Feng

Feng is the villain of the first Hamlet — Amleth's uncle, who murders his own brother Horwendil to seize his throne and his wife, and so sets the whole revenge in motion. Saxo makes him a study in the uneasy guilt of the usurper: having killed his brother and married the widow Gerutha, Feng can never quite be sure of the boy Amleth, who plays the drooling idiot so convincingly that the uncle is torn between contempt and suspicion. He sets trap after trap to test whether the madness is real — a woman to seduce him, an eavesdropper in the queen's chamber, a deadly errand to England — and Amleth turns each one back on him. In the end Feng is killed with his own sword in his burning hall, by the nephew he could neither trust nor bring himself to kill outright. Feng is the original Claudius — the fratricide whose guilt makes him both cruel and fatally hesitant.