succeeded for the most part in giving the
sense of Shakespeare in smooth and sounding verse, in itself no small
achievement. Rhetoric replaces poetry, it is true, and paraphrase dries
up the freshness and the sparkle of the metaphor. But a Norwegian of
that day who got his first taste of Shakespeare from the translation
before us, would at least feel that here was the power of words, the
music and sonorousness of elevated dramatic poetry.

One more extract and I am done. It is Coriolanus' outburst of wrath
against the pretensions of the tribunes (III, 1). With all its
imperfections, the translation is almost adequate.

_Coriolanus_:
Skal!
Patrisier, I aedle, men ei vise!
I hoie Senatorer, som mon mangle
Al Overlaeg, hvi lod I Hydra vaelge
En Tjener som med sit bestemte Skal
--Skjondt blot Uhyrets Taleror og Lyd--
Ei mangler Mod, at sige at han vil
Forvandle Eders Havstrom til en Sump,
Og som vil gjore Jer Kanal til sin.
Hvis han har Magten, lad Enfoldighed
Da for ham bukke; har han ingen Magt,
Da vaekker Eders Mildhed af sin Dvale,
Den farlig er; hvis I ei mangle Klogskab,
Da handler ei som Daaren; mangler den,
Lad denne ved Jer Side faae en Pude.
Plebeier ere I, hvis Senatorer
De ere, og de ere mindre ei
Naar begge Eders Stemmer sammenblandes
Og naar de kildres meest ved Fornemhed.
De vaelge deres egen Ovrighed,
Og saadan Een, der saette tor sit Skal,
Ja sit gemene Skal mod en Forsamling,
Der mer agtvaerdig er end nogensinde
Man fandt i Graekenland. Ved Jupiter!
Sligt Consulen fornedrer! Og det smerter
Min Sjael at vide, hvor der findes tvende
Autoriteter, ingen af dem storst,
Der kan Forvirring lettelig faae Indpas
I Gabet, som er mellem dem, og haeve
Den ene ved den anden.

C

In 1865, Paul Botten Hansen, best known to the English-speaking world
for his relations with Bjornson and Ibsen, reviewed[11] the eleventh
installment of Lembcke's translation of Shakespeare. The article
does not venture into criticism, but is almost entirely a resume of
Shakespeare translation in Norway and Denmark. It is less well informed
than we should expect, and contains, among several other slips, the
following "...in 1855, Niels Hauge, deceased the following year as
teacher in Kragero, translated _Macbeth_, the first faithful version of
this masterpiece which Dano-Norwegian literature could boast of." Botten
Hansen mentions only one previous Danish or Nor