Hamlet again. Here is another addition to the already voluminous literature on Shakespeare's play. Thus, the first question that must be asked is whether Theodore Lidz adds anything to what we already know. The answer is yes.

Lidz updates the psychoanalytic view of the play. Just as an earlier emphasis on instincts has given way to a new concern with object relations in psychoanalytic theory, Lidz moves away from Ernest Jones's instinctual, Oedipal interpretation of Hamlet's problem to an interpretation focusing on Hamlet's familial situation and his developmental tasks. Jones, in The Problem of Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex, attempted to understand a key aspect of the play—why Hamlet seemed to hesitate and delay in taking revenge for his father's murder by his uncle Claudius (who had also married Hamlet's mother Gertrude). In