Hamlet's best friend, HoraceA.C. 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 evident that he and Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horace came to Elsinore for the funeral (I.ii. 176). Now, even if the funeral took place about three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, although absorbed in grief and in any case withdrawn from the Court, did not meet Horatio [. . .] . (368)The hero's closest friend is a fellow student from Wittenberg (Granville-Barker 93) -- Horace. He is an interesting and faithful friend, as this essay will demonstrate. Marchette Chute in "The Story Told in Hamlet" describes the part of Horatio in the opening scene of the play: The story opens in the cold and darkness of a winter night in Denmark, while on the ramparts of the royal castle of Elsinore the changing of the guard. For two nights in a row, just as the bell strikes one, 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, Hamlet's schoolmate, has been informed of the apparition and cannot believe it, and one of the officers has taken him there at night so that he can see it for himself. The hour comes, and the ghost walks. (35) Horatio, frightened, faces the ghost in vain: What art thou that usurps this hour of the night, together with that fair and warlike form in which the majesty of buried Denmark sometimes marched? by heaven I command you to speak! (1.1) Maynard Mack in “Hamlet's World” argues that Horatio's words to the spirit “are later seen to have gone beyond their contexts. . . (244). Then Horatio and Marcellus leave the ramparts of Elsinore with the intention of enlisting the help of Hamlet, who is home from school. Hamlet is dejected by his mother's “hasty marriage” to his uncle less than two months after Hamlet's father's funeral (Gordon 128). Horatio and Marcellus soon come into contact with Hamlet with a strange greeting (Bradley 370) and escort him to the ramparts of Elsinore.