Hamlet Critical Readings

Question 1

Greenblatt (Ghost)

Answer 1

‘a young man from Wittenberg, with a distinctly Protestant temperament, is haunted by a distinctly Catholic ghost’

Question 2

Clinton (Ghost)

Answer 2

Described Ghost as a ‘diabolical manifestation on a mission to trick Hamlet into forfeiting his soul’

Question 3

Simone de Behaviour (Ophelia)

Answer 3

‘Ophelia is a sympathetic and engaging pawn of powerful men and her madness can be linked to the abandonment of Laertes, Polonius and Hamlet’

Question 4

Jan Kott (play)

Answer 4

Saw play as ‘a fable about totalitarian tyranny’ in 1960’s

Question 5

Foakes (Inaction)

Answer 5

Identified ‘Hamletism’ – procrastinating intellect

Question 6

Tennenhouse (murder)

Answer 6

‘What more heinous crime could be committed against the aristocratic body than a fratricidal that is also a regicide?’

Question 7

Voltaire (Hamlet)

Answer 7

Called Hamlet ‘the fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage’

Question 8

T.S. Eliot

Answer 8

‘Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary’

Question 9

Reginald Scot (humanist)

Answer 9

Believed Ghosts were the product of a disturbed mind or even bad omens for future

Question 10

Gibson (Fortinbras)

Answer 10

Uncertain as to whether Fortinbras’ rule will be ‘benign or tyrannical’

Question 11

Roman Catholics

Answer 11

Roman Catholics in 1500’s believed in purgatory

Question 12

Protestants

Answer 12

Protestants abolished idea of purgatory + believed Ghosts to be an evil agent of the devil

Question 13

Sigmund Freud

Answer 13

• Id = Hamlet’s desire to sleep with mother
• Hamlet recognises own id in Claudius – why he delays killing him
• Superego = Ghost, manages to control Hamlet’s desire

Question 14

Contemporary Audience

Answer 14

Shakespeare’s audience would have seen Hamlet as impulsive + unstatesmanlike – need to prove Ghost’s accusation

Question 15

Spurgeon

Answer 15

‘Hamlet is informed by multiple images of corruption and disease’

Question 16

Olivier’s Interpretation

Answer 16

• Ghost first appears in a “warlike form”
• Intro = ‘this is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind’
• Shadowy castle, uncertainty, supernatural
• Claudius’ actor portrayed soliloquy at same tone/pace so pre-meditated?
• Ghost appears to sound of heartbeats (iambic pentameter)
• Hamlet’s 1st soliloquy only spoken in head, ashamed, mad or mysterious?
• Ophelia always wears white – innocent, pure, obedient

Question 17

David Tenant’s Performance

Answer 17

• Pacing room during second soliloquy, appearing unsettled + paranoid (in purgatory psychologically?), inner turmoil

Question 18

Bogdanov’s Modern Production

Answer 18

• Fortinbras is a power-seeking opportunist surrounding the ‘territorial imperative’
• Fortinbras’ soldiers enter stage + seize power brandishing AK47’s
• Claudius is an amoral Machiavellian

Question 19

Branagh’s 1996 film

Answer 19

• motif of mirrors to suggest the surveillance society + how the individual can trust neither personal relationships nor operations of stat