Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/18

 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