Hamlet Critical Quotes 2

Question 1

Madness

Answer 1

• Maynard Mack: Madness allows “an intuitive unformulated awarenesses that reach the surface in free (yet relevant) associations”. Hamlet “can be privileged in madness to say things”.
• Kate Flint: “Hamlet embodies the melancholic’s inability to adjust to their situation”. In Hamlet’s case the situation is what is asked of him and it causes him great suffering as a result.

Question 2

Memory and Remembrance

Answer 2

• John Kerrigan: “The language of the play is full of “memory” and its cognates”
• A.C. Bradley: “They are also, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness or glory.” – on the suffering and calamity that reside within Shakespearean tragedy.
• Michael Mangan: “For Hamlet himself, the idealized memory of his dead father, the great warrior-king dominates his imagination, together with its negative image, the demonized Claudius”

Question 3

Kingship and Statecraft

Answer 3

• Sean McEvoy: “Claudius can be seen to be an effective, modern ruler.”
• Richard D Altick: “the cunning and lecherousness of Claudius’ evil has corrupted the whole kingdom of Denmark”

Question 4

Death

Answer 4

• A.C. Bradley: “It is, in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death.” – on Tragedy as a genre.
• Janet Adelman: “Hamlet’s father has become unavailable to him, not only through the fact of his death but through the complex vulnerability that his death demonstrates.” “Here, as in Shakespeare’s later plays, the loss of the father turns out in fact to mean the psychic domination of the mother”

Question 5

Masculinity

Answer 5

-Michael Mangan: “Throughout the play, the title character continually searches for models on which to construct his own masculine identity”

Question 6

Action and Inaction

Answer 6

• A.C Bradley: Hamlet’s inability to act is his “fatal flaw” - an essential trait of tragedy that leads to the character’s downfall
• Janet Adelman: “in the end, it is the specter of his mother, not his uncle-father, who paralyzes his will. The Queen, the Queen’s to blame”
• Ernest Jones - Oedipal Complex, makes historical sense.

Question 7

Deception

Answer 7

“no-one in this play knows or understands anyone else.” – Linda Charnes

Question 8

Claudius

Answer 8

Sean McEvoy: “Claudius can be seen to be an effective modern ruler”
Carla Stockton: “clearly the antagonist”
“the cunning and lecherousness of Claudius’ evil has corrupted the whole kingdom of Denmark” – Richard D Altick page 60

Question 9

Women

Answer 9

Maugerite Tassi: ‘[i]n fulfilling her tragic role, the end crowns all; in the final moments of her life, she performs an extraordinary act that gives Hamlet motive and cue for killing the King’
Gertrude: “negative and insignificant” – TS Eliot
Ophelia:
“suffers a series of patriarchal oppressions” – Emi Hamana