The Psychology of Shakespeare
Shakespeare was more than just an influential playwright.
Posted August 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Phil Zimbardo’s new book, Psychology According to Shakespeare: What You Can Learn About Human Nature From Shakespeare’s Great Plays , which he wrote with Robert L. Johnson, was recently published. We’re excited to share with you some takeaways from this insightful immersion into the world of psychology by the world’s most famous playwright—nearly three hundred years before it was invented!
Sigmund Freud , the first psychologist to analyze a Shakespearian character, diagnosed Hamlet with an Oedipus complex. Fast forward a hundred years when one of the authors of Psychology According to Shakespeare (2024) realized while viewing a performance of Cymbeline – a story about two young princes abducted as infants and raised in the Welsh wilderness – that Shakespeare was exploring the nature versus nurture issue. In other words, the author realized Shakespeare was, in a way, a burgeoning psychologist.
From a psychological standpoint, his best plays are case studies: Othello is a jealous general whose uncontrolled anger leads to deadly rage; Lady Macbeth suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder; and Richard III is a psychopath , prepared to murder his way to the throne. In these and other plays, Shakespeare reveals his grasp of the human psyche. He was gifted with the ability to reveal people’s private mental lives by cleverly uncovering, on stage, their hidden thoughts, feelings, and motivations.
Three groups of plays
The authors separate the Bard’s numerous plays into three categories: developmental crisis plays; situational comedies and tragedies; and simple history plays. In so doing, we can see how the majority are about the evolution of the characters’ human development. The following is a breakdown of the plays into their groups:
Developmental crisis plays (19): Antony and Cleopatra , Coriolanus , Hamlet , Henry IV , Part 1 , Henry IV , Part 2 , Henry V , Julius Caesar , King Lear , Macbeth , Measure for Measure , Merchant of Venice , Othello , Richard II , Richard III , Romeo and Juliet , The Tempest , Timon of Athens , Troilus and Cressida , The Winter’s Tale.
Situational comedies and tragedies (14): All’s Well That Ends Well , As You Like It , A Comedy of Errors , Cymbeline , Love’s Labour’s Lost , The Merry Wives of Windsor , A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Much Ado About Nothing , Pericles , Taming of the Shrew , Titus Andronicus , Twelfth Night , Two Gentlemen of Verona , The Two Noble Kinsmen .
Simple history plays (6): Edward III , Henry VI Part 1 , Henry VI Part 2 , Henry VI Part 3 , Henry VIII , King John .
Five of the six simple history plays mentioned above were written early in his career . Perhaps this is before he had become proficient in learning how to lead his audience and readers into the minds of his characters. The one exception is Henry VIII , which he collaborated on with a younger fellow playwright named John Fletcher. They would write three plays together a few years before Shakespeare’s death at the age of 52.
As for his later works, it appears Shakespeare was pondering human behavioral advancement, as well as its challenges, when he wrote his developmental crisis scripts.
When studying the psychological aspects of Shakespeare’s plays, two psychological lessons become clear:
Heroes abound in the Bard’s plays. But for purposes of this post we’ll focus on three examples.
Zimbardo, P.G. and Johnson R.L. (2024). Psychology according to Shakespeare. Guilford, CT: Prometheus Books.
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Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo are the authors, along with Richard M. Sword, of The Time Cure: Overcoming PTSD with the New Psychology of Time Perspective Therapy.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.