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 were 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