[MR] Hamelt Precurser?

[Tom Rettie]

>Any chance that Shakespeare knew the story of this saint? I think he was
>born too late to have got a Catholic education - but the story may have been
>known to Englishmen as "history". What do you think?

Sweet Baroness Rosine,

<<dusting off the English major cap and pulling it on -- damn it's gotten
smaller>>

Shakespeare's Hamlet (approx 1600-1602) wasn't the first play by that
title. There was an earlier Hamlet, possibly by Thomas Kyd, dating to about
1589, which does not survive. The English source may have been
Belleforest's "Histories Tragiques," which in turn was based on the story
of "Amleth" in the "Historica Danica," written in Latin by a 12th century
Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus.

One thing about Elizabethan drama is that it tends to be very derivative.
There was an enormous demand for new material, so there was a lot of
"recycling" of well known stories. Today we tend to think one needs to be
well educated to be familiar with Greek and Roman mythology (and obscure
Danish kings), but to Elizabethans it was all part of the popular
entertainment of the day.

Your obedient servant,

Fin



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Tom Rettie                                         tom at his.com
Heather Bryden                                 bryden at hers.com
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