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Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (1570) contains an account of the Hamlet legend. This in turn is drawn from Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum from the early 13th century. Shakespeare, however, may not have based his story on Belleforest, but on an earlier play of Hamlet which has since been lost (which scholars call the Ur-Hamlet). Some people say that the German play Der Bestrafte Brudermord dated 1710 is a translation of the Ur-Hamlet.

Belleforest inaccurately documented his source, calling Saxo Gramatticus's book Histoire des Danois or Historica Danica. Some people have used a patchwork of these inaccurate names to identify Saxo's work.

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14y ago

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