Hamlet, the hero of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, but whether a figure originally historical, mythological, or partly both, still remains uncertain. The legend of Amleth is first found in the third and fourth books of the Latin history of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus, written about the end of the 12th century, but first printed at Paris in 1514. According to this version, Gervendill, the governor of Jutland under Rörik, king of Denmark, leaves two sons, Horvendill and Fengo. Horvendill for a brave exploit is rewarded with the hand of Gerutha, Rörik's daughter, who bears him a son, Amleth. Fengo murders his brother, and then prevails upon Gerutha to marry him by persuading her that he had done this crime merely out of love for her. Amleth to save his life feigns madness, and is put to some strange tests by his suspicious uncle. He is finally sent to England with two attendants, bearing a sealed letter instructing the king to put him to death, but he contrives to alter the writing so as to procure for them death, and for himself an honourable reception. He next marries the king's daughter, and returns after a year to Denmark, burns down the banqueting-hall, together with its drunken revellers, and slays Fengo with his own sword. He next revisits England, but, as his father-in-law and Fengo had had a secret agreement that the survivor should avenge the other's death if caused by violence, he is sent for his own doom to Scotland to woo the queen
Hermuthruda, who had killed all former suitors. But the terrible queen herself falls in love with the hero, whose final fate is to fall in battle with Vikletus, the successor of Rörík. The interest of the story for students of Shakespeare ends with Saxo's third book, which brings it down to the death of Fengo.
The story of Hamlet was freely translated in the fifth volume of François de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (1570), and a rough but literal English translation of this exists in a single copy (once Edward Capell's) in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, entitled The Hystorie of Hamlet (London, 1608; reprinted in Collier's 'Shakespeare Library,' 1841). Dr Latham in his Dissertations on Hamlet (1872) contends that the hero in Saxo's third book is a different personage from that in the fourth, the former being identical with Olaf Kyrr, the Anlaf Cwiran of the Saxon Chronicle, and the Amlaf Cnaran of the Irish Annals; the latter, with the Hygelac of Beowulf, and the Chocilaicus of Gregory of Tours. Zinzow, Die Hamletsage (1877). For the whole question, see Simrock's Quellen des Shakespeare (1870), Moltke's Shakespeares Hamlet-Quellen (1881), and Hansen's Legend of Hamlet (Chicago, 1887).