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Hamlet and His Problems: The Annotated Edition
William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet tells the story of a young man in the throes of a mental breakdown, both real and imagined, as he struggles to avenge his father’s murder. As Hamlet devises a plan to kill the murderer, part of his method includes an extended period of feigned madness, known as his “antic disposition.”
In this essay, T.S. Eliot takes issue with Shakespeare’s use of this plot device, arguing that an audience has no way of determining when Hamlet’s madness is purely fake or when it may or may not be real. Eliot suggests the idea of using an object external to the action of the play that could act as a metaphor for Hamlet’s mental state. This essay gave rise to the concept of an “objective correlative,” a term which is still heavily in use today.
In this essay, T.S. Eliot takes issue with Shakespeare’s use of this plot device, arguing that an audience has no way of determining when Hamlet’s madness is purely fake or when it may or may not be real. Eliot suggests the idea of using an object external to the action of the play that could act as a metaphor for Hamlet’s mental state. This essay gave rise to the concept of an “objective correlative,” a term which is still heavily in use today.
14 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1919
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About the author
T.S. Eliot
1,120 books5,589 followersThomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He wrote the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 26, 2016
Hamlet's problems:
Because Hamlet has an incestious mother.
And because he is not able to find an “objective correlative” with which he can understand her.
He feigns Madness.
Then, he dies stupidly.
Because Hamlet has an incestious mother.
And because he is not able to find an “objective correlative” with which he can understand her.
He feigns Madness.
Then, he dies stupidly.
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October 26, 2023THIS IS THE BEST JOKE IN ALL OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. I LOVE THAT TS ELIOT HATES HAMLET!
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December 21, 2020A summary for the main points:
Most of the critics how have corrunented on the play consider the hero Hamlet as the cause of the problems. Eliot argues that the problem is with the plot of the play itself.
According to Eliot, the first problem is the play itself and the hero comes only second in significance.
Shakespeare's Hamlet, says Eliot, is not a masterwork but an "artistic failure", the play is confusing and causing uneasiness in a number of ways. His first charge is the style of the verse is not uniform throughout the play.
Hamlet is disgusted with his mother's behaviour. But his disgust is not in proportion to her breaking laws. His disgust, Eliot avers, is a feeling which he cannot understand; he cannot objectifyit, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action.
Hamlet fundamentally lack “objective correlative”. This term refer to: “Expressing an emotion in drama by representing a set of objects, chain of events or a situation. When the correlative is dramatized the emotion will unfold in the play.”
Hamlet’s tone is that of one who has suffered tortures on the score of his mother’s in 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.
The artistic 'inevitability' lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet.
Most of the critics how have corrunented on the play consider the hero Hamlet as the cause of the problems. Eliot argues that the problem is with the plot of the play itself.
According to Eliot, the first problem is the play itself and the hero comes only second in significance.
Shakespeare's Hamlet, says Eliot, is not a masterwork but an "artistic failure", the play is confusing and causing uneasiness in a number of ways. His first charge is the style of the verse is not uniform throughout the play.
Hamlet is disgusted with his mother's behaviour. But his disgust is not in proportion to her breaking laws. His disgust, Eliot avers, is a feeling which he cannot understand; he cannot objectifyit, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action.
Hamlet fundamentally lack “objective correlative”. This term refer to: “Expressing an emotion in drama by representing a set of objects, chain of events or a situation. When the correlative is dramatized the emotion will unfold in the play.”
Hamlet’s tone is that of one who has suffered tortures on the score of his mother’s in 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.
The artistic 'inevitability' lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet.
December 23, 2020
Sublime literature is not bounded, not stiff, it carries its ability to stretch. Eliot argues against other critics who claimed the opposite of his point of view, but what is the measure of inaccuracy in critisim? I believe that most of the time, analysis exceeds writing as a mental faculties. The writer may produce his masterpiece under his circumstances and backgrounds control, HE MAY NOT BE AWARE, while analysis is an induction of the whole scene. Eliot, about Hamlet, assures that “We are surely justified in attributing the play, to a period of crisis”. And assume that Shakespeare in the play tackles a very significant problem for him. Eliot, in order to interpret this play’s problem, assures that “We need a great many facts in his biography... We should have to understand things which Shakespeare did not understand himself”
December 17, 2023
This essay appeared in 1919, at the commencement of a sequence of critical essays that Eliot would publish ostensibly as reviews, though they would quickly place themselves at the center of the polemic of literary modernism. It is remarkable that the essays for which he is best known, particularly as they contain those critical phrases that will not fade back into the essays from which they are taken, are all published between the years 1919 and 1924.
Critics of this essay tend to treat it as a patient etherized upon a table, from which they feel able to surgically remove the idea of the "objective correlative," dissociating it from its context.
The essay itself is rarely discussed as having any bearing on Hamlet whatsoever, and has become little more than a vehicle for bringing into the critical vocabulary a conceptual formulation that has proved difficult and often awkward for criticism.
It is assuredly one of Eliot's most epigrammatic, gnomically formulated pieces of literary criticism, and there have been a number of suggestions as to why this is. One strong possibility is the influence of the philosophical thought of E. H. Bradley, on whom Eliot wrote his dissertation at Harvard (1916).
But no matter what we may think of the worth of Bradley's philosophy, attempting to illuminate the idea of the objective correlative as containing within itself its own logic, inaudibly cutting its contextual ties to Shakespeare's play, misses what should be the most important point of all, which is the relation between the critical formulation and the array of elements and forces that Eliot's essay attempts to deal with.
Critics of this essay tend to treat it as a patient etherized upon a table, from which they feel able to surgically remove the idea of the "objective correlative," dissociating it from its context.
The essay itself is rarely discussed as having any bearing on Hamlet whatsoever, and has become little more than a vehicle for bringing into the critical vocabulary a conceptual formulation that has proved difficult and often awkward for criticism.
It is assuredly one of Eliot's most epigrammatic, gnomically formulated pieces of literary criticism, and there have been a number of suggestions as to why this is. One strong possibility is the influence of the philosophical thought of E. H. Bradley, on whom Eliot wrote his dissertation at Harvard (1916).
But no matter what we may think of the worth of Bradley's philosophy, attempting to illuminate the idea of the objective correlative as containing within itself its own logic, inaudibly cutting its contextual ties to Shakespeare's play, misses what should be the most important point of all, which is the relation between the critical formulation and the array of elements and forces that Eliot's essay attempts to deal with.
May 13, 2017
اصل مقاله در دسترس است. سرسری نگاهش انداختم تا بفهمم چرا به نظر الیوت هملت اثر ناقصی است. جان کلام مقاله را ولی در نقد دکتر بهرام مقدادی بر نمایشنامه ی مکبث فهمیدم. نقدی که همراه با ترجمه ی آقای داریوش آشوری از مکبث چاپ شده بود:
"به نظر الیوت کار شاعر عبارت است از کشف قیاس پذیری ها و یگانگی ها در تجربه های ناهمگون و برقراری ارتباط میان آن ها. او در این باره می نویسد:
تنها شیوه ی بیان احساس به زبان هنری, یافتن ربط عینی ست. یعنی بافتن سلسله ای از چیزها, شرایط و زنجیره ای از رویدادها که در کنار هم بتوانند ترجمان آن احساس ویژه باشند بدان گونه که چون واقعیت بیرونی که باید به تجربه ای احساسی بینجامد بازنموده شود, آن احساس بی درنگ برانگیخته شود..."
مفهوم "ربط عینی" جان کلام این مقاله بر ضد هملت شکسپیر است.
"به نظر الیوت کار شاعر عبارت است از کشف قیاس پذیری ها و یگانگی ها در تجربه های ناهمگون و برقراری ارتباط میان آن ها. او در این باره می نویسد:
تنها شیوه ی بیان احساس به زبان هنری, یافتن ربط عینی ست. یعنی بافتن سلسله ای از چیزها, شرایط و زنجیره ای از رویدادها که در کنار هم بتوانند ترجمان آن احساس ویژه باشند بدان گونه که چون واقعیت بیرونی که باید به تجربه ای احساسی بینجامد بازنموده شود, آن احساس بی درنگ برانگیخته شود..."
مفهوم "ربط عینی" جان کلام این مقاله بر ضد هملت شکسپیر است.
January 24, 2021
Very insightful, perfect for those studying Hamlet as a play also good to use for critical quotes.
May 30, 2024
Hate to say but this is a braindead take
March 11, 2025
discussion in our English class about how this guy is scared of Shakespeare
i hate this
i hate this
June 5, 2025
t.s. eliot is love you— but no
February 7, 2017
Hamlet is the "Mona Lisa of literature", declared T. S. Eliot . Everyone appreciates it but no one understands the incomprehensibility of its enigmatic artistic nature. He also added that "it's an artistic failure", as Hamlet's strong emotions exceeded the facts of the play. They are not supported by the artistic mechanism namely "The 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.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews