Critical Interpretations

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Multiple interpretations on Shakespeare's Hamlet
Connie Wheeler
Flashcards by Connie Wheeler, updated more than 1 year ago
Connie Wheeler
Created by Connie Wheeler about 7 years ago
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Jan Kott 'Hamlet is a great scenario, in which every character has a more or less tragic and cruel part to play... The scenario is independent of the characters; ... It defines the situations, as well as the mutual relations of the characters. But it does not say who the characters are. It is something external in relation to them. And that is why the scenario of Hamlet can by played by different sorts of characters. '
L.C Knights "If this ghost turns out to be one who clamors for revenge, then we have every reason to suppose that Shakespeare entertained some grave doubts about him."
A.C Bradley "a Tragedy of Thought"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment"
Wilson Knight (1) "Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark"
Wilson Knight (2) "He [Hamlet] is in fact the poison in the veins of the community"
L.L Schüking "Hamlet [...] cannot be comprehended except as a study of emotion"
Edward Dowden "Shakespeare created it a mystery, and therefore it is forever suggestive; for ever suggestive and never wholly explicable"
Von Goethe "All duties seem holy for Hamlet"
Wilson Knight (3) "Claudius, as he appears in the play, is not a criminal...He is..a good and gentle king, enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him with his crime."
Rebecca Smith "Polonius seems to love his children; he seems to have the welfare of the kingdom in mind. His means of actions, however, are totally corrupt"
Elaine Showalter "Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language..she represents the strong emotions that the Elizabethans thought womanish"
Brucher "Revengers create their own civil justcie"
Claude C.H Williamson "is a man too intellectual to be practical; he thinks too much and does too little"
Elaine Showalter "Hamlet's emotional vulnerability can be conceptualised as feminine."
John Kerrigan "Hamlet never promises to revenge, only to remember"
Sanford Sternlicht "Perhaps Hamlet delays because he has no audience"
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