Critical Views Flashcards
ActionVInaction Kieran Ryan 2016
“main cause of the whole tragic train of events is Hamlet’s compulsion to postpone”
ActionVInaction Coleridge 1930s (spur of moment)
“Hamlet is obliged to act in the spur of the moment”
ActionVInaction GH Lewis 1800s (thought)
“Hamlet may be called the tragedy of thought”
ActionVInaction Goethe, 1795 (Hamlet, soul unfit)
“Represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it”
ActionVInaction Hazlitt, 1800s (Eaten up)
“His powers of action have been eaten up by thought”
Wilson Knight
‘(Claudius is a) good and gentle king’
Contrast to his controlling nature regarding Hamlet and people around him - R and G?
Rebecca Smith
‘Polonius clearly loves his children even though his methods may be corrupt’
Corruption = his spying/attempts to control his children
Doran’s Hamlet
Use of CCTV
Creates theme of surveillance Constantly being watched/ controlled
But ghost isn’t picked up - limitations to this surveillance
Showing cannot watch everything?
Or maybe just that ghost is not real
Icke’s Andrew Scott as Hamlet
Icke’s Andrew Scott as Hamlet
Doran’s version
David Tennant (playing Hamlet) wears a crown - symbolizing how he tries to be King but can’t fulfill this due to his inability to get revenge - presenting him as indecisive as if he wants to be powerful but is too indecisive.
Kozintev’s production- Ophelia’s lack of freedom
- A still formal dance, like a puppet
_ Ophelia’s heavy, wire-fenced farthingale (hooped skirt) is suggestive of someone living in a cage.
Dorans Hamlet 2009
Hamlet physically grasps his head illustrating the level of commitment to his father, almost trying to physically pull out the memories. Viewers can also say this is the first introduction to Hamlet’s madness and foreboding his decision paralysis later in the play.
Dorans Hamlet- depression
Hamlet leans against the walls in mental pain, obvious act of depression and perhaps madness.
David Tennant Act 2 Scene 2 - Hamlets mad
-lack of shoes
-crawled into a ball on the floor
-looks directly at the camera- break of the 4th wall shows he is mad and lunatic.
-anger draws im to act out players scene on the floor
-chases the camera- asks the viewer if he is a coward
-hits himself
-walks near 4 chairs (instead of him his mother and father, his uncle now sits with them?)
-devises a plan
-Tshirt and lankyness shows hamlets true persona- there is a lack of masculinity and hamlet does not bear the courage to avenge his father like Fortinbras or Laertes.
Paapa Essiedu- Act 3 Scene 1
- extremely colourful clothing- madness and luncacy
-one hand expresses himself, the other stays pocketed (appearance vs reality) - crying and confused
-he is in isolation
-reminiscent and thoughtful
-tears
-hand print over his heart
-defaces suit- he is trying to live up to his father who is now dead - corrupted mind (paint)
-corrupted setting
-
Newell 1991- Hamlets soliloquy
claims his soliloquy is “entirely motivated by reason, untouched my passion”
This is dramatic as Hamlet contemplates suicide yet claims he has no passion.
Hamlets mousetrap play- Bradshaw
“lacks real evidence”
Pragati- hamlets hatred of women
“Hamlet develops a deep seeded hatred for women from seeing his mother’s hasty marriage”
Smith- gertrude is passive
“pleasing men is Gertrude’s main interest”
Coleridge 1765
“hamet is, throughout the whole play , an instrument rather than an agent”
hamlet does nothing to stop people lying to him.
David Scott Kastan
“for shakespeare, uncertainty is the point”
william Hazlitt 1817
“Hamlet is as little as a hero as a man can well be”
Janet Adelman 1992
“Hamlet sets himself to remake his mother: the virgin mother”
Voltaire 1748
“A vulgar and barbarous tragedy”
Anna Brownwell comments on Ophelia’s character
“O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast upon the briars of the working-day world”
Francis Bacon- Revenge
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out”
G Wilson Knight
Death
Describes hamlet as the ambassador of death, suggesting that he navigated the complexities of life while being acutely aware of mortality.
CS Lewis
Death
Hamlet is haunted not by a physical fear of dying but of being dead
Jacqueline Rose
Gertrude and hamlet
The violence towards the mother is the effect of the desire for her
1948 Film on Hamlets inaction
This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind
Belsey- morality
Revenge is not justice
