Hamlet

Horatio is Hamlet's closest friend.

I disagree with the above statement, though it is commonly said. Horatio is *NOT* Hamlet's closest friend at the start of the play. He is a casual friend, that becomes increasingly closer to Hamlet as the play progresses.

First, Hamlet is not aware Horatio is in 'town' until they meet after the ghostly visit. And it should be noted that Marcellus is the one that knows where to find Hamlet, not Horatio. They are casual friends at school.

Horatio is the voice of reason for Hamlet, who remains unsure about his way and the righteousness of the ghostly request. But their friendship only solidifies in the second part of the play when Hamlet realizes the un-trustworthiness of his close friends, who are corrupted by power. It is after Hamlet has been freed by his time with the pirates that the friendship becomes utterly solid.

Hamlet uses Horatio during the play within the play scene to confirm the guilt of Claudius, but that is because he must use someone and only Horatio, a near aristocrat, is able to be used. Marcellus attending the play would be rather odd.

By no means. Most writing is not literature. Even some literature is not literature.

"All writings" includes a vast amount of factual material: historical records, technical information, law and legal commentary, journalistic writings, nonfiction of many other kinds. There is also the whole body of advertising, marketing, propaganda, political writing, and so on, whose aim is to sell something: product, point of view, position, cause, etc. None of this is literature.

Most of what you find in magazines and newspapers is not literature, even though there's an awful lot of words in them. (Some nonfiction is literature; the lines are not as crisp as all that.)

There is a very loose sense of "literature" to mean almost any kind of writing--for example, "advertising literature"--but that is not what we mean when we talk about literature as such.

Hamlet and Fortinbras do not actually meet. Fortinbras has no grounds for saying that Hamlet might have been a "goodly king". Hamlet does encounter Fortinbras's army in Act 4 Scene 4 and, in some versions of the play at least, goes off on a soliloquy in which he wonders if he is a coward, and yet again vows to complete his revenge.

Fortinbras uncle is the brother of Old Fortinbras (the father to the Fortinbras in the play), who was killed by Old Hamlet before the play begins. He, Fortinbras uncle, is the current ruler of Norway, and as such is often refered to as "Norway."

In Shakespeare's text, all of the action involving this uncle happens off-stage, hence he is not a listed character.

Polonius may actually care about his daughter, Ophelia but it's not very evident in his actions. He clearly is more concerned with his own personal reputation than his 2 children, Laertes and Ophelia.

Hamlet fakes death warrants for Ros and Guil which are acted on by the King of England. Hamlet justifies this by saying that they were spies and got what they deserved, especially as this was the death which Claudius had planned for Hamlet with Ros and Guil's help. "They did make love to this employment" says Hamlet. Horatio is not wholly convinced, especially since R and G probably had no idea what their warrant said (it was sealed, remember). "So Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go to it" says Horatio, a bit disgusted by Hamlet's callousness.

Because Hamlet reenacted in a play his fathers death, which included Claudius because he killed hamlets father by putting poison into Hamlets fathers ear

hope this helped

The issue of suicide in Shakespeare has recently come to the fore because of the popular book Resolution and the Briefest End: Suicide in Shakespeare's Tragedies. The author of this book, Ra'ed Ali Al-Qassas, suggests that there are a larger number of suicides than ordinarily thought because there are indirect cases of suicide. See the related link for a review of this book.

In the tragedies there are fifteen suicides including Lady Macbeth, Ophelia and Iras in Antony and Cleopatra, who may not actually be suicides. (Lady Macbeth dies offstage and all we hear is "who, it is thought, took her own life" from a unreliable hearsay source. Ophelia's "death was doubtful" but she was clearly insane at the time of her death and probably did not know what she was doing.) See the related question for a list.

In the comedies, very few people die at all (a pirate captain dies in Measure for Measure) and in the histories people who die are either executed (like Joan la Pucelle), or die in battle (like Talbot or Richard III), are murdered (like Richard II or the Duke of Clarence), or die in their beds (like Falstaff or Henry IV)

When he sees them, he says "my excellent good friends!" He is genuinely happy to see his old schoolmates. But it doesn't take him long to start to wonder what they are doing there and to notice things which suggest the answer--they are spies.

Hamlet's life was a series of tormenting events, and while highly intelligent, he was also becoming unstable. At first, Hamlet pretended to be mad, to try to fool people into thinking he was harmless. But as he got more into the role, he adopted it more fully, especially after he saw the effect on Ophelia and other people that he loved. He probably descended into actual madness after her death.

"Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king.

Tell him that by his licence Fortinbras

Craves the conveyance of a promised march

Over his kingdom."

Act 4, Scene 4

Polonius believes that Hamlet is acting strangely because he is in love with his daughter, Ophelia. Polonius had earlier instructed Ophelia to cut off contact with Hamlet and that is what Polonius thinks is making Hamlet mad.

One of the guards that patrolled the battlements of Elsinore castle.

It is not by any means clear that she intentionally drowned herself. Gertrude's account of her death suggests that she may have been unaware of her danger. If it wasn't an accident, it seems from the mad scenes that she was disturbed by her father's death "I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him i' th' cold ground." However, drowning oneself was a traditional mode of suicide for young women with unwanted pregnancies, and this might also be Ophelia's problem, as her mad scenes also show: "Quoth she 'Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed.' He answers, 'So wold I ha' done, by yonder sun, if thou hadst not come to my bed.'"

I suspect Claudius does not take young Fortinbras as a serious threat to Denmark. At Act 2 Scene 2, news of Norway from Voltemand would appear to be "good news", yet this diplomatic importance to the King plays second fiddle to Hamlet's health. Claudius does not promptly respond to this message and would wait/hesitate (much like hamlet) without taking prompt action: "Wasting time", as a nervous Polonius would interject

The message when looked at closer from Voltemand's speech, suggests that Old Norway had arrested his nephew, briefly, yet given him 3000 crowns to employ his army previously levied.

This is basically taking money out of the left pocket and putting it in the right pocket.

I suppose a better question would be, "Should Claudius fear young Fortinbras?"

Claudius publicly states to the court that young Fortinbras holds an arrogant view of Denmark, crippled by a pyrrhic victory. Instead of answering this young man directly, Claudius turns his attention to Old Norway and sends "dilated articles" (detailed instructions) on how to handle young Norway.

I do wonder if those 3000 crowns was of Claudius' money.

The fortified garrison watch would suggest so, yet no offensive manoeuvrings are planned from Denmark. Diplomacy seems to be the best course of action for the treacherous King.

Does Fortinbras intend to conquer Denmark? Or reclaim the land lost by his father in battle in Poland? Does he come to Elsinore directly from Norway's lands, or on his way back from Poland? Where are the soldiers levied?

There are still kings in the modern world, so yes, a man might murder his brother (the king) to steal his crown and his wife, while the son of the murdered king might plot revenge on the man who murdered his father. Hamlet could still happen today, although they are very few kings, and kingdoms in the world today. Most kings today have very little power.

Because Ophelia was thought to have committed suicide and suicides were not entitled to Christian burial. This is a little unfair on Ophelia since, from Gertrude's account of her death, she had no intention of drowning herself and died by accident.

Old fortinbras, Yorick, and King Hamlet are all dead at the start of the play. During the play itself, Polonius is killed, followed by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (offstage), Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and finally Hamlet.

Hamlet is upset because his uncle, Claudius killed his father, married his mother, and took his place at the throne. He is also upset because he can't do anything about it throughout the whole play.

Many classical allusions...

most important (in my opinion) is the reference to the biblical story of Cain and his murder.

She shimmied up a tree to get some flowers and the branch broke and she fell in the river. She was too looney to realize that she was in danger of drowning so she eventually got pulled under by her heavy, wet clothes. At least, that's the way Gertrude tells it.

He doesn't. He is, however, disgusted with the role she plays in the intrigue Claudius and Polonius put her up to. He treats her contemptuously after he discovers that she has been helping the king spy on him. Ophelia is the most truly tragic figure in the play as she is the only one that is utterly without guilt. What she does is at the request of her father and her king.

Shakespeare wrote a stageplay and Zeffirelli (and Christopher de Vore) wrote a screenplay. Shakespeare's is meant to be acted on stage; Zefirelli's was meant to be made into a movie, which of course it was.

A screenplay has a lot fewer words for the actors to speak than a stageplay of the same length and more instructions about what the viewer of the movie should see. I cannot find a copy of Zefirelli's screenplay (they do not tend to get circulated) but I expect it to be full of stuff like "EXT: a field outside the castle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on horses approach Hamlet, who is on foot."

You're thinking of his soliloquy "How all occasions do inform against me" in act 4. In the soliloquy he ponders the behaviour of Fortinbras and his army and asks himself why he is still twiddling his thumbs. It contains the line which might well sum up the entire play, "I do not know why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do' sith have cause and will and strength and means to do't."

In the first Scene, Act I scene 1, the Ghost is seen by sentinels at a platform outside the castle. (The "platform" is a raised area, an earthen mound, that gives an elevated viewing position. In performance, stage or movie, the first scene is often set on the castle ramparts, but Shakespeare's dialogue explicitly contradicts that.)

In Scene 4 (Act I scene 4) the Ghost is seen by Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus, again at the platform.

In Scene 5 (Act I scene 5) the Ghost is still being seen by Hamlet, alone now, at some distance from the platform. (This scene is probably set in or near the graveyard, but the location is not explicit in the dialogue, and identifying the setting as the graveyard relies on subtle details of interpretation.)

In Scene 11 (Act 3 scene 4), the Closet Scene, the Ghost is seen by Hamlet (but not by Gertrude) in Gertrude's private room.

So, overall, the Ghost appears in four Scenes, at three locations.

If the questioner only wanted to know where the Ghost first appears, the answer is: at the sentinels' platform. And that happens in the first Scene.