Critics across time: Hamlet and Gertrude Flashcards
Learn useful critical views and how to integrate them into analysis of Hamlet's relationship with Gertrude
“Hamlet’s mind…is constantly occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world without, giving substance to shadows..” (Coleridge, 1818)
Coleridge’s point is that Hamlet’s intellectual mind is so overactive that it distorts his perceptions of the actual, real world. Use this idea to argue that he exaggerates the sins of Gertrude by brooding on her ‘incestuous’ relationship with Claudius, her sexuality, and not acknowledging her political motive in marrying him, or giving enough credit to her claim to be innocent of any complicity (“as kill a king?”)
“[Hamlet’s] far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination.” (Von Schlegel, 1811)
Von Schlegel sees Hamlet as weak in resolution, using his moral deliberations as just an excuse not to act. You could use this idea to argue for/against the notion that he is overstating his moral objection to Gertrude and Claudius’ marriage as a distraction from the real business of taking revenge and doing the Ghost’s bidding.
“Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent.” (Samuel Johnson, 1765)
Johnson means that Hamlet, in general, is manipulated by stronger forces; he does not make things happen by himself. You could use this to argue that he vacillates between the conflicting forces acting on him, and his own desire to be a force of revenge himself: is he the Ghost’s ‘instrument’ of revenge, distracted by his preoccupations with Gertrude and Claudius’ marriage, or does he try to be the agent of revenge (as the RT genre requires) but confuses his agenda with his visceral distaste for his mother’s sexuality and his humanist scholarly ruminations on the ethics of revenge (‘to be..’)?
“The action required of Hamlet is ..violent, dangerous, difficult to accomplish perfectly…repulsive to a man of honour… But [these feelings] acquire an unnatural strength because they have an ally in something far stronger than themselves, the melancholic disgust and apathy…[and] deepening self-contempt.” (A.C.Bradley 1904)
Bradley contests Von Schlegel by implying that Hamlet’s moral ‘honour’ is partly responsible for his procrastination, but goes on to suggest that it is worsened by his ‘melancholy’ (being prone to depressive thought- “lost all my mirth”) and self loathing. You could argue that this might have been provoked by his disgust at Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius “within a month” of crying at old Hamlet’s funeral “like Niobe”. (“A beast that wants discourse of reason/Would have mourned longer.” 1:2:150-1) You could also argue against the idea that this is evidence of him being defined by his relationship with his mother, by suggesting that his melancholy is more to do with his idealising of Old Hamlet and not being of the same masculine calibre (“[Claudius is] no more like my father than I to Hercules” 1:2:152).
“What is it, then, that inhibits [Hamlet] in accomplishing the task which his father’s ghost has laid upon him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet is able to do anything but take vengeance upon the man who did away with his father and has taken his father’s place with his mother- the man who shows him in realization the repressed desires of his own childhood.” (Sigmund Freud, 1900)
Freud suggests that, if Hamlet suffers from the Oedipal subconscious sexual desire for his mother, his procrastination stems from his desire for revenge being replaced by self-disgust, as he starts to see himself as “no better than the murderer whom he is required to punish” (Freud). This idea clearly supports the argument that Hamlet is defined by his relationship with Gertrude, as his subconscious sexual desire for her, and its attendant complications regarding his unwelcome feelings of affinity with Claudius, is preventing him fulfilling the role of avenging protagonist as the audience would expect from the genre.
“[In 3:1, Hamlet] feels [Ophelia] is sent to lure him on and then, like his mother, to betray him at the behest of another man. … The underlying theme [of women as deceivers] relates ultimately to the splitting of the [infant’s] mother image…into two opposite pictures: one of a virginal Madonna, an inaccessible saint towards whom all sensual approaches are unthinkable, and the other of a sensual creature accessible to everyone. ..this dichotomy between love and lust, when sexual repression is highly pronounced, as with Hamlet, [means] both types of women are felt to be hostile…misogyny, as in the play, is the inevitable result.” (Ernest Jones, 1949- from ‘Hamlet and Oedipus’)
Jones, developing Freud’s ideas, suggests that Hamlet’s sexual repression accounts for his misogynistic outbursts toweards Ophelia in 3:1 and Gertrude in 3:4, as well as his inability to take vengeful action against Claudius, as to do so would mean stimulating his repressed Oedipal feelings- feelings he knows are immoral. Use references to these ideas in arguing for Hamlet being defined by his relationship to Gertrude, and why it inhibits his ability to follow the Ghost’s wishes for revenge; they could be used to contest Eliot’s views (next slide), perhaps as an accounting for the ‘excess’ of emotion he refers to; alternatively, argue against them using Erlich or Adelman and their emphasis on the ‘absent father’ idea, and criticise Jones for seeing the characters a bit like patients.
“Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear…[he] is up against the difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by his mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it; his disgust envelops and exceeds her. It is thus a feeling which he cannot understand; he cannot objectify it, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action.” (T.S. Eliot, 1919)
Eliot criticizes Shakespeare’s presentation of the character of Gertrude (“negative and insignificant”) to account for Hamlet’s ‘excess’ of emotions, saying that there is no adequate “objective correlative” (meaning a detailed presentation of a specific setting or situation that explains a character’s emotions to an audience) in the play. Argue against this by suggesting that if the cause of his ‘excess’ of emotions is his repressed sexuality, how would Shakespeare be able to provide an adequate objective correlative- given that it is psychological, subconscious, hidden? Do his raw emotions in soliloquy go some way to providing their own emotional setting, in contrast to the inherent deception of the public court at Elsinore?
I find that in ‘Hamlet’ Shakespeare deals not with repressed patricidal impulses but with a highly complex search, partially unconscious, for a strong father. Much more than he wants to have killed his father, Hamlet wants his father back, wants a strong man with whom to identify. (Avi Erlich, 1977)
Erlich rejects the Freudian reading of Hamlet’s character and suggests Hamlet’s struggle stems from him projecting the weaknesses of Old Hamlet (weaknesses which led him ultimately to his death) onto himself; he feels emasculated without a morally admirable patriarch and spends much of the play “unsuccessfully trying to fabricate a strong father.” Use this idea to argue against the notion that Hamlet is defined by his relationship with his mother alone; her marriage to Claudius has exacerbated his sense of patriarchal loss, given his unfavourable comparisons of Claudius to Old Hamlet at different points (e.g. “Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed/And batten on this moor?” 3:4:64-5)
“As his memory of his father pushes increasingly in the direction of idealisation, Hamlet becomes more acutely aware of his own distance from that idealisation and hence of his likeness to Claudius…[disrupting] the identification [with Old Hamlet] from which he could accomplish his vengeance.” (Janet Adelman 1992)
Adelman blames Gertrude for Hamlet’s inability to effectively identify with his real father: her “failure to mourn [Old Hamlet] appropriately is the symptom of her deeper failure to distinguish..between his father and his father’s brother”, meaning there is nowhere for Hamlet to see his father’s ideal image as it should be remembered, burdening him with the task of recreating it in his own mind. Refer to 1:2 and Gertrude’s apparent/veiled impatience with Hamlet’s mourning “suits of woe”: is she quietly conciliatory (Branagh) or strident and publicly critical (Godwin)? Difference in effect on Hamlet’s relationship with her? To what extent does this relationship define him, i.e. encourage or hinder his role as avenger?
