Hamlet

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.

The king as in the ghost? he tells him to get revenge on Hamlet Sr. (the ghost) brother, Claudius because he was the one who killed him. He also told him not to hurt his mother for marrying Claudius because Hamlet Sr. made her that way and she didn't know that Claudius killed him.

This is a very difficult question. It's not clear the play was meant to have a moral, or what the moral might have been. My personal best guess would be "know your own mind well enough to act both prudently and decisively." Other decent ones would be "Be decisive.", "Don't try to judge people as God does," or "Intelligence can be as much a burden as it is a virtue."

Claudius has sent written instructions to the English to put Hamlet to death when he arrives there.

Hamlet was at school at Wittenberg, a famous college in Germany. Wittenberg is where the Protestant Reformation started, and that's probably the association we're supposed to make. He returned to Elsinore for the funeral.

As a character Hamlet hadily develops throughout the course of the play. Hamlet is one of the greatest procrastinators ever written. He thinks, and thinks, and thinks, but never makes any attempt to actually persue his plans.

The only way in which Hamlet does ultimately become a better man, is that once he discovers he is poisoned by Laertes' blade, he finally decides to act instead of think, and finally kills Claudius.

No, Shakespeare lived during the English Renaissance which came some time after the Renaissance in Italy.

A lot of what happens in Hamlet has to do with death, especially Hamlet's two most famous speeches. The "To be or not to be" speech wonders why, since life is so crappy, people don't just kill themselves all the time like lemmings. The "Alas poor Yorick" speech and Hamlet's ensuing conversation with Horatio ponders the fact that, no matter how vital, funny, important or powerful you are, you still end up as a dirty, stinking bunch of bones. Hamlet also thinks about the "circle of life" when he thinks about worms eating kings, and then that same worm being eaten by a fish which is eaten by a beggar. The phenomenon of worms eating dead bodies also interests him: he says that Polonius is at supper, "not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

At the same time, the play talks about our spiritual life after death, especially in the revelation by the Ghost that, yes, there is a Purgatory, and it's pretty miserable, so it does make a difference if a priest gives you the sacrament of Extreme Unction or not.

Hamlet's obsession with mortality may be a result of his belief that we should be able to be masters of our fate, even to the extent of mastering death. (This is why he has such a hard time accepting his father's death and his mother's quick recovery from it.) But in the end, after facing the imminent possibility of his death at the hands of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then at the hands of the pirates, he learns to adopt a more fatalistic approach: "If it be not now, yet it will come . . . the readiness is all." Only when he does so is he able to carry out his revenge.

His father, Old Hamlet. The ghost who later speaks to him.