Shakespeare's Sonnetten En Hun Verband Met De Travesti-Double Spelen (Shakespeare's Sonnets and their Connection with the Double-Travesty Plays). a Medico-Psychological Study (In Dutch): By C. Van Emde Boas. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1951. 528 pp.

Those who are familiar with Freud's, Jones's and Ella Freeman Sharpe's studies of Shakespeare will be interested in this study. In his elaborate investigation, Van Emde Boas approaches the huge volume of Shakespeareana as one would a case study. He seeks to find the prejudices and blind spots among the critics and commentators who are unaware of unconscious motivation. He makes an elaborate analysis of the sonnets, finding in them a subjective autobiography of Shakespeare. This reader was convinced that the method is a justifiable means of attributing feelings to the poet of which he himself was not aware. In order better to understand his subject, Van Emde Boas translated the sonnets into his native language, and they are now appraised in Holland as belonging among the best existing translations.

The central theme of this exegesis is Shakespeare's betrayal by 'the fair Youth' whom he lost to 'the dark Lady'. There are repeated allusions in the sonnets to an inner 'civil war', the conflict between love and hate, with allusions to despair over the loss of these two objects of love, both being at the root of tragedies which Shakespeare later created.