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Hamlet Across Time: Critical Interpretations, 1980 Play: Directed by…

- - - - Johnson on Shakespeare's Plot:
        Johnson also criticised aspects of Shakespeare’s plotting.
        He could find “no adequate cause” for Hamlet’s pretend madness “for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity”.
  - - - Hazlitt's Account of Kemble:
        In 1817, Hazlitt claimed that “There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage”.
        Hazlitt gave a detailed account of John Phillip Kemble, one of the most successful and celebrated actors of the early 19th century, playing the role of Hamlet, judging him to be “too deliberate and formal… too strong and pointed.”
        However, this is simply because “Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted.”
        
        William Hazlitt declared, in 1817, that “It is we who are Hamlet,” most of all in the way in which his “powers have been eaten up by thought.”
        
        Hazlitt on Hamlet's Speeches:
        William Hazlitt wrote in 1817 that Hamlet’s speeches and soliloquies “are as real as our own thoughts”. As such, we can think of Hamlet as a “real” person with a “real” mind.
        
        Coleridge Identifies with Hamlet:
        Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare, 1897, “it is essential that we should regency in the constitution of our own minds.” “I have a smack of Hamlet in myself” Coleridge wrote
        
        For August Wilhelm. von Schlegel, I’m 1809, the burden that Hamlet faces “cripples the power of thought.”
    - - Hazlitt's Definition of Hamlet:
        Hazlitt defines Hamlet as “the prince of philosophical speculators” who, because he cannot accomplish a “perfect” revenge, “declines it altogether”.
        For Hazlitt, Hamlet is compelled to “indulge his imagination” rather than act.
        
        Wilhelm von Schegel on Hamlet's thoughts:
        The German poet, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, argued that Hamlet loses himself in “labyrinths of thought” without “end or beginning”.
        As a result, his thoughts “cripple” Hamlet from taking action.
        
        Shelley on Hamlet in
        Thoughts:
        Percy Bysshe Shelley also saw Hamlet as someone too prone to lose himself in thought: “his profound meditations seem without beginning or end, while he wanders in a wilderness of thought.”
        Shelley thought that whenever Hamlet did act, his instinct was to reproach himself: “Whenever he does anything, he seems astonished at himself, and calls it rashness.”
        
        Lamb Identifying with a Shy Hamlet:
        Charles Lamb identified with a Hamlet who he saw as delicate and sensitive (“shy, negligent, retiring”) and uncomfortable with his role as revenge hero.
- - - - According to Freud, Hamlet is unable to kill Claudius because he cannot “take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father’s place with the mother”.
        Hamlet is restrained by the realisation that he is “no better than the sinner whom he is to punish”.
        
        Adelman on Gertrude
        Janet Adelman’s Suffocating Mothers (1992) argued that Hamlet is primarily a family drama in which the figure of Gertrude, although not a particularly complex or fully-drawn character, inspires “fantasies larger than she is”.
        In Adelman’s view, “both the play and Hamlet shift blame for old Hamlet’s murder to Gertrude”.
        Adelman's view is common to several strands of 20th century criticism – of Gertrude being the cause of Hamlet’s psychological torment.
  - - - Bradley on the Impact of Gertrude's Incest:
        Gertrude’s “incestuous wedlock" results in Hamlet's whole mind being "poisoned” against all women.
        This leads to his treatment of Ophelia: “He can never see Ophelia in the same light again: she is a woman, and his mother is a woman”.
        Hamlet judges Ophelia by what he takes to be his mother’s standards and is overcome with feelings of disgust.
        
        T. S. Eliot on Gertrude
        TS Eliot also placed Gertrude at the heart of his criticism of the play.
        In a 1919 essay, he argued that the play was an “artistic failure” because Hamlet’s “disgust is occasioned [caused] by his mother” but Gertrude is so “insignificant” a character that she cannot convincingly be represented as a plausible cause of Hamlet’s feelings.
        In failing to develop Gertrude as a character, Shakespeare cannot convince the audience that she is the cause of the intense feelings of disgust felt by her son.
  - - - David Leverenz on Ophelia:
        In The Woman in Hamlet (1978), David Leverenz described Ophelia’s dramatic function as that “everyone has used her: Polonius, to gain favour; Laertes, to belittle Hamlet; Claudius, to spy on Hamlet; Hamlet, to express rage at Gertrude and Hamlet again, to express his feigned madness with her as decoy”.
        Ophelia’s descent into madness is made inevitable by the extent to which she is exploited.
        
        Carol Camden on Ophelia
        Carol Camden (1964) also points out how “Hamlet’s pretended madness is contrasted with the reality of Ophelia’s madness”.
        Camden points out that despite the reality of Ophelia’s madness, she is a marginal figure, whereas Hamlet’s feigned madness dominates the play.
        Camden puts this down to gender roles - the assumption that masculinity is dominant and femininity is subordinate.
        
        Charney and Charney (1977)
        Some feminist critics see Ophelia’s descent into madness as a form of empowerment, with Ophelia at last finding her own authentic voice.
        Maurice Charney and Hanna Charney (1977) argue that “her madness… enables her to assert her being; she is no longer enforced to keep silent and play the dutiful daughter”.
- - - - Massai (2018) on Gertrude's Compassion
        Massai somewhat agreed with views (like TS Eliot’s) that Gertrude is an “ambiguous” figure.
        However, she argued that, if one looks closer, Gertrude “has a lot of compassion for Ophelia”, shown in her beautifully tender lines on her death, and that her remarriage to Claudius “was not so uncommon, particularly in the context of royal families”.
        
        Massai on the Silencing of Women:
        Massai also touched on the silencing of the female characters in the play: “The fundamental problem with Ophelia & Gertrude in the play is that they each speak 4% of the lines in the play so they are mostly represented.”
        Here, Massai points out that with so few lines given to them, the female characters are under-developed and not given sufficient scope to define themselves. As a result, they are defined by the male characters who are given many more lines.