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Hamlet is a striking figure in Scandinavian romance and the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet,...

Hamlet is a striking figure in Scandinavian romance and the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The chief authority for the legend of Hamlet is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century. It is supposed that the story of Hamlet, Amleth or Amlóði, was contained in the lost Skjöldunga saga, but there are no means of determining whether Saxo derived his information in this case from oral or written sources. According to Saxo, Hamlet's history is briefly as follows. In the days of Rørik Slyngebond, king of Denmark, Gervendill was governor of Jutland, and was succeeded by his sons Horvendill and Feng. Horvendill, on his return from a Viking expedition in which he had slain Koll, king of Norway, married Gerutha, Rorik's daughter, who bore him a son Amleth. But Feng, out of jealousy, murdered Horvendill, and 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, pretended to be imbecile, but the suspicion of Feng put him