Shakespeare seems to be presenting a contrast between the secluded, idealistic academic world of Wittenberg and the real world as represented by the court at Elsinore. Hamlet must have been a student for many years. He would like to go back to Wittenberg, but his uncle specifically forbids it.
For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire;
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin,and our son.
Claudius wants to keep Hamlet under close scrutiny. The wicked usurper naturally believes that Hamlet is bitterly resentful about being passed over for succession and could be plotting a coup. Hamlet could do this much more easily if he could get out of Denmark. He could find young supporters at the university, and he could also contact foreign rulers for military assistance.
Hamlet is a fish out of water at Elsinore. He is an introspective, scholarly man in the midst of a bunch of schemers, hypocrites, and one double-dyed villain. Hamlet forms an extremely unfavorable view of humanity in general as a result of the contrast between real humanity and the world he has read about in books, including religious books. At one point in the play he expresses his jaundiced view of humanity in a striking metaphors.
O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. I.2
Hamlet knows three of the important characters in the play because of meeting them at Wittenberg. They are Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Horatio becomes his good friend, companion, and helper. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become spies for the king, and Hamlet will later have to have them beheaded by the English in order to keep from getting beheaded himself.
Wittenberg was responsible for turning Hamlet into a recluse, an idealist and a scholar. This is a handicap at Elsinore. He has to evolve into a man of action because of circumstances thrust upon him. It turns out that he can't even trust the girl he loves. Ophelia is being used by both Claudius and her own father Polonius to get Hamlet to reveal his secret thoughts. She is a little like Delilah in the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. But Hamlet is like a young man who has graduated from college and is just beginning to understand that the real world is a lot different from school! Shakespeare never went to a university. He graduated from the School of Hard Knocks.
Wittenberg serves as a sort of foil to Elsinore. Although Wittenberg is never actually shown, it is referred to many times, and we can imagine how it looks and feels. It is isolated, designed for meditation and religious worship. After all, it was the place where Martin Luther became a professor of theology. At Elsinore, Claudius sets the tone of behavior by spending much of his time drinking large quantities of wine. When Hamlet first encounters Horatio at Elsinore, he tells him:
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
This is Hamlet's way of saying that Elsinore has nothing else to offer to refined, intellectual men like Horatio and himself. Hamlet is a captive at Elsinore. Before he encounters his father's ghost, he would like very much to get back to Wittenberg. Once he realizes that he is duty-bound to revenge his father's murder, he must realize that his academic career is at an end. He has graduated into the ugly world of reality. At the very end of the last scene of Act 1, he says:
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
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