Marilyn French - To Be Or Not To Be 1942 -Discovering Hamlet TV - Jacob Bronowski TV - Frank Harris - David Tennant TV - Jonathan Bate - Laurence Olivier TV - The Pure Hell of St Trinian's 1960 - Rumpole of the Bailey TV - S T Coleridge - C S Lewis - Philip Edwards - Peter Davidson - Nigel Alexander - Stephen Booth - James L Calderwood - Rebecca Smith - Marilyn French - Elaine Showalter - David Leverenz - Catherine Belsey - Leonard Tennenhouse - John Hunt - esias -
98,828. First he recounts the overall fact of the murder, and the cover story given out ... And within a few lines, the ghost is attacking not Claudius, but his queen ... And the Claudius we have seen does not seem to be garbage. (Hamlet & Ghost) Marilyn French, Chaste Constancy in ‘Hamlet’
124,086. Even Shakespeare couldn’t stand seeing Hamlet three nights in a row. (Comedy & Adolf Hitler & Hamlet) To Be Or Not To Be 1942 starring Carole Lombard & Jack Benny & Robert Stack & Relix Bressart & Lionel Atwill & Stanley Ridges & Sig Ruman & Tom Dugan & Charles Halton & George Lynn & Henry Victor et al, director Ernst Lubitsch, Jack Benny as Joseph Tura
45,946. And then he has that dark side in him which must frighten the audience ... There’s something diabolical in him. (Shakespeare & Audience & Hamlet) Discovering Hamlet, Sky Arts, Christopher Plummer
45,947. You can play it violently different ways. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid. David Tennant
45,948. I discovered its importance by doing it. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid. Jonathan Miller
45,949. To have a friend like that would be awful. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid. Franco Zeffirelli
45,950. It’s a deeply interesting story. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid. Jonathan Miller
5,875. He is not ripe for the act he is asked to perform ... The tragedy is not that Hamlet dies, it’s that he dies exactly when he is ready to become a great king. (Evolution & Hamlet & Humanity & Shakespeare) Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man: The Long Childhood 13/13, BBC 1973
45,951. In Hamlet, Shakespeare has revealed too much of himself. (Hamlet & Shakespeare) Frank Harris, author The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story 1911
45,952. It connects with something very primal. It exists in a kind of public consciousness. This icon of theatre and culture. It is woven into the fabric of our lives. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That) David Tennant on Hamlet, BBC 2012
45,953. Every line seems to be a quotation. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That & Quotation) ibid.
45,954. Hamlet is angry and isolated. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That) ibid.
45,955. Everyone around him seems to have moved on. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That) ibid.
45,956. This play is about a murdered father and his lonely grieving son. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That) ibid.
45,957. His eleven year old son died – he was called Hamlet. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That) ibid.
45,958. The ghost of his dead father has been seen walking the battlements of the castle. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Ghost) ibid.
45,959. The appearance of the ghost becomes the engine of the play. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Ghost) ibid.
45,960. This call to arms has come from a ghost. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Ghost) ibid.
45,961. He asks, What is the point? (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That) ibid.
45,962. Hamlet 1990: Give me some light! The King reacts. Hamlet is vindicated ... He is straight-jacketed to his own morality. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That & Morality) ibid.
45,963. Hamlet 1948 Lawrence Olivier. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Actor) ibid.
45,964. As he see it – her promiscuity. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
45,965. Sigmund Freud: Hamlet might actually be in love with his mother. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
45,966. How long may a man lie in earth ere he rot? (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That & Death) ibid. Hamlet to gravedigger
45,967. Eight year ... Nine year. (Shakespeare & Hamlet & Life’s Like That & Death) ibid.
88,254. This play is so deeply ingrained in our popular culture. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) David Tennant: My Shakespeare: Hamlet s2e1
88,256. We the audience become his confidants. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
88,258. Hamlet starts to doubt his mission. Should he trust the ghost? (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
88,259. Hamlet is at the mercy of the man he loathes ... The King is determined to get rid of Hamlet. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
88,260. Hamlet comes face to face with mortality. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
88,261. Can he kill a king? (Shakespeare & Hamlet) ibid.
45,968. We’re on edge through the play of Hamlet. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) Professor Jonathan Bate
45,969. The tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind. (Shakespeare & Hamlet) Laurence Olivier, introduction to the 1948 screen adaptation of Hamlet
87,868. The final outrage – the Soliloquy [of Hamlet] to striptease. (School & Hamlet) The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s 1960 starring Joyce Grenfell & George Cole & Cecil Parker & Eric Barker & Thorley Walters & Irene Handl & Lloyd Lamble & Nicholas Phipps & John le Mesurier & Basil Dignam & Michael Ripper & Raymond Huntley & Liz Frazer & George Benson & Sid James et al, director Frank Launder, civil servant at school production of Hamlet
78,928. Like the two ends of a pantomime horse getting together to play Hamlet. (Law & Hamlet) Rumpole of the Bailey: Rumpole’s Last Case s4e6
98,854. Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. S T Coleridge, Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare, 1808
98,780. The appearance of the spectre means a breaking down of the walls of the world. C S Lewis
98,855. In short he is very human. Now these are the very qualities Hamlet lacks. Hamlet is inhuman. G Wilson Knight, The Embassy of Death: An Essay on Hamlet
98,856. They are, in fact, all leagued against him, they are puzzled by him or fear him; he has no friend except Horatio, and Horatio, after the Ghost scenes, becomes a queer shadowy character. ibid.
98,857. A poison in the midst of the healthy bustle of the court. He is a superman among men. And he is superman because he has walked and held converse with death. ibid.
98,858. Thus Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark. ibid.
98,859. He has indeed bought converse with his father’s spirit at the price of enduring and spreading Hell on earth. ibid.
98,860. It is Hamlet who is right. What he says and thinks of them is true, and there is no fault in his logic. ibid.
98,771. The twentieth-century view of the play developed as an antithesis to the view which prevailed in the nineteenth century. Philip Edwards, The Tragic Balance in Hamlet
98,772. G Wilson Knight’s powerful essay of 1930, ‘The Embassy of Death’ from The Wheel of Fire ... Knight portrayed the Denmark of Claudius and Gertrude as a healthy, contented, smoothly-running community. Claudius is clearly an efficient administrator, and he has sensible ideas about not letting memories of the past impede the promise of the future. Hamlet, by contrast, is a figure of nihilism and death. ibid.
98,773. L C Knight’s Approach to Hamlet of 1960 was uncompromising in its hostility to the Prince and his mission. Hamlet is an immature person lacking ‘a ready responsiveness to life’ who is pushed by the Ghost to concentrate on good and evil. ibid.
98,774. It is the common currency of Hamlet criticism to deplore, not Hamlet’s failure to carry out his mission, but to the mission itself. ibid.
98,775. The idea that Hamlet’s problem is somehow to punish Claudius and yet transcend the sheer human violence and vindictiveness which such punishment entails goes back to 1839 and the once famous but now forgotten ‘conscious’ theory of Hermann Ulrici. ‘It cannot,’ he said, ‘be an entirely innocent and heavenly spirit that would wander on earth to demand a son to avenge his death.’ ibid.
98,779. The critical element in this tragic structure is the notion that God is neither absent nor obviously present. If God is dead, or if God is clearly known, the tragedy (Goldman says) cannot exist. The special irony of the tragic hero’s position is that the difficulty of trying to live out what God wants is compounded by the difficulty of knowing what God wants, or even whether He exists. (Hamlet & God) ibid.
98,781. The ambiguity of the Ghost is of fundamental importance. (Hamlet & Ghost) ibid.