“Revengers . . . ”
“Revengers create their own civil justice.”
- Brucher
“The desire . . . ”
“The desire for vengeance is seen as part of a continuing pattern of human conduct.”
- Alexander
“Revenge . . . ”
“Revenge is not justice. It is rather an act of injustice on behalf of justice.”
- Belsey
“Hamlet only . . . ”
“Hamlet only possesses the word of an unreliable ghost and his own instinctive dislike of Gertrude’s second husband as a basis for revenge.”
- Anne Barton
“Hamlet assumes . . . ”
“Hamlet assumes without any questioning that he ought to avenge his father.”
- A.C Bradley
“It seems . . . ”
“It seems as if in plays of this kind [revenge tragedies] it was a necessary part of the total effect that the villain should be to some extent the agent of his own destruction. As initiator of the action he must be the initiator of its resolution.”
- Helen Gardener
“With the strongest . . . ”
“With the strongest purposes of revenge, he is irresolute and inactive.”
- Henry Mackenzie
“He himself . . . ”
“He himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish.”
- Kate Flint
“He is being asked . . . ”
“He is being asked, as a son who (surely) loves his father, to avenge his father’s foul and unnatural murder.”
- Gabriel Josipovici (Hamlet avenging his father)
“In order to act the part of revenger . . .
“In order to act the part of revenger, he must become the bloody villain himself.”
- Hunt
“Revenge is tragic . . .
“Revenge is tragic because it divides the protagonist against himself casting him in incompatible roles.”
- Watson
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; . . .
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
- Sir Francis Bacon
Hamlet cannot sweep to his revenge . . .
Hamlet cannot sweep to his revenge . . . The conventions will not permit him to do so: the dramatic action must be sustained for the required period of time.
