Hamlet Critics

Drake 1699 - description of the murder

“a [murder] privately committed, strangely discovered, and wonderfully punished”

Johnson 1765 (2) Hamlet’s agency / Polonius knowledge

• Hamlet is "rather an instrument than an agent"

• "[Polonius] is knowing in retrospect and ignorant in foresight"

Mackenzie 1780 - Hamlet revenge vs melancholy

"With the strongest purposes of revenge he is irresolute and inactive; amidst the gloom of the deepest melancholy he is gay"

Hazlitt 1817 - Hamlet’s tendency to act

[Hamlet] seems incapable of deliberate action and is only hurried into extremities, on the spur of the moment"

Freud 1900

“The repressed wishes of [Hamlet's] own childhood realised"

A.C. Bradley 1904 - Hamlet’s mind

"Hamlet's whole mind is poisoned [so]...he can do nothing"

T.S. Eliot 1919 - (2) Gertrude’s role / central theme involving Gertrude

• “negative and insignificant"

• "A play dealing with the effect of a mother's guilt on her son"

C.S. Lewis 1942 - main theme

“the subject of Hamlet is death”

A. Morgan 1943 - R&G defence

"[They] reported nothing that would harm Hamlet"

R. Morgan 1943 - R&G rebuttal

“tools of Claudius”

Mack 1952 - Hamlet’s world

"Hamlet's world reverberates with questions"

Wanger 1963 - Ophelia’s absence

"In all of Hamlet’s soliloquies. - all dealing with his innermost concerns..Ophelia is never mentioned"

Cott 1965 - damaged Elsinore

"Everything at Elsinore has been corroded by fear: marriage, love, friendship"

Prosser 1969 - Laertes rejection

"[Laertes] denies his conscience, his King and his God"

Leverenz 1978 - (2) Ophelia downfall / Ophelia symbolism

• "Not allowed to love and unable to be false, Ophelia breaks"

• "She becomes the mirror for a mad-inducing world"

Bates 1980 - Hamlet hamartia

Hamlet’s deadly sin is clearly sloth" (indecision)

Schofield 1980 - Claudius

"Claudius is morally empty"

Calderwood 1983 - Hamlet killing Claudius

"Hamlet's killing of Claudius is...an act of restorative destruction"

Golden 1984 - hero

"Nowhere in Hamlet do we hear even a faint echo of the genuine hero's response"

Belsey 1985 - (3) female role / revenge and justice / Hamlet at the end

• "Women were everything men were not: silent, submissive, powerless"

• "Revenge is not justice. It is an act of injustice on the behalf of justice"

• "Hamlet dies as a revenger, a poisoner, but also a soldier and a prince"

Showalter 1985 - (2) drowning / Ophelia lacks

• Drowning was a typically feminine death"

• "Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language"

Parker 1985 - Claudis vs Hamlet

Claudius is "a man of action against Hamlet's inaction”

Watts 1992 - The Ghost wants Hamlet to be

"The Ghost seeks to impose a stereotype…of a dedicated revenger; but Hamlet repeatedly displays a very credible resistance to that stereotype"

Adelman 1992 - mouse trap

"it is clear that the playlet (The Mouse Trap) was designed to "catch the conscience of the queen"

Kerrigan 1996 - Hamlet’s promise

“Hamlet never promises to revenge, only to remember.”

Jardine 1996 - closet scene

Polonius, in “The closet scene, fatally confuses privacy with affairs of the state.”

Weller 1997 - against Freud

“If Hamlet ‘really’ did have a neurotic Oedipus complex…he almost certainly would not act it out in simulated sex with his mother.”

Austen 1999 - Hamlet’s revenge

“He avenges not the Ghost of his father but the treachery done to himself.”

Knight 2001 - Hamlet = not good

“Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark… The ambassador of death walking amid life.”

Webster 2003 - drama in Hamlet / moral framework / moral guidance

• “Hamlet dramatises delay and inaction.”

• “Archaic verse for archaic morality.”

• "The realisation that there is no infallible moral guide leaves individuals with the responsibility to work out for themselves how to behave”

Bloom 2003 - Hamlet paradox

“hero-villain”

Charnes 2006 - you don’t get it

“No one in this play knows or understands anyone.”

Green 2006 - closet scene

“Polonius fails to consider the risk of using political tactics in a private sphere.”

Patrick 2008 - quality of good king

“A good king must be a good actor.”

Lavery 2009 - Gertrude’s roles

“Gertrude’s position both as mother, sexual woman, and political figure makes her a troubling, silenced figure.”

Barrow 2011 - pestering dead / the past / memory

• “The terrible thing about the dead in Hamlet…is their persistence.”

• “The spectre is a displaced part of the past.”

• “Memory displaces what really does remain of [the Ghost].”

Ryan 2016 - Hamlet is stuck

“Hamlet is paralysed by…the futility of the revenge his society demands that he seeks.”

Grindlay 2017 - Ophelia is…

“The trouble with Ophelia is that she is ‘nothing.’”

Bleiman 2017 - daughters

“Shakespeare’s daughters challenge patriarchal authority at every turn.”

Martin 2018 - mad Ophelia

“[Ophelia is] only interesting when she loses the little wits she had.”

Burnett 2019 - secrets

“Shakespeare’s text concerns itself primarily with secrets, with their function, inception, management, continuation and exposure.”

Unsworth-Hughes 2019 - Hamlet’s time away / dirty Denmark / Ophelia’s death / water

• “Hamlet’s episode at sea…serves as a kind of baptism.”

• “[Denmark] will not be easy to cleanse, and everyone, everywhere, is contaminated to some extent.”

• If someone knew exactly how [Ophelia] died, why wasn’t she rescued?”

• “Water is also used to denote death and stagnancy.”

Walton 2025 - obsessed / Ophelia death

• [Old Hamlet] is someone who Hamlet cannot get out of his head.”

• “[Ophelia’s] death was such a massive loss that the power of it almost shifts us to need to end this play, to get closure.”

Waghorn 2025 - massive mess up

“It’s more than things are going wrong for Hamlet… Things are going wrong in ways that aren’t expected.”