Critics for Hamlet

Question 1

Elaine Showalter - Romantic Ophelia

Answer 1

‘The Romantic Ophelia feels too much, as Hamlet overthinks; she drowns in a surfeit of feeling’

Question 2

Minnie Hampton - Untainted love

Answer 2

he can no longer view Ophelia with untainted, pure love’

Question 3

Minnie Hampton - Ophelia’s madness

Answer 3

{Ophelia’s madness is} ’the only sane response to an insane predicament in a society that no longer makes sense’

Question 4

Abi Marett - Religion

Answer 4

Religious obedience

Question 5

Abi Marett - reality of suicide

Answer 5

Hamlet recognises the difference between his idea of a painless purifying death and the reality of suicide

Question 6

Lilla Grindlay - Poison

Answer 6

Denmark is as poisoned as the old king Hamlet’s body

Question 7

Lilla Grindlay - Putrid corruption

Answer 7

Gertrude becomes mired in the father-and-son linguistic swirl of putrid corruption.

Question 8

Will Tosh - Religion

Answer 8

the relationship between love and madness is evident

Question 9

Richard Vardy - Polonius

Answer 9

Polonius - ‘nothing more than a stock character, an interfering, ageing busy-body

Question 10

Richard Vardy - Politics

Answer 10

Power and politics trump family values in Claudius’ Denmark

Question 11

Rob Worral - Human

Answer 11

Hamlet is about being human

Question 12

Rob Worral - Political muscles

Answer 12

Claudius is flexing his newly acquired political muscles

Question 13

Tanya Pollard - Satisfaction

Answer 13

There is no satisfaction for the audience in Hamlet’s revenge

Question 14

Tanya Pollard - Stock character

Answer 14

Unwillingness to play a stock character

Question 15

Emma Smith - Stasis

Answer 15

Hamlet’s sense of stasis, of being stuck is psychological

Question 16

Emma Smith - Theatrical past

Answer 16

The real ghost of Hamlet is the theatrical past - caught in the throes of the past

Question 17

Emma Smith - who are Hamlet’s strongest affections directed towards

Answer 17

Hamlet’s strongest affection is towards the dead

Question 18

Catherine Belsey - is Hamlet not thinking of killing himself

Answer 18

(Is Hamlet perhaps not thinking of killing himself after all ) but debating an ethical question

Question 19

Katy Limmer - Web of social and Political Power

Answer 19

(Rosencrantz and Guilderstern) Are firmly ensconced in the web of social and power relationships

Question 20

Gillian Woods - Both Hamlets

Answer 20

Hamlet - both the character and the play in which he appears - are deeply concerned with the performance.

Question 21

Gillian Woods - the boundary of performance

Answer 21

Hamlet polices the boundary between performance and reality

Question 22

Gillian Woods - play within a play structure

Answer 22

The play within a play structure keeps us at a frustrating distance from the definite truth of things.

Question 23

Tamara Tubb - Gertrude’s impact on the plays ending

Answer 23

She is an instrument in the actualisation of that revenge

Question 24

Tamara Tubb - The tragic waste of Gertrude’s death

Answer 24

Her tragic waste provides a gory backdrop to Hamlet and Claudius’s rivalry

Question 25

Emma Smith - Shakespeare's timelessness

Answer 25

a play that seems to epitomise Shakespeare's timelessness and modernity

Question 26

Emma Smith - Legitimacy

Answer 26

the question of legitimacy and the rightful king haunts Hamlet and Hamlet

Question 27

Emma Smith - Everyman

Answer 27

We prefer to see Hamlet as an everyman, representative of wider fragilities and insight into human nature

Question 28

Emma Smith - Modern readings

Answer 28

modern reading focuses on the familial relationships over the political

Question 29

Ben Johnson

Answer 29

not of an age but for all of time

Question 30

Jan Kott

Answer 30

Shakespeare, our contemporary

Question 31

Andrew Brown - War

Answer 31

Hamlet’s consciousness is most at war with itself

Question 32

Andrew Brown - Possibilities

Answer 32

The tragedy of Hamlet is the possibilities he represents that die with him

Question 33

Kiernan Ryan - chance

Answer 33

It is only by chance that Hamlet finally avenges his father's murderer

Question 34

Kiernan Ryan - theatrical cliche

Answer 34

Hamlet is acutely aware that the part is a theatrical cliche

Question 35

Kiernan Ryan - Sabotage

Answer 35

Hamlet sabotages the revenge genre

Question 36

Kate Baty - Morality of Revenge

Answer 36

Shakespeare shows us that the morality of revenge is far from uncomplicated

Question 37

Kate Baty - Debate

Answer 37

Philosophical debate of revenge

Question 38

Kate Baty - Inevitable

Answer 38

The final scene is tragic in its inevitability

Question 39

Johnny Patrick - Odd and problematic

Answer 39

The gravedigger scene has been referred to as ‘odd and problematic’

Question 40

Johnny Patrick - Undermining Hamlet

Answer 40

The gravedigger is literally and metaphorically undermining Hamlet’s class or even digging him a grave

Question 41

Emma Smith - Hamnet

Answer 41

References to Shakespeare’s son Hamnet authenticate the play's emotional landscape

Question 42

Kate Baty - Eyes of Hamlet

Answer 42

Shakespeare constructs Gertrude through the eyes of Hamlet

Question 43

Kate Baty - Romantic naive girl

Answer 43

Ophelia’s death occurs in surroundings that remind us of the romantic, naïve young girl we see before her decline