Romantic versus Modernist Hamlets

Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide - Nick Groom, Piero 2013

Romantic versus Modernist Hamlets

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IT IS WE WHO ARE HAMLET. THE WHOLE OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORK IS ONE POEM; AND IT IS THE POETRY OF IT IN THIS SENSE, NOT THE POETRY OF ISOLATED LINES AND PASSAGES OR THE POETRY OF THE SINGLE FIGURES HE CREATED, THAT MATTERS MOST.

On the other hand, it was Eliot who said of Hamlet that it was “most certainly an artistic failure”, and who heralded his form of Modernism in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) with a direct repudiation of the Hamlet- complex …