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 Bjornson 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.