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Although best known for his early book Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form in Relation to Social Custom, C. L. Barber did make use of psychoanalysis in his later work, so it is appropriate that a collection of essays dedicated to his memory include psychoanalytic interpretations of Shakespeare's plays, particularly when the interpretations are as good as most of these are. The essays concerned with the social and historical background are also on a high level, as might be expected from contributors as famous as Ann Barton, Stephen Booth, and Leslie Fiedler. But such background material, although interesting in itself, seldom changes my perception of what is happening within the plays, as do the psychoanalytic readings. Three of these essays deal with the conflict between homoerotic love or friendship and marriage.
For Janet Adelman, the threat to marriage comes from “male bonding”; it is “the complications posed by male identity and male friendship that … make marriage as much the problem as the solution.” The complication is obvious enough in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, where the attempt by Proteus to seduce Sylvia, who is engaged to his best friend (Valentine), is seen