Hamlet - AO5 Critics

Francis Bacon

It is a prince's part to pardon

Robert N. Watson

Revenge is tragic because it divides the protagonist against himself, casting him in incompatible roles

Catherine Belsey

Revenge is always in excess of justice

Samuel Johnson (revenge)

Hamlet trying to kill Claudius in 3.3 is "too horrible to be read or uttered"

Thomas Hamner (1700s)

To destroy a man's soul…this surely, in a Christian prince, is such a piece of revenge as no tenderness for any parent can justify

John McCrae (revenge)

“Revenge was a code of honour a son inherited for his father”

Jonny Patrick

" A good king must be a good actor"

Dr Sean McEvoy (Claudius)

A strong monarch, like Claudius, might well be thought preferable to a weak but virtuous one

Castiglione

"A successful prince must imitate both the lion and the fox…it is not necessary for a prince to have all the good qualities…but it is necessary that he seems to have them"

Rob Warrall

Hamlet's reason for not taking his own life is 'not religious orthodoxy but a fear of the unknown.'

Rob Warrall (context)

Suicide in Elizabethan England 'the ultimate state of gracelessness'

Rob Worrall (hope)

Hamlet comes to find the human condition painful, purposeless, poisonous...it is of greater merit than non-existence

Elaine Showalter (Ophelia)

Ophelia's dead body in Millais' painting as "an object of aesthetic contemplation"

Maurice Hunt

Hamlet uses inappropriate terms of life in talking about the dead

Phoebe Spinrad

Yorick has become "nothing more than a box office gimmick designed to draw laughter or screams from the audience"

L. C. Knights 

The ghost is one who ‘‘clamours for revenge” and  “whose command had been for a sterile concentration on death and evil.”

David Allan (asexual)

Sparked by the actions of the play, Hamlet becomes aware that he is incapable of being sexually attracted to women or men

David Allan (sexual repulsion)

In 1.2, Hamlet's "mournfulness and grief is overbore by disgust"

Ernest Jones

The murder of his father evokes in him indignation…his mother's guilty conduct awakens in him the intensest horror

Jaqueline Rose

The violence towards the mother is the effect of the desire for her

John Russell

By the end of the Closet Scene, ‘Though Gertrude is still nominally the wife of Claudius, she is no longer psychically or sexually in dyadic union with him. She has… consented to rejoin Hamlet in the paternal triangle, thus re-establishing the family configuration in its original form’

Joseph Westlund

Hamlet "regards Pyrrhus as being what he ought to be: cruel, instinctive, swift to act"

Colin Burrow

The good Stoic ‘completely controlled his passions by his reason and so insulated himself from the influence of Fortune. By suppressing rage and amorous desires directed towards external objects, the Stoic became an impassive hero, who could take whatever the world through at him.’

Kate Flint (comedy)

Comedy is described as a standard cure both for melancholy and for the melancholic’s inability to adjust to his situation

Manfred Draudt

Hamlet behaves like a "bitter court jester" when he makes jokes at the other characters' expense

Michael D. Bristol

Hamlet and Claudius stalk each other like two murderous clowns attempting to achieve strategic advantage over the other

Kate Flint (madness)

Hamlet's madness 'gives him the license of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing the language of social decorum'

Kate Flint (body politic)

Hamlet's disorder not only transgresses acceptable aristocratic behaviour but…threatens the well-being of the state as well as the individual

Kiernan Ryan

His feigned madness is…the only sane response to an insane predicament

Glynn Austen

Hamlet's antic disposition is "feigned, forced" rather than the actual "inflamed madness" of revenge tragedy customs

John Dryden (Romanticism)

Madness is to genius near allied

Stephen Siddall

Hamlet rejects his required role and adopts his own – that of the black-clad malcontent

John McCrae (fathers/sons)

Hamlet is 'the tragedy of fathers and sons'

Jan Kott

Hamlet is mad because politics is itself madness when it destroys all feeling and affection

Gillian Woods

Artifice is essential to finding the truth

H. D. F. Kitto

Polonius is ‘a mean and crafty man who meets a violent death while spying; and that such a man should be so killed is, in a large sense, right.’

Stephen Siddall (acting)

As a rebel and an idealist, he himself constantly adopts roles in relation to the world he inhabits, generally to disconcert the orthodox

Joost Daalder (play-within-the-play)

So strong is the lure of art that Hamlet comes to believe that he will serve his practical situation best by putting on the play-within-the-play

Joost Daalder (art)

Hamlet's behaviour is similar to that of an artist who is preoccupied with the creative process

David Pellegrini

Life itself is fixed on a stage of limited scope

William Hazlitt (Ophelia)

His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances

Samuel Jonson (Ophelia)

Hamlet 'treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty'

Ernest Jones

When sexual repression is highly pronounced, then both pure and the sensual women are felt to be hostile. Misogyny…is the inevitable result

Robert N. Watson (women)

Shakespeare’s women who seek more than momentary corrective power appear generally monstrous and destructive

John McCrae (female relationships)

"The two female relationships in the play are the ones that make him lose it"

Dr Sean McEvoy (Claudius x Gertrude)

Claudius genuinely loves Gertrude in a manner which contrasts greatly with Hamlet's feelings for Ophelia

Eleanor Prosser (renaissance)

“Hamlet is trapped between two worlds. The moral code from which he cannot escape is basically medieval, but his instincts (for revenge) are with the renaissance.

Graham Holderness

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

Sir Thomas Browne (Romanticism)

"United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other"

Laurence Olivier

This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind

A. C. Bradley

Hamlet is a "tragedy of thought"

John McCrae (tragedy)

"Hamlet is the tragedy of every man, and indeed woman on earth because it is the tragedy of moving, becoming, from nothing to something"

Michael Hattaway

Hamlet becomes something of a monster, careless of those around him

John McCrae (harmony)

By the end of the play, "Hamlet has balanced the head, heart and physical strength…all component parts of a man in perfect harmony with himself"

G. Wilson Knight

Claudius is not a criminal. He is a good and gentle king enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him with his crime

Samuel Johnson (Claudius)

The king's intemperance is very strongly impressed

Elaine Showalter (Gertrude)

Gertrude is "Eclectically prominent and a character highly scrutinized in Western culture"

A.C. Bradley

Gertrude’s “incestuous wedlock” results in Hamlet’s mind being “poisoned” against all women

Margaret Atwood

"The most common representation would see her as a lustful, adulterous and incestuous woman"

Carolyn Heilbrun

Gertrude is "intelligent, penetrating and gifted with a remarkable talent for concise and pithy speech"

Rebecca Smith

Gertrude is a "compliant, loving, unimaginative woman whose only concern is pleasing others"

Carol Rutter

Ophelia is bullied and betrayed by every character in this play

Elaine Showalter

Deprived of thought, sexuality, language, Ophelia's story becomes the Story of 'O', the zero, the empty circle or mystery of feminine difference, the cipher of female sexuality to be deciphered by feminist interpretation

Lilla Grindlay

While Laertes is able to live it up in Paris, Ophelia is virtually immured in the domestic sphere, with only the quintessentially feminine pastime of sewing to entertain her

William Hazlitt (Ophelia)

Ophelia is a character too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon… Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos

Charney and Charney

Ophelia’s madness enables her to assert her being; she is no longer forced to keep silent and play the dutiful daughter

Joseph Addison

Every time [the Ghost] enters he is still more terrifying. Who can read the speech without trembling?

Richard Vardy

[Polonius] is more than a ‘foolish, prating knave’. He is at the heart of the rotten Danish state and embodies the new realpolitik. He represents a modern age typified by political ruthlessness, surveillance and secrecy

Matthew Harkins (Laertes)

Unlike Fortinbras, Laertes knows his place: a properly subordinate youth whose privileges derive from his father's usefulness to the state

Eleanor Prosser (Laertes)

"Laertes is a hurricane. He defies his sovereign King, his conscience and his God"

Peter Gillies

Horatio acts as a barometer of trust for the audience, providing a reference for discerning the authenticity of events in the plot and the quality of choices made by Hamlet

J. H. Walter

Horatio is the witness and measure of truth throughout the whole play

Hudson

Horatio is “superbly self-contained” “the medium whereby many of the hero's finest and noblest qualities are revealed”

Matthew Harkins (Fortinbras)

Claudius characterises Fortinbras as a "troublesome but feckless youth"