In 1919, T.S. Eliot published an essay that elevates literary contrarianism to heights that have rarely been equaled. The central argument of “Hamlet and His Problems,” which first appeared in the Athenaeum and was later collected in The Sacred Wood, is that Hamlet, considered a masterpiece for centuries, is a shambles. Eliot goes on to insist that the Bard’s greatest tragedy is actually a play few peopled paid much attention to then or now: Coriolanus, just adapted for the screen by Ralph Fiennes.
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