Stanley Wells (1993, Shakespeare Survey) on Hamlet himself | Oedipus complex-‘Hamlet was in love with his mother and inhibited from killing his rival’ |
Stanley Wells (1993, Shakespeare Survey) on Polonius’ relationship with Ophelia | ‘On stage we see Ophelia being looked at by Polonius with the intensity of a jealous father’ |
Leonard Tennenhouse (Power in Hamlet) on Claudius | ‘He (Claudius) has taken the position through the effective use of force’ |
William Camden (1586, actually speaking of Richard III but applies to Claudius) | ‘He was a bad man, but a good king’ |
Olaf Loske (Outrageous Fortune) on Claudius | ‘There emerges a king who is well qualified for office’ (on Claudius) |
Peter Davison (The comedy of ‘Hamlet’) on Hamlet himself | ‘Hamlet’s wit, his power of mind, takes expression in both his attempt to puzzle out the meaning of life and death, and in his humour’ |
Lee Edwards on the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia | ‘We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet’. |
Elaine Showalter on Ophelia’s death | ‘Drowning was a typically feminine death’ |
Millicent Bell on Hamlet himself | ‘Hamlet’s desire for suicide…derives from the discrepancy between what is felt and what is done.’ |
Carol Thomas Neely (feminist critic) on Ophelia | ‘Until her madness, Ophelia scarcely exists outside of men’s use of her. |
Rebecca Smith (feminist critic) on Gertrude | ‘neither structure nor content [of Gertrude’s speeches] suggests the wantonness [attributed to her by the play’s masculine perspective].’ |
Ian Johnson on Polonius | ‘Polonius has the best interests of his family and his monarch at heart’ |
T.S. Eliot on Gertrude | ‘She (Gertrude) is insufficient as a character to carry the weight of the effect she generates’ |
Coleridge (poet)-1818 on Ophelia | ‘The sweet girl (Ophelia) was not acting a part of her own, but was a decoy’ |
Hamlet: Literary criticism
August 23, 2019