Eliot fries a 'Hamlet', and Shakes gets burnt toast

T.S. Eliot straight out rips Shakespeare’s starting quarterback, ace up his sleeve, gold material (take your pick so to speak); quite a ballsy performance. Clichés aside, this critique of Hamlet, unlike Hamlet ((the man)……to be, or not to...zzz (not that I don’t enjoy it’s brilliance…as will mention later)) was very poignant, and that struck me as quite odd, because unlike critics we’ve met earlier in this course Eliot is the only one that gets at the meat of the problem and devours it like a wild beast.

Eliot lays it out plain and simple " The play is an artistic failure " (47). He generalizes the term 'art', and leaves it in a broad context to play with. There are two values of 'art' that he addresses, and that Shakespeare (apparently) lacks. The first is on syntax (or style): he says the play suffers from an inconsistency of language " which even hasty revision should have noticed " (Eliot is a fierce one……reminds me of all those callous teachers I had in highschool) I for one have not read Hamlet from an editorial perspective (and for that matter have ever wanted to) so I miss the oppurtunity in defending the piece on that level (i will prevail don't you worry).

Continuing in his tirade of criticism on Shakespeare, Eliot specifies another artistic value that is weak in the play, " The artistic 'inevitability' lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet. Hamlet is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear "(48). I dislike the point made here because I feel ( because I do see the 'Mona Lisa' in Hamlet) that this is the very point that makes Hamlet so 'interesting': the breaks from attaching an emotion from a character to a plausible external sign; he takes on Fraudian concepts (no not Oedipus) and causes us to get inside the Id and the Ego, far more than we are able to get inside any other Shakespeare character. Eliot seems to take a more Aristotelian (of time, place, and action) approach, signifying the digression of Shakespeare's emotion. I would therefore assume that he did not like the " To be or not to be " speech, as it is very poetic and would not comply with the snobby Greek Poetic Standard (no offense to anyone who may take offense to that comment). But because he alludes to the questionable authorship ((a) we are not sure which folio the 1603, or 1605 is the authentic version of Shakespeare and (b)many believe, as Eliot does, that it has been revised " Hamlet is a stratification, that represents the efforts of a series of men "(46) ), I’m sure Eliot would argue that 'other men' helped in the creation of the what-we-see today (Penguin version or whatever)text of Hamlet. Because he is really bringing in two seperate arguments in the paradoxical form of one, I will leave the authorship thing alone, and merely whimper that both speeches in my mind are the same in content, just that the (one we see today) is far more poetic.

There's way too much Shakespeare bashing for my taste. Admittingly though, it was a good try on Eliot's part. Even Shakespeare can use a touch up. Eliot unfortunately pushes too far; arguing that 'Hamlet' is not a great piece of literature, even in the artistic sense, is a (forceful) stretch of the imagination.

Ciao, Aids