th comparison. On the whole,
this second attempt to put Shakespeare into Landsmaal was distinctly
less successful than the first. As poetry it does not measure up to
Aasen; as translation it is periphrastic, arbitrary, not at all
faithful.

F

The translations which we have thus far considered were mere
fragments--brief soliloquies or a single sonnet, and they were done into
a dialect which was not then and is not now the prevailing literary
language of the country. They were earnest and, in the case of Aasen,
successful attempts to show that Landsmaal was adequate to the most
varied and remote of styles. But many years were to elapse before anyone
attempted the far more difficult task of turning any considerable part
of Shakespeare into "Modern Norwegian."

Norway still relied, with no apparent sense of humiliation, on the
translations of Shakespeare as they came up from Copenhagen. In 1881,
however, Hartvig Lassen (1824-1897) translated _The Merchant of
Venice_.[19] Lassen matriculated as a student in 1842, and from 1850
supported himself as a literateur, writing reviews of books and plays
for _Krydseren_ and _Aftenposten_. In 1872 he was appointed Artistic
Censor at the theater, and in that office translated a multitude of
plays from almost every language of Western Europe. His published
translations of Shakespeare are, however, quite unrelated to his
theatrical work. They were done for school use and published by
_Selskabet for Folkeoplysningens Fremme_ (Society for the Promotion
of Popular Education).

[19. _Kjobmanden i Venedig_--Et Skuespil af William
Shakespeare. Oversat af Hartvig Lassen. Udgivet af Selskabet for
Folkeoplysningens Fremme som andet Tillaegshefte til _Folkevennen_
for 1881. Kristiania, 1881.]

To _Kjobmanden i Venedig_ there is no introduction and no notes--merely
a postscript in which the translator declares that he has endeavored
everywhere faithfully to reproduce the peculiar tone of the play and to
preserve the concentration of style which is everywhere characteristic
of Shakespeare. He acknowledges his indebtedness to the Swedish
translation by Hagberg and the German by Schlegel. Inasmuch as this work
was published for wide, general distribution and for reading in the
schools, Lassen cut out the passages which he deemed unsuitable for the
untutored mind. "But," he adds, "with the exception of the last scene of
Act III, which, in its expurgated form, would be too frag