I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu! You that look pale, and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you-- But let it be. Horatio, I am dead, Thou livest. Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied. O God, Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity a while, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story.

1) "Hamlet. O, I die, Horatio! The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit. 4015 I cannot live to hear the news from England, But I do prophesy th' election lights On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice. So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited- the rest is silence. Dies. 4020" Source: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Scope=entire&pleasewait=1&msg=pl Those are the last words of the character Hamlet in Shakespeare's play of the same name. 2) It is quite unclear what was the origin of this story. "Several possible ultimate sources of the 'hero as fool' story that is central to Hamlet are known, but no definitive candidate has emerged. Hamlet-like legends come from many ancient sources (Roman, Spanish, Scandinavian and Arabic) and some surmise that the core theme may be Indo-European in origin. Several very early Hamlet-type stories can be identified. The first is the anonymous Scandinavian Saga of Hrolf Kraki. In this, the murdered king has two sons—Hroar and Helgi—who assume the names of Ham and Hráni for concealment. They spend most of the story in disguise, rather than feigning madness, and the sequence of events differs from Shakespeare's. The second is the Roman legend of Brutus, which is recorded in two separate Latin works. Its hero, Lucius ('shining, light'), changes his name and persona to Brutus ('dull, stupid'), playing the role of a fool to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and eventually slaying his family's killer, King Tarquinus. A 17th-century Nordic scholar, Torfaeus, compared the Icelandic hero, Amloi, and the Spanish hero, Prince Ambales (from the Ambales Saga) to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Similarities include the prince's feigned madness, his accidental killing of the king's counsellor in his mother's bedroom, and the eventual slaying of his uncle. Many of the earlier Hamlet story elements are interwoven in the 13th-century Vita Amlethi ("The Life of Amleth") by Saxo Grammaticus, part of Gesta Danorum. Written in Latin, it reflects classical Roman concepts of virtue and heroism, and was widely available in Shakespeare's day. Significant parallels include the prince feigning madness, his mother's hasty marriage to the usurper, the prince killing a hidden spy, and the prince substituting the execution of two retainers for his own. A reasonably faithful version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet I could not find out what the *real* Hamlet's dying words were...