Hamlet Critic Quotes Flashcards
Goethe (Hamlet and Duty)
All duties seem holy to Hamlet
“Schofield (Claudius’ morality)”
“He has the persuasiveness and physical courage of a ruler, but is morally empty”
Coleridge in 1800 (on Hamlet killing Claudius and Polonius)
Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment
Dawson (Claudius’ love for Gertrude)
He loved Gertrude deeply and genuinely
Sir Herbert Tree (Madness and Humour)
The key comic element of the play is madness
Bloom (Gertrude’s promiscuity)
a woman of exuberant sexuality, who inspires uxorious passion first in King Hamlet and later in Claudius
C.S Lewis (Hamlet’s fear of death)
Hamlet is haunted, not by a physical fear of dying, but of being dead
Elaine Showalter (Ophelia’s deprivations)
Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language
Rebecca Smith (Gertrude’s interests)
Pleasing men is Gertrude’s main interest
Diana Bornstein (advice given to women)
Women are often given the same advice that is given to servants… Chasity, piety, obedience
Henry Mackenzie (Hamlet’s purposes of Revenge)
With the strongest purposes of revenge, he is irresolute and inactive
J.H Walter (Polonius)
Cold-hearted devil
Gabriel Josipovici (Polonius’ moral compass)
A man whose moral compass is infinitely wobbly
Thomas Hamner (Hamlet’s actions in Act 3, scene 3)
Unworthy of a hero
Kate Flint (Hamlet’s inactivity in Act 3, scene 3)
He himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish
Jacqueline Rose (Hamlet’s violence towards his mother in Act 3, scene 4)
The violence towards the mother is the effect of the desire for her
Kate Flint (Hamlet’s madness)
gives him the licence of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing the language of social decorum
Goethe in 1795 (Hamlet as a tragic hero)
a poetic and morally sensitive soul crushed by the barbarous task of murder
Susan Synder (Hamlet comedy and tragedy)
Comedy can be seen as “the grounds from which tragedy develops”
Elaine Showalter (Ophelia as a character)
Ophelia is portrayed as “an insignificant minor character”
Samuel Johnson in 1765 (Hamlet’s inactivity)
Hamlet is rather an instrument than an agent
Coleridge in early 1800 (Hamlet’s thinking and action)
Hamlet is a man incapable of acting because he thinks too much
Gabriel Josipovici (Hamlet’s character)
Hamlet is a merge of the tragic hero and the clown figure
Wilson Knight in 1930 (on Claudius)
Claudius is a “good and gentle King”
A.C Bradley in 1904 (Hamlet on avenging his father)
Hamlet assumes without any questioning that he ought to avenge his father
John Dover Wilson in 1935 (the origins of the ghost)
we are never perfectly certain as to just who or what the ghost is
John Gielgud (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are “just toadies to the king”
Lee Edwards (Ophelia)
Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet
Avi Ehrlich in 1977 (female sexuality)
Hamlet is a play about a father and a son who were weak because they were undone… by sexually treacherous women
Wilson Knight in 1930 (Hamlet)
(Hamlet is) an element of evil in the state of Denmark
Amanda Mabillard (Claudius)
he is not a monster, he is morally weak
Alan Gardnier (Hamlet’s world)
The world of Hamlet is a remarkably enclosed one
Basil (homosexuality)
‘there is nothing to keep me straight’
Sybil Vane (purity, virginity)
‘little white body’
Basil -> DG (influence)
‘you talk as if you have no heart’
DG (entrapment, fearing reality)
‘Dorian Gray locked the door…he felt safe now’
Basil (guilt, sinning, religion)
‘sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed’
LH (exposure, religion)
‘I shall show you my soul’
Alan -> DG (corruption)
‘you have gone from corruption to corruption and culminated in crime’
DG -> Duchess of Monmouth (status of women)
‘she was very clever, too clever for a woman’
DG (appearance vs reality)
‘ugliness is the one reality’
Narrator -> DG about Sybil Vane (mortality, guilt)
‘her death is at you door’ ‘the man who destroyed her life’
DG -> Duchess (hedonism)
’ I have never searched for happiness…I have searched for pleasure’
DG about James Vane’s dead body (youth, appearance, façade)
‘the mask of youth had saved him’
DG about James Vane’s death (reality, secrecy)
‘his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe’
LH (mortality)
‘death is the only thing that ever terrifies me’
DG (repentance, reality)
‘I have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more’
DG (appearance vs reality)
‘then he loathed his own beauty…it was his beauty that had ruined him’
DG (appearance vs reality)
‘youth had spoiled him’ ‘his beauty had been but a mask, his youth a mockery’
DG (reality, art)
‘he seized the thing and stabbed the painting with it…it had been conscious. He would destroy it’
DG (resolution, realisation, sin, guilt)
‘it was the living death of his own soul that had troubled him’
