Hamlet (legend)
Hamlet is a figure in Scandinavian romance and the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
The chief authority for the legend of Hamlet is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century. There are no means of determining whether Saxo derived his information in this case from oral or written sources.
Read more about Hamlet (legend): Saxo's Version, Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses, Prose Edda, Other Scandinavian Versions, Parallels in Britain and Ireland, Belleforest's Tragedies
Famous quotes containing the word hamlet:
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)