 The play's setting in Elsinore also differs from legendary versions.The story of the prince who plots revenge on his uncle (the current king) for killing his father (the former king) is an old one.Many of the story elements—the prince feigning madness and his testing by a young woman, the prince talking to his mother and her hasty marriage to the usurper, the prince killing a hidden spy and substituting the execution of two retainers for his own—are found in a medieval tale by Saxo Grammaticus called "Vita Amlethi" (part of his larger Latin work "Gesta Danorum"), which was written around 1200 AD.