Saxo Grammaticus
Saxo Grammaticus (1150–?1200),Danish historian, author of the Gesta Danorum or Historiae Daniae (c.1185–1200), which includes the legend of Amleth, the origin of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Amleth's uncle Feng has killed Amleth's father and married his mother, a union that Saxo identifies as incestuous. The son puts on an antic disposition as he prepares for revenge and is sent to England but finally kills Feng to reign in Denmark himself. This story had circulated in manuscript and was well known in 1514 when it was translated into French by François de Belleforest in his Histoires tragiques, the text Shakespeare used for Hamlet. The dramatist is unlikely to have known Saxo's work in the original.
Jane Kingsley-Smith
Bibliography
Gollancz, Israel, The Sources of ‘Hamlet’ (1926)
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