Add to ORKGThis chapter provides a reading of Lacan\u27s important reading of Shakespeare\u27s Hamlet in Seminar VI, in the context of his developing thought on the neuroses, and obsessional neurosis in particular. The article draws atttention to the way Lacan\u27s focus shifts from Hamlet\u27s \u27Oedipal\u27 relation towards his uncle towards his inability to fathom teh desire of his mother, Gertrude. This interpretive optic opens up many scenes of the play, and strange transformations in the heor\u27s conduct: his terrible hostility to Ophelia, and his \u27rebound\u27 at the moment that he leaps into her open grave, able at last to say \u27It is I, Hamlet the Dane!" and undertake to do the task his father\u27s ghost had implored of...