Shakespeare played a decisive role in creating
a Middle Ages for the generations that came after him. In the introduction to Shakespeare and the Middle Ages, Curtis Perry and John Watkins note
that “almost any book written on the Hundred Years War or the Wars of the Roses
begins by explaining just how Shakespeare got it wrong. He conflated
characters, condensed chronologies, cleaned up some careers, and sullied
others” (Perry and Watkins 1). The two tetralogies comprise the body of work
that is commonly studied for medievalisms, and in these plays Shakespeare’s
interpretation of the past demonstrates nation building, ‘Englishness,’ and a
concern about the nature of power (Perry and Watkins 16). A different kind of
engagement with the medieval past is occurring in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, though it is no less concerned with
nations and the nature of power. Set in a contemporary Danish court, the play draws
on the medieval Scandinavian tradition of Amleth which is encapsulated in Books
3 and 4 of Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta
Danorum. What is interesting is that Hamlet,
removed from its medieval setting, steps away from a representation of the
past, but the text it is drawn from conversely bears remarkable similarities to
the tetralogies in its treatment of the past; the Gesta Danorum is the recording and creation of a national past for
Denmark, as Shakespeare’s plays do for England. The difference, in part, is
that the tetralogies look back to a recent medieval past from an early modern
perspective, and the Gesta Danorum is
looking to an ancient and early medieval past from the High Middle Ages. While Hamlet represents an entirely different
kind of antiquarianism, thinking about it as an expression of medievalism
influences the way that we read the text. In part it has caused a search for a
‘historical’ Hamlet, a task that Alexander Welsh has identified as very
frustrating since “Shakespeare is among those artists chiefly responsible for
our (high) standards of verisimilitude,” and the so-called historical Hamlet is
hard, if not impossible to pin down (Welsh 4). Shakespeare adapts the medieval
narrative for dramatic purposes and for an Elizabethan audience. Determining what
about Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a
product of medieval Scandinavia and what is a product of the English Renaissance
is not a fruitful way to look at the narratives, because it ignores the textual
tradition that separated the two writers, and even suggests that we can
pinpoint an exact transmission history between the two, which we cannot.
However, the juxtaposition of the two texts suggests an interpretation of both.
English scholarly interpretation of the Saxo Grammaticus narrative has been
rooted in textual histories of Hamlet,
and placing the Gesta Danorum beside
Shakespeare’s text throws further light on the political and national aspect of
Shakespeare’s medievalism. Juxtaposing the two texts, and film adaptations of
the two texts, highlights the political nature of the personal and familial
tragedy in Hamlet and places Hamlet amongst Shakespeare’s more obviously
medieval plays.
Saxo Grammaticus wrote the Gesta Danorum over many years. Arguments
have been made for the order in which the books were written, but the
completion of the work probably occurred between 1208 and 1218 (Davidson 1). In
the Preface Saxo states that he is writing this work for a patron and for
national identity: “cum cetere naciones rerum suarum titulis gloriari,
uoluptatemque ex maiorum recordacione percipere soleant, Danorum maximus
pontifex Absalon patriam nostrum, cuius illustrande maxima semper” because other nations are in the habit of
vaunting the fame of their achievements, and joy in recollecting their
ancestors, Absalon, Archbishop of Denmark, had always been fired with a
passionate zeal to glorify our fatherland (1). Saxo does construct this
narrative for a purpose, though he has been criticized for not possessing the
artfulness of some of his contemporaries such as Snorri Sturluson. The first
books about the distant and largely mythic past represent an ideology of
kingship (Davidson 6). In the Preface he gives credit to his sources for tales
about the past, including Danish oral tradition and the “Tylensium industria” diligence of the men of Iceland who “official
continue sobrietatis exerveant, omniaque uite momenta ad excolendam alienorum
operum noticiam conferre soleant” pursue
a steady routine of temperance and devote all their time to improving our knowledge
of others’ deeds (3). The combination of art and history reminds us of
Shakespeare’s treatment of events such as the War of the Roses.
It is not possible to confirm Saxo’s source,
but there is enough evidence to suggest the Amleth tale is rooted in
longstanding Scandinavian traditions. William Hansen, studying the Amleth
narrative in Saxo Grammaticus, has identified five medieval Danish chronicles
that give a very truncated version of the life of Amleth (The Annals of Ryd, The Annals
of Slesvig, The Runic Chronicle, The History of the Danes in Danish and The Legend Chronicle), which suggests a
wide knowledge in Denmark (Hansen 147-9). Sources in Iceland also suggest there
was a longstanding tradition there. The Ambales
Saga, recorded after the Middle Ages, tells a romantic version of the same
story as found in the Saxo (Hansen 38). There is also, dating from about two
centuries before the Gesta Danorum, a
reference by an Icelandic poet to ‘Amloði’s meal,’ referring to sand (Hansen 5).
This mirrors the event in the Gesta
Danorum where, in his feigned madness, Amleth refers to the sand on the shore
as flour that “eadem albicantibus maris procellis permolita esse” had been ground by the foaming billows when
it was stormy (89). Hansen demonstrates that there may be a link between
this story and Scandinavian words for fool: “as a common noun amlóði is current in Icelandic in the
sense of ‘an imbecile, weak person,’ and it survives in Norwegian dialect as amlod ‘a fool’” (Hansen 6). And it is
not just a Scandinavian tradition, but a folkloric one, with The Hero as Fool motif informing many
stories that are passed down through to the modern tradition (Hansen 36).
Saxo writes in Latin because works of
national history tended to be written in Latin, including Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica Anglorum and Paul
the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum,
which Saxo mentions in his Preface (Hansen 40). Yet, the Gesta Danorum is not a work of history according to our modern
conception of what history is. Books X-XVI have debatable historical value, but
Books I-IX refer to northern traditional tales of the past, containing too many
supernatural and unsubstantiated stories to be accepted by modern audiences
(Davidson 2). Like the many ghosts found in Shakespeare, including in Hamlet, the dragon fight in Book II and
other elements tells us we are dealing with a different kind of story, not
unrelated to history, but not as obviously grounded in ‘verisimilitude.’
Hilda Ellis Davidson, in her introduction to
Peter Fisher’s translation of the first nine books of Saxo Grammaticus, shows
how English scholarship of the text has centered around the Amleth story
(Davidson 2). Hansen’s work, while about the Amleth tale, is called Saxo Grammaticus and Life of Hamlet,
even though Hamlet and Amleth are not etymologically related (Hansen 6).
Therefore, while it is clear that Shakespeare, or at least the sources for
Shakespeare’s Hamlet chose that
English name based on its resemblance to Amleth, there is no reason to suppose
the Amleth of Saxo Grammaticus should be Anglicized for modern readers as
Hamlet, unless it is to the purpose to remind your Shakespearean readers why
they are researching Saxo Grammaticus in the first place. The first translation
of Saxo into English by O. Elton in 1894 Davidson attributes to the popularity
of Shakespeare’s play. Historicity and the textual tradition have been the
mainstay of English scholarship on the Gesta
Danorum because of the popularity of Hamlet.
Philip Edwards, in his introduction to the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition,
does not overestimate Hamlet’s
importance when he states “it is probably safe to say that in the world’s
literature no single work has been so extensively written about as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” (Edwards 32).
Considering Shakespeare’s treatment of the
Middle Ages in other texts, Perry and Watkins state that “even if we know that
Shakespeare gave the wrong answers, he asked the right questions, or at least
asked the questions that still shape our sense of what mattered during the
Middle Ages” (Perry and Watkins 3). If we apply that to Hamlet, what questions does Hamlet
ask of the medieval narrative, even if it is inheriting the tradition
through various intervening texts? How else, besides in whether or not it
conforms to our idea of history, does the juxtaposing of the two texts
influence our understanding of the Amleth tradition in the Gesta Danorum? By looking at Gesta
Danorum Amleth through a Hamlet
lens, we see the text in two parts, the part of the narrative that coincides
with the events in Hamlet, and the
events which extend past the Hamlet
narrative. The juxtaposition says that what is important about the medieval
tale is that the dynastic jockeying for position, the travelling that occurs
between England and Denmark and Scotland and the death in open battle are less
remarkable ways to come to political prominence in the medieval northern
tradition, than to pretend to be a fool to safeguard your life, and to take the
throne by trickery as opposed to by force. This is why this text should be
remembered.
The juxtaposition also says that audiences
should pay attention to the character of Amleth and his motivations. Gesta Danorum’s Amleth is a crafty
Germanic king, whose every move is calculated to get him more political power
in the context of Germanic kingship. Because he possesses the basic qualities
necessary for a good king, including noble birth, intelligence, martial power
and ambition, Saxo Grammaticus does not speak ill of him, even though this king
is a minor king of Jutland, and not descended, or contributing descendants to,
the main Zealand line that Saxo is keenly interested in. There are no political
reasons why Saxo needs to keep Amleth a spotless king. Saxo as narrator
condemns Fengi, Amleth’s uncle, for incest and fratricide, saying “quisquis
enim uni se flagicio dederit, in aliud mox procliuior ruit” whoever commits himself to one crime soon
finds himself sliding downhill towards the next (87). In Saxo’s depiction
of kingship, it is not ambition or murder that are problems so much as
violating bonds of kinship, and secrecy or lying. Everyone knows Fengi killed
the king, but he lies about his reasons. There are no condemnations of Amleth
for killing his uncle, but there is the inclusion of a long speech after the
act so that Amleth can justify his actions to his followers, and in that speech
there is no lying. Seeing these events through the lens of Hamlet, we question Amleth’s motivations more than the text leads
us to. Why Saxo does not condemn the secrecy and kin killing of Amleth, though
he condemns Fengi, are explained only by the fact that the language used
establishes Fengi as bad, so that all bad done to him and his retainers is
justified by his status as an unworthy Germanic king.
The events in Gesta Danorum and Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark are specifically similar enough to posit there is a
direct relation between the texts, but different enough and separated enough by
time for the relation to be unknown. It is the Gesta Danorum specifically, and less the rest of the medieval
Scandinavian tradition of Amleth, that starts the textual journey to becoming Hamlet, though other sources cannot
definitively be ruled out. The relevance of this is summed up by Hansen: “I do
not, however, take up the old problem of the origin of Hamlet story, not
because the question is uninteresting, but because it appears to be
unanswerable” (Hansen xii). Scholars, interested in the historicity of either
text, have done some work in tracing the Amleth tradition. A text of Gesta Danorum was printed in Paris in
1514 and a copy of the Amleth story was told by François de Belleforest in the
fifth volume of Histoires tragiques
in 1570 (Hansen 66). This is supposedly a transitional text, though Davidson,
not unbiased as an editor of Saxo Grammaticus, sides with Yngve Olsson, stating
that Shakespeare uses a simple Latin version of the text as his source material
(Davidson 67). An earlier Hamlet, no
longer extant, was acted in 1589, and it is believed to have been the work of
Thomas Kyd, though Edwards indicates that that also is uncertain (Edwards 3).
The textual tradition of Hamlet, Prince
of Denmark itself is complicated, as there is not one definitive text for
how Hamlet was acted on the stage in
Shakespeare’s day (Edwards 8). The suggestion as well that Shakespeare could
have been with the acting troupe that went to Elsinore in 1586 complicates even
further the possible textual transmission, though less so for tracing what has
come from the medieval tales, and more so for determining what Shakespeare
himself added to the play (Srigley 178). The textual history is tangled.
Instead of
trying to sort out the exact medieval influences on Shakespeare’s work, it is
more fruitful to see how the medieval tale, and the Gesta Danorum in particular, directs our understanding of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Hansen, in
marking the transitions between the two texts, argues that Shakespeare’s play
takes the emphasis off of action and puts it on character. For instance, Hansen
argues that in Saxo the reason for delaying the revenge is a matter of action,
or external reasons; he has no opportunity to get at the king or the king’s
supporters. In Shakespeare the delay is a matter of character (Hansen 75). The
tale has also been moved from Jutland to Elsinore, in Zealand. In Saxo they are
fighting over a local kingship, though the rules of how kings behave are no
less pertinent to the reader. In Hamlet
they are fighting, on a small scale, for the throne of Denmark, and it is so
precisely Denmark, and so imprecisely Denmark, that the point can be applied to
all kings, and all nations. According to Edwards, the most important changes
from the medieval tale to the Elizabethan play are “1. The murder becomes
secret; 2. A ghost tells Hamlet of the murder and urges revenge; 3. Laertes and
young Fortinbras are introduced; 4. Ophelia’s role is extended and elevated; 5.
The players and their play are introduced; 6. Hamlet dies as he kills the king”
(Edwards 2). The general change of time, from a tale of the past to a tale of
the imprecise present, contrasts the universality of the emotional components
of the play with the added local colour that indicates Denmark specifically.
When the two texts are juxtaposed, the reader is drawn to what it means to be
king and the importance of family ties to kingship. The national and political
aspects of the play are highlighted, because every action in the original
medieval tale is an expression of kingship, and that is what Hamlet and Amleth
share.
The retention
of Denmark is a significant tribute to the original medieval text, because the
story could have been set elsewhere to match the change in epoch. By keeping
the play in Denmark the setting serves as a place both familiar and foreign to
the audience. Gunnar Sjörgen, who postulated a geography of the play that shows
the borders between Denmark, Norway and Poland are confused, shows that
Elsinore is meant to resonate with an English audience since it was one of two
ports English ships would have been familiar with (Sjörgen 69). Other places
where an historical Denmark asserts itself is in the reference to the
intemperate drinking, which Michael Srigley argues was a well-known aspect of
the Danish court of Christian IV (Srigley 168). It is mentioned several times,
as characteristic of the Danes, often by Hamlet, who states “though I am native
here/ And to the manner born, it is a custom/ More honoured in the breach than
the observance (1.4.13-16). Wittenberg was well-known school where there were
many Danish students, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are aristocratic Danish
names (Srigley 168). However, while the references to a specific Denmark enrich
the setting of the play, no references deny the universality of the Elsinore of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. If some
names are distinctly Danish, others are Greek (Laertes, Ophelia), Latin or
Neo-Latin (Claudius, Cornelius, Marcellus, Polonius), or Italian (Horatio,
Barnardo) (Hansen 85).” Edwards remarks that “Fortinbras, with its Frenchness
(‘Strong-arm’), is an odd name for a Norwegian
king and his son” (Edwards70). Polonius’s reference to Danskers in Act
2, Scene 1 line 7 represents the confusion, because while it is clearly meant
to be Danes, Sjörgen shows the word actually meant people from Danzig (Gdansk)
in Poland, and that there is a strange geography at play here (Sjörgen 69). Of
course, Shakespeare may be representing a legitimate understanding of
continental geography that did not correspond with reality, but regardless, the
placement of Norway and Poland on the borders of Denmark tighten the action of
the play, make the setting more claustrophobic, which has been noted during
stagings of the play, so that it is not necessarily a mistake (Duffy 141). This
is Denmark, but it is not just Denmark. Denmark is a stand in for a state that
is familiar, but not too familiar. In Act 2 Scene 2 when Hamlet exclaims
“Denmark’s a prison,” Rosenkrantz replies “Then is the world one” (2.2.233-4).
This is significantly different from the Gesta Danorum, since Saxo’s purpose is
to create a specifically national history, one that sets Denmark apart from
other countries, though worthy of a similar historical treatment. But it is
similar to the way that the other historical plays create a nation. Perry,
commenting on Benedict Anderson, demonstrates the early modern fascination with
the ‘imagined community’ of England (Perry 173). The idea of an imagined nation
does not have to be limited to depictions of one’s own nation. Hamlet, like the tetralogies, is
concerned with nation and statehood, organized around a central kingship. The
medieval narrative has been brought closer to audiences by updating the Danish
references, but maintains distance from home and relation to the original tale
by retaining Denmark as a location. Most importantly, it retains the theme of
kingship from Gesta Danorum, although
it is no longer Germanic kingship, but the age of absolute central rule (Perry
175). Analyzing Elizabethan plays that
engage with the Middle Ages, Perry states that “for though these plays stage
certain kinds of cultural heterogeneity … Helgerson is clearly correct to argue
that they are ultimately plays about the consolidation of royal power conceived
of as central to a brand of national identity” (Perry 174). Hamlet is engaging with the Middle Ages,
though in a way that puts history on the backburner.
Drinking at funerals, fostering and sworn
brotherhood, part of the social and political structure of the kingdom in Gesta Danorum, have different places in
the social and political structure in Hamlet,
though they have not entirely disappeared (Hansen 83). It would be impossible
to say whether we are seeing adaptation by Shakespeare, or insertion of a
social structure that is coincidentally similar in the two texts. However, the
importance of the social and political structure to Amleth’s motivations draws
attention to the importance of the political structure to Hamlet’s motivations.
An elective monarchy is an aspect of
Germanic kingship, old-fashioned even by Saxo Grammaticus’s time. The Gesta Danorum balances an antiquarian
idea of what Germanic kingship was in a mythic heroic age, and what kingship
looked like at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In the Gesta Danorum it is common for brothers
to take over kingship, as royal blood and kingly qualities is more important
than primogeniture, but nor is primogeniture unimportant. Edwards argues that
for Elizabethan audiences this was very antiquated, and that they had a “deep emotional
commitment to primogeniture and the right of a son to inherit … for the
audience, the system is a legalism which runs counter to their instinctive
sense of rightness” (Edwards 42). The
people who elect kings are called the “rabble”:
The rabble call him lord,
And as the
world were now but to begin,
Antiquity
forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers
and props of every word,
They cry
‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king.’
Caps, hands and
tongues applaud it to the clouds,
‘Laertes shall
be king, Laertes king!’ (4.5.102-108)
This is not an ancient Germanic election, but simply a country that
cannot honour those who are the kings by right of primogeniture. This affects
Hamlet, who is the offended party. His loss of a father is also the loss of a
promised office, which should not have been the case.
When the system falls apart, and royalty cannot
be maintained, the state falls apart. An interesting similarity between Gesta Danorum and Hamlet is the conflation between the person of the king and the
political body that makes up the nation. Gesta
Danorum means History of the Danes, but it is a history of exclusively
Danish kings. A history of the people is a history of the kings, and this is
true of the other Latin national histories that Saxo references. It is
interesting, then, to see the way the king stands in for the country.
Rosencrantz, talking about the office of the king, says that “Never alone/ Did
the king sigh, but with a general groan” (3.3.22-23). Laertes, when convincing
Ophelia not to pursue Hamlet, says that he may have lost interest because
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for
himself, for on his choice depends
The sanctity
and health of this whole state,
And therefore
must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice
and yielding of that body
Whereof he is
the head. (1.3.19-24)
The king must act for the country. In the play, not only are they
responsible for the state, but they stand in for it. Claudius and King Hamlet are
both referred to as Denmark, the King of Norway is called Norway and it is the
same for England; when Claudius sends a message to the King of England for
Hamlet to be killed, he says “Do it England,/ For like the hectic in my blood
he rages,/ And thou must cure me” (4.3.61-3). Therefore, there is added
significance to Marcellus’s line that “something is rotten in the state of
Denmark” (1.5.90) and to Hamlet’s statement that “Denmark’s a prison” (2.2.233)
because in both cases it shows how there is something wrong in the state, and
also in the mental capacity of he who embodies the state.
In the Gesta
Danorum Amleth’s madness is a political act. Amleth uses it to save himself
from the same fate as his father: “eoque calliditatis genere non solum ingenium
texit, uerum eciam salute defendit” this
piece of artfulness, besides concealing his true wisdom, safeguarded his life
(88). This is what made the tale distinct from the other tales of kingship in
this large body of work, and why it gets passed down to us. But the nature of
Hamlet’s madness is different. If the act of madness is also for
self-preservation, it is of a different kind, since there is no indication that
Claudius was going to kill him, nor that acting mad would keep Claudius from
doing so. Welsh argues that the madness “owes something to the northern saga
material,” since it is the root of the story (Welsh 9). In Saxo Grammaticus the
madness is a way for Amleth to remain connected to his world, and to ensure his
proper inheritance. The ‘antic disposition’ marks Hamlet’s alienation from his
world, and brings on Claudius’s suspicion that something is wrong (Edwards 46).
Claudius’s guilt is revealed through feigned (or maybe real) madness, which
allows for political action on Hamlet’s part, but Fengi’s guilt is known and
madness is a stalling technique. Madness in both texts is a way of enacting
family and dynastic politics, though the madness in the two texts has opposite
effects.
Hamlet’s character is more complex than
Amleth, as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
is arguably more (psychologically) complex than Gesta Danorum, but both texts end their narratives by commenting on
how royal a personage the protagonist could have been if fate had been even
kinder. Gesta Danorum ends the tale
of Amleth by talking about his death in battle: “such was Amleth’s departure.
If fate had tended him as kindly as nature, he would have shone as brightly as
the gods and his courage would have allowed him to surpass the labours of
Hercules.” (101) Fortinbras, who arrives just in time to pick up the political
pieces, commands
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet
like a soldier to the stage,
For he was
likely, had he been put on,
To have proved
most royal; and for his passage,
The soldier’s
music and the rite of war
Speak loudly
for him. (5.2.374-379)
The two texts talk about the character of the royal personage, because,
besides a narrative, both texts share an interest in expressing an ideology of
kingship. Looking at Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark through the lens of the Gesta
Danorum, what Shakespeare highlights from the medieval tradition is the
ways that kings shaped their state and how the character of a king is important
to his ability to rule. In Saxo Grammaticus, the killings and madness are
aspects of statehood, and that is not lost in the Elizabethan play, though the
personal and familial tragedy is an added dimension.
The presence of Saxo Grammaticus’s work
influences our understanding of Hamlet
by placing it in a tradition of medieval Scandinavian narratives about the
court of Jutland and about the nature of kings, even though the medieval has
been removed from the text. But arguably, the presence of Hamlet has had a much greater impact on the understanding of Gesta Danorum in the English-speaking
world. Take, for instance, two low budget film interpretations of the two
texts. Hamlet (2000), directed by
Michael Almereyda, is set in New York City in the year 2000. Robert Hapgood
argues that Almereyda is well versed in Hamlet
interpretations, but radically fractures the text to create his film. What this
adaptation shares with other film adaptations of Hamlet is a sense of the claustrophobia of Elsinore, or the indoor
nature of most of the scenes. Even the scenes with the Ghost take place in
small apartments or in basements and elevators of skyscrapers. Outdoor shots
are framed by skyscrapers, though most of the action occurs indoors. Robert
Duffy argues that “locale remains considerably less important here than in most
other Shakespearean plays.” (Duffy 141) In many stage and film productions the
emphasis is on the personal/family tragedy (Hapgood 75). Almereyda’s
interpretation is not without political implications, with Denmark being
instead the Denmark corporation, and Fortinbras representing a rival interest
looking for a corporate takeover, but the emphasis is on the personal and
family tragedy. Hamlet’s place and
time are out of joint, so although the time and the place of the setting of Hamlet provide something for the
audience, it is not as integral to the play as, say, the psychological state of
the characters. Denmark does not carry with it a stigma of being particularly
good or particularly anything, so nothing is lost by changing the setting. What
is important is the idea of statehood. Almereyda’s film, then, is as much
medievalism as Shakespeare’s play, in that this is the continuation of an
ongoing adaptation of a medieval narrative that has not yet lost its inherently
political message. But audiences do not think of it as medieval.
Compare this to
how we think of adaptations of the Gesta
Danorum, which cannot be thought of without reference to the later Shakespearean
tradition. Royal Deceit (1994),
directed by Gabriel Axel, is an adaptation of the Amleth story of Saxo
Grammaticus starring Gabriel Byrne and Christian Bale. Unlike Almereyda’s Hamlet, the openness of the outdoors
marks this film, which is introduced by a few minutes of panorama shots of
Scandinavian wilderness. Much of the film is, in narrative, very close to what
occurs in the Gesta Danorum, making
it seem like what has been compromised in the plot for film audiences has been
done so unwillingly. The film is an obvious interpretation of both a medieval
text and medieval history in its setting. Audiences are meant to recognize the
medieval. However, the narrative of Hamlet,
separate from the Gesta Danorum, has
been laid over the text, as an indication of, perhaps, why this film was made.
The narrator mentions, though the audience does not see, that Amleth’s father
Orvendil came to Amleth as a ghost, which does not happen in the Gesta Danorum. The action of the film
also ends at the point when Amleth is revenged on his uncle, suggesting that
the Shakespeare narrative governs the start and end point of this
interpretation of Saxo. Perhaps most tellingly, the narrator says that “it was
his son Amleth who will be remembered.” We do not have to think of Saxo
Grammaticus when we read or watch Shakespeare, but we must think of Shakespeare
when we read or watch Saxo Grammaticus.
Neither texts
are acceptable history to modern historians, but neither are either removed
entirely from history. Both texts together make us think of history, because
Saxo Grammaticus comes up when we are trying to locate sources for Shakespeare,
and so lends historical weight to Shakespeare’s narrative. Hamlet is not considered a historical text in the same way that the
tetralogies are, though all are works of fiction, but it has coloured the
popular interpretation of any historical Amleth that may have lived, as well as
real locations in Denmark. Saxo Grammaticus says “there is a plain in Jutland
famous as [Amleth’s] burial place and named after him” (101). Hansen states
that there was either a medieval tradition associating Ammelhede with Amleth,
or that a succession of eytmologists have made the association (Hansen 145).
However, it is at Elsinore, in Zealand, not Jutland, where this tale, and at
times a supposed ‘historical’ personage, have been commemorated. Starting in
the eighteenth century, tourists came to Elsinore, modern Danish Helsingør,
because of its association with the play. Hansen jokes that “some tourists were
inevitably disappointed to discover in Elsinore a castle that was too recent
for Hamlet’s time, but others cheerfully began to remake Elsinore to fit their
expectations” (Hansen 90). According to Hansen, it was in the nineteenth
century that businessmen tried to profit from Elsinore as the ‘actual’ burial
place of the ‘actual’ Hamlet (Hansen 90). Though it is no longer necessarily
associated with a ‘historical’ Hamlet, the first sentence on Denmark’s tourism
website about Helsingør states “in Helsingør lies Kronborg Castle, made famous
as Elsinore in Shakespeare’s Hamlet”
(Denmark.dk). Shakespeare’s mark lies over our interpretation of Danish medieval
history, as well as Danish landscape.
As Davidson
says, it is “no longer in fashion” to identify literary characters with
historical figures (Davidson 68). And yet, our interpretations are influenced
by the interpretations of older historians and literary critics who did find it
fashionable. As Perry and Watkins point out
if every medieval
biographer and historian knows that Shakespeare got it wrong, they still talk
about him as if his fictions not only prompted their investigations but somehow
continue to authorize them in the minds of the reading public (Perry and
Watkins 1).
This is not a medievalist text like Henry V or Richard III,
in that it adapts a medieval historical event for dramatic purposes. Perhaps it
is more medieval, because it is an adaptation of a medieval tale, inheriting
the medieval themes from the original telling, even when the medieval history
is removed, whereas the tetralogies are more original constructions. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and Gesta Danorum, discuss the relationship between
king and state and conclude that the king is the state, and vice versa. Amleth
must root out what is rotten in the state of Denmark as much as Hamlet must,
though for both that means different things.
Shakespeare roots Amleth in our mind as Hamlet as surely as he roots the
characters of the medieval English kings into the introductions of history
books.
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