key critic quotes

Adelman

  • “Hamlet wants to remake his mother in the image of the Virgin mother”

  • “his revenge isn’t achieved until he avenges his mother’s death”

  • “Gertrude is an ambiguously innocent character”

  • “Hamlet wants to purify his mother”

Bradley

  • “the spirit comes from the dead to enforce a moral order”

  • “the dynamic between Hamlet and Gertrude is central to the play”

Charney

  • “through madness, Ophelia suddenly makes a forceful assertion of her being”

Collier

  • Ophelia’s madness is “immodest”

Greenblatt

  • “the ghost is distinctively catholic”

  • “the world of Hamlet is one which not only encourages deception but makes it a necessity for survival”

Hazlitt

  • “Hamlet seems incapable of deliberate action”

  • “when he is most bound to act he remains sceptical”

  • “whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it to himself as a means of general reasoning”

  • “he moralises his own feelings and experiences”

  • “the characters think and speak and act just as they might do if left entirely to themselves”

Hopkins

  • “the skull is tangible and the ghost is intangible, the ghost may have evil intentions”

  • “Ophelia’s flowers are methods of contraception/abortion”

Lewis

  • “weird ‘thing’ exists but cannot be explained” - ghost

Mabillard

  • “Claudius is not a monster; he is morally weak”

Mack

  • “Hamlet adopts the guise of a madman”

  • “he’s privileged in madness to say things about the corruption of human nature”

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

O’Farrell - Hamnet

  • Hamnet explores the connection between the ghost and Hamlet - suggests that the play was a way for Shakespeare to channel his grief

  • the 2025 movie shows Shakespeare’s wife seeing the play as a cathartic processing of their grief over their son

Rogers

  • “in Shakespeare’s society, the ideal female is cherished for her youth, beauty and purity”

Showalter

  • “Ophelia’s madness is a rebellion against male-dominated structures that define her identity”

  • “Hamlet’s madness is associated with intellectual and imaginative genius, Ophelia’s with erotomania or love sickness”

  • “Ophelia is a powerful symbol of female oppression”

Wells

  • “the equivocal features in Claudius’ language suggests inner anxieties” - body politic integration, flattery of the court, over-frequent reference to the royal (we, us, our)

Kerrigan

  • “remembrance haunts him, even to the point of madness”

  • “his words to Horatio are consistent with a degree of suffering”

  • his relationship with Ophelia is him “attempting to replace a dead love-object with a living one”

  • “through the loss of Ophelia, Hamlet feels that of his father”