Why does “Hamlet” need Fortinbras?
Different directors treat Fortinbras in different ways, and can make Hamlet tell very different stories by doing so. The most extreme example is Kenneth Branagh’s film of the play, which has Fortinbras moving troops into position to storm the castle at Elsinore, while Hamlet and Laertes are planning their duel in Act 5. At the end of the play Fortinbras appears, clears away the bodies, and becomes King of Denmark. The point of Branagh’s reading is that Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius, Polonius and the rest are all behaving like the plot of a soap opera; living their lives as if home and family was all that mattered. Fortinbras is a soldier and a prince, and knows that a country is there to be ruled. Branagh suggests that Hamlet has lost sight of what it is to be a King, and has become so wound up in his private troubles that a new, more realist, ruler is needed in Denmark. …. From a dramatic point of view, Fortinbras needs to appear at the end of the play just to get the bodies cleared off
