In Shakespeare's Hamlet, an uncle kills the king, marries the widow and is chosen king over the son, and the crown ends with a foreign prince

Hamlet is a play by William Shakespeare, written between about 1599 and 1601 and first printed in 1603. It comes from the legend of Amleth in Saxo Grammaticus's Latin history of the Danes, retold in French by Belleforest in 1570. In Saxo, Feng kills his brother Horwendil, takes his wife Gerutha, and claims he acted to protect her; her son Amleth feigns madness to survive. In the play, Claudius has married his brother's widow, "Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state," and taken the throne. The Ghost tells Prince Hamlet he was murdered by his brother and so lost "life, of crown, of queen at once." Denmark in the play elects its king, and Hamlet says Claudius "Popp'd in between th'election and my hopes." By the last scene the king, the queen, the prince and the counsellor's son Laertes are dead. Hamlet gives the succession to the Norwegian prince: "th'election lights / On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice." Fortinbras says, "I have some rights of memory in this kingdom." The family that fought for the crown leaves no heir. The Folger Shakespeare Library lists the first quarto as 1603, the second as 1604 and the First Folio as 1623.