Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.
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24 June 1827.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
» Samuel Taylor Coleridge - all quotes »
All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That’s Ophelia, that Cordelia.William Butler Yeats
He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet.
Tom Robbins
What Elizabethan playwrights learned from the Greek classics was not theories of insanity, but dramatic practice — that is, madness is a dandy theatrical element. It focuses the audience's attention and increases suspense, since you never know what a mad person may get up to next; and Shakespeare himself makes use of it in many forms. In King Lear, there's a scene in which one man pretending to be mad, another who has really gone mad, and a third who has probably always been a little addled, are brought together for purposes of comparison, irony, pathos, and tour de force acting. In Hamlet, there are two variations — Hamlet himself, who assumes madness, and Ophelia, who really does go winsomely bonkers. In MacBeth, it's Lady MacBeth who snaps.
Margaret Atwood
King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare — or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.
Paul Scofield
For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?”
Imre Kertesz‎
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Colesworthy, Daniel Clement
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