How old was Hamlet when Shakespeare married?

Answer 1

If you mean, "How old was Hamlet, the character in the play, at the time Shakespeare was married?" then your question makes no sense. It's like asking "How old was Donald Duck when Shakespeare was born?" Well, you cannot answer not only because Donald Duck is a fictional character who never ages but also because he was not invented at the time Shakespeare was born. Likewise, if you mean "How old was Shakespeare's play Hamlet at the time Shakespeare was married?", it doesn't make sense because Shakespeare wrote that play after he and Anne were married. The same if by "Hamlet" you mean "Hamnet Shakespeare, William's son" because Hamnet was born in 1585 and his parents were married in 1582. The only way this question could possibly make sense is if you mean "How old was the story of Hamlet when Shakespeare got married in 1582?" Well, the story of Amleth appears in a book called Gesta Danorum (The Acts of the Danes), a kind of Danish history book, written around the year 1200, 382 years before Shakespeare's marriage, give or take a dozen years. Another similar but shorter work called the Chronicon Lethrense was written about thirty years earlier. These books put the events in the Amleth story some time in the 600s AD.