Hamlet Proved Too Much for Shakespeare"We must simply admit that Shakespeare faced a problem here that proved too much for him." TS Eliot The real tragedy of Hamlet is that it is far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece: the play is surely an artistic failure. In many ways the play is as baffling and disturbing as any of Shakespeare's other plays. Of all the plays it is the longest and is perhaps the one on which Shakespeare put the most effort; yet he left superfluous and inconsistent scenes that even a hasty review should have noticed. The versification is variable. I laughed as Look, the morning, dressed in a rust-colored cloak, Walks o'er the dew of that high eastern hill, I am Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The lines in Act v. sc. ii., Lord, in my heart there was a kind of struggle that would not let me sleep... Up from my cabin, with the scarf of my sea dress on, in the dark I tried to discover them: I had my wish; touched their package; they are quite mature. Both processing and thinking are in unstable conditions. We are surely justified in attributing the work, together with that other deeply interesting work of "intractable" material and striking versification, Measure for Measure, to a period of crisis, after which followed the tragic successes culminating in Coriolanus. Coriolanus may not be as "interesting" as Hamlet, but he is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's surest artistic success. And probably more people considered Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than they found it interesting because it is a work of art. She is the "Mona Lisa" of literature. The reasons for Hamlet's failure are not immediately apparent. It is undoubtedly correct to conclude that the essential emotion of the work is the feeling of a son towards a guilty mother. Hamlet's tone is that of someone who has suffered greatly as a direct result of his mother's degradation. A mother's guilt is an almost intolerable motif for drama, but it had to be maintained and emphasized to provide a psychological solution, or rather a hint of a solution. But this is by no means the whole story. It is not simply “a mother's guilt” that cannot be handled as Shakespeare handled Othello's suspicion, Antony's infatuation, or Coriolanus' pride...