In Hamlet, the courtier who invites Hamlet to fence with Laertes is Osric.
Osric appears in Act 5, Scene 2, after Hamlet has returned to Denmark and explained to Horatio how he escaped Claudius’s plan to have him executed in England. Osric delivers the king’s formal challenge: Claudius has arranged a supposedly friendly fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes.
The scene gives the audience comic relief before the tragedy’s final sequence. Osric is a foppish, excessively mannered courtier whose elaborate language Hamlet and Horatio mock. His ceremonial politeness also exposes the artificiality of Claudius’s court.
The match is not an innocent contest. Claudius and Laertes secretly prepare poisoned weapons, and Claudius also poisons a cup intended for Hamlet. Osric later helps manage the event and announces Fortinbras’s arrival. Some early texts spell his name “Ostricke,” but “Osric” is the standard modern form.