Harmen Steenwijck: Vanitas (ca. 1640, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, Netherlands)Harmen Steenwijck: Vanitas (ca. 1640, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, Netherlands)

Sources

The primary source texts of "Hamlet" are:

  1. The Amleth legend contained in Saxo Grammaticus's chronicle Gesta Danorum (ca. 1185),
  2. That legend's English transcription, "The Hystorie of Hamblet" (here, as rendered in a 1608 quarto edition),
  3. A French translation of Matteo Bandello's 1554 collection "Novelle" ("Les Histoires Tragiques, Extraicts des Oeuvres Italiennes de Bandel," 1559),
  4. And, at least by way of inspiration, Thomas Kyd's "Spanish Tragedie".