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

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_.

_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.

 

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!)

 

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.

 

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