About Names

The names in Part 1 are taken from the account of the ancient Hamlet legend in the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, a late-twelfth-century Latin text, first printed in Paris in 1514. The spellings in Part 2 come from an adaptation of Saxo printed in Paris in 1576. The names in Part 3 are from the source used by Shakespeare, probably a German work printed in 1781 from earlier manuscripts. The names used in the summaries correspond to the names used in the book.

Gerutha is sixteen when the story begins, an "ample, serene, dewy and sensible" girl, whose mother died when she was three. She has long, copper-colored hair and a small gap between her two front teeth, "as if too broad a smile had once pulled the space forever open." She feels the warrior blood that runs in her veins, setting her apart from all the other children in the castle...