Hamlet critics comments

“Hamlet’s hesitation is the result of an unconscious oedipal conflict - the inability to kill the man who had done what he secretly wished to do”

Ernst Jones

“The play-within-the-play is a means for Hamlet to confront his own theatricality”

Stephan Booth

“He is a confused, self-indlugent, and often headless figure”

Stepahn Booth

“His enormous intellectual activity prevents instant action”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Hamlet is a man who sees too much and does too little”

A.C Bradley

“Hamlet is the most intelligent figure ever created in literature - a consciousness that dwarfs those around him.”

Harold Bloom

“Shakespeare turns the revenge tragedy inward - Hamlet’s real struggle is with his own moral and psychological contradictions”

Northrop Frye

Claudius, as he appears in the play, is not a villain but a good and pragmatic king enmeshed in his crime”

Wilson Knight

Claudius’s conscious is his punishment: his guilt infects the court and poisons the state”

A.C Bradley

“Gertrude is not a figure of weakness but of pragmatic survival”

Carolyn Hellbrun 

“Gertrude’s sexuality and maternal body are the source of Hamlet’s deepest anxieties”

Janet Adelman

“Gertrude is a soft, obedient, dependent woman who seeks affection and status through men”

Rebecca Smith

Ophelia’s madness is a protest and a reflection of the repressive, patriarchal world that silences her”

Elaine Showalter

“Ophelia has no identity of her own; she becomes the mirror for Hamlet’s and Polonius’s interests”

Rebecca Smith

“Ophelia is the object of Hamlet’s desire, but her identity is defined entirely by the male gaze”

Jacques Lacan

“Horatio is the heart of Hamlet: the one man Hamlet fully trusts, and the keeper of his story”

Harold Bloom

Horatio is the ideal of reason - calm, loyal, and untouched by corruption”

G. Wilson Knight

“Laertes is a tragic figure in his own right - his honour corrupted by the very revenge he pursues”

Harold Jenkins

‘Laertes embodies the cultural ideal of masculine honour that Hamlet rejects”

Cathrine Belsey

“Laertes is Hamlet’s foil - impulsive where Hamlet is reflective, action where Hamlet is delay”

A.C Bradley

“Polonius’s tragedy lies in his folly; he is destroyed by the very schemes he imagines proves his intelligence”

A.C Bradley 

“An officious fool clocked with wisdom”

William Hazlit