Revenge in Hamlet

Francis Bacon (1625) - nature of revenge

‘Revenge is a kind of wilde justice’

Joe Sutcliffe - Hamlet as revenge hero

‘Hamlet is a unwilling revenger in a revenge tragedy’

Belsey - nature of revenge

‘Revenge is not justice. It is rather an act of injustice on behalf of justice’

Kiernan Ryan (2016) - Hamlet and genre

‘In Hamlet Shakespeare deliberately sabotages the whole genre of revenge tragedy by creating a tragic protagonist who refuses… to play the stock role in which he's been miscast by the world he happens to inhabit.’

Lee Jamieson (2018) - revenge as bathetic

‘the revenge itself ends up being almost an afterthought, and in many ways, is anticlimactic.’

Freud - Hamlet’s delay

'The play is built on Hamlet's hesitations over fulfilling the task of revenge, but the text offers no reasons or motives for his hesitations,'