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Hamlet Critical Interpretations Notes
Notes on critical interpretations from multiple critics perfect for A05 in a Hamlet part B Essay
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Hamlet Revisionhttps://www.stuvia.com/en-gb/doc/1175422/the-play-hamlet-proves-revenge-to-be-a-worthless-cause.
Hamlet and the Scanning of Revenge – Paul Gottschalk
‘The play revolves around the prince’s trying on of identities’
‘Hamlet accepts cowardice merely as a hypothesis confirmed in some degree by fact’
– when Hamlet says he is ‘pigeon-livered and lack gall’
The psychoanalytical interpretations of Freud and Ernest Jones are based upon the
assumption that Hamlet secretly harbours the same incestuous desire that Claudius
has acted upon
o But what the psychoanalysts adduce a priori is already implicit in the text:
Hamlet sees himself as a sinner among sinners
In assuming the role of villain and planning Claudius’ eternal damnation, Hamlet is
tactically condemning himself as well – which is what he has been doing all along
The Ghost is concerned with the spiritual health of his nation, his son, and his queen;
‘he shows no private thirst to see Claudius suffer what Claudius has made him suffer’
– the Ghost says ‘Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven’
o However, Hamlet does not leave Gertrude alone, instead he continues to
condemn her for marrying Claudius
Historical Critical Approaches
Renaissance Period
By the early Jacobean period, the play was famous for the ghost and for its
dramatization of melancholy and insanity
The procession of mad courtiers and ladues in Jacobean drama frequently appears
indebted to Hamlet
Looking back on Renaissance drama in 1655, Abraham Wright lauds the humour of
the gravedigger’s scene
There is some scholarly speculation that Hamlet may have been censored during this
eperiod. Theatres were closed under the Puritan Commonwealth which ran from
1640-1660
Restoration
When the monarchy was restored in 1660, theatres re-opened. Early interpretations,
from the late 17th to the early 18th century, typically showed Prince Hamlet as a
heroic figure
Shakespeare remained popular not just with mass audience but even with the very
critics made uncomfortable by his ignorance of Aristotle’s unities and decorum
o Aristotle states that in a great tragedy, there should be a unity of time, place
and action – the action of the play should take place in the amount of time it
takes to perform it
o Hamlet is an atypical play because it does not conform to traditional
Aristotelian concepts of the 3 unities
, In addition to Hamlet’s worth as a tragic hero, Restoration critics focussed on the
qualities of Shakespeare’s language, with Polonius’s fondness for puns and Hamlet’s
use of mean expression receiving particular attention
Even more important was the question of decorum, which in the case of Hamlet
focussed on the play’s violation of tragic unity of time and place, and on the
characters
Collier compares Ophelia to Electra, she condemns Shakespeare for allowing his
heroine to become ‘immodest’ in her insanity, particularly in the flower scene. Drake
almost immediately defend Ophelia; Drake describes her actions in the context of
her desperate situation
Early Eighteenth Century
Criticism of the play in the first decades of the 18 th century continued to be
dominated by the neoclassical conception of plot and character.
o Relying on the classic styles of the ancient Greeks and Romans, it main
characteristic is an emphasis on logic, common sense, properness and
adequate performance in society
Voltaire’s attach on the play is perhaps the most famous neoclassical treatment of
the play – ‘Shakespeare boasted a string fruitful Genius: he was natural and sublime,
but had not so much as a single Spark of good taste, or new one rule of drama’ ‘one
would think this work was the fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage’
The ghost scenes were particular favourites of an ae on the verge of the Gothic
revival. Stubbes noted Shakespeare’s use of Horatio’s incredulity to make the Ghost
credible
In 1735, Aaron Hill, rather than condemning Hamlet’s actions as a violation of
decorum, praised the seeming contradictions in his temperament
After mid-century, such psychological readings had begun to gain more currency
The play’s disparate elements were defended as part of a grander design. Walpole
defends the mixture of comedy and tragedy as ultimately ore realistic and effective
than rigid separation would be
Samuel Johnson echoed Popple in defending Polonius; Johnson also doubted the
necessity of Hamlet’s vicious treatment of Ophelia
Romantic Criticism
In 1774, William Richardson analysed that Hamlet was a sensitive and accomplished
prince with an unusually refined moral sense; he is nearly incapacitated by the
horror of the truth about his mother and uncle, and struggles against that horror to
fulfil his task. He thought the play should have been ended shortly after the closet
scene, thus saw the play as dramatizing the conflict between a sensitive individual
and a calloused world
Henry Mackenzie also concludes that the tragedy in the play arises from Hamlet’s
nature; even the best qualities of his character merely reinforce his inability to cope
with the world in which he is placed
Another change occurred right around the Romantic literary period (19 th century),
known for its emphasis on the individual and internal motive. The Romantic period
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