Hamlet and His Problems Sumamry

T. S. Eliot wrote the essay Hamlet and His Problems in 1919, where he analyzed Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The essay was first published in Eliot's book The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in 1920 and was later included in Selected Essays, 1917-1932, published by Faber & Faber in 1932.

Eliot's essay became well-known because he argued that Hamlet is "an artistic failure." He also introduced and popularized the idea of the objective correlative, a way for writers to create emotions in their audience by using specific images, events, or situations. The essay is an example of Eliot’s critical approach, which later became part of a literary movement called New Criticism.

In this essay, Eliot critiques Shakespeare’s Hamlet and introduces the idea of the “objective correlative”—the notion that emotions in art should be expressed through a set of objective symbols or situations rather than personal feelings. He controversially claims that Hamlet is an "artistic failure" due to its lack of a clear objective correlative for Hamlet’s emotions.

Summary

T.S. Eliot argues that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an “artistic failure.” Many critics before Eliot focused on analyzing the character of Hamlet rather than the play itself. However, Eliot believes that the play as a whole is the main problem, and Hamlet as a character is only a secondary issue.

Some famous critics, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, interpreted Hamlet in ways that reflected their own personalities rather than analyzing Shakespeare’s artistic intentions. Goethe saw Hamlet as a sentimental, sensitive figure like his own character Werther, while Coleridge made Hamlet resemble himself—a thinker who overanalyzes rather than acts. Eliot warns that such interpretations can be misleading because they replace Shakespeare’s Hamlet with a version shaped by the critic’s imagination.

On the other hand, modern critics such as J.M. Robertson and Professor Stoll have taken a different approach. They emphasize the importance of viewing Hamlet in its historical context. Stoll points out that earlier critics from the 17th and 18th centuries focused more on the structure and overall effect of the play rather than on psychological analysis. He suggests that they were actually closer to understanding Shakespeare’s art than later critics who became overly concerned with Hamlet’s inner thoughts.

Robertson argues that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is based on an earlier version of the story, likely written by Thomas Kyd, a playwright known for revenge tragedies like The Spanish Tragedy. The original Hamlet play, which existed before Shakespeare’s version, was a straightforward revenge story. In that version, Hamlet delays killing the king only because it is difficult to assassinate a monarch who is constantly guarded. Hamlet also pretends to be mad simply as a strategy to avoid suspicion, and this deception is successful.

Shakespeare took this older play and made significant changes. In his version, Hamlet’s delay in seeking revenge is no longer just a practical issue; it becomes a deeper, more complicated problem. The character’s madness is also no longer a simple trick—it seems real, and instead of deceiving the king, it actually makes him more suspicious. However, Eliot argues that Shakespeare did not fully adapt the old story to fit his new themes. As a result, there are inconsistencies and unnecessary scenes in Hamlet that do not contribute to the main plot. For example, the conversations between Polonius and his son Laertes, and between Polonius and Reynaldo, do not have a clear purpose in the story. Eliot suggests that these scenes might have been written by another playwright before Shakespeare revised the play.

Eliot ultimately claims that Hamlet is not Shakespeare’s greatest play, but rather one of his weakest. He points out several flaws:

• The play is unusually long and contains extra material that Shakespeare could have removed with careful editing.
• The writing style varies greatly in quality, suggesting that some parts were written earlier in Shakespeare’s career while others were written much later.
• The emotions in the play, especially Hamlet’s feelings about his mother, are too intense for the situation.

Eliot argues that the real theme of Hamlet is not revenge, but the emotional effect of Queen Gertrude’s guilt on her son. Hamlet is deeply disturbed by his mother’s marriage to his uncle, but Eliot believes that Shakespeare failed to express this emotion clearly. Shakespeare’s struggle to adapt the old revenge story resulted in a play that is confused and inconsistent.

To support his argument, Eliot introduces his famous idea of the objective correlative. He explains that in a well-written tragedy, emotions should be represented by external objects, events, or situations that create the right response in the audience. For example, in Macbeth, the emotions of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene are built up through earlier events in the play, making her actions feel inevitable and natural. Similarly, Macbeth’s speech about life (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”) is perfectly suited to his emotional state at that moment in the story.

However, in Hamlet, there is no clear external situation that fully explains Hamlet’s emotions. Hamlet feels something deeply, but the play does not provide a logical reason for why he feels this way. His emotions are larger than the actual events of the story, which makes them difficult for the audience to understand. According to Eliot, this is why Hamlet does not work as a successful piece of art.

Eliot suggests that Shakespeare himself may not have fully understood what he was trying to express in Hamlet. He compares this to Shakespeare’s sonnets, which also contain strong emotions that seem difficult to explain or analyze. Eliot even speculates that Shakespeare might have been influenced by personal experiences that we will never fully know about. He also wonders whether Shakespeare read the philosopher Montaigne, whose writings discuss deep, complex emotions similar to those found in Hamlet.

In conclusion, Eliot believes that Hamlet is a flawed play because Shakespeare tried to express emotions that he could not fully translate into a clear artistic form. The play’s inconsistencies, unnecessary scenes, and unresolved emotions make it an “artistic failure.” Eliot contrasts Hamlet with later Shakespearean tragedies, such as Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, which he sees as Shakespeare’s true artistic successes. He suggests that many people admire Hamlet not because it is a well-constructed play, but simply because they find it “interesting” and mysterious—similar to how people are fascinated by the painting Mona Lisa.