Hamlet Critic Quotes

Question 1

Goethe (Hamlet and Duty)

Answer 1

All duties seem holy to Hamlet

Question 2

“Schofield (Claudius’ morality)”

Answer 2

“He has the persuasiveness and physical courage of a ruler, but is morally empty”

Question 3

Coleridge in 1800 (on Hamlet killing Claudius and Polonius)

Answer 3

Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment

Question 4

Dawson (Claudius’ love for Gertrude)

Answer 4

He loved Gertrude deeply and genuinely

Question 5

Sir Herbert Tree (Madness and Humour)

Answer 5

The key comic element of the play is madness

Question 6

Bloom (Gertrude’s promiscuity)

Answer 6

a woman of exuberant sexuality, who inspires uxorious passion first in King Hamlet and later in Claudius

Question 7

C.S Lewis (Hamlet’s fear of death)

Answer 7

Hamlet is haunted, not by a physical fear of dying, but of being dead

Question 8

Elaine Showalter (Ophelia’s deprivations)

Answer 8

Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language

Question 9

Rebecca Smith (Gertrude’s interests)

Answer 9

Pleasing men is Gertrude’s main interest

Question 10

Diana Bornstein (advice given to women)

Answer 10

Women are often given the same advice that is given to servants… Chasity, piety, obedience

Question 11

Henry Mackenzie (Hamlet’s purposes of Revenge)

Answer 11

With the strongest purposes of revenge, he is irresolute and inactive

Question 12

J.H Walter (Polonius)

Answer 12

Cold-hearted devil

Question 13

Gabriel Josipovici (Polonius’ moral compass)

Answer 13

A man whose moral compass is infinitely wobbly

Question 14

Thomas Hamner (Hamlet’s actions in Act 3, scene 3)

Answer 14

Unworthy of a hero

Question 15

Kate Flint (Hamlet’s inactivity in Act 3, scene 3)

Answer 15

He himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish

Question 16

Jacqueline Rose (Hamlet’s violence towards his mother in Act 3, scene 4)

Answer 16

The violence towards the mother is the effect of the desire for her

Question 17

Kate Flint (Hamlet’s madness)

Answer 17

gives him the licence of a fool to speak cruel truths, transgressing the language of social decorum

Question 18

Goethe in 1795 (Hamlet as a tragic hero)

Answer 18

a poetic and morally sensitive soul crushed by the barbarous task of murder

Question 19

Susan Synder (Hamlet comedy and tragedy)

Answer 19

Comedy can be seen as “the grounds from which tragedy develops”

Question 20

Elaine Showalter (Ophelia as a character)

Answer 20

Ophelia is portrayed as “an insignificant minor character”

Question 21

Samuel Johnson in 1765 (Hamlet’s inactivity)

Answer 21

Hamlet is rather an instrument than an agent

Question 22

Coleridge in early 1800 (Hamlet’s thinking and action)

Answer 22

Hamlet is a man incapable of acting because he thinks too much

Question 23

Gabriel Josipovici (Hamlet’s character)

Answer 23

Hamlet is a merge of the tragic hero and the clown figure

Question 24

Wilson Knight in 1930 (on Claudius)

Answer 24

Claudius is a “good and gentle King”

Question 25

A.C Bradley in 1904 (Hamlet on avenging his father)

Answer 25

Hamlet assumes without any questioning that he ought to avenge his father

Question 26

John Dover Wilson in 1935 (the origins of the ghost)

Answer 26

we are never perfectly certain as to just who or what the ghost is

Question 27

John Gielgud (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

Answer 27

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are "just toadies to the king"

Question 28

Lee Edwards (Ophelia)

Answer 28

Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet

Question 29

Avi Ehrlich in 1977 (female sexuality)

Answer 29

Hamlet is a play about a father and a son who were weak because they were undone... by sexually treacherous women

Question 30

Wilson Knight in 1930 (Hamlet)

Answer 30

(Hamlet is) an element of evil in the state of Denmark

Question 31

Amanda Mabillard (Claudius)

Answer 31

he is not a monster, he is morally weak

Question 32

Alan Gardnier (Hamlet's world)

Answer 32

The world of Hamlet is a remarkably enclosed one

Question 33

Basil (homosexuality)

Answer 33

'there is nothing to keep me straight'

Question 34

Sybil Vane (purity, virginity)

Answer 34

'little white body'

Question 35

Basil -> DG (influence)

Answer 35

'you talk as if you have no heart'

Question 36

DG (entrapment, fearing reality)

Answer 36

'Dorian Gray locked the door...he felt safe now'

Question 37

Basil (guilt, sinning, religion)

Answer 37

'sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed'

Question 38

LH (exposure, religion)

Answer 38

'I shall show you my soul'

Question 39

Alan -> DG (corruption)

Answer 39

'you have gone from corruption to corruption and culminated in crime'

Question 40

DG -> Duchess of Monmouth (status of women)

Answer 40

'she was very clever, too clever for a woman'

Question 41

DG (appearance vs reality)

Answer 41

'ugliness is the one reality'

Question 42

Narrator -> DG about Sybil Vane (mortality, guilt)

Answer 42

'her death is at you door' 'the man who destroyed her life'

Question 43

DG -> Duchess (hedonism)

Answer 43

' I have never searched for happiness...I have searched for pleasure'

Question 44

DG about James Vane's dead body (youth, appearance, façade)

Answer 44

'the mask of youth had saved him'

Question 45

DG about James Vane's death (reality, secrecy)

Answer 45

'his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe'

Question 46

LH (mortality)

Answer 46

'death is the only thing that ever terrifies me'

Question 47

DG (repentance, reality)

Answer 47

'I have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more'

Question 48

DG (appearance vs reality)

Answer 48

‘then he loathed his own beauty...it was his beauty that had ruined him'

Question 49

DG (appearance vs reality)

Answer 49

'youth had spoiled him' 'his beauty had been but a mask, his youth a mockery'

Question 50

DG (reality, art)

Answer 50

'he seized the thing and stabbed the painting with it...it had been conscious. He would destroy it'

Question 51

DG (resolution, realisation, sin, guilt)

Answer 51

'it was the living death of his own soul that had troubled him'