ABSTRACT
This essay, a rough preliminary draft of which I have had by me for a number of years, is intended to supplement, though not to replace, those already written (including my ‘Rose of May’ in The Imperial Theme). I hope all the essays will be read in conjunction. It is not, however, supposed that they exhaust the latent meanings of Hamlet; and I would draw the attention of my readers to Mr. Roy Walker’s very important study in imaginative interpretation, The Time is Out of Joint, being published by Andrew Dakers (which I had the privilege of seeing in typescript). Though our approaches are basically similar, and our material in places overlaps, the clashes are, on the whole, comparatively few: an additional witness, if such be needed, of the play’s peculiar and inexhaustible wealth.
