Hamlet (1-5)

Question 1

Voltaire

Answer 1

• “the fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage”

Question 2

Dr Samuel Johnson

Answer 2

• “useless and wanton cruelty” – Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia.
• “too horrible to be read or to be uttered” (Hamlet’s third soliloquy)
• “Hamlet is…rather an instrument than an agent”

Question 3

Goethe

Answer 3

• “without the strength of nerve which makes the hero”

Question 4

A. W. Schlegel

Answer 4

• Hamlet is a “tragedy of thought”
• “Hamlet has no firm belief”

Question 5

William Hazlitt

Answer 5

• “It is we who are Hamlet”