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By Marjorie Garber. London & New York: Methuen, 1981, 248 pp., $30.00.
MAN'S ESTATE: MASCULINE IDENTITY IN SHAKESPEARE. By Coppelia Kahn. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981, 238 pp., $21.00.
What makes Shakespeare so appealing to analysts is precisely what has made him have such a perennial, universal appeal—his ability to portray a variety of human conflictual situations, in all their complexity, and his rich, multilayered, multifaceted language. It is language that conveys so much of the ambiguity and unconscious intentionality in human communication.
The two works reviewed here emphasize a particular aspect of Shakespeare's works, namely the processes and ideals of maturity that are embodied in his works. Each utilizes certain psychoanalytic perspectives in delineating and showing the significance of these patterns of maturation in Shakespeare, and generally speaking, use these perspectives in a sensible and productive way. The results are readings of Shakespeare that are definitely enriching to psychoanalysts and, I believe, to specialists in Shakespeare as well to the general audience of Shakespeare lovers. They enlarge our conceptions of maturity and they embody the spirit of Shakespeare whereby it is not only his characters who may mature but his audience, too.
The works differ in their emphases in a number of ways. Like the frequent twinned pairs among Shakespeare's characters, each is impressive in its own right, and together, they marvelously complement each other. The Garber book draws upon a much more general and conceptually looser framework, and the Kahn book utilizes a more formal and formidable set of psychoanalytic hypotheses. For both, however, the core assumption about maturation is that to mature is to experience conflict and its resolution. For Shakespeare, as both authors repeatedly demonstrate, to become and to be mature involves facing the pain, loss, conflict, disloyalty, guilt, and the risk of provoking