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The latter portion of the essay is dedicated to Eliot's criticism of Hamlet based on his concept of the objective correlative. He begins by arguing that the greatest contributor to the play's failure is Shakespeare's inability to express Hamlet's emotion in his surroundings and the audience's resultant inability to localize that emotion.
Hamlet welcomes them as "excellent good friends", but, seeing through their guise, comments that they won't "deal justly" with him about their mission. [1] Realising that he lacks allies except for Horatio, Hamlet gives the speech "What a piece of work is a man" to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. [1]
Hamlet is perhaps most affected by the prevailing skepticism in Shakespeare's day in response to the Renaissance's humanism. Humanists living prior to Shakespeare's time had argued that man was godlike, capable of anything. Skepticism toward this attitude is clearly expressed in Hamlet's What a piece of work is a man speech: [50]
Eliot uses Lady Macbeth's state of mind as an example of the successful objective correlative: "The artistic 'inevitability' lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion….", as a contrast to Hamlet. According to Eliot, the feelings of Hamlet are not sufficiently supported by the story and the other characters surrounding him.
During the Victorian era, Quillian argues, there was an "enormous and positive hold that Hamlet exerted on the literary imagination." [2] This was followed by a "shift in perception" [3] during the period of Modernism (c. 1911–1922) when T. S. Eliot and James Joyce condemned the play as a "failure."
Hamlet admits that he is upset at his situation but refuses to give the true reason, instead remarking "What a piece of work is a man". Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that they have brought along a troupe of actors that they met while travelling to Elsinore.
Singer’s father Laurence died in 1993, one year before she joined the Spice Girls
Author Molly Booth has written a young adult historical fiction novel, Saving Hamlet, about a teenage girl who time travels back to the original production of Hamlet at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, 1601. The book has a focus on Ophelia's role, and how the sexism from Shakespeare's era translates to sexism in modern society for young ...