To Awake, Shakespeare of the Night

Royle's text considers the importance of psychoanalysis in the writings of Cixous and Derrida, in particular in terms of Cixous's description of Freud as ‘the Shakespeare of the Night’. An exploration of what Derrida terms ‘thinking analysis’ in Cixous's writing is pursued via readings of Freud and Popper-Lynkeus, Derrida's ‘To Speculate — on Freud’, and telepathic or magical thinking in Shakespeare. It concludes with A Midsummer Night's Dream and with what Royle considers perhaps the most beautiful ‘because’ in Shakespeare.