I
saw him once; he was a goodly king.
-Horatio
Hamlet Act I, Scene ii, Line 186
So this is Horatio, and we’re at the beginning of the play.
He’s been discussing things (including Hamlet’s father) with Hamlet and he
blurts out here that he saw his father once. He’s about to tell Hamlet that he’s also
seen him recently, since the goodly king died. This of course means that he’s
seen the ghost. Well I guess you’d have to read the first scene to know a
little of what’s going on. But before he mentions the ghost he tells Hamlet
that he saw his father once when his father was still alive. The subject of
Hamlet’s father came up when Hamlet asked Horatio why he was back at Elsinore
and not still away at college in Wittenberg. And that’s a bit interesting,
isn’t it? This play is set in a dark, medieval, castle in Denmark in… in what
century? I’m not sure. Will wrote it sometime around the year 1600, so the
setting is at least that old though it’s based on a story from much earlier. But
it’s kind of funny that this particular bit of dialogue is so relate-able. It's that
of a young man being home from college. Anyway,
Horatio at first says that the reason he’s home from college is to attend the
funeral of Hamlet’s father. And before he gets to the part about seeing the
ghost, he mentions that he saw the guy once and then follows that with saying
that he was a goodly king. Which is, of course also something that is very much
what we still do: we say something nice about the recently departed. “Yeah, I
only saw your Dad once, but he was a good guy.” I’m not sure why we feel a need
to say something nice about the recently departed, but we do. Maybe we picked
that up from this play? No, I don’t think so.
Map time! I took this close up pic of a piece of my globe. Elsinore, where the play Hamlet takes place, is in Denmark, right about where the 'n', the last letter in 'Copenhagen' is on the map. That big pink piece sticking down is Sweden. And of course England is that purple island on the left with London near the bottom. I like maps.
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