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Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Hamlet and His Problems

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 4, 2020 • ( 0 )

Eliot first published the essay Hamlet and His Problems in Athenaeum on September 26, 1919, and subsequently the piece was collected in The Sacred Wood in 1920.

In the essay, Eliot was ostensibly reviewing two recent books on William Shakespeare’s play, one by an American scholar, Elmer Edgar Stoll, the other by an English scholar, J. M. Robertson. He singled both of them out for praise because, in their treatment of Hamlet, he felt that they had shifted their critical attention away from the more typical focus on Hamlet’s character and instead toward the play itself. Maintaining that same shift in focus in his own commentary, Eliot, in the course of his review, deliberates on what he sees to be Hamlet’ s failure as drama, and in the course of that part of his discussion he coins the term objective correlative , one of the two critical phrases for which he became perhaps as much renowned as he did for his poetry (the other would be dissociation of sensibility) .

The coinage came about as Eliot was attempting to define the precise nature of what is lacking from Hamlet that makes it, in his view, less successful as poetic drama than it could have been. Essentially, the play, Eliot suggests, is filled with “stuff” that Shakespeare as both playwright and poet was unable to “drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art.” This, according to Eliot, is a failing not necessarily in the material itself but in Shakespeare’s handling of it.

Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent

Readers of Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), for example, a piece virtually contemporaneous with his essay on Hamlet, will already know how important for Eliot were matters of craft and technique, those dispassionate structures and linguistic strategies whereby the poet transforms experience, be it real or invented and imaginary, into the work of art. As Eliot would have it, this transformative process overrides any other considerations. Indeed, for him, craft and technique should be the foremost constituents of the poetic process if poetry is ultimately to be accepted as an impersonal act of communicating the complexities of reality.

Having defined Hamlet’s “problems” as a failure on Shakespeare’s part to manage his poetic material as effectively as he could have, Eliot then offers what, in his view, ought to have been the solution to these problems, had Shakespeare only employed it. It is in that context that Eliot introduces the phrase “objective correlative” into his argument. For an emotion to be “immediately evoked” in a work of literature, Eliot contends, there must be “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” that constitute “that particular emotion,” such that when that formulation is presented, it will result for the reader or viewer in a sensory experience evoking the desired emotion. “The artistic ‘inevitability’ lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet. ”

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

The core idea that Eliot is expressing in “Hamlet and His Problems” seems indisputable once grasped. Essentially, all that he is saying is that a work of art affects the perceiver in many ways and on many levels—emotionally, sensuously, morally, ethically, socially, aesthetically, viscerally. The list goes on. The point is that the work of art succeeds best that combines the right elements into an “objective correlative” to elicit the broadest range of responses that the artist is aiming to provoke in the perceiver. According to the implications of Eliot’s theory, it can be argued that Shakespeare could have gotten more clarity out of the various components of a drama that has always impressed even its most ardent admirers with its murkiness had he, Shakespeare, succeeded in finding and then casting just the right objective correlative to exemplify the emotional and moral complexities of Hamlet’s dilemma. For example, Hamlet’s preexisting hatred of Claudius is justified by the Ghost’s revelation that Claudius is a murderer and putative adulterer, but so does the fact that Hamlet despises Claudius to begin with cloud the single-minded motivation required of Hamlet to seek the vengeance to which the Ghost exhorts him.

There is much that is subjective in Eliot’s evaluation, of course, and Eliot himself wisely avoids suggesting any concrete ways in which Shakespeare might have improved the play. The point is that Eliot takes the opportunity to pontificate on finding a serious flaw in one of the world’s greatest tragic plays, and he not only gets away with it but enhances his own reputation and credentials as a critical intellect in the process. The real issue is not whether Eliot is correct in his assessment of Hamlet or whether the objective correlative, albeit an original coinage, is a wholly original formulation on Eliot’s part. Rather, the focus should be on how influential the term has become as a critical commonplace, bespeaking the authority that Eliot acquired early on in his career as a critic.

There appear, as with virtually all Eliot’s ideas, to be subtleties that are either not sufficiently explicated or too facilely glossed over in his explanation of the aesthetic phenomenon that Eliot speaks of when he defines the objective correlative; but it is easy to get the general idea, since ultimately the point is well taken if regarded solely as a creative rule of thumb. In terms of the poetic arts, Eliot is arguing that an emotion cannot merely be named but must be demonstrated, represented, evoked, by something that is itself not the emotion but that in the proper context and at the right moment will nevertheless bring to mind in the reader the specific emotion that the poet desires to elicit. To achieve this, of course, the poet must be quite conscious of the effect or effects that he or she is hoping to achieve, so, in essays such as “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot will argue for the impersonality both of artistic process and of the artist, by which he would mean that poetry is not self-expression but the precise expression of emotions unique to the work itself.

The yellow fog in Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” may provide as good an example as any of the objective correlative in operation as an impersonal process of the creative mind aiming to achieve not self-expression but a specific effect. The mental image of such a fog undoubtedly colors the reader’s response not only to the scene that the poem is setting but to the tone and mood that it thus evokes, creating an atmosphere of the lurid and the sickly that both works against and complements the characterization both of Prufrock and of his life and social milieu that is emerging through the poetry. Furthermore, the yellow fog is rendered finally in the aspect of a feral animal, reminding the reader, perhaps, of details from the opening stanza, where the evening sky is personified in a surprising and disturbing way as an etherized patient and where the tawdry and lurid are suggested by references to sleazy hotels and lowclass dining establishments.

This accumulation of details that are unsettling in their potential for revealing a seamy sordidness just underlying and certainly thereby enveloping Prufrock’s otherwise stately but stale world, both in its physical realities and in its psychological impact on him, is embodied in the yellow fog, which strikes just the right note to summarize the emotions that the poetry appears to be attempting to provoke in the reader—disgust, curiosity, sympathy, caution. That yellow fog, then, in keeping with Eliot’s own definition, can be said to function as an objective correlative, triggering the sought-for emotional response in the reader by presenting rather than stating all of these tonal colorations. The fog is, as Eliot would say, an external detail adequate to the emotions, inevitably leading to them; in other words, it is an objective correlative for those emotions.

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A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Hamlet and his Problems’

A summary of an influential essay – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s most important and influential essays. It was first published in 1919. In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot makes the bold claim that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , far from being a triumph, is an artistic failure. Why? Eliot is being provocative with such a statement, but he does provide some reasons for this position. In this article, we’re going to analyse Eliot’s essay, which you can read here .

‘Hamlet and his Problems’: summary

In summary, Eliot’s argument in ‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is that 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 (probably Thomas Kyd, who also wrote The Spanish Tragedy ).

This earlier play contained many of the ingredients that appear in Shakespeare’s later rewriting of the story of Hamlet, but 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) onto Kyd’s more primitive version of the character.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is too ‘big’ for the plot of the play and the ‘intractable material’ Shakespeare is being forced to work with. It’s as if a master analyst of the human mind, such as Dostoevsky, tried to rewrite the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as a psychologically complex novel. (That’s our analogy, not Eliot’s.)

So, far from being a literary masterpiece, Shakespeare’s reworking of the Hamlet story fails, according to Eliot, because 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.

Championing a relatively little-read tragedy by Shakespeare (why not Macbeth , King Lear , or Othello ?) is another way of getting people talking about you. Eliot’s view of Coriolanus continues to be one of the more famous things about the play. A recent review of Ralph Fiennes’ film adaptation of Coriolanus even quotes from Eliot’s essay , showing how his critical pronouncement has endured.

Eliot justifies his analysis of Hamlet – and the play’s problems – by referring to what he calls the ‘ objective correlative ’ of the play: the ‘only way of expressing emotion in the form of art’, Eliot tells us, is by finding an ‘objective correlative’. He defines this 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.’

Eliot provides an example from another Shakespeare play, Macbeth , arguing that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep is ‘communicated to [the audience] by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions’. There is an air of ‘inevitability’ about Lady Macbeth’s fate, thanks to the careful accumulation of images, stage-effects, and emotional details which precede her death.

‘Hamlet and his Problems’: analysis

This idea of the ‘objective correlative’ (Eliot did not invent the term, but he made it his own with the above definition of it) would prove to be hugely influential on mid-twentieth-century criticism, which was often concerned with interpreting the symbols and images employed by writers to convey the emotional ‘life’ of a character.

Can we analyse T. S. Eliot’s own poetry in light of the idea of the ‘objective correlative’? Think about the images of ‘ragged claws’, the ‘yellow fog’, or the ‘patient etherised upon a table’ in his own ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ , all of which are outward and visible signs of an inward feeling or mood. So the patient on a table at the start of ‘Prufrock’ conveys J. Alfred Prufrock’s own attitude to the sunset – it evokes in him torpidity and inaction, as if he himself is barely conscious. The image of the ‘yellow fog’ and the ‘pair of ragged claws’ are continuations of this mood.

‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is not without its problems, not least because it remains difficult to pin down precisely how T. S. Eliot sees the ‘objective correlative’ working (or not working) in great literature. Nevertheless, his analysis of Hamlet and his thoughts about how writers can successfully convey internal moods and emotions remain worthy of study and analysis in their own right.

Image: David Garrick as Hamlet, Wikimedia Commons .

4 thoughts on “A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Hamlet and his Problems’”

Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA .

คุณอยู่ที่ไหน เมื่อ 29 มี.ค. 2017 01:01 “Interesting Literature” เขียนว่า:

> interestingliterature posted: “A summary of an influential essay ‘Hamlet > and his Problems’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s most important and influential > essays. It was first published in 1919. In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot > makes the bold claim that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, far from” >

While Eliot’s brilliance and contributions to literature are established , I agree that he was, perhaps, trying to find his place as critical analytic “extradonaire” by taking on Hamlet.

Reblogged this on kalimat2016 .

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“Hamlet and His Problems” by Thomas Stearns Eliot Essay

Introduction, hamlet’s instability and his mother, coriolanus and his mother, mothers – the bearer of tragedy, works cited.

T.S. Eliot in his famous essay points out that the character of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play Tragedy of Hamlet , should not be solely linked to the “guilt of the mother” unlike Coriolanus, whose characteristic pride was acquired from his mother (Eliot 98). Eliot categorically refutes the idea of Hamlet’s character being solely shaped by Gertrude’s guilt. Eliot is correct when he says that Hamlet’s character cannot simply be expressed through his mother’s guilt. However, I believe, the maternal influence creates various complexities in his character that cannot be explained solely by the guilt theory. The inclusion of the maternal figure in Hamlet breaks the fragile compact that otherwise allows Shakespeare to explore familial and sexual relationships. Hamlet assumes the role of both the father and the son and the need to detect his identity about his idea of the father becomes problematic in the presence of his mother. Further, the presence of the mother figure and the sexual power she has over her son creates a clash in Hamlet’s character.

Therefore, Shakespeare gives Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, the power to contaminate her son’s heart with hatred such that her presence creates a dramatic conflict in Hamlet’s character. Similarly, the character of Coriolanus in Shakespeare’s play of the same name is also influenced by the presence of the maternal figure. Here, I must disagree with Eliot in his assertion that Coriolanus was the product of his pride. Though pride was the reason for his demise when his life is put under the microscope it becomes apparent that his pride was the mirror image of that of his mother, Volumnia. Her indulgence of her son’s pride and rage, even as a child, had shaped the man he had become. I believe that in both the Shakespearean tragedies, the maternal figure plays a strong role in the mold of the characters of their sons. In Hamlet, Gertrude’s hasty marriage to Claudius and in Coriolanus , Volumnia’s encouragement of her son’s ego resulted in the decisive tragedy in both the plays.

The paper will enumerate the relationship between the mother and son in Hamlet and Coriolanus . The objective of the paper will be to understand the relation between Hamlet and Gertrude, and that between Coriolanus and Volumnia. The mother-son relation has a strong influence on the characters and the outcome of the son’s fate. Further, the mothers in the two plays are flawed in their role as a traditional mother and wife that creates an identity crisis in their sons. Promptly discarding her widowhood, Gertrude fails to become the mother who remains the source of the “father’s ideal image” (Adelman 13). She does not mourn him; instead, she marries her dead husband’s brother. Thus, Hamlet fails to assume the masculine identity through the image of his dead father by killing the false father (Claudius), as he remains incapable to distinguish between his father and brother because his mother fails to distinguish properly between her two husbands. Gertrude’s inability to differentiate creates a considerable strain on Hamlet. Her loss of memory creates the necessity in Hamlet to rely on his memory to reconstruct his dead father and assuming the burden of differentiating and affixing the past in the present. He, therefore, takes a vow to avenge his father’s death as a tribute to this static memory. Thus, Gertrude’s failure results in Hamlet’s madness.

Coriolanus, unlike Hamlet, is the creation of the omnipresent mother and her affection. For Coriolanus, Volumnia becomes a source of extreme masculinity as her overbearing personality forces him to become blatantly ferocious, to guard his helplessness in her presence. Coriolanus becomes the product of his mother’s will and therefore, in search of his male identity, he assumes the excessively aggressive masculine demeanor. Thus, Coriolanus’s ego and masculinity are a means of escape from the over-exerting maternal presence that cannibalizes his mind, actions, and identity. The other difference in the framing of the mothers, in these two plays, is that in Coriolanus the mother figure is androgynous.

In this paper, I propose the thesis that in both Hamlet and Coriolanus, Shakespeare uses the threat of maternal power to create the crisis of manhood in the persona of Hamlet and Coriolanus that arises as a result of the absent father.

Ernest Jones believes that to understand the personality of Hamlet, it is necessary to use the Freudian theory that opens a window into the “unconscious” part of his mind that had remained buried since his infancy, signifying the mental conflict still operational in his adulthood (Jones 140). Lacan, Miller, and Hulbert study Hamlet’s character in the presence of the Mother as the Other, and the identity crisis that asserts itself in hamlet’s character is due to the desire of the mother confronted by the idealized and exalted dead father-figure and on the degraded uncle as the despicable father (12). Thus, a psychological analysis of Hamlet shows a definite affinity of Hamlet towards his mother that he had experienced even as a child.

Gertrude is an affectionate mother and so she has been since Hamlet’s childhood. However, when he has to share that affection with his treacherous uncle, something he had found hard to share even with his father, fails to endure it and his subliminal jealousy grips his persona, driving him to insanity. Memory plays a vital role in the resurrection of these repressed feelings after the death of his father and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle. In the whole process, he blames his mother for being disrespectful of not only of his father’s memories but that of his affection towards his mother. Thus, the feeling of affection towards his mother and his desire for her that was repressed in childhood emerged after his mother’s second marriage. But now, it was no longer a source of love but that of hatred and repulsion. Thus, his long-repressed desire to take his father’s place and become the unchallenged recipient of his mother’s affection pushes him to hate the one person whose affection he has craved since childhood. Thus, when his father’s Ghost declares that he was murdered, Hamlet’s stability is disturbed.

The awareness of his mother’s marriage to the murderer of his father becomes another source of instability in Hamlet’s character. However, it must be born in mind that Hamlet’s instability does not arise out of his desire for his mother, as Freudian analysis would suggest. Instead, it is due to his mother’s desire that becomes the cause of Hamlet’s instability. After his father’s death Hamlet is thrown into melancholia and in his despair seeks his mother’s affection. When in depression, the general tendency of a man is to identify himself with the object of his affection, and when this object fails to stand up to his esteem, it creates a crisis in his identity. Thus, Hamlet feels dejected and betrayed upon hearing his mother’s decision to marry his uncle and his frustration finds a voice in acrimonious irony:

“Must I remember? why she would hang on him,

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on; and yet, within a month,

Let me not think on ’t: Frailty, thy name is a woman!” ( Hamlet 1.2.143-146)

His mother’s presence is absolute in all that he speaks. His mother is omnipresent in Hamlet’s fantasies about Gertrude with Claudius or in his memory of her love for his dead father. Gertrude’s “overhasty marriage” ( Hamlet 2.2.57) to his uncle is the primary source of Hamlet’s anger towards his mother. While describing his ardent feelings on the death of his father, Hamlet ends up describing his disgust of his mother’s second marriage. He loathes the hastiness of her decision to remarry and calls her relation to Claudius incestuous:

… within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! ( Hamlet 1.2.153-157)

Hamlet’s aversion towards his mother’s second marriage is made abundantly clear in the excerpt from his soliloquy. The passage indicates that Hamlet is more distressed with his mother’s marriage than his father’s murder. Hamlet feels that he has lost the affection of his mother just when he had acquired sole access to it. Further, his second marriage brings forth the question of his mother’s sexuality that leads to an intense sexual revulsion that has been expressed with the usage of the phrase “incestuous sheet”. The anger and jealously he feels towards his mother at the sight of her giving herself to another man whom he is not obliged to love or respect. This creates Hamlet’s distrust and extreme resentment against women that is abundantly shown towards Ophelia.

Hamlet reproaches Ophelia’s puritanical hypocrisy that makes her follow all her father’s wishes. He hates her affiliation with another man. Consequently, Ophelia too falls from his good opinion, just the way his love for his mother is poisoned. Hamlet is suspicious of Ophelia and convinces himself that she has been sent to deceive him by another man. So when he admonishes Ophelia, he is expressing his bitterness towards his mother. Thus, Hamlet’s mother’s second marriage creates a dichotomy of the maternal image he had painted in his infantile mind. The child sees his mother as the virginal Madonna, solemnly pure and beyond carnal allure. However, when his mother marries another man that image is shattered marking the birth of his stifled sensual awakening. Hamlet is thus, a product of his repressed feelings towards his mother, a misogynist who resents both the pure and the sensual image of women. His relation with his mother is the key reason behind the insecurity and madness of Hamlet’s character.

Coriolanus’s character is shaped by his subliminal desire to ward off the dominating maternal presence to hide his weaknesses (Adelman 130). Coriolanus’s mother, Volumnia, is a Roman aristocrat. By her birth and status, she shows a highborn attitude in the nurturing of her son. She has a large ego like her son, but she does not have her son’s temper. Volumnia is the androgynous parent with the pride and egotism of an aristocratic man. She is infected with the thoughtless militarism of her class and her son falls prey to this arrogance. She loves to see her son’s wounds that reflect her son’s bravery and might. She has no care for the wounds of his men, who have fought valiantly to earn fame for her son. She is proud of her son’s victories and boasts of them by describing the woes he causes with terrible phrases describing the terror. Thus, Volumnia, unlike Gertrude, dedicates her attention solely to her son but she shows no love or affection towards him.

The relationship between Coriolanus and his mother is very close. They stand together on an isolated island, an alcove of their own, away from all other. Their relationship underlines the character traits of Coriolanus. Shakespeare glorifies the love of mother and son by creating a conceited woman and an excessively aggressive warrior. Coriolanus is brought up in the cocoon of his mother’s care. It is not until he is away from her does he realize that he is lost. The persona of the mother resides within her son. She was the one who had created him. She had given birth to him and that has been Coriolanus’s identity for a long time. He is the mother in a man’s body. He fights the battles that she would have fought had she been a man. He imbibes her mother’s arrogance, conceit, and pride. She has been his educator and has taught him to:

To call them woolen vassals, things created

To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads

In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder,

When one but of my ordinance stood up

To speak of peace or war. ( Coriolanus 3.2.10-14)

Coriolanus has been brought up to love fame, which has been his inspiration since infancy. His pride is his mother’s creation. When Coriolanus returns from battle, wounded, his mother cries, “O! he is wounded; I thank the gods for ’t” ( Coriolanus 2.1.99). Volumnia basks in the glory of her son. Her son’s honors are hers; the misfortune that falls on her son, in the end, is essentially hers.

Coriolanus has a tempestuous temper. His mother nurtured this since childhood. However, in the end, when facing the mob in Rome, Volumnia pleads her son to bend the truth to flatter the mob, their connection snaps. Further, when his consulship depends on the restrictions of his temper, she advises him to do so. Volumnia’s manipulative nature had learned self-restraint but her son remained unaltered. But when the tribune had given their verdict and left, she forgets restraint and becomes the feminine image of her son. She cries, “Anger is my meat; I sup upon myself” ( Coriolanus 4.2.52).

Unmodified and unrestrained by femininity, her anger knows no bound. This is the temper that her son inherits from her and this becomes the cause of his ruin. Coriolanus is exiled from Rome for being a traitor to his country.

Both Gertrude and Volumnia played a strong role in shaping the character of their sons. However, their influence has been distinctly different. Gertrude can never be considered as a heartless woman. Her only folly must be her love of herself and comfortable life. These are follies, but not crimes. Gertrude is not ferocious or ruthless like Lady Macbeth or King Lear’s mother. She has not committed a crime for Shakespeare makes it abundantly clear that she was not Claudius’s ally in committing regicide. She loved and cared for her son and truly wanted him to marry Ophelia and be happy. But the vainness of her character, her frivolity, and her self-centeredness created a chasm in Hamlet’s heart. Above all, her crime was her second marriage to her dead husband’s brother. Hamlet’s frustration, disgust, and anger are all directed towards his mother.

Though Gertrude has very little stage presence, her persona remains omnipresent. She encompasses her son’s mind and soul, who fails to differentiate between her and any other woman. To Hamlet, all women become an image of Gertrude, self-centered, and conceited. In his hatred against women, which has stemmed from his hatred of his mother, he is suspicious of Ophelia and fails to see her true love. Hamlet’s hatred for his mother was so acute that he forced himself to consciously overlook the fact (which I believe he was aware of) that his mother was innocent. Hamlet’s character is shown in mourning from the very beginning of the play. However, his mourning is not one that is composed of grief. He is angry with his mother. He does not pray but questions the meaning of human existence. He is lost in the world, devoid of any parent to lean on. He feels like an orphan after his father’s death, even when his mother is alive. In his search for himself, he tries to hold onto the one thing that is closest to him – his mother. But when she marries another man, she ceases to be his mother, and all his anger falls on her for deserting him.

On the other hand, Volumnia is a strong-willed mother who valued pride and love of her motherland even above the love of her son. She is ruthless and demanding. She wanted her son to become a brave warrior and serve his country. Her son did. However, in the process of becoming a great warrior, he becomes even more ruthless than his mother. He turns out to be the epitome of male ferociousness. She was not cruel but strong-willed and arrogant. Coriolanus inherited her pride and gentry. Her education of bravery and vanity made him the man he turned out to be. Coriolanus had a terrible rage and colossal masculine ego. His mother nurtured this since he was a boy. Coriolanus’s exile and his coalition with Aufidius finally marked the road to his death. When Coriolanus sought vengeance against Rome, Volumnia dissuades her son to attack the Romans. When Coriolanus accedes to his mother, he is killed for his betrayal towards Aufidius. So, did he die because he listened to his mother?

The tragedy of Hamlet and Coriolanus are results of their maternal love and neglect. Hamlet, imprisoned in his yearning of maternal love, and Coriolanus in his desire to live up to his mother’s expectations and pride, become the men they were. The catastrophe of both the results of the play in the tragic end of the heroes who pursued maternal affection.

Adelman, Janet. Sufforcating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays. Routledge, 2012.

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. “Hamlet and his problems.” Eliot, TS. The sacred wood: Essays on poetry and criticism. Fb&C Ltd., 1920, pp. 95-103.

Jones, Ernest. “Hamlet and Oedipus.” Berman, Emanuel. Essential Papers on Literature and Psychoanalysis. NYU Press, 1993, pp. 139-149.

Lacan, Jacques, Jacques-Alain Miller and James Hulbert. “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet.” Yale French Studies, vol. 55/56, 1977, pp. 11-52.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Coriolanus. Penguin Books, 1999.

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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by T. S. Eliot

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11.2: Eliot, T.S. "Hamlet and His Problems" from The Sacred Wood (1919)

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

Hamlet and His Problems

by T.S. Eliot

Few critics have even admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary. And Hamlet the character has had an especial temptation for that most dangerous type of critic: the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creative power exercises itself in criticism instead. These minds often find in Hamlet a vicarious existence for their own artistic realization. Such a mind had Goethe, who made of Hamlet a Werther; and such had Coleridge, who made of Hamlet a Coleridge; and probably neither of these men in writing about Hamlet remembered that his first business was to study a work of art. The kind of criticism that Goethe and Coleridge produced, in writing of Hamlet, is the most misleading kind possible. For they both possessed unquestionable critical insight, and both make their critical aberrations the more plausible by the substitution—of their own Hamlet for Shakespeare’s—which their creative gift effects. We should be thankful that Walter Pater did not fix his attention on this play.

Two recent writers, Mr. J. M. Robertson and Professor Stoll of the University of Minnesota, have issued small books that can be praised for moving in the other direction. Mr. Stoll performs a service in recalling to our attention the labours of the critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, observing that they knew less about psychology than more recent Hamlet critics, but they were nearer in spirit to Shakespeare's art; and as they insisted on the importance of the effect of the whole rather than on the importance of the leading character, they were nearer, in their old-fashioned way, to the secret of dramatic art in general.

Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to interpret; we can only criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other works of art; and for "interpretation" the chief task is the presentation of relevant historical facts which the reader is not assumed to know. Mr. Robertson points out, very pertinently, how critics have failed in their "interpretation" of Hamlet by ignoring what ought to be very obvious: that Hamlet is a stratification, that it represents the efforts of a series of men, each making what he could out of the work of his predecessors. The Hamlet of Shakespeare will appear to us very differently if, instead of treating the whole action of the play as due to Shakespeare's design, we perceive his Hamlet to be superposed upon much cruder material which persists even in the final form.

We know that there was an older play by Thomas Kyd, that extraordinary dramatic (if not poetic) genius who was in all probability the author of two plays so dissimilar as the Spanish Tragedy and Arden of Feversham ; and what this play was like we can guess from three clues: from the Spanish Tragedy itself, from the tale of Belleforest upon which Kyd's Hamlet must have been based, and from a version acted in Germany in Shakespeare's lifetime which bears strong evidence of having been adapted from the earlier, not from the later, play. From these three sources it is clear that in the earlier play the motive was a revenge-motive simply; that the action or delay is caused, as in the Spanish Tragedy , solely by the difficulty of assassinating a monarch surrounded by guards; and that the "madness" of Hamlet was feigned in order to escape suspicion, and successfully. In the final play of Shakespeare, on the other hand, there is a motive which is more important than that of revenge, and which explicitly "blunts" the latter; the delay in revenge is unexplained on grounds of necessity or expediency; and the effect of the "madness" is not to lull but to arouse the king's suspicion. The alteration is not complete enough, however, to be convincing. Furthermore, there are verbal parallels so close to the Spanish Tragedy as to leave no doubt that in places Shakespeare was merely revising the text of Kyd. And finally there are unexplained scenes—the Polonius-Laertes and the Polonius-Reynaldo scenes—for which there is little excuse; these scenes are not in the verse style of Kyd, and not beyond doubt in the style of Shakespeare. These Mr. Robertson believes to be scenes in the original play of Kyd reworked by a third hand, perhaps Chapman, before Shakespeare touched the play. And he concludes, with very strong show of reason, that the original play of Kyd was, like certain other revenge plays, in two parts of five acts each. The upshot of Mr. Robertson's examination is, we believe, irrefragable: that Shakespeare's Hamlet , so far as it is Shakespeare's, is a play dealing with the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son, and that Shakespeare was unable to impose this motive successfully upon the "intractable" material of the old play.

Of the intractability there can be no doubt. So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure. In several ways the play is puzzling, and disquieting as is none of the others. Of all the plays it is the longest and is possibly the one on which Shakespeare spent most pains; and yet he has left in it superfluous and inconsistent scenes which even hasty revision should have noticed. The versification is variable. Lines like

Look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill,

are of the Shakespeare of Romeo and Juliet . The lines in Act V. sc. ii.,

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep ...

Up from my cabin,

My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark

Grop'd I to find out them: had my desire;

Finger'd their packet;

are of his quite mature. Both workmanship and thought are in an unstable condition. We are surely justified in attributing the play, with that other profoundly interesting play of "intractable" material and astonishing versification, Measure for Measure , to a period of crisis, after which follow the tragic successes which culminate in Coriolanus . Coriolanus may be not as "interesting" as Hamlet , but it is, with Antony and Cleopatra , Shakespeare's most assured artistic success. And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the "Mona Lisa" of literature.

The grounds of Hamlet's failure are not immediately obvious. Mr. Robertson is undoubtedly correct in concluding that the essential emotion of the play is the feeling of a son towards a guilty mother:

[Hamlet's] tone is that of one who has suffered tortures on the score of his mother's degradation.... The guilt of a mother is an almost intolerable motive for drama, but it had to be maintained and emphasized to supply a psychological solution, or rather a hint of one.

This, however, is by no means the whole story. It is not merely the "guilt of a mother" that cannot be handled as Shakespeare handled the suspicion of Othello, the infatuation of Antony, or the pride of Coriolanus. The subject might conceivably have expanded into a tragedy like these, intelligible, self-complete, in the sunlight. Hamlet , like the sonnets, is full of some stuff that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art. And when we search for this feeling, we find it, as in the sonnets, very difficult to localize. You cannot point to it in the speeches; indeed, if you examine the two famous soliloquies you see the versification of Shakespeare, but a content which might be claimed by another, perhaps by the author of the Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois , Act V. sc. i. We find 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.

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, 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. If you examine any of Shakespeare's more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth on hearing of his wife's death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the last event in the series. The artistic "inevitability" lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet . Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear. And the supposed identity of Hamlet with his author is genuine to this point: that Hamlet's bafflement at the absence of objective equivalent to his feelings is a prolongation of the bafflement of his creator in the face of his artistic problem. Hamlet is up against the difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by his mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it; his disgust envelops and exceeds her. It is thus a feeling which he cannot understand; he cannot objectify it, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action. None of the possible actions can satisfy it; and nothing that Shakespeare can do with the plot can express Hamlet for him. And it must be noticed that the very nature of the données of the problem precludes objective equivalence. To have heightened the criminality of Gertrude would have been to provide the formula for a totally different emotion in Hamlet; it is just because her character is so negative and insignificant that she arouses in Hamlet the feeling which she is incapable of representing.

The "madness" of Hamlet lay to Shakespeare's hand; in the earlier play a simple ruse, and to the end, we may presume, understood as a ruse by the audience. For Shakespeare it is less than madness and more than feigned. The levity of Hamlet, his repetition of phrase, his puns, are not part of a deliberate plan of dissimulation, but a form of emotional relief. In the character Hamlet it is the buffoonery of an emotion which can find no outlet in action; in the dramatist it is the buffoonery of an emotion which he cannot express in art. The intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, is something which every person of sensibility has known; it is doubtless a study to pathologists. It often occurs in adolescence: the ordinary person puts these feelings to sleep, or trims down his feeling to fit the business world; the artist keeps it alive by his ability to intensify the world to his emotions. The Hamlet of Laforgue is an adolescent; the Hamlet of Shakespeare is not, he has not that explanation and excuse. We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him. Why he attempted it at all is an insoluble puzzle; under compulsion of what experience he attempted to express the inexpressibly horrible, we cannot ever know. We need a great many facts in his biography; and we should like to know whether, and when, and after or at the same time as what personal experience, he read Montaigne, II. xii., Apologie de Raimond Sebond . We should have, finally, to know something which is by hypothesis unknowable, for we assume it to be an experience which, in the manner indicated, exceeded the facts. We should have to understand things which Shakespeare did not understand himself.

Discussion Questions

• What does T.S. Eliot feel is the problem with the way previous critics have addressed Hamlet?
• Why does T.S. Eliot feel Hamlet is a "failure"? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
• What is the "objective correlative," as defined by T.S. Eliot?
• Find an example of the objective correlative from another work of literature. Explain why you think it is an example of the objective correlative.
• According to T.S. Eliot, is Hamlet really mad (insane), or just pretending to be mad? Do you agree or disagree with this position? Justify your answer with evidence from the play.

How to Cite this Source

Eliot, T.S. "Hamlet and His Problems." The Sacred Wood. 1919. Reprinted in Writing and Critical Thinking Through Literature , eds. Heather Ringo and Athena Kashyap, Libretexts, 2019. https://human.libretexts.org/Courses/ASCCC/Writing_and_Critical_Thinking_Through_Literature/6%3A_Literary_Criticism/6.3_Literary_Criticism_Readings/Eliot%2C_T.S._%22Hamlet_and_His_Problems%22_from_The_Sacred_Wood_(1919)

Hamlet and His Problems

By t.s. eliot.

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Hamlet and his problems

1917, Selected essays

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