Who and who?

Peter Marshall writes in his book about renaissance Prague and the court of Rudolf II that:

...Kepler travelled with Brahe's cousin Frederick Rosenkrantz to Graz to collect his family. Rosenkrantz was going to join the Austrian forces fighting the Turks who were once again advancing through the Balkans and even threatened the southern boundary of Austria. He was the same Rosenkratz who was to be immortalised with another of Brahe's cousins - Knut Gyldenstierne (Guildenstern) - in Hamlet. Kepler arrived in Graz just in time. Archduke Ferdinand himself was attending a commission which demanded that non-Catholic citizens either convert to Catholicism or leave. The deeply Lutheran Kepler left in the nick of time. (p.174)

What?

Putting aside the inconsistent spelling Marshall uses in this passage (-krantz/-kratz) he does seem sure of his facts.

I thought I knew a bit about Hamlet - however this little piece of biographical information had passed me by. So I went and consulted my trusty Arden edition (ed Harold Jenkins, 1982, but it is the latest edition in the house). According to a "Longer Note" on the Dramatis Personae, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are explicitly Dutch names. Jenkins notes that they are also very common: Frederick II had nine Gs and three Rs at his court, while "...at the coronation of Christian IV in 1596, in a procession of 160 noblemen, one in ten bore one or other of these names..." And he gives references. He adds:

An engraved portrait of Tycho brahe dated in 1586 surrounds him with the coats-of-arms of sizteen families from which he is descended, including 'Guldesteren' and 'Rosenkrans'; but conjectures that Shakespeare knew this engraving - even that he saw a copy of it in the house of the astronomer Thomas Digges (Hotson,I, Wiliam Shakespeare, pp123-4) - are not necessary to account for a conjunction as natural as it is felcitous in giving an authentic touch of Denmark. (p.423)

So it isn't true then? Brahe's cousins were not necessarily the originals of Shakespeare's characters? I have to admit to a little regret: the notion of the characters from the play (famously Fortune's 'privates') bemusedly associating with Kepler and Brahe strikes me as highly amusing. Probably only because of the mismatch of genres (Kepler I know mostly about in terms of his scientific laws - and although Brahe's nose and dwarf do make him a broader character, the same is essentially true of him).

Anyway, it seemed worthwhile looking a little further. For the record, the engraving Jenkins mentions is at the top of this post.

Wikipedia sides with Jenkins (or it did when I checked!) - but then I found this at Access My Library

Hamlet's childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are among Shakespeare's most famous pairs of characters. But this inseparable couple, whom King Claudius called to the court from Wittenberg, has always been a puzzle to scholars. Were they created by Shakespeare and given Danish names--the only Danish names in the play--to add authenticity to the Danish setting? (1) Or were Hamlet's friends based on two real men? Danish records suggest that the latter is more likely. There is evidence that two historical Danish noblemen, Frederik Holgersen Rosenkrantz and Knud Henriksen Gyldenstierne, both with the right background, were in the right place at the right time for Shakespeare to write them into roles in Hamlet. (2)

Both Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne were born into powerful noble families in 16th century Denmark. Their families were among a small group of wealthy ruling clans with many connections by marriage. Evidently they were cousins: Rosenkrantz's mother was a Gyldenstierne. (3) Because of the status of these families, facts about them can be found in biographical dictionaries (4) and even in a modern biography of Tycho Brahe. The Brahe clan was also from the ruling class and was interrelated with the Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstierne clans. Both Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne were cousins of Brahe. (5) These sources state that Shakespeare did indeed write Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne into Hamlet, but do not give much explanation or supporting evidence for this claim.

It was Palle Rosenkrantz, a descendent of the Rosenkrantz clan, who uncovered the relevant documents about Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstierne and proposed that this pair was the likely source of Shakespeare's two characters. The present paper is based primarily on his 1910 article, "Rosenkrantz og Gyldenstjerne i Hamlet." (6) Material from other sources is included to fill out a picture of Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstierne and to better show how suitable they are as Shakespeare's sources. Their background and movements also have a bearing on the authorship question. Because we rely on the work of Palle Rosenkrantz, we should look at his biography as well. (7) Swank, Lowell James, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in London: did a Danish writer discover the real men behind the Shakespeare characters? (2003) If I want to read any more of this, I think I have to pay for it...

Also, I found elsewhere a citation for Freeman, John, 'Holding Up the Mirror's Mind to Nature', The Modern Language Review I (January 1996, 20-39) where he apparently states that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are names from Brahe's Epistolae - and that Elsinore is close to Hveen, Brahe's laboratory.

And then:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the Danish courtiers in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (and in Tom Stoppard's play " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead") probably got their names from two relatives of Tycho who visited England in 1592 on a diplomatic mission, Frederick Rosenkrantz, 3rd cousin of Tycho, and Knut Gyldenstierne, also a cousin. For more, see p. 265 in Ferguson's book. From this site - Ferguson is Ferguson, Kitty, The Nobleman and His Housedog: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler: The Strange Partnership That Revolutionised Science, (2002).

In fact there are lots of theories and arguments. Several have their origins in a 1997 paper by P. D. Usher (A New Reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet):

I argue that Hamlet is an allegory for the competition between the cosmologicalmodels of the contemporaries Thomas Digges (1546-1595) of England and TychoBrahe (1546-1601) of Denmark.

and also:
I suggest further that the slaying ofRosencrantz and Guildenstern is the Bard's way of killing the Tychonic model.

Um.
I am not convinced (and certainly not by the seemingly bizarre Usher). Jenkins' arguments in 1982 still seem reasonable. Even if the two cousins of Brahe did travel to England, it isn't clear to me that he might not just have used two familiar (common) Dutch names. Others of the name Rosencrantz and Guildenstern might have been known to Shakespeare. Although to be fair I haven't read the Ferguson book and can't be sure - whereas Marshall has read it, or at least includes it in his bibliography.

What really gets me I think, is the extent to which Marshall is so certain that this is the case. Even if he is right I prefer the somewhat querulous, questioning and playful tone of Harold Jenkins commentary. I fundamentally want Jenkins to be right!

So there.

But there is one more thing I discovered in my searches around Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Kepler and Tycho. In the Wikipedia article other references include, as well as the Tom Stoppard play, a comedy version by W.S.Gilbert. Of which I had never heard. And the entry - as well as summarising the typically Gilbertian plot - also tells us that "A televised performance of the play was given in 1938 with Grahame Clifford as Claudius, Erik Chitty as Guildenstern, Leonard Sachs as Rosencrantz, and Peter Ridgeway as Hamlet."

So that links Rosencrantz and Guildenstern squarely to Dr Who and Please Sir!

Much more fun.