Neo-Classical Era 1660-1798

Question 1

What dominated criticism of the play in the early eighteenth century?

Answer 1

The neo-classical perception of plot and charecter

Question 2

What were the 7 characteristics of Neo-classicism?

Answer 2

Focused on values of objectivity, impersonalism, rationality, decorum, balance, harmony, proportions and moderation

Question 3

What was the Neo-classicism art movement?

Answer 3

A severe and unemotional form of art harkening back to the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome. It’s rigidity was a reaction to the overbred Rococo style and the emotionally charged Baroque style.

Question 4

What did the main critics who defended Hamlet take for granted?

Answer 4

The necessity of the classical canon in principle

Question 5

Who provides the most famous example of neo-classical treatments of the play?

Answer 5

Voltaire

Question 6

Defences against Voltaire had to do what first?

Answer 6

At first had to weaken the neo-classical othodoxy

Question 7

How did Lewis Theobald explain the absurdity of Hamlet calling death “the undiscovered country”?

Answer 7

He hypothesised that the, having just seen the ghost, it explains purgatory rather than death itself

Question 8

What did William Popple praise (1735)?

Answer 8

The verisimilitude of Polonius’ character, deploring the actors tradition of only playing him as a fool

Question 9

What scene did Joseph Addison praise?

Answer 9

The ghost scene

Question 10

What soliloquy did Richard Steele praise and why?

Answer 10

The first one, due to the psychological insight

Question 11

Why were the ghost scenes a particular favourite during this period?

Answer 11

The era was on the verge of the gothic revival

Question 12

What did George Stubbes note about how Shakespeare made the ghost credible?

Answer 12

He used Horatio’s incredulity to make the ghost credible

Question 13

What did Arthur Murphy believe the play was a “poetic representation” of?

Answer 13

“the mind of a weak and melancholic person”

Question 14

What did George Calmon the elder single Hamlet out for in a general discussion of Shakespeare?

Answer 14

His skill with the supernatural element of drama

Question 15

What unusual note did Aaron Will raise in 1735?

Answer 15

He praised the contradictions of Hamlets temperament (rather than condemning them as violations of decorum)

Question 16

What reading gained popularity after the mid-century?

Answer 16

Psycological

Question 17

What did Tobias Smollet criticise as illogical?

Answer 17

Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, which he believed was illogical because of Hamlet’s actions.

Question 18

What was commonly defended as part of a grander plan?

Answer 18

The plays disparate elements

Question 19

What did Horace Walpole defend as ultimately more realistic and reflective than rigid separation?

Answer 19

The plays mixture of comedy and tragedy

Question 20

How did Samual Johnson echo Popple?

Answer 20

In his defence of the character of Polonius, he also doubled the necessity of Hamlets viscous treatment of Ophelia and skeptically viewed the necessary and probability of the climax

Question 21

What criticism occurred near the end of the century?

Answer 21

An attack on Hamlets character e.g George Stevens

Question 22

What understanding of Hamlet occurred in the late eighteenth century even before the Romantic movement?

Answer 22

The recognition that Hamlet (with Falstaff) was the first Shakespeare character to be understood as a personality separate from the play in which he appears

Question 23

What did critics and performers begin to view the play as towards the late eighteenth century?

Answer 23

Confusing and inconsistant

Question 24

Who had one of their characters say “Shakespeare meant…to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it…A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away.“?

Answer 24

Geothe, in ‘Wilheims Master Apprentice” (1795)

Question 25

What was the century’s changed view of Hamlets character called?

Answer 25

The shift in critical emphasis on plot (pre-1750) to an emphasis on the theatrical portrayal of the character (post-1750)