Geatish

This description does not fit the historical Hygelac, of course, but it clearly does reflect, accurately enough, the tradition of decadence which must have become attached to the Geatish royal house as a result of the decline and fall of the Geatish kingdom.

1923, Kemp Malone, The Literary History of Hamlet: The Early Tradition, published 1964, page 46

The Geatish digressions in the last episode of the poem take the audience from Hrethel's death to the deaths of all his sons and the succession of his grandson, Beowulf, though not in chronological order.

1997, George Clark, “Chapter 14: The Hero and the Theme”, in Robert E. Bjork, John D. Niles, editors, A Beowulf Handbook, page 289

Beowulf's succession to the Geatish throne took place only because of the successive deaths of Hygelac and Heardred (who was killed in Onela's invasion of the land of the Geats).

2010, Alistair Campbell, “The use in Beowulf of earlier heroic verse”, in Peter Clemoes, Kathleen Hughes, editors, England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, page 290