The Tempest is an abdication and renunciation play; it is a personal play of greater interest to the author but not a topic easily welcome to the audience. Shakespeare is trying to explain to us the reasons for his abdication and unconsciously he is asking for our permission to do so. He is pursuing two not-easily-reconciled wishes: to explain his abdication and at the same time not to depress his audience.
The Tempest is believed to have been written in 1611, when Shakespeare was forty-seven years old. Shakespeare's first play, Henry VI, Part I, is thought to have been written in 1589, when he was twenty-five years old, a span of twenty two years of creative play writing.
The Tempest is believed to be Shakespeare's last independently written play. It describes in symbolic language the playwright's waning powers as a poet and the decision to abdicate. In my reading, it can be read as the counterpart to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1589), in which the poet overcame his doubts and inhibitions, gaining the inner right to be a poet.
Both plays take place outside of ordinary civilisation; A Midsummer Night's Dream in a forest near Athens and The Tempest on an uncharted island. In both, fairies and spirits are assigned crucial roles. Shakespeare himself must have been at least preconsciously aware of the similarity between the two plays, for he gave lines to Prospero that belong to A Midsummer Night's Dream and appear to be inserted into The Tempest.
| PROSPERO: | Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself— Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (The Tempest, IV.i.138-148) |
For a moment we are back in A Midsummer Night's Dream, where Puck expresses similar feelings.
Hazlitt said: “The Tempest is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare's productions, and he has shewn in it all the varieties of his powers…. The real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream” (Hazlitt, 1817: p. 116).
Caroline Spurgeon called the play “an absolute symphony of sound” (Spurgeon, 1966: p. 300).
We hear, as we visit different parts of the island, the singing of the winds and the roaring of the waters, the cries of the drowning men, the reverberation of the thunder; our ears are assailed by the hollow bellowing of wild beasts making “a din to fright a monster's ear” (II.i.314), chattering apes and hissing adders, the drunken shouts and catches of Caliban and his companions, the hallooing of hunters and dogs, and other “strange, hollow, confused” and nerve-shaking noises…(Spurgeon, 1966: pp. 300–01)
By contrast, Harold Bloom finds the play “fundamentally plotless” (Bloom, 1998: p. 662). “Caliban, though he speaks only a hundred lines in The Tempest, has now taken over the play for so many” (Bloom, 1998: p. 663). As to Ariel, Bloom considers him “more a figures of vast suggestiveness than a character possessing an inwardness available to us” (Bloom, 1998: p. 666).
To Marjorie Garber, Caliban is something like libido, sexual desire or id, basic human drives, while Ariel is imagination personified. Going back to categories current in Shakespeare's time, Caliban is a spirit of earth and water and Ariel that of fire (Garber, 2004: pp. 852–853).
Nuttall, like Bloom, was disturbed by Ariel. “We do not know what he is. He is that thing that becomes normal in science fiction, a vividly imagined being for which no covering concept is readily available”. (Nuttall, 2007: p. 361). Nuttal singles out the moment where Prospero forgives his brother Antonio.
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault. (The Tempest, V.i.130–132)
Nuttall comments: “Never did forgiveness sound more like continuing, unabated hatred” (Nuttall, 2007: p. 371). Nuttal concludes, “Prospero's fear is of something that lies deeper than his own murder. It is the thought that he has never really been born at all” (Nuttall, 2007: p. 375). If Nuttall is right, and he well may be, then Shakespeare has failed to endow Prospero with the sense of personal reality that he succeeded in giving to his other creations.
Psychoanalytic studies of The Tempest
In 1923 Hanns Sachs, a member of Freud's closest circle wrote a long and erudite paper on The Tempest; I cite his main conclusions:
Another psychoanalytic study, written in 1946, was by the English psychoanalyst Ella Sharpe, titled “From King Lear to The Tempest”. In both plays the storm plays a major role; to Sharpe the storm represents the rage before the onset of depression. Prospero represents “the reemergence of the psyche after depression” (Sharpe, 1946: p. 215).
In his book Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET, published in 1971, K. R. Eissler devoted the last section of over one hundred pages to The Tempest. Eissler sees The Tempest as Shakespeare undoing what he had written in the earlier plays (Eissler, 1971: p. 557). Eissler assumes that the human passions that were brought onto the stage by Shakespeare must have shaken their creator (Eissler, 1971: p. 558). Shakespeare may have become traumatised by what he created. Within psychoanalysis this view was revolutionary. Creative work was traditionally seen as sublimation and as the opposite of neurosis. Now Eissler is suggesting that great artists may also traumatise themselves by their own creative work. Many tragic events almost happen in The Tempest, like murder and rape, but the play itself remains static, without psychological development. The twelve years of Prospero's stay on the island were not a preparation for any future; they were years of fulfillment of his life's mission. Caliban has strong ties to his mother, the witch Sycorax; Prospero, the father figure, tries to drive out Caliban's pre-oedipal fixation. Eissler quotes D. G. James (1937), who noted that The Tempest is the ultimate destruction of the world of the imagination. Shakespeare dissolves the world he had created.
In 2001 another study of the play, by Melvin Lansky, centred on the role of forgiveness. Lansky saw forgiveness as equivalent to the psychoanalytic concept of working through. The inability or unwillingness to forgive perpetuates the state of withdrawal and precludes re-involvement. Forgiveness represents identification with the loving aspects of the good object. It represents the triumph of Eros over Thanatos. Miranda is the good object that enables Prospero to reach a state of forgiveness.
The four psychoanalytic essays cited differ in their concepts and imagery, but all four find that The Tempest describes an inner crisis that Shakespeare must have experienced in order to write this play. Nor is there any evidence, as we sometimes feel about certain plays, that it was in some sense helpful or even curative to the author. Nor is the language as rich; there are no quotations that stay with us after we have seen or read the play.
Prospero was the ruler of Milan but he was more interested in magic than the administration of his kingdom and left the city in the care of a brother who usurped his power. A similarity to the behaviour of the Duke of Vienna in Measure for Measure springs to mind: Prospero's loss of his kingdom to a greedy brother leads to the thought that a younger brother may have displaced the poet. The storm created by Prospero brought his brother and his fellow conspirators under his power. As in Hamlet, the temptation to make it a simple revenge play is offered but rejected.
A scene of special psychoanalytic interest now takes place between Prospero and his fifteen-year-old daughter Miranda.
We are immediately introduced to Miranda's nobility of spirit.
| MIRANDA: | If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin's cheek, Dashes the fire out. Oh, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer. A brave vessel Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her Dashed all to pieces. Oh, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished. (I.ii.1–9) |
Prospero tells Miranda that he magically ordered the storm but that no one was harmed. He then tells her for the first time that when she was less than three years old his usurping brother drove him out of Milan. These enemies are now on the island and are under Prospero's control. To have one's enemies at one's mercy is a common theme in daydreams, but Shakespeare uses this opportunity for an inner struggle between forgiveness and revenge.
An interesting exchange takes place between father and daughter.
| PROSPERO: | I have done nothing but in care of thee, Of thee, my dear one—thee my daughter, who Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing Of whence I am, nor that I am more better Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell And thy no greater father. |
| MIRANDA: | More to know Did never meddle with my thoughts. |
| PROSPERO: | ‘Tis time I should inform thee farther. (I.ii.16–23) |
To our astonishment he is probing her infantile amnesia as a psychoanalyst would.
| PROSPERO: | Canst thou remember A time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not Out three years old. |
| MIRANDA: | Certainly, sir, I can. |
| PROSPERO: | By what? by any other house or person? Of any thing the image tell me that Hath kept with thy remembrance. |
| MIRANDA: | ‘Tis far off And rather like a dream than an assurance That my remembrance warrants. Had I not Four or five women once that tended me? (I.ii.38–47) |
Miranda contrasts “like a dream” with “assurance”. The language is Shakespeare's but the phenomenon described is familiar. In psychoanalysis, infantile memories are experienced as dreams and often they turn out to be “screen memories” or fantasies that were transformed into memories. The Tempest must be the first investigation of infantile amnesia in world literature. We are astonished to discover that Shakespeare was both interested in infantile amnesia and aware of its dream-like quality. Like any psychoanalyst, Prospero is amazed to learn why a particular detail survived the infantile amnesia. He asks, “But how is it / That this lives in thy mind?” (I.ii.48–49). If Prospero had been psychoanalytically trained he would not be so surprised by the memory. Miranda is the only female on the island. She must have struggled with the issue of gender difference and her memory assured her, however dimly, that she is not the only female in the world.
Prospero then discloses to Miranda the treachery of his brother.
| PROSPERO: | My brother and thy uncle, called Antonio— I pray thee, mark me (that a brother should Be so perfidious!)—he whom next thyself Of all the world I loved and to him put The manage of my state, as at that time Through all the signories it was the first, And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal arts Without a parallel. Those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle— Dost thou attend me? (I.ii.66–78) |
It must have been difficult for Prospero to disclose this information; we feel how out of breath he is. He transmits many more details than Miranda can assimilate and then suspects her of not paying attention. He tells her that he essentially abdicated his dukedom to a loved brother in order to devote himself to secret studies, but the brother betrayed him and forced him to seek refuge with his daughter on the enchanted island. If he suspects her of not listening, it is because of a trauma her father suffered and it is he who has difficulty recalling it.
To a psychoanalyst the scene is familiar from when a patient discovers that what was considered a happy childhood was in fact traumatic. Shakespeare, disguised as Prospero, discovers what he considered a magic island through something akin to self-analysis. His own creativity was really based on a traumatic childhood experience that now forces him to abdicate his magic, or creativity. Miranda stands for the innocent self that knows nothing of the trauma that Prospero is now disclosing to her.
The logical question for Miranda to ask would have been, “Were you the Duke of Milan?” but unconsciously the new information evokes in her the anxiety that he is not her father.
This is the only time in the play the mother is mentioned. We realise that this play deals with the relationship between a father and daughter, a relationship in which the mother is eliminated. Strikingly, we recall a similar absence of the mother in King Lear. A mother is needed to give birth to the child, but she is denied a role in the child's upbringing. The father's belief that he can be both father and mother to the daughter can be a sign of bisexuality.
Prospero continues the tale of woe.
| PROSPERO: | they hurried us aboard a bark, Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast. The very rats Instinctively had quit it. There they hoist us To cry to th’ sea that roared to us, to sigh To th’ winds whose pity, sighing back again, Did us but loving wrong. |
| MIRANDA: | Alack, what trouble Was I then to you! |
| PROSPERO: | Oh, a cherubim Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile Infusèd with a fortitude from heaven, When I have decked the sea with drops full salt, Under my burthen groaned; which raised in me An undergoing stomach to bear up Against what should ensue. (I.ii.144–158) |
Prospero is disclosing the traumatic past to Miranda, but Miranda experiences only what a burden she must have been to her father. Prospero assures her that she was the inspiration that made it possible for him to “bear up / Against what should ensue”. We hear feelings of inadequacy in Miranda and a declaration of love for her from Prospero.
In Act IV we learn how essential Miranda is to Prospero and that he is in love with her. He tells Ferdinand:
If I have too austerely punished you,
Your compensation makes amends, for I
Have given you here a third of mine own life—
Or that for which I live—who once again
I tender to thy hand. All thy vexations
Were but my trials of thy love and thou
Hast strangely stood the test. Here, afore heaven,
I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand,
Do not smile at me that I boast of her,
For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise
And make it halt behind her. (IV.i.1–11)
The expression “a third of mine own life” has evoked much comment. It is not logical since Miranda is Prospero's only child; the statement should have been half of my life. However, Shakespeare, unlike Prospero, had two daughters, hence the slip?
If we think of the dialogue between Prospero and Miranda as an inner struggle, then Prospero represents the part of the individual that remembers the trauma and Miranda is the part that has succumbed to infantile amnesia. The constant accusation that she is not listening represents what we call resistance, which is shown by the patient who does not want to remember a trauma.
What Miranda has been told corresponds to an analytic overcoming of the infantile amnesia. In the chapter on Hamlet I have shown how a similar overcoming of a childhood amnesia liberated Hamlet to love Ophelia. In a similar vein the overcoming of childhood amnesia enables Miranda to leave her father and transfer her love to a heterosexual relationship with Ferdinand. Remembering the women who took care of her enables her to become a woman and fall in love.
The parting from Miranda
The love that Prospero has for Miranda has helped him to move beyond the wish for revenge against his brother. His next task is to be able to give her up and this happens when she falls in love with Ferdinand, but now an interesting compromise formation takes place. He will give her to Ferdinand provided Ferdinand can abstain sexually until the marriage ceremony has taken place. The marriage is the moment when the father relinquishes his rights over his daughter.
| PROSPERO: | Then as my gift and thine own acquisition Worthily purchased, take my daughter. But If thou dost break her virgin knot before All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be ministered, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow, but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain, and discord shall bestrew The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed, As Hymen's lamps shall light you. (IV.i.13–23) |
What we hear is a father's curse. Should the two engage in premarital sex they will be denied heaven's “sweet aspersion” and will encounter “barren hate” and “sour-eyed disdain”. The language is so powerful that we surmise that Shakespeare was adamantly opposed to premarital sexuality. Ferdinand, unlike Caliban, can have Miranda, but only if he can control his lust for her. We have become familiar with Shakespeare's fear of lust. The haunting Sonnet 129 is a monument to the poet's overwhelming fear of lust.
Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Another equally vehement denunciation of lust is Arianna's condemnation in The Comedy of Errors:
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face,
And tear the stained skin off my harlot brow,
And from my false hand cut the wedding ring,
And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?
I know thou canst, and therefore see thou do it.
I am possessed with an adulterate blot;
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust. (The Comedy of Errors, II.ii.132–143)
And from the ghost in Hamlet:
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage. (Hamlet, I.v.55–57)
The condemnation of lust is also the dominant theme in “The Rape of Lucrece”:
This momentary joy breeds months of pain
This hot desire converts to cold disdain:
Pure chastity is rifled of her store,
and Lust, the thief, far poorer than before. (The Rape of Lucrece, 690–93)
…
She says her subjects with foul insurrection
Have battered down her consecrated wall
And by their mortal fault brought in subjection
Her immortality, and made her thrall
To living death and pain perpetual. (The Rape of Lucrece, 722–726)
…
She bears the load of lust he left behind,
And he the burden of a guilty mind.
He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence,
She like a wearied lamb lies panting there;
He scowls and hates himself for his offence,
She desperate with her nails her flesh doth tear. (The Rape of Lucrece, 734–39)
On the basis of this evidence we are justified in assuming that Prospero's vehement attack on sexual lust represented Shakespeare's own feelings.
Prospero can teach himself to give Miranda away provided that Ferdinand does not take her passionately. Symbolically, Ferdinand accepts the obedient son role; he will obey the “law of the father”. He will receive Miranda from Prospero and not conquer her. Prospero, and behind him Shakespeare, will tolerate the transfer of the daughter to another man only if their relationship is not passionate, and Ferdinand complies.
Caliban
Prospero and Miranda are not alone on their island; they share it with Caliban and Ariel. Who is Caliban? Shakespeare scholars have speculated about the origins of the name Caliban. The most likely literary source was Montaigne's essay on the cannibals. Before Caliban met Prospero he was preverbal. Having learned language from Prospero made it possible for him to express aggression.
| CALIBAN: | You taught me language, and my profit on ‘t Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language! (The Tempest, I.ii.369–371) |
A normal child is happy to learn to speak; an unloved child may not be. Caliban is not and he tells us why. To him, speech means the capacity to express aggression. If Caliban is part of Shakespeare, then Shakespeare just discovered that his creativity has enabled him to express his aggression.
A few lines earlier we got to know another aspect of Caliban. Speaking of his attempted rape of Miranda, he says:
Oh ho, oh ho! Would ‘t had been done!
Thou didst prevent me. I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans. (I.ii.355–357)
We now have three facts about Caliban: he is a cannibal by virtue of his name, he knows how to curse, and he sexually desires Miranda. He is Prospero before education and socialisation had done their work. In the analyst Melanie Klein's words, he is the infant in the paranoid position.
In Act III we will learn to know another redeeming aspect of Caliban. When he meets Stephano and Trinculo he is both friendly and assuring to them.
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again. And then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again. (III.ii.129–137)
In Shakespeare's work the capacity to sleep and have happy dreams is the usual sign that all is well intrapsychically. That Caliban can describe such a state of bliss to Stefano and Trinculo just after he persuades them to murder Prospero is surprising. It suggests that he is not just the embodiment of evil. The ability to hear such music makes Caliban a more complex figure.
If Caliban can hear music and if he can sleep well he has grown a great deal and has become more civilised. The Tempest deals with the difficulty a father has in allowing his daughter form a relationship with another man. Prospero is a stand in for the playwright. Unlike most of Shakespeare's works, the play is not built on previously known sources; he invented the whole plot.
Ariel
Who is Ariel? The name is biblical, meaning in Hebrew “the lion of God”, and if we wish to go to a more primitive, pre-monotheistic time it could also mean the lion god. It was Ariel who boarded the ship and created the storm at Prospero's command. Ariel has no personality of his own. He is a representation of Prospero's omnipotent wishes and Shakespeare's daydreams. Ariel was the slave of the witch Sycorax but being “a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorred commands” (I.ii.275–276) he was confined in a rift in a cloven pine and imprisoned for a dozen years. The witch died and left Ariel imprisoned. If we think psychoanalytically, Ariel represents Prospero when he freed himself from a witch-mother and experienced himself as creative.
The shipwreck originally expressed Prospero's fury and revenge wishes, but when Ariel carries these wishes out, a transformation takes place and no one is hurt by Prospero's aggressive wishes. In the play Caliban and Ariel are often two opposing forces. We understand why Prospero had to be deposed as the duke of Milan before he could take his daughter to the magic island. If it had been Prospero's free choice to live in exile with his daughter, the aspect represented by Caliban would have been stronger and resulted in the danger of a father-daughter incestuous relationship.
Act V opens with a discussion between Ariel and Prospero. Ariel assures his master that the shipwrecked crew is safely under control but then adds,
| ARIEL: | Your charm so strongly works ‘em That if you now beheld them, your affections Would become tender. |
| PROSPERO: | Dost thou think so, spirit? |
| ARIEL: | Mine would, sir, were I human. |
| PROSPERO: | And mine shall. Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, One of their kind, that relish all as sharply Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art? Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury Do I take part. (V.i.17–27) |
Ariel, a spirit, succeeds in humanising his master.
Both Caliban and Ariel are forces within Prospero. Caliban pulls him downward into incest and Ariel upward towards forgiveness. Only after Ariel has accomplished his work is Prospero ready to relinquish Miranda.
Prospero the magician represents Shakespeare the creative writer. In a self-analysis that Shakespeare carried out while writing this play, he recognised, probably with horror, that his creativity was fuelled by two Caliban-like wishes. These were revenge wishes, expressed in the shipwreck, and incestuous wishes for his daughter, represented by Caliban's wish to rape Miranda. When these two wishes found expression in this play, however veiled, the magician had to abjure his magic and the poet to give up his creativity.
Eissler's hypothesis, discussed earlier, was that Shakespeare became traumatised by his creative activity. We can be more precise: writing a play like The Tempest bears a similarity to self-analysis, in which the poet becomes aware of his aggression (the shipwreck) and his incestuous wishes towards his daughter (Caliban's wish to rape Miranda). If these wishes come too close to consciousness as a result of writing the play, a creative inhibition sets in.
If the hypothesis here advanced is correct, something can be added to the psychoanalytic theory of creativity. To be creative means for the artist to convert something that belongs to oneself into something others can share; it also means that something that was deeply repressed has become less repressed and closer to consciousness. The creative process in this play, called Prospero's magic, is facing two dangers. Prospero should not know that Caliban expresses his own wishes and Prospero should not become the forgiving Ariel. Some artists have been known to be afraid of psychoanalysis because they fear the loss of their creativity; they can use Prospero to express their fears.
The strange ending of The Tempest
Prospero's epilogue at the very end of the play goes even further than the previous quote:
Seen psychoanalytically, The Tempest is a description of a self-analysis in which Shakespeare the poet is represented by Prospero the magician. The self-analysis resulted in the recognition of two intrapsychic forces, here called Caliban and Ariel. The self-analysis was a success; the magician gave up his magic and incestuous wishes and returned to the world of reality (Milan). Shakespeare is not happy, however; Prospero the magician was much more interesting that the now “cured” former magician. Once more we understand why Shakespeare can be called the discoverer of the unconscious but not the discoverer of psychoanalysis as therapy.
Shakespeare has described Prospero as motivated by two forces: his love for Miranda and his creativity. His self-analysis leads to a double loss and leaves him bereft. It was a self-analysis that ended in abdication.
Shakespeare recognised that much of his creativity was unconsciously fed by incestuous wishes for the daughter and hostile wishes for revenge. In The Tempest his enemies have been defeated by his magic but he has succumbed to Ariel's forgiveness. Through Prospero, Shakespeare conveys to us that his creativity was based on what psychoanalysis calls “sublimated aggression”. Once the aggression becomes conscious magician and poet have to abdicate.
We are now at an amazing moment. A thin-edged forgiveness of his brother's betrayal together with a most reluctant decision to give Miranda to Ferdinand has led Prospero to give up his magic. It is as if Shakespeare analysed the motives behind his creativity and found that they were based on neurotic foundations. Having realised this, Shakespeare turned against his muse. Using the language of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, the latent content of The Tempest is Shakespeare's recognition that his art was fuelled by neurotic needs for revenge and holding onto his daughter.
| PROSPERO: | I'll bring you to your ship and so to Naples, Where I have hope to see the nuptial Of these our dear-belovèd solemnized, And thence retire me to my Milan, where Every third thought shall be my grave. (V.i.325–329) |
Prospero gives up Miranda but every third thought anticipates his death.
The two interpretations that I consider strictly psychoanalytic are the equation of the magic island with the early years of infancy and the terrible usurpation of the horrible brother with the reaction of a child to the birth of a sibling. Beyond these two items looms the strictly psychoanalytic emphasis that the play is an attempt to solve a problem that belongs to early childhood. The struggle to give up the daughter repeats the earlier struggle for the child to give up the mother.