Eliot and Shakespeare: Anthony and Cleopatra as a Defense for Eliot’s Critical Theory.
In his essay “Hamlet and His Problems”(1919), Eliot analyses Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and evaluates Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra favorably. To Eliot, Hamlet is not as good as Macbeth, because it has no objective correlatives. Macbeth is the work, in which he can find suitable correlatives. Unlike Hamlet, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra seem to him to be an artistic success. This article investigates Eliot’s evaluation of Antony and Cleopatra based on his objective correlative theory. Eliot claims that an author’s emotions should not be in his works, and that instead he should present them objectively. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is the best example of this theory, by way of Shakespeare’s various literary conventions, such as paradox, overtone, image, symbol, etc.