ABSTRACT
It remains to note how Shakespeare's handling has turned a Hamlet who was very little of a mystery into a Hamlet who is very much one. The first step in counter-sense, certainly, was taken by Kyd, when he combined the revelation by the Ghost with the mock-madness of the old story given him in Belleforest. In that, no Ghost is needed, the murder being known to all, though the traitorous brother (Fengon) persuades the people that he killed Hamblet's father (Horvendile) only in defence of Geruth, Hamblet's mother, who is secretly Fengon's paramour. Hamblet's madness, accordingly, is assumed in the manner of the old myth of Brutus and David, to save his life, he feeling sure that otherwise Fengon will slay him. It is not primarily a matter of wild talk but of demented action, though Hamblet proceeds to make “subtill answers” which arouse Fengon's suspicion, leading him to seek to entrap the youth by means of a “fair and beautiful woman” and “certain courtiers.” Here we have the germs of Ophelia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; and in the foster-brother who puts Hamblet on his guard we have a hint of Horatio. Another attempt is made by Fengon to entrap Hamblet in a talk with his mother, with a counsellor concealed behind the hangings, 1 and the counsellor is killed by Hamblet in the manner of the play, which here also follows the story. Before the slaying scene, however, Kyd had previously composed the play-within-the-play, which gratuitously reveals to the King Hamlet's ghost-given knowledge of the murder—a fresh confusion of the old plot. In that, the killing of the courtier is followed by Hamblet's dispatch to England; his counterfeiting of the letters, so as to doom the messengers, as in the play; and his manifold English adventures, which the play ignores.
