Characters in Hamlet He is the courtier sent by Claudius to invite Hamlet to participate in the duel with Laertes. (This character is called "Ostricke" in the Second Quarto.) Osric, as well as Polonius, attempts to engage with Hamlet in the elaborate, witty discourse, fully consistent with Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 work, "The Courtier". This work outlines several courtly rules, specifically advising royal retainers to amuse their masters with inventive language. The Players are a company of actors who arrive at Elsinore Castle. Friends of Hamlet, they had earlier performed in "the city" (presumably Copenhagen), but faced stiff competition from boy performers, so they
Hamlet (Liszt) are made to Ophelia, both marked as "to be played as quietly as possible and sound like a shadowy picture." Hamlet (Liszt) Hamlet, S.104, is a symphonic poem by Franz Liszt, written in 1858 and published as No. 10. It was not performed until 2 July 1876. Like all but one of Liszt's 13 symphonic poems, "Hamlet" was written while Liszt was working in Weimar and is dedicated to Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. After viewing Bogumil Dawison play Hamlet in Weimar (1856), Liszt wrote: "He does not make him into an indecisive dreamer who collapses under the power of his mission,