critics Flashcards
Von Goethe
‘All duties seem holy to Hamlet’
Mabillard
‘Claudius is not a monster, he is morally weak’
Arnold
‘Claudius’ soliloquy gives the impression of rhetorical pageantry rather than sincere contrition.’
Charney
‘Through madness, Ophelia suddenly makes a forceful assertion of her being’
Prosser
‘Laertes is like a hurricane’
Aristotle
‘The aim of tragedy is to arouse sensations of pity and fear’
T.S. Eliot
‘The opening scene of Hamlet is as well constructed as that of any play ever written’
Knight
‘Claudius shows every sign of being an excellent diplomat and king’
Showalter
‘Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language’
Rogers
‘In Shakespeare’s society, the ideal female is cherished for her youth, beauty and purity’
Mack (1)
Hamlet can be privileged in madness to say things about the corruption of human behaviour
Hazlitt
‘Hamlet seems incapable of deliberate action’
Bradley (1)
‘Hamlet’s delay is due to…a form of melancholy’
Bradley (2)
‘Hamlet is a tragedy of thought.’
Swinbourne
‘The single characteristic of Hamlet’s character is by no means hesitation but the strong conflux of contending forces.’
Edwards
‘We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet.’
Muir
‘Gertrude is a moral defective’
Wilson
‘The ghost is the linchpin of Hamlet’
Mack (2)
‘In the final act, Hamlet accepts his world and we discover a different man’
Frye
‘Hamlet is a tragedy without catharsis’
Mcgrory
Women are either innocent maiden saints or loathsome sinners, and the deciding factor is nearly almost sex.’
Showalter quoting swinbourne
Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsion against women
Smith
‘Polonius seems to love his children….his means of action however are totally corrupt’
Adelman (1)
Despite his ostensible agenda of revenge, the main psychological task that Hamlet seems to set himself is not to avenge his father’s death but to remake his mother
Adelman (2)
Throughout the play, the covert drama of reformation vies for priority with the overt drama of revenge
Kastan
The absence of clear answers to questions is central to Shakespearean tragedy
Coleridge (1)
Ophelia’s… natural carelessness of innocence
Coleridge (2)
The strange and forced manner of Ophelia, …..was not acting a part of her own, but was a decoy
Coleridge (3)
The soliloquy of Ophelia, which follows, is the perfection of love—so exquisitely unselfish!
Calderwood
‘Hamlet senses that he too has become part of a larger process: the plot of Providence as scripted by the divine Playwright’
O’Toole
Hamlet is a great problem for the tragic hero theme because he is patently not a hero
Kerrigan
Ophelia is a lesser we have never really known
Newell
Hamlet is entirely motivated by reason and untouched by passion
Johnson
Hamlet is rather an instrument than an agent
Knight (2)
Hamlet is infact the poison in the veins of the community
