Critics (AO5) Flashcards
Coleridge
Hamlet has “excessive reflectiveness”
Coleridge 2- Hamlet taking action
Hamlet “loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.”
Leverenz - Hamlet’s qualities
“Hamlet’s disgust at the female passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsion against women and into his brutal behaviour towards Ophelia.”
Dusinberre - Ophelia and men
“Ophelia is stifled by the authority of the male world.”
TS Elliot
[Gertrude] “dealing with the effects of a mother’s guilt upon her son.”
Smith - Gertrude’s role
“Gertrude has not moved in the play towards independence or a moral stance.”
Showalter
“Ophelia embodies the male attitudes to female sexuality and insanity”
Blackmore - Laertes
Laertes “could not understand the nobility of Hamlet’s character”
Bradley - Laertes’ qualities
Laertes “possesses in abundance the very quality which the hero seems to lack.”
Bradley
Hamlet is “a man of exquisite moral sensibility”
Bamber - Gertrude
Gertrude is “a character of ambiguous morality whom we can never fully know”
Williamson
“Hamlet is too intellectual to be practical”
Knight
“Claudius as he appears is not a criminal, he is a good and gentle king.”
Besley
“Revenge exists on the margins between crime and justice”
Bacon
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice”
