He begins with an analysis of the play: The play is called a dream. But wherein lies the dream? 'Why,' we are told, 'in the fact that fairies sport, that honest citizens, with and without asses' heads, put on a comedy, that lovers pursue each other in the moonlight.' But where is the law in all this? If the play is without law (Lov = organic unity), it is without validity.
But it does have artistic validity. The dream is more than a fantasy. The same experiences come to all of us. "The play takes place, now in your life, now in mine. A young man happily engaged or happily married dreams one night that this is all a delusion. He must be engaged to, he must marry another. The image of the 'chosen one' hovers before him, but he can not quite visualize it, and he marries with a bad conscience. Then he awakens and thanks God that it is all a bad dream (Lysander). Or a youth is tired of her whom he adored for a time. He even begins to flirt with another. And then one fine night he dreams that he worships the very woman he loathes, that he implores her, weeps for her, fights for her (Demetrius). Or a young girl, or a young wife, who loves and is loved dreams, that her beloved is fleeing from her. When she follows him with tears and petitions, he lifts his hand against her. She pursues him, calls to him to stop, but she cannot reach him. She feels all the agony of death till she falls back in a calm, dreamless sleep. Or she dreams that the lover she cannot get comes to her in a wood and tells her that he really does love her, that her eyes are lovelier than the stars, her hands whiter than the snow on Taurus. But other visions come, more confusing. Another, whom she has never given a thought, comes and tells her the same story. His protestations are even more glowing—and it all turns to contention and sorrow, idle pursuit and strife, till her powers fail (Helena).
"This is the dream chain of the lovers. The poet causes the man to dream that he is unfaithful, or that he is enamored of one whom he does not love. And he makes the woman dream that she is deserted or that she is happy with one whom she cannot get. And together these dreams tell us: watch your thoughts, watch your passions, you, walking in perfect confidence at the side of your beloved. They (the thoughts and passions) may bring forth a flower called 'love in idleness'—a flower which changes before you are aware of it. The dream gives us reality reversed, but reversed in such a way that there is always the possibility that it may, in an unguarded moment, take veritable shape.
"And this dream of the lovers is given a paradoxical counterpart. A respectable, fat citizen dreams one night that he is to experience the great triumph of his life. He is to be presented before the duke's throne as the greatest of heroes. He dreams that he cannot get dressed, that he cannot get his head attended to, because, as a matter of fact, his head is not his own excellent head, but the head of an ass with long ears, a snout, and hair that itches. 'This is exactly like a fairy tale of my youth,' he dreams. And indeed, it is a dream! The mountain opens, the captive princess comes forth and leads him in, and he rests his head in her lap all strewn with blossoms. The lovely trolls come and scratch his head and music sounds from the rocks. It is characteristic of Shakespeare that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue the life of waking. But the good weaver who lives thoroughly content in his own self-satisfaction and in the esteem of his neighbors, who has never reflected upon anything that has happened to him, but has received each day's blessings as they have come—this man sees, the moment he lays his head on the pillow, the fairies and the fairy queen. To him the whole circle of childhood fantasy reveals itself; nothing is changed, nothing but this absurd ass's head which he wears, and this curious longing for dry, sweet hay.
"This is the dream and the action of the play. Superficially, all this magic is set in motion by the fairies; Theseus and his train, with whom come hunting horn and hunting talk and processional—are, in reality, the incarnation of the festival. And the comedy at the close is added by way of counterpiece to the light, delicate fancies of the dream. It is the thoughts we have thought, the painfully-wrought products of the waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the background of nightly visions. See the play over and over again. Do not study it with Bottom's ass's head, and do not be so blasé that you reject the performance because it does not command the latest electrical effects."
Bjørnson then proceeds to discuss the staging. He admits by implication that the machinery and the properties are not so elaborate as they sometimes are in England, but points out that the equipment of Christiania Theater is fully up to that which, until a short time before, was considered entirely adequate in the great cities of Europe. And is machinery so important? The cutting of the play used at this performance was originally made by Tieck for the court theater at Potsdam. From Germany it was brought to Stockholm, and later to Christiania. "The spirit of Tieck pervades this adaptation. It is easy and natural. The spoken word has abundant opportunity to make itself felt, and is neither overwhelmed by theater tricks nor set aside by machinery. Tieck, who understood stage machinery perfectly, gave it free play where, as in modern operas, machinery is everything. The same is true of Mendelssohn. His music yields reverently to the spoken word. It merely accompanies the play like a new fairy who strews a strain or two across the stage before his companions enter, and lends them wings by which they may again disappear. Only when the words and the characters who utter them have gone, does the music brood over the forest like a mist of reminiscence, in which our imagination may once more synthesize the picture of what has gone before."
Tieck's adaptation is still the standard one. Englishmen often stage Shakespeare's romantic plays more elaborately. They even show us a ship at sea in The Tempest. But Shakespeare has fled England; they are left with their properties, out of which the spirit of Shakespeare will not rise. It is significant that the most distinguished dramaturg of Germany, Dingelstedt, planned a few years before to go to London with some of the best actors in Germany to teach Englishmen how to play Shakespeare once more.
Bjørnson closes this general discussion of scenery and properties with a word about the supreme importance of imagination to the playgoer. "I cannot refrain from saying that the imagination that delights in the familiar is stronger and healthier than that which loses itself in longings for the impossible. To visualize on the basis of a few and simple suggestions—that is to possess imagination; to allow the images to dissolve and dissipate—that is to have no imagination at all. Every allusion has a definite relation to the familiar, and if our playgoers cannot, after all that has been given here for years, feel the least illusion in the presence of the properties in A Midsummer Night's Dream, then it simply means that bad critics have broken the spell." Why should Norwegians require an elaborate wood-scene to be transported to the living woods? A boulevardier of Paris, indeed, might have need of it, but not a Norwegian with the great forests at his very doors. And what real illusion is there in a waterfall tumbling over a painted curtain, or a ship tossing about on rollers? Does not such apparatus rather destroy the illusion? "The new inventions of stage mechanicians are far from being under such perfect control that they do not often ruin art. We are in a period of transition. Why should we here, who are obliged to wait a long time for what is admittedly satisfactory, commit all the blunders which mark the way to acknowledged perfection?"
It would probably be difficult to find definite and tangible evidence of Shakespeare's influence in Bjørnson's work, and we are, therefore, doubly glad to have his own eloquent acknowledgement of his debt to Shakespeare. The closing passus of Bjørnson's article deserves quotation for this reason alone. Unfortunately I cannot convey its warm, illuminating style: "Of all the poetry I have ever read, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has, unquestionably, had the greatest influence upon me. It is his most delicate and most imaginative work, appealing quite as much through its intellectual significance as through its noble, humane spirit. I read it first in Eiksdal when I was writing Arne, and I felt rebuked for the gloomy feelings under the spell of which that book was written. But I took the lesson to heart: I felt that I had in my soul something that could produce a play with a little of the fancy and joy of A Midsummer Night's Dream—and I made resolutions. But the conditions under which a worker in art lives in Norway are hard, and all we say or promise avails nothing. But this I know: I am closer to the ideal of this play now than then, I have a fuller capacity for joy and a greater power to protect my joy and keep it inviolate. And if, after all, I never succeed in writing such a play, it means that circumstances have conquered, and that I have not achieved what I have ever sought to achieve.
"And one longs to present a play which has been a guiding star to oneself. I knew perfectly well that a public fresh from Orpheus would not at once respond, but I felt assured that response would come in time. As soon, therefore, as I had become acclimated as director and knew something of the resources of the theater, I made the venture. This is not a play to be given toward the end; it is too valuable as a means of gaining that which is to be the end—for the players and for the audience. So far as the actors are concerned, our exertions have been profitable. The play might doubtless be better presented—we shall give it better next year—but, all in all, we are making progress. You may call this naivete, poetic innocence, or obstinacy and arrogance—whatever it is, this play is of great moment to me, for it is the link which binds me to my public, it is my appeal to the public. If the public does not care to be led whither this leads, then I am not the proper guide. If people wish to get me out of the theater, they may attack me here. Here I am vulnerable."