Round of Applause for TS Eliot

This post kind of goes along with my other commentary on Hamlet but I hadn't read Eliot's response to it at the time. In all honesty, I agree with Eliot's criticisms of Shakespeare's play. I'm not sure I would go as far as calling it an "artistic failure," but I don't see why it is such a widely discussed piece of literature. Like Eliot says, most of the play is puzzling an confusing. Half of the time while reading Hamlet I thought to myself, "What's the point?" I agree with Eliot that there are a lot of superfluous scenes in the play--scenes that don't make sense or pretty random. If someone asked my to describe the tone of the play or discuss a major theme, I truly would have a difficult time doing so. As discussed in class, throughout the entire story you never know why Hamlet is doing what he's doing. You hardly know anything about Hamlet himself, or any of the other characters. You're given no explanations, no background information, and no foundation to build your own personal theories on. You're pretty much just guessing at what's going on in the play the entire time. I was, at least. I think Eliot has a pretty good response to the play. There's a big part of me that thinks people like and praise Hamlet simply because Shakespeare wrote it--if Shakespeare wrote something, it has to be good doesn't it? seems to be most people's train of thoughts. I'm glad Eliot doesn't pretend to enjoy the play or give it false sentiments. It was kind of refreshing to read about a well-known author bashing Shakespeare for once.