What is the basic idea behind T's Eliot's criticism of hamlet?

Answer 1

It is an artistic failure.

Answer 2

All of the above. Not everyone agrees on what makes "good" literature good (even if it's written by Shakespeare).

Popularity is not always equal to artistic quality.

You are allowed to have your own opinions about literature.

Answer 3

T.S. Eliot's criticism of the play is found in an essay he wrote in 1919 called "Hamlet and his Problems". In the essay, Eliot takes the view that the success or failure of the play must be assessed on the question of whether Shakespeare is able to have Hamlet convincingly express his emotions. He contrasts Shakespeare's play with his sources and with Der Brudermord, a German play which is probably a translation of an earlier Hamlet play in English. In the sources and in Der Brudermord, Hamlet is single-mindedly fixated on revenge, and is clearly faking the madness to cover his tracks. Shakespeare's character seems to be unsure about whether he really wants to revenge his father's murder or protest his mother's infidelity, and there have been endless debates about whether Hamlet is faking the madness or whether he is really crazy. To Eliot, the shallow and obvious characterizations of the sources are preferable to the subtle and ambiguous one Shakespeare presents. Not many would agree. Eliot postulates an "objective correlative", which means "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." He says that Shakespeare is not using an objective correlative, and therefore no particular emotion is evoked, and therefore the play is a failure. Not many would agree with that either.

Answer 4

Although the two essays are more than 100 years apart (Hazlitt in 1817, Eliot in 1921), both express the typical attitude toward Shakespeare in the 19th century. Eliot's essay, although written in the 20th century, belongs intellectually in the 19th, just as Harold Bloom's 1998 book does. Some of the key features of this 19th century attitude are:

1. Literary criticism consists of emotional responses to writing.
2. Shakespeare's plays are really poetry and should not be performed. ("We do not like to see our author’s plays acted, and least of all, Hamlet"--Hazlitt)
3. Shakespeare's plays are all about the character of the titular character (in the case of the tragedies) or the main pair of lovers (in the case of the comedies). Incident and plot exist only to inform us about character, and the most important part of the plays is the soliloquys.

The 20th century saw a rejection of this approach among many critics (not including, as I indicated, Harold Bloom) but it still powerfully influences Shakespeare teaching at pre-university levels.