Amlethus or Not before the “First Quarto”

Amlethus is the best-known character in Saxo’s History of the Danes (Gesta Danorum, 1208/1219) thanks to Hamlet, his English incarnation. The Danish prince described in Book III and IV, however, differs considerably from the protagonist in Shakespeare’s tragedy. He has also been depicted outside of English theater. This contribution presents the numerous texts mentioning this multifarious character up to the beginning of the 17^th century, when the first Hamlet edition appeared in London. During this period, Denmark used other media to glorify or criticize the prince. Because of the fame of Shakespeare’s play, scholarship on its sources and connection with Saxo’s version is abundant. It is generally accepted that Shakespeare was not directly inspired by the History of the Danes, but by the French adaptation of François de Belleforest first published in 15721. However, Belleforest is far from being the only author to have taken an interest in Saxo’s story. At least 31 texts mention the Danish prince by name before Shakespeare: ten in Latin, eight in Danish, six in German, five in English, one in Icelandic, and one in French, that of Belleforest. This survey from Saxo to Shakespeare will proceed chronologically and be concluded with a broad look at Amlethus’s fate after the edition of the “First Quarto” in 1603.

Amlethus is often absent from texts about Danish history. The Roskilde Chronicle (Chronicon Roskildense), written around 1157 and considered the pioneering work in Danish historiography, only runs from 827, much too late to include Amlethus, who lived long before the Christian era. In his Brief History of the Kings of Denmark (Brevis Historia Regum Dacie) from 1185/1186, Sven Aggesen mentions some 30 kings from Skjold to Cnut VI, son of Valdemar I, but omits Amlethus, as does the Lejre Chronicle (Chronicon Lethrense, 1170/1250), which goes back to Dan I, like Saxo. Ericus Olai, the pioneer of Swedish historiography, often relies on Saxo in his Chronicle of the Goths (Chronica Regni Gothorum, 1468/1475), but also omits Amlethus, just like the Danish-Norwegian author Ludvig Holberg. He penned a voluminous History of the Danish Kingdom (Dannemarks Riges Historie, 1732–1735), but did not have the slightest interest in remote fairytales and wrote nothing about the clever prince who avenged his father’s murder2.

Amlethus until the First Saxo Edition (1208–1514)

As the first mention of Amlethus is found in the History of the Danes3, there is every reason to believe that the story sprang from Saxo’s vivid imagination. The motif of the nephew feigning madness to deceive his uncle undoubtedly comes from Livy or Valerius Maximus4, but the plot is Saxo’s own. As none of the fragments covers the Amlethus episode, we only know the original story from the Paris edition. It goes like this:

Roricus appointed Horwendillus and Fengo, sons of Gerwendillus, governor of Jutland, to rule that province. After killing the Norwegian king Collerus in a duel, Horwendillus married Roricus’s daughter Gerutha. Jealous, Fengo killed Horwendillus and married his widowed sister-in-law. To protect himself, Amlethus feigned madness. Suspecting this a deceit, some courtiers set a trap for him and lured him into a wood where a beautiful woman was waiting. Warned of the danger by his foster brother, Amlethus indulged his desires with the woman out of the spies’ sight. One of Fengo’s advisors set a new trap and arranged for Amlethus to meet his mother. This advisor hid under the bed, where he was killed by Amlethus with a sword. Fengo attempted a third trap by sending his nephew to Britain. Amlethus’s two companions carried a woodcut letter ordering the king of Britain to kill him. Amlethus changed the signs so that the king would kill the two companions. Amlethus made the king understand that he was a bastard and that the queen was of servile origin. In admiration, the king gave him his daughter and had the two attendants hanged. After a year, Amlethus returned to Jutland, where his funeral took place. He got the courtiers drunk, set fire to the palace, and killed Fengo. The next day, Amlethus denounced Fengo’s crime in a speech to the people, had himself proclaimed king, and then returned to Britain. Meanwhile, his father-in-law had become a widower. To avenge Fengo, to whom he had sworn loyalty, the king of Britain sent Amlethus to Scotland to ask the queen to marry him on his behalf. He knew she used to behead her suitors. Finally, the queen called Herminthruda asked Amlethus to marry her, and he accepted. He then returned to Britain with this second wife. His first wife was pregnant with his child, therefore accepted the concubinage, and warned him against her own father. In a battle, the king of Britain was killed. Amlethus then returned to Denmark with his two wives and a great booty. Meanwhile, Roricus was dead and succeeded by Wiglecus. The family relationship between them is not specified, but Wiglecus seems to be Roricus’s son. In this case, he is Amlethus’s uncle. Amlethus first defeated him in a duel, but Wiglecus raised an army and came back. Amlethus was then defeated and killed by Wiglecus, who married the widow Herminthruda. Saxo complains about the fickleness of women and points out that Amlethus’s grave is still honored in Jutland5.

In the online transcription of the 1931 edition6, this narrative has around 5,650 words and 39,000 characters. This amounts to 3.1% of the total, which shows how important this episode was to Saxo. In the editio princeps from 1514, “Amlethus” is mentioned 41 times in Saxo’s text and 18 times in the editor Christiern Pedersen’s paratexts, i.e. the marginal notes, the list of kings where Amlethus is placed as number 27, and the alphabetical index. Amlethus is clearly one of the main characters in the History of the Danes. Interestingly, he discovers that the king of Britain is a bastard and that his queen has been unfaithful. Saxo may be pointing out that the throne of England was at his time occupied by a descendant of a famous bastard, William the Conqueror. This Norman had definitively put an end to all Danish claims in England. Moreover, when the History of the Danes was written, England had a queen whose infidelity was legendary, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

The first reaction to the Amlethus story seems to have come from Iceland. In the Prose Edda (1220/1230)7, which has several parallels with the History of the Danes, Snorri Sturluson makes no reference to the prince feigning madness, but the section Language of Poetry (Skáldskaparmál), mentions a man “Amlóði” after whom poets call the sea “Amlóði’s flour” or “Amlóði’s mill8”. This person’s name begins like Saxo’s Amlethus, and the double metaphor seems to reflect Amlethus’s clever explanation about the sand dunes being flour ground by the waves9. Snorri’s metaphors therefore suggest a close reading of the History of the Danes10.

Saxo’s work influenced Danish historiography from the late 13^th century on. The first established record of this influence is found in the Annals of Schleswig (Annales Slesvicenses, c. 1270) which probably ran from Dan I to 1268. The chronicle is almost entirely lost and only known through extracts copied by Anders Sørensen Vedel (1542–1616), who was active as a historian from 1570. It lists “Anletus” as the 28^th king of Denmark11.

Another 13^th century chronicle is complete: the Annals of Ryd (Annales Ryenses, c. 1290), named after an ancient Cistercian abbey near Flensburg in the same region as the previous annals. The Annals of Ryd run from Dan I to 1288, i.e. to the reign of Erik Menved, considered the 113^th king of Denmark. “Ambletus” is presented as the 26^th king, is spelled for the first time with b, and is said to have died in Øresund between Zealand and Scania, which contradicts Saxo12. The Annals of Ryd were translated into Danish, and this translation, which continues slightly beyond 1288, is preserved in three manuscripts. This is the first vernacular text containing the prince’s name, mostly “Amblæth13”. Shortly after Erik Menved’s death in 1319, another Danish chronicle was written in runes, the fragmentarily preserved Rune Chronicle (Runekrøniken) mentioning “Ambluþe14”. A third Danish chronicle covers the same period as the Annals of Ryd from Dan I to Erik Menved, but was written much later. It is called The History of the Danes in Danish (Gesta Danorum pa danskæ, c. 1390) in one of the two manuscripts from c. 1400 which preserve it. “Ambløthæ” is not counted among the kings15.

Around 1345, an anonymous author, perhaps from Jutland, reduced the History of the Danes to about a quarter. This Compendium Saxonis stops in 1342. With 1,765 words, the Amlethus story retains around 30% of the original. The abbreviator deleted the prince’s speech after Fengo’s murder, but kept the narrative framework. “Ambletus” is named almost as often as in the full version16. The Compendium Saxonis was translated into German and a version which runs until King Christian I’s death in 1481 was edited as The Danish Chronicle (De denske kroneke) without any print information, probably around 1502 by Matthäus Brandis in Schleswig or Ribe. Apart from the last section, this text is a faithful translation of the Compendium Saxonis with minor changes. The Scottish queen, for example, is anonymous, and “Ambletus” is less often named17.

Around the same time as the German translator, an unknown Dane, probably the monk Niels from Sorø, used the Compendium Saxonis as the basis for a rhymed chronicle ranging from Humble, father of Dan I, to Christian I, who reigned from 1448 to 1481. The chronicle consists of 116 monologues in which each king introduces himself. This is the first versification of the History of the Danes. It is known as the Danish Rhyme Chronicle (Den Danske Rimkrønike) and contains over 5,000 lines. The manuscript version ends in 1478 with the betrothal of the crown prince, the future King John, while the print version, published in Copenhagen in 1495, ends in 1481 with the death of Christian I. This edition was the first book ever published in Danish. It became a bestseller and was reprinted at least seven times (1504, 1508, 1533, 1534, 1555, 1573, and 1613). “Amleth” is the 23^rd king to speak. After three short monologues by his grandfather Rørich, his father Orwendell and his uncle Feggæ (respectively ten, six, and six lines), Amleth gives a lengthy account of his life in 330 lines, all in accordance with the Compendium Saxonis18. As Feggæ claims to have been murdered in Viborg, his nephew seems to have taken up residence there. Amleth’s relationship with his murderer Vitlæ is unclear. Vitlæ is presented as his father-in-law and seems to have married the queen mother Geruth, rather than the Scotswoman, Amleth’s second wife. Independently from the print version, the Danish Rhyme Chronicle was also copied in three manuscripts from the late 15^th or early 16^th century. Furthermore, Amleth’s monologue was inserted separately from one of the prints into two manuscripts with drawings of the Danish kings after portraits of Amleth19.

Before the Copenhagen edition was published, the Danish Rhyme Chronicle was translated into Low German. This version, only kept in one copy from c. 1550, begins with the words Densche Croniek (Danish Chronicle, c. 1477) and is therefore called so. It faithfully follows the Danish text, adding or deleting just one line here and there20.

Prior to the Paris edition of Saxo’s work, the unabridged version seems to have been used by Albert Krantz († 1517) for a six-book chronicle about the Nordic kingdoms, completed around 1509. Krantz belonged to the chapter of the Hamburg Cathedral. His Latin text was published in 1548 in Strasbourg by Heinrich von Eppendorf21. This editor had already published his own German translation of the same text in 1545. Two chapters from Book I deal with the fate of the prince called “Ambletus” in both versions22. Krantz deleted or shortened the same sections as in the Compendium Saxonis: the prince’s remonstrance to his mother and his speech to the people after the revenge.

Amlethus from the First Saxo Edition to the “First Quarto”

Amlethus is often mentioned during the 16^th century. This period is characterized by a diversification of languages and the spread of the story to England from 1589 onwards.

Shortly after the Paris edition, Petrus Olai or Peder Olsen, a Franciscan monk, probably from Roskilde, wrote a Chronicle of the Danish kings from Dan I to King John’s death (Chronica regum Danorum a Dano ad obitum Johannis regis). It is only preserved in one autograph. King John died in 1513, but the chronicle contains an addition for 1521. In a short section, Olai summarizes the life of “Ambletus23” and often refers to Saxo, i.e. in fact to the Compendium Saxonis. About 1527, Paulus Helie, a prolific Carmelite from Varberg in present-day Sweden, summarized Saxo’s work in a similar way from a personal copy of the Paris edition and briefly described the reigns of 103 kings from Dan I to Christian II. “Amlethus” is the 21^st of these kings24. Helie’s Shortened History of the Kings of Denmark (Compendiosa regum Daniæ historia) was edited in 1595 from the only complete copy including the first section with the early kings.

In 1554, a monumental chronicle completed fourteen years earlier by Johannes Magnus († 1544), Sweden’s last Catholic archbishop, was published posthumously by his brother in Rome. It describes Swedish history from the Flood and the coronation of Magog, one of Noah’s grandsons, as the first king of the Goths. It ends with the reign of Gustav Vasa, counted as the 143^rd king of Sweden. The History of the Danes is one of the main sources for this skillful construction. Johannes Magnus constantly attacked Denmark, going so far as to doubt the Danish origin of Saxo, whom he called “Iohannes de Saxonia (John of Saxony)25”. After renaming Saxo’s Roricus “Rodericus”, he included him as the 28^th king of Sweden and described “Horvendillus”, “Feugo”, and “Amletus26” as tyrants (“tyranni”) stirring up trouble in Jutland. A partial Swedish translation of this chronicle, published in 1611, dates Rodericus’s reign to 3252 Anno Mundi (AM), i.e. after the creation of the world, or 711 BC27.

In 1558, the Nuremberg poet and shoemaker Hans Sachs drew on the German translation of Albert Krantz’s Latin chronicle to compose the 112-line poem Fengo a Prince of Jutland (Fengo ein fürst in Itlandt) about Fengo’s fratricide and the revenge of his nephew “Ampletus28”. It ends with a fourteen-line moral. The poem was edited four times (1560, 1570, 1590, 1613).

In 1565, the Basel physician Heinrich Pantaleon published the first part of a huge three-volume encyclopedia featuring Germanic celebrities from Noah’s great-grandson Tuisco. This man is supposed to have founded the Germanic nation and ruled it until 1963 AM, or 2007 BC since Pantaleon dated Christ’s birth to 3970 AM29. The encyclopedia contains 1,590 biographies, usually illustrated with engravings. As the author included Scandinavia in Germania, we also find the kings invented by Saxo and Johannes Magnus. According to Pantaleon, “Amlethus30” began his reign in 3365 AM or 605 BC. Pantaleon was both the first author to accurately date Amlethus’s reign and the first to represent his face (fig. 1). When he published a German version of his encyclopedia two years later, he kept the Latin form “Amlethus31”, but now used a different woodcut to represent this hero (fig. 2). On average, each woodcut was used to portray twelve men.

In 1572, François de Belleforest published a long revision of the story in an expanded version of Part V of his Histoires tragiques. The original version of this part from 1570 contained eight stories, the expanded version twelve, with the story about “Amleth” in fifth position32. Of the 16 editions of Part V published up to 160633, only eight contain this story (1572, 1575, 1580, 1582 [twice], 1583, 1585, 1601 in third position34). With around 12,000 words, it is twice as long as Saxo’s version. In a note, Belleforest cites his source as “Saxon Grammairien35”. He follows Saxo’s narrative without making any major alteration, sometimes shortening, sometimes adding digressions, particularly comparisons with Biblical history or Roman antiquity. Thanks to Belleforest, the story garnered a level of international fame that neither the Saxo editions nor its adaptations had attracted until then, and would soon reach England.

The highest rate of mentions of “Amleth” was reached in 1575 by Andersen Sørensen Vedel in the first Danish translation of the History of the Danes he published as a preacher at Copenhagen Castle36. He faithfully followed Saxo’s text, but invented Danish forms for the proper nouns. He introduced each book with an informative summary and a family tree. He dedicated his translation to King Frederick II, his patron, whom he counted as the 98^th king of Denmark. Going directly from “Rørick” to “Viglet”, Vedel excluded Amleth from his list of kings, perhaps because this prince only ruled Jutland37. Furthermore, Vedel claimed that Amleth was buried at “Amlets hede38” (“Amlet’s meadow”). He undoubtedly had in mind Ammelhede, a hamlet near Randers.

In 1579, the Scanian pastor Niels Pedersen, Petreius in Latin, connected national history to Gomer, one of Noah’s grandsons and the elder brother of Magog, whom Johannes Magnus had made the ancestor of the Swedes. According to Petreius, Noah’s descendants colonized Scandinavia via Jutland, not Sweden. More than a thousand years after this colonization, the immigrants, whom Petreius called Cimbri, elected Dan king and thus became known as Danes. Although Petreius took little interest in their fate, he listed Saxo’s kings with a precise chronology, which he called Umbra Saxonis (Saxo’s shadow). He considered himself a sundial supplying Saxo with dates. In this chronology recorded in seven manuscripts, Petreius made “Amlethus39” the 21^st king of Denmark and dated his reign from 3520 to 3564 AM or 443–399 BC. His work was censored, perhaps by Vedel, but circulated clandestinely in manuscripts, and was first published in its entirety in 2012.

Around 1582, Iver Bertelsen wrote about 100 rhyming monologues in Danish at Frederick II’s request and attributed them to Danish kings from Dan I to Frederick II40. In choosing this pattern, he followed the custom established by the Danish Rhyme Chronicle. Ranging in length from ten to eighteen lines, the monologues were however considerably shorter. They were originally intended to adorn the tapestries that Frederick had ordered in 1581 to cover the walls of Kronborg in Elsinore. At that time, this royal castle still had no connection whatsoever with Amlethus. Bertelsen followed the list drawn up in 1575 by Vedel and thus jumped from “Rørick” to “Viglet”, whom he counted as the fifteenth and sixteenth kings of Denmark. Rørick evokes the revenge of his son-in-law’s murder without mentioning his grandson’s name. Like Vedel, Viglet claims that “Amlet” was killed at “Amblets Hed41”. Fifteen manuscripts preserve Bertelsen’s monologues, which were edited in 1646 with the title Regum Daniæ Icones (Portraits of Denmark’s Kings) next to copperplate engravings of 101 kings and two queens.

Eight of the fifteen manuscripts also have portraits of the kings speaking, six of them with Amlethus (fig. 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10). Three of them are somewhat faithful copies (fig. 5 and 6 from fig. 3, fig. 8 from fig. 7). The fashion of illustrating royal monologues with portraits began around 1590 and continued until the middle of the 17^th century42. In a manuscript partially copied around 1600 by the learned noblewoman Anne Krabbe (1552–1618), two comments explain that “Amblet” was buried at Ammelhede near Gammel Estrup, which now belonged to Eske Brock (1560–1625). This mansion is indeed located only eight kilometers east of Ammelhede. Krabbe knew this region well because she had been living at Stenalt nine kilometers further north since marrying Jacob Bjørn (1561–1596). She still lived there when she wrote the first comment on the backside of the portrait (fig. 7): “Amblet killed Fenge, who was both his stepfather and his uncle, in Viborg on the rampart in 246 BC or 3717 AM. He is buried at Ammelhede, which is located near Estrup and belongs to the honorable and well-born man Eske Brock of Estrup, who now in 1616 owns Estrup43.” On the edge of the Danish rhymes inserted after the portrait and mentioning “Amblets heed”, Krabbe added: “This meadow of Amblet is located next to Gammel Estrup and belongs to Eske Brock44.”

Krabbe also owned another manuscript with 102 portraits, but none with Amlethus. It is a parchment from c. 1600 and contains German poems written in 1582 and 1583, also royal monologues45. These poems were composed after Bertelsen’s Danish rhymes, which for unknown reasons were not chosen to adorn the walls of Kronborg. With eight to fourteen lines, the German monologues are slightly shorter than Bertelsen’s poems, but similar in style and content. The 43 tapestries, which featured 101 monologues, were completed in 1584. They were also admired by English visitors, but did not include any portrait of Amlethus. He is however mentioned in the monologue by “Wickloff”, who names him “Amblech46”. His place of death was therefore changed into “Amblechsheid” without being identified as Ammelhede by the unknown translator. This tapestry is not one of the fifteen preserved from the original series. The German monologues are only recorded in three manuscripts, but were already edited in 1597 with woodcuts before being reprinted in 1646 along with Bertelsen’s rhymes and new portraits.

Another manuscript with portraits described in German prose features a drawing of “Amlets” without any description (fig. 4). It is the third copy of the drawing from c. 1590 (fig. 3). All three copies misspelled the last letter in “Amleth” as an s. The prince was also drawn in a manuscript with Danish prose, now kept in Greifswald (fig. 9). He was overall drawn at eight occasions within under 100 years47. This corpus of Danish portraits would be called Amblet drawings (Amblet-tegninger). Apart from Pantaleon, nobody else seems to have portrayed him, until his Hamlet-spurred breakthrough in the late 18^th century. Today, only one of eight Danish drawings is available online – ironically the one in Greifswald. It is the only drawing kept in a library outside Scandinavia. It had probably arrived in Sweden as war booty at the end of the 17^th century. In 1729, it was acquired in Stockholm by the Greifswald lawyer Christian von Nettelbladt, who brought it to Germany48. Only six of the ten pictures reproduced at the end of this contribution had been previously published. In 1950, two of the drawings were reproduced in a Danish book about the Kronborg tapestries (fig. 7 and 10), and a third one was only mentioned (fig. 3)49. Shakespearian scholars only appear to have reproduced Amlethus drawings twice. In 1983, William F. Hansen published four drawings without shelf-marks (fig. 3, 4, 7, and 1050). Two of them were the same as in 1950. One of them was reprinted in 1996 in a popular reader about Hamlet, still without shelf-marks (fig. 751). From there, it was inserted in 2007 into the English Wikipedia entry about “Amleth” and now in entries in eight different languages without any precise reference. None of the three books from 1950 to 1996 mentions Pantaleon’s woodcuts, and Hansen inaccurately describes a drawing from c. 1600 (fig. 7) as “[p]robably the oldest picture of Hamlet”.

In the second half of the 16^th century, Danish aristocrats composed and recorded a large quantity of ballads in their mother tongue. These poems, today misleadingly called folkeviser (popular ballads), were written by aristocrats for aristocrats and about aristocrats. They often deal with local history. Vedel collected them, wrote many new ballads himself, and in 1591 published a hundred of them in a collection of purportedly anonymous poetry which he dedicated to Queen Sophia, a widow since King Frederick II’s death in 1588. This was the Book of Hundred Ballads (Hundredvisebogen). It became even more successful than the Danish Rhyme Chronicle, was reissued at least seventeen times until 1787, and is today considered as the foundational work of the national Danish literature52. Vedel claimed these poems were composed in ancient times, and was believed with the same naivety as Saxo, the central reference for any Danish historiography. The Book of Hundred Ballads relates several key moments in national history, from the emigration of the Danes to Lombardy to the present day. Vedel’s collection begins with a long poem in which 87 kings from Dan I to Prince Christian IV describe their reigns in six lines in keeping with the style of the Danish Rhyme Chronicle, Bertelsen’s rhymes, and the Kronborg tapestries. “Viglet”, the sixteenth king, names “Amlet” and now locates his death at “Ambletzbyl53”. Vedel means the hamlet Ammitsbøl ten kilometers southwest of Vejle, his own birthplace, to which he proudly referred with his pseudonym Vedel. After having first located Amlethus’s death at Ammelhede, he now situated it 100 kilometers further south in his own native region.

With the Book of Hundred Ballads, we are approaching the Shakespearean tragedy, which was not the first transformation of the story into a play. The first version known as Ur-Hamlet is lost. Great Britain only has five unquestionable references to “Hamlet” as a play before the “First Quarto” was printed in 1603.

A play called Hamlet was first recorded in Britain in 1589. That year, Robert Greene, a popular English author, published Menaphon, a pastoral novel preceded by a long introduction addressed “To the Gentlemen Students” by the satirist poet Thomas Nashe. He mocked a bad playwright he called the “English Seneca” and added ironically: “if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls, of tragical speeches54”. This remark means that an English tragedy with a hero called Hamlet already existed and had gained popularity by 1589. There has been much speculation about this lost play and its author. Whether it was written by Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, as is often thought, or someone else, it must have been in keeping with Saxo’s story and must have dealt with a fratricide to be avenged by a young prince.

Despite general opinion within Shakespearian scholarship, there are significant reasons to believe that Ur-Hamlet hinted to contemporary Denmark55. On February 14, 1588, Frederick II attended the wedding of his younger brother John, Duke of Holstein, in Sønderborg, fell seriously ill, and died on April 4 at the age of 53 in Antvorskov in the arms of Queen Sophia, who was 23 years younger than her husband. Eleven years earlier, at the time of birth of her first son Christian IV, her infidelity was a subject of rumors. Although she did not marry her brother-in-law after her husband’s suspicious death, there are similarities with Saxo’s story. Moreover, the destinies of Denmark and Britain were just about to be united by a royal marriage. In return for Denmark relinquishing the Orkney Islands which it had long claimed, King James VI of Scotland married Princess Anne, Queen Sophia’s eldest daughter, on August 20, 1589. Only three days later, Greene received permission to print his pastoral novel with Nashe’s preface. If Fengo was supposed to refer to Duke John the Younger in Ur-Hamlet, the avenging nephew must have stood for the legitimate prince of Denmark, Christian IV. He was then 12 years old and was denied the throne because of his age. In 1588, in a funeral oration for Frederick II, Vedel contradicted the rumor that the late king had been assassinated, clumsily attributing his premature death to alcoholism.

Meanwhile, Ur-Hamlet continued to be performed in England. In his diary, Philipp Henslowe, the manager of a London theater, noted that a play performed on June 9, 1594, at his house was called “Hamlet”, and he had received eight shillings for it56. It was one of 22 plays listed that month. Henslowe wrote nothing about the play performed on June 9 apart from mentioning its earnings.

The third mention of a similarly named play appears in 1596 in Thomas Lodge’s essay Wits Miserie and the Worlds Madnesse, in which he spoke up against the demons of his times. One of these demons was “Hate-Vertue or “Sorrow for another mans good successe”, a pale personification who would cry out like a ghost “Hamlet, reuenge57”. This is the first reference to the ghost, which is absent from all previous versions of the story. A ghost therefore appeared in a play before Shakespeare’s version. However, Lodge’s quote is missing in the later print versions. Shakespeare’s ghost never formulates this command.

Hamlet was mentioned again in a play performed in London in the autumn of 1601. On November 11 that year, Thomas Dekker’s satirical play Satiro-mastix was authorized for publication in The Stationer’s Register58. It had probably been written in September59. The print bears the year 1602. In a conversation with Horatio, Tucca introduces himself in this way: “my name’s Hamlet reuenge60”. This character uses the same expression as Lodge and seems to refer to the same lost version of the play.

The “First Quarto” (1603)

When Satiro-mastix was authorized for publication, Shakespeare had perhaps just begun to change the Ur-Hamlet into the play published in 1603 in the “First Quarto” as abridged version and in 1623 in the “First Folio” as full version, the modern reference. With nearly 16,000 words, the “First Quarto” is already longer than Belleforest’s text; with nearly 28,000 words, the “First Folio” more than twice as long. With over 4,000 lines in modern editions, Hamlet stands out as Shakespeare’s longest tragedy. It was completed before July 26, 1602, when it was authorized for publication in The Stationer’s Register. This entry is the fifth and last mention of a play called Hamlet in England before the “First Quarto”. It says: “A booke called ‘the Revenge of Hamlett Prince [of] Denmarke’ as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes61”. If Shakespeare finished his play some months before the entry in The Stationer’s Register, as did Dekker, Lord Chamberlain’s Men had enough time to rehearse and perform the play before the written version was submitted in July. As we shall see, continental evidence speaks in favor of a composition after October 24, 1601.

One of Shakespeare’s innovations is the setting of the story in a castle spelled Elsinore from the 1790 edition onwards. Previous editors do not seem to have identified this toponym as the coast town called Helsingør in Danish. They all distorted it. Apart from the titular protagonist, all the characters bear names that differ entirely from those used in the earlier tradition. Hamlet’s unnamed foster brother, who helps him foil his uncle’s traps in Saxo’s text, is now called Horatio. At the end of the play, this hero resigns himself to live so that he can deliver the truth and “speak to th’ yet unknowing world / How these things came about62”. Horatio here acts as the author’s spokesman. Shakespearean scholarship has considered the name of this character a hint to Horace, but never to the Roman poet’s contemporary Danish namesake Jon Jacobsen who called himself Venusinus. This Latin name referred to the Ven island in Øresund which Jacobsen claimed as his birthplace, but also to Horace’s epithet63. The Roman poet was indeed born in Venosa near Napoli and accordingly nicknamed Venusinus. In other words, his Danish namesake considered himself a new Horace.

When Shakespeare published Hamlet, Venusinus was Professor of Physics at the University of Copenhagen, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, and the King’s personal historiographer and advisor. He had learned Old English by himself, was in touch with learned people in England and Scotland, and may even have corresponded with Shakespeare. He was involved in the astronomical debate of that time, and openly sided with Copernicus against the most illustrious of his compatriots, the geocentrist Tycho Brahe (1646–1601), a close friend of Queen Sophia, so close that he was rumored to be not only her lover, but also the father of King Christian IV, and even to have poisoned King Frederick II64. During the regency (1588–1596), Tycho acted as a symbolic king of Denmark, receiving in 1590 King James VI at Uraniborg, the castle he had built on Ven near Kronborg. According to American astronomer Peter Usher, Hamlet can be read as an allegory between geocentrism embodied by Claudius and his followers and heliocentrism embodied by Horatio. Usher supposes that Shakespeare changed the name Fengo into Claudius in reference to Claudius Ptolemy, the founder of geocentrism65. If we adopt this reading and combine it with the rumors about Queen Sophia’s infidelity and the regicide committed by Tycho, the English play is peppered with references to contemporary Denmark. Hamlet was not set at Kronborg, but at Tycho’s castle Uraniborg, and was written after the astronomer’s suspicious death on October 24, 1601, which immediately triggered rumors of assassination throughout Europe.

Amlethus after the “First Quarto” (1603–2024)

As Shakespeare wrote a new play about Denmark, Christian IV was preparing for war on the other side of the North Sea and dreamt of invading Sweden. On March 9, 1602, he commissioned Venusinus to write poems to be inscribed on new guns. Inspired by the Danish fashion initiated by the Danish Rhyme Chronicle, Venusinus composed around a hundred Latin poems of two couplets each, in which the kings from Dan I to Frederick II sum up their reigns. Most of the guns ended up on the sea floor during naval battles lost by Denmark, but the poems were saved thanks to manuscript copies and an edition from 1646. Both Roricus and Vigletus, respectively the fifteenth and sixteenth king of Denmark, refer to the prince of Jutland, who does not speak himself. Roricus calls his grandson “Amalethus” due to metrical constraints, and so does Vigletus in the manuscript copy. The print version from 1646 has “Amtethus”, which is just a typographical error66.

Venusinus was a discreet author and may have contributed anonymously to the first national history ever issued in Danish, the ten-volume Chronicle of the Kingdom of Denmark (Danmarks Riges Krønike, 1595–1604). The official publisher was Venusinus’s patron, Chancellor Arild Huitfeldt. In 1603, Huitfeldt issued a volume describing the earliest part of Danish history, from Dan I to the coronation of Cnut VI in 1182, exactly covering the same period as the History of the Danes. However, the first mythical reigns were drastically reduced. By page 28, the chronicle has already reached Gøtrik, the first historical ruler mentioned in the Frankish Annals from 804 onwards. In Saxo’s work, Gøtrik is the 58^th king according to Christiern Pedersen’s count and only appears at the end of Book VIII. Huitfeldt’s history was in fact ahead of its time because of its skepticism on the pre-Charlemagne period. This skepticism is characteristic of Venusinus, who was the first Dane to question the existence of the earliest kings of Denmark and by extension Saxo’s reliability. Huitfeldt’s chronicle devotes half a page to Viklet’s reign and discusses his family connection to “Amleth”, confronting the different available sources67. In this part of the chronicle, the royal biographies are almost as short as Venusinus’s Latin poems about the same kings.

In 1622, Claus Christoffersen Lyschander, Venusinus’s successor as a royal historiographer, published a far less critical work. Relying on Umbra Saxonis, he extended Saxo’s account down to the Flood, and retained most of Petreius’s dates. Lyschander described “Amlet” as a rebel who “wanted to divide the Danish kingdom68”.

In 1711, Holberg briefly alluded to “Amlet” in his introduction to European history69, but omitted to name this prince in his monumental Danish history published two decades later. During the Enlightenment, Holberg’s history replaced Saxo’s work and quietly cast Amlethus into obscurity.

For a long time, this legendary prince was forgotten entirely in his homeland, and his fame was limited to Britain. From Denmark, his story however reached Iceland once again and influenced the beginning of an extensive romantic narrative recorded in the 17^th century and edited as Ambales saga along with Icelandic poems based on the same matter70. In this narrative, the King of Spain has a son who marries Amba, daughter of the chieftain of Burgundy. She calls their son “Ambales” after her own name, but the courtiers call him “Amlóde”. He survives after his father’s death by playing the fool and thus bears obvious similarities with Amlethus. The first editor argues that this late text should reflect the original story used for the History of the Danes, but, as proven long ago71, there is no reason to assume the existence of an oral tradition that would have been independent from Saxo.

During this time, Shakespeare’s play reached Germany where a free adaptation, Der bestrafte Brudermord (Fratricide Punished), appeared in 178172. According to the publisher, it was based on a now lost manuscript from 171073. The first genuine Hamlet translation was published in German by Wieland in 176674. The first Danish translation dates from 1777. Here, Hamlet welcomes for the first time his friends “Rosenkranz” and “Gyldenstierne” in “Helsingör”, thirteen years before that place became “Elsinore” in English editions75. In these years, Johannes Ewald began a free Danish adaptation of the play. This undertaking about “Hamleth” remained a fragment with only three scenes76. Hamlet was again translated into Danish in 1807 by Peter Foersom and was performed in this version in 1813 in Copenhagen, then in 1816 in Elsinore. Wieland’s German version had been staged in a 1792 Odense performance. Today, the play is performed every year in Elsinore by HamletScenen. The 2024 version included Tycho Brahe for the first time and was therefore named Hamlet’s Star.

Since Hamlet died in Elsinore according to Shakespeare, his grave was transferred from Jutland to a ground near Kronborg in the 19^th century. Around 1850, a stone obelisk was raised there, but was soon carried away by tourists. In 1926, a new granite stone with a relief was placed on the same spot; it stills stands there today. In response to the relocation of the grave in East Denmark, Jutland created another monument in 1933 by erecting a ten-ton stone at Ammelhede in honor of the national hero. It is inscribed with an alliterating poem by Jørgen Olrik, who had edited the History of the Danes two years earlier. Until now, nobody had identified Vedel as the initiator of the Ammelhede hypothesis, and nobody has ever paid attention to his second Ammitsbøl theory. Therefore, Vedel’s birth region does not commemorate Amlethus with a third monument, at least not yet.

*

Explicit mentions of Amlethus before the “First Quarto” (1210–1602)

1: Chronological order / 2: Author / 3: Short title in original langage / 4: Exact or approximative year of composition / 5: Manuscripts (6 with both n^o 23 and 26) / 6: First edition / 7: Editions prior to 1800 / 8: Reference edition / 9: Main form in nominative / 10: Occurrences.

Portraits of Amlethus from 1565 to the 17^thcentury