it is clear, though, that several elements did change somewhere between belleforest's and shakespeare's versions. for one, unlike saxo and belleforest, shakespeare's play has no all-knowing narrator, thus inviting the audience to draw their own conclusions about the motives of its characters. and the traditional story takes place across several years, while shakespeare's covers a few weeks. belleforest's version details hamlet's plan for revenge, while in shakespeare's play hamlet has no apparent plan. shakespeare also adds some elements that locate the action in 15th-century christian denmark instead of a medieval pagan setting. elsinore, for example, would have been familiar to elizabethan england, as a new castle had been built recently there, and wittenberg, hamlet's university, was widely known for its protestant teachings. other elements of shakespeare's "hamlet" absent in medieval versions include the secrecy that surrounds the old king's murder, the inclusion of laertes and fortinbras (who offer parallels to hamlet), the testing of the king via a play, and hamlet's death at the moment he gains his revenge.