Hamlet Critical Readings Flashcards
Greenblatt (Ghost)
‘a young man from Wittenberg, with a distinctly Protestant temperament, is haunted by a distinctly Catholic ghost’
Clinton (Ghost)
Described Ghost as a ‘diabolical manifestation on a mission to trick Hamlet into forfeiting his soul’
Simone de Behaviour (Ophelia)
‘Ophelia is a sympathetic and engaging pawn of powerful men and her madness can be linked to the abandonment of Laertes, Polonius and Hamlet’
Jan Kott (play)
Saw play as ‘a fable about totalitarian tyranny’ in 1960’s
Foakes (Inaction)
Identified ‘Hamletism’ – procrastinating intellect
Tennenhouse (murder)
‘What more heinous crime could be committed against the aristocratic body than a fratricidal that is also a regicide?’
Voltaire (Hamlet)
Called Hamlet ‘the fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage’
T.S. Eliot
‘Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary’
Reginald Scot (humanist)
Believed Ghosts were the product of a disturbed mind or even bad omens for future
Gibson (Fortinbras)
Uncertain as to whether Fortinbras’ rule will be ‘benign or tyrannical’
Roman Catholics
Roman Catholics in 1500’s believed in purgatory
Protestants
Protestants abolished idea of purgatory + believed Ghosts to be an evil agent of the devil
Sigmund Freud
- 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
Contemporary Audience
Shakespeare’s audience would have seen Hamlet as impulsive + unstatesmanlike – need to prove Ghost’s accusation
Spurgeon
‘Hamlet is informed by multiple images of corruption and disease’
Olivier’s Interpretation
- 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
David Tenant’s Performance
- Pacing room during second soliloquy, appearing unsettled + paranoid (in purgatory psychologically?), inner turmoil
Bogdanov’s Modern Production
- Fortinbras is a power-seeking opportunist surrounding the ‘territorial imperative’
- Fortinbras’ soldiers enter stage + seize power brandishing AK47’s
- Claudius is an amoral Machiavellian
Branagh’s 1996 film
- motif of mirrors to suggest the surveillance society + how the individual can trust neither personal relationships nor operations of stat
