Hamlet

Legend

EntitylegendQ7565175

Also known as Sources of Hamlet

Instance of: legend

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

The sources of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, date to before the 13th century. The generic "hero-as-fool" story is so old and is expressed in the literature of so many cultures that scholars have hypothesized that it may be Indo-European in origin. A Scandinavian version of the story of Hamlet was put into writing around 1200 AD by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his work Gesta Danorum. It is from this work that Shakespeare borrowed to create Hamlet. Similar accounts are found in the Icelandic Saga of Hrolf Kraki and the Roman legend of Lucius Junius Brutus, both of which feature heroes who pretend to be insane in order to get revenge. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy.

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12 statements · 42% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Characters: Amleth
Horwendill
Feng
Hermuthruda
Wihtlæg
Narrative motif: person cuts hooks for the revenge of their father (Hamlet)
1
Sources
1.Stated in Motif-Index of Folk-Literaturesites.ualberta.ca/~urban/Projects/English/Content/h.htmRetrieved 2022-12-24
View statement on Wikidata ↗
enigmatic statements of a sham mad person (Hamlet)
1
Sources
1.Stated in Motif-Index of Folk-Literaturesites.ualberta.ca/~urban/Projects/English/Content/h.htmRetrieved 2022-12-24
View statement on Wikidata ↗
son warns mother
1
Sources
1.Stated in Motif-Index of Folk-Literaturesites.ualberta.ca/~urban/Projects/English/Content/p.htmRetrieved 2022-12-24
View statement on Wikidata ↗

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3 identifiers linking Hamlet across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

42%

externally sourced

Source last edited May 30, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). Hamlet (Q7565175). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/hamlet-Q7565175