BEVIS OF HAMPTON, the name of an English metrical romance. The wife of Guy, count of Hampton (Southampton) asks a former suitor, Doon or Devoun, emperor of Almaine many), to send an army to der Guy in the forest. The plot is successful, and she marries Doon. When threatened with future vengeance by her year-old son, Bevis, she mines to make away with him also, but he is saved from death by a faithful tutor, is sold to heathen pirates, and reaches the court of King Hermin, whose realm is variously placed in Egypt and Armenia. The ploits of Bevis, his love for the king's daughter Josiane, his mission to King Bradmond of Da mascus with a sealed letter demanding his own death, his im prisonment, his final vengeance on his stepfather are related in detail. After succeeding to his inheritance he is, however, driven into exile and separated from Josiane, to whom he is reunited only after each of them has contracted, in form only, a second union.
The story also relates the hero's death and the fortunes of his two sons.
The oldest extant version appears to be Boeve de Haumtone, an Anglo-Norman text which dates from the first half of the 13th century. The oldest ms. of the English metrical romance, Sir Beues of Hamtoun, dates from the beginning of the 14th century. The French chanson de geste, Beuve d'Ilanstone, was followed by numerous prose versions, and in Italy, where Bovo d'Antona was the subject of more than one poem, the tale was interpolated in the Reali di Francia, the Italian compilation of Carolingian legend. Although the English version that we possess is based on a French original, it seems probable that the legend took shape on English soil in the loth century, and that it originated with the Danish invaders. R. Zenker (Boeve-Amlethus, Berlin and Leipzig, 1904) establishes a close parallel between Bevis and the Hamlet legend as related by Saxo Grammaticus in the Historia Danica.