passions, whole

lives--though he probably never developed the consequences of a chance

remark to their logical conclusion without first applying to them close

and searching rational processes. But it is clear that if a critic is to

analyze a character of Shakespeare's, he must not be content merely to

observe. He must feel with it, live with it. He must do so with special

sympathy in the case of Ophelia.

 

The common characteristic of Shakespeare's women is their devotion to

the man of their choice and their confidence that this choice is wise

and happy. The tragedy of Ophelia lies in the fact that outward evidence

is constantly shocking that faith. Laertes, in his worldly-wise fashion,

first warns her. She cries out from a broken heart though she promises

to heed the warning. Then comes Polonius with his cunning wisdom. But

Ophelia's faith is still unshaken. She promises her father, however, to

be careful, and her caution, in turn, arouses the suspicion of Hamlet.

Even after his wild outburst against her he still loves her. He begs her

to believe in him and to remember him in her prayers. But suspicion goes

Ophelia is caught between devotion and duty, and the grim events

that crowd upon her plunge her to sweet, tragic death. Nothing could be

more revealing than our last glimpse of her. Shakespeare's intuitive

knowledge of the soul was sure. The determining fact of her life was her

love for Hamlet: it is significant that when we see her insane not a

mention of it crosses her lips.

 

Hamlet and Ophelia are the delicate victims of a tragic necessity. They

are undone because they lose confidence in those to whom they cling with

all the abandon of deep, spiritual souls. Hamlet is at last aroused to

desperation; Ophelia is helplessly crushed. She is the finest woman

of Shakespeare's imagination, and perhaps for that reason the most

difficult to understand and the one least often appreciated.

 

The next chapter in Norwegian Shakespeareana is a dull, unprofitable

one--a series of articles on the Baconian theory appearing irregularly

in the monthly magazine, _Kringsjaa_. The first article appeared in the

second volume (1894) and is merely a review of a strong pro-Bacon

outburst in the American _Arena_. It is not worth criticising. Similar

articles appeared in _Kringsjaa_ in 1895, the material this time being

taken from the _Deutsche Revue_. It is the old ghost, the cipher in the

first folio, though not Ignatius Donnelly's cryptogram. Finally, in

1898, a new editor, Chr. Brinckmann, printed[13] a crushing reply to all

these cryptogram fantasies. And that is all that was ever published in

Norway on a foolish controversy.

 

    [13. _Kringsjaa_. Vol. XII, pp. 777 ff. The article upon which

    this reply was based was from the _Quarterly Review_.]

 

It is a relief to turn from puerilities of this sort to Theodor

Caspari's article in _For Kirke og Kultur_ (1895)[14]--_Grunddrag ved

den Shakespeareske Digtning, i særlig Jevnförelse med Ibsens senere

Digtning_.

 

    [14. Vol. I, pp. 38 ff.]

 

This article must be read with caution, partly because its analysis

of the Elizabethan age is conventional, and therefore superficial, and

partly because it represents a direction of thought which eyed the later

work of Ibsen and Bjørnson with distrust. These men had rejected the

faith of their fathers, and the books that came from them were signs of

the apostasy. But _For Kirke og Kultur_ has been marked from its first

number by ability, conspicuous fairness, and a large catholicity, which

give it an honorable place among church journals. And not even a

fanatical admirer of Ibsen will deny that there is more than a grain of

truth in the indictment which the writer of this article brings against

him.

 

The central idea is the large, general objectivity of Shakespeare's

plays as contrasted with the narrow, selfish subjectivity of Ibsen's.

The difference bottoms in the difference between the age of Elizabeth

and our own. Those were days of full, pulsing, untrammeled life. Men

lived big, physical lives. They had few scruples and no nerves.

Full-blooded passions, not petty problems of pathological psychology,

were the things that interested poets and dramatists. They saw life

fully and they saw it whole. So with Shakespeare. His characters are

big, well-rounded men; they are not laboratory specimens. They live in

the real Elizabethan world, not in the hothouse of the poet's brain. It

is of no consequence that violence is done to "local color." Shakespeare

beheld all the world and all ages through the lens of his own time and

country, but because the men he saw were actual, living beings, the

characters he gives us, be they mythological figures, Romans, Greeks,

Italians, or Englishmen, have universal validity. He went to Italy for

his greatest love-story. That gave him the right atmosphere. It is

significant that Ibsen once thought it necessary to seek a suggestive

background for one of his greatest characters. He went to Finmarken for

Rebecca West.

 

Shakespeare's characters speak in loud, emphatic tones and they give

utterance to clear, emphatic thoughts. There is no "twilight zone" in

their thinking. Ibsen's men and women, like the children at Rosmersholm,

never speak aloud; they merely whimper or they whisper the polite

innuendos of the drawing room. The difference lies largely in the

difference of the age. But Ibsen is more decadent than his age. There

are great ideas in our time too, but Ibsen does not see them. He sees

only the "thought." Contrast with this Shakespeare's colossal scale.

He is "loud-voiced" but he is also "many-voiced." Ibsen speaks in a

salon voice and always in one key. And the remarkable thing is that

Shakespeare, in spite of his complicated plots, is always clear. The

main lines of the action stand out boldly. There is always speed and

movement--a speed and movement directly caused by powerful feelings. He

makes his readers think on a bigger scale than does Ibsen. His passions

are sounder because they are larger and more expansive.

 

Shakespeare is the dramatist of our average life; Ibsen, the poet of

the rare exception. To Shakespeare's problems there is always an answer;

underneath his storms there is peace, not merely filth and doubt. There

is even a sense of a greater power--calm and immovable as history

itself. Ibsen's plays are nervous, hectic, and unbelieving. In the words

of Rosmer: "Since there is no judge over us, we must hold a judgment day

for ourselves." Contrast this with Hamlet's soliloquy. And, finally,

one feels sure in Shakespeare that the play means something. It has a

beginning and an end. "What shall we say of plays like Ibsen's, in which

Act I and Act II give no clue to Act III, and where both question and

answer are hurled at us in the same speech?"

 

In the same year, 1895, Georg Brandes published in _Samtiden_,[15] at

that time issued in Bergen, two articles on _Shakespeare's Work in his

Period of Gloom_ (Shakespeare i hans Digtnings mørke Periode) which

embody in compact form that