feeling finds its spontaneous expression, without any inquiry being possible on his part as to the essential nature or source of that feeling.
This conclusion is amply supported by a historical study of the external circumstances of the play. It is well known that Shakspere took not only the skeleton but also a surprising amount of detail from earlier writings.[1] It is probable that he had read both the original saga as told early in the thirteenth century by Saxo Grammaticus, and the translation and modification of this published by Belleforest.[2] For at least a dozen years before Shakspere wrote Hamlet a play of the same name was extant in England, which modern evidence[3] has clearly shewn to have been written by Thomas Kyd. Ruder accounts of the story, of Irish and Norse origin, were probably still more widely spread in England, and the name Hamlet itself, or some modification of it, was very common in the Stratford district;[4] as is well known, Shakspere in 1585 christened his own son Hamnet, a frequent variation of the name. Thus the plot of the tragedy must have been present in his mind for some years before it actually took form as a play. In all probability this was in the winter of 1601-2, for the play was registered on July 26, 1602, and the first, piratical, edition appeared in quarto in 1603. Highly suggestive, therefore, of the subjective origin of the psychical conflict in the play is the fact that it was in September, 1601, that Shakspere' s father died, an event which might well have had the same awakening effect on old "repressed" memories that the death of Hamlet's father had with Hamlet; his mother lived till some seven years later. There are many indications that the disposition of Shakspere's father was of that masterful and authoritative kind so apt to provoke rebellion, particularly in a first-born son.
- ↑ No doubt much detail was also introduced by Shakspere from personal experience. For instance there is much evidence to shew that in painting the character of Hamlet he had in mind some of his contemporaries, notably William Herbert, later Lord Pembroke, (Döring, Hamlet, 1898, S. 35) and Robert Essex (Isaac, Hamlet's Familie. Shakespeare's Jahrbuch, Bd. XVI, S. 274). The repeated allusion to the danger of Ophelia's conceiving illegitimately may be connected with both Herbert, who was imprisoned for being the father of an illegitimate child, and the poet himself, who hastily married in order to avoid the same stigma.
- ↑ Belleforest: Histoires tragiques, T. V., 1564. This translation was made from the Italian of Bandello.
- ↑ See Fleay: Chronicle of the English Drama, 1891; Sarrazin: Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis, 1892; and Corbin: The Elizabethan Hamlet, 1895.
- ↑ Elton: William Shakespeare. His Family and Friends, 1904, p. 223.
