Hamlet Crit Flashcards
(22 cards)
The story of the prince… His fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire
A. C Bradley
Madness is to some degree a punishment or doom
Maynard Mack
The cunning and lecherousness of Claudius’ evil has corrupted the whole Kingdom of Denmark
Richard D Altick
“She plays out the role of the missing Eve: her body is the garden in which her husband dies… Her sexuality the poisonous weeds that kill him and poison the world…”
Janet Adelman - Feminist Critic
“For Shakespeare anyhow, the uncertainty is the point”
Kastan
“Tragedy, for Shakespeare, is the genre of uncompensated suffering “
Kastan
“It is in fact a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death.”
A.C Bradley
“The main psychological task that Hamlet seems to set himself is not to avenge his father’s death but to remake his mother: to remake her in the image of the virgin mother who could guarantee his fathers purity, and his own, repairing the boundaries of selfhood”
Janet Adelman - Feminist Critic
“As an avenger, Hamlet seems motivated more by his mother than by his father.”
Janet Adelman - Feminist Critic
“Once we look at ‘The Murder of Gonzago’ for what it is, rather than for what Hamlet tells us it is, it becomes clear that the playlet is in fact designed to catch the conscience of the Queen.”
Janet Adelman - Feminist Critic
The play ‘abounds in the most striking reflections on human life’
Moral conflict - to be or not to be soliloquy
Hazlitt
Hamlet “is a great moraliser… he moralises his own feelings and experience”
Hazlitt
“He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion when he has no time to reflect”
Hazlitt
“…because he cannot have his revenge perfect… he declines it altogether”
Hazlitt
“And the picture of her death… is still purely beautiful”
AC Bradley
“Ophelia’s speech thus represents the horror of having nothing to say in public terms defined by the court”
Elaine Showalter
“Ophelia has played a major role in the theoretical construction of female insanity”
Elaine Showalter
“Scruples to trust the suggestions of the ghost”
Hazlitt
A ruler should perform any action that preserves and strengthens his power, regardless of its morality
Machiavelli
“The ambiguity of the ghost is of fundamental importance”
Philip Edwards
“Gertrude prompts violent and physical emotional reactions from the men in the story.”
Rebecca Smith
“Revenge exists on a margin between justice and crime”
Catherine Belsey
