hamlet critics Cartes | Quizlet

Samuel Johnson on Hamlet's behaviour, 1765

"He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty"

Samuel Johnson on Hamlet's inaction, 1765

"Hamlet is rather an instrument than an agent"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1795

"To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the importance of it."

William Hazlitt on Hamlet's distraction in the play, 1817

"[Hamlet's] conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in the circumstances. It is that of asumed severity only. It is the affect of disappointed hope, of bitter hopes, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions about him. He might be excused..."

Coleridge and Hamlet's mind, 1818

Hamlet's mind is "disturbed" by a lack of "balance" between "the real and imaginary worlds" -links to A.C Bradley

Coleridge on Hamlet's inaction, 1818

"Hamlet is a man paralysed by excessive thought" -links to A.C Bradley, Hazlitt, Johnson and Wilson.

Shelley on Hamlet's indecision, 1830

"Whenever he does anything, he seems astonished at himself, and calls it rashness"

A.C Bradley on Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia, 1904

"That Hamlet was not far from insanity is very probable. His adoption of the pretense in madness ay well have been due in part to fear of its reality."

A.C Bradley, 1904

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

A.C Bradley, 1904

Hamlet is suffering from 'an excess of melancholy' from 'moral shock' linked to Gertrude

Sigmund Freud on Hamlet's insanity, 1911

"Hamlet is able to do anything but take vengeance upon the man who did away with his father and has taken his father's place with his mother- the man who shows him in realisation th repressed desires of his own childhood"

Freud on the Oedipal complex, 1911

"The loathing which should have driven him to revenge is thus replaced by self-reproach, by conscientious scruples, which tell him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is required to punish."

T.S Eliot, 1921

"The play is most certainly an artistic failure" -he said this because of Hamlet's unnecessary delays of excecuting the revenge.

Wilson Knight on Claudius, 1930

'Claudius shows every sign of being an excellent diplomatist and king'

'Claudius is a good and gentle king'

Arnold Kettle on whether the play is a tragedy on personality or circumstances, 1964

"Hamlet is not merely a renaissance prince..., he is the first modern intellectual in our literature. And his dilemma of the modern intellectual; his ideas and values are at odds with his actions"

David Leverenz on the treatment of Ophelia, 1978

"everyone has used her; Polonius, to gain favour; Laertes, to belittle Hamlet; Claudius, to spy on Hamlet; Hamlet, to express rage at Gertrude and Hamlet again, to express his feigned madness with her as decoy"

David Leverenze on Ophelias breaking point, 1978

"Not allowed to love and unable to be false, Ophelia breaks"

Wilson, 1979

"Hamlet... is simply the most disappointing of all characters- because he will not and cannot satisfy our hopes- also very often, the most urgently familiar" -links to A.C Bradley and Coleridge

Elaine Showalter, 1985

"Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality, language" Ophelia portrayed as "an insignificant minor character"

Lisa Jardine on misogyny, 1996

she questioned why critics such as Freud and Eliot were so keen to place "the plays burden of guilt" on thefigure of Gertrude and present Hamlet as a "blameless hero"

Jacqueline Rose,

Gertrude is the symbolic 'scape goat of the play'

- lots of focus on her sexuality

- all comes from male dialogue

- voiceless

Belsey,

"Revenge is not justice. It is rather an act of injustice on behalf of justice"

massai, feminist reading of Hamlet, 2018

she described Hamlet at "one of the most misogynistic plays" and that "Gertrude is the target of thi hatred"