of Shakespeare’s craftsmen the genuine spoken language of Elizabethan craftsmen.  The important thing is that the tone is right.  And this feeling of a right tone is still further satisfied in the rehearsal scene (III, Sc. 1).  Certain slight liberties do not diminish our pleasure.  The reminiscence of Richard III in Bottom’s, “A calendar, a calendar, looke in the Almanack, finde out moonshine,” translated “Ei almanakke, ei almanakke, mit kongerike for ei almanakke,” seems, however, a labored piece of business.  One line, too, has been added to this speech which is a gratuitous invention of the translator, or rather, taken from the curious malaprop speech of the laboring classes; “Det er rett, Per Monsaas; sjaa millom aspektarane!” There can be no objection to an interpolation like this if the translation does not aim to be scholarly and definitive, but merely an effort to bring a foreign classic home to the masses.  And this is, obviously, Eggen’s purpose.  Personally I do not think, therefore, that there is any objection to a slight freedom like this.  But it has no place at all in the fairies’ lullaby.

When we move to the circle of the high-place lovers or the court, I cannot feel that the Landsmaal is quite so convincing.  There is something appallingly clumsy, labored, hard, in this speech of Hermia’s: 

      Min eigin gut,
  eg sver ved beste bogen Amor hev,
  ved beste pili hans, med odd av gull,
  ved duvune, dei reine og dei kvite
  som flyg paa tun hjaa fagre Afrodite,
  ved det som knyter mannehjarto saman,
  ved det som foder kjaerlerks fryd og gaman,
  ved baale, der seg dronning Dido brende,
  daa seg AEneas trulaus fraa ho vende,
  ved kvar den eid som falske menn hev svori—­
  langt fleir enn kvinnelippur fram hev bori,
  at paa den staden du hev nemnt for meg,
  der skal i morgo natt eg mote deg.

In spite of the translator’s obvious effort to put fire into the passage, his failure is all too evident.  Even the ornament of these lines—­to which there is nothing to correspond in the original—­only makes the poetry more forcibly feeble: 

  ved duvune, dei reine og dei kvite
  som flyg paa tun hjaa fagre Afrodite,

Shakespeare says quite simply: 

  By the simplicity of Venus Doves,

and to anyone but a Landsmaal fanatic it seems ridiculous to have Theseus tell Hermia:  “Demetrius er so gild ein kar som nokon.”  “Demetrius is a worthy gentleman,” says Shakespeare and this has “the grand Manner.”  But to a cultivated Norwegian the translation is “Bauernsprache,” such as a local magnate might use in forcing a suitor on his daughter.

All of which goes back to the present condition of Landsmaal.  It has little flexibility, little inward grace.  It is not a finished literary language.  But, despite its archaisms, Landsmaal is a living language and it has, therefore, unlike the Karathevusa of Greece, the possibility of growth.  The translations of Madhus and Aasen and Eggen have made notable contributions to this development.  They are worthy of all praise.  Their weaknesses are the result of conditions which time will change.