Hamlet | Criticism

  • An Approach to Hamlet

    In this excerpt L.C. Knight discusses the meaning of Hamlet's celebrated soliliquoy, "To Be or Not to Be."

  • Hamlet and Revenge

    In this excerpt from a highly regarded work on Hamlet, Eleanor Prosser meditates on the reasons for Hamlet's universal appeal, and how, in many ways, Hamlet's dilemma is the same one experienced by civilized man.

  • Overviews of Hamlet

    The following two full-length essays provide an in-depth survey of the dramatic action and major themes in Hamlet. In the first, David Bevington focuses on Hamlet's role in the play by examining his interactions with other characters and his soliloquies. In the second essay, Maynard Mack provides a general analysis of Hamlet. Mack discusses three aspects of the play: its mysteriousness, the relationship between appearance and reality, and a concept the critic terms "mortality."

  • Delay in Hamlet

    The following two critical excerpts examine in depth Hamlet's delay. Robert Hapgood, in the first excerpt, defines Hamlet's particular form of delay as "inertia" because he experiences difficulty both in getting started and in coming to a stop. In the second excerpt, Robert R. Reed, Jr. analyzes not only Hamlet's internal meditations on his hesitation to exact revenge on Claudius, but also various external obstacles which prevent him from killing the king.

  • Revenge in Hamlet

    In this excerpt, Réné Girard maintains that Hamlet belongs to the Revenge Tragedy genre. In the critic's opinion, Shakespeare despised the Revenge Tragedy genre as a form whose conventions had become trite. Yet, because revenge theater was highly popular among Elizabethan audiences, the dramatist had to conform to certain guidelines of the genre to produce a financially successful tragedy.

  • Melancholy and Grief in Hamlet

    In the first excerpt, Oscar James Campbell contends that the nature of Hamlet's melancholy, or state of depression, was more easily perceived by an Elizabethan audience than by a modern one. Further, the critic asserts that while Hamlet is indeed emotionally unstable, he is not insane. In the second excerpt, Arthur Kirsch considers Hamlet a play which generates great intellectual energy, but perhaps more importantly reflects an experience of profound pain and suffering for the protagonist.

  • Imagery in Hamlet

    In the first selection, Richard D. Altick argues that Shakespeare not only emphasized the theme of bodily corruption in Hamlet, but also the "revolting odors that accompany the process." Altick focuses on such images of decay as the sun as an agent of corruption, cancerous infection, and the stench which accompanies rotting. Kenneth Muir, in the second excerpt, discusses imagery and symbolism in Hamlet, beginning with an examination of what he considers the most apparent image pattern in the play—disease.

  • Hamlet

    The three critical excerpts in this section explore the character of Hamlet. George Detmold addresses the question of why Hamlet delays taking revenge on Claudius by assessing his status as a tragic hero. From his definition of a tragic hero, Detmold especially focuses on Hamlet's unorthodox demonstration of will-power in the play, arguing that the protagonist's preoccupation with moral integrity is what ultimately delays him from killing Claudius. In the second well-known excerpt, Ernest Jones applies Sigmund Freud's techniques of psychoanalysis to Hamlet's character, asserting that the prince is afflicted with an Oedipus Complex. Finally, in the last excerpt Edgar Johnson details his own interpretation of the protagonist as a hero whose complex "dilemma is to disentangle himself from the temptation to wreak justice for the wrong reasons and in an evil passion, and to do what he must do at last for the pure sake of justice, for the welfare of the State, to weed the unweeded garden of Denmark and set right the time that is out of joint."

  • The Ghost

    In this excerpt, Kenneth Muir analyzes the Ghost, first by proposing several attitudes an Elizabethan audience may have held regarding its nature. In addition, the critic explores Hamlet's reaction to his meeting with the Ghost by studying the nature of the prince's depression and his assumption of an "antic disposition."

  • Claudius

    In this excerpt Bertram Joseph examines the concept of appearance versus reality with regard to Claudius's character in Hamlet. When the play begins, the critic asserts, there is no indication that Claudius is a villain; rather, he appears to be the consummate monarch, who effectively transacts private and public business. As the play progresses, however, the quality of his villainy is gradually revealed to the audience.

  • Gertrude

    In the first of two excerpts on Gertrude, Carolyn Heilbrun contends that, contrary to the predominant critical opinion, Gertrude is not a weak character who lacks "depth and vigorous intelligence." Baldwin Maxwell takes exception to such a reading of Gertrude, and provides a scene-by-scene analysis of the queen to prove that she is highly dependent on, and manipulated by, Claudius.

  • Ophelia

    In the first selection, Theodore Lidz maintains that while Shakespeare remains ambiguous about the reality of the prince's madness, he portrays Ophelia as classically insane. J. Dover Wilson, in the second excerpt from his acclaimed What Happens in Hamlet, provides a detailed interpretation of the "nunnery scene" between Hamlet and Ophelia in Act III, scene i. The critic discusses Ophelia's role as a decoy, describing how she makes the prince suspicious of a plot by overplaying her part when returning his love letters.