Fratricide is founded as the result of a fratricide, when the twins Romulus and Remus quarrel over who has the favor of the gods and over each other's plans to build Rome, and Romulus becomes Rome's first king and namesake after killing his brother. In the Hindu epic Mahābhārata, Karna was killed by Arjuna who didn't know that Karna was his eldest brother. Though not exactly fratricide the otherwise meticulously pious Arjuna's actions - where he pitilessly and against the rules of honorable warfare slayed an unarmed Karna - are nevertheless considered utterly deplorable and heinous. However, the context of the
Fratricide Punished the second quarto (1604) and folio (1623), as well as elements uniquely its own. This is a remarkably problematic finding for Shakespeare scholars, complicating an area already made difficult by the discovery of Q1. Indeed, the majority of what has been written about "Fratricide Punished" exists strictly to better understand its relation to Q1 "Hamlet", such that it becomes troublesome to discuss one without the other. Yet, as it contains elements of all three versions, it seems clear that "Fratricide Punished" must have been reconstructed by an actor with knowledge of more than one version of "Hamlet". Kathleen Irace, in