Like so many books with the same title, this has an ambitious aim. The author tells us: 'There still remains the question—"Why did Hamlet delay to kill the King?"; and to that I wish to find an answer, so that it may no longer be an obstacle to anyone's experience of the play' (p. 31).

The various modern attempts to answer this question are, largely because of the well-known Freudian theory of Hamlet, becoming more and more definitely psychological and, although Mr. Clutton-Brock