real addition to our knowledge of Shakespeare may remain.

For the earliest references to the legendary Hamlet the reader should consult Mr. Gollancz's interesting volume Hamlet in Iceland (1898). The first in date, he tells us, is found in the second section of Snorri Sturlason's Prose Edda (about 1230):-"The Nine Maids of the Island Mill" (daughters of Ægir, the Ocean-god) "in ages past ground Hamlet's meal." The words occur in a quotation of Snorri from Snæbjörn, who was probably an Arctic adventurer of the tenth century.. The name Amhlaide is found yet earlier. In the Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters, under the year 917 (=919), in a fragment of song (having reference to the battle of Ath-Cliath between the Northerners and the Irish) attributed to Queen Gormflaith, appear the words. "Niall Glundubh [was slain] by Amhlaide." Mr. Gollancz identifies this Amhlaide with Sitric, a Northerner, who first came to Dublin in 888, and hazards the conjecture that "Gaile," a cognomen applied to Sitric, may mean mad, and that Amhlaide may be a synonym of "Gaile." He believes that in the Scandinavian kingdom of Ireland was developed, in the eleventh century, the Northern tale of Hamlet as we know it from Saxo.1

Probably about the opening of the thirteenth century the Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus told in Latin the

1 The Ambales Saga, which Mr. Gollancz prints, is in its present form "a modern production belonging to the sixteenth, or perhaps early seventeenth century," preserving possibly some elements of the pre-Saxo Hamlet legend. The Icelandic folk-tale of Brjam (first written down from oral tradition in 1705) is "nothing but a levelling down of the story of Hamlet, cleverly blended with another folk-tale of the Clever Hans' type" (Gollancz, Introduction, lxiv and lxviii).

story of Amlethus in the third and fourth books of his History of the Danes. The reader will find an English

version in Mr. Elton's translation of Saxo. The Northern Hamlet legends, oral or written, are mingled by Saxo with borrowings from the old Roman story of Lucius Junius Brutus. Horwendil and his brother Feng rule Jutland under King Rorik of Denmark. Horwendil slays Koll, king of Norway, and marries Gerutha, the daughter of King Rorik; their son is Amleth. Feng, jealous of his brother, slays Horwendil, and takes Gerutha to wife. Amleth feigns to be dull of wits and little better than a beast, while secretly planning vengeance. He baffles the courtiers by riddling words, which for them are nonsense, but are really significant. A girl, his foster-sister, is placed in his way, in the hope that his conduct may betray his true state of mind; his fosterbrother warns him of the snare, and he baffles his enemies. A friend of Feng, "more confident than wise," proposes to act as eavesdropper during an interview between Amleth and his mother. Amleth, crowing like a cock, flapping his arms like wings, and leaping hither and thither, discovers the eavesdropper hidden under straw, stabs him and brutally disposes of the body. He explains to his mother that his madness is feigned and that he plans revenge, and he gains her over to his side. His uncle sends Amleth to Britain, with two companions, who bear a letter graven on wood, requesting the king to slay Amleth. The letter is altered by Amleth, and his companions are put to death. His adventures in Britain do not affect Shakespeare's play. He returns, makes the courtiers drunk, nets them in hangings knitted by his

mother, sets fire to the palace, and slays his uncle with the sword. He harangues the people, and is hailed as Feng's successor. After other adventures of crafty device and daring deed, Amleth dies in battle. Had he lived, favoured by nature and fortune, he would have surpassed Hercules.

Saxo's History was printed in 1514. In 1570 Belleforest-freely rendering Saxo's Latin-told the story of Amleth in French in the fifth volume of his Histoires tragiques. The English translation of Belleforest's story, The Historie of Hamblet, is dated 1608, and may have been called forth by the popularity of Shakespeare's play. Here the eavesdropper hides behind the hangings of Geruthe's chamber, and Hamblet cries, "A rat! a rat!" circumstances probably borrowed from Shakespeare.

As early as 1589 an English drama on the subject of Hamlet was in existence. It is referred to in that year by Thomas Nash in a printed letter accompanying Greene's Menaphon. We know from this passage, and other allusions, that it was a drama written under the influence of Seneca, and that a ghost appeared in it crying "Revenge!" Henslowe's diary informs us that it was acted, not as a new play, at Newington Butts in June 1594. The suggestion that Thomas Kyd was the author-made long since was supported with substantial evidence by Mr. Fleay in his Chronicle of the English Drama (1891), and, in my opinion, was decisively proved by Gregor Sarrazin in the section entitled "Der

1 It may be found in Furness's Hamlet, vol. ii., or in Collier's Shakespeare's Library, vol. i.

Ur-Hamlet" of his Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis (1892). It is not improbable that Nash, in the passage where he speaks of Hamlet, puns upon the name Kyd. We may fairly assume that it was a companion piece to Kyd's Spanish Tragedy-itself a play of revenge (a father's revenge for a murdered son, inverting the Hamlet theme); of violent passion bordering on distraction; including among the dramatis persona a ghost, and presenting, like Hamlet, a play within the play. Kyd translated Garnier's Cornelia from the French, and could read the story of Hamlet in Belleforest. English actors had visited Elsinore, and had lately returned to London, bringing their tidings of Denmark.

Mr. Corbin, in a very ingenious study, The Elizabethan Hamlet (1895), has conjectured that the lost play by Kyd exhibited a Hamlet resembling the Amleth of Saxo in his being rather a man of resolute action than a man of contemplation, and that his assumption of madness was the occasion of vulgar comedy; the affliction of insanity was, as we know, often regarded by Elizabethan dramatists from the comic point of view. The conjecture is well worthy of consideration. In developing

his theory Mr. Corbin makes use, however, of one piece of evidence, which must be held as of doubtful value. A rude German drama, Der Bestrafte Brudermord, found in a manuscript dated 1710, is taken by Mr. Corbin and others as based on Kyd's Hamlet. This is possible; but it seems to me far more probable that the German play is a debased adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet in its earliest form. Perhaps, as Tanger has suggested (Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxiii.), a few recollections of the

later form of Shakespeare's play were woven in by actors who arrived in Germany at a later date.1

Under the date July 26, 1602, was entered in the Stationers' Registers for the printer James Roberts, "A booke called The Revenge of Hamlet Prince [of] Denmarke, as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes." There are no grounds for supposing that Shakespeare wrote the play earlier than 1602.2 In the following year appeared in quarto, "The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke By William Shake-speare. As it hath beene diverse times acted by his Highnesse servants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniversities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere. At London printed for N. L. and John Trundell. 1603." The Lord Chamberlain's servants of 1602Shakespeare's company-had, since the accession of James I., become his Highness' servants. It is conjectured that the play was acted at the Universities "at some entertainment in honour of the king's accession," the subject being connected "with the native country of his queen."

In 1604 appeared a second Quarto: "The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie. At London, Printed by I. R. for N. L.,

1 See Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany (1865); Latham's Two Dissertations on the Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus and of Shakespear (1872); and Furness's Hamlet, vol. ii. A Hamlet was performed by English actors at Dresden in 1626. Tanger's article, referred to above, is of great value.

The note by Gabriel Harvey in a copy of Speght's Chaucer (1598), mentioning Hamlet, was seen by Steevens, Bishop Percy, and Malone, but its date was a matter of conjecture. Harvey lived for many years after the ublication of Shakespeare's Hamlet.