98 COLLECTIVE REVIEWS
and what Rank says about the "play" and its position in the drama
might be considered as the fmishinj» toucli of Freud's conception.
More interest still is paid to the figure of Lady Macbeth, previously
only touched on in a footnote in the "lnter])retation of Dreams";
the publications 4, 14, 23 occupy themselves with her. The most
extensive of these essays is the one by Jekcls (14); this yields several
valuable results, of which only two will be mentioned: the conception
of the distribution between twij persons of the originally unitary
guilt feeling before and after the deed, and the discovery of
"Shakespeare's self reproach", who left wife and children and lost
his only son, as the quintessence of the ci>aracter of Macduflf.
Freud (6) starts from this discovery and shows how the problem of
childlessness runs below the surface through the wliole tragedy. In
this complex the old nature myth personified in the tragedy, namely
the victory of spring coming with green branches over the sterile
winter, coincides with the actual event, the accession of James I as
successor of the sterile Elizabeth who had beheaded his mother.
Freud makes it probable also that the night-wandering of Lady
Macbeth goes back directly to the last weeks spent in sleepless
disquietude of the virgin queen, who once called herself in grief
a fruitless stock. Another of Shakespeare's characters is investigated
by Freud in the same essay: Richard 111 who.se personality is
developed from the first monologue with logical clearness. He ^
belongs to those who believe they have a special claim on the
fulfilment of their wishes because they have been ill-treated by
nature at their birth. Among the type of those who break down
in success Freud classifies a tragic figure, studied already by Rank,
namely Rebecca West from Ibsen's "Rosmersholm". He shows that
Rebecca's actual position is the result of a tyj^ical phantasy in which
the housekeeper sets herself in the place of the housewife. The
unconscious root of this phantasy is of course to replace the motlier
in her relation to the father. When Rebecca learns that this tabooed
phantasy was reality for her, that is to .say, that she was the mistress
of her own father, then she becomes unable to enjoy her success
and chooses instead of marriage with Rosmer deatli with him.
The essay of FurtmUlIcr's (9) on Schnitzler's "Das weite I^nd" places the strife for power in the centre of action, following the author's prepossession for Adler's conception. A more unfortunate choice tlian one of Schnitzler's plays to prove such theses could not be made. Schnitzler's later works, especially "Casanova's
