It uses the known sources of William Shakespeare's Hamlet to tell a story that draws on a rather straightforward revenge tale in medieval Denmark, as depicted by Saxo Grammaticus in his twelfth-century Historiae Danicae.

Gertrude is a sensual, somewhat neglected wife, Claudius a rather dashing fellow, and old Hamlet an unpleasant combination of brutal Viking raider and coldly ambitious politician.

Finally, Gertrude has definite intimations of a ghost of her dead husband, and Claudius hears rumors of a midnight spirit in armour roving the battlements.

[3] Hamlet spends most of the novel's time offstage, as it were: a young child shunted off to nursemaids, a boy left to mischief with the disorderly Yorick, or a seemingly perpetual student living in Wittenberg.

But as the story ends he is finally back home at Elsinore, and Claudius feels that the resentful young man can be trained up into a properly domesticated prince and, matched with Ophelia (presented as a pretty but rather vacant young woman), reliably produce heirs to extend this benign dynasty...