Hamlet, Laertes, Horatio, Roseypants, Gildedstern....all would have been trained in swordsmanship.

It was necessary, at that period, if you wanted to live and especially so if you were of the Upper Classes.

The German Fechtschull didn't exist in the 17th Century to inflict scars -- they taught killing, pure and simple. It was later, in the 19th Century, that the mensur and all that sort of thing appeared.

I was being facetious about fencing earlier, but in the 17th Century (and before and after) the Master At Arms taught you how to kill with a sword. That could and did mean the use of the knucklebow as brass knuckles, how to get behind your opponent and break his back while cutting his throat, how to cut the hamstrings behind the knee (coupe de Jordan, I think it's called), how to grapple while using a sword...the "classical" fencing that Don Firth and I learned was nothing like the original, and today's "sport" fencing with its emphasis on "flicks" and fleche is even less so.

Rapier and dagger, rapier and cloak, rapier and glove, two rapiers, and more variations were taught. The fights in Shakespeare's plays were played before an audience who knew swordplay (even the groundlings) because their life depended upon it.