THE CITY OF HAMLET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19405, 13 August 1926, Page 14

THE CITY OF HAMLET.

ELS INO RE' S ANNIVERSARY, FIVE < HUNDRED YEARS OLD, Elsinore, the "city of Hamlet," has been celebrating the 500 th anniversary of its charter. All through last month and into the present month there '.yfos-, according to the programme, to be acting of Shakespeare and » pageant, a' tournament and' dancing all through V nightj the .roasting of an'ox and'the btu-ning—dram-atically, of course—of a witch. For, like other Scandinavian towns, Elsinore was very nervous about witches and in one ghastly year of the seventeenth century found eight to bum. The Daily Telegraph, London, writing before the event, remarked"We fegrefc to observe that Hamlet takes no part in celebrations. A stage has been put up in the courtyard of Kronborg Castle, but .the play wihich is announced is 'The Taming of tlio Shrew.' Now the flag battery of that castle is traditionally ■ the 'Platform before the Castle", of Elsinore,' on : which Hamlet saw the Ghost. It seems doubtful whether 'The Taming of the Shrew' is really" the play which Hamlet would have liked best. Perhaps the good people qf Elsinore feci that the connection of Hamlet with their ancient town is dubious. He is far less authentic than the eight witches. And if lie over was at Elsinore it must have been long before Erik of Pomerania gave the town its charter in 1426, still longer before the sandstone walls of the castle of Kronborg were built, for that was in Shakespeare's own time. " Hamlet is found in a history of Den-, mark which was written about 1200, so the plot oil which Shakespeare worked is at least as old as that. There is also reason to believe that Saxo Qrammalicus, the author who thought it good enough for history, decorated it with episodes from Latin and Greek. Something like the Hamlet story can indeed bo found in.) many languages, and there are those who say that if all wore known he was really a true-born Englishman. "But nobody has found Polonius and Ophelia except in the pages of the Danish historian. Shakespeare was working "over Saxo Grammaticus at second-hand, working over an earlier play. Whether ha had in his mind any picture of the castje at Elsinore which the great King Fred-' erick had just built is mere guessing. Denmark was rich and powerful in those years, the ruler admitted of all the Northern seas. , "We know that companies of English actors visited the country when Shakespeare was learning his craft. He may have gone with them, he may have seen 'thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinoro.' Whether he did or not Elsinore is for ever sacred to the memory o± Hamlet, who remains more real than the great Frederick and Erik of Pomerania and all ithe eight hapless witches and wo like to think of Hamlet's troubled spirit coming again to Elsinore to see in his castle The Taming of ;the Shrew.'"