Hamlet Critical Debates Flashcards
Hamlet (40 cards)
when were versions of Hamlet published and what does this mean?
1603, 1604, 1623
no definitive version of the play
what are key issues critics explore?
Hamlet’s delay: is there a ‘flaw’ preventing him from acting or other circumstances?
Hamlet’s madness: is it feigned or genuine?
role of Gertrude: complicit in OKH’s death, was her remarriage for stability?
what did Thomas Hammer say + when?
1736
complained abt H’s behaviour- H’s cruelty in not killing C because he wants to send him to hell
un-Christian attitude + unworthy of a hero
Hammer on H’s delay
if he’d killed C sooner, ‘there would have been an End of our Play’
his delay was a necessary plot device
Dr Samuel Johnson on H’s behaviour?
he ‘treats Ophelia with so much rudeness … useless and wanton cruelty’
H’s stature as a tragic hero is diminished
Johnson on H’s delay
criticises H for his passivity
H is ‘an instrument’ not an ‘agent’ - allows himself to be swayed by circumstance
H ‘makes no attempt to punish’ C and ‘has no part’ in planning the fencing match leading to his death
Johnson on Shakespeare’s plot
could find ‘no adequate cause’ for H’s pretend madness ‘for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity’
Coleridge + Hamlet
imagined he had a ‘smack of Hamlet’ in him
H and him suffered from an ‘overbalance of the imaginative power’
Coleridge on H’s mind
H’s mind is ‘disturbed’ by a lack of ‘balance’ between the ‘real and imaginary worlds’
H suffers because his imagination overpowers him
Hazlitt on H’s speeches
H’s speeches + soliloquies ‘are as real as our own thoughts’
H is a ‘real’ person with a ‘real’ mind
Hazlitt’s definition of Hamlet
‘the prince of philosophical speculators’ who cant accomplish a ‘perfect’ revenge so ‘declines it altogether’
H is compelled to ‘indulge his imagination’
Wilhelm von Schlegel on H’s thoughts
H looses himself in ‘labyrinths of thought’ without ‘end or beginning’
his thoughts ‘cripple’ H from taking action
Shelley on H’s thoughts
someone too prone to lose himself in thought ‘his profound meditations seem without beginning or end, while he wanders in a wilderness of thought’
‘whenever he does anything, he seems astonished at himself, and calls it rashness
Lamb on Hamlet
identified with a Hamlet he saw as delicate and sensitive ‘shy, negligent, retiring’ + uncomfortable with his role as revenge hero
dramatic poem?
romantics felt no actor could do the role of H justice bc of its psychological complexity
Hazlitt’s account of Kemble
1817- ‘there is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage’
Kemble (actor)= ‘too deliberate and formal … too strong and pointed’
‘Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted’
Freud on H’s murders
H kills Polonius without a moment’s hesitation + kills R+G without troubling his conscience
Freud on Hamlet’s Oedipal feelings
H’s inability to act rooted in H’s Oedipal feelings
same-sex parent as rival for opposite-sex parent’s attention
Freud on H not killing C
H can’t kill C bc he can’t ‘take vengeance on the man who did away with his father + took that father’s place with the mother’
C fulfilled ‘the repressed wishes’ of H’s childhood, he has an affinity w/him that doesnt let him take his revenge
H restrained by the realisation that he is ‘no better than the sinner whom he is to punish’
Adelman on Gertrude
G inspires ‘fantasies larger than she is’
‘both the play and H shift blame for OKH’s murder to G’
setting- G’s bedroom
3.4 occurs in G’s bedroom
repressed oedipal feelings to mother
Coleridge on H’s character
‘consider H as a real person’
delay was central problem of the play
Bradley on Hamlet
suffered from a psychological disorder- ‘melancholy’ (Gertrude was root cause)
H’s suicidal feelings from mother’s behaviour- ‘the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother’s true nature’
impact of G’s incest
G’s ‘incestuous wedlock’ results in H’s mind being ‘poisoned’ against all women
‘he can never see Ophelia in the same light again: she is a woman, and his mother is a woman’
H judges O by his mother’s standards
