2. Few critics says “Hamlet” classified the
problem into: secondary and primary
Primary problem is the Hamlet play itself
Secondary problem is the Hamlet
characters
‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is one of T. S.
Eliot’s most important and influential
essays.
It was first published in 1919.
2
3. TS Eliot wrote the essay Hamlet and His Problems
in 1920 as an attempt to redefine the manner in
which critics looked at literary work.
at the beginning of his essay, Eliot makes it clear
that critics have failed in their attempts at
critical insight
Rather than looking at Hamlet the play, former
critics such as Coleridge and Goethe instead
focused on Hamlet the character, who they easily
identified with.
In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot makes the
bold claim that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, far
from being a triumph, is an artistic failure.
3
4. The main argument is that, in fact, as a work of
art, the play Hamlet fails completely.
In order to prove this, Eliot invents a standard,
the objective correlative that never existed
before.
He defines the objective correlative as “a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events which
shall be the formula of that particular emotion;
such that when the external facts, which must
terminate in sensory experience, are given, the
emotion is immediately evoked”
4
5. A writer who presents the audience
with a thump outside a house, a
scratching at the door, and a hideous
scream would expect the audience
to feel fear when the main
character felt fear.
5
6. Shakespeare attempted to do too much with
the character and, as a result, Hamlet’s
emotions in the play seem unclear.
There is a gulf between the emotion felt by
the character and the way this is worked up
into drama in the play
Shakespeare has put lots of unnecessary
scenes to increase Hamlet’s confusion And
that’s why he could not decide/ take an
action
6
7. The artistic “inevitability” depends on the
Adequacy of the external to the emotion
And this was insufficient in Hamlet as Hamlet,
the character, had lots of emotions and
expressions that he could not even express.
Suspecting his mother.
Suspecting his uncle.
And in the same way, he does not do anything
as he has no clue or evidence.
Confusion blinds him; he is hesitated
7
8. Shakespeare’s play is a ‘failure’, but the play
has become so familiar and ubiquitous as a
work of art that we are no longer able to see
its flaws.
This bold revisionist claim is founded on several
points, not least of which is the fact that
Shakespeare inherited the original play-text of
Hamlet from another writer.
Thomas Kyd, who also wrote The Spanish
Tragedy.
8
9. “Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an
emotion which is inexpressible
because it is in excess of the facts as they
appear”
Eliot goes on to suppose that Shakespeare
finds himself in a paradox
As Hamlet’s disgust for Gertrude (his mother)
is occasioned
“because her character is so negative and
insignificant that she arouses in Hamlet the
feeling which she is incapable of
representing.”
9
10. If Shakespeare changed Hamlet’s character, there
would be no plot, but as he made the mother
even more despicable the play is rapidly exposed
as illogical.
Perhaps the most illogical part of Hamlet,
however, is Hamlet’s complete disregard for the
throne.
To a contemporary reader, it would seem that an
even greater offense than the murder would be
Claudius’ usurping the throne.
Yet only one line in the last act is devoted to
resolving why Hamlet did not simply inherit the
throne himself.
Hamlet tells us in the last act that Claudius has
“Popp’d in between the election and my hopes.”
10
11. In fact, in 1600 when Hamlet was written,
Denmark did not have a hereditary monarchy
but actually held elections among a council
of nobles.
Claudius was elected to be king following his
brother’s death.
Certainly this must have been an
unforgivable affront to Hamlet and his
supporters.
11
12. As Eliot writes, “the buffoonery of an emotion
which can find no outlet in action”
but instead is the legitimate anger and confusion
conflicting within Hamlet because of the
horrendous crimes his mother and uncle have
committed.
When Eliot writes his criticism a difference was
drawn between biological and foster parents so,
he is unable to feel the rage that Hamlet feels.
He writes that “we must simply admit that here
Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too
much for him,”
Shakespeare was unable to artistically portray,
with objective correlative, the intense emotion
that Hamlet felt.
12
13. The objective correlative is among his
greatest contributions to the literary
community;
it remains a standard for determining the
artistic validity of many works,
but Eliot failed in his own application of the
objective correlative to Hamlet.
The audiences of Shakespeare in the early
1600’s would be able to feel the anger that
Hamlet felt
At that time marriage was binding, and
Claudius was, in Hamlet’s mind, marrying his
own sister after killing his brother.
13
14. Indeed, this would have been viewed as a
crime against God and Christianity, justifying
Hamlet’s need to seek not just Claudius’
death, but also his eternal damnation.
Eliot writes that Hamlet’s emotions are in
excess of the facts as they appear.
In fact, Hamlet’s emotions are precisely in
keeping with the complete revenge which he
not only expects, but which the audience
expects.
An Elizabethan audience would have felt
aghast, not out of mere adolescence, but out
of genuine hatred for the villain Claudius and
contempt for the fool mother Gertrude.
14
15. This earlier play contained many of the
ingredients that appear in Shakespeare’s later
rewriting of the story of Hamlet.
It is a cruder example of the revenge tragedy.
Shakespeare rewrote it and updated it for a
later, more refined theatre audience
But the Bard failed to graft his more
sophisticated reading of the character of
Hamlet.(notably, his odd feelings towards his
own mother)
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is too ‘big’ for the plot
of the play and the ‘intractable material’
Shakespeare is being forced to work with.
15
16. The burning passion for justice to be
served is not portrayed disproportionately,
rather Shakespeare accurately reflects
Hamlet’s emotions.
Eliot writes that Shakespeare cannot
handle the “guilt of a mother” as he
“handled the suspicion of Othello, the
infatuation of Antony, or the pride of
Coriolanus”.
Eliot attempts in this to erase the validity
of Hamlet as an artistic work and a failure
in its attempt to convey a concrete
emotion.
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17. He even attacks the consistency of the play,
writing the he found,
“Shakespeare’s Hamlet not in the action not in
any quotations that we might select, so much as
in an unmistakable tone which is unmistakably
not in the earlier play”.
What the reader would be well advised to keep
in mind, however, is that in the beginning of the
play Hamlet did not know for sure that Claudius
had murdered Hamlet’s father.
Indeed, a modern viewer would be justified to
express some concern over how quickly and
rashly Hamlet affirms the guilt of his uncle.
17
18. Eliot’s does have a point in this, that to a
modern reader or viewer, there are multiple
discrepancies in the play.
Where an Elizabethan viewer would have been
horrified with the marriage of Claudius and
Gertrude
a modern viewer cannot be expected to feel the
same way.
Today we have a concept of uncles, aunts, and
“in-laws.”
At a time before a family member could be just
“in-law” but not related by blood, Gertrude and
Claudius are committing a horrible act of incest
and every action of theirs would be viewed with
suspicion.
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19. Eliot claims “the ‘madness’ of Hamlet lay to
Shakespeare’s hand; in the earlier play a simple
ruse,”
Hamlet’s madness is merely a play on the
audience as Shakespeare attempts to stretch a
character over a much larger emotion.
This is completely logical and lucid with a
modern viewer in mind
but an Elizabethan viewer would understand that
Hamlet’s madness was not merely a literary
device
but an actual emotional reaction to the incest
that was surfacing around him.
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