This is a reconstruction of Shakespeare's unconscious conflicts and their attempted resolution, through an analysis of two of his plays: King Lear (which ends with a storm) and The Tempest (which begins with a storm). The 'storm' in King Lear, Sharpe feels, 'represents the rage before the onset of a depression'. Seven years later, when he ushered in The Tempest with another storm, he expressed 'the re-emergence of [his] psyche after depression' and, in the rest of the play, his 'readjustment to reality'.

Although difficult to follow at certain points and incomplete at others, Sharpe's analysis is a penetrating and rich one.