Amletus
Amletus (also Amlethus ) is the central figure of an old Danish legend handed down by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus , which became the origin of the world-famous play " Hamlet " by William Shakespeare .
Main characters at Saxo
(in brackets the approximate equivalents in Shakespeare)
- Amletus (Hamlet), son of a prince
- Gerutha (Gertrude), Amletus' mother
- Horwendillus (spirit), Amletus' father
- Fengo (Claudius), uncle of Amletus
- Eavesdropper (Polonius)
- Amletus' milk brother (Horatio)
- Childhood friend of Amletus (Ophelia)
- 1. Companion (Rosencrantz)
- 2. Companion (Güldenstern)
Action at Saxo
Amletus, the legitimate successor of his father Horwendillus, the governor of Jutland , is afraid that his uncle Fengo, who killed Horwendillus and married Gerutha, mother of Amletus and daughter of the Danish king Rerik, will kill him too, if he has to fear that Amletus could enforce his claim. Therefore Amletus is insane, that is, incapable of governing . He hardens apparently pointless pegs into which he bores equally pointless barbs, and lives filthy in the ashes of the kitchen. Gerutha confronts him, but notices that the conversation is being overheard and stabs the eavesdropper, whose body he cooks and feeds to the pigs. He drags a childhood friend who is supposed to convict him of the disguise into impassable terrain and loves her there. The armor of his disguise is impenetrable. However, Fengo remains suspicious and sends his nephew to England with two companions. You are to deliver the order to the King of England to kill Amletus. He changes the order, cut in runes on wooden panels, so that the King of England kills the two companions. In England Amletus gives evidence of his superhuman acumen and has the daughter of the English king as his wife.
But after a year, Fengo celebrates the death of his nephew prematurely. This appears surprisingly at the feast that Amletus' mother has decorated with knotted fabrics on behalf of her son. Fengo suspects evil, has the sword of Amletus riveted in the scabbard and looks for his own bedroom. Amletus pours the guests until everyone is drunk. Then he lets his mother's knotted fabrics fall over her like a net, lashes them with the hooks so that no one can escape, and sets the hall on fire. He looks for Fengo in his room, exchanges the unusable sword for Fengos, which is hanging on the wall, and wakes the sleeper. He reaches for the sword, which is riveted into the scabbard. Amletus kills him and initially hides to wait how the opinion of the Jutian people will judge his act. When it develops favorably, he justifies himself in a big speech. He takes over the Jutian governorship and soon the Danish crown from his grandfather Rerik. He conquered England and Scotland and finally united three crowns on his head, but ultimately fell in the fight against the pretender Vigletus.
Interpretation and comparison
What Saxo handed down is a tale of revenge, only surpassed in strength by the legend of " Wieland, the blacksmith ". It contains humorous details, such as the warning Amletus issued by a brake with a straw on the back, his sitting upside down on the horse and a plethora of apparently insane sayings, the double meaning of which is only revealed to the knowledgeable. Against the background of this legend, the special achievement of Shakespeare becomes clear, who pushed the aspect of revenge, which may have played a major role in Thomas Kyd's forerunner play, into the background and transformed the avenger Amletus of the Danish legend into the doubter and hesitant Hamlet , who almost completely displaced its legendary precursor in general consciousness.
In the legend everyone knows that Fengo killed his brother Horwendillus, the father of Amletus. In order to mitigate the suspiciousness of this act, Fengo has it spread that he committed the murder for a noble motive: namely to free Gerutha, the gentlest of all women, from his brother's violence. But nobody doubts in the least that he killed Horwendillus, Amletus' father. In order to establish this doubt and thus to create a completely different starting point for his play, Shakespeare let the murder happen in secret (poison was instilled in Hamlet's sleeping father) that the appearance of Hamlet's father as a ghost becomes necessary in order to be at all first to turn Hamlet's vague malaise into a concrete suspicion. In Saxo Grammaticus, Amletus goes insane to ensure that Fengo does not turn him off as the pretender to the throne, while in Shakespeare Hamlet goes insane because he does not believe otherwise with the horrific suspicion and the order to avenge his father.
filming
Herbert Fritsch filmed the original by Saxo Grammaticus in 2010 under the title Elf Onkel .