Occasionally meanings are read into the play which not only do not belong in Shakespeare but which are ridiculously out of place. As an illustration, note the dialogue between Orlando and Rosalind in II, 2 (Original, III, 2). Orlando remarks: "Your accent is something finer than could be purchased in so remote a dwelling." Wildenvey renders this: "Eders sprog er mer elevert end man skulde vente i disse vilde trakter. De taler ikke Landsmaal." Probably no one would be deceived by this gratuitous satire on the Landsmaal, but, obviously, it has no place in what pretends to be a translation. The one justification for it is that Shakespeare himself could not have resisted so neat a word-play.
Wildenvey's version, therefore, can only be characterized as needlessly free. For the text as such he has absolutely no regard. But for the fact that he has kept the fable and, for the most part, the characters, intact, we should characterize it as a belated specimen of Sille Beyer's notorious Shakespeare "bearbeidelser" in Denmark. But Wildenvey does not take Sille Beyer's liberties with the dramatis personae and he has, moreover, what she utterly lacked—poetic genius.
For that is the redeeming feature of Livet i Skogen—it does not translate Shakespeare but it makes him live. The delighted audience which sat night after night in Christiania and Copenhagen and drank in the loveliness of Wildenvey's verse and Halvorsen's music cared little whether the lines that came over the footlights were philologically an accurate translation or not. They were enchanted by Norwegian verse and moved to unfeigned delight by the cleverness of the prose. If Wildenvey did not succeed in translating As You Like It—one cannot believe that he ever intended to,—he did succeed in reproducing something of "its imperishable woodland spirit, its fresh breath of out-of-doors."
We have already quoted the opening of Act II. It is not Shakespeare but it is good poetry in itself. And the immortal scene between Touchstone and Corin in III, 2 (Shak. III, 2), in which Touchstone clearly proves that the shepherd is damned, is a capital piece of work. The following fragment must serve as an example:
Touchstone: Har du været ved hoffet, hyrde?
Korin: Visselig ikke.
Touch: Da er du evig fordømt.
Korin: Det haaber jeg da ikke.
Touch: Visselig, da er du fordømt som en sviske.
Korin: Fordi jeg ikke har været ved hoffet? Hvad mener I?