Critics for Hamlet Flashcards
Elaine Showalter - Romantic Ophelia
‘The Romantic Ophelia feels too much, as Hamlet overthinks; she drowns in a surfeit of feeling’
Minnie Hampton - Untainted love
he can no longer view Ophelia with untainted, pure love’
Minnie Hampton - Ophelia’s madness
{Ophelia’s madness is} ’the only sane response to an insane predicament in a society that no longer makes sense’
Abi Marett - Religion
Religious obedience
Abi Marett - reality of suicide
Hamlet recognises the difference between his idea of a painless purifying death and the reality of suicide
Lilla Grindlay - Poison
Denmark is as poisoned as the old king Hamlet’s body
Lilla Grindlay - Putrid corruption
Gertrude becomes mired in the father-and-son linguistic swirl of putrid corruption.
Will Tosh - Religion
the relationship between love and madness is evident
Richard Vardy - Polonius
Polonius - ‘nothing more than a stock character, an interfering, ageing busy-body
Richard Vardy - Politics
Power and politics trump family values in Claudius’ Denmark
Rob Worral - Human
Hamlet is about being human
Rob Worral - Political muscles
Claudius is flexing his newly acquired political muscles
Tanya Pollard - Satisfaction
There is no satisfaction for the audience in Hamlet’s revenge
Tanya Pollard - Stock character
Unwillingness to play a stock character
Emma Smith - Stasis
Hamlet’s sense of stasis, of being stuck is psychological
Emma Smith - Theatrical past
The real ghost of Hamlet is the theatrical past - caught in the throes of the past
Emma Smith - who are Hamlet’s strongest affections directed towards
Hamlet’s strongest affection is towards the dead
Catherine Belsey - is Hamlet not thinking of killing himself
(Is Hamlet perhaps not thinking of killing himself after all ) but debating an ethical question
Catherine Belsey - Interpretations of the play
A production is always an interpretation
Katy Limmer - Web of social and Political Power
(Rosencrantz and Guilderstern) Are firmly ensconced in the web of social and power relationships
Gillian Woods - Both Hamlets
Hamlet - both the character and the play in which he appears - are deeply concerned with the performance.
Gillian Woods - the boundary of performance
Hamlet polices the boundary between performance and reality
Gillian Woods - play within a play structure
The play within a play structure keeps us at a frustrating distance from the definite truth of things.
Tamara Tubb - Gertrude’s impact on the plays ending
She is an instrument in the actualisation of that revenge
Tamara Tubb - The tragic waste of Gertrude’s death
Her tragic waste provides a gory backdrop to Hamlet and Claudius’s rivalry
Emma Smith - Shakespeare’s timelessness
a play that seems to epitomise Shakespeare’s timelessness and modernity
Emma Smith - Legitimacy
the question of legitimacy and the rightful king haunts Hamlet and Hamlet
Emma Smith - Everyman
We prefer to see Hamlet as an everyman, representative of wider fragilities and insight into human nature
Emma Smith - Modern readings
modern reading focuses on the familial relationships over the political
we habitually drop the royal associations from the title
Ben Johnson
not of an age but for all of time
Jan Kott
Shakespeare, our contemporary
