In Morgenbladet for May 1st the reviewer made a sharp reply. He insists again that the local theater is not equal to A Midsummer Night's Dream. But it is not strange that Bjørnson will not admit his own failure. His eloquent tribute to the play and all that it has meant to him has, moreover, nothing to do with the question. All that he says may be true, but certainly such facts ought to be the very thing to deter him from giving Shakespeare into the hands of untrained actors. For if Bjørnson feels that the play was adequately presented, then we are at a loss to understand how he has been able to produce original work of unquestionable merit. One is forced to believe that he is hiding a failure behind his own name and fame. After all, concludes the writer, the director has no right to make this a personal matter. Criticism has no right to turn aside for injured feelings, and all Bjørnson's declarations about the passions of the hour have nothing to do with the case.
This ended the discussion. At this day, of course, one cannot pass judgment, and there is no reason why we should. The two things which stand out are Bjørnson's protest against spectacular productions of Shakespeare's plays, and his ardent, almost passionate tribute to him as the poet whose influence had been greatest in his life.
And then there is a long silence. Norwegian periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift[II.11] published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph he commends his soul to God, his body to the dust. Shakespeare's extreme objectivity makes snap judgments unsafe. We cannot always be sure that his characters voice his own thoughts and judgments, but, on the other hand, we have no right to assume that they never do. The tragedies especially afford a safe basis for judgment, for in them characterization is of the greatest importance. No great character was ever created which did not spring from the poet's own soul. In Shakespeare's characters sin, lust, cruelty, are always punished; sympathy, love, kindness are everywhere glorified. The writer illustrates his meaning with copious quotations.
Apparently the good Lutheran who wrote this article felt troubled about the splendor which Shakespeare throws about the Catholic Church. But this is no evidence, he thinks, of any special sympathy for it. Many Protestants have been attracted by the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic Church, and they have been none the worse Protestants for that. The writer had the good sense not to make Shakespeare a Lutheran but, for the rest, the article is a typical example of the sort of criticism that has made Shakespeare everything from a pious Catholic to a champion of atheistic democracy. If, however, the readers of Luthersk Ugeskrift were led to read Shakespeare after being assured that they might do so safely, the article served a useful purpose.
Eight years later the distinguished litterateur and critic, Just Bing, wrote in Vidar[II.12], one of the best periodicals that Norway has ever had, a brief character study of Ophelia, which, though it contains nothing original, stands considerably higher as literary criticism than anything we have yet considered, with the sole exception of Bjørnson's article in Aftenbladet, twenty-three years earlier.
Bing begins by defining two kinds of writers. First, those whose power is their keen observation. They see things accurately and they secure their effects by recording just what they see. Second, those writers who do not merely see external phenomena with the external eye, but who, through a miraculous intuition, go deeper into the soul of man. Molière is the classical example of the first type; Shakespeare of the second. To him a chance utterance reveals feelings, passions, whole lives—though he probably never developed the consequences of a chance remark to their logical conclusion without first applying to them close and searching rational processes. But it is clear that if a critic is to analyze a character of Shakespeare's, he must not be content merely to observe. He must feel with it, live with it. He must do so with special sympathy in the case of Ophelia.
The common characteristic of Shakespeare's women is their devotion to the man of their choice and their confidence that this choice is wise and happy. The tragedy of Ophelia lies in the fact that outward evidence is constantly shocking that faith. Laertes, in his worldly-wise fashion, first warns her. She cries out from a broken heart though she promises to heed the warning. Then comes Polonius with his cunning wisdom. But Ophelia's faith is still unshaken. She promises her father, however, to be careful, and her caution, in turn, arouses the suspicion of Hamlet. Even after his wild outburst against her he still loves her. He begs her to believe in him and to remember him in her prayers. But suspicion goes on. Ophelia is caught between devotion and duty, and the grim events that crowd upon her plunge her to sweet, tragic death. Nothing could be more revealing than our last glimpse of her. Shakespeare's intuitive knowledge of the soul was sure. The determining fact of her life was her love for Hamlet: it is significant that when we see her insane not a mention of it crosses her lips.
Hamlet and Ophelia are the delicate victims of a tragic necessity. They are undone because they lose confidence in those to whom they cling with all the abandon of deep, spiritual souls. Hamlet is at last aroused to desperation; Ophelia is helplessly crushed. She is the finest woman of Shakespeare's imagination, and perhaps for that reason the most difficult to understand and the one least often appreciated.
The next chapter in Norwegian Shakespeareana is a dull, unprofitable one—a series of articles on the Baconian theory appearing irregularly in the monthly magazine, Kringsjaa. The first article appeared in the second volume (1894) and is merely a review of a strong pro-Bacon outburst in the American Arena. It is not worth criticising. Similar articles appeared in Kringsjaa in 1895, the material this time being taken from the Deutsche Revue. It is the old ghost, the cipher in the first folio, though not Ignatius Donnelly's cryptogram. Finally, in 1898, a new editor, Chr. Brinckmann, printed[II.13] a crushing reply to all these cryptogram fantasies. And that is all that was ever published in Norway on a foolish controversy.
It is a relief to turn from puerilities of this sort to Theodor Caspari's article in For Kirke og Kultur (1895)[II.14]—Grunddrag ved den Shakespeareske Digtning, i særlig Jevnförelse med Ibsens senere Digtning.