Hamlet A05

• "Hamlet was in love with his mother and inhibited from killing his rival"

  Wells
• Hamlet is obliged to act on the spur of the moment"

  Coleridge
• "Drowning was a typically feminine death"

  Showalter
• "All duties seem holy for Hamlet"

  Goethe
• "Gertrude's marriage provided a violent shock to [Hamlet's] moral being which caused him to sink into melancholy"

  A C Bradley
• "Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language..she represents the strong emotions that the Elizabethans thought womanish"

  Showalter
• Use of CCTV which moved with the action suggested Denmark was under Claudius' repressive police state

  2001 play, directed by Steven Pimlott
• "Hamlet is...rather an instrument than an agent"

  Johnson
• • "We can imagine Hamlet's story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet"

  Edwards
• Helen Mirren plays Gertrude AND Ophelia - shows lack of female presence

  Hamlet played by twins David and Anthony Meyer = duality, Hamlet's doubts and uncertainties are magnified into a literally split personality' (Emma Smith)

  1976 Film, directed by Celestino Coronado
• Freudian representation of the play: Hamlet kiss his mother on the lips - Oedipus complex

  Striking cinematography e.g. camera 'zooming in' to give illusion of entering Hamlet's head at beginning of soliloquy

  1948 Film, Directed By + Laurence Oliver as Hamlet
• "Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark"

  Knight
• only piece of scenery was a black woven curtain that engulfed characters. it stalked and attacked hamlet so he had to avoid it while on stage representing his detoriating psyche/ mental state and his constant dithering

  Lyubimov production 1971
• • claudius higher power
  • ophelia shot herself with gun

  southwark playhouse 2023
• claudius is a man of action in contrast to hamlet a man of words.

  Parker
• • women wore white representing purity and virginial self - reinforcing patrichal societal values
  • Claudius wore red signifying his impurityand the blood he's shed and corruption in denmark
  • hamlet wore black to act as a barier to claudius' and gertrudes marriage and due to hus morning
  • everything covered in snow reflecting claudius' disguised corruption of denmark

  kenneth braunnaugh 1996
• portrays claudius as cunning and lecherous

  Altick