Reaching Lifelong Goals

Another thing that I have been neglecting is the posting of my last research paper for ENG202, Middle Shakespeare.   The last play that we studied was Hamlet.  Perhaps the greatest play ever written, and possibly the most performed, the topics for research papers was great.   Again, during a class lecture, Peter Jensen, my professor made an off-hand comment about a Scandinavian legend that was possibly the origins of Hamlet.  This got my historian juices flowing and I was off to the races.   As a non traditional student, I had to go the extra mile for a simple two page paper.   I spent some very enjoyable time researching the origins of the story that was to become Hamlet.   This reprint of the paper has be reformatted to blog friendly printing.     I have a separate page of reference material in MLA format if anyone is interested, shoot me a message.   Now that Spring Term has started I’m already into the next Shakespeare paper.    Not to give anything away, but it may just be a little “R” rated, as many of the Bard’s plays were.    Hope you enjoy my paper about the origins of the story of Hamlet.

Amblothae the Jutlander – the Real Hamlet?

William Shakespeare used many sources for the body of work he produced for the world.   His histories illustrate his acumen for research in the chronicles of Sir Thomas Moore, Rafael Holinshed and John Hardyng.   Shakespeare was also influenced by the classics, such as Virgil, Plutarch and Homer.  The inspiration for the greatest play ever written, Hamlet comes from a more obscure source.  How did William Shakespeare come about the story of the Danish Prince?

The legend of Amleth, Prince of the Danes, dates back to the middle of the 12^th century, in Scandinavia’s violent early history.   Louise Cary, in an article for ELH noted, “By the time Shakespeare took on Hamlet, both the character and the basic outlines of the story were antiques. The misadventures of the Danish hero Amleth circulated as a folk-tale before they were given connected, if episodic, written form by Saxo Grammaticus in the twelfth century.” (Cary).  The author of the Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes), Saxo Gramaticus, was probably a cleric writing the history of Denmark  c.1200.    The chronicle, written in Latin, comprised sixteen large volumes of Denmark’s history up to the year 1185.  The volumes tell of the rise and fall of the great rulers of Denmark. The tale of Amleth (Latin: Amblothae),  Saxo’s Hamlet, is recounted in books three and four.  The works of Saxo Gramaticus were first printed in Paris in 1514, and Francois de Belleforest translated it into French in 1570, as part of his collection of tragic legends, Histories Tragiques. “Saxo’s text did not appear in English until 1608, so either Shakespeare was fluent in French or he used another English source based on the French translation.” (Mabillard).    Shakespeare probably would have had access to these volumes and could have translated the Latin versions himself.

The story of Amleth’s tragedy is too close to Shakespeare’s Hamlet to be a coincidence, even the names were not changed much to “protect the innocent”.  Amanda Mabillard in her article, Shakespeare’s Sources for Hamlet, on website Shakespeare Online, summarizes the story of Amleth from the original chronicle.  ”King Rorik of the Danes places his trust in two brothers, Orvendil and Fengi. The brothers are appointed to rule over Jutland, and Orvendil weds the king’s beautiful daughter, Geruth. They have a son, Amleth. But Fengi, lusting after Orvendil’s new bride and longing to become the sole ruler of Jutland, kills his brother, marries Geruth, and declares himself king over the land. Amleth is desperately afraid, and feigns madness to keep from getting murdered. He plans revenge against his uncle and becomes the new and rightful king of Jutland.” (Mabillard).

The basic plot of the Saxo Gramaticus account is the basis for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.    To be fair, it amounts to a mere skeleton for the great work of literary art that Shakespeare developed it into.   The characters of the tale of Amleth were translated

into Hamlet some 400 years later.   But was Saxo Gramaticus the only influence on Shakespeare for his writing of this play?

One other source for Shakespeare quite possibly was the Ur Hamlet.  The prefix “ur” is a German term for “primordial”.  This is the name given by Frederick Samuel Boas to a play mentioned as early as 1589, a decade before most scholars believe Shakespeare’s version of the story was written.   References indicate that such a play was well-known throughout the decade of the 1590s and was a popular tragedy or revenge play so popular at the time.  Unfortunately, the play has been lost and no copies exist.

Rebekah Owens discusses the evidence of Ur-Hamlet, writing: “Evidence for the existence of such a play appears in two important sources. Phillip Henslowe’s Diary for Newington Butts has an entry for the performance of a Hamlet on 9 June 1594. Henslowe does not annotate the entry with “ne”, his code for new. This indicates that an early Hamlet was performed by the Lord Admiral’s Men and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who were then resident at Newington Butts. A second reference comes from Thomas Lodge’s Wit’s Misery and the World’s Madness of 1596.” (Owens).

Not having an existing copy of the Ur-Hamlet is problematic; however, the story seems to have been a telling of the Amleth legend by Saxo Gramaticus.   This production was performed during Shakespeare’s early years as a playwright and was very popular.   It is also proposed that Shakespeare himself could have been the writer of both Ur-Hamlet and Hamlet.    There is no existing evidence to prove this theory, but it does suggest a possible connection to the c.1601 Hamlet.

My research suggests that both of these sources could have been used by William Shakespeare to pen the ultimate play for the ages, Hamlet. Even with the caveat that the sources were the basic plot of the story of Amleth, Prince of Denmark, it still remains that the play we have today is much more than the sum of its parts.  What William Shakespeare was able to do with this “skeleton” plot was to flesh it out with muscles of deep characters, a nervous system of twisting themes and the eyes to see deep into the human psyche.