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THE ALLEGED MURDER OF HRETHRIC IN BEOWULF

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2019

MARIJANE OSBORN
MARIJANE OSBORN*
Affiliation:
University of California at Davis
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

A scenario well known to Beowulf scholars alleges that after Beowulf has slain the monsters and gone home, Hrothulf, nephew of the Danish king Hrothgar, will murder prince Hrethric to gain the throne when the old king dies. This story, that many Anglo-Saxonists assume is integral to the ancient legend of these kings, is a modern misreading of the poet's allusions to events associated with the Scylding dynasty — a legendary history that the poet arguably takes care to follow. The present essay, in two parts, first shows how the idea of Hrothulf's treachery arose and became canonical under the influence of prestigious English and American scholars, then finds fault with this idea, refuting its “proof” from Saxo Grammaticus and showing how some Anglo-Saxonists have doubted that Beowulf supports an interpretation making Hrothulf a murderer. But when the poet's allusions to future treachery are ambiguous, at least for modern readers, in order to exonerate Hrothulf fully one must go to traditions about the Scylding dynasty outside the poem. Scandinavian regnal lists (including one that Saxo himself incorporates) consistently contradict the event the Saxo passage has been used to prove, as they agree on a sequence of Scylding rulers with names corresponding to those of persons in Beowulf. Attention to this traditional sequence exposes Hrothulf's murder of Hrethric as a logical impossibility. Moreover, the early medieval method of selecting rulers suggests that neither did Hrothulf usurp the throne of Denmark. In sum, careful scrutiny of the best Scandinavian evidence and rejection of the worst reveals Beowulf's “treacherous Hrothulf” to be a scholarly fantasy.

Keywords

BeowulfHrothulfHrethricAxel Olrikallusions misreadScylding dynastydynastic murderkinglists
Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 74 , 2019 , pp. 153 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University 2019 

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Footnotes

For a great deal of useful advice, generously supportive criticism, and even some turns of phrase, it gives me great pleasure to thank David Allen, Howell Chickering, and Stephen Harris, with gratitude also to the anonymous readers of this article.

References

1 These titles are from the introduction to Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles (Toronto, 2008), xxxvi and li. References to and quotations of the text of Beowulf are from this edition.

2 Hrothulf is the son of Hrothgar's brother Halga, with whom Hrothgar has coruled earlier (according to Scandinavian sources). On the death of Halga, the king and queen fostered his son Hrothulf (lines 1186–87). His story is told in colorful detail in Hrólfs saga kraka, translated as The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki by Jesse Byock (London, 1998), hereafter cited in notes as HKS (for “Hrolf Kraki's Saga”).

3 There is no intention here to disparage the intelligence of those who taught us so much about the poem, but even the brilliant can blunder, and in this particular case they have. The publications in which these three scholars most influentially embraced the idea of Hrothulf as murderer are: R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn, (Cambridge, first ed. 1921, second ed. 1932, third ed. with appendices by C. W. Wrenn, 1960); Malone, Kemp, “Hrethric” PMLA 42 (1927): 268–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robinson, Fred C., “History, Religion, Culture,” in Approaches to Teaching Beowulf, ed. Bessinger, Jess B. Jr. and Yeager, Robert F. (New York, 1984), 107–22Google Scholar.

4 According to Hilda Ellis Davidson, “the main source used by Saxo was probably the lost Skjoldunga Saga” (Saxo Grammaticus: History of the Danes, Books I–IX, ed. Hilda Ellis Davidson, trans. Peter Fisher (Cambridge, 1998), vol. 1, 39. (Vol. 1 contains Fisher's English translation and vol. 2 Davidson's commentary, both within one cover.) This version of Saxo's History is cited hereafter as “Saxo.” His sources are listed in further detail in note 38 below.

5 Hrolf's generosity is described in chap. 15 of HKS (31).

6 R. D. Fulk, The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts and The Fight at Finnsburg (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 169. I have elected to use Fulk's translation as an independent witness to avoid biasing my own translation to favor my argument. Fulk affirms that “the translation in nearly all respects accords with the interpretations offered in Klaeber's Beowulf ” (xxi). For the original texts see Fulk's facing page (here, p. 168) or Klaeber's Beowulf, cited above (n. 1).

7 In their note on lange þrage (line 1257b), the editors of Klaeber's Beowulf observe that “the story does not bear out this remark” (196–97), and they list suggestions made for emendation and justification.

8 A. C. Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley, 1959), 117.

9 Rolf H. Bremmer, “The Importance of Kinship: Uncle and Nephew in Beowulf,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 15 (1980): 38.

10 Richard North, “Hrothulf's Childhood and Beowulf's: A Comparison,” Childhood and Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Susan Irvine and Winfried Rudolf (Toronto, 2018), 243.

11 H. R. Loyn, “Kinship in Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 3 (1974): 202.

12 John D. Niles, “History and Myth,” A Beowulf Handbook, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Lincoln, NE, 1997), 226.

13 Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Woodbridge, 2003), 220.

14 Fulk, The Beowulf Manuscript, 153, 163, 165, 167 (see n. 6 above).

Bugon þa to bence   bældagande,
fylle gefægon;    fægere geþægon
medoful manig    magas þara
swiðhicgende    on sele þam hean,
Hroðgar ond Hroþulf.    Heorot innan wæs
freondum afylled;    nalles facenstafas
Þeod-Scyldingas    þenden fremedon.

16 The Old English text reads as follows, quoted from the edition of Bernard Muir, The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, vol. 1 (Exeter, 1994), p. 242:

Hroþwulf ond Hroðgar    heoldon lengest
sibbe ætsomne    suhtorfædran,
siþþan hy forwræcon    wicinga cynn
ond Ingeldes    ord forbigdan,
forheowan æt Heorote   Heaðobeardna þrym.

17 Jacqueline Simpson may have this idea in mind when she avoids hinting at enmity between these kinsmen in her translation of these lines from Widsith: “Very long did Hroðwulf and Hroðgar, nephew and uncle, keep peace as kinsmen together,” Beowulf and Its Analogues, ed. G. N. Garmonsway, Jacqueline Simpson, and Hilda Ellis Davidson (London, 1968), 127.

18 Seamus Heaney changes the scene's dynamic when at lines 1161–62 he has the queen sit between Hrothgar and Hrothulf in a position of intimacy, a position that suggests she is speaking quietly for them alone (Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation [New York, 2000], 83). She does not sit in the original; I imagine her speaking to the king, with especial attention to Hrothulf, in a calm but penetrating voice as she stands before the warriors in the hall, making sure there are witnesses to what she says.

Me man sægde     þæt þu ðe for sunu wolde
hereri[n]c habban.   Heorot is gefælsod,
beahsele beorhta;   bruc þenden þu mote
manigra medo,  ond þinum magum læf
folc ond rice    þonne ðu forð scyle,
metodsceaft seon.    Iċ minne can
glædne Hroþulf,   þæt he þa geogoðe wile
arum healdan   gyf þu ær þonne he,
wine Scildinga,   worold oflætest;
wene ic þæt he mid gode  gyldan wille
uncran eaferan    gif he þæt eal gemon,
hwæt wit to willan    ond to worðmyndum
umborwesendum ær      arna gefremedon.

20 Literally, suna, “son.” After Wealhtheow's request to Beowulf to “instruct these boys [cnyhtum] kindly” at lines 1219b–20a, Fulk, following Klaeber, translates her phrase suna minum at 1226b “my sons,” even though suna is singular and may refer to Hrethric in particular. Beowulf takes it that way later at lines 1536–39. The singular form in the manuscript is central to Helen Damico's argument, summarized below, that Wealhtheow's word suna refers to Hrothulf.

21 Sarrazin, “Rolf Krake und sein Vetter im Beowulfliede,” Englische Studien 24 (1898): 144–45.

22 Saxo. vol. 1, 56–63, in Fisher's translation from Saxo's Latin.

23 Rolf Krake og den Ældre Skjolungrække (Copenhagen, 1903) is available as a searchable e-book at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112124390763;view=1up;seq=5. It is Part I of Olrik's larger work, Danmarks Heltedigtning: En Oldtidsstudie (Copenhagen, 1910). Lee M. Hollander translated Part 1 with Olrik's collaboration as The Heroic Legends of Denmark (New York, 1919), hereafter cited as Legends.

24 Olrik, Legends, 112. Following his “restoration” (his term) of Saxo's poem to a version more like the original as he imagines it (Legends, 90–98), Olrik usefully provides Saxo's Latin version with “materials and parallels” on facing pages (Legends, 99–136).

25 Chambers, Introduction (n. 3 above), 444.

26 Olrik, Legends, 49.

27 Olrik, Legends, 54.

28 Legends, 64–65. Olrik's discussion of these matters is the main force behind the idea that the Scyldings (though not Scyld himself) had some claim to a historical identity. Chambers powerfully endorsed his view, saying that Hrethric was “almost certainly an actual historic prince who was thrust from the throne by Hrothulf” (Introduction, 26).

29 Chambers, Introduction, 27.

30 Malone, “Hrethric” (n. 3 above), 271.

31 Malone, “Hrethric,” 271.

32 Chambers, Introduction, 426, his emphasis.

33 Chambers, Introduction, 427.

34 Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburgh, 3rd ed., ed. Fredrick Klaeber (Lexington, MA, 1950), 169, note on lines 1018–19. After discussing Hrothulf and then the Heathobard feud (xxxi–vi), Klaeber concludes: “Thus the two tragic motives of this epic tradition are the implacable enmity between two tribes [the Scyldings and the Heathobards], dominated by the idea of revenge which no human bonds of affection can restrain, and the struggle for the crown among members of a royal family [which is to lead to the extinction of the dynasty]” (xxxvi, his brackets). The editors of Klaeber's Beowulf, less committed to the “Scylding feud” idea than Klaeber was, list six modern scholars who doubt Hrothulf's crime (Klaeber's Beowulf, 177, note on lines 1017–19).

35 Fred C. Robinson, The Tomb of Beowulf and Other Essays on Old English (Oxford, 1993), 38.

36 Robinson, Tomb, 38. As I cannot find where “Saxo Grammaticus notes that this happened only after Hrothulf slew Røricus” (Tomb, 38), it seems Robinson is merely echoing Chambers.

37 Robinson, Tomb, 38.

38 The most recent scholarly edition is Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen, trans. Peter Fisher, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2015); for Friis-Jensen's correction of “Bøgi the miser,” see I, 131, n. 13. At this point the translation by Peter Fisher used in this edition is not changed from that in Hilda Ellis Davidson's 1998 edition and commentary (really only a translation with commentary) cited in note 4 above.

39 See Olrik, Legends (n. 23 above), 73–74 and notes. Sarrazin corrects the mistake in “Rolf Krake,” 144–45.

40 Olrik, Legends, 92. Olrik's text reads:

Fylker fast skaren!
følg hvad Rolf lærte,
Hrøriks harde bane,
den ringkarriges.
Fattig var Hrørik,
dog han fæ ejed:
guld kun han sanked,
ej gæve kæmper (Olrik, ed., Danmarks Heltedigtning (n. 23 above), 51).

Olrik himself warned about the Bjarkamál that “the present reader is in the beggarly position of one who must form a conception of the old poem with the help of a Latin translation [Saxo's], a second-hand narrative [Olrik's own], and some few detached verses” (Olrik, Legends, 85), and Davidson further warns that “Olrik's [Bjarkamál] poem largely consists of ingenious conjectures, with little evidence to support them” (Saxo, vol 2, 47 n. 57).

41 Olrik pointed out that killing a king who withheld his treasure would not be a dishonorable act in medieval Scandinavia (Legends, 72–73). Hoarding wealth was considered contrary to one of the primary principles of good kingship, in which the king is meant to reward his warriors for valor and his bards for skillful praise of valor. See Bede's concern for defense of the Northumbrian kingdom when this practice is lost, in his “Letter to Egbert,” translated in The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Greater Chronicle, and Bede's Letter to Egbert, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins (Oxford, 1994), 343–57.

42 On the whole Saxo follows identifiable authorities such as the lost eleventh-century original behind Resen's Vellum and the twelfth-century kinglists of Skjoldungasaga and Langfedgatál. In “The Earliest Icelandic Genealogies and Regnal Lists,” Saga-Book 29 (2005), 115–19, Anthony Faulkes says that the Resen's Vellum list represents “the earliest stage of royal genealogy in Icelandic prose sources” (116). The also-lost Icelandic Skjoldunga Saga is extant only in a seventeenth-century epitome in Latin by Arngrímur Jónsson, translated as “Fragments of Danish History” by Clarence Miller in American Notes and Queries 20 (2007): 9–33.

43 See Ellis Davidson's notes in Saxo. vol. 2, 48 n.64 and, later, 58 n.52 (sic).

44 The stingy ring-hoarder is a potent source of story. Saxo inserts Rørik son of avaricious Bøk into his Bjarkamál as an enemy for Hrolf Kraki to defeat, and the HKS author reverses the positive meaning of slængvanbagi to create the unpleasant tale of envious Hrok, who slings Hrolf's most precious ring far into the ocean (chapter eight). In each tale, Hrolf does kill or mutilate an unethical “Hræric,” but in neither story is that person a Skjolding, and Hrok is not even a king.

45 See Davidson's warning about Olrik's poem in note 36 above; Saxo's version of the Bjarkamál in Latin hexameters is equally dubious as representing its source. (Both poems might gain critical value if considered “creative” works in response to the aesthetics of their period instead of translations.)

46 M. G. Clarke, Sidelights on Teutonic History (Cambridge, 1911).

47 Clarke, Sidelights, 100–101.

48 Kenneth Sisam, The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965), 80–82.

49 Sisam, Structure, 80.

50 For this understanding of sibbe, compare Beowulf lines 154b–56, where Grendel sibbe ne wolde (“wished no peace/relationship”) with the Danes.

51 Sisam, Structure, 81.

52 Sisam, Structure, 81–82.

53 Morton Bloomfield, “The Structure of Beowulf by Kenneth Sisam,” Essays and Explorations (Cambridge, 1970), 278.

54 Helen Damico, Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition (Madison, WI, 1984).

55 Damico, Wealhtheow, 127.

56 Damico, Wealhtheow, 127.

57 See James Earl, “The Forbidden Beowulf: Haunted by Incest,” PMLA 125 (2010): 289–305.

58 Clarke, Sidelights (n. 46 above), 76.

59 Saxo's version of this liaison is in vol 1, 51 (see n. 4 above), and HKS retells it in chap. 7 and 10 (trans. Byock).

60 Damico, Wealhtheow,130.

61 Perhaps realizing that if Wealhtheow is Yrsa, her marriage to Hrothgar, Yrsa's brother in Beowulf (lines 62–63), creates a problem, Damico omitted her Yrsa theory in “The Valkyrie Reflex in Old English Literature,” New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington, 1990), 176–90, cf. viii.

62 Mary Dockray-Miller, Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England (New York, 2000).

63 Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 106.

64 Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 111.

65 She cites John M. Hill, The Cultural World in Beowulf (Toronto, 1995), 75; and Michael D. C. Drout, “Imitating Fathers: Tradition, Inheritance, and the Reproduction of Culture in Anglo-Saxon England,” (PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 1997). Drout (“Imitating Fathers,” 238) argues that Wealhtheow supports Hrothgar's claim to the throne because her boys have no chance of succeeding to it and surviving.

66 Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 112.

67 Dockray-Miller, Motherhood, 113.

68 Presumably he dies of old age (see lines 1307 and 1769–70). That har hilderinc “gray-haired warrior” of line 1307 is hale enough, however, to join sometime later with his nephew Hrothulf in fighting the Heathobards when they attack Heorot (Widsith, lines 45–49). The editors of Klaeber's Beowulf (liii) comment on a “lack of biographical verisimilitude” in the way Hrothgar's life is depicted.

69 John M. Hill, The Anglo-Saxon Warrior Ethic (Gainsville, 2000), 72.

70 John M. Hill, The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf: Arrivals and Departures (Toronto, 2008), 49–50.

71 Fred C. Robinson, Beowulf and the Appositive Style (Knoxville, 1985), 5.

72 Hill, Pulse, 58.

73 Hill, Pulse, 59.

74 This is Robert E. Bjork's term. See Bjork, “Speech as Gift in Beowulf,” Speculum 69 (1994): 993–1020.

75 George Clark observes that Beowulf's speech here can be understood as a diplomatically delayed “answer to Wealhtheow's petition which the queen should have approved and which Hrothgar receives with deep gratitude.” See Clark, Beowulf (Boston, 1990), 89.

76 Interpreting this scene similarly, Peter S. Baker sees Beowulf taking charge of his identity and position in relation to his hosts in Heorot. See Baker, Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf (Woodbridge, 2013), 71. In Hill's understanding of these speeches and scenes, everyone present in Heorot is poised, graceful, and regal. This courtly goodwill even extends to Hrothgar's tears at Beowulf's departure: his tears are neither effeminate (Dockray-Miller's suggestion in “Beowulf's Tears of Fatherhood,” Exemplaria 10 [1998]: 1–28), nor a sign of senility (Olrik, Legends, 54), but rather “the emotional deepening of gravitas” (Hill, Pulse, 64). For a sophisticated analysis developing a view similar to Hill's, see Benjamin A. Saltzman, “Secrecy and the Hermeneutic Potential in Beowulf,” PMLA 133 (2018): 42–44.

77 Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, unlike the Beowulf poet, show no interest in the Scyldings from Hrothgar to Hrethric, although overlap with the Scandinavian genealogies occurs before and after them. As Audrey Heaney observes, “From Halfdan/Healfdene onwards, it appears to be purely Danish traditions which Beowulf is following, in an earlier form than that in the extant Scandinavian sources” (Heaney, “Scyld Scefing and the Dating of Beowulf — Again,” Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, ed. Donald Scragg [Cambridge, 2003], 35). Craig R. Davis explains how the Anglo-Saxon dynastic lists originated and then were typically expanded backwards into a pseudo-history populated ever more extravagantly by euhemerized gods, in Davis, Beowulf and the Demise of Germanic Heroic Legend (New York, 1996), 51–63. Scandinavian lists were also expanded creatively but with different emphasis.

78 Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf (n. 8 above), 77.

79 Chambers, Introduction (n. 3 above), 26.

80 Chambers, 26–27 and 26 n. 3. Dockray-Miller also observes this tampering in Motherhood, 109.

81 Bjarni Guðnason, “The Icelandic Sources of Saxo Grammaticus,” in Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author between Norse and Latin Culture, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen (Copenhagen, 1981), 88.

82 Saxo, vol. 1, 73.

83 Saxo, vol. 1, 50–79. When a king's genealogy is unclear, makers of regnal lists often assume that he is the son of the king preceding him. Sven Aggesen (fl. ca. 1185) lists every succeeding king as son of his predecessor, as in “Halfdan's son Helghi — his son Rolf Kraki — his son Rokil [Hrethric] — his son Frothi the Bold — his son Wermund the Wise — his son Uffi [Offa]”: The Works of Sven Aggesen, Twelfth-Century Danish Historian, trans. Eric Christiansen (London, 1992), 49–50. Wermund and Uffi appear in Beowulf as Garmund and Offa (lines 1948–62), but not as kings of Denmark.

84 See note 78. Klaeber's Beowulf, pp. 301–5 includes the relevant lists of kings in these six chronicles with text and translation: Langfeðgatal, Chronicon Lethrense, Sven Aggesen, Codex Runicus, Annales Ryenses, Skjoldungasaga. The first, third, and sixth passages selected from these chronicles show Hrethric following Hrothulf (at some point); the other three texts are either editorially curtailed after the death of Hrolf Kraki (Hrothulf) or contain ellipses where Hrethric's name may occur, as in the Codex Runicus. Alexander M. Bruce's agenda in Scyld and Scef: Expanding the Analogues (New York, 2002) similarly leads him to abbreviate the lists that he usefully provides in “Part II: Texts and Translations,” at one point concluding with “Rolf” (Hrothulf) immediately before the equivalent of Hrethric's name would appear (140). Bruce does however provide both lists from Langfeðgatál in Latin and English (115–17).

85 As Sam Newton (Sam Newton, The Origins of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia [Cambridge, 1993], 88) says, “Although [Heoroweard] is not actually named in the episode of the victory-feast in Beowulf, he may be implicitly invoked through the later descriptions of his father's war-gear.” William Cooke uses the support of Scandinavian sources to argue that the hints of future disaster in Heorot refer to the future battle with Heoroweard (Cooke, “Hrothulf: A Richard III, or an Alfred the Great?” Studies in Philology 104 [2007]: 184).

86 W. W. Lawrence alludes to this primogeniture understanding as he concludes his own “murder of Hrethric” story by describing Heoroweard, who follows “treacherous” Hrothulf, as “the rightful heir to the throne, according to strict succession” (Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition [Cambridge, MA, 1930], 78–79).

87 David N. Dumville explains: “Legal title … was naturally very important. It was one of those elements which enabled a man to be a candidate for the throne…. And in our period legal title was normally, though not invariably, established by descent. Royal genealogy may be expected to state that claim, often retrospectively, and it need have no necessary relationship with biological fact” (Dumville, “Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists,” Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood [Leeds, 1977], 73). Frederick M. Biggs understands “Beowulf's central theme [as] a contrast in two models of succession”: the old one where “the next king is chosen from among a relatively broadly-defined kin group,” and the newer model where “the pool of eligible candidates is restricted primarily to sons” (Biggs, “The Politics of Succession in Beowulf and in Anglo-Saxon England,” Speculum 80 [2005]: 710).

88 Cooke, “Hrothulf,” 175–76.

89 Klaeber's Beowulf, liii, not a new suggestion; see n. 2 above. Several kinglists show or imply Hrothgar ruling with his brother Halga (as Ro and Helgi). In Beowulf, where Halga is now dead, his warrior-son Hrothulf apparently occupies his place.

90 Yorke, Barbara, “Joint Kingship in Kent c. 560 to 785,” Archaeologia Cantiana 99 (1983): 1–20Google Scholar at 17.

91 Simpson's translation in Beowulf and Its Analogues (n. 17 above), 128.

92 HKS, 69.

93 Chickering, Howell D. Jr, Beowulf: A Dual Language Edition (New York, 1977), 322Google Scholar. Questioning whether allusion should be read “at face value, or do we allow for an artful irony?” Chickering suggests the problem may be resolved by a double perspective that combines the limited knowledge of those in the poem with the larger understanding of the poet, aware of events in their future.

94 Kennedy, Charles W., Beowulf: The Oldest English Epic; Translated into Alliterative Verse with a Critical Introduction (Oxford, 1940)Google Scholar, xxxiv.

95 Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951), 36; cf. Roberta Frank, “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature,” in Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2013), 97.

96 What “really happened” to the Hrethric of Beowulf depends on how he inhabits the mind of the poet. Both the Beowulf poet and Shakespeare have the authority to do as they like in the world of their fiction, to murder whom they will whatever the chroniclers say. The chroniclers say that Hamlet lived on too.