Corruption & Death

Question 1

Caroline Spurgeon (1930), on the Country’s Sickness

Answer 1

“ Hamlet sees the country and the people in it in terms of a sick body, needing medicine or surgeon’s knife. “

Question 2

G Wilson Knight (1933), on Hamlet & Death

Answer 2

“ Hamlet is an ambassador of death. He cannot break out of the closed cycle of loathing and self contempt. “

Question 3

G Wilson Knight (1933), on Hamlet as Poison

Answer 3

“ Hamlet is a figure of nihilism and death. He has been poisoned by his grief…He is a sick soul commanded to heal and is in fact a poison in the veins of the community. “

Question 4

Leonard Tennenhouse, on Corruption

Answer 4

Hamlet attempts to “ locate and purge a corrupt element within the aristocratic body. “

Question 5

Makhalik on corruption’s chain

Answer 5

“Corruption in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is represented as a chain of events starting with greed, spreading by manipulation through unquestioning loyalty… and concluding with the mad act of revenge”