Excerpt from Two Dissertations on the Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus and of Shakespear Are they originals or translations? They occur chiefly in the earlier books. His cotemporary Snorro Sturleson, in his 'Heimskringla, ' or 'History of the Kings of Norway, ' written in the vernacular Icelandic, makes similar references. His quotations, however, are in the original language and the original metres, and generally the name of the composers accompanies them. Upon the whole, then, we have a fair general notion of what Saxo means by the carmina antigua. Occasionally we can trace them in the prose narrative by their alliteration. The true illustration, however, of Saxo is to be found in the age to which he belonged. Neither he nor his cotemporaries had anything like systematic, critical, or adequately informed predecessors. In the way of actual testimony they had nothing but that of the men of their own generation for the events of their own time. Application to the oldest of these cotemporaries led them generally into the region of tradition. Latin accounts, when they delivered new matter, would rarely transcend the introduction of Christianity; even the carmina antiqua would generally consist of allusions to events supposed to be generally known rather than of explicit narratives. About any English sources Saxo says nothing beyond his reference to Beda. The only parts, however, of the earlier narrative which point in the direction of genuine history are English. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.