Critics and Performance cheat Sheet
Themes
Corruption/ deception
Spurgeon – Corruption is “a condition for which the individual is apparently not responsible, any
more than the sick man is to blame for the cancer which strikes and devours him”
Bristol – “Hamlet and Claudius stalk each other like two murderous clowns attempting to achieve
strategic advantage over each other”
Hattaway – “Accidents are as important to the unfolding of the tragic action as the consequence of
the hero’s choice”
Virtue
Watson – “Shakespeare provides us with perspective – almost a scientific control group- by
including two other sons also seeking to avenge their father’s slayings”
Francis Bacon - “It is a princes part to pardon”
Revenge
Francis Bacon – “Revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well”
- Revenge is “a wild kind of justice”
- “It is a princes part to pardon”
Michael de Montagne – “He should arm himself with reason against this furiously blind desire for
revenge”
Indecisiveness/ Inaction
Prosser – “Laertes himself is not a whiff of fresh air. He is a hurricane. He rushes in the
palace in an uncontrolled rage, roaring for blood, having no idea whom he
seeks”
Laurence Olivier’s opening line – “this is a film about a man who could not make up his mind”
Watson – “Shakespeare provides us with perspective – almost a scientific control group- by
including two other sons also seeking to avenge their father’s slayings”
Coleridge – Hamlet had a “proportionate aversion to real action”
Appearance vs reality
Patrick – “A good King must be a good actor”
Flaherty – “Hamlet is self-reflexive; it constantly draws attention to the greater reality… an
audience in a theatre watching actors perform as characters”
Comedy
Levin – “too many subsequent Hamlets have tended to overemphasize the solemnity of the
part. After all, the pseudo lunatic is conventionally a figure of comedy”
, Flint – “comedy is describes as a standard cured for melancholy, and for the melancholic’s
inability to adjust his situation”
- “Hamlet uses more puns than any other Shakespearean figure”
T.S Eliot
Madness
Cott – “Hamlet is made because politics itself is madness when it destroys all feelings and
affection”
Flint – (Hamlet’s madness) “gives him the licence of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing
the language of social decorum”
Austen – “when Hamlet puts on an ‘antic disposition’ it is ‘feigned, forced’ rather than the
‘natural role of inflamed madness’
Charney – “Through madness, the women on stage can suddenly make a forceful assertion
of their being… breaking through unbearable social restraints”
Truth
Flint – (Hamlet’s madness) “gives him the licence of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing
the language of social decorum”
Themes
Corruption/ deception
Spurgeon – Corruption is “a condition for which the individual is apparently not responsible, any
more than the sick man is to blame for the cancer which strikes and devours him”
Bristol – “Hamlet and Claudius stalk each other like two murderous clowns attempting to achieve
strategic advantage over each other”
Hattaway – “Accidents are as important to the unfolding of the tragic action as the consequence of
the hero’s choice”
Virtue
Watson – “Shakespeare provides us with perspective – almost a scientific control group- by
including two other sons also seeking to avenge their father’s slayings”
Francis Bacon - “It is a princes part to pardon”
Revenge
Francis Bacon – “Revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well”
- Revenge is “a wild kind of justice”
- “It is a princes part to pardon”
Michael de Montagne – “He should arm himself with reason against this furiously blind desire for
revenge”
Indecisiveness/ Inaction
Prosser – “Laertes himself is not a whiff of fresh air. He is a hurricane. He rushes in the
palace in an uncontrolled rage, roaring for blood, having no idea whom he
seeks”
Laurence Olivier’s opening line – “this is a film about a man who could not make up his mind”
Watson – “Shakespeare provides us with perspective – almost a scientific control group- by
including two other sons also seeking to avenge their father’s slayings”
Coleridge – Hamlet had a “proportionate aversion to real action”
Appearance vs reality
Patrick – “A good King must be a good actor”
Flaherty – “Hamlet is self-reflexive; it constantly draws attention to the greater reality… an
audience in a theatre watching actors perform as characters”
Comedy
Levin – “too many subsequent Hamlets have tended to overemphasize the solemnity of the
part. After all, the pseudo lunatic is conventionally a figure of comedy”
, Flint – “comedy is describes as a standard cured for melancholy, and for the melancholic’s
inability to adjust his situation”
- “Hamlet uses more puns than any other Shakespearean figure”
T.S Eliot
Madness
Cott – “Hamlet is made because politics itself is madness when it destroys all feelings and
affection”
Flint – (Hamlet’s madness) “gives him the licence of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing
the language of social decorum”
Austen – “when Hamlet puts on an ‘antic disposition’ it is ‘feigned, forced’ rather than the
‘natural role of inflamed madness’
Charney – “Through madness, the women on stage can suddenly make a forceful assertion
of their being… breaking through unbearable social restraints”
Truth
Flint – (Hamlet’s madness) “gives him the licence of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing
the language of social decorum”
