Here are my thoughts as I read the play, which is surprisingly shorter than I had thought it would be. The .pdf of the play that I found is only 23 pages, the scenes are very short, often only half a page, but the plot and the characters are similar to those we are familiar with with Hamlet.
The entire play is very similar to Shakespeare's Hamlet, all of the plot points and characters line up, if this play is shorter and all of the scenes are simplified. The first line is even "Wer da?" --"Who's there?", and many others are almost word for word translations. There are quite a few differences though:
1. Polonius and Leontes are named Corambus and Leonardo.
2. The players who play before the king are said to be from Germany.
3. When Hamlet comes on the King kneeling in prayer he almost stabs him twice (The stage directions say that he raises his dagger, then he has more lines, then he raises his dagger again, then has more lines). He wants to kill the King, not giving him a chance to pray, since he did not give Hamlet's father a chance to pray. But ultimately, Hamlet walks away, leaving the King to pray. What I found interesting is that the King's lines after Hamlet leaves lead one to believe that he is truly repentant, where in Shakespeare's Hamlet he says, ""My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go", which indicates that he is not as hopeful that his prayers are heard.
4. Also interesting to note that the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are missing. And Ophelia kills herself by throwing herself off of a mountain, rather than drowning.
5. There is an epilogue spoken by a chorus that makes the point of the play a bit more obvious.
So gehts, wenn ein Regent mit List zur Kron sich dringet,
Und durch Verrätherey dieselbe an sich bringet,
Derselb erlebt nichts, als lauter Spott und Hohn,
Denn wie die Arbeit ist, so folget auch der Lohn.
"So it goes when a regent gains the crown through deception and treachery, He experiences nothing but scorn and derision, for what you sow that shall you also reap."
Despite these differences, A. H. J. Knight argues that this German play must be based directly off of Shakespeare's Hamlet because, "the word for word resemblances are too frequent and too striking to be referable to coincidence or to a common third source alone" (Knight 1936). I agree with Knight, there are a lot of lines that are almost direct translations that the only logical conclusions are that Der Bestrafte Brudermord is based off of Shakespeare, or that both plays took lines from some third original source. So either this German play took its lines from Shakespeare or we accuse Shakespeare of not only taking plot and characters, but many lines as well. I am not too familiar with the arguments about Shakespeare and his sources, but I don't think there are too many that claim he plagiarized that blatantly.
