Hamlet Critical Quotes

C.S. Lewis

Hamlet - humanity - mystery

Hamlet depicts 'lasting mystery of our human situation'

John Evelyn

Play response - disgust

'the old play began to disgust this refined age'

AC Bradley

Hamlet - Madness - depression

'melancholia', 'tragedy of thought'

Coleridge

Hamlet - Over thinking

'excessive reflectiveness'

Coleridge

Hamlet - lack of action

Hamlet 'loses the power of action in the energy of resolve'

Tennenhouse

Hamlet - family - morality - revenge

Hamlet attempts to 'locate and purge a corrupt element within the aristocratic body'

Leverenz

Hamlet - femininity - treatment of women

'Hamlet's disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsion against women and into his brutal behaviour towards Ophelia.'

Showalter

Female madness

'madness is a product of the female body and female nature'

Bachelard

Contrast between male and female - madness

'female fluidity as opposed to masculine aridity'

Dusinberre

Ophelia - women

'Ophelia is stifled by the authority of the male world'

Lidz

Oedipus complex

Ophelia fails to shift her sexual attachment from her father 'to a man who can bring her fulfillment as a woman'

TS Eliot

Gertrude - guilt

It is a play 'dealing with the effects of a mother's guilt upon her son'

Kenneth Muir

Gertrude - morality

Gertrude is a 'moral defective'

Jacqueline Rose

Hamlet - female sexuality

'Hamlet's anguish is a product of the revelation of the essential but destabilizing function of female sexuality in a patriarchal society'

Rebecca Smith

Gertrude - lack of change

'Gertrude has not moved in the play toward independence or a moral stance'

AC Bradley

Ghost - connection between heaven and earth

'a symbol of the connection of the limited world of ordinary experience with the vaster life of which it is but a partial appearance'

Maynard Mack

Power of ghost

'The ghost is the supreme reality, representative of the hidden ultimate power'

Wilson Knight

Claudius - morality - King

'Claudius is a good and gentle king, enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him with his crime'

Leonard Tennenhouse

Hamlet and Claudius - kingdom

Both Hamlet and Claudius 'consequently assault the aristocratic body in attempting to acquire the crown.'

Jean Brooks

Polonius - love

Polonius 'judges love and lovers, like all other situations and people, by worldly and stereotyped formulas'

Van Goethe

Hamlet - religion - duty

'All duties seem holy for Hamlet'

Marion Cox

Death - religion

Death is prevented by the 'fundamental moral and physical imperative' of divine law.

Belsey

Revenge and justice

'Revenge is an act of injustice on behalf of justice'

Jonathon Dollimore

Avenger - revenge - corruption

Sees character of avenger as an 'agent and victim of social corruption'

Jennifer Wallace

Tragedy to confront experience

'Tragedy is the art form created to confront the most difficult experiences we face'

Aristotle

Tragedy - catharsis

tragedy effects 'through pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions'

Charney

Ophelia - sex and love

'explosive sexual imagery'

David Leverenz

Ophelia - Women - Suicide

'Ophelia's suicide becomes a microcosm of the male world's banishment of the female'

Terence Hawkes

Structuralist reading (of play)

There is no authoritative reading, the narrative is fluid

Peter Davison

Comedy

'humour is the key to the tonal quality of the play'

Kittredge

Laertes

'the typical avenger'

Manfred Draudt

Polonius - old man

‘a classic senex’

Wickham

Polonius characterised

'opportunist shifts, deceit and distorted ingenuity'

Draudt

Polonius comic stereotype

'the deceiver deceived'