Characters in Hamlet Characters in Hamlet What follows is an overview of the main characters in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", followed by a list and summary of the minor characters from the play. Three different early versions of the play survive: known as the First Quarto ("Q1"), Second Quarto ("Q2"), and First Folio ("F1"), each has lines—and even scenes—missing in the others, and some character names vary. Marcellus, Bernardo (or Barnardo) and Francisco are sentries at Elsinore. Francisco gives up his watch to Bernardo in the opening of the play, and it is Bernardo and Marcellus, who first alert Horatio to the appearance of
The Shakespeare Code "Sycorax" to Shakespeare, Shakespeare says that he will use the name (the joke is that the name in fact derives from Caliban's mother in Shakespeare's play "The Tempest".) Other sequences include subtle references to much earlier episodes. One of the putative lines of "Love's Labour's Won", "the eye should have contentment where it rests", is taken from episode three of the 1965 serial "The Crusade" — a story consciously written in Shakespearean style. The episode concerns the "lost" Shakespeare play "Love's Labour's Won", which is referred to in more than one historical document, but which may be just an alternative