18th Century

Thomas Hammer (1736) on Hamlet's Character

Hammer complained about certain aspects of Hamlet’s behaviour in the play, in particular what he considered to be Hamlet’s cruelty in not killing Claudius when at prayer because he wants to send him to Hell.

For Hammer, such an attitude was un-Christian and such behaviour was unworthy of a hero.

Dr Samuel Johnson

Dr Samuel Johnson is perhaps the leading literary figure of the age.

He was also critical of Hamlet’s behaviour, complaining that he “treats Ophelia with so much rudeness… useless and wanton cruelty”.

Again, the complaint is rooted in the idea that, in behaving like this, Hamlet’s stature as a tragic hero is diminished.

Johnson on Hamlet's Delay:

Johnson touches on the problem of Hamlet’s delay and criticises Hamlet for his passivity.

For Johnson, Hamlet is “an instrument” rather than “an agent”. This means that, rather than actively pursuing revenge, he allows himself to be swayed by circumstance.

Hamlet “makes no attempt to punish” Claudius and ultimately “has no part” in planning the fencing match which will lead to Claudius’ death.

Romatic Criticism:

The Romantic period of English literature saw writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge - joint authors of the hugely influential Lyrical Ballads published in 1798 - explore their fascination with individuals at odds with their societies and with the power of the imagination rather than logic and reason.

19th Century

Coleridge on Hamlet's Mind:

According to Coleridge, Hamlet’s mind is “disturbed” by a lack of “balance” between the “real and the imaginary worlds”.

Hamlet suffers because his imagination, full of images of corruption and decay which he alone can see, overpowers him.

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.”

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.”

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.

20th Century

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) disagreed with the Romantic view of Hamlet as a man who cannot act. Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis, a set of psychological theories which explored a person’s unconscious and deep-seated thoughts, memories, emotions and desires. By probing a subject’s subconscious, one could discover the hidden impulses which drive a subject’s thoughts or behaviour.

Freud on Hamlet's Delay

Freud developed his own theory to explain the problem of Hamlet’s delay in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).

'Hamlet is driven subconsciously by an incestuous desire for his mother which complicates his task revenge on his father; how can he kill the hated uncles for having taken sexual possession of the mother whom Hamlet himself yearns for?'

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”.

Coleridge on Hamlet's Character:

Hartley Coleridge advised that we should “consider Hamlet as a real person”.

Bradley on Hamlet

A.C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) was especially influential.

Bradley saw the prince as suffering from a psychological disorder – a depression or “melancholy” – which also had the figure of Gertrude at its root cause.

Hamlet’s suicidal feelings result from his mother’s behaviour or what Bradley describes as “the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother’s true nature”.

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.

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

Feminist Readings of Hamlet

Lisa Jardine (1996)

Lisa Jardine questioned why critics such as Freud and TS Eliot were so keen to place “the play’s burden of guilt” on the figure of Gertrude and, as a result, present Hamlet as a “blameless hero”.

Jardine blamed the “political tendency” in society - in which the powerful blame the “disadvantaged of all races, genders and sexual preferences” for their own lack of power.

Massai (2018): The Misogynistic Play

Sonia Massai, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King's College, London, went even further in her defence of Gertrude during a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time (2018).

Massai described Hamlet as “one of the most fiercely misogynistic plays” and that “Gertrude is the target of this hatred”.

Massai (2018) on Biblic Ambiguity:

Massai also pointed to ambiguity in the Bible about whether marrying one’s dead husband’s brother was “incestuous or not” with one book forbidding it but another (Deuteronomy) urging it.

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”.

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 Rutter on Ophelia:

Carol Rutter, Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, told BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time (2018) that “Ophelia… is bullied [and] betrayed by every person in this play”.

Rutter also notes how Ophelia’s journey mirrors that of Hamlet: Ophelia “performs… the psychic journey of Prince Hamlet and the big themes of the play. Hamlet is thinking about madness; Ophelia plays it for real…. Hamlet toys with the idea of suicide; …Ophelia commits suicide”.

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.

Terry Eagleton on Hamlet

One of the leading Marxist critics, Terry Eagleton, argued that Hamlet resists playing the roles that his society expects of him (e.g. “chivalric lover, obedient revenger or future king”) but that he is “unable to find self-definition”.

Hamlet is therefore trapped between society’s expectations of him and his own inability to redefine himself. This will eventually lead to his destruction.

James Shapiro on Hamlet

James Shapiro, in his book, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), seems to offer a Marxist reading of Hamlet.

He considers the tension in the play as resulting from the conflict between different “forces” of history in the context of an old world of “chivalry” fading away and a new society founded on Protestantism and global capitalism beginning to replace it.

1997 Play: Directed by Matthew Warchus

In this production, Ophelia is seen to be taking pills throughout the performance, a sign that she is perhaps on edge. During the ‘mad scene’ (Act 4 Scene 5), instead of handing the King and Queen flowers, she instead spills her pills.