Much more interesting than Blom’s attempt, and much more significant, is a translation and working over of As You Like It which appeared in November of the same year.  The circumstances under which this translation were made are interesting.  Fru Johanne Dybwad, one of the “stars” at the National Theater was completing her twenty-fifth year of service on the stage, and the theater wished to commemorate the event in a manner worthy of the actress.  For the gala performance, Herman Wildenvey, a poet of the young Norway, made a new translation and adaptation of As You Like It.[38] And no choice could have been more felicitous.  Fru Dybwad had scored her greatest success as Puck; the life and sparkle and jollity of that mischievous wight seemed like a poetic glorification of her own character.  It might be expected, then, that she would triumph in the role of Rosalind.

    [38:  As You Like It, eller Livet i Skogen.  Dramatisk Skuespil
    av William Shakespeare.  Oversat og bearbeidet for Nationaltheatret
    av Herman Wildenvey.  Kristiania og Kobenhavn. 1912.]

Then came the problem of a stage version.  A simple cutting of Lembcke seemed inappropriate to this intensely modern woman.  There was danger, too, that Lembcke’s faithful Danish would hang heavy on the light and sparkling Norwegian.  Herman Wildenvey undertook to prepare an acting version that should fit the actress and the occasion.  The result is the text before us.  For the songs and intermissions, Johan Halvorsen, Kapelmester of the theater, composed new music and the theater provided a magnificent staging.  The tremendous stage-success of Wildenvey’s As You Like It belongs rather to stage history, and for the present we shall confine ourselves to the translation itself.

First, what of the cutting?  In a short introduction the translator has given an apologia for his procedure.  It is worth quoting at some length.  “To adapt a piece of literature is, as a rule, not especially commendable.  And now, I who should be the last to do it, have become the first in this country to attempt anything of the sort with Shakespeare.

“I will not defend myself by saying that most of Shakespeare’s plays require some sort of adaptation to the modern stage if they are to be played at all.  But, as a matter of fact, I have done little adapting.  I have dusted some of the speeches, maltreated others, and finally cut out a few which would have sputtered out of the mouths of the actors like fringes of an old tapestry.  But, above all, I have tried to reproduce the imperishable woodland spirit, the fresh breath of out-of-doors which permeates this play.”

Wildenvey then states that in his cuttings he has followed the edition of the British Empire Shakespeare Society.  But the performance in Kristiania has demanded more, “and my adaptation could not be so wonderfully ideal. As You Like It is, probably more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, a jest and only in part a play.  Through the title he has given his work, he has given me the right to make my own arrangement which is accordingly, yours truly As You Like It.”