Lords, give us leave; the prince of Wales and I
  must have some conference...

and what follows is the remainder of the scene with many cuttings.  Sir Walter Blunt does not appear.  His role is taken by Warwick.

Act II, Sc. 2 of Bjornson’s text follows Part I, Act III, Sc. 3 closely.

Act III, Sc. 1 corresponds with Part I, Act III, Sc. 1 to the point where Lady Mortimer and Lady Percy enter.  This episode is cut and the scene resumes with the entrance of the messenger in Part I, Act IV, Sc. 1, line 14.  This scene is then followed in outline to the end.

Act III, Sc. 2 begins with Part I, Act IV, Sc. 3 from the entrance of Falstaff, and follows it to the end of the scene.  To this is added most of Scene 4, but there is little left of the original action.  Only the Falstaff episodes are retained intact.

The last act (IV) is a wonderful composite.  Scene 1 corresponds closely to Part II, Act III, Sc. 4, but it is, as usual, severely cut.  Scene 2 reverts back to Part II, Act III, Sc. 2 and is based on this scene to line 246, after which it is free handling of Part II, Act V, Sc. 3.  Scene 3 is based on Part II, Act V, Sc. 5.

A careful reading of Bjornson’s text with the above as a guide will show that this collection of episodes, chaotic as it seems, makes no ineffective play.  With a genius—­and a genius Johannes Brun was—­as Falstaff, one can imagine that the piece went brilliantly.  The press received it favorably, though the reviewers were much too critical to allow Bjornson’s mangling of the text to go unrebuked.

Aftenbladet has a careful review.[14] The writer admits that in our day it requires courage and labor to put on one of Shakespeare’s historical plays, for they were written for a stage radically different from ours.  In the Elizabethan times the immense scale of these “histories” presented no difficulties.  On a modern stage the mere bulk makes a faithful rendition impossible.  And the moment one starts tampering with Shakespeare, trouble begins.  No two adapters will agree as to what or how to cut.  Moreover, it may well be questioned whether any such cutting as that made for the theater here would be tolerated in any other country with a higher and older Shakespeare “Kultur.”  The attempt to fuse the two parts of Henry IV would be impossible in a country with higher standards.  “Our theater can, however, venture undisturbed to combine these two comprehensive series of scenes into one which shall not require more time than each one of them singly—­a venture, to be sure, which is not wholly without precedent in foreign countries.  It is clear that the result cannot give an adequate notion of Shakespeare’s ‘histories’ in all their richness of content, but it does, perhaps, give to the theater a series of worth-while problems to work out, the importance of which should not be underestimated.  The attempt, too, has made our theater-goers familiar with Shakespeare’s greatest comic character, apparently to their immense delight.  Added to all this is the fact that the acting was uniformly excellent.”