Hamlet Critics
General
- Lawrence Olivier: Tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind (but arguably
the ambiguity throughout the play means that the audience cannot make up their
minds)
- Kastan: for shakespeare…uncertainty is the point (ironically drives the play forward)
- Hazlitt: we are all of us, Hamlets (felt the whole range of human emotions)
- John Lennard: revenge tragedies have an ABC structure (victim, offendor +
revenger) ‘Shakespeare deliberately complicates this’ by bringing in an intersecting
ABC structure after death of Polonius via Laertes in Act 4 (ultimately could argue that
carrying out revenge ends up fatal to revenger in both ways; whether it be swift or
delayed)
- AD Nuttall: There is now a ‘later kind of moralism, taught a new generation of readers
and theatre goers to despise the pleasurable and to value disturbing, jagged, painful
work’ (fencing match begun as a structured contest but escalated into chaotic
violence)
- AC Bradley: Tragedies in Shakespeare always concerned with a person of a ‘higher
rank’
Prince Hamlet
- Joseph Westlund: Player’s speech + Hamlet’s reaction in 2.2 convey the difficulties of
moving from thought to deed, (mirror of his own situation in paralysing complexity)
- Mack: It is enough that Hamlet wears, even if it is for the moment self assumed, the
guise of madness (Hamlet is privileged in madness)
- Flint: madness gives him the license of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing the
language of social decorum
- Leitzel: Hamlet’s delayed revenge is reminiscent of ‘economic rationality’
- Wood: Hamlet is a new man in Act 5 with ‘clarity, coherence + confidence’
(dramatically contrasts his confusion + indecisiveness earlier in the play)
- Wilson Knight: Hamlet is the poison in the vein of the community
- Hazlitt: hamlet is the prince of philosophical spectators: because he cant have his
refined version of revenge perfect he misses it all together (act 3, didnt kill claudius)
- Hirsh: 3.1 to be or not to be soliloquy uses abstract rather than personal language of
‘I, my etc’ (is not an emotional introspection, but a deliberate rhetorical exercise /
academic discussion - knows someone is listening)
- John Dover Wilson: Hamlet’s harsh words to Ophelia intended for the ears of
Claudius and Polonius
The Ghost
- Kerrigan: ghost creates feelings of loss + duty to commemorate in Hamlet
- Bridget O’Connor: ‘essential for the Elizabethan audience to believe that the ghost
was real in order for the play to be successful.’rather serves as a symbol for the
religious ambivalence present in England during the time it was written.’ (Religious
reformation)
- Anslem Haverkamp, The Ghost of History ‘the ghost in truth of his untruth, cannot
actually be doubted in the slightest’
General
- Lawrence Olivier: Tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind (but arguably
the ambiguity throughout the play means that the audience cannot make up their
minds)
- Kastan: for shakespeare…uncertainty is the point (ironically drives the play forward)
- Hazlitt: we are all of us, Hamlets (felt the whole range of human emotions)
- John Lennard: revenge tragedies have an ABC structure (victim, offendor +
revenger) ‘Shakespeare deliberately complicates this’ by bringing in an intersecting
ABC structure after death of Polonius via Laertes in Act 4 (ultimately could argue that
carrying out revenge ends up fatal to revenger in both ways; whether it be swift or
delayed)
- AD Nuttall: There is now a ‘later kind of moralism, taught a new generation of readers
and theatre goers to despise the pleasurable and to value disturbing, jagged, painful
work’ (fencing match begun as a structured contest but escalated into chaotic
violence)
- AC Bradley: Tragedies in Shakespeare always concerned with a person of a ‘higher
rank’
Prince Hamlet
- Joseph Westlund: Player’s speech + Hamlet’s reaction in 2.2 convey the difficulties of
moving from thought to deed, (mirror of his own situation in paralysing complexity)
- Mack: It is enough that Hamlet wears, even if it is for the moment self assumed, the
guise of madness (Hamlet is privileged in madness)
- Flint: madness gives him the license of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing the
language of social decorum
- Leitzel: Hamlet’s delayed revenge is reminiscent of ‘economic rationality’
- Wood: Hamlet is a new man in Act 5 with ‘clarity, coherence + confidence’
(dramatically contrasts his confusion + indecisiveness earlier in the play)
- Wilson Knight: Hamlet is the poison in the vein of the community
- Hazlitt: hamlet is the prince of philosophical spectators: because he cant have his
refined version of revenge perfect he misses it all together (act 3, didnt kill claudius)
- Hirsh: 3.1 to be or not to be soliloquy uses abstract rather than personal language of
‘I, my etc’ (is not an emotional introspection, but a deliberate rhetorical exercise /
academic discussion - knows someone is listening)
- John Dover Wilson: Hamlet’s harsh words to Ophelia intended for the ears of
Claudius and Polonius
The Ghost
- Kerrigan: ghost creates feelings of loss + duty to commemorate in Hamlet
- Bridget O’Connor: ‘essential for the Elizabethan audience to believe that the ghost
was real in order for the play to be successful.’rather serves as a symbol for the
religious ambivalence present in England during the time it was written.’ (Religious
reformation)
- Anslem Haverkamp, The Ghost of History ‘the ghost in truth of his untruth, cannot
actually be doubted in the slightest’
