PREFATORY NOTE

I have attempted in this study to trace the history of Shakespearean translations, Shakespearean criticism, and the performances of Shakespeare’s plays in Norway.  I have not attempted to investigate Shakespeare’s influence on Norwegian literature.  To do so would not, perhaps, be entirely fruitless, but it would constitute a different kind of work.

The investigation was made possible by a fellowship from the University of Chicago and a scholarship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and I am glad to express my gratitude to these bodies for the opportunities given to me of study in the Scandinavian countries.  I am indebted for special help and encouragement to Dr. C.N.  Gould and Professor J.M.  Manly, of the University of Chicago, and to the authorities of the University library in Kristiania for their unfailing courtesy.  To my wife, who has worked with me throughout, my obligations are greater than I can express.

It is my plan to follow this monograph with a second on the history of Shakespeare in Denmark.

M.B.R.

Minneapolis, Minnesota. 
September, 1916.

CHAPTER I

Shakespeare Translations In Norway

A

In the years following 1750, there was gathered in the city of Trondhjem a remarkable group of men:  Nils Krog Bredal, composer of the first Danish opera, John Gunnerus, theologian and biologist, Gerhart Schoning, rector of the Cathedral School and author of an elaborate history of the fatherland, and Peter Suhm, whose 14,047 pages on the history of Denmark testify to a learning, an industry, and a generous devotion to scholarship which few have rivalled.  Bredal was mayor (Borgermester), Gunnerus was bishop, Schoning was rector, and Suhm was for the moment merely the husband of a rich and unsympathetic wife.  But they were united in their interest in serious studies, and in 1760, the last three—­somewhat before Bredal’s arrival—­founded “Videnskabsselkabet i Trondhjem.”  A few years later the society received its charter as “Det Kongelige Videnskabsselskab.”

A little provincial scientific body!  Of what moment is it?  But in those days it was of moment.  Norway was then and long afterwards the political and intellectual dependency of Denmark.  For three hundred years she had been governed more or less effectively from Copenhagen, and for two hundred years Danish had supplanted Norwegian as the language of church and state, of trade, and of higher social intercourse.  The country had no university; Norwegians were compelled to go to Copenhagen for their degrees and there loaf about in the anterooms of ministers waiting for preferment.  Videnskabsselskabet was the first tangible evidence of awakened national life, and we are not surprised