Bevis of Hampton

Supporting him are a resourceful, appealing heroine and faithful servants set against dynastic intrigue, and a parade of interesting villains, both foreign and domestic.

The plot has a geographical sweep that moves back and forth from England to the Near East and through most of western Europe, replete with battles against dragons, giants and other mythical creatures.

Forced marriages, episodes of domestic violence, a myriad of disguises and mistaken identities, harsh imprisonments with dramatic escapes, harrowing rescues, and violent urban warfare fill out the protagonist's experiences.

Discontented with her marriage, Bevis's mother asks a former suitor, Doon or Devoun, emperor of Almaine (Germany), to send an army to murder Guy in a forest.

[5] The English metrical romance, Sir Beues of Hamtoun (see Matter of England[6]), is founded based on some French origins, varying slightly from those that have been preserved.

[7] The printed editions of the story were most numerous in Italy, where Bovo or Buovo d'Antona was the subject of more than one poem, and the tale was interpolated in the Reali di Francia, the Italian compilation of Carolingian legend.

R. Zenker (Boeve-Amlethus, Berlin and Leipzig, 1904) established a close parallel between Bevis and the Hamlet legend as related by Saxo Grammaticus in the Historia Danica.

Some of the details that point to a common source are the vengeance of a stepfather for a father's death, the letter bearing his own death-warrant entrusted to the hero, and his double marriage.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica characterizes the mooted etymology connecting Bevis (Boeve) with Béowa (Beowulf), as "fanciful" and "inadmissible" on the ground that they were both dragon slayers.