Artistic failure

In his essay Hamlet and His Problems T. S. Eliot reached the oddly arbitrary conclusion that "far from being Shakespeare's
masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure." T.S. Eliot conceives Hamlet as an artistic failure, pointing at the
inexplicable manner in which Hamlet is obsessed with his mother's behavior; and how in terms of an objective correlative,
Gertrude is not only an inadequate object for the emotions generated in the play, but also unable to support them. In contrast,
"to have heightened the criminality of Gertrude would have been to provide the formula for a totally different emotion in
Hamlet."In other words, the problem of the play lies not in the character of Hamlet, but in the author's treatment of "the effect
of a mother's guilt upon her son. Eliot thinks that Shakespeare could not handle the "guilt of a mother" so effectively
as he “handled the suspicion of Othello, the infatuation of Antony, or the pride of Coriolanus”.

In this essay Eliot wrote, “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative. In other
words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion;…”The main thrust
of Eliot's criticism is that Hamlet's complex feelings don't find adequate expression in the play. According to Eliot's theory of the
objective correlative, emotions must find expression in objects, a situation, or a chain of events. The objective correlative‘s
purpose is to express the character‘s emotions by showing rather than describing feelings as pictured earlier by Plato and
referred to by Peter Barry “…perhaps little more than the ancient distinction (first made by Plato) between mimesis and
diegesis….‖. Hamlet fails in this regard. Hamlet’s disgust for his mother stems from so many situations one after another that he
fails to express his real feelings towards her unable to comprehnd them himself. So, Hamlet’s emotions can not be said to be
developed from dramatic occurences of actions but a overflow of feelings blended with confusion. Eliot takes up the instance
of Hamlet's Madness and tries to invalidate routine perspective by belligerence that Hamlet's franticness "is not as
much as frenzy and more than faked".As Shakespeare cannot understand Hamlet’s feelings, he cannot create an
objective correlative for them, and so Hamlet therefore appears mad to the audience while his madness does not
intrinsically develop out of the plot.

Comparing Coriolanus with Hamlet Eliot observes that “Coriolanus may be not as “interesting” as Hamlet, but it is…
Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success” because It makes sense.  Eliot thinks that what we need in a work of art is
something objective that will evoke an emotional state within us, something that will correspond indirectly to the emotion itself.
If this isn't provided, then we're merely left with an excess of emotion without the prospect of its being fully articulated. And
this, argues Eliot, is the main problem with Hamlet.