Freudian Responses to Hamlet

Question 1

Freud on Hamlet’s murders

Answer 1

• Hamlet kills Polonius without a moment’s hesitations
• Hamlet later sends R+G to their deaths with no trouble to his conscience

Question 2

Freud on Hamlet’s delay

Answer 2

• Developed his own theory to explain the problem of Hamlet’s delay in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (1900)

Question 3

Freud on Hamlet’s Oedipal feelings

Answer 3

• Hamlet’s inability to act is rooted in his Oedipal feelings
• Children view their same sex parent as a rival for the opposite sex parent’s attention and affections

Question 4

Freud on Hamlet not killing Claudius

Answer 4

• ‘He cannot take vengeance on the the ,an who did away with his father and took that father’s place with the mother’
• Since Claudius has fulfilled ‘the repressed wishes’ of Hamlet’s childhood, he subconsciously feels too strong an affinity with him which prevent him from taking out his revenge
• Hamlet is restrained by the realisation that he is ‘no better than the sinner whom he is to punish’

Question 5

Janet Adelman on Gertrude

Answer 5

• Hamlet is primarily a family drama in which the figure of Gertrude, inspires ‘fantasies larger than she is’
• ‘Both the play and Hamlet shift blame for old Hamlet’s murder to Gertrude’

Question 6

Setting of Gertrude’s bedroom

Answer 6

• Some productions of the play allude to the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet by setting Act 3 Scene 4
• Helps suggest the repressed Oedipal impulses which Hamlet has towards his mother