ised hands, assuming
that Shakespeare should be played at all. "For our part, we do not
believe the time far distant when Shakespeare will cease to be a
regular part of the repertoire."[8] To this statement a contributor in
_Aftenposten_ for Sept. 28 objected. He admits that Shakespeare wrote
his plays for a stage different from our own, that the ease with which
Elizabethan scenery was shifted gave his plays a form that makes them
difficult to play today. Too often at a modern presentation we feel that
we are seeing a succession of scenes rather than unified, organic drama.
But, after all, the main thing is the substance--"the weighty content,
and this will most certainly secure for them for a long time to come a
place in the repertoire of the theater of the Germanic world. So long
as we admit that in the delineation of character, in the presentation
of noble figures, and in the mastery of dialogue, Shakespeare is
unexcelled, so long we must admit that Shakespeare has a place on the
modern stage."

[8. _Aftenposten_. Sept. 21, 1878.]

Where did _Aftenposten_'s reviewer get the idea that Shakespeare's plays
are not adapted to the modern stage? Was it from Charles Lamb? At any
rate, it is certain that he anticipated a movement that has led to many
devices both in the English-speaking countries and in Germany to
reproduce the stage conditions under which Shakespeare's plays were
performed during his own life.

Of the next Shakespearean piece to be performed in Christiania,
_All's Well That Ends Well_, there is but the briefest mention in
the newspapers. We know that it was given in the curiously perverted
arrangement by Sille Beyer and was presented twelve times from January
15, 1854 to May 23, 1869. On that day a new version based on Lembcke's
translation was used, and in this form the play was given eight times
the following seasons. Since January 24, 1882, it has not been performed
in Norway.[9]

[9. See Blanc's _Fortegnelse_. p. 93.]

At the beginning of the next season, October 29, 1854, _Much Ado About
Nothing_ was introduced to Kristiania theater-goers under the title
_Blind Alarm_. The translation was by Carl Borgaard, director of the
theater. But here, too, contemporary documents leave us in the dark.
There is merely a brief announcement in the newspapers. Blanc informs
us that Jomfru Svendsen played Hero, and Wiehe, Benedict.[10]

[10. See Blanc's _Fortegnelse_. p. 93.]

After _Blind Alarm_ S