Romantic Responses to Hamlet Flashcards
1
Q
Study of Romantic period
A
- Explored their fascination with individuals at odds with their societies and with the power of the imagination rather than logic and reason
2
Q
Samuel Coleridge identifying with Hamlet
A
- Imagined that he had a ‘smack of Hamlet’ in himself
- Hamlet, like himself, suffered from an ‘overbalance of the imaginative power’
3
Q
Samuel Coleridge on Hamlet’s mind
A
- Hamlet’s mind is ‘disturbed’ by lack of ‘balance’ between the ‘real and the imaginary worlds’
- Hamlet suffered because his imagination overpowers him
4
Q
William Hazlitt on Hamlet’s speeches
A
- ‘Are as real as our own thoughts’
- We can think of Hamlet as a ‘real’ person with a ‘real’ mind
5
Q
William Hazlitt’s definition of Hamlet
A
- ‘The prince of philosophical speculators’ who, because he can’t accomplish a ‘perfect’ revenge, ‘declines it altogether
- Hamlet is compelled to ‘indulge his imagination’ rather than act’
6
Q
Wilhelm Von Schlegel on Hamlet’s thoughts
A
- Hamlet loses himself in ‘labyrinths of thought’ without ‘ending or beginning’
- His thoughts ‘cripple’ Hamlet from taking action
7
Q
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Hamlet in thought
A
- ‘His profound meditations seem without beginning or end, while he wander in a wilderness of thought’
- ‘Whenever he does anything, he seems astonished at himself, and calls it rashness’
8
Q
Charles Lamb on Identifying with Hamlet
A
- Delicate and sensitive (‘shy, negligent, retiring’)
- Uncomfortable with his role as a revenge hero
9
Q
William Hazlitt on performance of Hamlet
A
- ‘There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage’
- ‘Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted’
