Hamlet Critics Flashcards
Lee Edwards: Gender
“We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet.”
Helen Faucitt Martin: Gender
“[Ophelia is] only interesting when she loses the little wits she had.”
Belsey: gender
“women were everything men were not: silent, submissive, powerless.”
David Leverenz: Gender
“Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsion against women.”
Rebecca Smith: Gertrude
“Gertrude is caught between two mighty opposites.”
Maragaret Atwood: Gertrude
‘Gertrude Talks Back’, 1993, suggestion that she killed OKH.
Sonia Massai 2018: Gender
“One of the most fiercely misogynistic plays […] Gertrude is the target of this hatred.”
Hippolyte Taine: Corruption
“The story of moral poisoning.”
Coleridge: Madness
“Hamlet suffered from an overbalance of the imaginative power.”
Changing interpretations: Queer Studies
Hamlet / Horatio (2020) explores the concept of the two men being lovers
Cedric Watts: Revenge
“Hamlet repeatedly displays a very credible resistance to that stereotype of the dedicated revenger.”
AC Bradley: tragedy
“a tragedy of thought; his Hamlet downfall is connected rather with his intellectual nature.”
Schuking: Hamlet
“‘Hamlet’ cannot be comprehended, except as a study of emotion.”
Belsey: Revenge + Ending
“the moral uncertainty persists to the end […] Hamlet dies a revenger, a poisoner, but also a soldier and a prince.”
Professor Campbell: Horatio
“[Horatio is} a character in the play in whom reason has swayed passion.”
