Hamlet Critical Quotes

Question 1

Coleridge on Hamlet

Answer 1

Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment

Question 2

Josipovici on Hamlet

Answer 2

He is being asked… to avenge his father’s foul and unnatural murder

Question 3

Rose on Hamlet and Gertrude

Answer 3

The violence towards the mother is the effect of the desire for her

Question 4

Johnson on Hamlet

Answer 4

Hamlet is rather an instrument than an agent

Question 5

Coleridge on Hamlet’s belief

Answer 5

Hamlet has no belief in himself or anything

Question 6

Coleridge on Hamlet’s lack of action

Answer 6

Hamlet is a man incapable of acting because he thinks too much

Question 7

Taine on the plot

Answer 7

A story of moral poisoning

Question 8

Edwards on Ophelia

Answer 8

Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet

Question 9

Belesey on revenge (excess)

Answer 9

Revenge us always in excess of justice

Question 10

Belesey on revenge and justice

Answer 10

Revenge exists on a margin between justice and and crime

Question 11

Showalter on Ophelia

Answer 11

Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language… she represents the strong emotions that Elizabethans thought womanish

Question 12

Fench on Rosencrantz and guildenstern

Answer 12

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sacrifice the bond of human friendship to a social propriety

Question 13

Pollimore on how Hamlet reflects England

Answer 13

Articulates a crisis in the decay of a traditional order in England

Question 14

Showalter on women

Answer 14

Madness is a product of the female body and nature

Question 15

Dusinberre on women/Ophelia

Answer 15

Ophelia is stifled by the authority if the male world

Question 16

Leverenz on Ophelia’s madness

Answer 16

Ophelia’s suicide becomes a microcosm of the male world’s banishment of the female