What Critics think of Prince Hamlet

Question 1

Coleridge- Hamlet’s value systems, self concept

Answer 1

Hamlet has no firm belief in himself or anything.

Question 2

Goethe- Duty vs ethics

Answer 2

• A poetic and morally sensitive soul crushed by the barbarous task of murder

Question 3

Kate Flint- Madness/ artfice

Answer 3

• Hamlets madness gives him the licence to “speak cruel truths, transgressing the language of social decorum”

Question 4

Swinsburne- Hamlets innermost nature

Answer 4

• Hamlets innermost nature is defined by “the strong conflux of contending forces.”

Question 5

Lawerence- Hamlet and Curroption

Answer 5

• A sense of curroption in the flesh makes Hamlet frenzied,
• For he will never admit it is his own flesh