Hamlet Critical Quotes Flashcards
Hazlitt ~ “his powers…”
“His powers of action have been eaten up by thought”
Showalter ~ “Ophelia is…”
“Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language”
Swinburne ~ Hamlet’s “innermost…”
Hamlet’s “innermost nature is the strong conflux of contending forces
Bradley ~ Hamlet is “a son…”
“A son distressed by his mother’s sexual misbehaviour”
Wagner ~ “perhaps the frailty…”
“Perhaps the frailty of women has embittered Hamlet to callousness”
(Callousness means insensitive and cruel disregard for others)
French ~ “the incertitude…”
“The incertitude that informs the play is attributed to… appearance and reality”
Knight ~ “Hamlet is…”
“Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark”
Ernest Jones ~ “Claudius has…”
“Claudius has fulfilled precisely Hamlet’s own Oedipal fantasies”
Lacan ~ “Hamlet just…”
“Hamlet just doesn’t know what he wants”
Coleridge ~ “Hamlet is obliged to…”
“Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment”
Hazlitt ~ Hamlet “seems incapable…”
Hamlet “seems incapable of deliberate action”
Hazlitt ~ Hamlet’s speeches and soliloquies “are…”
“Are as real as our own thoughts”
Wilson ~ “the ghost is…”
“The ghost is the linchpin of Hamlet”. If you remove it, “the whole play falls to pieces”
Leverenz ~ “Hamlet’s disgust at…”
“Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translate into violent revision against women and into his brutal behaviour towards Ophelia”
Showalter ~ “madness is a product of…”
“Madness is a product of the female body and female nature”
