On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.

The Oxford Companion To Shakespeare
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare is the most comprehensive reference work yet produced about Shakespeare's works, times, life, and afterlives. From the conjectured identity of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets to the misprints in the First Folio, from Shakespeare's favourite figures of speech to the staging of Othello in South Africa, a team of internationally renowned scholars provides a lucid, stimulating, and authoritative guide to the plays, the poems, and their interpretation around the world over the last four centuries. Bringing its readers up to date not only with the latest in Shakespearian scholarship and controversy but with the plays' most recent incarnations on stage, on film, and in international popular culture, this is the perfect companion to Shakespeare's works, covering everything from Aaron and act divisions to Zeffirelli and Zuccaro, and from Shakespeare in schools to Shakespeare in Love.