Early 20th Century Responses to Hamlet

Question 1

Coleridge on Hamlet’s character

Answer 1

• ‘Consider Hamlet as a real person’
• The question of delay was also considered the central ‘problem’ of the play’

Question 2

A.C. Bradley on Hamlet

Answer 2

• Saw the Prince as suffering from psychological disorder, a depression or ‘melancholy’ which also had the figure of Gertrude at its root cause
• Hamlet’s suicidal feelings result from his mother’s behaviour, ‘the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother’s true nature’

Question 3

A.C. Bradley on the impact of Gertrude’s incest

Answer 3

• Gertrude’s ‘incestuous wedlock’ results in Hamlet’s whole mind being ‘poisoned’ against all women
• This leads to his treatment of Ophelia, ‘He can never see Ophelia in the same light again: she is a woman, and his mother is a woman’
• Hamlet judges Ophelia by what he takes to be his mother’s standards and is overcome with feelings of disgust

Question 4

TS Eliot on Gertrude

Answer 4

• The play was an ‘artistic failure’ because Hamlet’s ‘disgust is occasioned by his mother’
• But Gertrude is so ‘insignificant’ a character the she cannot convincingly be represented as a plausible cause of Hamlet’s feelings
• In failing to develop Gertrude as a character, Shakespeare cannot convince the audience the she is the cause of the intense feelings of disgust felt by her son

Question 5

A.C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy (1904)

Answer 5

• Hamlet’s suicidal feelings result from his mother’s behaviour, ‘the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother’s true nature’