Hamlet AO5 Flashcards
(51 cards)
1
Q
Jacobs
A
- ‘Hamlet has a problem with women, or rather with two women’
- Hamlet’s ’self-perceived alienation in an antagonistic world’
2
Q
Leverenz
A
‘Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine positivity in himself is translated into violent repulsion against women’
3
Q
Bloom
A
Hamlet is a ‘hero-villain’
4
Q
Critchley and Jamieson
A
Hamlet’s ’awful linguistic violence’ towards women
5
Q
Levin
A
- Old Hamlet’s ‘primary concern is Gertrude’, not the killing of Claudius, suggesting he does this to ‘vilify’ her and ‘valorise’ himself
- ‘the most problematic play ever written by Shakespeare or any other playwright’
6
Q
Bradley
A
- ‘Hamlet is a tragedy of thought’
- ‘the hero is not a helpless victim of fate but is brought down by his tragic flaw’
- ‘both Fortinbras and Laertes possess in abundance the very quality which the hero seems to lack’
- Gertrude is ‘very dull and very shallow’
- ‘it is difficult to forgive Ophelia for not being a heroine’
7
Q
Knight
A
- ‘Claudius cannot be blamed for his later actions, they are forced upon him’
- ‘Claudius shows every sign of being an excellent diplomatist and King’
- Hamlet himself is ‘an element of evil’
- ‘Hamlet is the poison in the veins of the community’
- ‘we need not see through Hamlet’s eyes’
8
Q
How Gertrude’s portrayal has evolved in film adaptations
A
18th century: matronly and passive
20th and 21st: sensual, even sexualised figure
9
Q
Thompson
A
‘Gertrude has no real purpose in the play other than to die’
10
Q
Smith
A
Gertrude is a ‘soft, obedient, dependent, unimaginative woman’
11
Q
unknown
A
‘Gertrude’s incestuous behaviour is a catalyst for the characters’ deaths’
12
Q
T.S Eliot
A
- ‘a form of emotional relief’
- ‘less than madness and more than feigned’
- ‘Shakespeare tackled a problem that proved too much for him’
13
Q
McClure
A
- ‘a great, almost enormous intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it’
- ‘Hamlet’s supreme characteristic is morality’
- ‘heroic, terrible figure’
- ‘that which is impossible is required of him’
14
Q
Hallam
A
‘Hamlet unable to kill man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood’
15
Q
Goldman
A
‘ghost brings purgatory to the real world as Hamlet can’t rest until he’s taken revenge’
16
Q
Greg
A
ghost is a ‘hallucination’ of Hamlet’s ‘distracted nerves’
17
Q
Kerrigan
A
- ghost ‘condemns Hamlet to an endless, fruitless yearning for a lost figure’
- ‘Hamlet never promises to revenge, only to remember’
18
Q
West
A
‘Shakespeare deliberately chose’ to make ghost ambiguous and mix evidence to keep audience uncertain, therefore ‘giving the apparition dramatic impact and vitality’
19
Q
Showalter
A
- ‘Ophelia’s characterisation is a hybrid of patriarchal assumptions and symbolism used to typify young women’
- ‘Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language’
- ‘from about 1580 melancholy has become a fashionable disease among young men’
20
Q
Woods
A
- ‘Hamlet is deeply concerned with performance’
- ‘he seems to deliberately parade his grief for all to see’
- ‘his endless soliloquising makes him all the more theatrical’
21
Q
Crawford
A
‘deliberately feigned fits of madness’
22
Q
Nardo
A
Hamlet’s feigned madness is how he escapes true madness
23
Q
Cumberbatch interview with Melvin Bragg
A
- suggests Hamlet’s relationship with Yorick enabled him to feign madness in a humorous manner to criticise the actions of the Danish court in the same way jesters would satirise upper classes
- discusses transgenerational trauma: how primarily youth in the play suffer an incredible amount at the hands of generation above them
- suggests Hamlet’s grief and depression at start not caused by a fascination with death but because everyone around him fails to grieve sufficiently and Hamlet can’t understand why
24
Q
Kitteredge
A
‘Laertes is the typical avenger’
25
Prosser
Laertes is a ‘hurricane who acts on his rage’
26
Blackmore
‘evil traits of Laertes, serves to illuminate all the more nobility of Hamlet’s nature’
27
Tomko
Fortinbras is ‘a man of action more than words’
28
Garrick
Hamlet is ‘only kind and not cruel’
29
Mallarme
‘he (Hamlet) is a killer, he kills without concern’
30
Johnson
- Hamlet is ‘rather an instrument than an agent’
- Polonius' 'mode of oratory is defined to ridicule the practice of those times'
- Polonius 'entangles himself in his own thoughts’
31
Senecan revenge tragedies
madness, violence and bloodshed
32
Schlegel
‘he (Hamlet) loses himself in labyrinths of thought’
33
Ziegler
- ‘Hamlet delays due to external difficulties’
- ‘he fails to act because of a desire publicly to unmask Claudius’ guilt’
34
Charles
‘no one in this play knows or understands anyone else’
35
Masefield
- ‘it is a defilement of personal ideals, difficult for a wise mind to justify… death seems preferable to action and existence alike’
- ‘Hamlet is neither weak nor impractical… what he hesitates to do may be necessary, or even just’
36
Coleridge
‘action is the chief end of existence’
37
Doran (himself)
confrontation with Yorick’s skull provides ‘grim fascination’ with what would inevitably be his fate
38
Patrick (The English Review)
Yorick’s death on day of Hamlet’s birth meant Hamlet was always living under the shadow of death
39
Edwards
- ‘Fortinbras is success as Hamlet is failure’
- ‘we can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet’
40
Neely
‘Ophelia’s madness is her liberation’
40
Montgomery
Ophelia becomes ‘post-humously significant’
41
Bamber
‘Hamlet is capable of love’
42
Schofield
‘Claudius is morally empty’
43
Adelman
the Mousetrap is ‘designed to catch the conscience of the Queen’
44
Knights
‘ghost whose command had been for a sterile concentration on death and evil’
45
Polonius’ portrayal in 18th century productions
generally the comedic relief character, becoming more well-rounded and loved by onstage family
46
Walter
Polonius is 'a cold-hearted devil'
47
RSC 1980 production
Tony Church's Polonius delivered his speeches twice as fast as the normal speaking rate like "an eccentric university lecturer" (according to Church himself) = comedic effect
48
Ophelia's flowers
daisy: symbols of changeable and inconstant love
violets: stand for faithfulness
rosemary: supposed to strengthen the memory
pansy: in French means 'thought'
49
James
Horatio:
- 'one who suffers everything and nothing'
- 'he has steadiness and tenour that Hamlet does not possess'
- 'how clearly he would like to be Horatio!'
50
Dowden
'Horatio's evenness of temper is like solid land to Hamlet after the tossings and tumult of his own heart'
