hamlet critical quotes Flashcards
ac bradley
“exhibit in his latest hour all the glorious power”, “nobility” and “sweetness of his nature”
bacon (16th century philosopher/statesmen)
“revenge is a kind of wild justice… putteth the law out of office”
Sir Herbert Tree
The key comic element of the play is madness
parker
the king and the queens marriage bed is “stewed in corruption”
besley
“Revenge is not justice. It is rather an act of injustice on behalf of justice”
johnson
“Hamlet is…rather an instrument than an agent”
showalter
“ophelia is deprived from thought, sexuality and language”
campbell and quinn
not an “avenger” but a “christian elizabethan” who adopted the “confused beliefs of his age about ghosts
colerdige
“spur of the moment”
ct neeley
hamlet’s madness/grief is “fashionably introspecive and melancholy”
whereas opehlia’s is “eroticised”
Atlick
‘the cunning and lecherousness of Claudius’ evil has corrupted the whole kingdom of Denmark’
schofield
persuasiveness and physical courage of a ruler, but is morally empty (claudius)
knight
“Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark.”
Ryan 4
the other charge Hamlet levels at himself – that he’s guilty of cowardice – doesn’t hold up either.
for the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern he feels not a twinge of guilt.
ac bradley suggetss inaction is from a “form of depression called melancholy in Shakespeare’s day”
paralysed by the futility of the revenge his society demands that he seek,
Cannot ‘set it right’, ‘no adequate action’
Hamlet wavers and stalls, playing for time until circumstances force his hand and he kills Claudius in anger in the spur of the moment. -
(hamlet knows he cant set things right by killing claudius, its too late to truly do right by his father and nothing can change that. however, he is plagued by societal expectation to seek revenge as expected of him and gives in, but stalls until circumstances force him to do it)
Ernest Jones
repressed desire for his mother
