The historical and mythical sources of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Essay from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: keine, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Institut für Anglistik), language: English, abstract: In this essay I will discuss the historical and mythical sources of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and briefly their relationship among one another. Although it is difficult to separate these into clearly distinguishable and exclusive categories, and perhaps even misleading to do so, I will, for getting the main facts in, try to bring them into a logical context. It will be seen that they will overlap. When we talk about Shakespeare's sources for Hamlet, we are talking about Lucius Junius Brutus, who tries to save himself by feigning stupidity to his uncle, the king. About Nero, the insane murderer of his mother, of whom Uncle Claudius feigns in his youth stupidity as well for escaping being murdered and finally about Orestas, who becomes mad after his mother was murdered.