Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GUI-HAN |
|
|
HAMLET , the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, a striking figure in Scandinavian romance. The chief
2 The word is used in modern Icelandic metaphorically of an imbecile or weak-minded person (see Cleasby and Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary, 1$6q). Bevis of Hampton make it not unlikely that Hamlet is of British rather than of Scandinavian origin. His name does in fact occur in the Irish Annals of the Four Masters (ed. O'Donovan, 1851) in a stanza attributed to the Irish Queen Gormflaith, who laments the death of her husband, Niall Glundubh, at the hands of Amhlaide in 919 at the battle of Ath-Cliath. The slayer of Niall Glundubh is by other authorities stated to have been Sihtric. Now Sihtric was the father of that Olaf or Anl.af Cuaran who was the prototype of the English Havelok, but nowhere else does he receive the nickname of Amhlaide. If Amhlaide may really be identified with Sihtric, who first went to Dublin in 888, the relations between the tales of Havelok and Hamlet are readily explicable, since nothing was more likely than that the exploits of father and son should be confounded (see HAVELOK). But, whoever the historic Hamlet may have been, it is quite certain that much was added that was extraneous to Scandinavian tradition. Later in the loth century there is evidence of the existence of an Icelandic saga of Amlocii or Amleth in a passage from the poet Snaebjorn in the second part of the prose Edda.' According to Saxo,2 Hamlet's history is briefly as follows. In the days of Rorik, 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 to various tests which are related in detail. Among other things they sought to entangle him with a young girl, his foster-sister, but his cunning saved him. When, however, Amleth slew the eaves-dropper hidden, like Polonius, in his mother's room, and destroyed all trace of the deed, Feng was assured that the young man's madness was feigned. Accordingly he despatched him to England in company with two attendants, who bore a letter enjoining the king of the country to put him to death. Amleth surmised the purport of their instructions, and secretly altered the message on their wooden tablets to the effect that the king should put the attendants to death and give Amleth his daughter in marriage. After marrying the princess Amleth returned at the end of a year to Denmark. Of the wealth he had accumulated he took with him only certain hollow sticks filled with gold. He arrived in time for a funeral feast, held to celebrate his supposed death. During the feast he plied the courtiers with wine, and executed his vengeance during their drunken sleep by fastening down over them the woollen hangings of the hall
' " 'Tis said that far out, off yonder ness, the Nine Maids of the Island Mill stir amain the hostcruel skerry-quern--they who in ages past ground Hamlet's meal
meal
2 Books iii. and iv., chaps. 86-1o6, Eng. trans. by O. Elton (London, 1894). 895 tale of Hamlet and the English romances of Havelok, Horn and the dead men of the day before with stakes, and thus terrifying the enemy. He then returned with his two wives to Jutland, where he had to encounter the enmity of Wiglek, Rorik's successor. He was slain in a battle against Wiglek, and Hermuthruda, although she had engaged to die with him, married the victor .The other Scandinavian versions of the tale are: the Hrolfssaga Kraka,' where the brothers Helgi and Hroar take the place of the hero; the tale of Harald and Halfdan, as related in the 7th book of Saxo Grammaticus; the modern Icelandic Ambales Saga,' a romantic tale the earliest MS. of which dates from the 17th century; and the folk-tale of Brjam5 which was put in writing in 1707. Helgi and Hroar, like Harald and Halfdan, avenge their father's death on their uncle by burning him in his palace. Harald and Halfdan escape after their father's death by being brought up, with dogs' names, in a hollow oak, and subsequently by feigned madness; and in the case of the other brothers there are traces of a similar motive, since the boys are called by dogs' names. The methods of Hamlet's madness, as related by Saxo, seem to point to cynanthropy. In the Ambales Saga, which perhaps is collateral to, rather than derived from, Saxo's version, there are, besides romantic additions, some traits which point to an earlier version of the tale. Saxo Grammaticus was certainly familiar with the Latin historians, and it is most probable that, recognizing the similarity between the northern Hamlet legend and the classical tale of Lucius Junius Brutus as told by Livy, by Valerius Maximus, and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (with which he was probably acquainted through a Latin epitome), he deliberately added circumstances from the classical story. The incident of the gold-filled sticks could hardly appear fortuitously in both, and a comparison of the harangues of Amleth (Saxo, Book iv.) and of Brutus (Dionysius iv. 77) shows marked similarities. In both tales the usurping uncle is ultimately succeeded by the nephew who has escaped notice during his youth by a feigned madness. But the parts played by the personages who in Shakespeare became Ophelia and Polonius, the method of revenge, and the whole narrative of Amleth's adventure in England, have no parallels in the Latin story. Dr. O. L. Jiriczeks first pointed out the striking similarities existing between the story of Amleth in Saxo and the other northern versions, and that of Kei Chosro in the Shahnameh (Book of the King) of the Persian poet Firdausi. The comparison was carried farther by R. Zenker (Boeve Amlethus, pp. 207-268, Berlin and Leipzig
The tale of Hamlet's adventures in Britain forms an episode so distinct that it was at one time referred to a separate hero. The traitorous letter, the purport of which is changed by Hermuthruda, occurs in the popular Dit de l'empereur Constant,' and in Arabian and Indian tales. Hermuthruda's cruelty to her wooers is common in northern and German mythology, and close ' Printed in Fornaldar Sogur Nor5trlanda (vol. i. Copenhagen, 1829), analysed by F. Detter in Zeitschr. fur deutsches Altertum (vol. 36, Berlin, 1892). Printed with English translation and with other texts germane to the subject by I. Gollancz (Hamlet in Iceland, London, 1898). Professor I. Gollancz points out (p. 1xix.) that Brjam is a variation of the Irish Brian, that the relations between Ireland and the Norsemen were very close, and that, curiously enough, Brian Boroimhe was the hero of that very battle of Clontarf (1014) where the device (which occurs in Havelok and Hamlet) of bluffing the enemy by tying the wounded to stakes to represent active soldiers was used. e " Hamlet in Iran
See A. B. Gough, The Constance Saga (Berlin, 1902). parallels are afforded by Thrytho, the terrible bride of Offa I., who figures in Beowulf, and by Brunhilda in the Nibelungenlied. The story of Hamlet was known to the Elizabethans in Francois de Belleforest's Histoires tragiques (1559), and found its supreme expression in Shakespeare's tragedy. That as early as 1587 or 1589 Hamlet had appeared on the English stage is shown by Nash
Greene
See an appendix to Elton's trans. of Saxo Grammaticus; I. Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland (London, 1898) ; H. L. Ward, Catalogue of Romances, under " Havelok," vol. i. pp. 423 seq. ; English Historical Review, x. (1895) ; F. Detter, " Die Hamletsage," Zeitschr. f. deut. Alter. vol. 36 (Berlin, 1892) ; O. L. Jiriczek, " Die Amlethsage auf Island," in Germanistische Abhandlungen, vol. xii. (Breslau), and " Hamlet in Iran
End of Article: HAMLET If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/GUI_HAN/HAMLET.html"> HAMLET </a> |
|
|
(Previous) HAMITIC RACES AND LANGUAGES |
(Next) HAMLEY, SIR EDWARD BRUCE (1824-1893) |
|
Sponsored Advertisements