Saturday, November 11, 2017
Amleth and Hamlet
I was interested why Shakespeare chose Denmark as the setting of Hamlet, and I came across the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, the direct predecessor of the character of Prince Hamlet. It has been frequently assumed that the legend ultimately goes back to an Old Norse (Old Icelandic) poem of about the 10th century. The chief authority for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who was a Danish historian, theologian and author. His version of the legend is very similar to Hamlet. Horvendill (equivalent of King Hamlet), on his return from a Viking expedition in which he had slain Koll, king of Norway, marries Gerutha (equivalent of Gertrude); she bears him a son, Amleth (equivalent of Hamlet). But Feng (equivalent of Cladius) murders Horvendill, and has an incestuous relationship with Gerutha. One major difference is that in the legend of Amleth, Feng tells Gerutha that he killed his brother to avenge her of a husband who had hated her. Amleth feigns not knowing his uncle's crime through the pretense of "madness," which is similar to Hamlet's feigned madness. In the end, Amleth murders his uncle, avenging his father.
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This story and Hamlet's is a bit reminiscent to me of Odysseys. Odysseus of course is known as the super clever trickster Greek who devised the Trojan Horse. However, the history of his trickery goes back to well before the Trojan War actually begins. For example, when Menelaus tells the other suitors to help him get Helen back (according to an oath that they all took), Odysseus tries to avoid it by pretending he's crazy. (Kind of like how Hamlet feigns madness to try to avoid danger himself—i.e., Claudius finding out that he knows about Hamlet Sr.'s murder.) Odysseus hooks up a donkey and an ox to his plow and sows his field with salt, but his madness is discovered as a ruse when Palamedes puts Odysseus' baby son Telemachus in front of the plow and Odysseys swerves so that he doesn't hit his son. Both Hamlet and Odysseus are really smart and use their intelligence to their advantage by feigning madness, but ultimately Odysseus still has to go fight the war and isn't able to return home for a really long time, and Hamlet, though he accomplishes his mission of avenging his father, still dies.
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