Abstract
The Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) is often regarded as Norway's greatest prose writer. This article analyzes his statements on Shakespeare from his essays and lectures from around 1890.
The 1880s were the heyday of Realism and Naturalism in Norway, and Hamsun was trying to make space for a different type of literature which he himself called ʻpsychologicalʼ and which one nowadays often sees as early modernist. In his attacks on some of the great authors of his time, as well as canonical writers of previous centuries, he criticizes Shakespeare, among others, and claims that Shakespeare's characters are extremely flat.
Some of Hamsun's arguments are crude, superficial and amusing, but his statements nonetheless constitute an interesting case of Shakespeare reception. This article shows that some of the Norwegian writer's pronouncements about Shakespeare are in accord with his proto-modernist literary programme.
In addition, the article compares his disparaging remarks with those of two other detractors of Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy and G. B.
Shaw, and concludes that Hamsun and Shaw share the same strategy: they use scandalous statements about Shakespeare in order to shake contemporary readers and gain their own place in the sun.