Hamlet Literary Critics Flashcards
Catherine Belsey: The Subject of Tragedy 1985 - HAMLET Revenge vs Justice
“When Hamlet differentiates revenge from hire and salary, he specifies the gap between vengeance and justice. Revenge is always in excess of justice”
Lee Jamieson 2018 - HAMLET Revenge Satisfaction
“When he does enact his revenge and kills Claudius it is too late for him to derive any satisfaction from it; Laertes has struck him with a poisoned foil and Hamlet dies shortly after.”
G. Wilson Knight 1930 - HAMLET Commands
“Had Hamlet forgotten both the Ghost’s commands, it would have been well, since Claudius is a good king and the Ghost but a minor spirit”
Yeats - HAMLET Fortinbras
“Fortinbras was a better king than Hamlet would have been”
Samuel Johnson: The Works of William Shakespeare 1765 - HAMLET Instrument
“Hamlet is… rather an instrument than an agent”
J. W. von Goethe - HAMLET Duty
“All duties seem holy for Hamlet”
A. C. Swinburne 1880 - HAMLET Contending Forces
“The single characteristic of Hamlet’s innermost nature is by no means irresolution or hesitation…but rather the strong conflux of contending forces”
A C Bradley 1904 - HAMLET Hamartia
Hamlet “had a fatal flaw: brooding melancholy”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1818 - HAMLET Inaction/ Imbalance
Hamlet’s inaction was due to “an overbalance of the contemplative faculty.”
John Dover Wilson 1935 - Ophelia repelled Hamlet
“Most critics have completely misunderstood [the nunnery episode] because in their sympathy with Ophelia they have forgotten that it is not Hamlet who has “repelled” her but she him.”
