A05 + critical views/ adaptations

Hamlet

MADNESS - Mark Rylance Adaptation

Emphasised madness in his performance

MADNESS - Some critics

Argue that Ophelia's madness is a rejection of traditional male hierarchy, she has a voice that she cannot have sane

MADNESS - Sigmund Freud

Hamlet is able to do anything - expect take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that fathers place with the mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realised

MADNESS - L.C Knights

The Prince's judgements, brooding upon evil, are pathologically unbalanced

MADNESS - A.C Bradley

Explored Hamlet as a son made melancholy by his mother's sexual depravity, who can respond to the Ghost's demand for action in words but not deed

MADNESS + MORALITY - Goethe

A lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature… sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away

MADNESS - Samuel Johnson

Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity

MORALITY - Goethe

All duties seem holy for Hamlet

MORALITY - Bradley

Hamlet is unable to carry out the sacred duty, imposed by divine authority, of punishing an evil man by death

MORALITY - G. Wilson Knight

Hamlet is not a heroic victim but a sinister presence in Denmark

MORALITY - L.C Knights

The Prince's judgements, brooding upon evil, are pathologically unbalanced

MORALITY - Wilson Knight

The prayer scene creates sympathy for Claudius not Hamlet

MORALITY - Philip Edwards

Explored the ethical dilemmas posed by the clash of two incompatible moral codes and related Hamlet to the fractious time that the play was written in

MORALITY - Wilson Knight

Claudius, as he appears in the play, is not criminal

MORALITY - Patrick Stewart adaptation

Played Claudius as commanding, calculating, open, affable and sympathetic making him all the more sinister

POLITICS - Marxist criticism

Has contended that you cannot read Hamlet without considering politics

POLITICS - Graham Bradshaw

The play does not suggest that Denmark is an especially or unusually corrupt country

POLITICS - Graham Holderness

Hamlet himself seems stranded between the two worlds, unable to emulate the heroic values of his father, unable to engage with the modern world of political diplomacy

POLITICS - Catherine Belsey

Conflicting notions of power and authority give rise to much of the dramatic interest in the play

GENDER + MADNESS - Elaine Showalter

Ophelia’s madness highlights the sexism in the Elizabethan era. Mad men were fashionably melancholic, women were ‘hysteric’

GENDER - Rebecca Smith

Polonius trained his daughter to be obedient and chaste and is able to use her as a piece of bait for spying

GENDER - Leverez

Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent repulsion against women

GENDER - Lee Edwards

We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia has literally no story without Hamlet

GENDER - David Leverenz

Ophelia’s suicide is a microcosm of the male world’s banishment of the female

GENDER - Feminist critics

argue that Ophelia’s mistreatment represents the Elizabethan double standard - the men that control her life are hypocrites who insist on one behaviour for her but another for themselves

GENDER - Feminist criticism

has explored the lack of development of Gertrude and Ophelia in comparison to the male characters. They often look at theatrical interpretations to reveal the non-verbal implications

GENDER - A.C Bradley

saw Gertrude as the cause of Hamlet’s melancholy

IDENTITY - The Romantics

were fascinated by Hamlet because he explored the concept of an individual alienated from society. the complexity of his thoughts makes him hard to pin down in terms of identity - he is multifaceted

IDENTITY - C.S Lewis

saw the play as a picture of alienated mankind struggling to discover meaning

IDENTITY - Mark Thornton Burnett

Abundantly evident… is Hamlet’s refusal to fit into neat categorisations, its resistance to generic classifications and its unwillingness to affirm cherished ideals. Hamlet revels in asking questions about identity

IDENTITY - Catherine Belsey

The moral uncertainty persists to the end. Hamlet dies a revenger, a poisoner, but also a soldier and a prince

IDENTITY - Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead’

moves the two characters to centre stage to explore ideas about identity - the two characters lack individuality in Hamlet

DEATH - Wilson Knight

The theme of Hamlet is death

DEATH - Greenblatt

The ghost represents ‘a common fear of being forgotten after death’

DEATH - Fintan O’Toole

Hamlet is a play about death, or rather it is a play about the survival of the individual in the face of death

DEATH - Benedict Cumberbatch production

The production cut the opening scene and began with Hamlet going through his fathers belongings

DEATH - David Farr adaptation

The 2013 RSC production, focused on the vulnerability of Hamlet and his inability to deal with death and loss

DEATH - C.S Lewis

Hamlet isn’t afraid of dying but being dead, of the unknown and the unknowable

REVENGE - L.C. Knights

If this ghost turns out to be one who clamours for revenge, then we have every reason to suppose that Shakespeare entertained some grave doubts about him

REVENGE - Thomas Hanmer

drew attention to the way in which Hamlet delays in carrying out his revenge. Hanmer points out that had Hamlet done as the ghost asked immediately ‘there would have been an end of our play’

REVENGE - Samuel Johnson

Hamlet is, throughout the play, rather an instrument than an agent…After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the King, he makes no attempt to punish him, and his death is at last affected by an incident which Hamlet has no part in producing

REVENGE - Ernest Jones

supported the notion that Hamlet suffers from an Oedipus complex, meaning that his lack of action is because he is fascinated by Claudius despite his disgust: Claudius has what he desires

REVENGE - Belsey

Revenge is always in excess of justice