Hamlet Critics

Question 1

‘Revenge exists on the margin between justice and crime.’

Answer 1

Belsey

Question 2

‘All duties seem holy for Hamlet’

Answer 2

Van Goethe

Question 3

‘Laertes is the typical avenger’

Answer 3

Kitteridge

Question 4

‘Hamlet’s principal concern is not revenge but to purify his mother’

Answer 4

Adelman

Question 5

‘Tragedy is made blacker by the jewels of humour in which it is bestowed’

Answer 5

Alexander Crawford

Question 6

‘Gertrude moves throughout Claudius’ shadow’

Answer 6

Barker

Question 7

‘Gertrude is the scapegoat of the play’

Answer 7

Rose

Question 8

‘Ophelia has no story without Hamlet’

Answer 8

Lee Edwards

Question 9

‘Ophelia is a player trying to respond to several directors at once’

Answer 9

David Levernz

Question 10

‘His grief for his dead father seems more nostalgia than loss’

Answer 10

Worral

Question 11

‘Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment’

Answer 11

Coleridge

Question 12

‘Hamlet has no straight forward revenge stratergy’

Answer 12

Ann Thompson

Question 13

‘The melancholy hero, doomed to an awful fate’

Answer 13

G.H Lewes

Question 14

‘Ophelia’s madness fills the heart with tenderness

Answer 14

Johnson

Question 15

‘Claudius has corrupted the whole kingdom of Denmark’

Answer 15

Atlick

Question 16

‘It is a play about political chicanery’

Answer 16

Worral

Question 17

‘his habitual feeling is one of disgust at life and everything in it, himself included’

Answer 17

A.C Bradley

Question 18

‘she represents the strong emotions that the Elizabethans thought womanish’

Answer 18

Showalter

Question 19

‘Ophelia is stifled by the authority of the male world’ -

Answer 19

Dusinbere

Question 20

‘Claudius is a good and gentle king’

Answer 20

Knight

Question 21

‘The ghost is the linchpin of the play’

Answer 21

John Wilson

Question 22

‘In Shakespears society, the ideal female is cherished for her youth, beauty and purity’

Answer 22

Rogers

Question 23

‘Hamlets madness is associated with intellectual and imaginative genius but Ophelia’s affliction is erotomania, of love madness’

Answer 23

Showalter

Question 24

‘Ophelia is a play within a play’

Answer 24

David Leverenz

Question 25

'pleasing men is Gertrude's main interest'

Answer 25

Rebecca Smith

Question 26

'he thinks too much and does too little'

Answer 26

Williamson

Question 27

'(Horatio) loves Hamlet with all his heart'

Answer 27

Mabillard

Question 28

'desire to take his father's place in his mother's affections'

Answer 28

Ernest Jones

Question 29

'Of all the unclean ones, Hamlet was the uncleanest. But he accused only the others'

Answer 29

D.H. Lawrence

Question 30

'pure, noble and most moral nature'

Answer 30

Van Goethe

Question 31

'a character of ambiguous morality whom we can never fully know' (on Gertrude)

Answer 31

G.F. Bradby

Question 32

'disgust at the feminine passivity within himself'

Answer 32

David Leverenz

Question 33

'Hamlet is an element of evil'

Answer 33

Wilson Knight

Question 34

'Gertrude is in fact protecting her son from the man who murdered her husband'

Answer 34

Graf

Question 35

'Gertrude is shallow and a sexual being'

Answer 35

Mabillard