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By Root 5581 0

in a great battle, is made king of Jutland. He marries the Princess Gerutha (Shakespeare's Gertrude), by whom he has a son, Amleth (Hamlet). But he has a much less brave but crafty brother Feng (Claudius) who, jealous of his brother's renown, treacherously murders him and marries his widow. Prince Amleth sees clearly that Feng, his uncle, now stepfather, is unremittingly evil and fears for his own safety. He protects himself by pretending to be harmlessly mad (the word `amleth' in old Danish means `insane'). After three demonstrations of his feigned insanity, one of Feng's courtiers (the Polonius-figure) sets up a trap for Amleth, to test whether he is genuinely mad or not. This involves the old courtier hiding under a pile of straw, to eavesdrop on a private interview between Amleth and his mother. The idea is that, with his mother, whom he loves and trusts, Amleth will drop his guard and show his true character. But when he enters the room, Amleth at once smells a rat, He crows like a cock, jumps on the straw and plunges his sword into something hard he feels beneath it. He pulls out the body of the eavesdropping courtier, cuts it into pieces and throws them into a sewer, to be eaten by pigs. Amleth then returns to his mother and berates her at length for being the `harlot' who had taken her husband's murderer in `vile wedlock'.

When Feng discovers what has happened to his courtier, he fears what Amleth may do next and lays an elaborate plot to have him killed. He sends him on an embassy to the King of Britain, accompanied by two courtiers (Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), carrying a message which asks the king to put the bearer of the message to death. Amleth discovers this and changes the wording, requesting the king to hang the two bearers of the message and to give he who is accompanying them the hand of a princess in marriage.

The British king is deeply impressed when Amleth gives three demonstrations of his second-sight, and does exactly as the message requests. Amleth then returns to Jutland, invites all Feng's noble followers to a highly alcoholic feast and, when they are lying in drunken heaps, burns down the hall with them inside. He is now free to seek out his stepfather in the royal bedchamber and slay him. Amleth then disguises himself to watch for the reaction of the people. When he sees they are all rejoicing that the Tyrant is dead, he throws off his disguise, explains why he had to pretend to be mad to avoid being murdered himself and tells the people that he has slain the Tyrant for their sake. As with Oedipus, the people then acclaim Amleth king, as the hero who has overcome the `monster' and set them free.

Such is the story on which Shakespeare bases his play, although the original version continues with a new episode in which Amleth marries the Queen of Scotland, defeats the British in a great battle and is finally slain himself in yet another battle, to be buried with honour in Jutland. But the part of the story adapted by Shakespeare, culminating in the hero killing his wicked uncle and succeeding to his father's throne, is thus an archetypal tale of a young hero whose `light Father' is replaced by a `dark Father', whom he eventually slays to become king. The fascinating question is why Shakespeare should so dramatically have altered this story (despite retaining many of its details) that he turns it into one totally different. Instead of showing us a young man maturing to the point where he can arrive at the familiar happy ending, the story ends with its hero being destroyed. Why should Shakespeare have wanted to use so much of the original story, only in order to turn it on its head?

Hamlet: The personal drama

The most crucial respect in which Shakespeare's version differs from the original, in that it transforms the character of everything which follows, is how he shows Hamlet conceiving the idea that he must destroy his stepfather. In the original there is never any question that Amleth is justified in killing his stepfather. We have seen his father in life, as a heroic warrior-king