1610800 1514 Saxo Grammaticus
10326.
Very Good
First edition of Saxo's history of Medieval Denmark
containing the story that became the source
of Shakespeare's Hamlet. 1514.
Textual Notes
Folio in eights, measuring 11.5 x 8 inches: 208 leaves. Early blind-tooled and paneled calf over wooden boards, partial metal clasps, raised bands, remnants of paper spine label, manuscript title to top edge. Woodcut title page printed in red and black, decorative initials throughout text, leaf “cxcix” misnumbered “cxcviii;” colophon at rear. “CP” printed in central woodcut decoration on title, a nod to editor Christiern Pedersen; issue “A” (assumed export issue) without inscription beneath central woodcut. Early ink underlining and notes throughout text, marginal paper repairs to first two leaves, occasional wormhole. Boards patched with later repairs, binding rubbed, cords exposed. Housed in a custom box.
First edition of Saxo Grammaticus’s history of medieval Denmark, known as the Gesta Danorum, the original source material for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Although Shakespeare is not generally believed to have consulted Saxo directly, the legend of Prince Amleth in Books III and IV, translated into French by François Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques, laid the groundwork for Shakespeare’s play. Saxo provides the rivalry between royal brothers, the murder of Amleth’s father and and incestuous remarriage of his mother, the prince’s performative “madness,” the treacherous journey to Britain, and Amleth’s avenging return. The prince of Danish legend, unlike Shakespeare’s hero, survived to rule as king -- though not for long. A remarkable survival, in an early binding, of an important Shakespearean source.
“The first connected account of the hero whom later ages know as Hamlet is that of Saxo, called Grammaticus, in [the work offered here], written at the end of the twelfth century and first published in 1514” (Harold Jenkins, ed., Introduction to The Arden Shakespeare Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare).
“The [1514 editio princeps] of Saxo probably had a political purpose, to strengthen the legitimacy of the young Danish king, Christian II, vis-a-vis his new family-in-law, the Hapsburg dynasty. Saxo’s patriotic history of Denmark, written in language which the Renaissance humanists could appreciate, had finally reached a European public, and thus after a long delay it contributed to the reputation of Saxo’s country and its kings, exactly as he would have liked” (Karsten Friis-Jensen, ed., Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes).
Saxo’s preface to his book is charmingly modest: “Because other nations are in the habit of vaunting the fame of their achievements, and joy in recollecting their ancestors, Absalon, archbishop of Denmark, had always been fired with a passionate zeal to glorify our fatherland; he would not allow it to go without some noble document of this kind and, since everyone else refused the task, the work of compiling a history of the Danes was thrown upon me, the least of his entourage; his powerful insistence forced my weak intellect to embark on a project too huge for my abilities” (Peter Fisher’s translation, in Friis-Jensen, op. cit.). Yet whatever the deficiencies of the author or the work, Saxo deserves credit for passing on the story that fired Shakespeare’s imagination and led him to create what is arguably the greatest play ever written in the English language.
“In this primitive and sometimes brutal story the essentials of Shakespeare’s plot — fratricide, an incestuous marriage, feigned madness, and the ultimate achievement of a long-delayed revenge — are already present. And it is the kind of potentially dramatic story in which ‘carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts’ show ‘ purposes mistook Fall’n on th’inventors’ heads’ ([Hamlet] v.ii.386-90) The woman who waylays the hero, the man who spies on him in his mother’s chamber, and the retainers who escort him to England to be killed already adumbrate the roles of Ophelia, Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern... Likenesses do not stop at incidents. In Shakespeare’s big set scene between Hamlet and his mother [Act III, sc. 4], the very drift of the dialogue is anticipated in Saxo... Something of Saxo also remains in Hamlet’s savage contempt for Polonius’s corpse [Act IV, sc. 3]” (Jenkins, op. cit.).
A beautifully printed book with title in red and black and with highly decorative woodcut initials throughout.
THE 1514 FIRST EDITION - PARTICULARLY IN AN EARLY BINDING - IS SCARCE.
Synopsis of Amleth's Life
Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum, a patriotic and detailed history of the Danes compiled around 1200 CE, contains the original written account of the legendary Norse hero Amleth. Unlike the melancholic and introspective character of Shakespeare's later adaptation, Saxo's Amleth is a man of decisive and cunning action, whose feigned madness is a weapon wielded with cold calculation rather than a symptom of indecision. His story, primarily recounted in Books 3 and 4 of Saxo's work, is a brutal, methodical tale of survival and vengeance rooted in the pre-Christian Viking ethos of honor and blood feuds.
The murder and the madman's guise
The tale of Amleth begins in Jutland, a region of Denmark ruled jointly by two brothers, Horwendil and Fengi. Horwendil marries Gerutha, daughter of the Danish King Rorik, and they produce a son, Amleth. But a bitter jealousy consumes Fengi, who resents his brother's success and popularity. In a cowardly act of treachery, Fengi ambushes and murders Horwendil. He then marries the newly widowed Gerutha, convincing the court that his fratricide was a justified act for the good of the kingdom.
Witnessing his father's murder and fearing his own fate, the young Amleth realizes he is in grave danger. To protect himself, he adopts a brilliant, if disgusting, pretense of madness. He covers himself in filth, rolls on the ground, and speaks in riddles and seemingly nonsensical gibberish. While the court dismisses him as a harmless imbecile, his feigned foolishness is a calculated strategy. A key detail of his cunning is his habit of sitting by the fire, shaping barbed wooden hooks. When asked what they are for, he cryptically replies they are "sharp javelins to avenge his father," a statement everyone believes to be a madman's fantasy.
A series of clever escapes
Fengi, though publicly accepting of Amleth's madness, remains suspicious. He orchestrates several tests to determine if his nephew is truly witless. In the first plot, he sets up a meeting between Amleth and a young woman (Amleth's foster-sister), hoping she can seduce him into revealing his true state. However, a loyal friend warns Amleth, and the youth impresses both his foster-sister and observers with his ability to engage in sexual relations while maintaining his "mad" facade.
Next, Fengi attempts an eavesdropping plot, a direct parallel to the Polonius scene in Shakespeare. He instructs his nobles to hide a spy in Gerutha's bedroom and leave Amleth alone with his mother. Amleth, however, suspects a trap and, imitating the crow of a rooster, finds the spy hidden in a pile of straw. He slays the man, chops his body into pieces, and tosses the remains into a sewer to be consumed by pigs. He then reveals his feigned madness to his mother, chastising her for her quick marriage to her husband's killer and reminding her of the family's honor. He successfully secures her loyalty and collusion in his coming plan.
Exile, deception, and revenge
Following the failures of his tests, Fengi decides to get rid of Amleth once and for all by sending him to England. Amleth travels with two escorts, who carry a message carved on a wooden tablet instructing the English king to execute him. During the journey, Amleth finds the message and cunningly alters it. He changes the instructions to order the death of his two escorts and requests that the English king give him his daughter's hand in marriage. The English king, impressed by Amleth's wit and demeanor, carries out the rewritten orders and marries his daughter to Amleth. As a reward for killing the two retainers, Amleth is given gold, which he melts and stores in hollowed-out wooden rods.
After a year, Amleth returns to Jutland during a grand banquet celebrating his supposed funeral. Filthy and disheveled, he is immediately dismissed as the same old madman, a perception reinforced when he offers his hollow rods of gold and jokes that his companions' bodies are "in them". He proceeds to ply the entire court with drink until they fall into a stupor. Using his wooden hooks, he pins the sleeping nobles' tapestries to the floor, trapping them. He then sets the hall on fire, burning everyone inside alive. Finally, he confronts Fengi in his bedroom, swaps Fengi's sword for his own useless one (which he had earlier tampered with), and executes his uncle.
Amleth's later life and death
With his revenge complete, Amleth gathers the remaining people and delivers a powerful oration, detailing Fengi's crimes and justifying his own actions. The Danes, impressed by his bravery and satisfied with the justice served, proclaim him the new king of Jutland.
Unlike Shakespeare's protagonist, Amleth's story does not end with his revenge. As king, he must return to Britain to face the angry king, whose daughter he has married. The English king, seeking to eliminate him, sends Amleth to woo a formidable Scottish queen, Hermutrude, who is known for killing her suitors. Amleth, however, wins her hand, and she becomes his second wife. Amleth then returns to Jutland, only to face a new adversary, Wiglek, who challenges and eventually defeats him in battle. Amleth dies a warrior's death, but his cunning and single-minded pursuit of vengeance leave a lasting legacy.