Critical Views

Question 1

Maynard Mack- notes how Shakespeare tragic heroes suffer madness or are associated with it

Answer 1

‘Madness is to some degree a punishment or doom’

Question 2

Pleasure of tragedy- A.D. Nuttall

Considers the tension between pleasure and pain in tragic drama

Answer 2

‘Similarly, if you like the disturbing kind of play then this disturbance is something you like, must itself be a further model of pleasure’

Question 3

The Shakespearean tragic hero: A.C. Bradley

Argues that Shakespearean tragedy necessarily centers on a character of high rank

Answer 3

“Such exceptional suffering and calamity […] are an essential ingredient in tragedy and chef source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity”

Question 4

Memory and remembrance- John Kerrigan

Answer 4

“Hamlet never promised to revenge only to remember”
“Such memories divert and slow the play […] contrasts with the movement of Shakespeare’s other tragedies”
“Through the loss is Ophelia, Hamlet feels that if his father”

Question 5

Avenging his father or saving his mother? Janet Adelman:

Answer 5

“Hamlet initiates the period of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies because it in effect rewrites the story of Cain and Abel as the story of Adam and Eve, relocating masculine identity in the presence of the adulterating female”

Question 6

The complexity of Hamlet: William Hazlitt:

Theories how Hamlets complex character reflects the full breadth of Shakespeare’s concerns

Answer 6

“It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment”

“He is the prince of philosophical speculators”