Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine

The figure of Hamlet haunts our culture like the Ghost haunts him. Arguably, no literary work, not even the Bible, is more familiar to us than Shakespeares Hamlet. Everyone knows at least six words from the play; often people know many more. Yet the playShakespeares longestis more than passing strange and becomes deeply unfamiliar when considered closely. Reading Hamlet alongside other writers, philosophers, and psychoanalystsCarl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Freud, Lacan, Nietzsche, Melville, and JoyceSimon Critchley and Jamieson Webster consider the political context and stakes of Shakespeares play, its relation to religion, the movement of desire, and the incapacity to love.