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Summary Hamlet - Critical Quote Bank
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A quote bank of some critical quotes concerning Shakespeare's most famous play, Hamlet.
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CRITIC’S NAME ARGUMENT THEME QUOTESCatherine “Revenge is not justice” but is always ● Revenge “To uphold the law, revengers are compelled to break it.”
Belsey; ‘The seen by the revenger (and the ● Justice
Subject of audience) as both morally and ● Morality “Revenge exists in the margin between justice and crime. An act of injustice on behalf
Tragedy: Identity politically necessary. The traditional ● Religion of justice, it deconstructs the antithesis which fixes the meanings of good and evil.”
& Difference in answer to this dilemma is “to suffer in
Renaissance Christian patience”, but that leaves “Revenge is always in excess to justice.”
Drama’ the social body in the hands of
murderers like Claudius. The extent “The question whether it is nobler to suffer in Christian patience or to take arms
to which revenge in Hamlet is not against secular injustice is not resolved in the plays.”
simply a moral problem but rather a
political problem of the utmost
significance to a century that, in
1649, was to see the execution of
Charles I.
Stephen The play, Hamlet, is not about ● Remembrance “Remembrance of the dead becomes depersonalised” when Hamlet tells Horatio that
Greenblatt; revenge. It is about remembrance. ● Revenge Claudius ‘hath killed my king and whored my mother’. Use of ‘king’ and not ‘father’
‘Chapter 5: shows the depersonalisation.
Remember Me’
from ‘Hamlet in “Grief turns into the imperative to avenge his father.”
Purgatory’
“Perhaps remembrance and revenge are not as perfectly coincident as either the
2001 prince or the ghost had thought.”
Elaine Elaine Showalter creates an ● Love Ophelia represents “the impossibility of representing the feminine in patriarchal
Showalter; argument that is predominantly ● Relationships discourse as other than madness, incoherence, fluidity or silence.”
‘Representing based on the idea that Ophelia's ● Madness
Ophelia: ● Women
madness is one that comes from her Further, she contends that when feminists have turned Ophelia into a female “symbol
Women, ● Sexuality
"female love-melancholy" - "a of absence,” they have also been endorsing their own marginality.
Madness and the
Responsibilities predictable outcome of erotomania".
, of Feminist Finally, she asserts that when making Ophelia into Hamlet’s anima, feminists have
Criticism’ Lacan argues that Ophelia is an reduced her to “a metaphor for male experience.”
essential character in Hamlet as she
is the object of Hamlet’s male desire “Ophelia does have a story of her own that feminist criticism can tell; it is neither her
and is therefore “linked forever, for life story, nor her love story, but rather the history of her representation.”
centuries to the figure of Hamlet”.
“Madness is a product of the female body and female nature.”
Feminist critic Lee Ecwards argues
that “we can imagine Hamlet’s story “No true Ophelia as she has been appropriated by each age to represent its own
without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally preoccupations about women.”
has no story without Hamlet.”
“Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language.”
“Ophelia is entirely pure.”
Rebecca Smith; Defends Gertrude against the ● Women “Heart cleft in twain” as she has divided loyalties to husband and son.
‘A Heart Cleft in traditional critic attacks and shows ● Incest
Twain’ from ‘The that she is, instead, a “soft, obedient, ● Relationships “Gertrude believes that quiet women best please men, and pleasing men is Gertrude’s
Dilemma of ● Sexuality main interest.”
dependent, unimaginative woman”
Shakespeare’s
Gertrude’ who is the victim of “divided loyalties “Hamlet seems obsessed with Gertrude as a sex object.”
between her husband and son”.
“He attacks what he perceives to be the brevity of women’s love, women’s
wantonness and ability to make ‘monsters’ of men”.
“Gertrude has not moved in the play toward independence or moral stance.”
“Prompts violent physical and emotional reactions from the men in the story.”
“Although he clearly loves her - Claudius shares Hamlet's concept of Gertrude as an
object. She is possessed as one of the effects of his actions.”
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