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OCR A Level English Literature Hamlet important critics sheet
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Important Hamlet Critics17th Century Criticism- Shakespeare Language
★ Evelyn- Wrote that “the old play begins to disgust the refined age”- he
criticised the violent scenes in the play. Evelyn also questioned whether
Hamlet had a clear sense of justice. Hamlet’s crude and bawdy
language was also criticised, especially Polonius’s uses of puns and
Hamlet’s sexually charged expressions such in A3 S2 “Do you think I
meant country matters”
★ Collier was a respected critic at the time who challenged the play’s
immorality and foul language. He condemned Shakespeare for making
Ophelia “immodest” when she goes insane.
★ Hamlet was defended by Drake who argued that there was justice in the
play because the murders are “caught in their own toils'' and that
Opherlia’s immodesty was reasonably explained by her desperate state.
18th Century Critics- Questioned the play’s morality
❖ Johnson criticised particularly violent bits of the play. He called
Hamlet’s soliloquy in A3 S3 “too horrible to be read or to be uttered” as
it was so merciless.
❖ However Walpole defended the mixture of comic and tragic elements in
Hamlet as being more believable than a straight tragedy and Hill
praised the contradictions in Hamlet’s character, saying that it made
him more lifelike.
Romanticism- Hamlet’s delay
➢ Goethe suggested that Hamlet can’t balance his thoughts and actions
because he’s so highly intelligent. In other words Hamlet can’t reconcile
his morality with the horrible act that he’s been asked to commit.
➢ Coleridge argued that Hamlet was a psychological study of an over
imaginative person with an unwillingness to act- Basically Hamlet
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