According to Saxo, whose account is excerpted in Simrock’s Quellen des Shakspeare (Bonn, 1870), and summarized in Latham’s Dissertations on Hamlet (Lond., 1872, reprinted from Transactions of the Roy. Soc. oj Literature, vol. x., new series), Hamlet’s history is briefly as follows. In the days of Rörik, king of Denmark, Gervendill was governor of Jutland, and in this office he was succeeded by his sons Horvendill and Fengo. The former, returning with glory from a'viking expedition in which he had defeated Koller, king of Norway, obtained the hand of Gerutha, Rörik’s daughter, who in due course bore him a son Amleth. But Fengo, out of jealousy, murdered Horvendill with his own hand, and then persuaded Gerutha to become his wife, on the plea that he had committed the crime for no other reason than to avenge her of a husband by whom she had been hated. Amleth, afraid of sharing his father’s fate, pretends to be imbecile, but the suspicion of Fengo puts him to various tests, which are related with all the inconsequent simplicity of the ordinary Märchen. Despatched to England in company with two attendants, who bear a letter instructing the king of that country to put him to death, he surmises the purport of their instructions, and secretly modifies the inscription on their “tablets” so that the king is requested to put them to death and to treat him with honour. By his wisdom he makes a deep impression on the king, and obtains the hand of the royal princess; but instead of settling in England he returns at the end of a year to Denmark, where he Î3 supposed to be dead, just as the people are celebrating his obsequies. During the feast that follows he makes the courtiers all drink freely, and then, when they are heavy with wine and sleep, he pulls down over them the hangings of the hall, fixes these with pegs which he had sharpened and prepared in the early stage of his folly, and then setting fire to the building leaves the revellers to their fate. He next proceeds to the royal chamber to take vengeance on Fengo himself, who falls beneath the stroke of his own sword, for which Hamlet had substituted his own scabbard-fastened weapon. Returning to England for his wife, the hero finds that his father-in-law and Fengo had been under pledge to each other that the survivor should avenge the other’s death if it resulted from violence; and his father-in-law, unwilling to make a direct attack on his life, sends him to Scotland as proxy-suitor for the hand of a terrible queen Hermuthruda, who has put all previous wo0er3 to death. But Hermuthruda happens to fall in love with Hamlet, and he returns to England to upbraid his father-in-law with his treachery. As king of Jutland he has to endure the grievous hostility of Vikletus, Rörik’s successor, but at la3t determines, though well aware that he is doomed to death in the attempt, to engage with him in a decisive battle. He perishe3, and his widow marries Vikletus.

According to Latham, who may be taken as the representative of the historical theory, there are really two Hamlets,—the Hamlet of Saxo’s third book and the Hamlet of his fourth book, who have been confounded together. The former, who 13 the Shakespearean hero, he would identify with Olaf Kyrre, the Anlaf Cwiran of the Saxon Chronicle and the Amlaf Cuaran of the Irish Annals, whose name, having passed through England and Ireland, he supposes to have returned to Denmark in a form which is Latinized by Saxo a3 Amlethus; the latter he considers as the Hygelac of Beowulf, the Chochilaicus of Gregory of Tours, the Huhleike of the Heimskringla, and even the Havelok of English legend. “By a confusion between them aβ man and man, the bearers,” he says, “of names as different as Olaf and Higelac take a form out of which Amlethus is a probable educt.” But this theory, which is expounded with more learning than lucidity, is hardly so much in favour as that of the mythological schooL

That, in spite of the links by which Saxo has sought to connect its different portions with the authentic history of Denmark, the whole story was destitute of historical basis was maintained by P. E. Müller (Critisk Undersogelse q∕ Danmarks og Narges Sagahistorie eller am Troυoerdigheden af Saxos og Sηorros Kilder, Copenhagen, 1823), and his conclusions in regard to the matter have been very generally accepted. Though Hamlet or Amleth himself is not mentioned in the earlier documents of the Scandinavian mythology—the only allusion to his existence being the phrase Amlotha qvem, or Hamleth’s mill, applied to the sea in the Skaldskaparmal —his father, Horvendill or Orvandil (from or, the spear, and υandel, skilful), appears in the great Scandinavian mythus in connexion with Thor’s contest with Hrungnir, and is farther to be identified with the Orendel of German legend, whose memorial coat was afterwards christened the seamless coat of our Saviour at Treves, and whose name, which occurs also as Ernthelle, may possibly be the source of the more famous name of Tell. Hamleth’s own name finds its explanation in the Norse amr or arnl, toil (still used colloquially in Icelandic, amla, to toil), and lothi, devoted to, and probably has reference to his mythic impersonation of the endless toil and travail of the sea. The various details of the story—not only improbable and impossible, but essentially stupid and trivial— lend themselves with remarkable readiness to the theory which explains them as versions of the tale, a thousand times retold, of the contests between summer and winter, sea and land, light and darkness. An elaborate exposition of the whole will be found in Zinzow’s Die Hamletsage an und mit verwandten Sagen erläutert, Halle, 1877. It has been already stated that Saxo’s is the only original authority; but proof of the popularity of the legend is found in the presence in Jutland of such names as Amelhede {i.e, Hamlet’s Heath), near Binders, Fegges Sund, that is, Fengo’s Sound, and Feggesklint, that is, Fengo’s Cliff, and in the fact that in modern Icelandic the word amlothi is a regular equivalent for an idiotic or stupid man. Nor are literary rifacimentos of the story wanting. The Icelanders have their Amlotha Saga, which is a free translation of Saxo, and their Ambales Saga, in which the matter is treated in a more romantic style. The story of Brian, given in Jon Arnason’s Isleηzkur pjodsogur (Leipsic. 1864, ii.), has the same main features; and Dr Vigfusson, by whom it was discovered, is disposed to surmise that the legend may actually be of Celtic origin,—a supposition quite in keeping with other well-known facts in Icelandic history. It was taken down from the lips of Lady Hildur Arngrims-dotter, whose father was born in 1568. As Niels of Sorö in the 15th century made Hamlet more familiar to the Danes by his Danske 2iimkronike, so the French story-teller Belleforest introduced him to a wider company in his Cent Histoires tragiques. That as early as 1587 or 1589 he had been represented on the English stage is shown by the well-known passage from Nash’s preface to Greene’s Menaphan, “He will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfulls of tragical speeches.”