Hamlet A05 - Different Critical Lens

Romanticism

- Due to Hamlet's ambiguity, they saw him as "life-like"; he actions and thoughts can't be simplified.

- They were preoccupied with his madness, and Hamlet was seen as an alienated individual that anyone could relate to.

- Samuel Coleridge saw him as a man whose "intellectual energy and alertness made action possible".

- "There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage". - William Hazlet

- Suggests his procrastination comes from trying to avoid the fact that he truly desires Claudius' spiritual demise.

Psycoanalytic

- Ernest Jones and Freud: Hamlet's problem is his Oedipus complex; how can he murder Claudius when he has committed the deed he himself subconsciously wished to carry out?

- This is certainly emphasized (the fact that he desires his mother) in adaptations within scene 3.4 between Hamlet and his mother (for example Olvier's Hamlet, they kiss)

20th century critics and the focus on the play's language

- T.S. Elliot saw the play as an artistic failure.

- C.S. Lewis focused on the language, and looking at Hamlet less like a person and more like a message/meaning.

- They often fell into the trap of reducing Shakespeare to a formula, "a temptation to simplify to which generalizing theories are prone".

- Hamlet has the highest developed language, using asyndeton, anaphora and complicated metaphors. He relies on puns, especially as he pretend to be mad.

Structuralism

- Critics explore the ways in which key words generate "force fields" of associations, creating meaning that are more that is immediately apparent, (they ignore the influence of human nature).

- Argue that Hamlet fails to fit into categorizations, and is a deliberate craft to resist generic classifications.

- The use of questions and doubling characters and situations contributes to the play's subversion of any straight-forward reading.

- Post-structuralists insist upon the ambiguity: that any work of art has no final meaning, and through engaging with Hamlet, there will be an infinite number of outcomes (all generated by the intricate use of language).

Feminist Criticism

- Desire to challenge and change assumptions about gender, illuminating how sexual stereotypes towards sexual roles are frequently embedded in a text, both in and around it (critics)

- Gertrude and Ophelia don't develop in characters to the same extent that the male protagonists do, yet Shakespeare is clearly capable of creating strong female protagonists. The view this as "deliberate silencing", so turn to the non-verbal language.

- They criticize the way that the play is supposed to fathom the human psyche, yet the play doesn't reveal much of the two major female characters.

- They see female characters as victims; helpless and objects of male characters. This would be acceptable to a Renaissance audience (even Hamlet's sexual innuendos), and why modern adaptations are seen to emphasize the victimized women.

- All the interpretations of the female characters come from male dialogues.

Political Theory: Marxism

Marxism literary theory is based on socialist theories, often focusing on class separation and conflict, and critique human power.

- Characters such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Polonius and Laertes obey the King due to their class, and are therefore victims of capitalism.

- They believe there is no reading of Hamlet that isn't political; stemming from the conflicting notions of authority and power within the tragedy.

- Rather than Hamlet being seen as a powerful and creative expression of the human condition, it is instead seen as a product of Elizabethan culture, and a critique of capitalist power.

- The role of Fortinbras, whom is cut out of many adaptations, is argued to be the character of which the politics hinge.

- There was religious and political controversy when Hamlet was written: the power of the monarchy was being tested by the rise of capitalism (Hamlet is often disgusted by those in power).

- Hamlet is seen as an intellectual; a rebel

Feminist Critics

• Wanger 1963

• Leverenz 1978

• Belsey 1985 (poststructural)

• Showalter 1985

• Adelman 1992

• Lavery 2009

• Grindlay 2017

• Bleiman 2017

• Martin 2018

Enlightenment critics

Johnson 1765

Romantic critics

• Mackenzie 1780 (proto-romantic)

• Hazlitt 1817

Neoclassical critics

• Drake 1699

• Johnson 1766

Psychoanalytical critics

• Freud 1900

• A.C. Bradley 1904

• Weller 1997

Modernist critics

• T.S. Eliot 1919

Existential Critics

• Mack 1952

• Cott 1965

• Kerrigan 1996

• Austen 1999

Postmodern critics

• Watts 1992

• Charnes 2006

• Barrow 2011

• Unsworth-Hughes 2019

• Waghorn 2025

• Walton 2025

New Historicism (history influences literature and other way round)

• Jardine 1996

• Green 2006

Poststructuralist (no one meaning - reader creates meaning & no absolute truths)

• Belsey 1985

• Burnett 2019 (deconstructive - how language undermines itself)

Neo-Aristotelian critics

• Calderwood 1983

• Golden 1984