T.S. Eliot’s 1921 essay, Hamlet and His Problems, continues to challenge perceptions of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy as a literary masterpiece. Eliot’s argument surrounding the disparity between dramatic action. And emotional reaction provides the basis for his rejection of the play as a structural and “artistic failure”.
Eliot’s commentary, however, also provides us with an important opportunity to objectively evaluate Hamlet and its drivers for revenge. An analytical evaluation of Eliot’s main arguments, illuminated by a critical comparison of other commentators’ attempts to grapple with the “mystery of Hamlet”, is crucial in understanding the extent to which Eliot’s main assertions are still relevant to the well- plowed field of Shakespearean criticism, and will simultaneously allow us to consider the question of motive in the play from a number of different perspectives.
Modern literary critics have widely sought to reject the 19th century conception of Hamlet, embraced and popularized by Goethe, that “Hamlet, for temperamental reasons, was fundamentally incapable of any decisive action of any kind” (Diamond, 93). For Goethe and Coleridge, this seemed to be the essence of the dramatic success in Hamlet. For Coleridge specifically, Prince Hamlet embodied a Renaissance character. Which was sublime in intellect and, thus, deeply affected by.
The oppressive nature of Denmark – “we see a great, an almost enormous. Intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it” (Coleridge). Eliot, however, takes issue precisely with the idea that any of Hamlet’s actions throughout the play are “proportionate”. For modern critics, solving the mystery of the origins of Hamlet’s. Motives has become such an important task that the very artistic viability of the play has now been called into question.
Break In his essay, Eliot doesn’t substantively attempt to resolve the “mystery of Hamlet”. Instead, he finds that Hamlet is “dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible. Because it is in excess of the facts as they appear”, and goes on to dismiss the entire play as an “artistic failure” (Eliot, 98). David Stevenson, in his response to Eliot’s commentary. Seeks to resolve the mystery by finding substantive motive for Hamlet’s emotion in the “blind evil” of his uncle and mother. And what he refers to as the repressed “political rivalry” between Hamlet and Claudius (Stevenson, 74).
Like Stevenson, Ernest Jones rejects the conclusion that the tragedy is in its essence “inexplicable. Incongruous and incoherent” (Jones, 81) – he identifies. A repressed Freudian dynamic to blame for Hamlet’s emotional depth. And finds that a “dilemma” surrounding the confrontation of evil drives the Prince’s paralysis. Break In Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory, we find another possible motive in the religious incongruences of the play by considering.
Hamlet to be bound up by the theological implications of a call for revenge that emanates from Purgatory. However, it seems to me that neither Jones nor Greenblatt really engage with Eliot’s invitation to find an “objective correlative” (Eliot, 98) – the motives they identify are motives for inaction and thus essentially vindicate Goethe’s initial argument. Stevenson, however, engages with Eliot’s criticism on a more fundamental.
Level to prove how Shakespeare’s revolutionary structuring of the play does indeed deliver an “objective correlative”. Albeit not one that “consists in any fact, or action, or sequence of events” (Eliot, 98). A more careful, individual, critical analysis of these influential commentaries will lead us to the conclusion that Stevenson’s appraisal of the play is more adequate in solving the “mystery of Hamlet” and dealing with Eliot’s problems with the Prince and his emotions.f
