e has met
with conspicuous success. Also he has aquitted himself well in the
difficult matter of putting Shakespeare's meter into Norwegian.

The last two pages are taken up with a detailed study of single
passages. The only serious error Monrad has noticed is the following: In
Act II, 3 one of the murderers calls out "A light! A light!" Regarding
this passage Monrad remarks: "It is certainly a mistake to have the
second murderer call out, "Bring a light here!" (Lys hid!) The murderer
does not demand a light, but he detects a shimmer from Banquo's
approaching torch." The rest of the section is devoted to mere trifles.

This is the sort of review which we should expect from an intelligent
and well-informed man. Monrad was not a scholar, nor even a man of
delicate and penetrating reactions. But he had sound sense and perfect
self-assurance, which made him something of a Samuel Johnson in the
little provincial Kristiania of his day. At any rate, he was the only
one who took the trouble to review Hauge's translation, and even he was
doubtless led to the task because of his personal interest in the
translator. If we may judge from the stir it made in periodical
literature, _Macbeth_ fell dead from the press.

The tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth (1864) aroused a certain
interest in Norway, and little notes and articles are not infrequent
in the newspapers and periodicals about that time. _Illustreret
Nyhedsblad_[4] has a short, popular article on Stratford-on-Avon. It
contains the usual Shakespeare apocrypha--the Sir Thomas Lucy story, the
story of the apple tree under which Shakespeare and his companions slept
off the effects of too much Bedford ale--and all the rest of it. It
makes no pretense of being anything but an interesting hodge-podge
for popular consumption. The next year, 1864, the same periodical
published[5] on the traditional day of Shakespeare's birth a rather long
and suggestive article on the English drama before Shakespeare. If this
article had been original, it might have had a certain significance,
but, unfortunately, it is taken from the German of Bodenstedt. The
only significant thing about it is the line following the title: "Til
Erindring paa Trehundredsaarsdagen efter Shakespeares Foedsel, d. 23
April, 1563."

[4. Vol. XII (1863), pp. 199 ff.]

[5. Vol. XIII (1864), pp. 65 ff.]

More interesting than this, however, are the verses written by the then
highly esteemed poet, Andreas Mun