Hamlet

Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo have heard him say that he "will put an antic disposition on", but neither they nor can any member of the audience be absolutely sure how much of Hamlet's insanity is put on and how much is real. The question forms one of the eternal debates about this play.

"Where is your father?" (said to Ophelia)

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The theme of "to be or not to be" is mortality.

No, just talkative.

The role of Macbeth, however.....

The public story was that an adder (snake) stung (bit) King Hamlet while he was sleeping, but when Hamlet's Ghost tells Prince Hamlet it was Claudius, the Prince responds, "Oh, my prophetic soul," meaning he really thought so all the time.

Horatio

This expression does not occur in Shakespeare's Hamlet anywhere.

what does it mean Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust the earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was

Horatio plans to go meet Hamlet at Elsinore, which he does in Act 1 Scene 2.

Horatio plans to meet Hamlet on the battlements, which he does in Act I Scene 4.

Horatio plans to meet Hamlet at the play, and does in Act 3 Scene 2.

Horatio has no plans to meet Hamlet in England.

From a snakebite when he was asleep in his orchard.

The ghost could only appear between midnight and dawn. He says in 1,5 "But soft! I smell the morning air. Brief let me be." He needs to tell his story before morning comes. In 1,1 he disappears once he hears a rooster crow to signal the dawn.

Claudius was the brother of old King Hamlet (father of Prince Hamlet the hero of the play). When King Hamlet died, Claudius became king and married his widow Gertrude (Prince Hamlet's mother). Hamlet felt that it was too soon after his father's death for them to marry and also there used the idea that your husband or wife siblings were your siblings so to marry them was a kind of incest. So Hamlet wasn't very keen on his uncle to begin with - then he saw his father's ghost and found that Claudius had murdered his father. Read the play or at least see the film - the one with Mel Gibson isn't bad. Or read the prose version in Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. It is worth studying properly.

Perhaps it might affect the reader a bit more than the viewer in the audience. The audience get the idea that he's dead very clearly in the first scene when his ghost arrives and scares the pants off of some guards. This possibly may be more difficult to grasp if you are reading, but then the play was not meant to be read.

Which of Laertes' actions are we talking about? His leaping into Ophelia's grave? His statement that in terms of honour he remains aloof? His stabbing Hamlet with an unbated sword?

Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford and wrote Hamlet between 1599 and 1601.

Hamlet was written around 1600.

he played the role of osric

Many many actresses have played Ophelia. Indeed it is a standard role for young actresses to cut their teeth on. Ellen Terry made herself an icon playing it. Claire Bloom made her name with the role. So did Judi Dench, opposite John Neville. And Cate Blanchett. On stage Glenda Jackson played her opposite David Warner, Helen Mirren opposite Alan Howard, Carol Royle opposite Michael Pennington, Sophie Thompson and Joanne Pearce opposite Kenneth Branagh, Rebecca Saire opposite Mark Rylance, Stella Gonet opposite Daniel Day Lewis, Linda Marsh opposite Richard Burton, Bonny Giroux opposite Elias Toufexis and Julia Ford opposite Alan Rickman.

On film and for television we had Jean Simmons (opposite Olivier), Marianne Faithfull (Nicol Williamson), Lalla Ward (Sir Derek Jacobi), Anastasiya Vertinskiya (Innokenti Smoktunovsky), Jo Maxwell Muller (Christopher Plummer), Mariah Gale (David Tennant), Helena Bonham Carter (Mel Gibson), Julia Styles (Ethan Hawke), Lisa Gay Hamilton (Campbell Scott), Dunja Movar (Maximilian Schell), Sarah Churchill (Maurice Evans), Gertrude Eliot (Johnston Forbes-Robertson), Susan Fleetwood (Ian McKellen), Lucy Cockram (William Houston), Simone Kirby (Steven Cavanagh), Tallulah Sheffield (William Belchambers), Shantala Shivalingappa (Adrian Lester), Beth Buchanan (Richard Pyros), Ciaran Madden (Richard Chamberlain) and of course Kate Winslett (Branagh, again).

There are more . . .

That grief is "unmanly" and everyone's father dies at some point, you just have to get over it.

No, Polonius's theory is that Hamlet's behaviour is because he is in love with Ophelia, and when she gave him the cold shoulder he went crazy. "This is the very ecstasy of love." he says.

His behavior is manic and outrageous. He plunks himself down next to Ophelia, and talks to her in the most coarse and obscene way. He calls out to his mother, yells at the actors "Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?", and keeps up such a running commentary that Ophelia says tartly, "You are as good as a chorus, my lord." If he did not reveal himself in the following scene we might wonder whether Claudius was offended by the picture of his murder of Hamlet Senior or offended by Hamlet's behavior.

Shakespeare set Hamlet in Denmark because that is where the story was set in his sources. He took the story possibly directly from the source story by Belleforest who had taken it from Saxo Grammaticus. In both those sources Hamlet is prince of Denmark. Even more importantly, scholars believe that there was a previous play drawn from Belleforest and possibly by Thomas Kyd also called Hamlet the Prince of Denmark, which was very well-known and thought to have been considered to have been a bit corny. To have written Hamlet Prince of Bavaria would have looked as ridiculous to his audience as Holmes and Watson being based in Las Vegas instead of London.

He is a scholar and so probably can speak Latin, although it is Hamlet who actually says a line in Latin ("Hic et ubique")

I'd say the gravedigger. Nothing much seems to bother him.