Hamlet critics

Kastan

David Scott Kastan - Professor Emiratus of English at Yale

“ ‘a rarity most beloved’: Shakespeare and the idea of Tragedy” 2003

central argument: Shakespeare’s tragedies ask questions of the causes of tragedy and that he didn’t really have a worked - out theory in answer to this question

“are there reasons for the intolerable suffering? For Shakespeare, the uncertainty is the point.”

“characters may commit themselves to a confident sense of the tragic world they inhabit; but the plays render that understanding inadequate.”

“Tragedy , for Shakespeare, is the genre of uncompensated suffering.”

“Shakespeare’s tragedies provoke the questions about the cause of pain, and in refusal of any answers prevent and confident attribution of meaning to human suffering.”

Bradley

A.C. Bradley - Oxford professor of poetry (1901-1935)

“Shakespearean Tragedy” (1904)

Central argument: Shakespearean tragedy centres on a character of high rank who undergoes reversal of fortune that leads to his won death and more chaos generally and that Shakespeare is inspired by both medieval and classical designations of tragedy

“To the medieval mind a tragedy meant […] a total reversal of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who stood in high degree.”

"the story of a prince has a greatness and dignity of its own. His fate affects the welfare of a whole nation and when he falls he produces a sense of contrast which no private life can possibly rival.”

“the consciousness of high position is neither eternal nor unimportant.”

Mack

Sterling professor of English at Yale

“What happens in Shakespearian tragedy” (1993)

central argument: there is frequent association between tragic heroes and madness. Madness both causes punishment and allows freedom, letting Shakespeare use his tragic heroes for licenced political and cultural criticism

“Hamlet can be privileged in madness to say things about the corruption of human nature”

“madness has a further dimension, an insight”

“madness like Hamlet’s contains both punishment and insight”

“Shakespeare himself having been given the power to see the ‘truth’ can convey it only through poetry - what we call a fiction and dismiss.”

Adelman

Professor at UC Berkley

‘Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origins in Shakespeare's Plays’ (1992)