volde slige hederlige Mænd Fortræd. Men her er et Pergament med Cæsars Segl: jeg fandt det i hans Kammer; det er hans sidste Villie. Lad Folket blot høre hans Testament, som jeg, tilgiv mig det, ikke tænker at oplæse, da skulde de alle gaa hen og kysse den døde Cæsars Saar; og dyppe deres Klæder i hans hellige Blod; skulde bede om et Haar af ham til Erindring, og paa deres Dødsdag i deres sidste Villie tænke paa dette Haar, og testamentere deres Efterkommere det som en rig Arvedel.

The translation continues to the point where the plebeians, roused to fury by the cunning appeal of Antony, rush out with the cries:^I.2

But we have not space for a more extended quotation, and the passage given is sufficiently representative.

The faults are obvious. The translator has not ventured to reproduce Shakespeare's blank verse, nor, indeed, could that be expected. The Alexandrine had long held sway in Danish poetry. In Rolf Krage (1770), Ewald had broken with the tradition and written an heroic tragedy in prose. Unquestionably he had been moved to take this step by the example of his great model Klopstock in Bardiete.^I.3 It seems equally certain, however, that he was also inspired by the plays of Shakespeare, and the songs of Ossian, which came to him in the translations of Wieland.^I.4

A few years later, when he had learned English and read Shakespeare in the original, he wrote Balders Død in blank verse and naturalized Shakespeare's metre in Denmark.^I.5 At any rate, it is not surprising that this unknown plodder far north in Trondhjem had not progressed beyond Klopstock and Ewald. But the result of turning Shakespeare's poetry into the journeyman prose of a foreign language is necessarily bad. The translation before us amounts to a paraphrase,—good, respectable Danish untouched by genius. Two examples will illustrate this. The lines:

are rendered in the thoroughly matter-of-fact words, appropriate for a letter or a newspaper "story":

Again,

is translated:

On the other hand, the translation presents no glaring errors; such slips as we do find are due rather to ineptitude, an inability to find the right word, with the result that the writer has contented himself with an accidental and approximate rendering. For example, the translator no doubt understood the lines:

but he could hit upon nothing better than:

which is both inaccurate and infelicitous. For the line

our author has:

Again:

Translation:

Despite these faults—and many others could be cited,—it is perfectly clear that this unknown student of Shakespeare understood his original and endeavored to reproduce it correctly in good Danish. His very blunders showed that he tried not to be slavish, and his style, while not remarkable, is easy and fluent. Apparently, however, his work attracted no attention. His name is unknown, as are his sources, and there is not, with one exception, a single reference to him in the later Shakespeare literature of Denmark and Norway. Not even Rahbek, who was remarkably well informed in this field, mentions him. Only Foersom,^I.6 who let nothing referring to Shakespeare escape him, speaks (in the notes to Part I of his translation) of a part of Act III of Julius Caesar in Trondhjems Allehaande. That is all. It it not too much to emphasize, therefore, that we have here the first Danish version of any part of Julius Caesar as well as the first Norwegian translation of any part of Shakespeare into what was then the common literary language of Denmark and Norway.^I.7*

B

It was many years before the anonymous contributor to Trondhjems Allehaande was to have a follower. From 1782 to 1807 Norwegians were engaged in accumulating wealth, an occupation, indeed, in which they were remarkably successful. There was no time to meddle with Shakespeare in a day when Norwegian shipping and Norwegian products were profitable as never before. After 1807, when the blundering panic of the British plunged Denmark and Norway into war on the side of Napoleon, there were sterner things to think of. It was a sufficiently difficult matter to get daily bread. But in 1818, when the country had, as yet, scarcely begun to recover from the agony of the Napoleonic wars, the second Norwegian translation from Shakespeare appeared.^I.8

The translator of