Freud on Shakespeare

Author(s): Norman N. Holland

Source: PMLA, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Jun., 1960), pp. 163-173
Published by: Modern Language Association
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 FREUD ON
By Norman
DISCOVERY of the unconscious
at the end of the nineteenth century bids fair
FREUD'S
to be the defining factor in the intellectual life of
the twentieth. Already, Freud's ideas seem to
have touched everyone from the juvenile de-
linquent on the corner to the scholar in his study.
Biography, history, literary criticism, and, not
least, the study of Shakespeare, psychoanalysis
has affected them all. Hamlet's Oedipus complex
(thanks to Sir Laurence Olivier's film) has be?
come as conspicuous a feature in the popular
image of Shakespeare as the controversy about
authorship. Freud was a psychologist, however,
not a critic, and his remarks about Shakespeare,
like all his literary comments, were only inci-
dental to his main study, the mind of man. As a
result, his Shakespearian insights are scattered
through his works. No one, so far as I know, has
clearly established just exactly what Freud said
about Shakespeare or where he said it. The pur?
pose of this article is to answer those two ques?
tions, that is, to set out in systematic form
Freud's comments on, references to, and quota?
tions from Shakespeare, and second, to provide
via the footnotes a bibliography for them. I have
summarized Freud's remarks in the following
order: first, his remarks on Shakespeare gen?
erally; second, his views on authorship; third,
the points he makes about particular plays and
poems (arranged alphabetically). Within these
large divisions, references are arranged in order
of generality, larger topics first. Topics of equal
generality within a given work are put in the
order in which they appear in the work. Where
Freud made more than one reference to a topic
(e.g., a particular character or quotation), the
references are arranged chronologically accord?
ing to the time Freud made them (which may or
may not coincide with the order of publication).*
In a sense, the subject is its own justification:
the intersection of two such geniuses is a point
worth looking at. Also, Freud's comments on
Shakespeare are not without intrinsic interest.
Taken all together, they establish him as a
Shakespearian commentator of more than pass?
ing importance. Conversely, the student of
psychoanalysis will find in these comments much
that illumines the workings of Freud's own mind,
particularly the curious ambivalence in his atti?
tude toward Shakespeare. Freud admired the
poems and plays greatly, but, in a psychoanalytic
sense, some of his remarks, particularly his
denying Shakespeare's identity, show an un?
conscious hostility.
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SHAKESPEARE
N. Holland
Freud thought Shakespeare purely and simply
"the greatest of poets,"1 and used him as a
touchstone with which to set the status of other
writers, Dostoevsky, for example,2 although he
thought the cultural level of Shakespeare's
England, which he measured by its standards of
cleanliness, low: "We read that there was a tall
dungheap in front of his father's house in Strat-
ford."3 He felt, moreover, that Shakespeare's
genius should not be placed above examination,
that genius "should not be called upon as an
explanation until every other solution has
failed."4 Freud's biographers tell us that he be?
gan reading Shakespeare at the age of eight and
read him over and over again; he was always
ready with a Shakespearian quotation. He ad?
mired particularly Shakespeare's power of ex?
pression (Freud himself was no mean stylist)
and his insights into human nature. Dr. Jones
* The notes to this article
constitute,seriatim,a bibliog?
raphyof Freud's references to Shakespearein his published
psychologicalworks. They are keyed, obviously, to the
topical plan given in the firstparagraph. I have also in?
cluded referencesto memoirsand biographies(particularly
Dr. Jones's) which quote fromotherwiseunpublishedma?
terials.
In each entry,I have referred to thestandardGermantext
and to one Englishtext,the StandardEditionwhichis ap-
pearingvolume by volume,and, for volumesthat had not
appeared at the time of writing,to the CollectedPapers or
some otheraccessiblesource.I have giventhe Englishtitles
of Freud's worksas theyappear in AlexanderGrinstein,The
Index of Psychoanalytic Writings(New York: International
UniversitiesPress, 1956- ), i, Appendixrv. The following
abbreviationsare used: GW: Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte
Werke,18 vols. (London: Imago PublishingCo., 1940-41).
SE: The Standard Edition of the CompletePsychological
WorksofSigmundFreud,trans.JamesStrachey,Anna Freud,
Alix Strachey,and Alan Tyson, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth
Press,1953- ). CP: SigmundFreud,Collected Papers, trans.
and ed. Joan Riviere,5 vols. (London: The Hogarth Press,
1924-50). BW: The Basic WritingsofSigmundFreud,trans.
A. A. Brill (New York: ModernLibrary,1938). Origins:Sig?
mund Freud, The Originsof Psychoanalysis:Letters,Drafts
and Notes to WilhelmFliess, 1887-1902, eds. Marie Bona-
parte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris, trans. Eric Mosbacher and
James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1954). Jones:
Ernest Jones,The Life and WorkofSigmundFreud,3 vols.
(New York: Basic Books, 1953-57).
1 "Some
Character-TypesMet with in Psycho-Analytic
Work" (1916), Part i; GW, x, 368; SE, xiv, 313; CP, iv, 321.
2 "Dostoevsky and Parricide"
(1928); GW, xiv, 399; SE,
xxi; CP, v, 222.
3 Civilizationand its Discontents;
GW, xrv, 452; SE, xxi;
trans. Joan Riviere (London: Hogarth Press, 1930), pp.
54-55.
4 Moses and Monotheism(1939
[1937-39]); GW, xvi, 168;
SE, xxiii; trans. Katherine A. Jones (New York: Knopf,
1939), p. 101.
163
164 Freud on Shakespeare
says that Shakespeare was Freud's "favorite,"5
and Joan Riviere, in speaking of "his astonishing
knowledge of literature," noted "his memory, es?
pecially for Shakespeare."6 "Shakespeare,"
Hanns Sachs writes, "was the most frequent
topic of our discussions when they turned to
literature." Sachs also recalled Freud's showing
him how Shakespeare could display or conceal
his characters' motivations at will, throwing logic
to the winds and courting contradictions if they
suited the emotional situation.7 Ludwig Bins-
wanger remembered Freud's view that Shake?
speare's extensive use of disguise, one person
masquerading as another, was a dramatic device
corresponding to substitution of setting in
dreams.8
In spite of his admiration of Shakespeare's
works, Freud entertained doubts about author?
ship, not unnaturally in a way, for Freud was
often interested in things or people not being
what they seemed to be, dreams or slips of the
tongue, for example. He did, however, reject the
Baconian hypothesis,9 though on the doubtful
grounds that, "In that event Bacon would then
have been the most powerful brain the world
has ever borne, and it seems to me that there is
more need to share Shakespeare's achievement
among several rivals than to burden another man
with it."10 For a time he flirted with the notion
that Shakespeare's face "could not be that of an
Anglo-Saxon but must be French, and he sug?
gested that the name was a corruption of Jacques
Pierre." Freud later told Dr. Jones that he had
gotten this idea from "Professor Gentilli of
Nervi."11 Finally, however, he settled down with
the Oxfordian view.
About 1923, he read J. Thomas Looney's
Shakespeare Identified (London: C. Palmer, 1921)
and in 1926 expressed his enthusiasm for the idea
to Dr. Jones. A year later he reread the book,
and in 1928 he asked Dr. Jones (whose essay
on Hamlet had already established him as the
Shakespearian in the circle) to investigate the
conclusions that would result
psychoanalytic
from assigning the plays to Oxford. He was dis-
appointed at Dr. Jones's skeptical reply.12 In
1930, he wrote Theodore Reik, "I no longer be?
lieve in the man from Stratford,"13 and in that
year, he began to state his doubts about the
authorship of Shakespeare's works publicly. In
a speech accepting the Goethe Prize, he an?
nounced, "It annoys us all that we will never
know who made the comedies, tragedies, and
sonnets of Shakespeare, whether it was really
the untaught son of the Stratford petty bourgeois
who in London achieved a certain status as an
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actor, or whether it was the noble, highborn, and
finely cultured, the passionately disordered, the
somewhat declasse aristocrat Edward de Vere."14
(Either way, his description is hardly flattering.)
Also in 1930, Freud added a footnote to the new
edition of The Interpretation of Dreams stating
that he had "ceased to believe that the author
of Shakespeare's works was the man from Strat-
ford."15 In complimenting Dr. Richard Flatter
on his translation of the Sonnets, he referred him
to Gerald H. RendalPs Shakespeare's Sonnets
and Edward De Vere (London: J. Murray, 1930)
and said, "The sonnets become much more un-
derstandable" with the realization that the
Earl of Oxford wrote them.16 In another letter,
Freud related Lear's three daughters and the
relative dates of their marriages to Oxford's
three daughters and the dates of their marriages;
he described King Lear as a play symbolically
compensating for the fact that Oxford was a
wretched father. If Oxford was Shakespeare,
Freud said, he had suffered the miseries of
Othello, too. Freud accepted the identification of
Lord Derby, Oxford's first son-in-law, as Albany
in Lear and Horatio in Hamlet. He went on to
deduce from the discrepancy between the dates
of publication and performance and the date of
Oxford's death (1604) that "the poet did not
finish one play after another," but worked on
several at once, so that when he died he left
several unfinished. These, Freud concluded, were
finished by friends.17
In 1935, in an addition to his autobiography,
Freud withdrew the observation (so useful in an
Oedipal reading of the play) that "Shakespeare
5 Jones, i, 21, quoting a letter to Martha Bernays, 14
January1884.
6 Joan Riviere, "An Intimate Impression," The Lancet,
20 September1939,p. 765; quoted,Jones,ii, 405.
7 Hanns Sachs, Freud: Master and Friend (Cambridge,
Mass., Harvard Univ. Press,1944), p. 108.
8 Ludwig Binswanger, of a
SigmundFreud: Reminiscences
Friendship (New York and London: Grune & Stratton.
1957), p. 5.
9 Jones,iii, 428.
10Jones,i, 21.
11Jones,i, 21 and m, 429.
12Jones,ni, 429.
13Letter to Theodore Reik, 23 March 1930,
publishedin
TheodoreReik, The SearchWithin(New York: GrovePress,
1956).
14"Address Deliveredin the GoetheHouse at Frankfort"
(1930); GW, xiv, 549; SE, xxi.
15Footnoteadded in 1930 to The InterpretationofDreams
(1900); GW, ii/m, 271-272; SE, iv, 266.
16Letter to Dr. Richard Flatter, 20 September 1932;
n, 369.
quoted,Jones,m, 455; publ. in ShakespeareQuarterly,
17Letterto JamesS. H. Bransom,25 March 1934; quoted,
Jones,m, 457-458.
 Norman
wrote Hamlet very soon after his father's death."
He announced instead that he was "almost con-
vinced" that Oxford was the author, and for the
first time mentioned Looney by name.18 James
Strachey, Freud's translator, pointed out that
the connotation of the name could not fail to
strengthen by irony the scholarly view that the
Oxfordian hypothesis was crack-brained, but
Freud inserted the name in the American edition
any way.19 In 1938, on his arrival in England,
Looney wrote Freud a note of welcome; Freud
replied in a letter expressing admiration for
Looney's "remarkable book, to which I owe my
conviction about Shakespeare's identity, as far
as my judgment in this matter goes."20 Even in
his last writings, Freud clung to the idea, relat-
ing Hamlet's Oedipus complex to the fact that
the Earl of Oxford's beloved father had died
when the supposed playwright was still a boy
and his mother (whom he later repudiated) had
quickly remarried.21
Happily, Freud did not confine his remarks on
Shakespeare to eccentric views on authorship,
and when he talked about the plays he had better
things to say. Hamlet was his favorite; he would,
he said, include it and Macbeth in a list of "the
ten most magnificent works of world literature."22
The supernatural element, the Ghost, caught his
attention in this play as it did in Macbeth, Julius
Caesar, The Tempest, and A Midsummer-Night's
Dream.23 Though he was himself an uncom-
promising materialist, he respected the poet's
right, so to speak, to the unreal. "We adapt our
judgment to the imaginary reality imposed on us
by the writer, and regard souls, spirits and ghosts
as though their existence had the same validity
as our own in material reality."24
Freud's most famous statement about Hamlet,
indeed, his most famous contribution to Shake?
speare scholarship generally, was to point out
Hamlet's Oedipus complex. Conversely, Hamlet
seems almost to have helped Freud formulate
the conception of the Oedipus complex which
turned out to be the cornerstone of orthodox
In the very letter (dated 15
psychoanalysis.
October 1897) in which Freud first said, "I have
found love of the mother and jealousy of the
father in my own case, too, and now believe it to
be a general phenomenon of early childhood," he
immediately went on to apply the concept to
Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. It is almost as though
these two plays guided him in his self-analysis.
Indeed, as he said on his seventieth birthday,
"Not I, but the poets discovered the uncon?
scious." He related his discovery to the efect of
Oedipus Rex: "Every member of the audience
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N. Holland 165
was once a budding Oedipus in phantasy, and
this dream-fulfillment played out in reality
causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full
measure of repression which separates his in-
fantile from his present state." He treated
Hamlet difTerently, however, referring the com?
plex to Shakespeare's unconscious and showing
that the character and hesitation of Hamlet are
life-like. He used the Oedipus concept to explain
Hamlet's hesitation (despite his readiness to act
in the cases of Laertes, Rosencrantz, and Guil-
denstern), his pangs of conscience (guilt), his
coldness to Ophelia, his sexual distaste, and his
final destruction.25 (In a curious Freudian slip,
Freud substituted Laertes' death for the im-
petuous killing of Polonius.)
Freud first publicly stated his reading of
Hamlet in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).
He said, first, that in Oedipus Rex the wish is
acted out while in Hamlet it is repressed. This,
he said, showed "the secular advance of repres?
sion in the emotional life of mankind." Second,
he pointed out that Hamlet hesitates in aveng-
ing his father, though he can act resolutely in
other things, because "Hamlet is able to do any?
thing?except take vengeance on the man who
did away with his father and took that father's
place with his mother, the man who shows him
the repressed wishes of his own childhood
realized." Third, Freud argued that his reading
of Hamlet explained Shakespeare's distaste for
sexuality at this period (giving Timon as an
example), and fitted in with Georg Brandes'
statement that Hamlet was written after the
death of Shakespeare's father and his son
Hamnet. (As we have seen, Freud's Oxfordian
fancies made him withdraw these two corrob-
orations in 1930.) Freud related his Oedipal or
father-and-son reading of Hamlet to Macbeth
("written at approximately the same period"),
which, he said, dealt with the theme of child-
lessness. "It can, of course," he concluded, "only
18An Autobiographical Study,(1925 [1924],1935),GW,xiv,
89, 96; SE, xx, 63-64.
19Jones,ii, 428.
20Letter to J. Thomas
Looney, June 1938; quoted in A.
Bronson Feldman, "The Confessionsof William Shake?
speare,"AmericanImago,x (1953,No. 2), 165.
21An Outline
of Psychoanalysis (1940 [1938]), Ch. vii;
GW, xvn, 119; SE, xxm; trans. James Strachey (New
York: Norton[1949]),p. 96.
22Letterto Hugo Heller
quoted,Jones,m, 422; published
in InternationalJournalof Psycho-Analysis, xxxiii (1951),
319.
23"The
'Uncanny'" (1919); GW,xn, 242; SE, xvn, 230.
24"The
'Uncanny'"; GW,xn, 265; SE, xvn, 250.
25Letter to WilhelmFliess, 15 October 1897;
Origins,pp.
223-224.
166 Freud on Shakespeare
be the poet's own mind which confronts us in
Hamlet."26
In this first period of discovery, Freud wrote
a highly significant (and much-neglected) essay,
"Psychopathic Characters on the Stage," which
amounts to a Freudian reworking of the tradi?
tional idea of dramatic catharsis. He discussed
the preconditions for the enjoyment of a psy?
chopathic character on the stage, using Hamlet
as the example of a successful characterization:
(1) The character must not start out psycho?
pathic, he said, but must become psychopathic
in the course of the play. (2) The impulse the
character represses must be one common to all
of us, if we are to identify ourselves with him.
(3) The impulse struggling into consciousness
must never be named, so that the spectator is
carried along unawares. This is the most impor?
tant condition (and one almost invariably dis?
regarded by post-Freudian dramatists); if it is
not observed, the spectator's resistance is
mobilized. "The conflict in Hamlet," he some?
what haughtily said, "is so effectively concealed
that it was left to me to unearth it."27
In a seminar in 1910, a student labored the
hypothesis that Hamlet's splitting of his atti?
tudes toward his father between Claudius and
Polonius was like the splitting up of a personality
in dreams. Freud dismissed the matter as a
"well-established fact."28 After this first period
of discovery, Freud added nothing new to his
Oedipal explanation of Hamlet, though he re?
peated it frequently?in his American lectures,29
in his analysis of Michelangelo's Moses (where
he did, however, make it clear that the Oedipus
complex explained the effectof Hamlet, as well
as Hamlet's hesitation and Shakespeare's choice
of subject),30 in A General Introduction to Psy?
choanalysis ,31 in his autobiography,32 and in his
analysis of The Brothers KaramazovP He gave
use of the Oedipus complex in
Shakespeare's
Hamlet as an example of the general principle
that poets are more sensitive to unconscious
attitudes than most people.34 In An Outline of
Psychoanalysis (1940 ['38]), which he was work?
ing on up to his death, he rather wryly com-
mented on his discovery about Hamlet, "The
general lack of comprehension displayed by the
literary world showed how ready is the mass of
mankind to hold fast to its infantile repres-
sions."36
One would expect a psychiatrist to be in?
terested in the vexed question of Hamlet's mad-
ness. Freud, however, seems to have taken it for
granted that Hamlet was not mad, and refers to
Hamlet's madness only to suggest by analogy
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that the madness of dreams, like Hamlet's, is
not without method.36 Dreams, too, conceal the
truth under "a cloak of wit and unintelligibility."
They are "but mad north-north-west."37
Pretty clearly, Hamlet seems to have been
Freud's favorite play; at least he quoted from
it more than from any other. For example, he
used, "Thrift, Horatio, thrift [sie]" to epigram-
matize the economy of wit; "the funeral baked
meats" furnished a metaphor for jokes where
one element serves two purposes.38 He whimsi-
cally quoted, "There needs no ghost . . . come
from the grave / To tell us this," as he made an
obvious point.39 On the other hand, Theodore
Reik recalls a lecture in which Freud urged his
audience not to dismiss prematurely the dis-
tinctly unobvious point he was making, but
rather, "As a stranger give it welcome."40 Dr.
Jones says that Freud's favorite quotation (from
any source) was:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.41
Apparently, Freud used it frequently in con?
versation; in his writings, it turns up at least five
times. In his analysis of wit, he quoted Lichten-
berg's joke, "But there is also in philosophy much
which is found neither in heaven nor on earth."42
26GW, n/m, 271-273; SE, rv,264-266.
27"Psychopathic Characterson the Stage"
(1942 [1905
or 1906]); SE, vn, 309-310.
28Ludwig Binswanger,
SigmundFreud: Reminiscences ofa
Friendship(New York and London: Grune& Stratton,1957),
p.5.
29"Five Lectureson
Psycho-Analysis"(1909-10), Fourth
Lecture;GW, vm, 50; SE, xi, 47.
30"The Moses of Michelangelo"(1914);
GW, x, 174; SE,
xm, 212-213; CP, iv, 259.
31A General Introductionto Psychoanalysis (1916-17),
Lecture xxi; GW, xi, 348; SE, xv-xvi; trans.Joan Riviere
(New York: GardenCityPubl. Co., 1943),p. 294.
32GW, xrv, 89-90; SE, xx, 63-64.
33"Dostoevskyand Parricide"
(1928); GW, xiv, 399; SE,
xxi; CP, v, 235-236.
34Letterto JamesS. H. Bransom,25 March
1934; quoted
Jones,m, 457.
35Ch. vii; GW, xvn, 119; SE, xxm; trans.
JamesStrachey
(New York: Norton,1949),p. 96.
36The Interpretation of Dreams,Ch. i, see. E; GW, n/m,
63; SE, iv, 60.
37The Interpretation of Dreams, Ch. vi, see. G; GW,
n/m, 446; SE, v, 444.
38(i. ii. 180). Jokesand TheirRelationto the Unconscious
(1905), see. n; GW,vi, 43,44; SE, vm; BW, pp. 653,654.
39(I. v. 125). The Interpretation
of Dreams,Ch. v, see. A;
GW, n/m, 181; SJE,iv, 175.
40(I. v. 165). Theodore Reik, From
ThirtyYears with
Freud,trans.Richard Winston (New York: Farrar& Rine-
hart,1940),pp. 12-13.
41(I. v. 166-167).
Jones,m, 381.
42Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
(1905),
see. ii; GW,vi, 77; SE, vm; BW, p. 674.
 Norman
He quoted the couplet to say that story-tellers,
those "valuable allies" for the psychoanalyst,
know much "that our academie wisdom does
not even dream of."43 He compared Hamlet's
words to Leonardo's, "La natur a e piena d'in?
finite ragioni ehe non furono mai in isperienza."u
He used the quotation to state his own surprise
at one difficult case;46 he also used it to define
occultism46 (a subject in which he was much
interested).
He used, though, many quotations from Ham?
let besides I.v. 166-167. He compared false con?
structions in analysis to Polonius' "bait of false-
hood."47 From Jean Paul who, in turn, was quot?
ing Polonius, Freud quoted, "Brevity is the soul
of wit."48 He used Hamlet's love-verses to
Ophelia to illustrate the idea that the obses-
sional neurotic's universal doubt is in reality a
doubt of his own love.49 He dismissed a contro?
versy with "Words, words, words."60 We have
already seen him quote Polonius' "madness"
with "method in't" and Hamlet's "mad north-
north-west" in discussing the madness of dreams.
One quotation Freud refers to twice is Hamlet's
remark, "Use every man after his desert, and
who should 'scape whipping?" The first time he
comments, "There can be no doubt that who-
ever holds and expresses such an opinion . . .
that man is ill."51 Yet twenty-one years later, he
himself wrote to Arnold Zweig, "Wasn't Prince
Hamlet right when he asked who would escape a
whipping if he had his just deserts?"52
In the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, Freud
pointed to the oddity of having Hamlet wonder
about a life after death when he has just spoken
to a ghost.53 "Thus conscience does make cow-
ards of us all," he used to illustrate the discon-
tents and inhibitions civilization must impose
on us.64 He analyzed a joke about Arthur Schnitz?
ler based on holding "the mirror up to nature."56
Calling Hamlet "a world-famous neurotic," he
quoted against over-hasty analysts, "You would
pluck out the heart of my mystery."66 To show
man's faith in the omnipotence of thoughts, he
recalled Claudius' "My words fly up."57 Freud
misquoted Hamlet's "the readiness is all" as "to
be in readiness"; his translators, however,
changed Freud's already English phrase to "ripe?
ness," thus confusing it with King Lear, v.ii.ll.58
Though Freud quoted (and misquoted) Hamlet
more than any other of Shakespeare's plays, he
did have some interesting things to say about the
rest. In the Henry IV plays, he analyzed the
humorous effect of Falstaff according to his
formula, "economized expenditure of affect"
(i.e., feeling). That is, we expect to feel indigna-
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N. Holland 167
tion at the fat knight for his gluttony, cowardice,
and dishonesty, but we don't because of his
shape, the harmlessness of his activities, the
comic lowness of those he deceives, and the fact
that he ultimately becomes a puppet in Hal's
hands. We "turn all we economize in him in in-
dignation into comic pleasure." Like many
another comic character, "Sir John's own humor
really emanates from the superiority of an ego
which neither his physical nor his moral defects
can rob of its joviality and security."59
Freud misquoted i" Henry IV, n.iv.265,60 not
once but twice,61 and in his self-analysis, the mis-
quotation of i" Henry IV, v.i.127 as "Thou
owest Nature [should be 'God'] a death" played
an important part in one of his chains of associa?
tion.62 Dr. Jones explains the misquotation as de?
rived from Tristram Shandy, Book v, Ch. 3, but,
in any case, Freud did not change it when he in-
43Delusion and Dream in Jensen'sGradiva (1907); GW,
vn, 33; SE, ix, S.
44Leonardoda Vinciand a Memoryofhis Childhood(1910);
GW, vm, 210-211; SE, xi, 137.
45"From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" (1918
[1914]),see. i; GW,xn, 34-35; SE, xvn, 12.
46New Introductory Lectureson Psycho-Analysis(1933),
No. 30; GW, xv, 32; SE, xxn; trans.W. J. H. Sprottand
JamesStrachey(New York: Norton,1933), p. 47.
47(n. i. 63). "Constructionsin Analysis" (1937); GW,
xvi, 48; SE, xxm; CP, v, 363.
48(n. ii. 90-92). Jokesand Their Relationto the Uncon?
scious,see. i; GW, vi, 10; SE, vm; BW, p. 636.
49(n. ii. 116ff.)"Observationsupon a Case of Obsessional
Neurosis" (1909), Part ii (c); GW, vn, 457; SE, x, 241; CP,
in, 376.
50(n. ii. 194). The Questionof Lay Analysis (1926); GW,
xiv, 214; SE, xx, 187.
61(n. ii. 553). "Mourningand Melancholia" (1917 [1915]);
GW, x, 432; SE, xiv, 246; CP, rv,156.
52Letterto ArnoldZweig,31 May 1936; quoted Jones,m,
208.
53Hanns Sachs, Freud: Master and Friend (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,1944),p. 108.
54Civilizationand its Discontents(1930), Ch. vm; GW,
xrv,494n.; SE, xxi; trans.Joan Riviere (London: Hogarth
Press,1930),p.l23n.
55Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,see. n;
GW, vi, 36; SE, vm; BW, p. 650.
56(iii. ii. 380ff.)"On Psychotherapy"(1905 [1904]); GW,
v, 18-19; SE, vn, 261-262; CP, i, 255-256.
57(iii. iii. 97-98). Totemand Taboo (1913), see. m; GW,
ix, 105n.;S?, xm, 84n.
58(v. ii. 233). Letter to WilhelmFliess, 21 Sept. 1897;
Origins,p. 217. See Freud, Aus den Anfdngender Psycho?
analyse(London: Imago Publ. Co., 1950).
59Jokes and Their Relationto the Unconscious,see. vn;
GW,vi, 264n.; SE, vm; BW, p. 800.
60"The History of the Psycho-AnalyticMovement"
(1914); GW,x, 62; SE, xrv,24; CP, i, 306.
61"Thoughtsforthe Times on War and Death" (1915);
GW,x, 339; SE, xrv,287; CP, iv, 303.
62Letter to WilhelmFliess, 6 Feb. 1899; Origins,p. 276.
See Jones,1,16.
168 Freud on Shakespeare
cluded the analysis in The Interpretation of
Dreams.? In analyzing wit, he gave "Discharge
thyself of our company, Pistol," as an example
of "a name with verbal significance and hence a
double meaning."64 In analyzing one of his own
dreams, he noted, "Wherever there is rank and
promotion the way lies open for wishes that call
for suppression. Shakespeare's Prince Hal could
not, even at his father's sick-bed, resist the temp?
tation of trying on the crown."65 The implica?
tion is that Hal's speech (at 77 Henry IV,
iv.v.21ff.), which consciously deals with the cares
of kingship, masks an unconscious wish for his
father's death (as, indeed, Henry IV says).
Unlike most readers, Freud did not neglect
the Henry VI plays. He was familiar enough with
these plays to find an association in analyzing
one of his own dreams between the putting of a
flower in his buttonhole with the scene in /
Henry VI (n.iv), "which represented the be?
ginning of the Wars of the Red and White
Roses."66 He used in his analysis of wit the
wretched pun, "For Suffolk's duke may he be
suffocate" as an example of a name used with a
double meaning on its verbal significance.67
Another play Freud knew well enough to
dream about (though he discounted the super?
natural elements)68 was Julius Caesar. The part
that seems to have affected him most was Brutus'
speech justifying himself to the crowd in IILii.
Freud found in the antithetical structure of
Brutus' sentences a pattern of ambivalence in his
own emotional life: "I had been playing the part
of Brutus in the dream." He had actually, as a
child, played the part of Brutus in a dualogue of
Schiller's, though, Dr. Jones points out, he failed
to mention its "pronouncedly parricidal con?
tent." In further analyzing this same dream,
Freud returned to the phrase, "As he was ambi-
tious, I slew him," which he associated to Prince
Hal's putting on the crown.69 This same speech
with its juxtaposition of "As Caesar loved me"
and "I slew him" served to describe a patient,
"Rat Man's" repressed hatred for his father.70
(Though Freud did not say so, this psychological
reading throws some light on Brutus' repressed
feelings, too.)
He used Antony's ironic, "For Brutus is an
honorable man," as an example of representing
an idea through its opposite, as in wit and
dreams;71 he used another phrase from Antony's
speech, "My heart is in the coffin here [sie]" to
say his own real interest was not in medical prac?
tice, but in the study of neurosis.72 Finally, he
used the murdering of Cinna for his name as an
instance of the practice, common to magic,
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dreams, forgettings, and lapsus linguae, of using
the name in lieu of the person.73
Though Freud found the opening love-con-
test in King Lear "an improbable supposition,"74
he devoted a large part of his most polished lit?
erary essay, "The Theme of the Three Caskets"
(1913) to elucidating it. Cordelia's behavior, he
said, reminds one of other stories (e.g., Cinderella,
Psyche, or the choice of Paris) in which the third
of three women surpasses the other two. Often
this third woman is mute, and muteness in
dreams or stories frequently symbolizes death.
Freud therefore concluded that Cordelia, the
third, the mute woman, as in the tradition of
triple mother-goddesses, stood for Death. The
fact that she is the most attractive and loving,
he said, is a case of "replacement by the oppo?
site" which often occurs in dreams and stories
where the reality is too grim. Lear's initial rejec?
tion of Cordelia, then, signifies his resistance to
death and his longing for the love of woman.
His final entrance is also a reversal. His carrying
Cordelia symbolizes that he himself is being
borne away by the ultimate mother, mother
earth. Only in these terms, said Freud, could the
effectof the tragedy be accounted for.75
In response to a question by Dr. Richard
Flatter, Freud replied that Lear's insane behav?
ior did not "justify a diagnosis of hysteria" or
"represent a consistent psychosis." The clinical
inaccuracy, however, he dismissed as unim-
63The Interpretation of Dreams,Ch. v, see. B; GW, n/m,
211; SE, iv, 205. See Jones,i, 16. See also SE, xiv, 289.
64(2 H. IV, n. iv. 147). Jokesand TheirRelationtotheUn?
conscious,see. n; GW,vi, 36; SE, vm; BW, p. 650.
66(2 H. IV, iv. v. 43). TheInterpretation ofDreams,Ch. vi,
see. H; GW, n/m, 488; SE, v, 484.
66The Interpretation of Dreams,Ch. v, see. B; GW, ii/m,
217; SE, iv, 212.
67(2 H. VI, i. i. 124). Jokesand TheirRelationto theUn?
conscious,see. ii; GW, vr,36; SE, vm; BW, p. 650.
68See note24.
69(iii. ii. 13ff.)The Interpretation of Dreams,Ch. vi, sees.
F and H; GW, n/in, 427 and 487; SE, v, 424 and 484. See
Jones,i, 23.
70"Observationsupon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis"
(1909); GW,vn, 404; SE, x, 180.
71(m. ii. 87). Jokesand TheirRelationto theUnconscious,
see. ii; GW, vi, 78; SE, vm; BW, p. 675.
72(m. ii. 111). Letter to WilhelmFliess, 27 April 1895;
Origins,p. 119.
73(iii. iii). The Psychopathology of EverydayLife (1901),
Ch. vi, see. B-b; GW, rv,130n.;SE, vi; BW, p. 89n.
74(i. i). Delusionand Dreamin JenserisGradiva;GW,vn,
69; SE, ix, 43.
75GW,x, 23-37; SE, xn; CP, iv, 244-256.Freud described
the compositionof this "trifle"in a letterto Ludwig Bins-
wanger, 4 July 1912. See Binswanger,Sigmund Freud:
Reminiscences ofa Friendship, p. 45.
 Norman
portant: "It should be enough if our instinctive
reaction is nowhere upset."76
Lear's insanity, however, proved important
in another context. In a letter to J. S. H. Bran-
som about his book, The Tragedy of King Lear
(Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1934), Freud agreed that
"the secret meaning of the tragedy" lay in Lear's
"repressed incestuous claims on the daughter's
love." The older married sisters have outgrown
and repressed the Oedipal love for the father;
Cordelia has not, nor can she bring herself to
speak of this forbidden love. Lear's insanity in
this context signifies "a forceful rejection of the
content of the dream" (i.e., play) both by Lear
?and by Shakespeare, who, he noted, had added
Lear's insanity to the sources. Lear's madness
says, in effect, "Only a madman would have
such desires." Freud found reinforcement of this
aspect of the theme in Shakespeare's curious
silence about the mother of the three girls. Freud
went on to explain that his earlier discussion of
Lear dealt with "the mythological content of the
material." This new psychological angle, he said,
put the earlier meaning in the background,
though "I hope to show," he wrote, "that in
Shakespeare's Lear the old meaning glimmers at
times through the new one."77
He never did, but it is possible to see how they
relate, anyway. Lear's desire for Cordelia (in?
deed, all his behavior in the love-contest) is re-
gressive and childish. His angry rejection of
Cordelia, throwing her away to her suitor, re-
pudiates his regressive desires, but it also repudi-
ates her for not responding to them. Mythologi-
cally, as Freud's earlier essay showed, Lear is
also childishly rejecting death. His final union
with Cordelia ("Have I caught thee?") repre?
sents on the mythological level a mature accept?
ance of death; psychologically, it is a further re?
gressive attempt to "have" his daughter. This
ambivalence between child and wise old man is,
as the Fool points out, Lear's folly throughout;
it persists even to his final words, the mad in-
sistence that Cordelia must be alive even as
death is gathering them both in. This ambiva?
lence, indeed, is not only the basis for the char?
acter of Lear (and his daughters); it is also a
unifying theme of the play, the divorce of what
is from what ought to be, the schism between
earthly fact and heavenly value?as in the
idealizing of the third mute woman, mother
earth, in the triad of the mother-goddess.
Such a combination of the early essay and the
later letter would make Lear the play that Freud
most fully analyzed, though he quoted from it
only once?in analyzing a joke about a fat lady,
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N. Holland 169
"Every fathom a queen."78 Love's Labour's Lost
was another play Freud quoted only once, for the
proposition that "A jest's prosperity lies in the
ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
/ Of him that makes it," a point that Freud's
theory of wit explains.79
After Hamlet, Macbeth seems to have been the
play of Shakespeare that most interested Freud.
In his first public statement of Hamlet's Oedipus
complex, he mentioned simply in passing that
uMacbeth . . . is concerned with the subject of
childlessness."80 Freud himself did little more
with the point, but other analysts, notably Lud?
wig Jekels, developed it, and showed how basic
the ideas of parenthood, progeny, and procrea-
tion are in the play. Freud compared what he
took to be the immediate stimulus behind Mac?
beth, the desire to pay tribute to James I, to the
"whole content of the drama," "its grandeur
and its mystery." In the same way, he said, the
immediate stimuli behind a dream give no in?
sight into the whole content of the dream.81
Despite Freud's overweening respect for reality
and despite the supernatural elements in Mac?
beth, Freud said he would include it in a list of
"the ten most magnificent works of world litera?
ture."82 Macbeth's unreality even prompted him
to a defense of the poet's power over reality:
"It is no valid criticism of Shakespeare that
about the year 1000 Macbeth was a just and
benevolent King of Scotland. On the other hand
[the poet] should respect reality where it is estab?
lished and has become common property" (as
Shaw, he said, failed to do in Caesar and Cleo?
patra).,83 Freud used the "hallucinations" of Mac?
beth and Richard III to illustrate Sir James
Frazer's theories about ghosts.84 Again, these
ghosts represent the poet's privilege; though
they are not frightening, we must consider them
as real within the play.85
The character of Lady Macbeth seems to
78Letterto RichardFlatter,30 March 1930;
quoted,Jones,
iii, 452; publ. in ShakespeareQuarterly,
n (1951), 368.
77Letterto JamesS. H. Bransom,25 March 1934;
quoted,
Jones,iii, 457-458.
78(iv.vi.109). Jokesand TheirRelationtotheUnconscious,
see. ii; GW, vi, 82; SE, vm; BW, p. 678.
79(v.ii.871-873). Jokes and Their Relationto the Uncon?
scious,see. v; GW,vi, 162; SE, vm; BW, p. 732.
80See note26.
81A General Introductionto Psychoanalysis,Lecture
v;
GW, xi, 93; SE, xv-xvi; trans. Joan Riviere (New York:
GardenCityPubl. Co., 1943),p. 86.
82See note22.
83Letter to ArnoldZweig, 11
May 1934; quoted, Jones,
ra, 459.
84Totemand Taboo,see.
n-3; GW, ix, 49; SE, xin, 38.
86See notes23 and 24,
170 Freud on Shakespeare
have been the most interesting part of the play
for Freud. In one of his earliest analytic writ?
ings, he and his co-author, Josef Breuer, noted
the compulsion to wash some women have and
attributed it to the feeling that anything sexual
is dirtying and a consequent fear of dirt; they
went on to say, "Their washing is derived from
the same mental process as Lady Macbeth's,"
meaning, I take it, simply the physical represen?
tation of mental "dirt."86 In another early writ?
ing, Freud compared the case of "a woman who
washed her hands constantly and touched door-
handles only with her elbow" to "the case of
Lady Macbeth." "The washing was symbolic,
designed to replace by physical purity the moral
purity which she regretted having lost."87 In an
unpublished paper (described by Dr. Jones), he
compared the Empress Charlotte to Lady Mac?
beth: "Charlotte's husband, Maximilian, had
been completely impotent . . . So she, like Lady
Macbeth, had turned all her energies into am-
bitious plans."88 Finally, in 1916, relying on Lud?
wig Jekels' two essays on Macbeth (see his Se?
lected Papers [New York: International Univer?
sities Press, 1952]), Freud gave a full analysis of
the character. What piqued Freud was the fol?
lowing problem: Since neurosis is caused by
frustration, why does Lady Macbeth break down
when she achieves success? All through the play,
it is she who is resolute; even in the sleepwalking
scene she repeats the words she used to put heart
into her husband. Yet remorse finally breaks her
?why?
In answer Freud first noted the importance
of parents and children in Macbeth. The recent
death of the childless Elizabeth provided the oc?
casion for the play; the witches' prophecies gave
the crown to Banquo's children; Macbeth's hope
of children (Freud cites i.vii.72-74) is defeated;
and finally, there is Macduff's shattering cry:
"He has no children!" Macduff himself is a
"sinister" exception to the laws of generation.
Freud concluded,
It would be a perfect example of poetic justice . . . if
Macbeth could not become a father because he had
robbed children of their father and a father of his
children, and if Lady Macbeth had suffered the un-
sexing she had demanded of the spirits of murder. I
believe one could without more ado explain the illness
of Lady Macbeth, the transformation of her callous-
ness into penitence, as a reaction to her childlessness,
by which she is convinced of her impotence against
the decrees of nature, and at the same time admon-
ished that she has only herself to blame if her crime
has been barren of the better part of its desired results.
Similarly, the reaction to childlessness could also
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explain "the change in Macbeth to a sanguinary
tyrant." Inexplicably, however, Freud assumes
that the events of the play take place in one
week, and so rejects this line of explanation.
(Since his reason for rejecting it is itself false, the
explanation still stands.)
Alternatively, Freud goes on to suggest an?
other motive, a structural one (taken from
Jekels), namely, that Macbeth and Lady Mac?
beth "are the divided images of a single proto?
type," and neither character makes psychological
sense until recombined with the other; she, here,
fulfills the madness his pangs of conscience had
apprehended earlier. "She is incarnate remorse
after the deed, he incarnate defiance?together
they exhaust the possibilities of reaction to the
crime, like two disunited parts of the mind of a
single individuality." Finally, Freud hinted
(after discussing other things) that, since the
sense of guilt seems to be derived from the
Oedipus complex, the reason the forces of con?
science induce illness on attaining a forbidden
end may well be simply the basic pattern taken
over from the Oedipus situation: we would break
down were we ever to fulfill our Oedipal wishes.89
Certainly, this would explain Lady Macbeth's
remorse for helping kill a man who "resembled"
her father.
As with Hamlet, Freud used quotations from
Macbeth to explain his own ideas, the prophetic
character of childhood fantasies,90 or his own
hope that he would die in harness.91 He noted
also the symbolic significance of Macduff's
Caesarean birth: "Birth is both the first of all
dangers to life and the prototype of all the later
ones that cause us to feel anxiety, and the ex?
perience of birth has probably left behind in us
the expression of affect which we call anxiety.
Macduff of the Scottish legend, who was not
born of his mother but ripped from her womb,
was for that reason unacquainted with anxi?
ety."92
We have already seen Freud's points about
86Freud and JosefBreuer,Studiesin Hysteria(1893-95),
see. m-6; SE, n, 245.
87"Obsessionsand Phobias'? (1895), Case 11; GW, i, 350;
SE, ra; CP, i, 134.
88"The Fate of Two Women" (1912?unpublished);
Jones,ii, 350.
89"Some Character-Typesmet with in Psycho-Analytic
Work" (1916), Part n; GW, x, 373-380, 389; SE, xiv, 318-
324,331; CP, iv, 323-333,341.
50(i.iii.67). "A Child is Being Beaten" (1919); GW, xn,
207; SE, xvn, 187.
91(v.v.52). Letterto Oskar Pfister,6 March 1910; quoted,
Jones,n, 396-397.
92"A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men"
(1910); GW,vm, 76; SE, xl, 173; CP, rv,201.
 Norman
Lear which he made in "The Theme of the Three
Caskets." Oddly enough, the essay did not say a
great deal about The Merchant of Venice. Bas-
sanio's speech choosing the lead casket he found
unconvincing enough to suggest concealed mo?
tives. Following Eduard Stucken, Astralmythen
(Leipzig: E. Pfeiffer, 1896-1907), he compared
the Prince of Morocco and the gold casket to the
sun, the Prince of Aragon and the silver casket
to the moon, Bassanio and the leaden casket to
the stars. Behind this astrological folklore, how?
ever, the three caskets are "symbols of the es?
sential thing in woman, and therefore of a woman
herself." (He might also have mentioned the
three rings associated with Portia, Nerissa, and
Jessica.) The choice among three women relates
in turn to Lear's choice among his three daugh?
ters and other such choices among three women
in mythology. The third woman, being pale and
silent or else most lovely, represents?ultimately
?Death.93 We can relate Freud's idea to the play
as a whole through the theme of venturing, which
links the romantic plot to the mercantile one.
This third woman, death (lovely, rich, and mer-
ciful in a Christian view), stands for the in-
vestor's return in the great venture of life itself.
Freud twice quoted with approval Otto Rank's
description (in Zentralblatt fiir Psychoanalyse, i,
109-110) of Portia's slip of the tongue in the
casket scene:
One half of me is yours, the other half yours?
Mine own, I would say?but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.
" 'The "
poet with exquisite fineness of feeling'
lets Portia's real thought slip through. " 'It
shows that the poets well understand the mech?
anism and meaning of such slips and assume that
the audience will also understand them'."94
In A Midsummer-Night9s
Dream, though
Freud regarded the fairies as mere poetic fiction,95
he found a larger significance in Titania's actions.
"In the neuroses belief is transposed: it is with-
held from the repressed material if it forces its
way to reproduction [consciousness?] and?as a 99(v.i.12). Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 31 May 1897;
punishment, one might say?is transposed on to
the defensive material. So Titania, who refused
to love her rightful husband Oberon, was obliged
instead to shower her love upon Bottom, the ass
of her imagination."96 (Such a reading would ap?
ply to the transpositions of the lovers, too, and
to dreams, thus giving a richer significance to the
play's title.) Theodore Reik recalls two other
comments Freud made on A Midsummer-Nighf s
Dream. At a lecture in Vienna (unpublished), he
suggested that the play was concerned with "the
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N. Holland 171
maliciousness of objects," a particular case of the
magical, animistic thinking of children and primi-
tives.97 In a conversation with Reik in the thir?
ties, Freud said, "Look how impoverished the
poet's imagination really is. Shakespeare, in A
Midsummer-NigMs Dream, has a woman fall
in love with a donkey. The audience wonders at
that. And now, think of it, that a nation of sixty-
five millions have . . . "98 Very early in his an-
alytic thinking, Freud found in Theseus' descrip?
tion of "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet"
a true description of the creative imagination.99
Josef Breuer (probably at Freud's suggestion)
applied the description of Peter Quince's play
("The best in this kind are but shadows") to
physiological explanations of psychic pro?
cesses.100 Freud himself compared the lion that
concealed Snug the joiner to lions in dreams
which do not frighten the dreamer; such figures,
he said, refer to superiors of whom one is not
afraid.101
Much Ado About Nothing served Freud for
just one quotation, Dogberry's advice to the
watch to avoid thieves, which Freud applied to
physicians who thought it dangerous to bring
complexes to consciousness.102 Othello, we have
seen, Freud used to confirm the Oxfordian hy?
pothesis.103 Also, in the Moor's outbursts over the
lost handkerchief, Freud found an example of
displacement,104 and similarly, he quoted Desde-
mona's song, "I call'd my love false love," as
an example of "projected jealousy." That is, the
jealous one may simply be projecting his own im?
pulses on the partner.105 (Possibly, the song
93"The Theme of the Three Caskets"; GW, x, 23-37; SE,
xn; CP, iv, 244-256.
94(m.ii.16-18). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
(1901), Ch. v; GW, iv, 108-109; SE, vi; BW, pp. 84-85. A
GeneralIntroduction to Psychoanalysis,Lecture n; GW, xi,
31-32; SE, xv-xvi; trans.Joan Riviere (New York: Garden
City Publ. Co., 1943), pp. 35-36.
95See note23.
96Letterto WilhelmFliess,31 May 1897; Origins,p. 208.
97Theodore Reik, The Haunting Melody (New York:
Farrar,Straus,& Young, 1953),p. 49.
98Theodore Reik, From ThirtyYears withFreud, p. 29.
Origins,p. 208.
100(v.i.212). Freud and JosefBreuer,Studiesin Hysteria,
Ch. iii (6); SE, n, 250-251.
101(v.i.226). The Interpretationof Dreams, Ch. vi, see. H;
GIF,ii/iii,465;5?,v,462.
102(ni.iii.55?56). "Analysisof a Phobia in a Five-Year-
Old Boy" (1909), Conclusion;GW, vn, 374-375; SE, x, 144.
103See note 16.
104(ni.iv.51fl.) The Interpretationof Dreams, Ch. v, see.
A; GW, n/ra, 183; SE, rv,177.
105(iv.iii.55-57). "Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy,
Paranoia, and Homosexuality"(1922); GW, xm, 197; SE,
xviii, 224; CP, n, 233.
172 Freud on Shakespeare
serves by reflection, as it were, to illuminate part
of Othello's motives.)
In discussing neurotics who consider them?
selves "exceptions" to the ordinary rules of life,
Freud gave the example of Richard III's opening
soliloquy. It seems to say that since Richard can?
not prove a lover, he will play a villain. "So
wanton a cause of action," Freud said, "could
not but stifle any stirring of sympathy in the
audience," and for the play to succeed, "the
writer must know how to furnish us with a secret
background of sympathy for his hero." "The
bitterness and minuteness with which Richard
has depicted his deformity" have a hidden effect;
they make us feel "that we ourselves could be
like Richard." "Richard is an enormously mag-
nified representation of something we can all dis?
cover in ourselves," namely, the tendency to re?
proach nature and destiny for our own lack of
perfection and to "demand reparation for early
wounds to our narcissism, our self-love," in
short, the tendency to consider ourselves "excep?
tions." Shakespeare, however, has very subtly not
revealed this aspect directly, and so he keeps us
identified with his hero without our quite know?
ing why. Had he let us know Richard's appeal,
Freud said, "our cool, untrammelled intelligence
. . . would preclude any great degree of illu?
sion."106 Another aspect of the play, Richard's
wooing of Anne beside the bier, touched on a
topic of recurring interest to Freud?the poet's
power to tamper with reality. The dramatist, he
said, is free to shorten the natural timing of
events to enhance dramatic effect so long as he
only affronts probability; such a shortening is
not justified "when it breaks the causal connec?
tion" (as in his supposition that the events of
Macbeth took only a week).107 The unreal ghosts
in Richard III simply represented for Freud "a
superstitious fear" of the slain.108
Freud felt, as we have seen, that the Sonnets
gave further proof that Shakespeare was the
Earl of Oxford. The Tempest, though he thought
it autobiographical too, served him only with
quotations. (The supernatural elements he took
to be, again, poetic license.) When he was shown
a hostile book (Charles E. Maylan's Freuds
tragischer Komplex [Munich: Ernst Reinhardt,
1929]) which purported to give a psychoanalytic
description of Freud's own personality, he re?
plied simply, "You taught me language; and my
profit on't / Is, I know how to curse."109 He also
quoted Ariel's song, "Full fathom five," with its
notion of a sea-change to illustrate the substitu-
tions which must have arisen for the real memory
of killing "the primal father."110
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Timon of Athens, he said, showed the same dis?
taste for sexuality that Hamlet had and so
proved it could only be "the poet's own mind
which confronts us in Hamlet."111 A much more
satisfying reference from Freud for at last con-
cluding this long listing is his use of Twelfth
Night in a letter to his future wife; he quoted
Feste's song:
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.112
Freud was indeed a lover of Shakespeare, an
amateur in the finest sense. It is true that Freud's
views on authorship were at least eccentric if not
downright hostile. It is true, too, that, quoting
from memory rather than from a text, he often
misquoted and that he was frequently mistaken
about the facts of Shakespeare's life or of the
plays; he was far too ready to accept without
questioning the vagaries of Continental scholars
such as Brandes or Darmstetter. Nevertheless,
a summary of Freud's remarks on Shakespeare
shows two things. First, he had some insights
into Shakespeare's works that later scholarship
has had to deal with (either pro or con); second,
his treatment of Shakespeare?much greater in
bulk than his comments on any other writer?
established the basic methods of applying depth
psychology to literature.
Freud's method was to take a pattern of men?
tal life (which had been established scientifi-
cally) and hold it up, as it were, against the play
to discover a congruous pattern. Merely estab-
lishing the congruity was not enough; Freud did
not simply play here-a-phallic-symbol-there-a-
phallic-symbol. Rather, he went on to draw con?
clusions either about psychology or about the
author, the play's effect, the probability of some
part, the structure, or the language. If about the
author, Freud would point to two things: first, an
infantile wish common to all men embodied in
the play; then, some event in the author's biog?
raphy that would reactivate the wish at the time
106"Some Character-TypesMet with in Psycho-Analytic
Work" (1916), Part i; GW, x, 368-370; SE, xrv, 313-315;
CP, iv, 320-323.
107(i. ii). "Some Character-TypesMet with in Psycho-
AnalyticWork," Part n; GW,x, 379; SE, xiv, 323; CP, rv,
332.
108See note 84.
109(i. ii. 362-363). Letter fromMax Eitingonto Charles
Maylan, 22 March 1929; quoted,Jones,iii, 145.
110(i.ii.396-402). Totemand Taboo, Chapter iv, see. 7;
GTF,rx,187;S?,xni, 155.
111See note26.
112(n.iii.44-45). Letter to Martha Bernays, July 1883;
quoted,Jones,i, 113.
 Norman
of writing the play (Hamlet's Oedipal feelings at
the time of John Shakespeare's death; the theme
of childlessness in Macbeth and the English suc?
cession). If Freud's conclusion was about the
play's effect on an audience, he would speak in
terms of a common unconscious factor, explain-
ing, for example, that a villain like Richard III
appeals to us because he plays on our own wish
to be an "exception." If Freud was discussing
the play itself, he would conclude that a certain
character or event was life-like or probable in
psychoanalytic terms, that Hamlet's delay was
natural under the circumstances, or that all of
us make slips of the tongue as Portia does. On
the other hand, he would sometimes (where an
event was obviously unrealistic) find in it the
truth of dreams, a psychological rather than a
literal truth, the love-contest in Lear, for ex?
ample, the various ghosts, the choice among the
three caskets, or Titania's showering her love on
Bottom. Freud remarked on structure only rarely
and then in terms of the psychic mechanism of
decomposition or splitting; that is, various atti?
tudes toward the father are decomposed into the
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N. Holland 173
several father-figures of Hamlet; Lady Macbeth
and Macbeth are splits of a single protagonist.
Freud's comments on Shakespeare's language
were almost entirely limited to showing that in
wit and poetry not logic but the nonlogical proc?
esses of unconscious thought apply.
As for his particular insights into Shakespeare,
some of these are well known: his explanation of
Hamlet's delay and the play's effect, of the myth?
ology of King Lear, of Lady Macbeth's hand-
washing, and of the meaning of the three caskets.
Others are less well known than perhaps they
should be: his explanation of Falstaff's humor,
the psychology of King Lear and the Macbeths,
the significance of Macduff's birth, or our em-
pathy with Richard III. The scholar has already
had to cope with a few Freudian readings; con-
fronted with more, he may well cry, "Rest, rest,
perturbed spirit." Freud, I am sure, would have
replied, "There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio ..."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge 39