The play begins with a group of sentinels keeping watch on the walls of Elsinore Castle, the royal seat of the King of Denmark. The sentinels are ill at ease. For the past several nights, they have seen a ghost stalking the battlements. They ask Horatio, a young scholar and friend of Prince Hamlet, to come and wait for the ghost with them. He is skeptical, but his tune changes when a ghost indeed does appear. It looks just like the late King, Prince Hamlet’s father, wearing full armor. Horatio commands it to speak, but it disappears.

Shaken, Horatio and the sentinels discuss why this apparition might have shown up now. Horatio speculates that the ghost’s appearance may have something to do with an upcoming war with Norway. The late king defeated and killed King Fortinbras of Norway and conquered some of his lands. Fortinbras’s son, also called Fortinbras, is now plotting to attack Denmark and reclaim his territory. 

Horatio is worried. The apparition of the king and recent astrological omens remind him of the events that legendarily surrounded the death of Julius Caesar. The ghost appears again, and again, it refuses to answer when Horatio and the sentinels call to him.