Underlying the events of Hamlet is the question of the succession to the throne of Denmark from the time of Hamlet's father to the choice of Claudius' successor. This issue is colored, in turn, by the threat of a war against Norway, and unsettled legal claims which date from times previous to the beginning of the play, and are only resolved in the last scene. The political context of the drama is often lost in modern productions, and contemporary directors are frequently tempted diminish or to entirely weed out this aspect of the drama in order to shorten the lengthy script. We can see this by comparing Laurence Olivier's staging of Claudius' announcement regarding the succession to the throne in Act I, Scene ii to Franco Zeffirelli's adaptation of the same scene.

In Olivier's production, the announcement is a political pronouncement of great moment, and it is treated by the surrounding court with appropriate awe for its historical impact. Appropriately enough, it is accompanied by full fanfare, and the words of the pronouncement have a staged formality to them and a self-conscious awareness of their significance.

Franco Zeffirelli, on the other hand, chooses to transfer this pronouncement from the public visibility of the court in full formal session, to the intimacy of the private family internment of Hamlet's father. Moved as it is to the very beginning of the film, this scene announces Zeffirelli's intention to subjugate the political drama to the personal. In fact, Zeffirelli makes an oddly modern decision to concentrate on the inner (psychological) politics of Gertrude's newly "blended" family rather than the external drama of nations at war. Much of his political drama has to do with Gertrude's, and her new husband's, attempts to create harmony within the family with the child from her former marriage.

It is appropriate, then, that Zeffirelli should cut any mention of Fortinbras, Norway, the ambassadors, and almost all impositions of the outside world on the domestic drama.