Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
Hamlet – Act V, Scene ii, 219-220
In 1921 T.S. Eliot published a little article discussing what he viewed as the inconsistencies with the play Hamlet by Shakespeare. The piece is short and entitled Hamlet and His Problems. You can find a link to the source document here for your reading pleasure. You can also read the play Hamlet here.
Personally I understand Eliot’s position on the play, but I don’t think I agree with his conclusion. Granted one of the early lines of his essay just may call me out for my own bias. Eliot states:
Hamlet the character has had an especial temptation for that most dangerous type of critic: the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creative power exercises itself in criticism instead.
It is certainly quite the searing critique, because in truth I perceive him to be most accurate in his assessment here. I do love the play and Hamlet the character so much that I’m probably not a very good source to criticize it. And more than likely my own creative powers aren’t as robust as they should be, leaving me in a rather precarious position of looking far too much like the exact type of critic Eliot describes above. Nevertheless I’d like to discuss briefly and generally my view of the play Hamlet, a subject that can be quite a long discussion which we could continue further on this blog in future posts as well.
In short, Eliot’s main objection to the play Hamlet is that the inner feelings of the man do not match the exterior experiences he goes through. Eliot explains:
Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear.
Hamlet’s father was clearly murdered in cold blood and his mother is now married to that same murderer, but Hamlet’s real conflict is not so much in how to avenge his father, but rather if in fact it is true that his father was murdered and his mother is profiting from it. Hamlet’s struggle then is one of truth and of knowing if the truth he suspects is in fact true at all. This doubt is the major conflict for Hamlet and is why he delays so much in avenging his father. But Eliot, and others he cites in his essay, just don’t buy it. They suggest, interestingly, that these feelings of doubt are not externally anchored in anything in the actual play. In other words Hamlet is a play that doesn’t show you the main conflict, but rather tells you about it through Hamlet’s amazing soliloquies and asides, and because those lines are so rich, the real faults of the play are that much more difficult to notice. For Eliot and his critics they argue that the closest external force for Hamlet’s conflict is found in Gertrude, his mother, and whatever guilt she has which makes Hamlet hesitate. But here again Eliot argues, and I think legitimately, that Gertrude’s guilt, though measurable and significant, still does not hold enough gravity and weight to force Hamlet into protracted doubt and inaction.
As I say, I do agree with Eliot on these points, however I do not agree with his conclusion that Hamlet the play is therefore “most certainly an artistic failure.” Such a conclusion, though admirable in its boldness, is simply just not acknowledging the larger arc and force of the play. There is a meta-play in Hamlet that I think Eliot fails to truly understand or appreciate. Yes he is correct that something in the plot of the play just doesn’t add up right. Hamlet should either avenge his father and kill his uncle immediately or die trying. The play could be about this process and scheming in how to achieve that end. And apparently earlier versions of the play prior to Shakespeare’s focused on just that. But it is my opinion that Shakespeare was actually not interested in such a simple revenge play like that otherwise he would have written it that way. Shakespeare was actually attempting to test the boundaries of the form the play itself, and I think Hamlet may be arguably the first attempt at a novel in western literature. Hamlet the character behaves more like a character in a novel where his soliloquies resemble the internal monologues and “voice” of a first person narrator we so often find in the novel form. Shakespeare was exploring internal realms and the drivers of motive within the character Hamlet and allowed the plot to be a more secondary force in the piece much like we find many novelists do today. Hamlet was written sometime between 1599 – 1602, and although still debated in literary circles, the first novel was written either in 1605 with Don Quixote by Cervantes or with Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders both written by Daniel Defoe in 1719 and 1722 respectively. In either case all of them are produced after Hamlet was written. Shakespeare himself didn’t have a model or framework other than the play to conceive or approach the ideas at work in Hamlet or the deep conflicts his character struggles with. To me this is precisely what makes the play sublime – it is transcending itself beyond its own form, and just as Hamlet himself is going mad in the play so too is the play itself spinning out of control, pushing against its own internal housing and architecture to discover and express an internal expression unable to fully materialize itself on the stage. Hamlet is a character desperate to pierce into the unknown and through the limitation of literary genres available to the writer, the play itself was naturally pierced as well. For me this type of struggle only adds to the thrill of the play. We can only imagine the power and grandeur The Bard would accomplish if he tried his hand at a novel. I think Hamlet comes closest to whatever that work might have been. Eliot concludes the following:
We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him.
If I were speaking with Eliot today perhaps by the fireside puffing on a pipe and stirring a glass of whisky in hand, I would simply suggest to him that no – Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much not for him but instead for the play itself. I might even be so bold as to remind Eliot of his own great quote, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” In Hamlet, Shakespeare probably did push the limits of the play genre itself, but in doing so he produced an amazing, undeniably incredible piece of art – perhaps the greatest play ever written. And certainly it is fair to say that Shakespeare of all the playwrights, knew precisely what limits he was testing and what he instead could have done with Hamlet. We must ascribe intention and motive to whatever inadequacies Eliot or others may identify with the play, and because of that we must then consider why the great playwright wrote them at all. Perhaps T.S. Eliot might agree with me and my analysis, I don’t know. Hamlet himself, by the end of the play, as shown in the lines quoted at the very top of this post, seems to have come to a similar realization just before he is killed, by declaring that in failure and even in death we shall still transcend, that nothing is ever lost or forsaken. All of our endeavors fall under the auspices of God. All is understood.
The struggles and issues then that we do find throughout Hamlet, which Eliot so insightfully articulates, particularly this inability to fully manifest and exteriorize Hamlet’s major conflict, is in fact one of the great accomplishments and sublime joys that the play actually illustrates. That inability is what the play is about, at least in part, and is exactly what carries it to new heights as a play at all. Through this romantic irony, this meta-play if you will, we bear witness to the unwavering, unconquerable spirit of man in art, in finding an expression into the world, and in the deepest desires to seek for truth regardless of forms, in spite of rules, and beyond all bounds. And for that, once again, Shakespeare still remains, along with his incredible play Hamlet, without question or reservation, the resounding master of literature.