to follow this monograph with a second on the history of
Shakespeare in Denmark.

M.B.R.

Minneapolis, Minnesota.
September, 1916.

CHAPTER I

Shakespeare Translations In Norway

A

In the years following 1750, there was gathered in the city of Trondhjem
a remarkable group of men: Nils Krog Bredal, composer of the first
Danish opera, John Gunnerus, theologian and biologist, Gerhart Schoning,
rector of the Cathedral School and author of an elaborate history of the
fatherland, and Peter Suhm, whose 14,047 pages on the history of Denmark
testify to a learning, an industry, and a generous devotion to
scholarship which few have rivalled. Bredal was mayor (Borgermester),
Gunnerus was bishop, Schoning was rector, and Suhm was for the moment
merely the husband of a rich and unsympathetic wife. But they were
united in their interest in serious studies, and in 1760, the last
three--somewhat before Bredal's arrival--founded "Videnskabsselkabet i
Trondhjem." A few years later the society received its charter as "Det
Kongelige Videnskabsselskab."

A little provincial scientific body! Of what moment is it? But in those
days it was of moment. Norway was then and long afterwards the political
and intellectual dependency of Denmark. For three hundred years she had
been governed more or less effectively from Copenhagen, and for two
hundred years Danish had supplanted Norwegian as the language of church
and state, of trade, and of higher social intercourse. The country had
no university; Norwegians were compelled to go to Copenhagen for their
degrees and there loaf about in the anterooms of ministers waiting for
preferment. Videnskabsselskabet was the first tangible evidence of
awakened national life, and we are not surprised to find that it was in
this circle that the demand for a separate Norwegian university was
first authoritatively presented. Again, a little group of periodicals
sprang up in which were discussed, learnedly and pedantically, to be
sure, but with keen intelligence, the questions that were interesting
the great world outside. It is dreary business ploughing through these
solemn, badly printed octavos and quartos. Of a sudden, however, one
comes upon the first, and for thirty-six years the only Norwegian
translation of Shakespeare.

We find it in _Trondhjems Allehaande_ for October 23, 1782--the third
and last volume. The translator has hit upon Antony's funeral oration
and introduces it with a shor