In Hamlet and elsewhere in Shakespeare we come across traces of a sort of atomistic-materialistic philosophy. In the last scene of Julius Cæsar, Antony actually employs with regard to Brutus the expression, "The elements so mixd in him." In Measure for Measure (iii. I) the Duke says to Claudio—
"Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust."
"O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew;"
and to Horatio (iii. 2)—
"Bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled."
It has already been pointed out how far this atomism, if we can so regard it, differs from Bruno's idealistic monadism. But in all probability we have here only the expressions of the dominant belief of Shakespeare's time, that all differences of temperament depended upon the mixture of the juices or "humours." Shakespeare is on this point, as on many others, more popular and less book-learned, more naïve and less metaphysical, than book-learned commentators are willing to allow.
Writers like Montaigne and Lyly were no doubt constantly in Shakespeare's hands while Hamlet was taking shape within him. But it would be absurd to suppose that he consulted them especially with Hamlet in view. He did consult authorities with regard to Hamlet, but they were men, not books, and men, moreover, with whom he was in daily intercourse. Hamlet being a Dane and his destiny being acted out in distant Denmark—a name not yet so familiar in England as it was soon to be, when, with the new King, a Danish princess came to the throne— Shakespeare would naturally seize whatever opportunities lay in his way of gathering intelligence as to the manners and customs of this little-known country.
In the year 1585 a troupe of English players had appeared in the courtyard of the Town-Hall of Elsinore. If we are justified in assuming this troupe to have been the same which we find in the following year established at the Danish Court, it numbered among its members three persons who, at the time when Shakespeare was turning over in his mind the idea of Hamlet, belonged to his company of actors, and probably to his most intimate circle: namely, William Kemp, George Bryan, and Thomas Pope. The first of these, the celebrated clown, belonged to Shakespeare's company from 1594 till March 1602, when he went over for six months to Henslow's company; the other two also joined Shakespeare's company as early as 1594. It was evidently from these comrades of his, and perhaps also from other English actors who, under the management of Thomas Sackville, had performed at Copenhagen in 1596 at the coronation of Christian IV., that Shakespeare gathered information on several matters relating to Denmark.
First and foremost, he picked up some Danish names, which we find, indeed, mutilated by the printers in the different texts of Hamlet, but which are easily recognisable. The Rossencraft of the First Quarto has become Rosencraus in the second, and Rosincrane in the Folio; it is clearly enough the name of the ancient Danish family of Rosenkrans. Thus, too, we find in the three editions the name Gilderstone, Guyldensterne, and Guildensterne, in which we recognise the Danish Gyldenstierne; while the names given to the ambassador, Voltemar, Voltemand, Valtemand, Voltumand, are so many corruptions of the Danish Valdemar. The name Gertrude, too, Shakespeare must have learned from his comrades as a Danish name; he has substituted it for the Geruth of the novel. In the Second Quarto it is misprinted Gertrad.