e with him at Wittenberg:

_Ham._ What, Gilderstone, and Rossencraft,
Welcome, kind school-fellows, to Elsanore.

_Gil._ We thank your grace, and would be very glad
You were as when we were at Wittenberg.

Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in the
received text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of a
man to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is not
rather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an old
fellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time
(II. ii. 226 f.).

(4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet of the players who are
coming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you were
wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city.' He asks, 'Do
they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?'
Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is still
more evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having grown
a beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they last
met. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, but
where (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not in
Denmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It would seem to be
Wittenberg.[253]

All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with one
another. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left the
University for some years and has been living at Court. This again is
consistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his being
mentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (III. i.
159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play,
unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg.' But
it is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be that
Hamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother's
marriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, years
ago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this were
Shakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression
'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlet
had only just left 'school.'

I do not see how to account for these passages except on this
hypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as