Critical Approaches Flashcards
What was the interpretation of Renaissance and Restoration critics (1600s)?
Concerned with play’s portrayal of madness
Genre of Revenge Tragedy was most popular of the time
Productions of Hamlet exaggerated violent aspects after reopening of theatres after the Puritans
Shakespeare looked down on by his contemporaries
What did John Jump say about contemporary playgoers’ opinion on delay?
“they gave no sign of noticing that he delayed at all”
What did John Evelyn say about the tastefulness of Hamlet?
“the old plays begin to disgust this refined age”
How did Drake defend Hamlet?
There was justice in the play because the murderers are “caught in their own toils” and Ophelia’s immodesty can be explained by her desperate state
What was Voltaire’s criticism of Hamlet’s immorality and violence (early 1700s)?
He called Hamlet the “fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage”
What was Dr Johnson’s opinion on the Act 3 Scene 3 soliloquy?
It was “too horrible to be read or to be uttered”
What did Dr Johnson think about Hamlet’s lack of moral purpose and failure?
Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia was “useless and wanton cruelty”
“the apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose”
What did Thomas Hanmer praise about Hamlet in 1736?
If Hamlet had not delayed, “there would have been an end of our play”
What did Romantic critics praise about Hamlet?
It expresses the Romantic interest in the individual, a refined psychological/ emotional state, intellectual, the imagination
Had a tendency to read the play as a text rather than a practical performance
What did William Hazlitt believe about the construction of the play?
“There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage”
How was Hamlet relatable to Romantic critics?
They looked mainly at Hamlet’s character and psychological state, saw how the individual could be affected by e.g. isolation, melancholy, personal misery which made him relatable
Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw a “smack of Hamlet” in himself
Saw Hamlet as an everyman character, William Hazlitt: “it is we who are Hamlet”
What did Lamb say about Hamlet’s delay and intellect?
He described a “shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet”
What did Henry Mackenzie note about Hamlet’s delay?
“with the strongest purposes of revenge he is irresolute and inactive”
What did early 20th century criticism focus on?
Character analysis, characters caught in particular circumstances or explained by psychoanalytic theories
What did A C Bradley argue about Hamlet’s conflict?
It’s a result of his “inward struggle”
He is a “man who at any other time and in any other circumstances… would have been perfectly equal to his task” but could not cope with the position he was in
