Hamlet and His Problems

"Hamlet and His Problems" is a 1920 essay by T. S. Eliot which offers a critical reading of Hamlet. Originally published in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, it was reprinted in Selected Essays, 1917-1932. The essay introduced his concept of objective correlative. The essay is also noted for its bold description of Hamlet as "an artistic failure".

Eliot sets the ground rules by criticising the fixation on Hamlet the character as opposed to Hamlet the play, which is exacerbated, in the case of Goethe's treatment of the subject, by the creative ability to meld Shakespeare's creation into a 'Werther' while still professing to offer critical insight.

For Eliot, the purpose of "interpretation" is to present the reader with those relevant facts that he is assumed not to know. In his view these are, in this case, the three Sources for Hamlet being Kyd's Hamlet; Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques; and a version of the play performed in Germany during Shakespeare's lifetime

References

• Cowley, V.J.E. "A Source for T. S. Eliot's "Objective Correlative"?." The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 26, No. 103 (Aug., 1975), pp. 320-321.
• Quillian, William H. Hamlet and the New Poetic: James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. Ann Arbor, MI:UMI Research Press, 1983.
• Wright, Nathalia. "Source for T. S. Eliot's "Objective Correlative"?." American Literature, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Jan., 1970), pp. 589-591.

External links

• Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "Hamlet and His Problems." The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism.