Hamlet and the Desire of the Mother

Here we shall engage with another seminar, whose focus on desire and its interpretation radically displaces the usual Freudian reading of Hamlet as an Oedipus at one remove. It again seems useful to follow Lacan’s cautious investigations in a seminar in which he seems at first to be quite respectful of Freud’s ideas. I shall try to show how Lacan reaches a different interpretation in several stages, as if he had not completely seen at first that he would contradict both Freud and the Freudian canon.