The names of the dramatis personæ incongruously mingle forms derived from the Hamlet tradition of the North with classical, Italian, and German forms. "Gertrude" is a modification of Saxo's "Gerutha." "Horatio," in the old play Jeronimo, is the name of Andrea's faithful friend, who reappears in The Spanish Tragedy. Both "Ofelia," the name of a shepherd, and "Montano" (the name of Reynaldo in the Quarto of 1603), are found in the Arcadia of Sannazaro. The autograph signatures—dated 1577—of Jorgen Rossenkrantz and P. Guldenstern appear on the same page of an old German album in the Royal Public Library at Stuttgart, the original owner of which had resided for some time at Copenhagen;[1] it does not follow that these individuals were in any sense the originals of Shakespeare's courtiers; an ambassador named Rosencrantz was sent to England at the accession of James the First, and there were other Guildensterns. Shakespeare probably obtained the names from actors who had returned from the Continent "Fortinbras," wrote Mr. Elliot Browne (Athenæum, July 26, 1876), "is evidently Fortebras, or Strongarm of the family of Ferumbras of the romances, or may have come directly from Niccolo Fortebraccio, the famous leader of the condottieri.
It is not proposed here to notice the stage-history of Hamlet, the interpretations by eminent actors, nor the vast critical library that has grown around the play. Critics, I think, have sometimes erred in not keeping vividly before their imagination the nature of Shake-
- ↑ See for facsimile Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxv.; and, for letters on the subject, xxvi.
