HAMLET CRITICS QUOTES

THEME OF CONFUSION

‘Hamlet’s world s pre-eminently in the interrogative mood. It reverberates with questions, anguished, meditative, alarmed’ → MACK

THEME OF SUCCESSION

‘The question of who would succeed her preoccupied late Elizabethan society’ - SMITH

THEME OF DEATH

‘Hamlet… blurs the boundaries of most basic categories – life and death… [death] is the central factor of life’- O’TOOLE

‘What Hamlet is looking for is a meaningful death… that has significance’- O’TOOLE

HUMORAL THEORY

‘Hamlet’s melancholy is a late example of humoral theory… Ideally they are all in equilibrium but commonly may predominate’ - HEBRON

THEME OF CORRUPTION

‘The vehicle of illness and disease is used in connection with a variety of tenors… the characters… use language associated with disease to describe themselves, their relationship relationships with others, and, most crucially, the wider social, and political consequences of the disruption of power in Denmark’ - TROUSDALE

‘Most of the imagery comes in hamlet’s speeches and soliloquies’ - CLEMMEN 

‘The problem isn’t with Hamlet’s inability to act, The problem lies within Denmark’ - VARDY

THEME OF WOMEN AND SEXUALITY

‘Nothing stands between Hamlet and suicide… and what has caused it?… the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother‘s true nature’ - BRADLEY

‘Shakespeare’s preoccupation with the uncontrollability of women's sexuality… was… a shared vulnerability of men in his intensely patriarchical… culture’ - TRAUB

HUMANISM

‘[Hamlet] wants to shape the old chaotic and corrupt world according to the principles of the new rationality which he has learned at wittenberg’ - O’TOOLE

HORATIO

‘Horatio’s appearances mark pivotal moments of revelation… he challenges [the ghost]… he aids Hamlet… is the Prince’s constant companion’ → HUI

‘Horatio… has been freely chosen by Hamlet himself’ - LIMMER

GHOST

‘the Ghost’s provenance is uncertain… the characters who die [are]… condemned to the same unspeakable torments which the Ghost says he himself has suffered’ → BRADSHAW

‘Hamlet was born at the crossroads of the death pf chivalry and the birth of glabalisation…the ghost… evokes a catholic past… is also a ghostly relic of a chivalric age’ → SHAPIRO

FORTINBRAS

‘Shakespeare’s use of him is typical of his dramatic method’ → BRADSHAW

‘The ending of the early modern play must have resonated with contemporary fears that a foreign molotary power would annex England on the death of Elizabeth’ → SMITH

CLAUDIUS

‘[Claudius] shows his mastery of new renaissance or Machiavellian art… arguably far more concerned to protect his country and his subjects than the old [king] was’ - BRADSHAW

‘Claudius is not drawn as wholly evil… his advice to Hamlet… is admirable common sense’ - KNIGHT

GERTRUDE

‘Gertrude… Has traditionally been played as a sensual deceitful woman… The traditional view of Gertrude is a false one’ - SMITH

‘It becomes clear that the playlet is in fact designed to catch the conscience of the queen’ - ADELMAN

‘Gertrudes persona… is consistent with the Hamlet’s view of her as shallow and lustful’ - TUBB

HAMLET

‘[Melancholy] accounts for the main fact, Hamlet‘s inaction… the body is a inert, the mind is indifferent or worse… the retarding motives acquire an unnatural strength, because… the melancholic disgust and apathy’ - BRADLEY

‘Hamlets delay… is the cause of all the disasters that follow’ - BRADLEY

OPHELIA

‘The trouble with Ophelia is that she is nothing… her speech and behaviour are frequently circumscribed by the characters around her, most of whom are men’ - GRINDLAY

‘Ophelia has been an insignificant minor character in the play’ -  SHOWALTER

POLONIUS

• ‘Polonius palpably enjoys spying and surveillance… spying is endemic’ - VARDY

  • emphasis on ‘endemic’, theme of disease

• ‘Elizabethan audiences may perhaps have connected Polonius with Francis Walshingham, Queen Elizabeth’s… spymaster’ - VARDY