Johnson - “Hamlet is rather an…
instrument than an agent”
Hawkes - “The ghost…
dominates even in his absence”
Webster - “Flattering…
sycophants”
Webster - “Poison near the head…
death and disease through the whole land spread”
Webster - “From decayed…
fortunes, every flatterer shrinks, men cease to build when the foundation sinks”
Hytner - “Surveillance…
state”
Branagh - “People…
forever being watched”
Poe - “The death of…
a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world”
Collier - “The depiction…
of Ophelia is lewd and unreasonable”
Hammer - “Hamlet’s conduct is…
cruel…There is something very bloody in it, so inhuman, so unworthy of a hero”
Voltaire - “A…
vulgar and barbarous drama”
Hazlitt- “Hamlet is so incapable…
of deliberate action”
Traub - “Male power…
is restored through the vilification of women”
Freud - “Hamlet is literally…
no better than the sinner whom he is to punish”
Bradley - “Melancholia…
is at the root of Hamlet’s problems”
Bradley - “There is no tragedy in…
it’s expulsion of evil, the tragedy is that it involves the waste of good”
Dusinberre - “Ophelia has no chance to…
develop an individual conscience, so stifled is she by the authority of the male world”
Eliot - “The play is…
an artistic failure”
Lawrence - “The soliloquies of Hamlet…
are as deep as the soul of man can go”
Wilson- “Hamlet (play) is the most successful…
piece of dramatic illusion the world has ever known”
Levin - “Hamlet (play) is the most..
problematic play ever written”
Smith - “Gertrude is a…
caring and nurturing maternal presence”
Hawkes - “Claudius is no…
simple villain, but a complex, compelling figure”
Holderness - “Hamlet is intensely…
aware of himself as an actor”
