Romantic Readings of Hamlet

William Hazlitt 'He is full of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amiable of misanthropes'

Romanticized image of Hamlet as idealised poet

Hamlet's soul too sensitive for the world

William Richardson

• 'he is moved by finer principles, by an exquisite sense of virtue, of moral beauty and turpitude... Gertude's behaviour...cast him into utter agony'
• Hamlet discovering moral depravity in his parentis painful and bitter
• Struggles for utterance
• desires deliverance for painful existence
• Respect for father and inability to revenge comes from Hamlet's virtue
• conflict between Hamlet's parents as the source of Hamlet's moral confusion
• mind falling apart
• Hamlet restores to Gertrude a sense of her own depravity
• abhorrence of the appearance of inhuman actions makes him distrustful of everyone including himself
• his inner virtue cannot succeed in a fallen world

solipsistic prince, inward looking play


contradictions not inconsistencies of narrative but complexity of character

 Henry Mackenzie

• hamelt is 'gay and jocular' whilst in the 'gloom of deepest melancholy'
• 'described as a passionate lover but seems indifferent to the object of his affections'
• basis of his character in his 'extreme sensibility of mind'
• play about the development of Hamlet's mind rather than plot

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - Goethe

1. 'the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it'
2. strength of nerve makes a hero
3. 'the present is too hard'
4. Hamlets is 'lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature'
5. 'impossibilities required of him' not impossible, but impossible for him to do them
6. loses all purpose from his thoughts without recovering his peace of mind

Schlegel

• Hamlet as inherently flawed, weak character
• calculating consideration shown to cripple action
• 'He has a natural affinity towards... artifice and dissimulation'
• 'he is a hypocrite towards himself'
• 'too much overwhelmed in his won sorrow to have any compassion for others'
• 'has no firm belief in either himself or anything else'
• 'criminals are at last punished... by accidental blow'
• Hamlet is 'out of joint' and therefore a man of his time'
• Hamlet's lack of convictions it what causes his failure to act

Coleridge

• exteriors only interesting when reflected in Hamlet's mind
• placed in the most stimulating of circumstances
• perpetual solicitation of the mind to act
• 'aversion to action which prevails amongst those who have a world within themselves'
• hamlet like poet's understanding of external phenomena is the result of self-reflection
• 'deeply acquainted with own feelings'
• popularity of the play because Hamlet is an everyman