Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
Hamlet is an artistic failure. Shakespeare has employed the story of Thomas Kyd and has tried to impose his undefined theme on the play.
Eliot has written many critical essays that define about Eliot’s considerations regarding the main points that he raises in his essays. He has written an essay named Hamlet, which considers the issues in the play faced by Hamlet, the protagonist.
Over time, many opinions have been formed about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Through the quagmire of confusion, Eliot has come up with explicit ideas about Hamlet’s problems. Eliot sees Hamlet as somewhat of an artistic failure due to its confusion between the main plot and the main character. He identifies Hamlet as the “Mona Lisa” of Literature and the reason for this is that Mona Lisa is liked for no reason; same is the case with Hamlet.
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John Safer, in his essay, “Hamlet Inconsistent” explains that Eliot categorizes Hamlet as an artistic failure on the basis of only one scene and that is the “closet scene”, when Hamlet confronts Queen Gertrude, his mother, in her bed chamber.
In his analysis, Eliot recalls the work of other authors who have talked on the subject of Hamlet. He states that many authors connect with Hamlet and do not come to realize their own creative potential. Authors like Coleridge and Goethe have a creative mind and not critical. They come to think of the drama as a classic and therefore, see it as an extension of their own artistic ability.
Eliot depicts that Hamlet’s matter is adapted from Thomas Kyd’s play, Spanish Tragedy. In Spanish Tragedy, there was a revenge motive, with the assassination of monarchy surrounded by guards and feigned madness in order to escape suspicion. Shakespeare incorporated another motive other than revenge provided with unexplained delay and also the madness in spite of escaping from King’s suspicion resulted in arousing it. Eliot criticizes that whatever is included by Shakespeare remains unexplained and not understandable as Shakespeare is unable to express himself like Hamlet. Shakespeare as well as Hamlet wanted to express something but failed.
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Eliot reinforces that internal feelings must have some external stimuli and that is “deficient in Hamlet”. Hamlet is unable to objectify his emotions and puts everything on his mother’s guilt. Feelings of Hamlet are in excess to the incidents that have happened. According to Eliot, Shakespeare himself is unable to handle the problem of the play and calls Hamlet Shakespeare’s mouthpiece.
Eliot identifies Hamlet’s problem and that is his mother’s guilt, which Shakespeare is unable to impose successfully upon Kyd’s play. According to Martin Lings, Gertrude is the fallen humanity and Hamlet is the bearer of that fallen humanity and is one who keeps talking about the guilt.
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According to Eliot’s famous principle of “objective correlative”, emotions should be linked to facts in a way that they look important and by this way, one’s emotions can be expressed in the form of art. According to the essay, “Eliot and the Traditions of Criticism”, objective correlative is the use of an object, which acts in parallel to an otherwise unexpressed emotion, the internal emotions, I think.
Eliot explains that in the case of Hamlet, interpretation is futile and that only criticism is relevant. According to Eliot, Hamlet should be criticized and not interpreted.
Some critics are of the opinion that in Eliot’s criticism, there is abundance of negative attitudes towards life, attitudes of disgust, fear and rejection that play a part of which, he is not properly conscious.
References
Eliot, T. S. (1972). “Hamlet (1919)”. Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 141 – 146.
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There is considerable doubt about this earlier Hamlet supposedly written by Thomas Kyd. It is mentioned in one or two contemporary sources but the play itself has never been found. This, and other matters relating to Shakespeare’s authorship are considered in depth in a new book, The Ignorance Of Shakespeare, Eloquent Books, New York.
Yes, you are right. There is no fixity in terms of extraction of Hamlet’s subject matter from Thomas Kyd’s Play. This essay considers what Eliot mentions in his essay about Shakespeare’s Hamlet not what actually the case was. Thanks for the comment and for the book name that can add to my knowledge.
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Very interesting article. I really enjoyed reading it.
But the fact is that there are a few notions that such play was really written by Kyd, though the same was not published and therefore lost. In the year 1589 that was written by the name Ur-Hamlet. In Robert Greene’s Menaphon lies the hint of the same.