1.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks as the 26th most translated author in the world. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he seemed to pick the word up on the point of his pen. Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850, to Thomas Stevenson, a lighthouse engineer. He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, at about age 18, Stevenson was to change the spelling of Lewis to Louis, and in 1873, he dropped Balfour. Lighthouse design was the profession, Thomass father was the famous Robert Stevenson. Indeed, even Thomass maternal grandfather, Thomas Smith, had been in the same profession, however, Roberts mothers family were not of the same profession. Margarets natal family, the Balfours, were gentry, tracing their lineage back to a certain Alexander Balfour who had held the lands of Inchyra in Fife in the fifteenth century. Margarets father, Lewis Balfour, was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and her siblings included the physician George William Balfour, Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfathers house. Now I often wonder, wrote Stevenson, what I inherited from this old minister, I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them. Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health, Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851. The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin. Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis or even sarcoidosis, Stevensons parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. His nurse, Alison Cunningham, was fervently religious. Her Calvinism and folk beliefs were a source of nightmares for the child. But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him from Bunyan, Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in The Land of Counterpane in A Childs Garden of Verses, dedicating the book to his nurse. In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school and he was a late reader, first learning at age seven or eight, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse. He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood and his father was proud of this interest, he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father found them and told him to give up such nonsense and mind your business
2.
Lowestoft
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Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly settlement of the United Kingdom and it is 110 miles north-east of London,38 miles north-east of Ipswich and 22 miles south-east of Norwich. It is situated on the edge of The Broads system and is the settlement within the district of Waveney with a population of 71,010 in 2011. Some of the earliest evidence of settlement in Britain has been found in Lowestoft and it is a port town which developed due to the fishing industry, and a traditional seaside resort. It has wide, sandy beaches, two piers and a number of other tourist attractions and this role has since declined and the town has begun to develop as a centre of the renewable energy industry within the East of England. Following the discovery of flint tools in the cliffs at Pakefield in south Lowestoft in 2005 and this establishes Lowestoft as one of the earliest known sites for human habitation in Britain. The area was settled during the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages and during the Roman and Saxon periods, the settlements name is derived from the Viking personal name Hlothver and toft, a Viking word for homestead. The towns name has been spelled variously, Lothnwistoft, Lestoffe, Laistoe, at the Domesday survey the village was known as Lothuwistoft and was relatively small with a population of around 16 households comprising, in 1086, three families, ten smallholders and three slaves. The manor formed part of the kings holding within the Hundred of Lothingland and was worth about four geld in tax income, roger Bigod was the tenant in chief of the village. The village of Akethorpe may have been located close to Lowestoft, in the Middle Ages Lowestoft became an increasingly important fishing town. The industry grew quickly and the town grew to challenge its neighbour Great Yarmouth, the trade, particularly fishing for herring, continued to act as the towns main identity until the 20th century. In June 1665 the Battle of Lowestoft, the first battle of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the battle resulted in a significant victory for the English fleet over the Dutch. The factory, built on the site of a pottery or brick kiln, was later used as a brewery. Most of its buildings were demolished in 1955. In the 19th century, the arrival of Sir Samuel Morton Peto brought about a change in Lowestofts fortunes, Railway contractor Peto was contracted by the Lowestoft Railway & Harbour Company to build a railway line between Lowestoft and Reedham. This stimulated the development of the fishing industry and the Port of Lowestoft in general. The development of the port boosted trade with the continent, during World War I, Lowestoft was bombarded by the German Navy on 24 April 1916 in conjunction with the Easter Rising. In World War II, the town was targeted for bombing by the Luftwaffe due to its engineering industry
3.
Scottish people
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The Scottish people, or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century, and are thought to have been ethnolinguistically Celts. Later, the neighbouring Cumbrian Britons, who spoke a Celtic language, as well as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons. In modern usage, Scottish people or Scots is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, the Latin word Scotti, originally the word referred specifically to the Gaels, but came to describe all inhabitants of Scotland. Considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also used for Scottish people. John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Scotch documents the descendants of 19th-century Scottish pioneers who settled in Southwestern Ontario and he states the book was meant to give a true picture of life in the community in the early decades of the 20th century. People of Scottish descent live in countries other than Scotland. Scottish emigrants took with them their Scottish languages and culture, large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. Canada has the highest level of Scottish descendants per capita in the world, Scotland has seen migration and settlement of many peoples at different periods in its history. The Gaels, the Picts and the Britons have their origin myths. The Venerable Bede tells of the Scotti coming from Spain via Ireland, Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxons, arrived beginning in the 7th century, while the Norse invaded and colonized parts of Scotland from the 8th century onwards. In the High Middle Ages, from the reign of David I of Scotland, there was emigration from France, England. Some famous Scottish family names, including bearing the names which became Bruce, Balliol, Murray. Today Scotland is one of the countries of the United Kingdom, culturally, these peoples are grouped according to language. Most of Scotland until the 13th century spoke Celtic languages and these included, at least initially, the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts. Germanic peoples included the Angles of Northumbria, who settled in south-eastern Scotland in the region between the Firth of Forth to the north and the River Tweed to the south. They also occupied the south-west of Scotland up to and including the Plain of Kyle and their language, south-east of the Firth of Forth, then in Lothian and the Borders, a northern variety of Old English, also known as Early Scots, was spoken. The Northern Isles and some parts of Caithness were Norn-speaking, from 1500 on, Scotland was commonly divided by language into two groups of people, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and the Inglis-speaking Lowlanders
4.
William McGonagall
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William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish weaver, poet and actor. He won notoriety as a bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for. He wrote about 200 poems, including The Tay Bridge Disaster and The Famous Tay Whale, collections of his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today. McGonagall has been lampooned as the worst poet in British history, the chief criticisms are that he is deaf to poetic metaphor and unable to scan correctly. McGonagalls fame stems from the effects these shortcomings are considered to generate in his work. Scholars argue that his rhythms, weak vocabulary, and ill-advised imagery combine to make his work amongst the most unintentionally amusing dramatic poetry in the English language. His work is in a tradition of narrative ballads and verse written and published about great events and tragedies. In an age before radio and television, their voice was one way of communicating important news to an avid public, William McGonagalls parents, Charles and Margaret, were Irish. It has been suggested that McGonagall may have falsified his place of birth, McGonagall moved north and was apprenticed as a handloom weaver in Dundee, following in his fathers footsteps. In 1846, he married Jean King, they had five sons, despite the industrial revolution slowly making weavers obsolete, McGonagall appeared to prosper, as there was still need for skilled workers to perform tasks of great complexity. Before he showed an interest in poetry, he displayed a keenness for acting, though Mr Giles Theatre, the theatre was filled with his friends and fellow workers, anxious to see what they expected to be an amusing disaster. The play should have ended with Macbeths death, but McGonagall believed the actor playing Macduff was trying to upstage him, by the 1870s, McGonagall and his family were struggling. Work as a weaver was more difficult to find and his oldest daughter shamed the family by giving birth to an illegitimate child, Gilfillan, himself an untrained and poorly-reviewed polemic Christian preacher who occasionally dabbled in poetry, commented admiringly Shakespeare never wrote anything like this. McGonagall realised if he were to succeed as a poet, he required a patron and he received a letter of rejection, written by a royal functionary, thanking him for his interest. vii McGonagall took this as praise for his work. During a trip to Dunfermline in 1879, he was mocked by the Chief Templar, in July 1878, he walked from Dundee to Balmoral, a distance of about 60 miles over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to perform for Queen Victoria. When he arrived, he announced himself as The Queens Poet, the guards informed him Youre not the Queens poet. McGonagall presented the letter but was refused entry and had to return home and these were popular, the people of Dundee possibly recognising that McGonagall was so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius. He met with the ire of the publicans, on one occasion being pelted with peas for reciting a poem about the evils of strong drink
5.
Dundee
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Dundee, officially the City of Dundee, is Scotlands fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2015 was 148,210 which gave Dundee a population density of 2, 477/km2 or 6, 420/sq mi and it lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea. Under the name of Dundee City, it one of the 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland. Historically part of Angus, the city developed into a burgh in the late 12th century, rapid expansion was brought on by the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the 19th century when Dundee was the centre of the global jute industry. This, along with its major industries gave Dundee its epithet as the city of jute, jam. Biomedical and technological industries have arrived since the 1980s, and the city now accounts for 10% of the United Kingdoms digital-entertainment industry, Dundee has two universities — the University of Dundee and the Abertay University. In 2014 Dundee was recognised by the United Nations as the UKs first UNESCO City of Design for its contributions to fields including medical research, comics. A unique feature of Dundee is that its two football clubs Dundee United and Dundee F. C. have stadiums all but adjacent to each other. With the decline of industry, the city has adopted a plan to regenerate. The name Dundee is made up of two parts, the common Celtic place-name element dun, meaning fort, and a part that may derive from a Celtic element, cognate with the Gaelic dè. The situation of the town and its promotion by Earl David as a trading centre led to a period of prosperity, the earldom was passed down to Davids descendants, amongst whom was John Balliol. The town became a Royal Burgh on Johns coronation as king in 1292, the town and its castle were occupied by English forces for several years during the First War of Independence and recaptured by Robert the Bruce in early 1312. The original Burghal charters were lost during the occupation and subsequently renewed by Bruce in 1327, the burgh suffered considerably during the conflict known as the Rough Wooing of 1543 to 1550, and was occupied by the English forces of Andrew Dudley from 1547. In 1548, unable to defend the town against an advancing Scottish force, in 1645, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Dundee was again besieged, this time by the Royalist Marquess of Montrose. The town was destroyed by Parliamentarian forces led by George Monck in 1651. The town played a role in the establishment of the Jacobite cause when John Graham of Claverhouse. The town was held by the Jacobites in the 1715–16 rising, many in Scotland, including many in Dundee, regarded him as the rightful king. The economy of mediaeval Dundee centred on the export of raw wool, expansion of the whaling industry was triggered by the second Bounty Act, introduced in 1750 to increase Britains maritime and naval skill base
6.
Balmoral Castle
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Balmoral Castle /bælˈmɒrəl/ is a large estate house in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, near the village of Crathie,6.2 miles west of Ballater and 6.8 miles east of Braemar. They remain as the property of the royal family and are not the property of the Crown. Soon after the estate was purchased by the family, the existing house was found to be too small. The architect was William Smith of Aberdeen, although his designs were amended by Prince Albert, the castle is an example of Scots Baronial architecture, and is classified by Historic Scotland as a category A listed building. The new castle was completed in 1856 and the old castle demolished shortly thereafter, the Balmoral Estate has been added to by successive members of the royal family, and now covers an area of approximately 50,000 acres. It is an estate, including grouse moors, forestry, and farmland, as well as managed herds of deer, Highland cattle. King Robert II of Scotland had a lodge in the area. Historical records also indicate that a house at Balmoral was built by Sir William Drummond in 1390, the estate is recorded in 1451 as Bouchmorale, and later was tenanted by Alexander Gordon, second son of the 1st Earl of Huntly. A tower house was built on the estate by the Gordons, in 1662 the estate passed to Charles Farquharson of Inverey, brother of John Farquharson, the Black Colonel. The Farquharsons were Jacobite sympathisers, and James Farquharson of Balmoral was involved in both the 1715 and 1745 rebellions and he was wounded at the Battle of Falkirk in 1746. The Farquharson estates were forfeit, and passed to the Farquharsons of Auchendryne, in 1798, James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife, acquired Balmoral and leased the castle. Sir Robert Gordon, a brother of the 4th Earl of Aberdeen. He made major alterations to the castle at Balmoral, including baronial-style extensions that were designed by John Smith of Aberdeen. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert first visited Scotland in 1842, five years after her accession to the throne, during this first visit they stayed at Edinburgh, and at Taymouth Castle in Perthshire, the home of the Marquess of Breadalbane. They returned in 1844 to stay at Blair Castle and, in 1847, during the latter trip they encountered weather that was extremely rainy, which led Sir James Clark, the queens physician, to recommend Deeside instead, for its more healthy climate. Sir Robert Gordon died in 1847 and his lease on Balmoral reverted to Lord Aberdeen, in February 1848 an arrangement was made—that Prince Albert would acquire the remaining part of the lease on Balmoral, together with its furniture and staff—without having seen the property first. The royal couple arrived for their first visit on 8 September 1848, Victoria found the house small but pretty, and recorded in her diary that, All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils. The surrounding hilly landscape reminded them of Thuringia, Alberts homeland in Germany, quickly, the house was confirmed to be too small and, in 1848, John and William Smith were commissioned to design new offices, cottages, and other ancillary buildings
7.
Queen Victoria
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Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her fathers three brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments, publicly, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together, after Alberts death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength and her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era and it was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victorias father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, until 1817, Edwards niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen and her brother Leopold was Princess Charlottes widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kents only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a. m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace and she was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina, Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Dukes eldest brother, George, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarences daughters died as infants. Victorias father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, a week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827, when George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive
8.
Gustave Flaubert
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Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary, his Correspondence, the celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. Flaubert was born on 12 December 1821, in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy and he was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. He began writing at an age, as early as eight according to some sources. He was educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen, and did not leave until 1840, in Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo, toward the end of 1840, he traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris, from 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet, his letters to her have survived. After leaving Paris, he returned to Croisset, near the Seine, close to Rouen and he made occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Louise Colet was his only serious romantic relationship, with his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he traveled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849–50 he went on a journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece. He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850 and he visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô. Flaubert was very open about his activities with prostitutes in his writings on his travels. He suspected that a chancre on his penis was from a Maronite or a Turkish girl and he also engaged in intercourse with male prostitutes in Beirut and Egypt, in one of his letters, he describes a pockmarked young rascal wearing a white turban. Flaubert was a worker and often complained in his letters to friends about the strenuous nature of his work. He was close to his niece, Caroline Commanville, and had a close friendship and he occasionally visited Parisian acquaintances, including Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The 1870s were a time for Flaubert. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the War of 1870, after her death, he fell into financial difficulty due to business failures on the part of his nieces husband
9.
Maryland
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The states largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, the state is named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore and the first English proprietor of the colonial grant. Maryland was the state to ratify the United States Constitution. Maryland is one of the smallest U. S. states in terms of area, as well as one of the most densely populated, Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles and is comparable in overall area with Belgium. It is the 42nd largest and 9th smallest state and is closest in size to the state of Hawaii, the next largest state, its neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland. Maryland possesses a variety of topography within its borders, contributing to its nickname America in Miniature. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted by Washington, D. C. which sits on land that was part of Montgomery and Prince Georges counties and including the town of Georgetown. This land was ceded to the United States Federal Government in 1790 to form the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Close to the town of Hancock, in western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state. This geographical curiosity makes Maryland the narrowest state, bordered by the Mason–Dixon line to the north, portions of Maryland are included in various official and unofficial geographic regions. Much of the Baltimore–Washington corridor lies just south of the Piedmont in the Coastal Plain, earthquakes in Maryland are infrequent and small due to the states distance from seismic/earthquake zones. The M5.8 Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt moderately throughout Maryland, buildings in the state are not well-designed for earthquakes and can suffer damage easily. The lack of any glacial history accounts for the scarcity of Marylands natural lakes, laurel Oxbow Lake is an over one-hundred-year-old 55-acre natural lake two miles north of Maryland City and adjacent to Russett. Chews Lake is a natural lake two miles south-southeast of Upper Marlboro. There are numerous lakes, the largest of them being the Deep Creek Lake. Maryland has shale formations containing natural gas, where fracking is theoretically possible, as is typical of states on the East Coast, Marylands plant life is abundant and healthy. Middle Atlantic coastal forests, typical of the southeastern Atlantic coastal plain, grow around Chesapeake Bay, moving west, a mixture of Northeastern coastal forests and Southeastern mixed forests cover the central part of the state
10.
Henry Irving
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Sir Henry Irving, born John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, Irving is widely acknowledged to be one of the inspirations for Count Dracula, the title character of the 1897 novel Dracula whose author Bram Stoker was business manager of the theatre. Irving was born to a family in Keinton Mandeville in the county of Somerset. W. H. Davies, the poet, was a cousin. Irving spent his living with his aunt, Mrs Penberthy. He competed in a recitation contest at a local Methodist chapel where he was bested by William Curnow and he attended City Commercial School for two years before going to work in the office of a law firm at age 13. He married Florence OCallaghan on 15 July 1869 at St. Marylebone, London, but his personal life took second place to his professional life. On opening night of The Bells,25 November 1871, Florence, Irving exited their carriage at Hyde Park Corner, walked off into the night, and chose never to see her again. He maintained a distance from his children as well. Florence Irving never divorced Irving, and once he had been knighted she styled herself Lady Irving, Irving never remarried and his elder son, Harry Brodribb Irving, usually known as H B Irving, became a famous actor and later a theatre manager. His younger son, Laurence Irving, became a dramatist and later drowned, with his wife, H B married Dorothea Baird and they had a son, Laurence Irving, who became a well-known Hollywood art director and his grandfathers biographer. In November 1882 Irving became a Freemason, being initiated into the prestigious Jerusalem Lodge No 197 in London, in 1887 he became a founder member and first Treasurer of the Savage Club Lodge No 2190, a Lodge associated with Londons Savage Club. It could be said that Irving found his family in his professional company, whether Irvings long, spectacularly successful relationship with leading lady Ellen Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much historical speculation. Most of their correspondence was lost or burned by her descendants and we were terribly in love for a while. But at earlier periods in her life, when there were more people around to be offended, Terrys son Teddy, later known as Edward Gordon Craig, spent much of his childhood indulged by Irving backstage at the Lyceum. Craig, who came to be regarded as something of a visionary for the theatre of the future, wrote an especially vivid, George Bernard Shaw, at the time a theatre critic who was jealous of Irvings connection to Ellen Terry, conceded Irvings genius after Irving died. After a few years schooling while living at Halsetown, near St Ives, Cornwall, Irving became a clerk to a firm of East India merchants in London, but he soon gave up a commercial career for acting. On 29 September 1856 he made his first appearance at Sunderland as Gaston, Duke of Orleans, in Bulwer Lyttons play, Richelieu and this name he eventually assumed by royal licence
11.
Hamlet
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlets father, Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brothers widow. It has inspired many other writers—from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and he almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeares time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by highly acclaimed actors in each successive century. Three different early versions of the play are extant, the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, each version includes lines and entire scenes missing from the others. The plays structure and depth of characterisation have inspired much critical scrutiny, the protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently deceased King Hamlet, and nephew of King Claudius, his fathers brother and successor. Claudius hastily married King Hamlets widow, Gertrude, Hamlets mother, Denmark has a long-standing feud with neighboring Norway, which culminated when King Hamlet slew King Fortinbras of Norway in a battle years ago. Although Denmark defeated Norway, and the Norwegian throne fell to King Fortinbrass infirm brother, Denmark fears that an invasion led by the dead Norwegian kings son, Prince Fortinbras, is imminent. On a cold night on the ramparts of Elsinore, the Danish royal castle and they vow to tell Prince Hamlet what they have witnessed. As the court gathers the next day, while King Claudius and Queen Gertrude discuss affairs of state with their elderly adviser Polonius, after the court exits, Hamlet despairs of his fathers death and his mothers hasty remarriage. Learning of the ghost from Horatio, Hamlet resolves to see it himself, as Poloniuss son Laertes prepares to depart for a visit to France, Polonius gives him contradictory advice that culminates in the ironic maxim to thine own self be true. Poloniuss daughter, Ophelia, admits her interest in Hamlet, and that night on the rampart, the ghost appears to Hamlet, telling the prince that he was murdered by Claudius and demanding that Hamlet avenge him. Hamlet agrees and the ghost vanishes, the prince confides to Horatio and the sentries that from now on he plans to put an antic disposition on and forces them to swear to keep his plans for revenge secret. Privately, however, he remains uncertain of the ghosts reliability, soon thereafter, Ophelia rushes to her father, telling him that Hamlet arrived at her door the prior night half-undressed and behaving crazily. Polonius blames love for Hamlets madness and resolves to inform Claudius, as he enters to do so, the king and queen finish welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two student acquaintances of Hamlet, to Elsinore. The royal couple has requested that the students investigate the cause of Hamlets mood, additional news requires that Polonius wait to be heard, messengers from Norway inform Claudius that the King of Norway has rebuked Prince Fortinbras for attempting to re-fight his fathers battles. The forces that Fortinbras conscripted to march against Denmark will instead be sent against Poland, Polonius tells Claudius and Gertrude his theory regarding Hamlets behavior, and speaks to Hamlet in a hall of the castle to try to uncover more information. Hamlet feigns madness but subtly insults Polonius all the while, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, Hamlet greets his friends warmly, but quickly discerns that they are spies
