This is a summary of Hamlet and his problems articlewhich was written by T.S.ElioT who had a different perspective regarding Hamlet. With reference to other critics, Eliot classified the problem into: secondary and primary.
4. Critics
• Critics find in Hamlet an artistic realization through the observance of the
character.
• We have three critics:-
1. One of them is excluded; Walter Pater; he did not fix his attention on the play.
2. The others, in writing of Hamlet used the most misleading kind possible of
criticism.
5. Who are these critics and In What way did they
use criticism?
•Who are these critics?
Goethe and Coleridge
6. Who are these critics and In What way did they
use criticism?
• In What way did they use criticism?
- They both possessed unquestionable critical insight and both
made their critical aberrations( deviation).
They used it in a misleading way.
7. What does that mean?
• It means that they deviated from truth.
• They presented a work which is not totally true and not totally wrong
Which there creative
gift effects.
8. In the 17thc and the 18thc
• They observed that they knew less about psychology than most recent
Hamlet’s critics.
They were nearer in spirit to Shakespeare’s art.
• They insisted on the importance of the effect of the whole rather than the character.
• In other words, we should focus on the message itself not the character.
9. In the 17thc and the 18thc
• They were nearer to the secret of the dramatic
art in general.
10. There were conditions
1. The work of art can not be interpreted.
2. We can only criticize it according to standards that
the work of art in comparison to other works.
11. The Writers
According to Mr. Robertson,
• Critics have failed in their “interpretation” of Hamlet
How????
By ignoring what ought to be obvious.
12. According to Mr. Robertson,
Hamlet
Represents the efforts of
a series of a man.
Is a stratification
13. According to Mr. Robertson,
• The Hamlet of Shakespeare will appear to us differently
• Only if we concentrated on the play not the character.
14. The Writers:
Thomas Kyd
• Thomas Kyd made three plays that Shakespeare took Hamlet from.
- The Spanish Tragedy.
- Arden of Feversham.
- Tale of Belleforest.
15. The Writers:
Shakespeare
• Those plays had motives such as: revenge.
• Shakespeare developed the motive of revenge, in his Hamlet, by associating
it to an aim.
• What is this aim?
This aim is also the effect which is the madness to arouse the king’s
suspicion.
• The delay in revenge is unexplained on grounds of necessity or expediency.
16. The Writers:
Shakespeare
• The alteration (change) is not complete enough to be convincing.
• Shakespeare’s Hamlet 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.
*Intractable: not easily controlled/ stubborn.
18. The Writers:
Shakespeare
• In several ways, the play is:-
- puzzling
- disquieting.
Shakespeare has left in Hamlet
superfluous and inconsistent scenes. In
brief, the unnecessary ones.
19. The Writers
• It is thought that Hamlet is interesting because
it is the “Mona Lisa” of literature.
Grounds of Hamlet’s failure: are not immediately obvious.
20. Mr. Robertson
• For Mr. Robertson, the essential emotion of the play is the feeling of a son
towards a guilty mother.
Motive
is the guilt of the
mother
- It had to be maintained and
emphasized to supply a
psychological solution.
22. Hamlet
• Hamlet is full of some things that the writer could not drag to light,
contemplate or manipulate the art.
When we search for the feelings
as in the sonnets
It is very difficult to localize.
23. Hamlet
• The only way to express emotions in the form of art is
through finding
an objective
correlative
A set of objects + chain of events + situation --------->. Formula of that particular emotion
When the external facts which must
terminate in sensory experience are given
The result will be
The emotions are immediately
evoked/ aroused.
24. If we applied this to Shakespeare’s plays
• We will find this exact equivalence.
• Example:-
- The state of mind of Lady Macbeth; walking in her sleep has been
communicated to you by a skillful accumulation of imagined sensory
impressions.
We felt the misery
25. If we applied this to Shakespeare’s plays
• The words of Macbeth on hearing his wife’s death strike us as if these words
were automatically released by the last events in the series.
• When Macbeth knew his wife’s death, we felt the same reaction that Macbeth
felt.
26. The “inevitability”
• The artistic “inevitability” depends on the
Adequacy of the external to the emotion
27. The “inevitability”
• And this was insufficient in Hamlet as Hamlet, the character, had lots of
emotions and expressions that he could not even express.
1. Suspecting his mother.
2. Suspecting his uncle.
• and in the same way, he does not do anything as he has no clue or evidence.
• Confusion blinds him; he is hesitated.
This was a problem
29. Hamlet
• As he could not take an action, his life is destroyed.
• Nothing can satisfy him and Shakespeare did not even add anything to the
event that can make Hamlet realize/understand what is going on.
State of Confusion
The objective equivalence will
never happen.
30. Hamlet
• Hamlet, for Shakespeare, is less than madness and more than feigned.
• The Levity of Hamlet + his repitition of phrase+ his pups -------> a form
of emotional relief.
• Example:-
- In the character of Hamlet, it is buffoonery of emotion that even dramatist
can not express ( Hesitation).
31. Study of Pathologist
• It is something which every person of sensibility has known.
• It often occurs in adolescence in which the ordinary person puts his feelings
to sleep or trims down his feeling to fit the business world.
• On the Contrary, the artists keep it alive by their ability to intensify the
world to their emotions.
32. Hamlet is not only written by Shakespeare
• It is also written
by Laforgue
• Is an adolescent.
Shakespeare
- It is not an adolescent.
- Tackled a problem which
proved too much for him.
- There are no explanation or an
excuse
33. Shakespeare
• 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; inexpressibly horrible.
34. In the End
• We should understand things that
Shakespeare did not understand himself and
in order to do this, we have to be conscious
and aware of the personal experience and
know lot of facts in his biography.
