Hamlet, the hero of Shakespeare’s great tragedy, seems to correspond to a figure called Amleth, who appears in history of Denmark, written by Saxo Grammaticus late in the 12th century.
However, it is impossible to say whether he did in fact exist. The figure of the young man whose father was murdered by a brother who later married his victim’s widow appears in many legends. In all of them the son pretends to be mad in order to revenge his father’s death. Such stories are found as far back as the Icelandic saga of Amlooi, mentioned by the 10th Century poet, Snaebjorn.
The story of Hamlet is told in the fifth volume of Histories Tragiques (1570) by Francois de Belleforest and an English version of this, The Hystorie of Hamblet was published in London in 1608. Shakespeare’s tragedy was written about 1601, but a play about Hamlet believed to have been written by Thomas Kyd was performed in about 1509.
As he often did, Shakespeare borrowed the plot from others and transformed it by his genius into a great work of art.
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