Thank you very much! Horatio is one of my all time favourite characters in literature, and has one of my favourite roles--the humorous, unfailingly loyal best friend (possibly lover, particularly in Horatio's case), who both challenges his very emotional, Romantic with a capital R best friend and stays by his side through everything. We see this same iteration a couple of centuries later in Les Miserables with Marius and Courfeyrac.

And then of course one of the main themes of Hamlet is how much words fail to express us, and how meaningless they can be, either in the expression or the reception. Plus, I think Fortinbras (like Laertes) serves as a complete foil for Hamlet--while Hamlet deliberates absolutely everything, Fortinbras is all about action and decisions, glossing over the finer points of understanding.

In short, I REALLY love Hamlet (one of my four favourite works of lit!) so thanks for the prompt--it really got my brain firing.