Julius Caesar Book

Henry IV, Part 1 11/4-5
Henry IV, Part 2 11/9-10
The Merry Wives of Windsor 11/17-18
Henry V 11/20
As You Like It 12/6
Hamlet 12/10-12

Hamlet - After all that's been written and said about the play, it's probably impossible for anyone to come up with anything original and reasonable to say about Hamlet. That said, the following ideas derive mainly from my reading of the text; I'm not aware of any general or specific interpretations quite like this, though I suspect the ideas have likely been previously suggested by others.

I see similarities between Hamlet and Prince Hal in the Henry IV plays. As Hal is seen as being divided between two father figures, King Henry and Falstaff, so Hamlet is torn between modeling himself on his father and his admired friend Horatio. In both plays, too, the spiritual heir of the king appears to fall outside the direct bloodline with Hotspur and Fortinbras.

Old Hamlet was a warlord, a man of violent action; he took "arms against a sea of troubles": where the world did not conform to his will, he attempted to shape it to his will be physical force. Horatio is "a scholar", a man of thought and understanding, an advocate, like Brutus, of stoicism; he masters his own will in order to live with equanimity in the world as it is. He is the man who "could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space" (a line only in the Folio text). Old Hamlet wished to master the world, or at least as much of it as came within reach of his truncheon; Horatio seeks to master only himself.

The question of the extent to which Hamlet identifies with Horatio is highlighted by a difference between the Second Quarto (Q2) and Folio (F) versions of one of the play's most famous lines. Q2 has:There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.The same passage in F is:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy. A note to the Arden Shakespeare suggests that "your" in Q2 may not in fact refer to Horatio, but be a generic term of address, as in the gravedigger's "your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body." Given the direct address to his friend, however, I don't find this interpretation persuasive.
In Act 5 Hamlet, after the abortive trip to England on which he has subverted the King's plot against his life and dealt with pirates, seems, with his praise of "rashness", to have chosen his father as his model, determining to act on his will as opportunity offers. The psychological foundation for this resolution is found before his journey, however, in Q2's Act 4 soliloquy, "How all occasions do inform against me".

Hamlet's wrestling with the idea of suicide may be a result of his exposure to Horatio's "philosophy", but I have quite a problem coming to terms with Horatio's own brief, but apparently sincere, resolution to commit suicide with the dregs of the King's poison after the general slaughter in Act 5 ("I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. / Here's yet some liquor left.") It seems totally unjustified, and not at all in character for someone described "As one in suffering all that suffers nothing, / A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards / Hast ta'en with equal thanks." Unless the relationship between Hamlet and Horatio is much deeper than I understood it, or than I can recall ever seeing it portrayed, I just cannot understand why Horatio should consider suicide at this point. His only other allusion to suicide is in Act 1 of Q2, where he seems to consider it a mental aberration, "toys of desperation", in warning Hamlet what might happen if he follows the ghost What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath. On this reading I came to see Horatio as an important character in the play. Dramatically, he is Hamlet's only trusted confidant, thus giving the occasion for some exposition and revelation of the prince's character outside the soliloquies. He also seems to be the representative of the Renaissance in the medieval Danish court, thus the source, if not the enactor, of ideas destabilizing to the established order.
The Arden Shakespeare includes an appendix on the doubling of roles in the play, where they find that the three roles that cannot be doubled, except in very trivial ways, are Hamlet (no surprise), the Queen, and Horatio. The revealed importance of the last role seems to have surprised the editors themselves.
It may be worth quoting in full Hamlet's praise of his friend from act 3: HAMLET
Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped withal.
HORATIO
O, my dear lord'
HAMLET
Nay, do not think I flatter,
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one in suffering all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. The contrast with his interactions with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is interesting; in both cases, Hamlet mentions their relationship to Fortune.
The only conjecture I have about Horatio's suicidal impulse in the last act is to imagine that he is, in fact, in love with Hamlet and finds the thought of life without him unbearable. The suicidal gesture comes before Hamlet has given his "dying voice" to Fortinbras as the next monarch, so I can't say it's the prospect of the new regime that inspires it, though it could be argued that the Norwegian prince is the likely candidate even before Hamlet's endorsement.