Hamlet - negative criticism, quotes from famous writers.

The first 200 words of this essay...

NEGATIVE CRITICISM ON HAMLET

Voltaire (1752)

Dr. Johnson's Criticism 1756 (partially negative)

Eliot "Hamlet and His Problems," (1919)

"the play is most certainly an artistic failure." [...] "Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear. . . . We should have to understand things which Shakespeare did not understand himself."

Hamlet's Character Viewed As Evil

"in which Hamlet, represented as a virtuous character, is not content with taking blood for blood, but contrives damnation for the man that he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered."

G. Wilson Knight The Wheel of Fire (1930)

"Hamlet is inhuman. He has seen through humanity. And this inhuman cynicism, however justifiable in this case, on the plane of causality and individual responsibility, is a deadly and venomous thing. Instinctively the creatures of earth - Laertes, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, league themselves with Claudius: they are of his kind. . . . But Hamlet is not of flesh and blood, he is a spirit of penetrating intellect and cynicism and misery, without faith in