Summary Hamlet: Quotes of Critics and Different Interpretations and Performances
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Course
Drama and poetry pre-1900
Institution
OCR
Created by a student who is predicted A*, and obtained all 9s at GCSE, this document contains 57 different quotes of critics, details of performances and interpretations of Hamlet that can be used for the second essay in the exam. The document is organised by character and theme, making it easy to ...
Emma Smith - "Hamlet's own instincts are towards undoing rather than doing"
William Hazlitt (revenge) - "The prince of philosophical spectators...he cannot have
his revenge perfect...he declines it altogether."
Swinburne - "The single characteristic of Hamlet's innermost nature is by no means
irresolution or hesitation..but rather a strong conflux of contending forces."
William Hazlitt - Hamlet is he whose "powers of action have been eaten up by
thought."
Coleridge - "Hamlet's mind, which unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly
occupied with the world within."
L.C Knight - Hamlet "cannot break out of the closed circle of loathing and self
contempt."
Graham Holderness - Hamlet is "stranded between two worlds, unable to emulate
the heroic values of his father, unable to engage with the modern world of political
diplomacy."
Campbell - "Melancholy...defeats all his impulses towards action and increasingly
paralyses his will."
Hapgood - "Hamlet's form of delay is 'inertia', he finds difficulty in starting and coming
to a stop."
Harold Bloom (Nietzsche) - "The fundamental fact about Hamlet is not that he thinks
too much, but that he thinks too well"
Ulrici, Victorian, argued that Hamlet delays because he struggles to reconcile the
code of revenge with his Christian faith: we witness "the Christian struggling with the
natural man"
1964 Lunt-Fontanne: Richard Burton performs Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 4 - with an
indifferent, nonchalant manner, ending unconvincingly "my thoughts be bloody or be
nothing worth"
, The 19th Century Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche connected Hamlet's delay to the
corrupted and loveless world he has found himself in. Hamlet is held back from
avenging his father's murder by tragic knowledge of the futility of his action because
Denmark's decay and collapse is inevitable.
HAMLET’S EMOTIONS
Sigmund Freud - Hamlet is faced with "scruples of consciousness" reminding him
"he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish."
Peter John (Andrew Scott) - "This is Hamlet living on the edge of his emotions."
L.L Schüking - "Hamlet...cannot be comprehended except as a study of emotion."
HAMLET’S MADNESS
20th Century critic Maurice Charney: Hamlet's jokes have a thread of bitter satire
running through them. - "Through madness, the character can suddenly make a
forceful assertion of their being".
Romantic critics focused on Hamlet's psychological state, as madness is a common
theme in Romantic poetry. - They talked about this 'antic disposition' as though it was
a real life, independent entity.
1980 Jonathon Pryce: The ghost never appears - He is an effect of Hamlet's
psychologically disturbed state and his lines are spoken by Hamlet in a tormented,
distorted voice.
W.W. Greg also famously argued that the ghost is - hallucinatory in his 1917 article
"Hamlet's Hallucination"
HAMLET’S HUMOUR
While Garrick and Olivier's Hamlets are governed by grief, - Papa Essiedu played
Hamlet as energetic, youthful and quick-witted. For example, when he suggests that
Polonius "like a crab could go backward" and get younger, - Essiedu creates humour
by imitating the walk of a crab. His use of physical and slapstick comedy provides
light relief, but also reduces Polonius to an aging fool.
Anne Barton: “Hamlet ... seems to be the only one of Shakespeare's tragic
protagonists .. who possesses -and demonstrates- a sense of humour.
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