Psychological insights in Shakespeare's final play, The Two Noble Kinsmen

Shakespeare's final play, The Two Noble Kinsmen, contains profound psychological insights. Like all of Shakespeare's reworkings of old material, the result is not merely a variation on a theme but a psychological statement in and of itself, which respects and revisits the past even as it presents a new and original statement. In this paper I argue that the transformation of the Chaucerian into the Shakespearean has a premonition of the Freudian in it also: Shakespeare not only delivers insights on development and sexuality, he anticipates an important Freudian concept in his introduction of the theme of the jailer's daughter whose "love-sickness" requires on understanding of transference before sense can be made of it!