This is a great criticism, even though few will agree with his assertion than Hamlet is an "artistic failure".
Instead of considering the play as a fully deliberate creation by Shakespeare, Eliot considers what Shakespeare layers on top of his source material. This gives rise to some fair criticism. For example Shakespeare seem to handle the "madness" quite illogicaly compared to the Amleth legend. In Amleth, he plays mad (or rather retarded) in order to seem unthreatening to the uncle. But in Shakespeares Hamlet, the feigned madness has it has the opposite effect - it causes the suspicion of Claudius who starts spying on him. Until then, Claudius seem to have full trust in Hamlet. So it is a pretty dumb plan.
The point about the queen is also fair. In Amleth, the uncle openly kills the king, so the widow knowingly marries the killer of her husband. In Hamlet, the murder is disguised as an accident and there is nothing to indicate that the queen knows Claudius killed her husband. Still, Hamlet has the same level of anger towards her as in Amleth.
Of course Shakespeare adds the complex psychological layer and beautiful poetry - but from a purely dramatic point of view, the original works better.
Reading Hamlet as an adult simply blew my mind. It was one of those moments where you step back in awe that a single mind could produce a work of such depth, with so many layers, yet with a consistency and a wholeness. JS Bach is the only other artist I have seen to produce a similar “Forrest” and “Trees” views within his artwork.
While King Lear is my personal favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, I acknowledge Hamlet his greatest in all aspects (poetry, philosophy, etc).
Shakespeare has really improved their writing over the years. In high school, the Bard was tedious, had little of relevance to say, and the language was absurdly complicated. Much improved since then.
You joke, but you make an important point. A book is just a dead thing without a reader who has something in them that can respond to the book's contents. A book by itself has no value. It is the event that occurs between the book and the reader that is the real thing.
Hamlet is what rerevealed Shakespeare to me. Now, speaking of forest and trees, what's even more mindblowing is to consider all those plays together, all the characters, (and the sonnets). What range! What scope!
Who else? Melville's Moby Dick blew me away a bit like that too. And Joyce. And Goethe.
That's exactly what I like about it!