Sul,—The answer to Mr. Asquith's question is, I think, rather
more intricate than Janus suggests. According to Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian of the twelfth century (on whose Historia Danica Shakespeare bases his plot and not on the later version of Belleforest), Hamlet's grandfather was King. of Denmark. He had a daughter Gerutha whom he gave in marriage to Amleth, a governor of Jutland; as a reward for Amleth having killed the King of Norway in single combat. Amleth had a brother Feng who assassinated him out of jealousy, assumed his office of governor, and married his wife. Gerutha, therefore, was Queen, and both her husbands were consorts, and there was no question of young Hamlet succeeding to the throne until after his mother's death. (So, incidentally, there are forty-eight lines in Shakespeare's Act V, between the Queen's death and that of Hamlet, in which Hamlet is King.) If Shakespeare had called Claudius consort
or King-consort, the position would have been plain, but, as it is, everyone assumes wrongly that Claudius was monarch.
The origin of the events is fully treated by Professor Dover Wilson in the introduction to his edition of Hamlet published by the Cam-
bridge University Press.—Yours faithfully, GUY BOAS. Sloane School, Chelsea.
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