The Speaker
Horatio had never been such a believer in fate. Why should fate have the final say? No, it was ultimately men's choices that decided who died and who lived. And although he would have died, now he lives. But he finds it curious, that he the Orator would be the one to tell the tale.
Hamlet had once said Denmark was a prison, and Horatio now knows the truth of that statement. Strange that he should find it so, when it was his fate (and how he laughed to think it) to travel and tell of the tragedy that occurred in Elsinore. But then, perhaps not so. Denmark is with him wherever he might go, for the story is his life now.
(And he forgets the things he has to grieve for, because grief is not seemly on the player's face unless it is feigned – further proof that Hamlet ought to have lived to tell his story the better.)
He wonders idly if this very dock his ship has arrived at was the very dock where Rosecrantz and Guildenstern met their untimely demise. More of the tale. Horatio never could find it in his heart to feel anything about their death. They were an unknown to him. And they had conspired against Hamlet. Perhaps they did not deserve to die, but few did. Hamlet had not, no more than Ophelia or Laertes or foolish Polonius. No more had Gertrude.
Perhaps even Claudius had not deserved death. Horatio is not sure, but does not wish to forgive him. Were it not for Claudius' treachery, none of this would have come to pass.
(But that is another dangerous thought, for 'what ifs' are endless and many things could have been different. They were not.)
He steps onto the solid ground of England and hopes that this will be the last retelling.
(And he remembers well a time when Horatio was a name without irony, a name to be called by a merry friend who never once suspected that in little time his life was to be ripped away – for oh, no time had been simpler than that spent in Wittenberg!)