Why then did Shakespeare create Fortinbras?
No one can answer that. In pruning the play, I took out the Fortinbras character because to me it was not relevant to the central tragedy. Shakespeare was endlessly pragmatic, and was working for a living theatre. He did many things for the needs and taste of the times. One of the Elizabethan conventions was plot and subplot. There are plays like Lear, in which the subplot is totally integrated and is inseparable from the main plot. In Hamlet, Fortinbras is somebody you don’t see. You are told at the beginning that Hamlet’s father had a quarrel with Fortinbras’s father. It is not dramatized; it’s just told. In an Elizabethan setting, in a Shakespeare play, someone always puts the whole country back in order. The implication of the Fortinbras story is to make you feel that life goes on, which is what Shakespeare always wanted at the end of his plays. Here you have a country in a state of confusion and chaos and a strong young fellow [Fortinbras] comes into view and is put into power to
