e gives a
similar popular account in its issue for Sept. 4, 1844. Indeed, several
such articles and sketches may be found in popular periodicals of the
years following.

In 1855, however, appeared Niels Hauge's afore mentioned translation of
_Macbeth_, and shortly afterward Professor Monrad, who, according to
Hauge himself, had at least given him valuable counsel in his work,
wrote a review in _Nordisk Tidsskrift for Videnskab og Literatur_.[3]
Monrad was a pedant, stiff and inflexible, but he was a man of good
sense, and when he was dealing with acknowledged masterpieces he could
be depended upon to say the conventional things well.

[3. See Vol. III (1855), pp. 378 ff.]

He begins by saying that if any author deserves translation it
is Shakespeare, for in him the whole poetic, romantic ideal of
Protestantism finds expression. He is the Luther of poetry, though
between Luther and Shakespeare there is all the difference between
religious zeal and the quiet contemplation of the beautiful. Both belong
to the whole world, Shakespeare because his characters, humor, art,
reflections, are universal in their validity and their appeal. Wherever
he is read he becomes the spokesman against narrowness, dogmatism, and
intolerance. To translate Shakespeare, he points out, is difficult
because of the archaic language, the obscure allusions, and the intense
originality of the expression. Shakespeare, indeed, is as much the
creator as the user of his mother-tongue. The one translation of
_Macbeth_ in existence, Foersom's, is good, but it is only in part
Shakespeare, and the times require something more adequate and
"something more distinctly our own." Monrad feels that this should
not be altogether impossible "when we consider the intimate relations
between England and Norway, and the further coincidence that the
Norwegian language today is in the same state of flux and transition,
as was Elizabethan English." All translations at present, he continues,
can be but experiments, and should aim primarily at a faithful rendering
of the text. Monrad calls attention to the fact--in which he was, of
course, mistaken--that this is the first translation of the original
_Macbeth_ into Dano-Norwegian or into Danish. It is a work of undoubted
merit, though here and there a little stiff and hazy, "but Shakespeare
is not easily clarified." The humorous passages, thinks the reviewer,
are a severe test of a translator's powers and this test Haug