Important critics:
EMW Tillyard: ‘Hamlet is one of the most medieval as well as one of the most
acutely modern of Shakespeare’s plays’.
G.W Knight: The question of the relative morality of Hamlet and Claudius reflects the
ultimate problem of this play.
Jan Kott: Elsinore’s a prison camp
Philip Edwards: Whether Hamlet kills the king or not, Denmark will continue to be a
prison, a place of suffering ruled by fortune
Goethe (18th century):
A great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it
There is an oak tree planted in a costly jar; which should have borne only pleasant
flowers in its boson; the roots expanded the jar is shivered
Hamlet:
Anne Barton:
Hamlet seems to be the only one of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists who possesses
- and demonstrates - a sense of humour.
Intellectually superior to anybody else at court, he is finally outwitted by a clown.
Hamlet meets his match in the gravedigger, who treats him in exactly the same
way as Hamlet has treated the members of the court in Elsinore.
G Wilson Knight:
An element of evil in the state of Denmark
The ambassador of death walking amid life, corroding everything, like an acid eating
into metal
Hamlet has been poisoned by grief
Dr Oliver Tearle: cryptic utterance – unsure of what question Hamlet is mulling over
A C Swinburne : Hamlet is not indecisive, rather his mind is in a 'strong conflux of
contending forces'
William Hazlitt 1817:
His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances.
It is we who are Hamlet
Steve Henderson: (‘Hamlet and a Feminist Argument’): Hamlet abuses his position
in a patriarchal society, using crude sexual innuendo to dehumanise the two women
who are central to his existence
Harold Bloom: The fundamental fact about Hamlet is not that he thinks too much,
but that he thinks too well'
Voltaire : 'Hamlet becomes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy
in the third'
S T Coleridge :
'Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and
procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.'
Detected a ‘smack of Hamlet’ in himself
, Freudian interpretation: a sexual relationship- where Hamlet is jealous of Claudius
because he had sexual feelings for his mother
Philip Edwards: The first event in Hamlet's mission that we hear about is his silent
ritual of divorce from Ophelia…by this, he cuts the closest tie that binds him to the
court of Denmark, and takes his school-fellow Horatio as his only confidant.'
George Bernard Shaw : Hamlet 'is morally bound to kill his uncle, politically as
rightful heir to the usurped throne, and filially as 'the son of a dear father murdered'
and a mother seduced by an incestuous adulterer. He has no doubt as to his duty in
the matter.'
Sigmund Freud (1900): rejected the idea that Hamlet is basically paralyzed by his
own thoughtfulness, and proposes that there is something specific about Claudius that
makes it impossible for Hamlet to kill him.
Johnson: “useless and wanton cruelty” treatment of Ophelia
Version History:
Mel Gibson and Glenn Close (1990): Hamlet and Gertrude kiss in Act 3.4, an
Oedipal interpretation
Branagh’s 1996 film:
Kate Winslet takes on a feminist slant and portrays Ophelia as mad
Ophelia and Hamlet have had sex
Hamlet is separated in the opening court scene, wearing black to show he is still
mourning and distant from the rest of the court
Ophelia:
Sandra K. Fischer: ‘Ophelia’s utterances are never allowed free, natural flow… tries
to accommodate her closest males' expectations - all are determined by external
pressures.’
A.C Bradly- Ophelia is treated with disrespect due to her pathetic beauty
Laura Mulvey: She is not a speaking subject but an object ‘to-be-looked at’.
Dr Johnson:
The mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness'
The gratification … is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the
beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.
James McManaway: she is grieving for both her father and her denied love
Carol Rutter: Even Ophelia's self destruction is presented as an erotic act
Fitzpatrick: Ophelia’s death is assumed to be suicide given her madness and lack of
contentment
Delacroix: 1838 painting: death is presented as peaceful: she is free from the control
and manipulation of men
EMW Tillyard: ‘Hamlet is one of the most medieval as well as one of the most
acutely modern of Shakespeare’s plays’.
G.W Knight: The question of the relative morality of Hamlet and Claudius reflects the
ultimate problem of this play.
Jan Kott: Elsinore’s a prison camp
Philip Edwards: Whether Hamlet kills the king or not, Denmark will continue to be a
prison, a place of suffering ruled by fortune
Goethe (18th century):
A great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it
There is an oak tree planted in a costly jar; which should have borne only pleasant
flowers in its boson; the roots expanded the jar is shivered
Hamlet:
Anne Barton:
Hamlet seems to be the only one of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists who possesses
- and demonstrates - a sense of humour.
Intellectually superior to anybody else at court, he is finally outwitted by a clown.
Hamlet meets his match in the gravedigger, who treats him in exactly the same
way as Hamlet has treated the members of the court in Elsinore.
G Wilson Knight:
An element of evil in the state of Denmark
The ambassador of death walking amid life, corroding everything, like an acid eating
into metal
Hamlet has been poisoned by grief
Dr Oliver Tearle: cryptic utterance – unsure of what question Hamlet is mulling over
A C Swinburne : Hamlet is not indecisive, rather his mind is in a 'strong conflux of
contending forces'
William Hazlitt 1817:
His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances.
It is we who are Hamlet
Steve Henderson: (‘Hamlet and a Feminist Argument’): Hamlet abuses his position
in a patriarchal society, using crude sexual innuendo to dehumanise the two women
who are central to his existence
Harold Bloom: The fundamental fact about Hamlet is not that he thinks too much,
but that he thinks too well'
Voltaire : 'Hamlet becomes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy
in the third'
S T Coleridge :
'Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and
procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.'
Detected a ‘smack of Hamlet’ in himself
, Freudian interpretation: a sexual relationship- where Hamlet is jealous of Claudius
because he had sexual feelings for his mother
Philip Edwards: The first event in Hamlet's mission that we hear about is his silent
ritual of divorce from Ophelia…by this, he cuts the closest tie that binds him to the
court of Denmark, and takes his school-fellow Horatio as his only confidant.'
George Bernard Shaw : Hamlet 'is morally bound to kill his uncle, politically as
rightful heir to the usurped throne, and filially as 'the son of a dear father murdered'
and a mother seduced by an incestuous adulterer. He has no doubt as to his duty in
the matter.'
Sigmund Freud (1900): rejected the idea that Hamlet is basically paralyzed by his
own thoughtfulness, and proposes that there is something specific about Claudius that
makes it impossible for Hamlet to kill him.
Johnson: “useless and wanton cruelty” treatment of Ophelia
Version History:
Mel Gibson and Glenn Close (1990): Hamlet and Gertrude kiss in Act 3.4, an
Oedipal interpretation
Branagh’s 1996 film:
Kate Winslet takes on a feminist slant and portrays Ophelia as mad
Ophelia and Hamlet have had sex
Hamlet is separated in the opening court scene, wearing black to show he is still
mourning and distant from the rest of the court
Ophelia:
Sandra K. Fischer: ‘Ophelia’s utterances are never allowed free, natural flow… tries
to accommodate her closest males' expectations - all are determined by external
pressures.’
A.C Bradly- Ophelia is treated with disrespect due to her pathetic beauty
Laura Mulvey: She is not a speaking subject but an object ‘to-be-looked at’.
Dr Johnson:
The mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness'
The gratification … is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the
beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.
James McManaway: she is grieving for both her father and her denied love
Carol Rutter: Even Ophelia's self destruction is presented as an erotic act
Fitzpatrick: Ophelia’s death is assumed to be suicide given her madness and lack of
contentment
Delacroix: 1838 painting: death is presented as peaceful: she is free from the control
and manipulation of men
