Although T. S. Eliot admired William Shakespeare and commented on his irreplaceable influence on English literature, he also took a strongly critical stance toward Shakespeare’s works. Especially notable is Eliot’s dissection of Hamlet, with which he found many faults. Eliot’s analysis of the play in “Hamlet and His Problems” drew a clear distinction between the play and the character. His elaboration of theoretical premises for drama, based on the “objective correlative,” has had lasting influence.

Eliot took issue with a widely held view that Hamlet was a truly great play. Instead, he lamented that the play was “an artistic failure.” This failure inheres in the discrepancies between Hamlet as a character and the dramatic work into which he is placed. Eliot seems to accuse Shakespeare of making Hamlet too intriguing and relatable, as audiences—and especially critics—project themselves onto this creative, sensitive individual. In contrast, the play does not adequately support Hamlet’s behavior or successfully reveal his inner feelings.

The “objective correlative” that Eliot proposed relates to these flaws. He regarded it as the playwright’s responsibility to establish

a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of the particular emotion.

One single character is not equipped to bear the burden of conveying emotion; rather, the facts will generate “sensory experience” that evokes the emotion.

In another essay, “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca,” Eliot locates Shakespeare among his Elizabethan contemporaries and connects him to classical Roman philosophy. While rejecting a popular notion about Shakespeare’s singular ideology, Eliot claims that stoicism undergirds his works. He bases this idea on the multiple formulations in which characters, especially the tragic heroes, flounder at the mercy of an uncaring or hostile world.