rresponds closely
to Part II, Act III, Sc. 4, but it is, as usual, severely cut. Scene 2
reverts back to Part II, Act III, Sc. 2 and is based on this scene to
line 246, after which it is free handling of Part II, Act V, Sc. 3.
Scene 3 is based on Part II, Act V, Sc. 5.

A careful reading of Bjornson's text with the above as a guide will
show that this collection of episodes, chaotic as it seems, makes no
ineffective play. With a genius--and a genius Johannes Brun was--as
Falstaff, one can imagine that the piece went brilliantly. The press
received it favorably, though the reviewers were much too critical to
allow Bjornson's mangling of the text to go unrebuked.

_Aftenbladet_ has a careful review.[14] The writer admits that in our
day it requires courage and labor to put on one of Shakespeare's
historical plays, for they were written for a stage radically different
from ours. In the Elizabethan times the immense scale of these
"histories" presented no difficulties. On a modern stage the mere
bulk makes a faithful rendition impossible. And the moment one starts
tampering with Shakespeare, trouble begins. No two adapters will agree
as to what or how to cut. Moreover, it may well be questioned whether
any such cutting as that made for the theater here would be tolerated in
any other country with a higher and older Shakespeare "Kultur." The
attempt to fuse the two parts of _Henry IV_ would be impossible in a
country with higher standards. "Our theater can, however, venture
undisturbed to combine these two comprehensive series of scenes into
one which shall not require more time than each one of them singly--a
venture, to be sure, which is not wholly without precedent in foreign
countries. It is clear that the result cannot give an adequate notion of
Shakespeare's 'histories' in all their richness of content, but it does,
perhaps, give to the theater a series of worth-while problems to work
out, the importance of which should not be underestimated. The attempt,
too, has made our theater-goers familiar with Shakespeare's greatest
comic character, apparently to their immense delight. Added to all this
is the fact that the acting was uniformly excellent."

[14. February 18, 1867.]

But by what right is the play called Henry IV? Practically nothing is
left of the historical setting, and the spectator is at a loss to know
just what the whole thing is about. Certainly the whole emphasis is
shifted, for the king, instead of