Hamlet's Best Friend, HoratioThe Shakespearean drama Hamlet shows a lot of deception and crime. Few friendships in the play survive to the end. But Hamlet and Horatio, best friends, are not even separated by the hero's death. This essay will develop this relationship. AC Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy notes a problem involving Horatio in Shakespeare's Hamlet: When Horatio, at the end of the soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is obvious that he and Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. . Yet Horatio came to Elsinore for the funeral (I.ii. 176). Now, even though the funeral took place about three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, so absorbed in grief and so withdrawn from Court, should not have met Horatio. . . (368). Marchette Chute in "The Story Told in Hamlet" describes Horatio's role in the opening scene of the play: The story opens in the cold and darkness of a winter night in Denmark, while the guard is changed on the ramparts of the royal castle of Elsinore. For two nights in a row, as the bell struck one o'clock, a ghost appeared on the battlements, a figure dressed in full armor and with a face similar to that of the late king of Denmark, Hamlet's father. A young man named Horatio, who is a school friend of Hamlet, has been informed of the apparition and cannot believe it, and one of the officers brings him there at night so that he can see it for himself. The hour arrives, and the ghost walks (35). Horatio, frightened, confronts the ghost uselessly: What are you who usurps this hour of the night, with this fair and warlike form in which the majesty of Denma buried...... middle of paper ..... .Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. From Shakespeare's Stories. N.p. : EP Dutton, 1956. Granville-Barker, Harley. “Place and time in Hamlet.” Readings on Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint of Shakespeare's Prefaces. volume 1. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University P., 1946. Levin, Harry. General introduction. The Shakespeare by the River. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Mack, Maynard. "Hamlet's World." Yale Review. flight. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rep. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. New York: Oxford University P., 1967. Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line number.