Horatio Explains

Hamlet begins at high intensity with the first appearance of the ghost. Immediately after that, Shakespeare launches into a very economical piece of exposition when Horatio is asked by Marcellus to explain the aggressive preparations for war that he sees going on around him, and the urgency that has recently been attached to his watch. In the next twenty-four lines, Horatio lays out the entire situation in exposition that is so compressed, it leaves a fair amount of understanding to be read between the lines.

Here's the exposition. The colored text serves as hyperlinks to an examination of the nature of the contract in question (the contract between Hamlet's father and Fortinbras' father), and the legality of Fortinbras' attempts to recover the lands lost by his father. The intention is to provide with these links access to some of the between-the-lines background implied in the exposition.

HORATIO:                  ... our last king,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who, by a sealed compact
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror;
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our King, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other,
As it doth well appear unto our state,
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost;       (I.i.80-104)