Death and the Fear of Finiteness in Hamlet, by Jerome Oremland, is a psychoanalyst's deeply personal study of Shakespeare's most deathobsessed play. Oremland approaches his subject with seriousness and sophistication, as well as a deep sense of personal mission. He tells us that writing the book helped him mourn the death of his wife, even as writing about the play in 1983 helped him come to terms with the death of his mother, even as, according to Freud, the writing of Hamlet helped Shakespeare mourn the deaths of his son Hamnet in 1596 and his father in 1601.

Bringing his expertise as a clinician to bear on the play, Oremland compellingly argues that Hamlet feigns madness to mask his very real psychosis and describes Gertrude as an “as-if” personality who lacks