Psychoanalytic interpretation of early modern texts has been criticized as anachronistic, the argument being that psychoanalysis, as a late Victorian and early twentieth-century theoretical intervention, is irrelevant to the critique of premodern identities. This chapter suggests a different approach: one that examines Shakespeare’s dramatic portrayal of subjectivity as an innovation rooted in literary history, reaching back to Petrarch and forward to Freud. To this end, it offers a close reading of Shakespeare’s representation of Juliet’s rapidly changing states of mind as a precursor to his creation of the illusion of interiority in his tragic heroes, which in turn has altered readerly expectations regarding the notion of “character” and the portrayal of inwardness in fiction and other literary forms. Freud himself was deeply indebted to Shakespeare, as is evident in his frequent references to his work, yet he regards his theories as universally applicable, using Shakespeare to confirm his own intuitions. In contrast to this approach (in which psychoanalysis may be invoked to explicate literary texts), this chapter maintains that Shakespeare’s innovative portrayals of subjectivity not only anticipated but also enabled Freud and his successors.