Hamlet Critics

Question 1

“the rotten miasma of Claudia’s Elsinore”

Answer 1

Harold Bloom

Question 2

“they take pleasure in the tragedy of Hamlet”

Answer 2

Voltaire, 1748

Question 3

“his mistress becomes crazy”

Answer 3

Voltaire, 1748

Question 4

“Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent”

Answer 4

Samuel Johnson, 1765

Question 5

“untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless and the pious”

Answer 5

Samuel Johnson, 1765

Question 6

“the deepest melancholy being rooted at his heart” (hamlet)

Answer 6

Henry Mackenzie

Question 7

“to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it” (hamlet)

Answer 7

Goethe

Question 8

“he winds, and turns, and torments himself”

Answer 8

Goethe

Question 9

“he acts the part of madness with unrivalled power” (hamlet)

Answer 9

Schlegel

Question 10

“he is a hypocrite towards himself” (H)

Answer 10

Schlegel

Question 11

“he is too much overwhelmed with his own sorrow to have any compassion to spare for others” (H)

Answer 11

Schlegel

Question 12

“transactions between himself and his moral sense” (H)

Answer 12

Charles Lamb

Question 13

“because he cannot have his revenge perfect, he declines it altogether” (H)

Answer 13

William Hazlitt

Question 14

“an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds” (Shakespeare’s intentions)

Answer 14

S.T. Coleridge

Question 15

“vacillates from sensibility” (H)

Answer 15

S.T. Coleridge

Question 16

“his moral poisoning” (H)

Answer 16

Taine

Question 17

“Hamlet is Shakespeare”

Answer 17

Taine

Question 18

“Hamlet had experienced the warmest affection for his Mother”

Answer 18

Ernest Jones

Question 19

“bitter resentment against his Mother” (H)

Answer 19

Ernest Jones

Question 20

“it is a tragedy, not of excessive thought but of defeated thought”

Answer 20

D.G. James

Question 21

“he is always either behind an arras or prying into one” (polonius)

Answer 21

Maynard Mack

Question 22

“where does the playing end?”

Answer 22

Maynard Mack

Question 23

“infinitely corruptible” (R&G)

Answer 23

Maynard Mack

Question 24

“he confronts, recognises and accepts the condition of being man” (graveyard scene for Hamlet)

Answer 24

Maynard Mack

Question 25

"He is a man living in meditation"

Answer 25

Coleridge

Question 26

"the great object of his life is defeated by continually resolving to do"

Answer 26

Coleridge

Question 27

"Hamlet is unable to carry out the sacred duty, imposed by divine authority, of punishing an evil man by death"

Answer 27

Bradley

Question 28

"Hamlet is not an individual riddled with hesitation, but rather someone who sees too clearly the moral and existential implications of action"

Answer 28

C.S. Lewis

Question 29

"The delay is not of Hamlet's own making; it is imposed upon him by the nature of the revenge play itself"

Answer 29

Dover Wilson

Question 30

"Hamlet's hesitation is the result of an Oedipal complex; he cannot kill Claudius because he has an unconscious identification with him"

Answer 30

Freud

Question 31

"The conflict in Hamlet is between the duty of revenge and the horror of fulfilling it"

Answer 31

Ernest Jones

Question 32

"Ophelia has no story without Hamlet."

Answer 32

Showalter

Question 33

"Gertrude and Ophelia are constructed as opposites: the sensual mother and the innocent maiden, each defined by her sexuality."

Answer 33

Neely

Question 34

"Gertrude has traditionally been played as a sensual, deceitful woman"

Answer 34

Smith

Question 35

"We can imagine Hamlet's story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet."

Answer 35

Edwards

Question 36

"Ophelia's tragedy is that she is incapable of representing herself"

Answer 36

Leverenz

Question 37

"She is defined by others."

Answer 37

Leverenz

Question 38

"Gertrude's 'crime' is her remarriage"

Answer 38

Rose

Question 39

"Hamlet's disgust stems from his own fantasies rather than anything she has actually done."

Answer 39

Rose

Question 40

"Ophelia is a potent figure of resistance who goes mad and speaks truths no one wants to hear."

Answer 40

Showalter

Question 41

"Gertrude's sexuality and maternal body become the grounds of Hamlet's deepest anxieties."

Answer 41

Adelman

Question 42

"The ghost insists on the return of an unresolved past"

Answer 42

Greenblatt

Question 43

"The Ghost embodies the persistence of memory and the inescapable nature of the past"

Answer 43

Belsey

Question 44

"Hamlet never shakes off the burden of memory: the past possesses him"

Answer 44

Kerrigan

Question 45

"The Ghost's revelation does not free Hamlet but imprisons him in a state of inaction and melancholy, his mind forever haunted by the past."

Answer 45

Bradley

Question 46

"The Ghost is not merely a figure from Hamlet's past—it is the past itself, returning to claim him, preventing his escape into the future."

Answer 46

Bloom