riend; I'll change that name with you:
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
Marcellus?

_Mar._ My good lord--

_Ham._ I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.[251]
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

_Hor._ A truant disposition, good my lord.

_Ham._ I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do my ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

_Hor._ My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

_Ham._ I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Is not this passing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to be
fellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore less
than two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, and
speaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest,
'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream that
Hamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for the
previous words about his going back there?

How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, by
supposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really does
almost 'forget himself'[252] and forget everything else, so that he
actually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, is
hard to believe.

'Oh no,' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too;
and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellus
often.' But he is _not_ doubtful about Marcellus. That note of
interrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in any
Quarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the man
who lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friend
who comes from Wittenberg.

(3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from his
melancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known them
from his youth and is fond of them (II. ii. 1 ff.). They come _to_
Denmark (II. ii. 247 f.): they come therefore _from_ some other country.
Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows'
(III. iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that they
wer