HAMLET CRITICS - English Literature Y12 Mocks

Soundbites from critical analysis by scholar/theme.

INACTION

Peter Saccio

• “for all his self-blame about delay…Hamlet has not done so badly in hesitating over what course of action he should take”

• “Reason, the sense that there are alternatives, the worry about consequence - these things have restrained his passions.”

• “Hamlet is a person with a conscience….He must be sure that it is the right thing that he will do, or he will not do it at all.”

INACTION

A.C. Bradley

““the ghost’s demands for revenge forces Hamlet into a moral quandary and raises the problem of acting despite uncertainty”

REVENGE / ACTION

Peter Saccio

• “Both of them (Ophelia and Laertes) surrender to the difficult situation, both yield wholly to passion…”

• Ophelia and Laertes show “the disastrous results of alternatives he could have chosen”

MADNESS

Maynard Mack

• “madness is to some degree a punishment or doom”

• “the madness has a further dimension, as insight”

• “Hamlet wears…the guise of the madman”

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

MADNESS

J. Dover Wilson

• “Hamlet assumes madness because he cannot help it”

• “He no longer retains perfect control over himself.”

MADNESS

Peter Saccio

“Indeed, sometimes he casts off reason altogether and behaves quite madly, but he confines himself to speaking daggers…rather than using them.”

MEMORY / GRIEF

Kerrigan

• “Hamlet never promises to revenge, only to remember.”

• “Such memories divert and slow the play…which contrasts with the movement of Shakespeare’s other tragedies and…The Spanish Tragedy”

• “Even before he sees the ghost, the prince remembers his father.”

• “Remembrance haunts him, even to the point of madness…even when comfort is found in the past, that only makes the present more desolate”

• “The ghost condemns Hamlet to an endless, fruitless yearning.”

• “In saying her farewells, Ophelia is, in effect, forcing him to remember.”

DEATH / AFTERLIFE

Peter Saccio

“He (Hamlet) does not fear death; he fears what may happen after death.”

DEATH / RELIGION

Mark Matheson

“Shakespeare emphasises the torments of purgatory which reflects the doctrines and practices of late medieval Catholicism.”

DEATH

Wilson Knight

“Hamlet is morbidly obsessed with death”

WOMEN / MISOGYNY

Elaine Showalter

• “Ophelia has become the representation of female insanity”

• “Ophelia’s madness is the document of female oppression”

WOMEN / MISOGYNY

Carolyn Heilbrun

• “Indeed, Freud and Jones see her, the object of Hamlet's Oedipus complex, as central to the motivation of the play”

• “Gertrude is more sinned against than sinning”

• “The character of Gertrude has usually been misunderstood”

• “Her speeches have been short, however warm and loving, and conciseness of statement is no the mask of a dull and shallow woman.”

WOMAN

Kerrigan

“Ophelia’s apparent rejection is one factor in Hamlet’s distress”

WOMEN

J. Dover Wilson

“Hamlet felt himself involved in his mother’s lust”

KINGSHIP

G. Wilson Knight

“Claudius is the representative of healthy and harmonius order.”

KINGSHIP

J. Dover Wilson

“The usurpation (illegal/unlawful seizure of someone else's power) is one of the main factors in the plot of Hamlet.”

KINGSHIP

A.C. Bradley

“The tragic hero’s fate affects the welfare of the whole nation or empire”

APPEARANCE VS REALITY

Harold Jenkins

“The world of Hamlet is a world of spying”

APPEARANCE VS REALITY

Maynard Mack

“The play’s emphasis is on mystery, ambiguity, and uncertainty.”

CORRUPTION AND DECAY

Maynard Mack

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

CORRUPTION AND DECAY

J. Dover Wilson

“The stock from which he sprang was rotten”

SUFFERING

A.C. Bradley

• “Hamlet here projects his sadness at his father’s death onto the entire world around him”

• “the fact that this sadness occurs so early in the narrative foreshadows the suffering which Hamlet is to endure throughout the rest of the play”.