NOTE B.

WHERE WAS HAMLET AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER’S DEATH?

The answer will at once be given:  ’At the University of Wittenberg.  For the king says to him (I. ii. 112): 

                         For your intent
     In going back to school in Wittenberg,
     It is most retrograde to our desire.

The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg:  and he consents to remain.’

Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this passage is that universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenberg when his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong.  But it involves difficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain.

(1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised.  Hamlet, according to the evidence of Act V., Scene i., is thirty years of age; and that is a very late age for a university student.  One solution is found (by those who admit that Hamlet was thirty) in a passage in Nash’s Pierce Penniless:  ’For fashion sake some [Danes] will put their children to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteene years old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne his A.B.C. and sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old.’  Another solution, as we saw (p. 105), is found in Hamlet’s character.  He is a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of his studies there.

(2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to have escaped notice.  Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral.  And observe how he and Hamlet meet (I. ii. 160).

Hor. Hail to your lordship!

Ham. I am glad to see you well: 
Horatio,—­or I do forget myself.

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

Ham. Sir, my good friend; 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?