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diff --git a/old/63896-0.txt b/old/63896-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 219881a..0000000 --- a/old/63896-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5947 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Elizabethan Drama and Its Mad Folk, by E. -Allison (Edgar Allison) Peers - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Elizabethan Drama and Its Mad Folk - The Harness Prize Essay for 1913 - - -Author: E. Allison (Edgar Allison) Peers - - - -Release Date: November 27, 2020 [eBook #63896] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD -FOLK*** - - -E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Lisa Reigel, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made -available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/b24857087 - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - - In the original, some text is printed in a larger font - than the surrounding text. Text with larger font is - surrounded by plus signs (+larger font+). - - A row of asterisks represents a thought break. - - A complete list of corrections follows the text. - - - - - -ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK - - - * * * * * * - -[Illustration: Logo] - - -London Agents: -Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Ltd. - - * * * * * * - - -ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK - -The Harness Prize Essay for 1913 - -by - -EDGAR ALLISON PEERS, B.A. - -Late Scholar of Christ’s College, Cambridge. - - - - - - -Cambridge: -W. Heffer and Sons Ltd. -1914 - - - - - TO - - MY MOTHER - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAP. PAGE - - PREFACE - - I. INTRODUCTORY 1 - - II. THE PRESENTATION OF MADNESS—FROM THE STANDPOINT OF - HISTORY 8 - - III. THE PRESENTATION OF MADNESS—FROM THE STANDPOINT OF - LITERATURE 42 - - IV. MAD FOLK IN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY—(i) THE MANIACS 60 - - V. MAD FOLK IN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY—(ii) IMBECILITY 118 - - VI. MAD FOLK IN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY—(iii) MELANCHOLY 126 - - VII. MAD FOLK IN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY—(iv) DELUSIONS, - HALLUCINATIONS, AND OTHER ABNORMAL STATES 150 - - VIII. MAD FOLK IN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY—(v) THE PRETENDERS 167 - - IX. CONCLUSION 176 - - - - -PREFACE. - - -The bulk of this essay is the result of research work along lines -which, so far as the author knows, have not been previously traversed. -The arrangement and the general treatment of the work are therefore -original. Certain books, notably Tuke’s “History of the Insane in -the British Isles,” Bucknill’s “Mad Folk of Shakespeare,” Bradley’s -“Shakespearean Tragedy,” and Ward’s “English Dramatic Literature,” have -been of special utility in places where reference is made to them. The -critical judgments of these authors, however, have by no means always -been followed. - -The original title of the essay was “The Mad Folk of English Comedy -and Tragedy down to 1642.” It has been shortened for purposes of -convenience, and the term Elizabethan extended in order to take in a -few plays which belong to the next two reigns. The term is, however, -generally recognised to be an elastic one, and most of the plays dealt -with fall easily within it. - -Much of the revision of this work has been carried out under pressure -of other duties. I have been greatly helped in it by the criticisms and -suggestions of Professor G. Moore Smith, by the constant help of Mr. -N. G. Brett James, by some useful information given me by Mr. C. Ll. -Bullock, and especially by the kindness of my friend, Dr. J. Hamilton, -who has read the essay through in manuscript from the point of view -of the physician. Although I have not always taken up this standpoint -in dealing with my subject, I have tried at all times to give it due -consideration, for, as Ferdinand says in the “Duchess of Malfi,” -“Physicians are like kings: they brook no contradiction.” - - E. A. P. - - MILL HILL, - _March, 1914_. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY. - - “Shall I tell you why? - Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore.” - - (_Shakespeare: “Comedy of Errors.”_) - - -The jingling criticism of Dromio of Syracuse will ever recur to the -essayist on an unconventional subject. Lest any therefore should claim -of this essay that “in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor -reason,” excuse shall come prologue to the theme, and its “wherefore” -shall receive a moment’s merited attention. Of what utility, it may -be asked, can the study of certain insane persons appearing in early -modern drama be to the student of to-day? To this question let us -give a double answer. The study has a distinct historical value, for -from the mass of original documents which form the body of drama -under consideration, we may gather much of the progress which has -been made in the attitude of the country towards insanity, and hence -the increasing tendency towards a humane and intelligent outlook -upon disease in general. Our study is also of value from the point -of view of literature—partly as shewing the varying accuracy of our -dramatists and the art with which they portrayed their mad folk and -introduced them into their plays, partly by selecting and exposing the -chief types of the mad folk themselves, considering them on their own -merits, as pieces of art of intrinsic literary value. This last will be -the chief business of the present essay. - -We shall follow the order above indicated, regarding the presentation -of madness successively from the standpoints of history and of -literature. Under the latter head we shall consider several general -questions before proceeding to isolate individual characters in turn. -Lastly, we shall endeavour, from the matter furnished us by these -plays, to extract some general conclusions. - -One proviso must be made before we can embark upon our subject. What, -for the purposes of this essay, is to be the criterion of madness? In -ordinary life, as we know, the border-land of the rational and the -irrational is but ill-defined. We cannot always tell whether mental -disease is actually present in a person whom we have known all our -lives, much less can we say when the pronounced eccentricity of a -stranger has passed the bourn which divides it from insanity. The -medical profession itself has not always been too wise where madness is -concerned; and where the profession is at fault, with every detail of -the case before it, how can the layman aspire to success, with only -a few pages of evidence before him of a “case” propounded by another -layman of three centuries before? Were we to take the point of view -of the physician we should be plunged into a medical dissertation for -which we are both ill-equipped and ill-inclined. - -But there is another, and a far more serious objection, already hinted -at, to the adoption in this essay of the medical point of view. The -authors themselves were not physicians; in many cases, as will be -seen, they appear to have had but an imperfect technical knowledge -of insanity and its treatment; their ideas were based largely on the -loose and popular medical ideas of the Elizabethan age. If we are to -consider this subject as a department of literature we must adopt the -point of view of the dramatist, not of the practical physician. We -must, for the time, definitely break with those who enquire deeply and -seriously into the state of mind of every character in Shakespeare. In -dealing with “King Lear,” for example, we shall make no attempt to pry -behind the curtain five minutes before the opening of the play for the -purpose of detecting thus early some symptoms of approaching senile -decay. Nor shall we follow those who endeavour to carry the history of -Shylock beyond the limits of Shakespeare’s knowledge of him, in the -hope of discovering whether he was true or false to the religion of -his fathers. The critic who peeps behind the scenes at such times as -these finds only the scene-shifters and the green room, where his nice -offence will soon receive appropriate comments! - -Our best plan, then, will be habitually to consider the plays from -the point of view which we take to be that of the author himself. -Prejudices will be put aside, and predispositions to premature -diagnoses resisted. Constance and Timon of Athens, with several -personages from Marlowe’s dramas, will be regarded (with some effort) -as sane, for the simple and quite adequate reason that they were so -regarded by their authors. The question whether or no Hamlet was -actually insane will, for the same reason, be dismissed in a few -words; while the many witches who haunt Elizabethan drama, and whose -prototypes afforded in nearly every case genuine examples of dementia, -will be heroically disregarded, as falling without the bounds of our -proposed theme. - -From the number of occurrences in this body of drama of such words -as “mad,” “madness,” “Bedlam,” “frantic,” and the like, it might be -supposed that there are more genuine mad folk than actually appear. A -few words will suffice to clear up this difficulty. - -The term “madness” is often used in a loose, unmeaning sense,—in -phrases such as “Mad wench!”, somewhat resembling the equally -unmeaning slang of to-day. To insist on this point would probably -provoke the charge of a lack of the sense of humour, and insistence is -indeed unnecessary. Most readers of Shakespeare will recall Leontes’ -transport before the supposed statue of his wife, a transport which -he characterises as “madness”; Portia’s description of that “hare,” -“madness the youth”; Biron’s apostrophe: - - “Behaviour, what wert thou - Till this madman show’d thee?”[5:1] - -and no less Shylock’s famous description of men that - - “are mad if they behold a cat.”[5:2] - -Those who are acquainted with “Philaster” may remember Megra’s -description of - - “A woman’s madness, - The glory of a fury,”[5:3] - -and everyone has at some time or other lighted upon that kind of “fine -madness” which is the property of every true poet, and which Drayton, -attributing it to Marlowe, declares - - “rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”[5:4] - -Nowhere in these passages are we expected to see insanity, though -the last two are somewhat stronger than the others, and are typical -of many places where “madness” is used for simple passion and for -inspiration respectively. - -In a very special sense, however, madness is used for the passion of -love, to such an extent that there is an actual gradation into madness -itself. Loosely, and often humorously, the lover is said to be mad for -the same reason as the lunatic. To quote Shakespeare once more—as he -is more familiar than many of his contemporaries— - - “The lunatic, the lover and the poet, - Are of imagination all compact.”[6:1] - -There is only a step between seeing “Helen’s beauty in a brow of -Egypt,”[6:2] and seeing “more devils than vast hell can hold.”[6:3] -Once cool reason has given way to “frenzy,” the Elizabethan is not -always too subtle in his distinctions within that convenient term. -So when Troilus informs us that he is “mad in Cressida’s love,”[6:4] -when Rosalind jestingly speaks of love as deserving “a dark house and -a whip,”[6:5] and when Mercutio declares that his Rosaline-tormented -Romeo will “sure run mad,”[6:6] we must not altogether discard such -references as idle or even conventional. For while there is a great -gulf fixed between such “frenzies” as these and the madness of the -love-lorn Ophelia or even of the Gaoler’s Daughter in the “Two Noble -Kinsmen,” we can only account for such a peculiar case as Memnon—in -Fletcher’s “Mad Lover”—by postulating a conscious development of the -idea that “love is a kind of madness.” - -It is possible that the difficulty of keeping to the point of view we -have chosen may lead to many mistakes being made in our treatment of -individual characters. But it seems better to run the risk of this -than to set about this work as though it were a medical treatise, or -as though the plays to be considered had been produced by a kind of -evolution, and not by very human, imperfect, work-a-day playwrights. -That being said, Prologue has finished: - - “Now, good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.” - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[5:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” v., 2, 337. - -[5:2] “Merchant of Venice,” iv., 1, 48. - -[5:3] “Philaster,” ii., 4. - -[5:4] Drayton, “The Battle of Agincourt.” - -[6:1] “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” v., 1, 7. - -[6:2] l. 11. - -[6:3] l. 9. - -[6:4] “Troilus and Cressida,” i., 1, 51. - -[6:5] “As You Like It,” iii., 2, 420. - -[6:6] “Romeo and Juliet,” ii., 4, 5. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -THE PRESENTATION OF MADNESS—FROM THE STANDPOINT OF HISTORY. - - “A mad world, my masters!” - - (_Middleton._) - - -The earliest view of madness which finds its way into this drama and -persists throughout it, is based on the idea of possession by evil -spirits. This conception came down from remote ages; it accounts, for -example, for the madness of King Saul in the Old Testament, when “The -Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and an evil spirit troubled -him.”[8:1] In the Elizabethan Age, demoniacal possession was still -regarded as one of the most potent causes of insanity; it was made -to account not only for mental disease but for all kinds of physical -deformations and imperfections, whether occurring alone, or, as is -often the case, accompanying idiocy. An offshoot, as it were, from this -idea, is the ascription of mental disease to the influence of witches, -who were often themselves (ironically enough), persons suffering from -mental disorders. So enlightened a man as Sir Thomas Browne declares -more than once his belief in witches and their influence; Burton’s -“Anatomy of Melancholy” asserts that melancholy can be caused and -cured by witches; the learned James, King of England, and Edward Coke, -who lived at the same time, both take up the legal aspects, stating -that the plea of insanity offered on behalf of witches should not be -recognised at the legal tribunal. In Middleton’s “Witch” (i., 2), -there is a mention of “solanum somniferum” (otherwise known as Deadly -Nightshade or Atropa Belladonna) which was the chief ingredient in many -witches’ recipes and produced hallucinations and other abnormal states -of mind. Banquo, in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” probably refers to the -witches’ influence when he enquires, directly after the first meeting -with them: - - “Have we eaten on the insane root - That takes the reason prisoner?”[9:1] - -A counterpart to the idea of possession by demons is found in a belief, -common at this time and earlier, in the inspired utterances of the -frenzied prophetess. Neither here nor with the witches was any curative -treatment undertaken. For with the oracle no such treatment was thought -to be necessary or even advisable, and with the witches none except -death was supposed to avail. Occasionally a “witch” might be subjected, -like other mad folk, to “chains” and “whips,” but the road more often -taken was the short one. In simple cases of demoniacal possession the -means of cure was patent: the demon must be cast out and the patient -will return to his right mind. The exorcisation of the “conjuror” was -commonly accompanied by pseudo-medical treatment, the nature of which -will presently appear. - -Now the influence of the demonological conception of insanity is -clearly seen in our dramas. Everyone is familiar, to go no farther -than Shakespeare, with the famous exorcisation scene in “Twelfth -Night,”[10:1] where the clown, disguised as “Sir Topas the curate,” -comes to visit “Malvolio the lunatic,” and drives out the “hyperbolical -fiend” which is supposed to vex him. Everything Malvolio does can be -expressed in terms of Satan. When the wretched man speaks, it is the -“fiend” speaking “hollow” within him. His disgusted exclamation when -Maria urges him to “say his prayers” is construed into the fiend’s -repugnance to things sacred. Fabian advises “no way (of treatment) -but gentleness . . . the fiend is rough and will not be roughly used.” -While Sir Toby protests that it is “not for gravity to play at -cherry-pit with Satan; hang him, foul collier.” A more complete and -far more famous illustration may be found in “Lear,”[10:2] where Edgar -attributes his assumed madness to possession by the various spirits -which he names. Almost his first words in his disguise tell of the -“foul fiend” leading him “through fire and through flame, through -ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire.”[11:1] He names “the foul -Flibbertigibbet,” the fiend of “mopping and mowing,”[11:2] who “gives -the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip;”[11:3] -of “the prince of darkness . . . a gentleman; Modo he’s called and -Mahu”;[11:4] of “Hobbididence prince of dumbness;” of “Hoppedance” -who “cries in Tom’s belly for two white herring”[11:5] and many -others—culled from the flowery page of Harsnet’s “Popish Impostures.” - -A more modern idea of insanity is that which attributes it to natural -physical causes, and this finds expression in our dramas—often in -the same play—side by side with the conception just mentioned. The -capriciousness of heredity, for instance, is recognised by the author -of “A Fair Quarrel”: - - “Wise men beget fools and fools are the fathers - To many wise children . . . - A great scholar may beget an idiot, - And from the ploughtail may come a great scholar.”[11:6] - -The supposed justice of the same law is illustrated by a passage in -Brome’s “English Moor,” where among punishments for sin is included: - - “That his base offspring proves a natural idiot.” - -One of the most popular of the physical causes assigned by seventeenth -century dramatists to madness is the worm in the brain. “Madam,” says -Arcadius in Shirley’s “Coronation,” “my uncle is something craz’d; -there is a worm in’s brain.”[12:1] Shirley frequently refers to this -particular “cause,” and Winfield, one of the characters in “The Ball,” -adds to it another superstition when he says: “He has a worm in’s -brain, which some have suppos’d at some time o’ the moon doth ravish -him into perfect madness.”[12:2] - -Superstition is responsible for many of the “causes” of madness in our -drama, and among these the most prominent is probably the superstition -responsible for the English word “lunatic.” The supposed influence -of the moon on insanity and of its deviations on the recurrence of -maniacal periods is clearly the source of those words which Shakespeare -gives to Othello after the murder of Desdemona: - - “It is the very error of the moon; - She comes more nearer earth than she was wont - And makes men mad.”[12:3] - -So Lollio, in “The Changeling,” tells Franciscus that “Luna” made him -mad.[12:4] The “parson” who figures, too, among the mad folk in “The -Pilgrim,” has to be “tied short” since “the moon’s i’ th’ full.”[12:5] - -That the superstition connected with the moon, however, was under high -medical patronage is shewn by a reference to the “Anatomie of the Bodie -of Man” by one Vicary, chief surgeon at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital -(1548-1562). “Also the Brayne” (he writes) “hath this propertie that -it moveth and followeth the moving of the moone; for in the waxing of -the moone the brayne discendeth downwarde and vanisheth in substance of -vertue; for then the Brayne shrinketh together in itselfe and is not so -fully obedient to the spirit of feeling, and this is proved in men that -be lunaticke or madde . . . that be moste greeved in the beginning of -the newe moone and in the latter quarter of the moone. Wherefore when it -happeneth that the Brayne is either too drye or too moyst, then can it -not werke his kinde; then are the spirits of life melted and resolved -away, and then foloweth feebleness of the wittes and of al other -members of the bodie, and at the laste death.” - -The word “lunatic” itself, it may be noted, quickly passed into common -speech, and was used without reference to its original significance. We -shall find it constantly recurring throughout this study, but as there -is little variety in its use, no further examples need be quoted. - -An interesting superstition is connected with the mandrake plant, -round which, from the supposed resemblance of its strangely cleft root -to the human figure, many weird notions have gathered. One of these was -that when torn from the ground, the plant would utter groans of “sad -horror,” which, if heard, caused instant madness, or even death.[14:1] -From the numerous references to this superstition in Elizabethan drama -may be extracted two,—the first from “Romeo and Juliet” (iv., 3, -47-8), where Juliet speaks of - - “shrieks of mandrakes, torn out of the earth - That living mortals, hearing them, run mad”; - -the second from a speech of Suffolk’s in “2 Henry VI.” (iii., 2, 310), -where the Duke reminds the Queen that curses will not kill - - “as doth the mandrake’s groan.” - -Other causes to which, rightly or wrongly, insanity is attributed may -be grouped together for convenience. In the “Emperor of the East” is an -obvious reminiscence of Holy Writ where Flaccilla says of Pulcheria: - - “Grant heaven, your too much learning - Does not conclude in madness.”[14:2] - -This devout wish, however, has only about as much claim to be taken -seriously as Leonato’s fear that Benedick and Beatrice, married a week, -would “talk themselves mad.”[15:1] - -Such causes as irritation, worry, jealousy and persecution are -frequently mentioned as conducing to frenzy, if not actually causing -it. The Abbess of the “Comedy of Errors,” reproaching Adriana for her -treatment of Antipholus, sums the matter up thus: - - “The venom clamours of a jealous woman - Poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth. - It seems his sleeps were hinder’d by thy railing, - And thereof comes it that his head is light. - Thou say’st his meat was sauced with thy upbraidings: - Unquiet meals make ill digestions; - Thereof the raging fire of fever bred; - And what’s a fever but a fit of madness? - Thou say’st his sports were hinder’d by thy brawls: - Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue - But moody and dull melancholy . . . - Have scared thy husband from the use of wits.”[15:2] - -We need not stay long over the numerous characters who speak of anger -as leading to madness. The term “horn-mad,” however, is sufficiently -interesting to be cleared up here.[15:3] - -It is used in two senses. Often it is no more than an emphatic way of -expressing the simple adjective. In this sense it may be connected -with the Scottish word “harns,” meaning “brains,” an alternative form -being “horn-wood.” When Joculo, in Day’s “Law Tricks,” suggests that -“the better half of the townsmen will run horn-mad,”[16:1] this is -clearly the sense in which the words are to be taken. But in another -sense, the source of which is evident, “horn-mad” is the word used to -denote a kind of madness unknown as a technical term to the medical -profession, but very common in the less elevated portions of our drama. -This madness is a thing - - “Created - Of woman’s making and her faithless vows”; - -the madness, in a word, of the cuckold. Falstaff seems to be punning -on the two senses of the term when he says: “If I have horns to make -me mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn mad.”[16:2] Dekker -exhibits an especial fondness for this particular pun. Cordolente, the -shopkeeper of “Match Me in London,” whose wife the King has seduced, -says on being informed by that monarch that he is mad: “I am indeed -horn-mad. O me! In the holiest place of the Kingdom have I caught my -undoing.”[16:3] Similar passages can be found in nearly all Dekker’s -plays, whether true madness is actually in question or not. - -A world of meaning lies beneath such phrases as “dog-madness,” -“midsummer madness,” “March mad,” “as mad as May butter.”[17:1] The -first refers primarily to hydrophobia, though it is not always used in -that sense; the second is accounted for by the old belief that insanity -was fiercest and most prevalent in midsummer. The phrase “March mad” is -connected with the saying “As mad as a March hare.” Its explanation is -that during the month of March, their breeding season, hares are wilder -than usual. An example of the use of the phrase might be quoted from -Drayton’s (non-dramatic) work, “Nymphidia”: - - “Oberon . . . Grew mad as any hare - When he had sought each place with care - And found his queen was missing.” - -“May butter” is unsalted butter, preserved during May for medicinal use -in healing wounds. The connexion of the phrase with madness, however, -is so deep as to be no longer understood! - -Finally, among the causes of madness recognised in the seventeenth -century must be mentioned melancholy, though we shall have to return -to this on another page. The common belief appears to have been, -in the words of the Doctors of the Induction to the “Taming of the -Shrew,” that “Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy,”[17:2] and incipient -melancholiacs are constantly adjured by their nearest and dearest to -remember this fact—though their adjurations seldom have any effect. -The Duchess of Malfi, indeed, hearing in her captivity a “hideous -noise,” and being told: - - “’Tis the wild consort - Of madmen, lady, whom your tyrant brother - Hath placed about your lodging,” - -replies: - - “Indeed, I thank him; nothing but noise and folly - Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason - And silence make me mad.”[18:1] - -In the “Lover’s Melancholy,” Prince Palador is presented with a “Masque -of Melancholy” (for which the author was largely indebted to Burton) in -order that his diseased mind may be relieved. These two cases certainly -shew a divergence from the more general opinion. The first may perhaps -be attributed to the Duchess’ desire: “to make a virtue of necessity,” -the second to the fact that Palador’s disease is not true melancholia, -but a state of mind bordering on affectation—that melancholy affected -by more than one of Shakespeare’s “humorous” characters, of whom it can -be said “You may call it melancholy if you will favour the man, but by -my head ’tis pride.”[18:2] - -We may gather next, from our plays, some of the recognised symptoms of -insanity in these early times. Epicene, pretending to recognise the -madness of Morose, says: “Lord, how idly he talks, and how his eyes -sparkle! he looks green about the temples! do you see what blue spots -he has?” Clerimont has his answer ready: “Ay, ’tis melancholy.”[19:1] -But these two are over-frivolous; their diagnosis is untrustworthy; we -must turn to surer ground. One supposed sign of madness was evidently -the quickening of the heart and the pulse. Hamlet, in a well-known -passage, ridicules his mother’s idea that the ghost which he sees is -due to “ecstasy”: - - “Ecstasy! - My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, - And makes as healthful music.”[19:2] - -Philaster, declaring his sanity to Arethusa, says: - - “Take this sword - And search how temperate a heart I have . . . .” - -and again: - - “. . . Am I raging now? - If I were mad, I should desire to live. - Sir, feel my pulse, whether have you known - A man in a more equal tune to die.” - -Bellario replies: - - “Alas, my lord, your pulse keeps madman’s time! - So does your tongue.”[19:3] - -That these tests were inadequate is proved by a simple illustration—in -the “Comedy of Errors,” Pinch the exorcist, mistakes Antipholus’ anger -for madness. Luciana cries: - - “Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!” - -And a courtezan, - - “Mark, how he trembles in his ecstasy!”[20:1] - -Pinch attempts to feel the “madman’s” pulse, but in any case he knows -that both man and master are possessed: - - “I know it by their pale and deadly looks.”[20:2] - -The madman was supposed not to be aware of the nature of his disease. -“That proves you mad,” says the Officer in Dekker’s “Honest Whore,” -by a strange piece of reasoning, “because you know it not.”[20:3] -Throughout the plays occurs the same phenomenon. Even when certain -of the mad folk recognise that they are afflicted with some sort of -disease, they resent questioning on it. Guildenstern’s account of -Hamlet is significant of a large number of cases: - - “Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, - But with a crafty madness, keeps aloof - When we would bring him on to some confession - Of his true state.”[20:4] - -The resentment is no doubt due to a subconscious wish of the madman -to hide his loss of that sense of personal identity which is used by -Shakespeare as one of the criteria of madness. Constance’ proof to -Pandulph of her entire sanity will be remembered: - - “I am not mad; this hair I tear is mine. - My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife; - Young Arthur is my son and he is lost: - I am not mad[21:1]. . .” - -Sebastian, in “Twelfth Night,” gives similar evidence: - - “This is the air; that is the glorious sun; - This pearl she gave me. I do feel’t and see’t; - And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus, - Yet ’tis not madness.”[21:2] - -Another symptom of insanity was sleeping with open eyes. Meleander, -in the “Lover’s Melancholy,” “sleeps . . . with eyes open, and that’s -no good sign”[21:3] and the Duchess of Malfi is said to sleep “like a -madman, with (her) eyes open.”[21:4] - -A general wildness of demeanour was thought to be characteristic of -both the earlier and the later stages of madness. Songs and dances -are often associated with it; wild laughter, “the usher to a violent -extremity,” accompanied by fulminations against the world in general; -bitter sarcasm, sudden touches of pathos and consequent outbursts of -anger; “thundering” and “roaring,” which can only be checked by like -excesses on the part of others—these are all common symptoms, together -with “raving” on all kinds of subjects. This wildness, however, is not -inconsistent with considerable force and pregnancy of speech, which -might lead some to doubt the actual presence of insanity; and which is -“a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could -not so prosperously be delivered of.”[22:1] A sense of physical pain, -of being “cut to the brains,” might also afflict the patient; and the -disease frequently causes such suffering that - - “Nor the exterior nor the inward man - Resembles that it was.”[22:2] - -An excellent objective description of a single case is furnished by the -“Gentleman” in “Hamlet” who announces the frenzy of Ophelia: - - “She speaks much of her father; says she hears - There’s tricks i’ the world, and hems and beats her heart; - Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, - That carry but half sense; her speech is nothing, - Yet the unshaped use of it doth move - The hearers to collection; they aim at it, - And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts; - Which as her winks and nods and gestures yield them - Indeed would make one think there might be thought, - Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.”[22:3] - -As to the nature of the madman’s talk, we find it impossible to -generalise, and the ideas of different authors on what it should be -have not much agreement, beyond the one condition that there should be -wanting what Shakespeare aptly calls “a dependency of thing on thing.” -This will be noted more particularly when we come to the study of -individual characters. - -From these symptoms and others which might be cited it will be evident -that the madness of our dramas is far from being confined to one -type. We know that various kinds of insanity were recognised in the -seventeenth century. Corax, the physician of the “Lover’s Melancholy,” -makes it clear that - - “Ecstasy - Fantastic Dotage, Madness, Frenzy, Rapture - Of mere imagination differ partly - From Melancholy.”[23:1] - -Our learned informant, Ben Jonson, diagnoses another case of insanity -as “the disease in Greek . . . called μα νια, in Latin, insania, furor, -vel ecstasis melancholica, that is egressio, when a man ex melancholico -evadit fanaticus, . . . . But he may be but ‘phreneticus,’ yet, -mistress, and ‘phrenesis’ is only ‘delirium’ or so.”[23:2] And indeed -there are all varieties of insanity in the plays before us. There is -the young person who merely talks “fantastically,” “like a justice of -peace,” “of a thousand matters and all to no purpose,”[23:3] and whose -words “though they (lack) form a little,” are “not like madness.”[23:4] -There is the person dominated by the “idée fixe”—examples differing -widely occur in “King Lear” and in “Bartholomew Fair.” There is the -“idiot” and there is the “imbecile”—two types between which it would -be affectation here to attempt a discrimination. The melancholiac, -one of “sundry kinds,” affected by a “mere commotion of the mind, -o’ercharged with fear and sorrow,”[24:1] is one of the commonest types. -Mania and delusional insanity are also frequent and account for a -large proportion of our characters. Yet, since this is not a medical -treatise, how can we distinguish any more finely? We shall do better -not to attempt a more detailed classification of our mad folk than -this, which will be utilised later in the consideration of individual -characters. “It is not as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church-door, -but ’twill serve.” Like more than one of those Elizabethan playwrights -we may feel that: - - “To define true madness - What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?”[24:2] - -On this let us act and employ a literary rather than a medical -criticism. - -Our dramas are not silent as to the way in which lunatics were regarded -by the world at large. Few people at that time had the sympathy of -Langland for those whom, three hundred years before, he beautifully -called “God’s minstrels”—a title explained by the preceding -exhortation to his readers to bestow their gifts on the wandering -insane as bountifully as though they were wandering minstrels. For -the most part the lunatic seems to have been regarded, when confined, -as a negligible factor in everyday life,[25:1] and when at large as a -harmless and a gratuitous amusement. So, as has just been noted, the -Duchess of Malfi is regaled before her death with “some sport” in the -shape of several madmen who sing and dance before her. Here, of course, -the intention is a sinister one, but there is no sinister meaning in a -casual remark let fall by Truewit in the “Silent Woman”—“Mad folks and -other strange sights to be seen daily, private, and public”![25:2] Nor -is there any idea but one of legitimate amusement in the entertainment -organised by the master of a private asylum, Alibius by name, for the -marriage of Beatrice-Joanna (in “The Changeling”) and given, as he -says, by: - - “A mixture of our madmen and our fools, - To finish, as it were, and make the fag - Of all the revels, the third night from the first.”[25:3] - -Isabella caustically remarks “Madmen and fools are a staple commodity.” - -In this connexion, a particular class of lunatic deserves notice. -The Bedlam beggar, variously known as “bedlamer,” “bedlamite,” and -“Abraham’s man,” was originally an inmate of Bedlam, but, coming to be -regarded as convalescent, had been set free and would roam about the -country, half-crazed, living for the most part on the charity of such -as would befriend him. In Dekker’s “Belman of London,” a non-dramatic -work professing to expose “The most notorious Villanies that are now -Practised in the Kingdome,” is a long description, in the manner of -a seventeenth century “character,” of one of “those Wild-geese or -Hayre-braynes . . . called Abraham’s men.” Dekker at least has little -good to say of them. “The fellow . . . sweares he hath bin in bedlam -and will talke frantickly of purpose: you see pinnes stuck in sundry -places of his naked flesh, especially in his armes, which paine he -gladly puts himselfe to (beeing indeede no torment at all, his skin is -either so dead, with some fowle disease, or so hardned with weather), -onely to make you believe he is out of his wits: he calls himself by -the name of Poore Tom, and comming neere anybody, cryes out Poore Tom -is a-cold . . . .” The mind at once turns to Edgar and the celebrated -lines where he poses as one of those very “Abraham-men”: - - “This country gives me proof and precedent - Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, - Strike in their numb’d and mortified bare arms - Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; - And with this horrible object, from low farms, - Poor pelting villages, sheep cotes, and mills, - Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers - Enforce their charity.”[26:1] - -From all that we can gather, however, of the treatment of the insane -in madhouses of the time, it would seem probable that, among those -released or escaping from them, many would still be genuine lunatics. -At the same time, it was no doubt fairly easy to make a living in the -way Dekker describes, and numbers of beggars must have emulated Edgar’s -behaviour from far less worthy motives. - -Such a lack of popular sympathy could hardly go hand-in-hand with a -peculiarly humanitarian treatment of the insane. The Saxon treatment -of lunatics has been described as “a curious compound of pharmacy, -superstition, and castigation.” In the seventeenth century it had -been but little improved upon. Its most characteristic feature was -confinement in a dark room, with additional treatment, varying -according to circumstances. A book, of date 1542, called “A Compendious -Pygment or a Dyetry of Helth” by one Dr. Borde, advises the keeping -of lunatics in a dark room, provided with no knives, girdles, nor -pictures of man or woman on the wall. Few words are to be used except -in gentle reproofs and the dietary is to be careful and ample. Dr. -Borde’s treatment was enlarged upon in later days; chains were used -to prevent escape; castigation was employed freely and often attended -with great cruelty. A quatrain in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” -(1621), confirms this statement, presenting what is indeed a ghastly -picture. It is all borne out by the dramatic references, which are -extremely numerous. The lunatic _chez lui_ is evidently a subject -which appeals to the dramatist: madness and its cure become topics -of ordinary conversation. Rosalind, in playful banter with Orlando, -compares love to “a madness,” which “deserves as well a dark house -and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished -and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in -love too.”[28:1] Leonato, in “Much Ado” talks (from our point of view -ominously) of those who would - - “Give preceptial medicine to rage, - Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, - Charm ache with air and agony with words.”[28:2] - -Shakespeare is not predicting here, as has been suggested, the -application of gentle methods to insanity, but ridiculing those -who were so foolish as to apply “a moral medicine to a mortifying -mischief.” Even as he wrote lightly of the silken thread, he would have -heard in imagination the clank of the lunatic’s chains. - -Another addition to the attractions of the asylum was the course of -slow starvation, and this is hinted at in a casual allusion by Romeo in -“Romeo and Juliet”: - - “Why Romeo, art thou mad?” +asks Benvolio.+ - - “Not mad,” +answers Romeo,+ “but bound more than a madman is, - Shut up in prison, kept without my food, - Whipped and tormented.”[29:1] - -Pinch the conjuror knows what to do in cases of madness: - - “Mistress, both man and master is possess’d . . . - They must be bound and laid in some dark room.” - -George, in “The Honest Whore,” has heard of domestic cures: “’Sfoot! -I have known many women that have had mad rascals to their husbands, -whom they would belabour by all means possible to keep ’em in their -right wits.” And a character in Marston’s “What You Will” speaks in a -delightfully brisk and business-like manner: “Shut the windows, darken -the room, fetch whips; the fellow is mad, he raves, he raves—talks -idly—lunatic.” - -Few tests were needed to convince the keepers of an asylum that -their patient was mad, and if it could be made a matter of pecuniary -advantage to them to incarcerate any person, they would often take him -and clothe him in the “fool’s coat” or clap him into the “madman’s -cage” without making too many inquiries. Thus the madhouse became, -in many a sinister sense, “a house of correction to whip us into our -senses.”[29:2] - -Before we leave the historical side of our subject, some mention must -be made of the famous Bedlam, so often mentioned in connexion with -the mad folk of our plays. The real and original Bedlam, “Bethlem -monastery,” as it is called, “the madman’s pound,” which is actually -introduced into one or more of the plays under consideration,[30:1] -was formerly the Hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem in Bishopsgate Street. -The Priory was founded for this Order in 1247 by an ex-sheriff named -Simon Fitz-Mary. It passed through many vicissitudes, chief among which -were a seizure by the Crown in 1375 and the dissolution by Henry VIII. -in 1547. After this latter date the revenues were held by the Mayor, -the commonalty and the citizens of London. For some hundred and fifty -years the Hospital had been used for lunatics, and the only difference -in this use caused by its dissolution as a religious house seems to -have been that it became incorporated as a Royal Foundation. For a -considerable time it suffered through poverty, being largely dependent -on legacies, such as Sir Thomas Gresham’s in 1575, and on general alms. -Mistress Trainewell, in Brome’s “Northern Lass” (1632), mentions Bedlam -among other objects of charity, and suggests to Squelch an excellent -reason for patronising it. The passage may be quoted in full: - - _Squelch_: “I will now bestow my wealth in monumental good - deeds, and charitable uses in my life-time, to be talked well - on when I am dead.” - - _Trainewell_: “Yes, build almshouses and hospitals for beggars, - and provide in Bridewell houses of correction for your friends - and kindred. Pray give enough to Bedlam, you may feel some part - of that benefit yourself before you die, if these fits hold - you.” - -The later history of Bedlam is uneventful, and, to us, unimportant. -In 1676 it was transferred to London Wall, the new buildings being -known as the “New Hospital of Bethlehem,” and in 1815 to Lambeth. -Bethlem Hospital was by far the best known of London mad-houses in the -Seventeenth Century; two more are mentioned by Stow in his “Survey of -London,” and may be noted here. The first was “an Hospitall in the -Parish of Barking Church,” founded “by Robert Denton Chaplen, for the -sustentation of poore Priests, and other both men and women, that were -sicke of the Phrenzie, there to remaine till they were perfectly whole, -and restored to good memorie.”[31:1] In another place, under the title -of “An house belonging to Bethlem,” we read: “Then had ye an house -wherein sometime were distraught and lunatike people, of what antiquity -founded, or by whom I have not read, neither of the suppression, but -it was said that sometime a King of England, not liking such a kind -of people to remaine so neare his pallace, caused them to be remoued -farther of, to Bethlem without Bishops gate of London, and to that -Hospitall the said house by Charing crosse doth yet remaine.”[32:1] - -No doubt there were also private asylums in existence, where the -treatment of the patients was harsh, and their comforts were few. The -conditions, indeed, seem to have been very similar to those of Bedlam. -These and other details may be gathered chiefly from four plays, in -each of which there are “madhouse scenes”—they are “The Pilgrim” by -John Fletcher, “The Honest Whore” by Thomas Dekker, “Northward Ho,” -the joint work of Dekker and Webster, and “The Changeling,” ascribed -to Middleton, who was probably aided in it by Rowley. A comparison of -these plays should give a very fair account of a seventeenth century -lunatic asylum.[32:2] - -It is not difficult to obtain admission to this asylum, for the -charge is only a penny or twopence, and Bellamont and his friends -in “Northward Ho” look at the “mad Greeks” for a short time before -calling for their horses, which are stabled at “the Dolphin without -Bishopsgate” near by. The hospital consists of “a parlour, kitchen, -and larder below stairs, and twenty-one rooms where the poor distracted -people lie, and above stairs eight rooms more for servants”; the madmen -may either be visited in their cells, or brought in for inspection -by the visitors. Preferring the former alternative we approach the -cells, and hear a confused roaring—“the Chimes of Bedlam.” It is -“Mad Bess roaring for meat or the Englishman for drink”; like “bells -rung backward” they are nothing but “confusion and mere noises.” The -“shaking of irons” adds to the din, which is increased by the snatches -of coarse song which are continually assailing our ears, the playing of -rough games such as “barley-break,” the running and jumping of the more -violent of the patients, and the cries of those who are undergoing a -treatment of the whip: - - “If sad, they cry, - If mirth be their conceit, they laugh again; - Sometimes they imitate the beasts and birds, - Singing or howling, braying, barking, all - As their wild fancies prompt ’em.” - -When the lunatics are brought in, or (as was more usual in real life -though unsuited for dramatic representation), we visit them in their -“cages” or cells, we are confronted with a strange sight. A “pretty -poet” who “ran mad for a chambermaid” invokes Titania and Oberon, -and speaks in the sanest of tones of “daisies, primrose, violets”; -his madness, though at the time we do not know it, is feigned. The -Englishman is still crying for drink. Everyone must go down on his -knees and pledge him: “A thousand pots, and froth ’em, froth ’em!” The -parson, “that run mad for tithe goslings,” threatens to excommunicate -and curse the whole company. A musician walks slowly and deliberately -apart; he fell mad “for love of an Italian dwarf.” Many a lunatic -resembles Candido, “much gone indeed,” who believes himself to be a -prentice, “talks to himself,” selling “pure calicos, fine hollands, -choice cambrics, neat lawns,” and resenting interference in a way which -is positively dangerous. Near him is a lad brought in (like Alinda) “a -little craz’d, distracted” and not suffering acutely; he is allowed -comparative freedom and accorded light treatment till more dangerous -symptoms shew themselves. He - - “talks little idly - And therefore has the freedom of the house.” - -We speak to the keepers about their charges, and they seem mildly -interested. The most entertaining characters we may discuss at length -with them; and, if we will brave their foul talk, we may even converse -with the patients as freely as they are permitted to converse with -each other. We must be prepared, in this case, to hear frank comments -on our personal appearance and the wildest of guesses, often mere -expressions of an _idée fixe_ on our profession or our business. The -lunatics will not, of course, allow that they are mad, though they may -recognise that they are ill and under a doctor’s care. This, however, -is less common with our asylum patients than with those undergoing -private treatment, such as Ford’s Meleander. The mere suggestion -that they may be of unsound mind usually amuses them, or makes them -indignant. It is only when the keeper ceases to reproach them with -madness and turns the conversation to “Whips!” that they become serious -again. Perhaps, after all, a talk with the keeper will best serve our -purpose. - -Friar Anselmo is at hand and will describe to us with more sympathy -than many of his kind the condition of the inmates: - - “There are of madmen, as there are of tame, - All humoured not alike. We have here some - So apish and fantastic, play with a feather; - And, though ’twould grieve a soul to see God’s image - So blemished and defaced, yet they do act - Such antic and such pretty lunacies, - That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. - Others, again, we have, like hungry lions, - Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies; - And these have oftentimes from strangers’ sides - Snatch’d rapiers suddenly and done much harm; - Whom if you’ll see, you must be weaponless.” - -We may ask him about his treatment of these poor creatures, who are -ever in fear of the lash. It will be easily justified: - - “They must be used like children; pleased with toys, - And anon whipt for their unruliness.” - -Alternate cajolings and threats are the mildest form of treatment that -we can hope to see in these places. The Elizabethan asylum keeper holds -with Shakespeare that - - “Diseases desperate grown - By desperate appliance are relieved - Or not at all.” - -In the middle of this entertaining discussion we are interrupted. A -prospective patient, it seems, is being announced, but the first words -of the Master, who enters with him, suggest that we have been fortunate -enough to meet with a case of false incarceration. A scholarly young -man has been confined without cause and his friends in high quarters -have come, armed with a “discharge from my lord cardinal,” to demand -his release. “I am heartily sorry,” says the Master, “If ye allow him -sound, pray take him with ye.” A gentleman protests that there is -nothing in the Scholar - - “light nor tainted, - No startings nor no rubs in all his answers; - In all his letters nothing but discretion, - Learning and handsome style.” - -He is quite “perfect”; “a civiler discourser I ne’er talked with.” -Then, before the Master, the Scholar is catechised: - -“You find no sickness?” “Do ye sleep o’ nights?” “Have you no fearful -dreams?” The answers, to the Master’s disgust, are satisfactory. “I -think,” exclaims the friend, “You keep him here to teach him madness.” -But, just then, his “eyes alter,” and - - “On a sudden, from some word or other. - When no man could expect a fit, he has flown out.” - -The mention of “stubborn weather” and “strange work at sea,” starts in -him a new delusion or revives an old one. He rants and raves: “I am -Neptune.” Now it is the Master’s turn to jeer, and the visitors retire, -discomfited. - -It may be noticed, in passing, that the questions addressed by the -keepers of madhouses to prospective patients in order to ascertain -whether or no they are indeed mad are hardly less irrelevant and -absurd than those of “Sir Topas” in “Twelfth Night.” Antonio, in the -“Changeling,” is asked as “easy questions”: “How many true (_i.e._ -honest) fingers has a tailor on his right hand?” . . . “and how many -on both?”—“How many fools goes to a wise man?” These remind us of the -questions put by the Fool to King Lear. - -Our madhouse does not contain only those lunatics who are termed -“madmen”; there is another variety, known most commonly as the “fool.” -Now the word “fool,” in Elizabethan literature, has a number of -connotations. It may be used, as in Shakespeare, for the professional -jester of the court, who was, indeed, often a little wanting in -ordinary intelligence, though this was amply atoned for by his witty -and pregnant remarks. It is also used in a general sense, as to-day, -of a person who has acted, or who habitually acts, in an unwise way. -With reference, however, to our plays, it has more often approximately -the technical meaning of “imbecile”—a term used of those whose brains -are constitutionally affected and whose insanity is therefore rather a -quantitative rather than a qualitative defect. Taken in this sense, the -word “fool” may be applied to some of the asylum’s inmates, the word -“madman” to others. The two classes are not always well distinguished -in these plays, but the fools can generally be detected by the inanity, -rather than the violence, of their words and actions. They tend to -reply in the style of Antonio, the feigning fool of “The Changeling”— - - “He, he, he! well, I thank you, cousin, he, he, he!” - -To which Lollio, the attendant, replies: “He can laugh; I perceive by -that he is no beast.” - -The two classes of patients are apparently allowed to mix in each -others’ company. “We have,” says Lollio, “two sorts of people in the -house, and both under the whip, that’s fools and madmen; the one has -not wit enough to be knaves, and the other not knavery enough to be -fools.” They are kept under very much the same discipline, though the -fools are sent to the “Fools’ College”—which is an institution of the -madhouse itself—and are put to school in various classes in the hope -of improving their wit. - -The seventeenth-century asylum, it must be remembered, claims to -have worked cures, though at first it seems hard to believe that its -designation as “the school where those that lose their wits Practise -again to get them” is anything more than a phrase. As we enter the -domain of Anselmo we are met by a “sweeper,” who describes himself as -one of the “implements” of the house—“a mad wag myself here once; but -I thank father Anselmo, he lashed me into my right mind again.” - -We are struck at once, as we read these accounts of Bedlam, by the -inconsequence, verging at times on brutal heartlessness, with which -those responsible for the lunatics’ welfare refer to them. It is the -expression of that spirit upon which we have remarked continually -throughout this historical survey. In concluding it we can hardly -illustrate this last point better than by considering a few of the -occasions on which the mad folk are held up to ridicule or satire. It -is, of course, the dramatist with whom we have properly to reckon for -this, yet he was clearly influenced by the attitude of the time, and -contemporary prose-references endorse the spirit of the plays. - -Satire abounds on the coarsest of subjects—that of the “horn-mad” -patient—and further examples need hardly be given. More interesting is -the comment of the keeper in the “Pilgrim” when a patient enters crying -“Give me some drink.” - - “Oh, there’s the Englishman! . . . - These English are so malt-mad there’s no meddling with ’em; - When they have a fruitful year of barley there, - All the whole island’s thus.” - -A similar skit follows on the parson above-mentioned “that run mad for -tithe goslings.” But Fletcher’s best effort in this direction is the -introduction of the Welshman, who, but for his premature exit might -have served as quite a reasonable understudy for Fluellen. “Whaw, -Master Keeper,” is his first remark, “Give me some ceeze and onions, -give me some wash brew . . . Pendragon was a shentleman, marg you, sir. -And the organs at Rixum were made by revelations: There is a spirit -blows the bellows, and then they sing.” He will “sing, dance and do -anything,” and when the Englishman and the Scholar challenge him, he -threatens to “get upon a mountain and call my countrymen.” Dekker, in -the “Honest Whore,” is able to hit the lawyers. There are none of that -company, he says, among Anselmo’s madmen. “We dare not let a lawyer -come in, for he’ll make ’em mad faster than we can recover ’em.” -Questioned as to how long it takes to “recover” any of the patients, -our informant replies that “An alderman’s son will be mad a great -while. . . . A whore will hardly come to her wits again. A Puritan, -there’s no hope of him, unless he may pull down the steeple and hang -himself i’ the bell-ropes.”[41:1] - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[8:1] I. Samuel, xvi., 14. - -[9:1] “Macbeth,” i., 3, 84. - -[10:1] “Twelfth Night,” iv., 2. - -[10:2] “King Lear,” iii., 4, etc. - -[11:1] “King Lear,” iii., 4, 52, etc. - -[11:2] Ibid., iv., 1, 64. - -[11:3] Ibid., iii., 4, 122. - -[11:4] Ibid., iii., 4, 148-9. - -[11:5] Ibid., iii., 5, 31. - -[11:6] Middleton: “A Fair Quarrel,” i., 1. - -[12:1] iii., 2. - -[12:2] i., 1. - -[12:3] “Othello,” v., 2, 109. - -[12:4] iii., 3. - -[12:5] iii., 6. Cf. with these the phrases: “planet-struck,” -“planet-stricken,” etc.; _e.g._ Brome’s “City Wit,” v., 1—Crazy: “Sure -I was planet-struck.” - -[14:1] For further information on this subject Bulleine’s “Bulwark of -Defence” and Sir Thomas Browne’s “Vulgar Errors” may be consulted. - -[14:2] Act iii. Sc. iv., cf. Jonson: “The Alchemist,” ii., i. Face of -Dol: - - “She is a most rare scholar, - And is gone mad with studying Broughton’s works. - If you but name a word touching the Hebrew - She falls into her fit and will discourse - So learnedly of genealogies, - As you would run mad, too, to hear her, sir.” - -[15:1] “Much Ado About Nothing,” ii., 1, 368. - -[15:2] “Comedy of Errors,” v., 1, 68. - -[15:3] For further information on this interesting word see the New -English Dictionary. _s.v._ “horn-mad.” - -[16:1] “Law Tricks,” iv., 2. - -[16:2] “Merry Wives of Windsor,” iii., 5, 153. - -[16:3] “Match Me in London,” iv., 1. - -[17:1] All taken from plays of the period under consideration. - -[17:2] “Taming of the Shrew,” Ind. ii., 135. - -[18:1] “Duchess of Malfi,” iv., 2. - -[18:2] “Troilus and Cressida,” ii., 3, 92. - -[19:1] “Epicene,” iv., 2. - -[19:2] “Hamlet,” iii., 4, 139, etc. - -[19:3] “Philaster,” iv., 3, 45, etc. - -[20:1] “Comedy of Errors,” iv., 4, 52-3. - -[20:2] Ibid., l. 96. - -[20:3] “Honest Whore,” iv., 3. - -[20:4] “Hamlet,” iii., 1, 7. - -[21:1] “King John,” iii., 4, 48, etc. - -[21:2] “Twelfth Night,” iv., 3, 1, etc. - -[21:3] “Lover’s Melancholy,” ii., 2. - -[21:4] “Duchess of Malfi,” iv., 2. - -[22:1] “Hamlet,” ii., 2, 212. - -[22:2] Ibid., ii., 2, 6-7. - -[22:3] Ibid., iv., 5, 4, etc. - -[23:1] “Lover’s Melancholy,” iii., 1. - -[23:2] “Epicene,” iv., 2. - -[23:3] “Honest Whore,” v., 1. - -[23:4] “Hamlet,” iii., 1, 171. - -[24:1] “Lover’s Melancholy,” iii., 1. - -[24:2] “Hamlet,” ii., 2, 93. - -[25:1] _e.g._ A lunatic’s legal acts were annulled and his property was -placed under control. (See further, Encyl. Brit., _s.v._ Insanity.) - -[25:2] “Epicene,” ii., 1. - -[25:3] “The Changeling,” iii., 3. - -[26:1] “King Lear,” ii., 3, 13, etc. - -[28:1] “As You Like It,” iii., 2, 420, etc. - -[28:2] “Much Ado About Nothing,” v., 1, 24, etc. - -[29:1] “Romeo and Juliet,” i., 2, 54, etc. - -[29:2] Shirley: “Bird in a Cage,” ii., 1. - -[30:1] Notably into “Northward Ho.” The madhouses of “The Pilgrim,” -“The Honest Whore,” and “The Changeling” are private asylums. - -[31:1] Stow: “Survey of London” (Clarendon Press), i., 137. - -[32:1] Ibid., ii., 98. - -[32:2] The chief sources from which this description is compiled -are:—“The Pilgrim,” iii. 6, iv. 3, v. 5; “The Honest Whore,” v. 12, -13; “The Changeling,” i. 2, iii. 3, iv. 3, v. 3; “Northward Ho,” iv. 1. -For obvious reasons the specific references to every quotation are not -given. - -[41:1] Another interesting passage, no doubt satirical, but too long -for quotation at length, occurs in “The Duchess of Malfi,” Act iv., Sc. -2: It begins: - - “A mad lawyer and a secular priest - A doctor that hath forfeited his wits - By jealousy,” etc., etc. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE PRESENTATION OF MADNESS—FROM THE STANDPOINT OF LITERATURE. - - “This mirthful comic style - Makes us at once both serious, and smile.” - - (_Alex. Brome._) - - -The questions which we have now to answer, before passing to our main -study and considering the mad folk as individuals, are two in number. -The first is a general one: What is the place of such a feature as -madness in drama? The second is more particular: What place does -madness assume in the body of drama under consideration? Let us take -them in this order. - -1. Clearly there is a great difference between madness in tragedy and -madness in comedy. Many of us would hold to the one and emphatically -despise the other. At all events, risking confusion through an -over-complicated scheme of sub-division, we shall deal with each -separately. - -The representation of madness in tragedy might be objected to upon the -following grounds: If carried out well, it becomes too terrible for the -stage; if badly, it is nothing but a ludicrous caricature of greatness. -This is at least plausible, and the last proposition is evidently true. -But what of the first? Is madness really too terrible for dramatic -presentation, or is it not eminently suited to the stage by virtue of -its peculiar qualities? - -The critic replies that madness is sheer suffering of the most painful -sort, that the ravings of a noble mind o’erthrown have passed the _ne -plus ultra_ of the tragic, while the babblings of mere imbecility -have not reached the level of tragedy at all. “Such suffering” (he -will say), “as is the lot of Lear, should never be dwelt upon, -much less paraded before crowds, and decked out with the tinsel -of the stage. Think of physical suffering comparable with it, if -that be possible—for is not mental suffering far more terrible and -heart-rending than physical?—and you would never talk of putting the -maniac on the stage. Think of the repulsion caused by the blinding of -Gloster and the murder of Lady Macduff’s infant son,—and is not the -madness of Lear more terrible? ‘King Lear’ is, of course, a brilliant -exception, but the exception proves the rule.” - -With this last provoking platitude we need not quarrel, but the main -assertion must be challenged nevertheless. In the first place it is -a fact that we do not feel the same repulsion at the representation -of madness on the stage as we do at a similar case in real life, -whereas with physical brutality the effect seems in drama to be almost -magnified. Could we possibly feel more keenly the blow which Othello -gives to Desdemona if the scene took place in our own family? It is -at least doubtful. But if we think of the suffering of Lear, or of -Ophelia, and suppose one-tenth of it inflicted on our dearest friend, -the thought becomes perfectly unbearable. It is not that we do not -enter into the spirit of “King Lear,” but rather that the sufferings of -the aged King, by reason of their very remoteness from human life, give -us the actual “tragic feeling” which Shakespearean tragedy inevitably -produces. - -Not only so, but the state of the madman, provided that apart from him -the play contains the requisite tragic hero, is admirably calculated -to contribute, through the emotions of pity and fear, to that καθάρσις -which Aristotle considers to be the essence of tragedy. Tragic -pity will most surely be excited at the misfortunes of “one who is -undeserving,” that is of - - “a man - More sinn’d against than sinning.” - -Hardly any disaster which may befall a human being can excite such -tragic pity as the crowning disaster of insanity. Whatever a man’s -sins, we feel that the loss of reason more than atones for them all. -If the greatest villain in drama should lose his reason, we should -feel this; when Lear, the rash, impetuous King of Britain, becomes -insane, we cry out, forgetting for the time his tragic error, that -his punishment is too great for him. When the brief scene is ended we -consign him to the Great Silence, not with feelings of rebellion but -with a sense of supreme calm: - - “He hates him - That would upon the rack of this tough world - Stretch him out longer.”[45:1] - -So equally with tragic fear. This emotion, which is no vulgar sense -of possible or impending misfortune to ourselves, but an awed and -sympathetic feeling for a character essentially of the nature of our -own, is brought out to the full by means of the portrayal of madness. -For what reduces men so quickly to the same level as the loss of reason -by a fellow-man? In real life our hearts are stirred by compassion, -yet moved by inexpressible awe, as we see or hear of one whom we have -known and whose senses have deserted him. Be he of high or low station, -it matters nothing. Differences of rank are forgotten—and this is -less often so with physical calamity. Loss of reason has effected -the belated recognition of our common humanity. Carry this into the -imaginative world of drama, and you have the emotion of tragic fear. - -The representation, then, of madness in tragedy would seem to be -not only permissible, but of the greatest value to the drama when -this madness is worked into the plot and becomes an essential part -of it. Often, however, and especially with the lesser lights of the -Elizabethan stage, it held a place wholly subsidiary to the main theme -of the tragedy. If tragic fear and tragic pity were to be evoked it -would be by other means; madness was required for colouring effects, -and to lend a peculiar atmosphere to the tragedy. It was sketched but -lightly, frequently with little attempt at reality; whether this arose -from the dramatists’ lack of ability, or from a desire to lessen the -supposed pain, can only be a matter of conjecture. The introduction -of madness, as a subsidiary element, into tragedy, appears to be -justifiable only when it is regarded objectively with no relation to -the pain caused to the sufferer. Let us illustrate. The Duchess of -Malfi, previously to her death, is made to listen to the cries and to -watch the antics of madmen. The intention of the author is evident. -Whether we consider him to have been successful or not, we can hardly -cavil at his device when we bear in mind the nature of the tragedy. -But had a madman been introduced and presented as a new character -with a definite interest of his own, either at this or at an earlier -stage of the play, we should have rightly condemned the new feature as -inartistic and revolting, for our centre of gravity, so to say, would -at once have been shifted from the unfortunate lady to the unfortunate -madman. The conception of madness in tragedy is a powerful one and -cannot be trifled with. - -There is another point of view from which the question must be -considered before we pass from tragedy to comedy,—namely, that of -the action. It is recognised that in tragedy properly so called the -conflict must spring from the actions of the hero, and that the -calamity which marks the tragedy must be unmistakeably dependent upon -this generating action. Now the hero, to commit a tragic error, must -obviously be responsible for his actions,—otherwise the tragedy -will rest upon an irrational basis, which would be absurd. No -abnormal mental state, then, such as would arise from drunkenness, -hallucination, or insanity, can serve to generate the conflict. The -most usual and natural position for the introduction of insanity will -be either during a considerable part of the decline of the action from -the crisis (as with Ophelia’s madness in “Hamlet”)[47:1] or immediately -preceding the catastrophe (cf. the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth), when -it adds greatly to the force of the tragedy. The construction of “King -Lear” is in this respect peculiar. Lear’s madness, to the ordinary -spectator, is first noticeable in the third act;[47:2] but, as Dr. -Bradley points out, it is more satisfactory from the point of view of -the construction to consider, not Lear, but Goneril, Edmund and Regan, -as the leading characters in the play.[48:1] - -What of madness in comedy? This, we confess, it is difficult, if not -impossible, to justify. Feigned madness may, no doubt, have some -place in a comedy, and such tricks as occur in “Northward Ho!” where -the poet Bellamont narrowly escapes being immured in a madhouse, -may, and certainly did appeal to a certain kind of audience. But the -introduction of Bedlam into a romance such as “The Pilgrim,” or a -comedy of low life such as “The Changeling,” merely for the sake of -giving some cheap amusement to the groundlings, reveals a mind which -one would suppose to be untouched by the elements of human pity. It -can only be understood in the light of the treatment accorded to the -lunatic in real life. And our authors’ sins do not end here. In more -than one comedy in which the madman appears, little or no attempt is -made to give even an approximate idea of what he might be expected to -say or do. His presence is merely an excuse for the coarsest of jokes -and the vilest of songs, which, no doubt, lost nothing in the acting. -The degradation of a theme which is properly tragic is unhappily -only what may be expected from playwrights whose work graced the -Post-Restoration stage. - -In tragi-comedy, it may be said, madness has a legitimate place, and we -find the authors of “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” among others, making full -use of it. We shall best see, when we consider this play separately, -how impossible it is to reconcile madness with the dénouement of -comedy. We may be able to put a hook into the nose of leviathan, but -we can no more use the sufferings of mad folk and then bring them to a -dénouement, in a tragi-comedy worthy of the name, than we can supply -a “happy ending” to “Hamlet” or “Lear.” The heights of mania are very -high, as the depths of idiocy are very low. The maniac, though cured -of his disease, does not fit into comedy, any more than the imbecile, -however well-born, can harmonise with tragedy. From one point of view -at least, a great man is at his greatest when he is possessed by an -uncontrollable passion. If the madman of a tragi-comedy is sufficiently -great for tragedy, the play cannot be resolved into a comedy; if he is -not a possible tragic hero, his madness is not sufficiently imposing to -raise the conflict to a crisis. We are on the horns of a dilemma which -may be avoided in practice by some dramatic genius, but which were -certainly not avoided in Elizabethan drama by those authors who rushed -in where others might fear to tread. - -2. We have now to enquire into the actual presentation of madness in -our tragedy and comedy, and it must be confessed at once that the -results will be somewhat disappointing. We have between twenty and -thirty plays of which it may fairly be said that the conception of -madness enters definitely into the plot, and of this number all, save -four or five, are comedies. The tragedies may briefly be considered -first. - -In “King Lear,” mad folk are given an exalted place. On the madness of -the old King depends the whole play; the scenes which are naturally -the most striking become more terrible because of his ravings; their -effect is further enhanced by the feigned madness of Edgar and by the -curious half-imbecility of the Fool. In “Hamlet” the hero’s assumption -of an “antic disposition” is inextricably interwoven with the main -plot, while Ophelia’s loss of reason is largely responsible for the -catastrophe. Nowhere else in Elizabethan Tragedy do we find so bold a -use of the madman as here. Turn to “The Changeling” and Middleton’s -ideas of what can be done with him take shape. There is a comic -underplot, alternating during the greater part of the play with a fine -tragic theme, and only becoming connected with it towards the end—this -underplot embodies the grossest of all possible conceptions of madness. -From a sublime passion, it becomes material for vulgar intrigue. Even -where mad folk are seriously treated in these tragedies, they are not -portrayed with the power of which the author is capable. Penthea, for -example, in Ford’s “Broken Heart,” though not, as has been suggested, -a mere reminiscence of Ophelia, is somewhat slightly and inadequately -drawn. And one would at least have expected Webster, with his penchant -towards the carnival of horrors, to have produced something better than -the inane songs and dances which, with hardly the saving grace of being -grotesque, disfigure the fourth act of the “Duchess of Malfi.” The fact -is that the common Elizabethan treatment of insanity was so far removed -from the humane that the subject was regarded rather as one for mirth -than for solemnity—for comedy and not for tragedy. - -Reconciling ourselves as best we can to this state of things, let us -examine some representative comedies. There are, in the first place, -those in which insanity plays quite a subsidiary part and is not in the -least essential to the main plot. In “The Silent Woman,” for example, -the pretended madness of Morose is an occasion for much merriment, -but it lasts only for part of a scene. In “Northward Ho!”, Maybery, -Greenshield and their friends lay a merry plot against Bellamont and -contrive to secure his arrest as a madman, though here again, the jest -is but a short one. Similarly, in “Twelfth Night,” Malvolio is treated -as if he were insane, much to the delight of Maria, Sir Toby, and -the lesser folk; while in the “Comedy of Errors” many accusations of -madness are bandied to and fro, which more than once lead to violence. -Sometimes the madness is only reported. In “Cymbeline,” the Queen is -said in the fourth act to be afflicted by - - “A fever with the absence of her son, - A madness of which her life’s in danger,” - -and there is little doubt that her violent death, “most -shameless-desperate,” was due to some derangement of the reason. So, -too, the Lady Constance dies “in a frenzy,” and Brutus’ Portia, it is -reported, - - “fell distract - And, her attendants absent, swallow’d fire.” - -Such scenes as these last three, however, Shakespeare has, with his -usual tact, kept off the stage, knowing that in the case of “Cymbeline” -he would otherwise introduce too violent a nemesis into what was -rapidly becoming the dénouement of a romantic comedy. Massinger, on -the contrary, in “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” seems rather to welcome -this nemesis, allowing his extortioner, Sir Giles Overreach, when -outwitted in the fifth act, to go mad and to be taken off to Bedlam. -It will be noticed that most of the examples just given (excluding -those of “reported” insanity) have been mainly of pretended madness; -where bona-fide mad folk are introduced into comedy without affecting -the construction of the play, this is usually for the sake of a vulgar -realism or of comic effect falsely so-called. We have already seen -enough of this and may pass on. - -In “Bartholomew Fair” we have a madman delineated with some care. -Trouble-all, the lunatic in question, only makes his appearance -in the fourth act, but from his entry to the close of the play he -evokes, together with Quarlous, who masquerades in his clothes, a -considerable share of attention. His place in the plot is an important -one. Dame Purecraft, who is being wooed by that notorious Puritan, -Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, and by a gentleman named Winwife, has had it -foretold that she must marry a madman within seven days. She has been -daily to Bedlam to enquire if any insane gentlemen are available, but -it is only when she meets Trouble-all that she feels any inclination -towards one. By a trick, however, Quarlous, a “gamester” and a friend -of Winwife’s, succeeds in duping and eventually marrying the Dame, -and although Trouble-all discovers the ruse, all ends happily. It will -be seen, when a sketch of the madman is attempted on another page, how -carefully the lunatic is portrayed. - -It is needless to examine all the comedies in which the madman is more -intricately interwoven with the plot than in “Bartholomew Fair,” for -the work is seldom done with any appreciable dramatic skill, or with -the least vestige of sympathy. The plot of “The Mad Lover,” a play -in Fletcher’s worst style, will serve as a typical example. Madness -here forms the basis and theme of the plot. Memnon, a valiant general -somewhat advanced in years, albeit a blunt, uncourtly fellow, has -returned from his victories to the Court of Paphos. He falls in love -with Calis, the King’s sister, who is herself in love with Memnon’s -brother, Polydore. The General proposes in truly singular fashion; his -courtship begins and ends with three remarks: “I love thee, lady,” -“With all my heart I love thee,” and finally, “Good lady, kiss me!” -Calis, supposing not unnaturally that he is mad, ignores him; when she -has left the room, the Mad Lover suddenly grows quarrelsome, talks -wildly, and declares that his suit shall succeed. Calis, re-entering, -is held up, and, growing fearful, tries to humour him, but he rushes -from her presence with wild threats. In the next act, we find him -contemplating death for the purpose of presenting his lady with his -heart. This announcement of his project sends more than one of his -friends to plead for him with the Princess. Meanwhile, Polydore, who -has overheard his brother entreating the surgeon to cut out his heart -and seen the surgeon beat a hasty retreat, concludes that the “cause is -merely heat” and contrives a double expedient. For Memnon he dresses -up another woman as the Princess, in the hope that he may be satisfied -with her; at the same time, he reports to Calis that Memnon has carried -out his threat and makes believe to present the General’s heart in a -cup together with some verses from her “dead” lover. This makes her a -little remorseful. But Memnon refuses to be deceived, and it is only -when Polydore himself pretends to be dead that the Princess is induced -to change her mind and marry Memnon. Instantly the Mad Lover becomes -sane, and all is well. - -Of the tragi-comedies into which this theme is introduced we may take -two—“The Lover’s Melancholy” and “Match Me in London”—as being -representative. Each shows some improvement on the “Mad Lover.” The -“Lover’s Melancholy” is based, as the name partly implies, on the -melancholy of Palador, Prince of Cyprus, whose love Eroclea has -“disappeared,” though in reality she is present in disguise during the -whole play. The plot turns on the situation caused by the heroine’s -secret presence. Among the disasters occasioned by her “loss” is the -madness of her father, Meleander; his recovery, in the fifth act, is -the best part of that act, the Prince having rediscovered his love long -before (iv., 3.). Dr. Ward considers that the melancholy of Palador -“recalls Hamlet.”[56:1] The young Prince is certainly an interesting -character, and the curtness of his exclamations and replies, together -with the natural grace of his disposition, afford quite a noticeable -contrast with the now coherent, now raving old father. Both characters -are intimately connected with the plot; and both present traits, as -will be seen, which are fully in harmony with their conditions. It only -remains to wish that Ford had not been inspired by Burton, and that the -zealous physician Corax had refrained from presenting the Prince with -that “trifle” of his “own brain,” to wit, the tedious and unnecessary -“Masque of Melancholy.” - -It may at first appear a violent anti-climax to come to Dekker’s “Match -Me in London.” Nevertheless the working into the plot of Tormiella’s -feigned madness is quite in the true dramatic spirit, and one scene -leaves us a little suspicious, as is so often the case with the -plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, of the influence of Ophelia. -Tormiella is a young shopkeeper’s wife whom the King tries to seduce; -he visits her in disguise and she is beguiled away, with the compliance -of her father. The situation develops thus: Malevento, Tormiella’s -father, rushes on the stage, crying out that his daughter has lost her -reason:[57:1] - - _Mal._ O royal Sir, my daughter Tormiella - Has lost her use of reason and gone mad. - - _King._ When? - - _Mal._ Not half an hour since. - - _King._ Mad now! now frantic! - When all my hopes are at the highest pitch - To enjoy her beauties! talk no more; thou liest. - - [_Enter Gazetto._ - - _Gaz._ May it please your Majesty— - - _King._ Curses consume thee—oh— [_Strikes him._ - - _Gaz._ It is dispatch’d, the Queen is lost, never to be found. - - _King._ Wave upon wave, - Hard-hearted Furies, when will you dig my grave? - You do not hear him, thunder shakes Heaven first. - Before dull earth can feel it:— - My dear, dear’st Queen is dead. - -The King is distracted. “Without a woman,” he says, he will himself -“run mad at midnight.” The physician is to use his “skill,” but if that -prove unavailing the King’s resolve is taken nevertheless. - - “I will marry - The lunatic lady, she shall be my Queen, - Proclaim her so.”[58:1] - -So saying, he leaves the room, and almost simultaneously Tormiella -enters. She plays the madwoman for some time before the physician; -but, discovering at length that he is in reality an agent for her -husband, she reveals her sanity to him, together with the reasons for -her assumption of madness. The action hurries on from this point with -increasing rapidity; and, after several plots have been thwarted, the -dead come to life and sinners are converted, after the approved manner -of romantic comedy. But enough has been said to shew how the somewhat -vulgar plot is given a startling and unexpected turn, at a point where, -to tell the truth, it is badly needed. The actual “mad scene” is -extremely short, but it serves a true dramatic purpose and is far from -being the worst thing in the play. We are a long way from the comic -scenes of the “Changeling” and the “Honest Whore” of Dekker himself. - -In these few pages we have briefly considered the places occupied -by mad folk in some of the most representative of our tragedies and -comedies. In many of them sublime passion is degraded for the most -vulgar of purposes; in many more there is little attempt to realise the -nature of insanity—mere surface work, a “writing down” to the lowest -type of contemporary play-goer. Such prostitution of art appears to us, -in the light of Shakespeare’s plays and of our own opinions, unworthy -and base. Yet it must not be forgotten that many of the “madhouse -scenes” of our plays contain much genuine humour which from the point -of view of the day was harmless and legitimate. And as we have already -agreed to take up, as far as possible, the position of the author -himself, we shall restrain our Puritanical or artistic indignation, -and pass on to consider our mad folk themselves, as men and women -rather than as puppets of a playwright, from the point of view not of -construction but of character. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[45:1] “King Lear,” v., 3, 313. - -[47:1] Taking the Play Scene (iii., 2.) as the crisis. - -[47:2] Indeed many critics find incipient madness in Lear’s conduct -even earlier, _i.e._ from the very beginning of the play. This view I -cannot hold; Lear’s actions in the early part of the play do not seem -to me to be the result of anything but the childishness of old age. The -King is quite responsible for his actions. If he were not, he would be -the one exception to Shakespeare’s practice in his tragedies. - -[48:1] Sh. Trag., p. 53. - -[56:1] Eng. Dram. Lit.: Vol. ii., p. 297. - -[57:1] “Match Me in London,” Act v., Sc. 1. - -[58:1] Ibid., v., 1. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY—(i.) THE MANIACS. - - “Whom if you’ll see, you must be weaponless.” - - (_The Honest Whore._) - - -In the division of our study upon which we have now entered, the -various figures of madmen will be considered under some five or -six headings. We shall naturally exclude the mere crowds of madmen -who enter the plays as lay figures rather than as personalities of -the drama. The largest of the remaining classes will be dealt with -first, namely, that which includes “maniacs,” or “madmen” in the -proper acceptation of the term. Next come the half-witted, who will -not detain us long; then the melancholiacs, who appear so frequently -that they demand a section to themselves; next those suffering from -hallucinations and delusions, who have not perhaps crossed the -border-line, or who exhibit abnormal symptoms which can hardly be -included in the term insanity, though they are very near it. Lastly, -there is a group of pretenders,—of whom Hamlet and Edgar are the -chief,—members of which attract our attention in several other plays. - -Greene’s Orlando, a rude and undeveloped character, whose frenzy is -quite conventional, may be briefly mentioned by way of prelude. His -ravings are composed mainly of scraps of classical lore: “Woods, trees, -leaves; leaves, trees, woods, tria sequuntur tria; ergo optimus vir -non est optimus magistratus, a peny for a pote of beer and sixe pence -for a peec of beife? wounds! what am I the worse? O Minerva! salve; -good morrow; how do you to-day? Sweet goddesse, now I see thou lovest -thy ulisses, lovely Minerva, tell thy ulisses, will Jove send Mercury -to Calipso to lett me goe?”[61:1] It will be seen that Greene has no -idea of making his madman anything more than a source of amusement. His -violence is noteworthy: more than once he “beats” those who listen to -his ravings. Scraps of incident like the fight with Brandimant, King of -the Isles, are highly significant: - - _Brandimant._ “Frantic companion, lunatic and wood, - Get thee hence, or else I vow by heaven, - Thy madness shall not privilege thy life.” - - [_Alarum. They fight. Orlando kills Brandimant._ - -The following dialogue, too, is delightfully naïve: - - _Enter Tom and Ralph._ - - _Ralph._ O Tom, look where he is! Call him madman. - - _Tom._ Madman, Madman. - - _Ralph._ Madman, Madman. - - _Orlando._ What say’st thou, villain? [_Beats him._ - -It only remains to add that after being treated for his disease by -Melissa, a witch—she sprinkles, among other things, many Latin verses -over him—Orlando recovers his sanity, and cries: - - “Sirrah, how came I thus disguis’d, - Like mad Orestes, quaintly thus attir’d?” - -A more serious study of insanity, in a work of that unbridled force -which characterised the University Wits, is Kyd’s portrayal of -Hieronimo and Isabella.[62:1] - -Hieronimo, Marshal of Spain, whose son Horatio has been murdered by -the King’s nephew, Lorenzo, is stricken with insanity as a result of -the shock; his lunacy is intermittent (closely akin to the disease -known as manic depressive insanity), but it is only right to add that -this result is largely due to the addition of certain scenes to the -play by another hand. Kyd represents Hieronimo as afflicted by a deep -melancholy which is only a later phase of his grief and in no way -prevents him from doing his ordinary duties; the scenes in which his -ravings are at their wildest are commonly attributed to Ben Jonson. It -is therefore of little use attempting to trace any regular development -of Hieronimo’s madness; a short account of it will suffice. - -It breaks out, not when entering the arbour “in his shirt, etc.,” he -first discovers his murdered son, but after he has cut him down from -the tree on which he has been hanged, and has lamented the murder with -his wife. All his ravings, as we are told later in the play, are of -Horatio. - - “His heart is quiet—like a desp’rate man, - Grows lunatic and childish for his son. - Sometimes, as he doth at his table sit, - He speaks as if Horatio stood by him; - Then, starting in a rage, falls on the earth, - Cries out ‘Horatio, where is my Horatio?’ - So that with extreme grief and cutting sorrow - There is not left in him one inch of man.”[63:1] - -At the conclusion of the scene the distracted father is made to recite -some Latin verses, usually attributed to Kyd himself. Hieronimo’s -“tragical speeches” do not again reveal a mind unhinged, until the -eleventh scene of the third act, where the interpolator is once more -busy. This, however, occurring as it does in Kyd’s part of the play, -where the Marshal is still sane, must not be mistaken for a sign of -madness. He utters the word “son.” In his disordered brain this starts -a train of bewildered reasoning. “My son, and what’s a son?”—he -debates the question dispassionately until he once more remembers his -loss. Then his grief breaks forth: he rants of Nemesis and Furies, -murder and confusion, and even in Kyd’s work we now see that “this man -is passing lunatic.” From this point onwards Hieronimo pursues his -course of revenge with all the dogged cunning of real madness. His -violence surprises the King, who is ignorant of its cause. He digs with -his dagger; he would “rip the bowels of the earth.” “Stand from about -me,” he cries to the courtiers, - - “I’ll make a pickaxe of my poniard - And here surrender up my marshalship; - For I’ll go marshal up the fiends in hell, - To be avenged on you all for this.”[64:1] - -The next scene—an interpolation—is the weirdest and perhaps the most -effective in the play. Tormented by delusions of spirits, yet hotly -denying his madness even while raving on all kinds of topics, Hieronimo -is confronted with a painter, Bazardo. Ever mindful of his cruel -bereavement, he entreats Bazardo to paint a picture of him with his -wife and son, to paint a murderer, “a youth run through and through,” -and—if he only could—“to paint a doleful cry.” At the end of this -scene Hieronimo is at his greatest, and, although in a more detailed -study of the play the manner of his revenge and his death would find -due place, we will be content to leave him here: - - “Make me curse,” +he cries,+ “make me rave, make me cry, - make me mad, make me well again, make me curse hell, invocate - heaven, and in the end leave me in a trance—and so forth. - - _Painter._ And is this the end? - - _Hieronimo._ O no, there is no end: the end is death and - madness! As I am never better than when I am mad; then, - methinks, I am a brave fellow; then I do wonders; but reason - abuseth me, and there’s the torment, there’s the hell. At the - last, sir, bring me to one of the murderers; were he as strong - as Hector, thus would I tear and drag him up and down.”[65:1] - -Hieronimo’s wife, Isabella, who is similarly afflicted by Horatio’s -murder, though she plays a much smaller part in the play, first “runs -lunatic” in a short scene with her maid. Here her talk is mere nonsense: - - “Why did I not give you gowns and goodly things, - Bought you a whistle and a whipstalk too, - To be revenged on their villanies?”[65:2] - -She seems sane enough, however, in the “Painte Scene,” and only appears -once again,[65:3] when she cuts down the accursèd arbour and, after a -long soliloquy, stabs herself. - -The comparatively rough sketches of Greene and Kyd—the first, in -order of time, of those under consideration—have been introduced thus -early into this chapter for the sake of contrast with the figures that -follow.[65:4] Kyd, in “The Spanish Tragedy,” almost certainly inspired -“Titus Andronicus,” and we may be fairly sure of his influence on -“Hamlet.” Now that we have examined the work of the instructor, let us -turn to Shakespeare’s maniacs and see how the pupil has bettered the -instruction. - -The most powerful character among the maniacs, by far the grandest -figure in our drama of insanity, if not indeed in the whole of -English drama, is King Lear. “Grandly passive”—the description is -Professor Dowden’s—“played upon by all the manifold forces of nature -and society,” he “passes away from our sight, not in any mood of -resignation or faith or illuminated peace, but in a piteous agony of -yearning for that love which he had found only to lose for ever.”[66:1] -This alone would make him a noteworthy figure, but he has far greater -claims on our admiration and wonder. He is as lovable, even in his -greatest weakness, as the most affectionate of all Shakespeare’s -characters, yet more terrible than his darkest villains. He takes -hold at once of our sympathy, our pity and our imagination, and the -tragic feelings evoked by the drama conflict in us with the more human -emotions roused by his own essential humanity. - -At the beginning of the play he is often said to be already insane, -especially by those medical writers who are somewhat inclined to -pervert Shakespeare in order to read in him their own opinions. “The -general belief is that the insanity of Lear originated solely from the -ill-treatment of his daughters, while in truth he was insane before -that, from the beginning of the play, when he gave his kingdom away.” -Thus Dr. Brigham, in the “American Journal of Insanity,” and thus more -than one of his kind. But if what they assert be true, and Lear is -really mad in the first scene of the play, then “King Lear” is not, in -the Shakespearean sense, a tragedy at all. Lear is not mad, however, at -this point, as an examination of the scene will shew. His apparently -arbitrary division of the kingdom has really been planned before the -opening of the play; the protestations of love on the part of his -daughters are only planned as an impressive setting for the bestowal of -the richest portion upon his best-loved child. Nor was it the King’s -original intention to live with each of his daughters in turn: “I loved -her most,” he says of Cordelia, “and thought to set my rest on her kind -nursery.”[67:1] His powers are indeed failing; his childishness, his -vanity, his wayward temper have more sway over him than of old; but -at the very worst his state is but one of incipient senile decay. His -daughters themselves recognise this. “’Tis the infirmity of his age,” -says Regan to Goneril, “such unconstant starts are we like to have from -him as this of Kent’s banishment,” and Goneril adds that they must -“look . . . to receive, not alone the imperfections of long-ingraffed -condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and -choleric years bring with them.”[68:1] Here, then, he stands, impatient -and passionate, “a very foolish, fond old man,” but sane in every sense -of the word. Only a physician could detect in his “unconstant starts” -a predisposition to insanity, with which, since it is not part of the -play, we need not concern ourselves. - -When the King next appears, his passion is for a time calmed, and his -state, apart from the short scene with Oswald (i., 4, 84, etc.), one -of tolerant indulgence. The caustic comments of the fool he listens to -and encourages; it is only when Goneril appears that his tone changes -to one of ill-concealed irritation. “How now, daughter! what makes that -frontlet on? Methinks you are too much of late i’ the frown.”[68:2] He -pierces the thin disguise of urbanity which cloaks her speeches, and -attacks with all the fierceness he can summon the ingratitude which it -conceals. It is by no chance that he strikes his head as he exclaims: - - “O Lear, Lear, Lear. - Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, - And thy dear judgment out.”[68:3] - -He invokes the most terrible of curses on his ungrateful daughter. -His words are here and there broken, but their sense is only too -clear. Hot tears escape him in spite of himself; his manhood he feels -to be shaken, and when alone with his Fool and the faithful Kent (now -disguised as “Caius” the servant), he feels that passion and shock have -done their worst. Even as he listens to the jests of the Fool, he knows -that the curse is coming upon him. The “self-consciousness of gathering -madness” breaks through all restraint: - - “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! - Keep me in temper, I would not be mad”[69:1] - -From this time onward his self-control grows less and less; try as he -will, he is unable to restrain his passion: - - “O how this mother swells up toward my heart! - Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, - Thy element’s below!”[69:2] - -But the passionate nature is reasserting itself and will not be kept -down. Sarcasm, tenderness, and anger alternate in his speeches; he -responds to the least sign of love, but anything less draws from him -the bitterest reproaches. He prays for patience and for the judgment -of Heaven to be manifested in his favour. Now he begins to approach -incoherence, and the abruptness which marks the matter as well as the -manner of his speech shews only too plainly the affection of his mind. -His state of mind is truly described as one of “high rage.” - - “No, I’ll not weep; - I have full cause of weeping; but this heart - Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, - Or e’er I’ll weep.—O fool, I shall go mad.”[70:1] - -It is from this point, though the physicians, with Dr Bucknill at -their head, deny it, that we can actually assert that Lear is insane. -Hitherto there have been signs that his madness was imminent, but it is -the scene on the Heath which is “par excellence,” the scene of Lear’s -madness. It is true that, as Dr. Bucknill says, he has “threatened, -cursed, wept, knelt, beaten others, beaten his own head.”[70:2] But -“the addition of a physical cause” marks the crisis of what Shakespeare -certainly means to be understood as insanity in the sense which that -term commonly bears. From this time predominates that symptom which is -so widespread in cases of insanity—the domination of an _idée fixe_. -After Lear has announced “My wits begin to turn”[70:3] (a statement of -itself not without significance), Edgar enters, disguised as Tom o’ -Bedlam. Lear mistakes him; the idea dominant in his mind comes to the -surface: “Didst thou give all to thy daughters? And art thou come to -this?”[71:1] - -However, the ravings of the King by no means continue incessantly from -this point. Indeed, in the presence of Edgar he becomes comparatively -tranquil, and henceforward periods of storm and calm follow in quick -succession. His speeches still contain much reason, and they have lost -little of their wonderful force. Edgar, appearing unclothed, is to -Lear an enviable object—“the thing itself.” Hence, through another -semi-delusion, he becomes a “learned Theban,” a “philosopher.”[71:2] -This delusion continually recurs, and is developed with much force and -even eloquence, but with less poetry. - -In the scene where Lear arraigns a pair of joint-stools as his supposed -daughters,[71:3] we can trace all the wanderings of the deluded mind. -In their “warp’d looks,” the King can read “what store (their) heart -is made on.” He resolves to have them tried for their cruelty. Some -people are standing about him. One (Edgar) is taken for a “robèd man -of justice.” Another (the Fool) is “his yokefellow of equity.” Kent -is “o’ the commission,” and must take his place beside them. Goneril -is arraigned first, and Lear takes his oath that “she kicked the poor -King, her father.” The joint-stool naturally makes no reply; her guilt -is thereby confirmed. “She cannot deny it.” The other sister is then -brought forward. But even as the self-constituted witness is about to -give evidence, the image vanishes from his mind; the delusion changes; -the criminal has escaped: - - “Arms, arms, sword, fire! Corruption in the place! - False justicer, why hast thou let her ’scape?” - -Now Edgar is again the object of a delusion; he is one of those scanty -hundred followers: “You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only -I do not like the fashion of your garments.” It is all so true, and at -the same time so pathetic! Edgar feels that he can hardly sustain his -disguise. - - “My tears,” +he says,+ “begin to take his part so much, - They mar my counterfeiting.” - -A long interval (according to Daniel, four dramatic days) has passed -before Lear again appears.[72:1] He is “fantastically dressed with wild -flowers” and is at first ignorant of Edgar’s presence. Now he is wild, -full of delusions, and certain of nothing. His mind first runs upon -soldiers and war: “There’s your press-money. That fellow handles his -bow like a crow-keeper.”[72:2] Now he recalls a scene with Goneril, now -the terrors of the storm on the heath, now some memory of his former -greatness. “Is’t not the King?” asks Gloster, and the reply of Lear -rings true: - - “Ay, every inch a king. - When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.”[73:1] - -“Matter and impertinency,” to quote the words of Edgar, mingle in his -speech. He seems no longer to suspect the nature of his disease. He -only knows that he needs surgeons: “I am cut to the brains!” Mr. Cowden -Clarke aptly draws the reader’s attention to this phrase,—expressive -of what acute physical and mental suffering!—together with such -phrases as “I am not ague-proof” and “Pull off my boots, harder, -harder.” It is in this scene, perhaps, more even than in the Storm -Scene of the third act, that we feel the acutest distress at the King’s -sad condition. - -We are relieved at length. When next we meet King Lear,[73:2] it is -at Cordelia’s tent in the camp. Gentle hands are ministering to him; -loving faces are near to welcome him, when he shall awaken from the -sleep which it is hoped will be his cure. He awakens to the sound of -“soft music,” growing gradually louder—how different from the “chimes -of Bedlam”!—and when Cordelia speaks to him, he believes her to be a -spirit from Heaven. Then at last he wakes—still infirm of mind, but -faintly conscious of infirmity, not frantic with physical and mental -pain. Everything in this scene is touched with the most delicate -pathos; Lear’s wistful plea: - - “Do not laugh at me, - For, as I am a man, I think this lady, - To be my child Cordelia.”[74:1] - -Cordelia’s heart-felt reply: - - “And so I am, I am.”[74:2] - -Kent’s loyal assertion that his master is in his “own kingdom,” and the -old father’s final - - “Pray you now, forget and forgive,”[74:3] - -as if he were hardly convinced even yet that Cordelia’s end was not -revenge. - -With such tender care as might now have been his lot, the old King -would surely have recovered something like his former state of mind. -But this is not to be, and our dramatic selves at least will not wish -that it should be so. When Lear enters, with Cordelia dead in his arms -and the rest following behind, we feel perhaps as nowhere else his -tragic greatness. One wrathful speech, one tender reminiscence, and -another of the fiercest: - - “Her voice was ever soft, - Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman, - I kill’d the slave that was a-hanging thee.”[74:4] - -A few questions and replies, and the catastrophe is upon us. Exquisite -sympathy creates exquisite pathos: - - “And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life! - Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, - And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, - Never, never, never, never, never!— - Pray you, undo this button; thank you, sir,— - Do you see this? Look on her—look—her lips— - Look there, look there!”[75:1] - -Lear is dead; he has rejoined his belovèd daughter; he has been -“dismissed with calm of mind, all passion spent.” What greater -consummation could we desire? - -There is little need to insist upon the grandeur and pathos of Lear, -and, happily, with our next subject of study, the need is equally -small. Yet Shakespeare’s presentation of Ophelia is utterly different -from his presentation of Lear. The madness of Lear we are able to trace -from its first symptoms; we follow it through all its involutions and -are present at its partial cure. Ophelia we see but once after she -“becomes distract.” A brief word of introduction, and she appears; a -few broken words and snatches of song and she has left us. A brief -re-entry and she has passed us again, and all is over—all save the -report of her death. Lear is an old man, predisposed to insanity by -a passionate temper and a mind weakened by old age. Ophelia is a -young girl, a “Rose of May,” whose loss of reason excites in us not -so much terror as sheer pity. With Lear the crisis is brought on by -thwartings of the will, followed by the severest physical exposure and -shock. With Ophelia the cause is mental shock following the deepest -of sorrows. Lear dies half-sane; Ophelia is never restored to her -right mind,—her death is not shewn to us like that of Lear. There is -a reason for these differences. Ophelia is no tragic personage and -our sympathies are not to remain for long with her misery. She must -disappear, lest she should destroy all our interest in the main plot. -And thus we must not expect to find the depth in her character which we -find in the character of Lear. - -Before her affliction wins for her our sympathy, Ophelia stands in our -estimation far below Shakespeare’s other heroines. Perhaps it would -not be too much to say that at times, like Isabella in “Measure for -Measure,” she is actually repellent, and for exactly the opposite -reason. She is passive and reserved, gentle to the point of weakness, a -tool in the hand of any man who could gain her confidence. This is the -reason for her mind giving way. Throughout her life, she has leaned for -support, not on her own strength, but upon the strength of her father -and her brother. Her father is murdered, her lover distracted, her -brother far away—and Ophelia herself is unable to stand alone. - -We may have blamed her for a too ready acquiescence in her father’s -prying schemes and despised her for throwing over her lover, but -whatever her sins, they are more than atoned for by the treatment to -which she has to submit at the hands of Hamlet himself; and when, in -addition to this, her father is killed and she loses her reason, we -feel that these calamities have been wholly undeserved. Thus, when -a Gentleman of the Court prepares the Queen for her sad entry, our -sympathy is entirely won: - - “She speaks much of her father; says she hears - There’s tricks i’ the world, and hems and beats her heart; - Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, - That carry but half sense.”[77:1] - -She is led in, crooning to herself, chattering incoherently of her -sorrows, confusing them in her mind and mingling them together in her -speech. Her songs have been censured for their alleged grossness. Small -wonder if they should contain reminiscences of her lover’s foul talk, -yet for the most part these ditties are mere expressions of piercing -sorrow at his supposed untimely madness. First she is clearly recalling -the scenes where he has disdained her. - - “How should I your true love know - From another one?”[77:2] - -But as the Queen demands the meaning of the song, its theme changes: - - “He is dead and gone, lady, - He is dead and gone; - At his head a grass-green turf, - At his heels a stone.”[77:3] - -And then, as the King comes in, she confuses the two calamities, and -sings, as though her lover and not her father were dead: - - “White his shroud as the mountain-snow . . - Larded with sweet flowers; - Which bewept to the grave did go, - With true-love showers.”[78:1] - -The King’s voice seems here to divert the broken current of her -thoughts and she wanders again. Then, returning to the tragic -theme with the most piteous of cries: “We must be patient; but I -cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i’ the cold -ground,”[78:2] she goes out. - -Before long Lærtes returns, furious with rage at his father’s violent -end and eager to be revenged “most throughly” on his enemies. He has -not heard of his sister’s affliction and is dumbfounded, as at this -moment she returns. Then he realises what has taken place and all his -anger melts into a terrible grief: - - “O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt - Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye . . . - O heavens! is’t possible a young maid’s wits - Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?”[78:3] - -Her pitiful condition soon reinforces his determination to be revenged: -“This nothing’s more than matter,”[78:4] he exclaims, and the -spectator re-echoes the cry as he gazes on the enraged brother and the -afflicted girl whose sorrows have been more than she can bear. In her -madness there is not a jot of the maniacal frenzy which is the great -characteristic of Lear. Her nature was ever too gentle: - - “Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, - She turns to favour and to prettiness.”[79:1] - -Though of a wholly different nature from the insanity of Lear, -Shakespeare’s delineation of Ophelia’s madness is in its way quite as -masterly. We see nothing of it in its earlier stages—indeed it would -seem to have been of sudden birth and to have developed quickly. In -her ravings there is none of that force and pregnancy which marks the -invective of Lear; two fixed ideas dominate her mind and constantly -recur to it; apart from these she is totally incoherent. We are told, -by those who know, that her insanity takes the form of erotomania, “the -fine name for that form of insanity in which the sentiment of love is -prominent;”[79:2] we should suppose, indeed, from what she says, that -her father’s death is its chief cause, as the King and Queen naturally -think also; but this can hardly be assumed, for we cannot say how far -she confuses the two causes of her affliction. - -The Queen’s account of the death of Ophelia is in keeping both with -the tone of the “mad scene” and with the nature of Ophelia’s malady. -Exquisitely pathetic, it tells how the distraught girl, obeying a -common instinct of the insane for floral decoration (an instinct which -we also find in “King Lear”) clambered with “fantastic garlands,” on to -a willow which overhung a stream. Mad folk are notoriously regardless -of danger, and Ophelia’s rashness led to a premature grave: - - “An envious sliver broke; - When down her weedy trophies and herself - Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, - And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up; - Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, - As one incapable of her own distress, - Or like a creature native and indued - Unto that element: but long it could not be - Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, - Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay - To muddy death.”[80:1] - -It will be seen that Shakespeare’s Ophelia, though not in the technical -sense a tragic character, is essentially a character of tragedy, for -it would be only in the gravest and most pathetic of tragi-comedies -that scenes so magnificently portrayed as those of Ophelia’s madness -and the report of her death could be allowed to appear. And in no case -could we witness with equanimity her restoration to complete sanity. -The character was apparently a popular one on the Elizabethan stage and -in more than one contemporary play there are resemblances to it which -are so marked as to make a conjecture of mere coincidence impossible. -We are now to consider a personage similarly conceived, but treated -with none of the “high seriousness” of Ophelia and in altogether a -lighter vein—and introduced into a comedy. This character (that of -the ‘Gaoler’s Daughter’ in ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen,’ probably the work -of Shakespeare and Fletcher) is certainly one of the imitations of -Ophelia. It is with equal certainty the work of Fletcher—indeed, the -present writer is only prepared to admit Shakespeare’s hand at all in -two or three scenes, and these are entirely concerned with the main -plot, whereas the story of the Gaoler’s Daughter is a side issue, -and she never appears on the stage at the same time as the Two Noble -Kinsmen themselves. The nature of Fletcher’s imitation—we might almost -say his caricature—of Ophelia will best be seen from a brief account -of the various scenes in which the Gaoler’s Daughter appears. - -The main plot embodies the well-known story of Palamon and Arcite -and their love for the fair Emilia. It will be remembered that in -Chaucer’s version of the story it was “by helping of a freend” that -Palamon escaped from prison; in our play the friend is none other than -the daughter of the gaoler. She is prompted to do this service by a -hopeless and entirely unrequited love for the unfortunate prisoner, -which helps to drive her to distraction. The exact nature of her malady -is somewhat doubtful, and the author is not concerned to make it clear. -One suspects that he was none too clear on the subject himself. The -Doctor, who, unlike Shakespeare’s physicians, is a rather incompetent -fellow with a very competent tongue, says that her disease is “not an -engraffed madness, but a most thick and profound melancholy.”[82:1] -Various other references, however, suggest mania rather than -melancholy, and as the girl is an obvious imitation of Ophelia, she may -best be considered here. - -The whole story of the development of her madness is told in those -portions of the play which form the underplot, and, in its first -stages, it is told with considerable skill. A “Wooer” is asking -the Gaoler for his daughter’s hand, and during the conversation -the daughter herself comes in and the talk runs on the noble -prisoners.[82:2] The daughter is full of their praises. “By my troth, -I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a grise above the reach of -report.” “The prison itself is proud of ’em; and they have all the -world in their chamber.” Then the two prisoners appear “above” and the -girl at once shews the nature of her interest—much as Portia, in “The -Merchant of Venice” is made to display her preference for Bassanio: - - _Gaoler_: “Look yonder they are! that’s Arcite looks out.” - - _Daughter_: “No, sir, no; that’s Palamon; Arcite is the - lower of the twain; you may perceive a - part of him.” - -The love which one has probably suspected here is openly revealed -in the fourth scene of the second act, which consists solely of a -soliloquy by the Gaoler’s Daughter. The course of her love is made -plain to us: first she admired him; finally, pity having sprung from -admiration and helpless love from pity, she - - “Extremely lov’d him, infinitely lov’d him.” - -Her love has been fed by the plaintive songs he sings and impassioned -by his kindness, his courtesy and a chance caress. On the next -occasion[83:1] we see her more sympathetically yet—her love has -achieved something, Palamon is free, and before long his deliverer is -to meet him with food. But though she wanders by night through the -forest, she is unable to find him. For two days nothing has passed -her lips save a little water, she has not slept, and her whole being -is alive with terror at the “strange howls” which seem to tell of her -hero’s untimely fate. “Dissolve my life!” she cries, with the dire -foreboding of the incipient lunatic, - - “Let not my sense unsettle, - Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself . . . - So, which way now? - The best way is the next way to a grave: - Each errant step beside is torment.” - -For a moment she disappears, only to re-enter[84:1] in a state -bordering on frenzy. Dawn has broken, and her search has been -unsuccessful: - - “Palamon! - Alas no! he’s in heaven—where am I now? - Yonder’s the sea, and there’s a ship; how’t tumbles! - And there’s a rock lies watching under water; - Now, now, it beats upon it; now, now, now, - There’s a leak sprung, a sound one; how they cry! - Spoom her before the wind, you’ll lose all else; - Up with a course or two, and back about, boys; - Good night, good night; ye’re gone. I’m very hungry: - Would I could find a fine frog! he would tell me - News from all parts o’ the world; then would I make - A careck of a cockle-shell, and sail - By east and north-east to the King of Pygmies, - For he tells fortunes rarely.” - -She leaves us again, breaking into the first of her mad songs: - - “For I’ll cut my green coat a foot above my knee; - Hey nonny, nonny, nonny.” - -Up to this point the character of the Gaoler’s Daughter is not unworthy -of Shakespeare, but Fletcher could not keep at so high a level for -long. More than any of his contemporaries he creates mad folk for the -purpose of embellishing his comedies; in this play, having developed a -situation with many fine capabilities, he proceeds to rush in and spoil -his own work in the worst possible way. The luckless girl is introduced -into a rustic scene[84:2] and made to sing for the delectation of -some peasants, to exchange coarse banter with them, and even to join -in their morris. From this time forward the underplot is hopelessly -degraded, both by its being drawn out to an absurd length and by its -ending in the coarsest of scenes which leads to what we are asked to -believe is the girl’s complete restoration to sanity. - -The Wooer first acquaints the Gaoler with his sweetheart’s -complaint.[85:1] We learn that it has been preceded by the natural -irritation which is common in such cases, and that she has answered her -father’s questions: - - “So childishly, - So sillily, as if she were a fool, - An innocent.” - -Since we have last seen her, her senses have quite gone. She constantly -repeats phrases which tell of her trouble—“Palamon is gone,” “Palamon, -fair Palamon,” and the like. She even plagiarises Desdemona, and -sings nothing but “Willow, willow, willow.” She has been playing and -garlanding herself with flowers; now she weeps, now smiles, now sings; -reckless of danger, she sits by a lake, and attempts to drown herself -at the Wooer’s approach. She appears at length[85:2] and carries on -the same kind of conversation, fancifully constructing long trains -of imagination from the smallest incidents. While ever and anon the -theme of Palamon recurs: he is still in love with her—“a fine young -gentleman,” and he “lies longing” for her in the wood. - -This her father reports to the Doctor: “She is continually in a -harmless distemper, sleeps little; altogether without appetite, save -often drinking; dreaming of another world and a better; and what -broken piece of matter so e’er she’s about the name Palamon lards -it.”[86:1] The Doctor is out of his depth. He understands little of -the mind diseased, holding the popular notion that it is “more at some -time of the moon than at other some,” and confessing that he “cannot -minister” to her “perturbed mind.” The remedy which he proposes is -of the crudest. The Wooer is to dress as if he were Palamon, satisfy -all the girl’s desires, and wait for her to return to her right mind. -Both Wooer and Gaoler protest against the extreme application of this -“cure,” but the Doctor is so insistent that they give in, and when in -the last scene Palamon enquires after the girl who procured his escape -and who, he has heard, has been ill, he is told that she is - - “well restor’d - And to be married shortly.”[86:2] - -It is unnecessary to dwell on the cure, for long before this stage the -story has lost all semblance of probability. - -The inferiority of the Gaoler’s Daughter to Ophelia is as patent as -that of the false to the true Florimel of Spenser’s “Færie Queene.” -A little more skill on the part of the author and a great deal more -restraint would, no doubt, have effected an enormous improvement, -but it is unlikely that Fletcher could ever have made us take the -same interest in the Gaoler’s Daughter as we take in Ophelia. She -is quite unnecessary to the plot, and would require far greater -depth of characterisation before she could appeal with any force to -our sympathies. Had this been done, the taint of the comic and the -coarseness removed, the ravings lessened and the execrable character -of the Doctor changed, we might have had another Ophelia and not an -exaggerated and debased imitation. - -Whatever the nature of the madness of our last subject, the affliction -of Penthea, in Ford’s “Broken Heart” is certainly acute melancholia. -She is dealt with here for the sake of contrast with the two preceding -characters. “The Broken Heart,” as far as its “mad-scenes” are -concerned, has certainly more in common with “Hamlet” than with “The -Two Noble Kinsmen.” It is a tragedy of more than usual gloom, and the -scenes in question are marked by a subdued restraint quite absent -from the “Two Noble Kinsmen.” Penthea talks much more coherently than -either Ophelia or her ape; and though there is a distinct want in her -speeches of that colour which so marks the other two plays, she is much -nearer Ophelia in spirit and essentials than the girl for whom Ophelia -actually stood as a model. - -The story, so far as it concerns Penthea, is this: She is in love with -Orgilus, son of a counsellor to the King of Laconia, but has been -compelled to marry Bassanes, a jealous nobleman whom she detests. Her -brother Ithocles’ love for the King’s daughter, Calantha, becomes known -to Penthea, who, in spite of her brother’s cruelty to her, tries to -bring about their union; when she is dead, however, her lover stabs -Ithocles and the Princess dies of a broken heart. Penthea’s situation, -when in the second act she has an interview with Orgilus, is this: she -is contracted to Bassanes, and though she loathes him and will have no -more to do with him than she can help she will not consent to break the -bond of marriage. Her loss of reason, which terminates in her death -in the fourth act, is one of the main factors of the series of events -which leads up to the impressive final situation. - -The scenes which portray the melancholy and distraction of Penthea are -much superior to the others in which she appears, by reason of the -irresistible sympathy which they inspire. We are not greatly enamoured -of the unhappy girl in the first scenes; her character is somewhat -slightly drawn, and, as one commentator puts it, there is “a trace of -selfishness in her sorrow, which operates against the sympathy excited -by her sufferings.”[89:1] This is dispelled in that touching scene -(iii., 5), where Penthea pleads with Calantha on behalf of her brother. -Her plaintive farewell to life, in the same scene, is not less touching: - - “Glories - Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams - And shadows soon decaying; on the stage - Of my mortality my youth hath acted - Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length - By varied pleasures sweetened in the mixture, - But tragical in issue . . . - . . . You may see - How weary I am of a lingering life, - Who count the best a misery.” - -When she next enters “with her hair loose” (iv., 2), Bassanes and -Orgilus are engaged in a violent quarrel. She is followed by Ithocles -heart-broken like Shakespeare’s Lærtes, begging her to look up and -speak to him: - - “Your Ithocles, your brother, - Speaks t’ ye; why do you weep? Dear, turn not from me.” - -The sight moves all to pity or remorse, save only Orgilus, whose bitter -sarcasm, when rebuked by Ithocles, turns to a dreadful thirst for -revenge. But the afflicted girl recks nothing of this. Loss of sleep -and a voluntary fast have combined with her heavy sorrows to produce -the inevitable result; her depression has deprived her of her reason -and she is sinking into her grave: - - “There’s not a hair - Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet, - It sinks me to my grave: I must creep thither; - The journey is not long.” - -“Her fancies guide her tongue,” but the burden of her talk is the -subject of marriage, child bearing, infidelity, and true love. Her -resolve to die by starvation is certainly the project of a disordered -brain, though Mr. Saintsbury treats it as if it were not, and censures -the character as unnatural![90:1] Assuming that - - “There is no peace left for a ravished wife - Widowed by lawful marriage,” - -she declares that her blood shall - - “be henceforth never heightened - With taste of sustenance,” - -and falls fainting into her attendant’s arms. The subsequent account of -her death[90:2] is the more pathetic by reason of its brevity: - - _Philema._ “She called for music, - And begged some gentle voice to tune a farewell - To life and griefs; Christalla touched the lute; - I wept the funeral song. - - _Christalla._ Which scarce was ended - But her last breath sealed up these hollow sounds, - ‘O cruel Ithocles and injured Orgilus’ - So down she drew her veil, so died.” - -The presentation of Penthea’s madness is one of the few examples of a -truly artistic treatment of the subject, and “The Broken Heart” is -one of the few post-Shakespearean plays which with some touches by -the Master-hand might have become a really great romantic tragedy. -Penthea is, to tell the truth, about as far inferior to Ophelia as -she is superior to the Gaoler’s Daughter. The partly unsympathetic -presentation of her character in the first part of the play, the lack -of picturesqueness and relief from the gloom of the tragedy, the -suspicion of melodrama in the surrounding scenes and the involved -nature of the plot—all these combine to place Penthea on a lower level -than Ophelia. And, in addition, she is less important and hence less -striking from a purely dramatic point of view. - -Something has already been said of the plot and the personages of “The -Lover’s Melancholy,” but the melancholy of Palador and the madness -of Meleander may be briefly considered here as furnishing additional -examples of Ford’s treatment of the subject. Palador’s melancholy, -which gives the title to the piece, seems to be largely temperamental -and scarcely a case for the physician, though Corax, his medical -adviser, goes to some pains to “cure” it, and is in consequence, -hailed as a “perfect arts-man.”[91:1] The Prince’s melancholy is thus -described: - - “He’s the same melancholy man - He was at’s father’s death; sometimes speaks sense, - But seldom mirth; will smile, but seldom laugh; - Will lead an ear to business, deal in none; - Gaze upon revels, antic fopperies, - But is not moved; will sparingly discourse, - Hear music; but what most he takes delight in - Are handsome pictures.”[92:1] - -His melancholy apparently began at his father’s death and was increased -by the disappearance of Eroclea. We need not stay long over him. -Corax, who is apparently a man of many theories and much resource, -presents the Prince with a Masque,[92:2]—already mentioned—in which -madmen of various sorts pass over the stage and make speeches. The -last of these persons is Palador’s lost love in disguise who appears -as “Love-Melancholy.” How far the Prince’s malady is relieved by this -is uncertain; but the form of “Parthenophil” arouses memories and the -re-appearance of Eroclea in the next act is the real “potent” which -restores the melancholy lover. - -The madness of Meleander, Eroclea’s father, is more interesting. He -has, so far as we know, no sort of predisposition to insanity, which -comes upon him following a cloud of troubles—he has been accused of -treason, his lands have been seized and his daughter has disappeared. -We are informed by our physician that his affliction is not madness; it -is - - “His sorrows— - Close-griping grief and anguish of the soul— - That torture him.”[93:1] - -Yet we can find in Meleander all those “signs” which by now we are -beginning to associate with insanity. The unfortunate man “sleeps -like a hare, with his eyes open,” he groans, “thunders” and “roars,” -and his “eyes roll.” He talks wildly, yet at times coherently, knows -his daughter Cleophila, enquires “Am I stark mad?” His maniacal -excitability displays itself in his laughter, “the usher to a violent -extremity.”[93:2] The reaction soon follows; he faces those about him -and remarks: - - “I am a weak old man; all these are come - To jeer my ripe calamities.”[93:2] - -At times—and this is surely the greatest praise we can give him—his -ravings remind us of Lear’s, with their mingled sarcasm, pathos and -unconcealed rage. His brother’s son Menaphon approaches him with a -“Good uncle!” What, outside Shakespeare, can be more like Lear before -his eloquence goes and leaves his rage supreme, than Meleander’s -furious reply:[93:3] - - “Fools, desperate fools! - You’re cheated, grossly cheated; range, range on, - And roll about the world to gather moss, - The moss of honour, gay reports, gay clothes, - Gay wives, huge empty buildings, whose proud roofs - Shall with their pinnacles even reach the stars, - Ye work and work like moles, blind in the paths - That are bored through the crannies of the earth, - To charge your hungry souls with such full surfeits - As being gorged once, make ye lean with plenty; - And when ye’ve skimmed the vomit of your riots, - Ye’re fat in no felicity but folly; - Then your last sleeps seize on ye; then the troops - Of worms crawl round and feast; good cheer, rich fare, - Dainty, delicious!” - -How does Corax propose to cure such a patient as this? Spurred on -by the flatteries of Rhetias—“a reduced Courtier”—nothing daunted -by the picturesque report that Meleander “chafes hugely, fumes like -a stew-pot,”[94:1] he coolly explains his intention of out-Heroding -Herod—“We will roar with him, if he roar,”[94:1]—and suiting the -action to the word he “produces a frightful mask and headpiece.”[94:1] -Meleander enters, armed with a poleaxe and raving in a vein which must -have delighted the greediest of the groundlings. A battle of words -and mock actions ensues, and the madman is soon reduced to a state -of comparative calm. He lays down the poleaxe, and Corax removes the -mask. The physician then proceeds to minister to the mind diseased with -tales of his own supposed mental sufferings, assuming apparently that -like counteracts like in madness as in melancholy. This is to some -extent true, and Shakespeare rightly represents Lear as in a state -of comparative tranquillity when in the presence of Edgar. But Ford’s -play would seem to be inspired rather by a desire to please than by -a fidelity to real life. The concluding scene,[95:1] however, so far -as it concerns Meleander, is sufficient compensation, for again it -recalls “King Lear” in its general nature if not in matters of detail. -The madman has been put to sleep, his hair and beard have been trimmed -and his gown is changed. Music, as in “King Lear,” is playing, and a -song, full of delicate charm, is being sung by a Boy outside. At its -close Meleander awakens, confused and half-dreaming. He is inclined to -sleep again, but the physician hails him—somewhat boisterously, one -would think—and in spite of his patient’s brusque “Away, beast! let me -alone,” he succeeds in rousing him. The madness certainly appears to -have left him; he is now quite calm, though the burden of his troubles -still oppresses him. - - “The weight of my disease,” +he says,+ - “Sits on my heart so heavy, - That all the hands of art cannot remove - One grain, to ease my grief.” - -Corax has, indeed, in preparation, a cordial which is to effect this, -but it is reserved—not wholly for dramatic reasons,—to a fitting -climax. Successive messengers first bring the news that the Prince, -now happy (though the father knows it not) in the possession of his -love, has restored to Meleander all the honours he formerly enjoyed, -together with new honours and marks of favour undreamed of. Then at -last Eroclea is presented to him and his restored reason stands the -test of happiness. Explanations ensue; all part friends; and “sorrows -are changed to bride-songs.” - -It will be seen that Ford’s conception of madness is by no means a -low one; he has not debased it by making it a sport for those to whom -it is a thing to fleer and jest at; he has introduced it into comedy -indeed, but it must be remembered that Ford’s tragi-comedy is a wholly -different thing from the gross buffooneries of Fletcher, Dekker and -Middleton, and that the madness of Meleander, though resembling that -of Lear, is on a far lower scale. It rises now and then to unusual -heights, but remains at their exalted level for so short a time that we -never look at it seriously for long. The gloom is also lightened by the -antics of the whimsical Corax, whose triumphs of psycho-medical skill -would, no doubt, in happier times, have induced him to set up a private -Bedlam of his own! - -In considering Chettles’ “Tragedy of Hoffman”[96:1] we are met by an -initial difficulty of authorship, for the resemblance between this -play and “Hamlet,” as well as between Lucibella and Ophelia, would -suggest plagiarism. The question, however, is difficult to decide, -and can hardly be discussed here. Whatever be the solution, Lucibella -is a most effective character. To a certain degree her madness is -merely conventional. But there are numerous touches of real art in -her portrayal, and she is not degraded like the Gaoler’s Daughter in -“The Two Noble Kinsmen” by being made “a motley to the view.” On the -contrary, as one editor points out, Chettle surpasses Shakespeare by -making her, unlike Ophelia, directly instrumental in bringing about the -dénouement of the play. - -The madness of Lucibella is brought about by the murder of her lover, -Lodowick, through the agency of Hoffman. In her mad wanderings she -discovers the skeletons of Hoffman’s father, and of Prince Otho, for -whose death her lover’s murderer is also responsible. Eventually the -mischief caused by the first shock is undone by a second; Lucibella -recovers her reason. Hear her in her first ravings: - - “Oh [Oh] a sword, I pray you, kill me not, - For I am going to the river’s side, - To fetch white lilies and blue daffodils, - To stick in Lod’wick’s bosom, where it bled, - And in mine own . . . . - ‘_We must run all away, yet all must die_’ - ’Tis so;—I wrought it in a sampler. - ’Twas heart in hand, and true love’s knots and words, - All true stitch, by my troth, the posy thus— - ‘_No flight, dear love, but death shall sever us_.’ - Neither did that! He lies here, does he not?” - -She cannot make up her mind whether her lover is really dead or not. -Only conscious of a vague calamity, she cries: - - “Tell Lod’wick, Lucibell would speak with him! - I’ve news from heav’n for him, he must not die; - I’ve robb’d Prometheus of his moving fire:— - Open the door!—I must come in, and will; - I’ll beat myself to air, but I’ll come in!” - -So saying, she knocks violently at the door of the vault; those who -surround her fear that she will “do violence upon herself.” She -understands: - - “Oh, never fear me! there is somewhat cries - Within me, ‘No!’ tells me there’re knaves abroad; - Bids me be quiet, lay me down, and sleep.”[98:1] - -Her violence is noteworthy; three or four men attempt to hold her; but -she succeeds in freeing herself from them, and wanders abroad. - -When we next see her the second shock is at work and Lucibella is -returning to sanity. Mathias, Lodowick’s brother, still fears for her -life, having seen her “clamb’ring upon the steepness of the rock,” but -what she has seen in Hoffman’s cave has saved her mental life. She -talks still with the fierce sarcasm of mania. - -Shewing the skeletons, she cries: - - “Is it not like - I keep a princely house, when I have such - Fat porters at my gate.” - -Still, as before, she lards her speech with scraps of song: - - “Here, look here! - Here is a way goes down! - Down, down, down, - Hey down, down!” - -This ditty is reminiscent of the descent to the cave, but the next -moment the memory of that is gone and only the consciousness of her -loss remains: - - “I sang that song while Lod’wick slept with me:” - -But at length, gradually and before our eyes, she recovers her lost -reason. Her speech to the Duchess of Luneberg shews what seems to be -the wandering of her still distraught mind. She displays the rich -clothes of Otho: - - “A poor maiden, mistress, has a suit to you, - And ’tis a good suit, very good apparel.” - -And she breaks into song again. But shortly afterwards she recognises -the two corpses, and as Lorick unfolds the ghastly story of Hoffman’s -crime the princess comes to her right mind again. At the end of the -scene she declares her complete sanity: - - “Nay I will come; my wits are mine agen, - Now faith grows firm to punish faithless men.”[99:1] - -For a moment now we may look at the madness of Cardenes, which enters -into the plot of Massinger’s “A Very Woman.” He is son to the Duke -of Messina and a rival of Don John Antonio, the Prince of Tarent, for -the hand of Almira, daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily. In a violent -quarrel with Antonio, who is enraged at not being the favoured suitor, -Cardenes is wounded—it is at first thought mortally, but he recovers, -though for a time he loses his senses. Eventually he is restored by a -physician named Paulo. We see very little of him in his mad condition. -First we learn that his disease is - - “Melancholy - And at the height, too, near akin to madness . . . - . . . His senses are distracted,” +says Paulo,+ - “Not one, but all; and if I can collect them - With all the various ways invention - Or industry e’er practised, I shall write it - My masterpiece.”[100:1] - -When Cardenes actually appears,[100:2] any maniacal excitement which -may have disturbed him has disappeared, and he appears to be in a state -of simple melancholia: - - “Farewell, farewell, for ever, name of mistress! - Out of my heart I cross thee; love and women - Out of my thoughts.” - -This is the burden of his discourse. Paulo encourages him by mild -half-contradictions: - - “And yet I’ve heard of many virtuous women.” - -But Cardenes’ new-learned philosophy remains unchanged: - - “Not many, doctor; there your reading fails you: - Would there were more, and in their loves less dangers.” - -The treatment recommended for this “strange melancholy” by the -physician, who is of good reputation and has received many gifts from -the Duke of Messina and others, is most noteworthy. He is no friend -of prevailing customs: The patient “must take air.” Though, as the -surgeons protest, “he hath lost already . . . much blood,” - - “To choke up his spirits in a dark room, - Is far more dangerous.” - -The remainder of the cure is not unlike the prescription of Corax. The -physician applies himself to all the patient’s “humours,” “checking the -bad and cherishing the good.” - - “For these I have - Prepared my instruments, fitting his chamber - With trapdoors, and descents; sometimes presenting - Good spirits of the air, bad of the earth, - To pull down or advance his fair intentions. - He’s of a noble nature, yet sometimes - Thinks that which, by confederacy, I do, - Is by some skill in magic.”[101:1] - -Who can wonder, for “Protean Paulo” with his quaint devices shews a -truly super-human versatility. At all events, he succeeds in gathering -the “scatter’d sense” of Cardenes, who thanks him profusely for having -been - - “My friar, soldier (and) philosopher, - My poet, architect, physician.” - -Paulo is indeed a disinterested and enthusiastic doctor, and is really -more interesting than Cardenes himself. - -The madness of Sir Giles Overreach is worth our notice, as being -introduced merely as a stage device, to emphasise the defeat of the -cruel extortioner and to serve as a climax to the comedy. The last -act of the play, into which he is introduced, shows every sign at -the outset of being the usual type of “last act” of a tragi-comedy. -Overreach, with “distracted looks,” has learned how he has been tricked -both by his creature, Marall, and by his daughter Margaret, who, -against his will, has married her lover, and now appears with him, -as his wife. The usurer is overcome by the double shock. “My brain -turns,” he cries. His rage passes all bounds. He attempts to kill his -daughter and threatens to make the house “a heap of ashes.” Flourishing -his sword, he raves of his courage; those standing around are, to his -disordered mind, - - “hangmen, - That come to bind my hands, and then to drag me - Before the judgment seat: now they are new shapes, - And do appear like Furies, with steel whips - To scourge my ulcerous soul. Shall I then fall - Ingloriously and yield? No! spite of Fate, - I will be forced to hell like to myself. - Though you were legions of accursed spirits, - Thus would I fly among you.”[102:1] - -He flings himself on the ground, foaming and biting the earth, only to -be disarmed, bound and carried “to some dark room.” He will be tended -by physicians from Bedlam, who will try - - “What art can do for his recovery.”[103:1] - -The climax could hardly be more effective, were it not for Lord Lovell, -who, before winding up the business of the play, thinks it necessary -to point the moral in the most objectionable manner, only surpassed by -Massinger himself elsewhere: - - “Here is a precedent to teach wicked men, - That when they leave religion, and turn atheists, - Their own abilities leave them.”[103:2] - -With Overreach may be compared Webster’s Ferdinand, who, after causing -his sister, the Duchess of Malfi, with her little children, to be -murdered, is driven by remorse to self-questionings and fears, and -thence to raving madness. Webster’s presentation of insanity is far -superior, in these scenes, to that by Massinger just cited. For the -ravings of Ferdinand come upon us with the greatest force after the -awful tragedy for which he has been responsible—we are spared the -comments of Justice Greedy on the situation. Further, the madness of -Ferdinand is what we should expect from one of so passionate a nature, -and its course, as will now be seen, is depicted with realistic force -to its terrible end. - -His insanity takes the form, so we are told, of lycanthropia,[103:3] -victims of which, we learn imagine themselves transformed into -wolves and do deeds of violence to dead bodies; the Duke has already -been found at night, has “howled fearfully” and seems in danger of -his life. When he enters, he is persecuted by a fear of his shadow, -which he tries unreasoningly to kill. The Doctor approaches him, but -can do nothing with his patient beyond extracting one expression of -fear: “Hide me from him; physicians are like kings, they brook no -contradiction.” But the timidity lasts but a moment, and Ferdinand -leaves the stage in a fit of insane passion. - -When he reappears, it is but for a moment; his words are few but tense, -and recall the terrible crime he has committed. “Strangling is a very -quiet death . . . So, it must be done in the dark: the Cardinal would -not for a thousand pounds the doctor should see it.” In the next scene, -he is more violent. Interrupting a struggle between Bosola, his bloody -instrument, and his brother the crafty Cardinal, he wounds them both, -in spite of the latter’s cry for assistance, and is himself stabbed by -Bosola, who stigmatises him as “thou main cause of my undoing.” In his -last moments he recovers something of his reason. - - “He seems to come to himself,” +says Bosola,+ - “Now he’s so near the bottom.” - -And in truth the last words which fall from the Duke’s lips reiterate -the remorse which he feels for his crime. - -As concluding examples of the presentation of the madman, in the most -usual sense of the word, may be taken two of Fletcher’s characters and -one of Jonson’s. Fletcher’s productions shall be considered briefly in -succession: they are “The Passionate Madman,” in the play, with that -sub-title, usually known as “The Nice Valour,”[105:1] and Shattillion -in “The Noble Gentleman.” - -“The Passionate Madman,” who has no name besides, is inspired, like -many of his fellows, rather by a desire to please the public than -by a passion for probability. His peculiar mania takes the form of -a succession of “fits,” characterised as the “love fit,” the “merry -fit,” the “angry fit” and so on. There is seldom any reason adduced -for the change from one state to another, which is probably governed -by the dramatic situation. There seems to be no authority for the -classification of insanity in so many compartments in this manner; -if the author ever thought about this at all, he probably arrived at -a generalisation of the most common attribute of mania—the violent -and rapid succession of emotions—in much the same way as Jonson -generalised traits of character into “humours.” - -The madman of this play is a kinsman to the Duke of Genoa. He makes -his appearance at the end of the first act,[106:1] coming on with a -wooden smile and making “a congee or two to nothing.” He selects a -courtier for the object of his affections, makes love to him as if to -a lady, and as the object of his choice is quite willing to sustain -the delusion, he works himself up to a great state of excitement. In -the next scene[106:2] it appears “by his flattering and his fineness” -that “he is still in his love-fit,” and his mistress, thinking it well -to humour him, disguises herself as Cupid and persuades him that if he -comes away she will make all ladies follow him. She really hopes to -cure him: - - “She keeps this shape. . . . - To see if she can draw all his wild passions - To one point only, and that’s love, the main point.”[106:3] - -She has every opportunity of trying, for at this moment the “love -fit” obligingly gives way to the “angry fit.” Galoshio, the clown, -has been “almost beaten blind” by the Passionate Madman, “twice -thrown down stairs, just before supper,” and “pluck’d and tugg’d by -th’ hair o’ th’ head about a gallery half an acre long.”[106:4] The -Passionate Lord, after giving this foretaste of his achievements, is -not long in appearing, “rudely and carelessly apparelled, unbraced -and untrussed,”[107:1] and followed by the Lady, still in disguise. -The fit would seem at first to be one of melancholy, which rejects all -the Lady’s blandishments and stigmatises those of her sex as “fair -mischiefs.” As Lapet, Galoshio’s master, approaches, the “furious fit” -succeeds. Lapet is struck down and discreetly shams death, while the -madman accompanies his truncheon-blows with wild snatches of song. -We see no more of our madman after this until the fifth act when the -“merry fit” has sway. The burden of his speech is “Ha! ha! ha!” and his -songs are wildly merry: he begins to be “song-ripe.”[107:2] The Lady -once more appears, followed by several others dressed as fools. But a -cure is unexpectedly wrought more quickly than she could accomplish it. -“The Soldier” (brother to Chamont, the chief character of the play) has -been insulted by the madman at an earlier stage in it, and, much to -the dismay of the Lady and her attendants, he now stabs the Passionate -Lord, and makes his escape. He only re-appears at the end of the -play, cured of his wound and at the same time of his madness. La Nove -explains this to the Duke: - - “Death cannot be more free from passions, sir, - Than he is at this instant; he’s so meek now, - He makes those seem passionate were never thought of; - And, for he fears his moods have oft disturbed you, sir, - He’s only hasty now for his forgiveness.”[108:1] - -There is little to add to this sketch, which is sufficiently -expressive. The Lord is not interesting, still less striking, as a -character; no attempt is made to introduce a vestige of reality into -the madness, and thus the comedy leaves us unmoved. We cannot even be -indignant at it—it is so feeble. - -Is it necessary to complete the story by adding that the Passionate -Lord marries the Lady? - -As a slightly different example of Fletcher’s work, we may consider his -“Noble Gentleman” and the madman Shattillion. We can diagnose his case -more readily than that of the Passionate Lord. He suffers from a kind -of persecutory delusion, being - - “strong opinion’d that the wench he lov’d - Remains close prisoner by the King’s command, - Fearing her title.”[108:2] - -At the same time, he believes that certain enemies have designs on his -life. Meeting his cousin Cleremont, he enquires of him his “faction,” -and being told: - - “I know no parties nor no factions, sir,” - -he commands him: - - “Then wear this cross of white, - And where you see the like, they are my friends; - Observe them well, the type is dangerous.”[109:1] - -A touch of the pathetic (often mingled with the comic), accompanies the -“poor, grieved gentlewoman” who once refused his suit and for love of -whom Shattillion’s mind became unhinged, who: - - “Follows him much lamenting, and much loving, - In hope to make him well.”[109:2] - -But, says Longueville, a courtier, - - “he knows her not, - Nor any else that comes to visit him.”[109:2] - -Shattillion is plainly created for a dramatic purpose. The main story -concerns the gulling of a gentleman named Mount-Marine by his wife, -who persuades him that the King has granted him many high honours, and -that he is Duke of Burgundy. Shattillion, whose delusions persuade him -that he has himself a claim to the crown, is worked into the plot with -considerable skill, and his quarrel in the fifth act with the “Duke” -and his servant unites the two plots with great effect. - -A short study of the “mad scenes” will shew the strength and the -weakness of this character. The particular form of his mania is brought -out very clearly. The madman is perfectly sure about the plots laid -for him; his friends are really enemies disguised to “sift into” his -words; _he_ “can see and can beware”; _he_ has his wits about him and -thanks Heaven for it! The burst of laughter with which the audience -would greet this assertion is at once hushed as the Lady laments the -o’erthrow of her lover’s noble mind; - - “That was the fairest hope the French court bred, - The worthiest and the sweetest-temper’d spirit, - The truest, and the valiantest, the best of judgment.”[110:1] - -She is remorse-stricken at being the cause of it all, and prays Heaven -to be merciful; she will do all she can to restore her lover to his -senses. - -A long interval elapses before Shattillion is again introduced.[110:2] -Now he has heard of the “new duke” and he is suspicious and curious, -so much so that he is gesticulating and enquiring about it in the -open street. The Lady appears and begs Madam Marine to take him into -her house “from the broad eyes of people.” She does so. Shattillion, -now believing that he is “betray’d” and about to be beheaded, is led -away giving his last instructions. Before long, we see him once more, -this time in Marine’s house, proving to Marine that he (Shattillion) -is of the blood royal, and but for the interference of his friends he -would seize Marine as a traitor. In the next act he persuades Jacques, -Marine’s old servant, that he too is in danger of his life, and drags -him into his house for shelter. As they go in, the Lady appears, and, -knocking at Shattillion’s door, is repulsed as another enemy. The -madman’s imagination goes so far as to see “some twenty musketeers in -ambush,” and he suspects his love of being their captain. Meanwhile -Jacques, disguised as a woman, is leaving the house, when his preserver -stops him, accuses him of being - - “A yeoman of the guard, - Disguised in woman’s clothes, to work on me, - To make love to me and to trap my words - And so ensnare my life.”[111:1] - -Jacques at length escapes, and after another adventure returns as -servant to the “Duke.” In this capacity he is forced into a fierce -quarrel with Shattillion, who, in his furious loyalty, seizes Marine -and throws him to the ground. Hereupon the Lady has a remedy to propose: - - “A strange conceit hath wrought this malady; - Conceits again must bring him to himself; - My strict denial to his will wrought this, - And if you could but draw his wilder thoughts - To know me, he would, sure, recover sense.” - -Longueville undertakes the charge. Assuring Shattillion that the King -has rewarded his loyalty, he presents to him the Lady, who, he says, -has been released from prison for his sake. Shattillion is overcome, -and after a few minutes falls asleep. Longueville knows that this is a -good sign: - - “His eyes grow very heavy. Not a word, - That his weak senses may come sweetly home.”[111:2] - -He wakes, indeed, still “weak and sickly,” but himself again. - -The general impression left by this comedy is, on the whole, pleasant, -that part of it concerned with Shattillion included. The antics of -the madman himself are certainly comic, especially on the stage, and -the lighter side of his mania is persistently put forward. The only -pathetic touch is, in fact, the genuine sorrow of his Lady. This -predominance of the comic may be regretted, though in a play of the -farcical nature of “The Noble Gentleman” little else could be expected. -However, the sound, realistic basis of the disease, together with -the simple and unassuming cure—which, nevertheless, would hardly be -successful in real life,—makes the treatment of Shattillion as far -superior to the treatment of the Passionate Lord as the one play is to -the other. Considered absolutely, the representation of Shattillion -is chiefly remarkable for its reality, its skilful weaving into the -plot, and its mingling of pathos with broad humour. On the other hand -the pathos would not be so artificial if the entrance of the lady were -somewhat less mechanical—we could almost certainly predict when she -will enter in the last two acts. Fletcher’s almost total blindness to -everything but the comic and its possibilities also detracts from the -effect of Shattillion, and the very obvious dramatic motive for his -introduction does not, on reflection, improve matters. - -We have now passed from the heights of tragedy, through its pathos, and -the ill-blended pathos and broad humour of inferior tragi-comedy to the -pure and simple inanity of “The Nice Valour”—a work which certainly -appears to be unfinished. In considering Shattillion, we have risen -as high as we can hope to do within the limits of comedy, and before -leaving the raving lunatic for another class of madman we must descend -slightly as we consider Ben Jonson’s comedy of “Bartholomew Fair,” and -his madman, Trouble-all. - -The plot has already been outlined, and it will be seen that the place -of the madman is an important one. Theoretically, he is of prime -importance to the play, since it is foretold that Dame Purecraft, who -has already had two suitors, shall “never have happy hour unless she -marry within this sen’night; and when it is it must be a madman,” and -it is Quarlous, dressed in Trouble-all’s clothes and affecting his -malady, who eventually marries her. As a matter of fact, the main -portion of the play is concerned with other things, and we only meet -our madman in the fourth act. From this point onward, the author shews -great ingenuity in his handling of him; the burden of his remarks -alone serves as a _point d’appui_ for the spectator (who by this time -is probably getting wearied), while the humorous situations which he -provokes, culminating in the acuteness of Quarlous and its success, are -largely responsible for the undoubted popularity of the comedy with -both reader and spectator. - -This is, of course, very much to the credit of a comedy which -professedly deals with low life; it is more to our purpose to -remark that as a picture of madness the character of Trouble-all is -exceptionally correct. Gifford’s note to Cunningham’s edition of Ben -Jonson remarks that “Even the trifling part of Trouble-all, in any -other writer than Jonson, would be thought deserving of praise for -its correct delineation of a particular species of insanity, too -inoffensive for fear and too slight for commiseration.”[114:1] Gifford -is right, both in what he states and in what he implies. We expect -correctness from Jonson and we are not disappointed. - -A sketch of the madman should make this clear. He was “an officer -in the court of pie-poudres last year and put out of his place by -Justice Overdo.”[114:2] His affliction is marked by the _idée fixe_; -he raves continually about the Justice, and will do nothing—not even -the simplest actions of daily life—without satisfying himself that he -has Overdo’s warrant for it. How true to life this feature is may be -read in any modern book on insanity. He appears first of all in the -fair, where Overdo is being put into the stocks: “If you have Justice -Overdo’s warrant,” he says, “’tis well; you are safe: that is the -warrant of warrants.”[115:1] He is walking to and fro, with all the -restless impatience of mania, demanding to be shewn Adam Overdo. In -his frantic wanderings he comes upon Dame Purecraft, who apparently -thinks him more suitable for her than any madman she has yet seen -and cries: “Now heaven increase his madness and bless and thank it.” -Trouble-all’s reply does not vary: “Have you a warrant? an you have a -warrant, shew it.”[115:1] Person after person presents himself but the -madman’s reply is always the same. Every conversation he interrupts -with his query, and, when he is ignored, he turns away in disgust. Once -he exasperates a watchman, who strikes him. The latent rage of the -lunatic shews itself, but the madman’s rationalisation first provides -it with an excuse: “Strikest thou without a warrant? take thou that.” -When Quarlous personates the lunatic[115:2] our author rightly depicts -him as only partially successful, though his end is nevertheless as -well reached as if he had been wholly so. He raves occasionally about -a warrant, but it is not hard to see his sanity peeping through the -veil of assumed madness. Much of his talk is comparatively coherent, -and beyond his occasional references to the warrant he makes no attempt -to play the madman. To turn his literal phrase into metaphor, he is -“mad but from the gown outward.”[116:1] Trouble-all himself, when -Quarlous’ purpose is accomplished, makes one furious entry, armed “with -a dripping pan,”[116:1] but he does no mischief, and soon disappears. - -Trouble-all is a noteworthy character, though a small one; yet, -for more than one reason, the character is less praiseworthy than -Fletcher’s Shattillion. Considerable care is shewn in the sketch, but -little or no sympathy; and, if madness is to be utilised in comedy, the -comic element should at least, as has been seen, be mingled with some -touches of pathos. As it is, any other character than the madman would -have served Jonson equally well, provided that it had supplied him with -the same dramatic advantages. When Overdo says: “Alas, poor wretch! -how it yearns my heart for him!” we believe him about as readily as if -Jonson had made the same remark in an “author’s footnote.” - -In one respect, and in one respect only, can any claim be made -on behalf of Jonson’s character to rank above Fletcher’s “Noble -Gentleman.” Fletcher makes us look at madness from the point of view -of the madman, and tries to put us in sympathy with him. We have -seen that he is only partially successful. Jonson, on the other hand, -treats madness in quite an objective way, uses it frankly for a -subsidiary dramatic purpose, and portrays his madman with the utmost -conscientiousness and care. It may be just a question—though the -writer himself does not think so—whether from the point of view of art -Jonson’s production is not the more praiseworthy. - -Be that, however, as it may, it is nevertheless absolute Ben Jonson! - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[61:1] From the Alleyn MS. - -[62:1] “Spanish Tragedy.” - -[63:1] “Spanish Tragedy,” iii., 12a. - -[64:1] “Spanish Tragedy,” iii., 12. - -[65:1] Ibid., iii., 12a. - -[65:2] Ibid., iii., 8. - -[65:3] Ibid., iv., 2. - -[65:4] Other examples of conventional madness abound. See page 151, -Note 1. (Ann Ratcliff, in “The Witch of Edmonton.”) Peele, in the “Old -Wives’ Tale,” presents us with a character, Venelia, sent mad by a -sorcerer, Sacrapant: - - She “runs madding, all enraged, about the woods - All by his cursèd and enchanting spells.” - -But, apart from this, she does nothing! - -[66:1] “Shakespeare, His Mind and Art,” p. 272. - -[67:1] “King Lear,” i., 1, 125-6. - -[68:1] “King Lear,” i., 1, 296, etc. - -[68:2] Ibid., i., 4, 207-8. - -[68:3] Ibid., i., 4, 292-4. - -[69:1] “King Lear,” i., 5, 50-1. - -[69:2] Ibid., ii., 4, 56-8. - -[70:1] “King Lear,” ii., 4, 285-9. - -[70:2] “The Mad Folk of Shakespeare,” p. 194. - -[70:3] “King Lear,” iii., 2, 67. - -[71:1] “King Lear,” iii., 4, 49-50. - -[71:2] Ibid., iii., 4 passim. - -[71:3] Ibid., iii., 6. - -[72:1] “King Lear,” iv., 6, 81, etc. - -[72:2] l. 85. - -[73:1] ll. 109-10. - -[73:2] “King Lear,” iv., 7. - -[74:1] “King Lear,” iv., 7, 68-9. - -[74:2] l. 70. - -[74:3] l. 84. - -[74:4] Ibid., v., 3, 272-4. - -[75:1] “King Lear,” v., 3, 305, etc. - -[77:1] “Hamlet,” iv., 5, 4, etc. - -[77:2] Ibid., iv., 5, 23, etc. - -[77:3] ll. 29-32. - -[78:1] “Hamlet,” iv., 5, 35, etc. - -[78:2] ll. 68-70. - -[78:3] Ibid., iv., 5, 155, etc. - -[78:4] l. 173. - -[79:1] ll. 188-9. - -[79:2] Ferriar, quoted by Dr. Bucknill, p. 155 (op. cit.) - -[80:1] “Hamlet,” iv., 7, 167, etc. - -[82:1] “Two Noble Kinsmen,” iv., 3. - -[82:2] Ibid., ii., 1. - -[83:1] Ibid., iii., 2. - -[84:1] Ibid., iii., 4. - -[84:2] Ibid., iii., 5. - -[85:1] Ibid., iv., 1. - -[85:2] Ibid., iv., 1, 104, etc. - -[86:1] Ibid., iv., 3. - -[86:2] Ibid., v., 2. - -[89:1] Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii., 300. The original criticism, as Dr. -Ward points out, is Gifford’s. Cf. the latter’s edition of Ford, vol. -i., p. 337. - -[90:1] “Elizabethan Literature,” p. 408. - -[90:2] “The Broken Heart,” iv., 4. - -[91:1] “The Lover’s Melancholy,” iii., 3. - -[92:1] Ibid., i., 1. - -[92:2] A similar device is found in Brome’s play, “The Antipodes,” -where, however, the physician uses the fantastic but less morbid device -of a “play within a play.” See page 136. - -[93:1] Ibid., iv., 2. - -[93:2] Ibid., ii., 2. - -[93:3] Ibid., ii., 2. - -[94:1] Ibid., iv., 2. - -[95:1] Ibid., v., 1. - -[96:1] Acted in 1602; first printed in 1631. - -[98:1] “Hoffman,” iv., 1. - -[99:1] Ibid., v., 2. - -[100:1] “A Very Woman,” ii., 2. - -[100:2] Ibid., iii., 3. - -[101:1] Ibid., iv., 2. - -[102:1] “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” v., 1. - -[103:1] Ibid., v., 1. - -[103:2] Ibid., v., 1. - -[103:3] “The Duchess of Malfi,” v., 2. - -[105:1] It is referred to, however, in the following pages as “The -Passionate Madman.” - -[106:1] “The Passionate Madman,” i., 1. - -[106:2] Ibid., ii., 1. - -[106:3] Ibid., iii., 1. - -[106:4] Ibid., iii., 2. - -[107:1] Compare “Hamlet,” ii., 1, 77, etc. - - _Ophelia_: “My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, - Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d, - No hat upon his head . . he comes before me.” - -[107:2] “The Passionate Madman,” v., 1. - -[108:1] Ibid., v., 3. - -[108:2] “The Noble Gentleman,” i., 2. - -[109:1] Ibid., i., 3. - -[109:2] Ibid., i., 2. - -[110:1] Ibid., i., 3. - -[110:2] Act iii., Sc. 2. - -[111:1] Ibid., iv., 3. - -[111:2] Ibid., v., 1. - -[114:1] p. 210. - -[114:2] “Bartholomew Fair,” iv., 1. - -[115:1] Ibid., iv., 1. - -[115:2] Ibid., v., 2. - -[116:1] Ibid., v., 3. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY. - -(ii.) IMBECILITY. - - “I ask’d her questions and she answered me - So far from what she was, so childishly, - So sillily, as if she were a fool, - An innocent.” - - (“_Two Noble Kinsmen._”) - - -Of the few sketches of imbeciles which we find in the drama under -consideration there is hardly one which can properly be called a -full-length portrait. As a class, the idiots come in for a fair -share of attention; the “fool” as well as the “madman” is shewn us -in the asylums of Fletcher and Middleton, but no dramatist seems to -have thought the tragic or the comic possibilities of the “lunatic -lean-witted fool” sufficiently promising to justify the inclusion -of him as a prominent character of a play. This is not altogether -surprising; the imbecile—we shall take the term as nearly as possible -in its precise signification[118:1]—was not considered as an ordinary -madman; he was treated like the half-developed creature he really was, -looked after more carefully than the madman, and trained in simple -things just like a child. So the fool occupied a subordinate place, in -drama as well as in life. - -The word “fool” as has been explained,[119:1] is used in our plays -in more senses than one, and a few characters who answer to the -description “simple,” “idiot” or “imbecile” may now be mentioned. They -demand little space, for, though serving a dramatic purpose, they have -little interest or importance in themselves. Nearest sanity is Pogio of -Chapman’s “Gentleman Usher,” whose half-witted condition seems to be -largely pose; it is a strange way of carrying out his own dictum that -“gentility must be fantastical.” Bergetto, too, in Ford’s play, “’Tis -pity she’s a Whore,” though consistently spoken of as “fool’s head,” -“dunce” and the like, could hardly be called anything more serious -than a foolish fellow. Jerome, in Chettle’s “Tragedy of Hoffman,” and -Cloten, the “empty purse” of Cymbeline, have both something of the -true congenital idiot about them. With Jerome, however, our judgment -is influenced more by impression than by anything he says or does in -the play. Hoffman and others call him an “idiot,” and he himself owns -“They say I am a fool,” after which he speaks of seeking out “my notes -of Machiavell.” But this is mere foolish talk, as, indeed, are most -of his speeches. In a quaint scene he addresses the people as their -King, but is outdone by a later speech of Hoffman’s, which he himself -solicits saying, “I charge you all, upon pain of death, that you hear -my cousin.” The action of a fool, indeed, but was it not also the -action of honest Brutus? Therefore we must cling to our estimate of -Jerome, framed from his own speeches, as justification for including -him in this category. Both the actions and the words of Shakespeare’s -Cloten are those of a man mentally deficient; Guiderius was not far -from the truth when he said: - - “not Hercules - Could have knock’d out his brains, for he had none”;[120:1] - -and everyone who knows him wonders - - “That such a crafty devil as is his mother - Should yield the world this ass.”[120:2] - -A quaint pair of simples may be seen in Lyly’s “Mother Bombie.” -Memphio, an avaricious old man, has a supposed son, Accius by name, -whom he wishes to marry to Silena; both parties being mentally -defective, the old man takes it for granted that their offspring will -be sane. Silena is described as “no natural fool”; and though this -would at first seem to be untrue, it becomes doubtful later if the -author had any very clear idea of the nature of her malady. She begins -by being “passing amiable, but very simple,” but before long her -condition approaches mania. Her first speech is typical: “My name is -Silena. I care not who know it, so I do not; my father keeps me close, -so he does; and now I have stolen out, so I have; to go to old Bombie -to know my fortune, so I will.” Candius, who listens to her, thinks -her at first a “fool,” but decides that as “so fair a face cannot be -the scabbard of a foolish mind,” she must be mad. In her meeting with -Accius, in the fourth act of the farce, she justifies this conclusion -by mistaking him for a “joint-stool.”[121:1] - -Before leaving the imbeciles, we must make a bare mention of -Shakespeare’s Caliban—bare, because we are hardly justified in calling -him a human being at all. The son of a witch, - - “A freckled whelp hag-born—not honour’d with - A human shape,”[121:2] - -he is only distinguished, as Coleridge says, from the brutes by his dim -understanding (bereft, however, of moral reason) and the absence in him -of all the instincts of absolute animals. Schlegel gives perhaps the -best account of Shakespeare’s creation when he says: “It is as though -the use of reason and human speech should be communicated to a stupid -ape.”[121:3] Such a being as this can certainly not be classed with -such “simples” and “fools” as have just been mentioned. - -To the ordinary reader of drama the word “fool” describes, not a -natural imbecile, but a peculiar type of character in the tragedy and -comedy of Shakespeare. The Shakespearean fool has a significance which -it would be out of place to dwell upon here; he is, however, speaking -generally, perfectly sane, and rather rich than defective in intellect. -Thus he has nothing in common with the “naturall fooles . . . suted in -long coats” mentioned by Nash,[122:1] and but little with the “fool” -of many a country village. For this strange character is most often a -half-demented fellow with a gift for making curt, cutting remarks, and -a tongue which, since its owner fears nobody, invariably vents whatever -his breast may forge. There would seem to be only one of Shakespeare’s -fools who is really half-witted, and that one is, of course, the fool -in “King Lear.” - -This point is well made by Dr. Bradley: “To suppose that the Fool is, -like many a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending -to be half-witted, is surely a most prosaic blunder. There is no -difficulty in imagining that, being slightly touched in the brain, -and holding the office of fool, he performs the duties of his office -intentionally as well as involuntarily—it is evident that he does -so. But unless we suppose that he _is_ touched in the brain, we lose -half the effect of his appearance in the Storm-scenes. The effect of -those scenes (to state the matter as plainly as possible) depends -largely on the presence of three characters and on the affinities and -contrasts between them; on our perception that the differences of -station in King, Fool, and beggar-noble, are levelled by one blast of -calamity; but also on our perception of the differences between these -three in one respect,—viz., in regard to the peculiar affliction of -insanity. . . . The insanity of the King differs from that of the -beggar, not only in its nature, but also in the fact that one is real -and the other simply a pretence. Are we to suppose then that the -insanity of the third character, the Fool, is in this respect a mere -repetition of the second, the beggar,—that it is _mere_ pretence? -To suppose this is not only to impoverish miserably the impression -made by the trio as a whole, it is also to diminish the heroic and -pathetic effect of the character of the Fool.”[123:1] If further proof -were needed it could be found in the expressions and the turns of -thought which characterise him throughout the play,—they are not the -expressions of mania, nor yet of perfect self-possession; they are -often, indeed, the expressions which one would expect of a feeble mind. -Can one suppose,—to take only one example—that any sane man, even in -the position of a Court fool, would insist, as mercilessly as the Fool -does in the first scenes, upon the ingratitude of Lear’s daughters? -None of Shakespeare’s other fools will be found to probe a wound so -deep, but it is exactly what one would expect from a Fool whose brain -is really slightly touched. It is true that he also diverts the King’s -attention from his troubles in the same scenes, but it is only to -return to them again with an even more piercing sting. - -Still further, if we assume the actual imbecility of the Fool, a flood -of light is at once thrown upon the question of his age—not that it -matters in the least what his age is, but some critics have found a -difficulty in reconciling the references which seem to make him now -a boy, now a man. He is, in fact, a man, but his feeble intellect, -together perhaps with a certain physical frailty, causes him to be -treated occasionally as a boy, much in the same way that Antonio -is treated by Lollio in the “Changeling.” We need not stay longer, -however, to defend this view, for, as Dr. Bradley says: “Arguments -against the idea that the Fool is wholly sane are either needless or -futile; for in the end they are appeals to the perception that this -idea almost destroys the poetry of the character.”[125:1] - -Alone, then, in this division of our subject, we place the Fool of -“King Lear.” Demented persons may occur here and there in our plays -(such is Cassandra in “Troilus and Cressida”) and there may even be -some congenital imbeciles (as Cloten in “Cymbeline”). But such cases -of dementia are hard to distinguish from those of mania. In both -cases—especially in the second—it is often hard to say whether or -no the author intended the idea of idiocy to be conveyed. So Lear’s -Fool remains unrivalled and we are glad of it. For nowhere in drama is -there a more delicate intermingling of laughter and tears, of terror -and pathos, than in this play of “King Lear.” The Fool needs no more -lengthy description. To see him (whether as we watch or as we read) -alone suffices, and nothing else will do so. When we have looked on -him, we have seen “sunshine and rain at once”; there is no “better way.” - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[118:1] Strictly speaking, the insanity of the imbecile is congenital; -the general conformation of his brain is faulty, and the mental -phenomena of his condition are for the most part “dissociated from -active bodily disease.” (See Encyl. Brit., s.v. Insanity.) - -[119:1] Above, p. 37 ff. - -[120:1] “Cymbeline,” iv., 2, 114. - -[120:2] Ibid., iv., 1, 57. - -[121:1] Cf. “Lear,” iii., 6, 54. The expression was proverbial, it is -true. - -[121:2] “Tempest,” i., 2. - -[121:3] It is interesting to compare the higher conception of Caliban -seen in Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos,” where, though the brute -sprawls “with elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,” in the -“cool slush,” he nevertheless reasons vaguely upon such problems as the -existence of evil, of pain, and of a law governing the universe. - -[122:1] In “Have with you to Saffron Walden.” The “fool’s coat” is -often mentioned in our plays. - -[123:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” pp. 311-12. - -[125:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” p. 312. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY. - -(iii.) MELANCHOLY. - - “Many new and old writers have spoken confusedly of it, - confounding melancholy and madness.” - - (_Burton: “Anatomy of Melancholy.”_) - - -The representation of “melancholy” and of the disease which we know -as “melancholia” was extremely common in seventeenth century drama. -Its popularity with playwrights of all kinds can be traced to several -causes. In the first place it gave ample opportunity for introducing -poetry of no mean order, which seems to have been more popular on the -stage a few centuries ago than it is to-day. Then “melancholy” was -commonly associated with unrequited love, and the sad lover has always -been a favourite character both in comedy and in tragedy. Again, a -hero or heroine afflicted with “melancholy” was, after all, in the -seventeenth-century acceptation of the term, quite sane. “Melancholy,” -then, became a kind of “humour”—as in the eyes of the mediæval -physician it literally had been—and it was not regarded in at all the -same way as other species of mental disorder. - -We must distinguish, however, between the variety of ways in which -the word “melancholy” is used in these dramas, where there are -“large volumes of it in print to very slender purpose.”[127:1] When -Shakespeare says in “Cymbeline” - - “O melancholy! - Who ever yet could find thy bottom? find - The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare - Might easiliest harbour in,”[127:2] - -he is expressing feelings shared by anyone who tries to fathom the -treatment of melancholy by Shakespeare’s own contemporaries. There was -no common and generally recognised conception of melancholy as of the -more obvious forms of insanity. Hence it becomes impossible to consider -the question of melancholy from the standpoint of medicine, still less -to make any division such as the threefold medical division of to-day, -into acute melancholia, excited melancholia, and that alternation of -depression and excitement known as “folie circulaire.” We shall instead -divide our subject more broadly and simply into Melancholy True and -Melancholy False, taking but a few typical cases to illustrate each of -these divisions in turn. - -By Melancholy True is meant what we call nowadays “melancholia,”—that -is, a mental disease in which the prevailing symptom is depression,—a -mental disease from the author’s point of view and not merely from -ours. Some cases which would come under this heading have already, for -convenience’ sake, been treated above. There is the melancholia of -Penthea, hardly distinguishable from madness, and utilised dramatically -in a similar way. There is also the melancholy of Palador, which seems -to us less a case for the physician than it did to the author. Ford’s -conception of melancholy as a disease is clearly influenced by Burton, -and he would no doubt have agreed with the doctors of Christopher Sly -that “Melancholy is the Nurse of frenzy,”[128:1] if, indeed, he would -not have gone farther and declined to distinguish between them. Other -cases of melancholia are merely described, and will hardly repay study. -Such is Viola’s well-known description of one (imaginary) girl who - - “Never told her love, - But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud - Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought - And with a green and yellow melancholy - She sat like Patience on a monument, - Smiling at grief.”[128:2] - -Shakespeare’s King John is thinking of another kind of melancholy when -he says to Hubert: - - “. . . that surly spirit, melancholy, - Had baked thy blood and made it heavy-thick.”[128:3] - -In the two characters which we shall now study,—Aspatia of the “Maid’s -Tragedy” and Euphrasia in “Philaster”—we shall see that there is -with Beaumont and Fletcher a considerable lightening of the subject, -with a consequent artistic gain, but possibly a loss in force and -impressiveness. - -Aspatia is, of course, throughout the play, subordinated to Evadne, -and she appears only in the first two acts and the last, her death -occurring in the last scene. From her first appearance, after her -betrothed husband has taken Evadne to wife at the King’s command, the -pitiableness of her situation and the nobility and the purity of her -character endear her to us unchangeably. None of the indecency which -mars the play clings to the wronged Aspatia; many would go so far as to -consider her laments more effective, because less revolting, than those -of Ophelia. Wherever we see her - - “Nothing but sad thoughts in her breast do dwell.”[129:1] - -When Melantius offers her his ill-timed congratulations on the marriage -which he supposes to have been hers, her reply is short: - - “My hard fortunes - Deserve not scorn; for I was never proud - When they were good.”[129:2] - -In the next scene, however, when the presence of the bride makes the -hurt keener, her tongue is loosened. No sweeter song, in spite of the -rather vulgar criticism of Evadne, can be found outside Shakespeare -than the only one Aspatia gives us: - - “Lay a garland on my hearse, - Of the dismal yew, - Maidens, willow trenches bear; - Say I died true; - My love was false, but I was firm - From my hour of birth. - Upon my buried body lie - Lightly, gentle earth.”[130:1] - -“Fie on’t madam!” says Evadne, “The words are so strange, they are able -to make one dream of hobgoblins.” - -The effect of Aspatia’s appearances enhances enormously the effect of -the play as a whole. - - “She carries with her an infectious grief, - That strikes all her beholders.”[130:2] - -Her father is distressed beyond measure; her betrothed, “servile ‘iure -divino’ royalist” as he is, is stricken with the keenest remorse. Even -the apparently buoyant Evadne is moved to pity. - -Perhaps, in the scene between Aspatia and her waiting women, the -wronged woman loses a little of our sympathy. The dramatists have -evidently succumbed to the Muse of Poetry and Aspatia’s laments become -drawn-out and a little monotonous. Yet the poetry is at times almost -perfect; it is only her continual harping on the subject of “Man, Oh -that beast man!”[130:3] which makes us fear lest melancholy become -raving madness. When she subsides at last into “dull silence,” our -love for her is at its height: she is indeed “like Sorrow’s monument.” - -In the last act she appears once more,[131:1] in the disguise of a -supposed brother, with the seeming intention of killing her faithless -lord. A tragic Viola indeed, she succeeds in getting wounded, and -eventually dies, not without witnessing the death of Evadne and holding -Amintor’s hand in token of reconciliation. - -The girl Euphrasia, in “Philaster,” has less of tragedy and more of -romance, more even of Shakespeare’s own poetry. In her disguise as -Bellario, Philaster’s page, she appears as a “pretty, sad-talking -boy,”[131:2] and it would seem to be rather the prince, who sits -“cross-armed,” “sighs away the day” for love of Arethusa, and talks -furthermore in several places of going mad,[131:3] who should come -under this category of melancholiacs. But he himself proves to his own -satisfaction that he is sane enough; and though such a statement is not -always to be believed, it seems for once to correspond with the point -of view of the author. But Euphrasia herself is continually reminding -us of her melancholy, which has all the appearance of being conceived -as similar to that of Aspatia, although it is less pronounced. It -springs from love, it is nowhere put down to a mere caprice, and -although in neither of these two plays is any cure attempted, this is -because the characters are subordinated to others and for the sake of a -unified plot. - -The melancholy of Mistress Constance, in Brome’s “Northern Lass,” was -probably meant by the author to be taken more seriously than most -people would find possible to-day. In conception it resembles the -melancholy-madness of Fletcher’s “Passionate Madman.” Its cause, to go -no further, is the same. Love has “overwhelmed her spirits, and turned -the faculties of all her senses into a rude confusion, sending forth -the uses of them extravagantly.” The method of her cure, according -to Pate (disguised as a Doctor) is as simple as are the lightning -cures of Fletcher: “The party that she loves must be the doctor, the -medicine and the cure.” This _médecin malgré lui_, however, finds his -patient too much for him. “I fear she is wiser than all of us, that -have to do with her. She knows my gown better than I do; for I have had -but two hours’ acquaintance with it.” Constance, though at times she -sings snatches of song, does not rave like Shattillion or the Gaoler’s -Daughter; the prevailing symptom of her melancholy is depression. As -a character she is peculiarly lacking in charm, though the title-page -of the play, which declares it to be “a comedy often acted with good -applause,” in high places, would suggest that the heroine was popular -enough at the time. - -Almira, the daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily, in Massinger’s “A Very -Woman,” might profitably be considered in a later section dealing with -unclassified abnormal states of mind. However, the malady produced in -her by the supposed loss of her lover was apparently conceived by the -dramatist as “melancholy-madness,” and therefore it finds a place here. -Gifford, in a note in his edition of Massinger, describes Almira’s -complaint as “not madness, but light-headedness.” She is firmly -convinced that Cardenes, who has been wounded in a scuffle with his -rival, is dead, and all her friends’ attempts to convince her to the -contrary merely strengthen her belief. - - “I know you, - And that in this you flatter me; he’s dead, - As much as could die of him: but look yonder! - Amongst a million of glorious lights - That deck the heavenly canopy, I have - Discern’d his soul, transform’d into a star. - Do you not see it?”[133:1] - -The belief induces semi-hallucinations. She hears “a dismal sound”—it -is Antonio in hell, “on the infernal rack where murderers are -tormented.”[133:1] This sets a train of delusive ideas in motion; -her cousin fears “she’ll grow into a frenzy,” when one of her women -exclaims “Her fit begins to leave her,” and she is once more herself, -relating her “strangest waking dream of hell and heaven.”[134:1] -Notwithstanding these temperate intervals her father is alarmed, and -fears, not without reason, that - - “She’ll do some violent act upon herself.”[134:2] - -Her hands are therefore to be bound and a physician sent for. We hear -a good deal more of her melancholy during the play, but it becomes -conventional, and after the second act we think of her as quite a -rational human being—as a “Very Woman.” It is the strange change in -her affections which gives the great interest to her character which it -certainly possesses; for that reason it would hardly be fair to attempt -to compare her either with Aspatia or with Euphrasia, interest in whom -is dependent on other considerations. - -A case of melancholy, both interesting and amusing, similar in -conception and treatment to the mania of Shattillion and of the -Passionate Lover mentioned above,[134:3] is furnished by Brome’s -“Antipodes.” As we should expect in an “approved Comedy” acted in -the year 1638, the subject is approached only from its lighter -side; within the limits which such a treatment necessarily imposes -the play is pleasant enough, and the principal characters are very -laughable. Joyless and Diana, it appears, have a son Peregrine, a -lad of twenty-five, who has been married for some years to a girl -named Martha. But Peregrine, whose inclination has always been for a -roving life, has developed a melancholy in consequence of his parents’ -opposition to his desire for travel. The disease, when the play -opens, is “inclining still to worse, As he grows more in days,” and -the father’s anxiety is aggravated by the fact that Martha is also -afflicted with a similar trouble, caused by her husband’s neglect. Her -symptoms are somewhat different: - - “Indeed she’s full of passion, which she utters - By the effects, as diversely, as several - Objects reflect upon her wand’ring fancy, - Sometimes in extreme weepings, and anon - In vehement laughter; now in sullen silence, - And presently in loudest exclamations.”[135:1] - -Doctor Hughball, a physician of renown, undertakes both cases, and -in addition that of Joyless, whom “some few yellow spots” about the -temples proclaim to be “jealous-mad.” This doctor, like others of the -“cure-all” tribe whom we have recently encountered, has had great -experience of mental disease. He has cured - - “A country gentleman, that fell mad - For spending of his land before he sold it.”[135:2] - -A lady who fell mad with “tedious and painful study” to find “a way -to love her husband,” and “horn-mad citizens, he cures them by the -dozens”![136:1] Brought face to face with the melancholiac in one -of his “fits,” Hughball sets about humouring him, “applauding” his -“noble disposition,” and “adoring” his “spirit of travel.” He tells his -patient that he has been all over the world, even in the Antipodes, -meeting his praise of Mandeville, Drake, and other worthies with vivid -and imaginative descriptions of the unknown lands on the other side of -the world. Everything, it appears, goes by contraries: - - “There the deer - Pursue the hounds, and (which you may think strange), - I ha’ seen one sheep worry a dozen foxes, - By moonshine, in a morning before day, - They hunt, trail scents with oxen and plough with dogs.”[136:2] - -Peregrine is subdued; he could listen to the Doctor “a whole -fortnight,” and gladly accepts his offer to travel with him to this -wonderful land. Hence, in the next scene, by the device of a play -within a play,[136:3] the Doctor is able to effect a threefold cure. -Joyless’ jealousy is overcome; Martha (after being disguised as a Queen -and formally presented to her husband), wins back the love of the -melancholy Peregrine; and Peregrine himself, though falling back more -than once during the play-scenes to “Mandeville-madness,” is eventually -cured. In the concluding scenes, where music “upon the Recorders” is -being played, we are shewn the melancholiac’s return to complete sanity. - - “I am what you are pleased to make me; but withal . . . ignorant - of my own condition, whether I sleep or wake, or talk, or - dream; whether _I_ be, or be not; or if I am, whether I do, or - do not anything.”[137:1] - -Revelations and recognitions follow, in spite of the Doctor’s warning -against “troubling his brain with new discoveries.” Peregrine is then -made to “recover roundly” by means of a short masque (preceded by “a -most untunable flourish”!) introducing “Discord, Folly, Jealousy, -Melancholy, and Madness.” When these characters have been routed by -Harmony and her train, Peregrine declares “Indeed, I find me well.” - -The treatment of melancholy in this play is in no way serious, and -shews us little of real value. - -“Melancholy False”[137:2] is hard to define; the criterion must -ultimately be a subjective one. It is depicted as a state of the mind -in which the person concerned has full control of himself,—as a cloak -which he assumes for his own purposes, and which he is able to throw -off should necessity arise. At its very worst, it would only be spoken -of to-day as “depression.” Sometimes, it is true, this melancholy seems -to give a definite colour to the person whom it characterises—to -be, in fact, part of his temperament; but in these cases no mention -is made of any possible cure of the trouble—sometimes not even of -the cause—so that the suggestion of disease does not arise in the -spectator’s mind. No doubt such a condition, if persisted in, would -often have disastrous results. Such a “humour” was dangerous, but it -was nevertheless a “humour.” - -It may be objected that many persons, using these tests, might well -put Euphrasia and Aspatia in the present category. It is true. But -if we made no distinctions and adopted no classifications but those -which were indisputable and self-evident, we should make very few, -and those would be of little value. We have it on excellent authority -that the only way to “part sadness and melancholy” is “by a familiar -demonstration of the working.”[138:1] To a layman it would probably -be clear that the melancholy of Aspatia and Euphrasia, of Mistress -Constance and Almira, is meant to be of a different kind from that of -several characters with whom we shall now have to deal. - -The largest variety of “cases” is furnished by Shakespeare, and for -this reason our study of this type may be confined to his works. Some -of the “cases” are described by Dr. Bucknill:[139:1] “the melancholy -of pride in Achilles, of prosperity in Antonio, of constitution and -timidity in the Queen of ‘Richard II,’ of contemplation in Jacques.” -We might possibly add more, but here are instances enough (if they are -really instances) to shew the nature of this melancholy. - -Surprise might perhaps be expressed that Shakespeare should make such -large use of this “humour”; it would be expected that he, whom we -have shewn to be familiar with all kinds of insanity, would conceive -of melancholia more nearly after the fashion of the present-day -physician. The explanation is simple. Shakespeare knew perfectly well -that melancholy could be a disease, and has described it as such. Let -us remember the quotations, given above,[139:2] from “Twelfth Night” -and “King John.” And who was it that “besieged with sable-coloured -melancholy . . . did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most -wholesome physic of thy health-giving air?”[140:1] Yet Shakespeare -was equally well acquainted with that hypochondriacal melancholia and -that temperamental depression which play a large part in modern life, -and both of these, to say nothing of the love-melancholy which varies -from slight depression to acute mania, he found it convenient to use. -The contemporary dramatists, however great or small their knowledge, -usually preferred the “love melancholy” and used it almost exclusively. - -The melancholy of Achilles is quite superficial. He is “lion sick of -a proud heart”[140:2] just as Ajax is “melancholy without cause,” and -nobody in the play interprets his behaviour otherwise. The estimate -just quoted of him is one of the least violent of the opinions of Ajax; -Agamemnon calls him “over-proud and under-honest”;[140:3] Ulysses says -that he is - - “possess’d . . . with greatness - And speaks not to himself but with a pride - That quarrels at self-breath.”[140:4] - -Ulysses’ descriptions of the general’s occupations, of his jests at -Agamemnon and the Greeks, of his delight in Patroclus’ imitations, -and the “loud applause” which comes from his “deep chest”[140:5] are -sufficient proof that his malady is not very serious. Certainly, -judging from the care with which Shakespeare demonstrates the nature -of its source, we shall conclude that this melancholy is presented to -us as a “humour.” - -The “Merchant of Venice” is coloured by the sadness of its hero, even -at the height of his prosperity. At the outset of the play he declares -to his friends: - - “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad; - It wearies me; you say it wearies you; - But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, - What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, - I am to learn. - And such a want-wit sadness makes of me - That I have much ado to know myself.”[141:1] - -We at least are not at a loss to explain Antonio’s depression. It is -not alone the boredom of “unruffled prosperity”[141:2]—this sorts ill -with the character of the noble merchant: it is rather a peculiarity -of temperament which colours both adversity and prosperity. For such -melancholy as marks Antonio’s farewell to Bassanio: - - “I am a tainted wether of the flock, - Meetest for death,”[141:3] - -is not the necessary concomitant either of prosperity or of adversity. -The two speeches quoted are examples of the same condition of mind; -the melancholy which they exhibit has the double dramatic purpose of -beautifying the character of Antonio and of giving the spectator that -“preadjustment” which is so valuable an aid to the plot. - -Similarly we have in “Richard II” the melancholy of the Queen, which -prepares us for the troubles about to befall her. This melancholy may -best be attributed, not necessarily, as Dr. Bucknill suggests, to her -temperament, certainly not to any prosperity she may have enjoyed, but -rather to a vague fear as to the results of her husband’s perilous -journey, coupled possibly with her experience of the King’s rashness -and a recognition of his recent weakness in dealing with Mowbray and -Bolingbroke. It is, at all events, merely a passing sadness of the -“inward soul” and her “heavy sad”-ness is soon dispersed, changing -first to real grief, which gives place before her weaker husband—true -woman that she is!—to a resolution concealing for a time her sorrow. - -In Jacques we have a character of more complexity. His humour he -describes as “a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, -extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of -my travels in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous -sadness.”[142:1] He wishes, in his own words, to - - “Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, - If they will patiently receive my medicine.”[142:2] - -But the Duke, usually so gentle, is quite out of sympathy with the -pseudo-reformer. Jacques, he says, has been a libertine, and like -many a reformed sinner, the ex-voluptuary would merely “disgorge into -the general world,” “all the embossèd sores and headed evils” of his -unregenerate days.[143:1] - -So much discussion has been lavished on the “case” of Jacques that -we shall not attempt to do more than shew what we believe to be its -perfectly superficial nature. Judging from the play as a whole, and -more especially from the Duke’s contempt and Rosalind’s banter, we -should suppose this to be Shakespeare’s view. As Dr. Moulton very -justly remarks, egotism is plainly shewn to be at the root of his -disposition. He has lived out his life in a short time; now he turns -everything, for sheer self-love, into matter not for jests but for -scurrilous abuse, or at best for a malevolent, sarcastic humour. - -Yet the morbidity of Jacques’ melancholy suggests that, more than any -other of Shakespeare’s similarly conceived characters, he carries about -with him a secret malady when he persists in his attitude towards -the world. One day the secret wound will fester; his “weeping” and -his “sullen fits” will become uncontrollable; his frantic abuse will -turn to frenzy; his ironic, half-humorous sallies will change to -the disconnected utterances of a maniac; or his surly humour will -sink lower and lower until it reaches the dead level of melancholic -depression. - -Here, then, we have, in briefest outline, some of the types of -melancholy—true and false—presented by Shakespeare and certain of his -contemporaries. Numerous examples from other authors of the time might -be added, but we have seen enough to be clear on two points. These are, -the essential difference between the true and the false melancholy, and -the use of each to the dramatist in his work, both for its own sake -and because of the opportunities which it gives for the introduction -of poetical passages. From the character who entertains a “wilful -stillness” - - “With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion - Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,”[144:1] - -to the true victim of his sorrow, holding, against his will (like -Constance in “King John”) - - “The eternal spirit . . . - In the vile prison of afflicted breath,”[144:2] - -the melancholiac has great dramatic possibilities, of which, for the -most part, the fullest advantage is taken. - -This seems to be the most convenient place to discuss the question -of the real (as distinguished from the assumed) mental condition of -Hamlet. That it is an abnormal condition most careful readers of the -play will not question. How otherwise can we explain his habitual -inaction, his sudden fits of energy, his violence to those whom he -loves, his strange self-questionings, and his even stranger apathy to -those things which should most move him? The whole question of the -cause of Hamlet’s procrastination depends on our estimate of his mental -state. Goethe’s description of Hamlet as “a beautiful, pure, noble, -and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which makes the -hero,” is clearly at variance with facts, and the estimates of both -Coleridge and Dowden largely ignore the practical side of the character -of Hamlet. Only by recognising what the play certainly tells us, that -the melancholy of Hamlet is really a disease, can we obtain anything -like a reasonable explanation of his strange movements. After all, he -is not the one-sided, unequally-developed weakling that certain school -editions of Shakespeare would have us suppose. He is, without any -doubt, a man of practical ability, capable of prompt, energetic action, -skilled in all manly exercises. Intellectually, his “noble mind” -compels the greatest regard, he has studied long at the University and -possesses besides such qualities as would serve him admirably as ruler -of Denmark. Fortinbras says of him that - - “He was likely - Had he been put on, to have proved most royally.”[146:1] - -His moral nature is equally praiseworthy. Ordinarily strong of will, -“most generous and free from all contriving,”[146:2] though probably at -times inclined to be passionate and on occasions headstrong to excess, -he was certainly not the man to procrastinate through “losing himself -in labyrinths of thought” as Schlegel asserts him to have done. - -If we would find the key to this mystery, Hamlet himself will give it -us in his first soliloquy. He meditates suicide, from which he is only -kept by the fact that “the Everlasting” has “fix’d His canon ’gainst -self-slaughter.”[146:3] Then he explains why everything to him is -“weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”—it is the terrible shock of his -mother’s incestuous marriage following that of the death of his father, -and the suspicious circumstances which attended it, that has given -rise to this abnormal state of mind. His melancholy is augmented by -the nature of the command laid on him by the Ghost and the consequent -secrecy which he must put upon himself: - - “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”[146:4] - -This is Melancholy True—a state of mind which cannot be thrown -off like a cloak, yet which is abnormal. It is an excellent case -for the pathologist. Truly conceived, it furnishes the only -satisfying explanation of the strange phases of Hamlet’s so-called -“character”—the depression, the self-weariness, the irritability, -the violence, the satisfaction at the smallest thing achieved, the -impossibility of carrying out the original purpose—all these things -are the natural outcome of melancholia. - -A two-fold objection to this view has to be met. It will be said that -such a conception of Hamlet destroys the moral lesson of the play. And -would that it did! It is unfortunate that certain critics are unable -to pick up a play without looking at once for the moral. Those who -have done this with “Hamlet” have succeeded in shifting the centre of -gravity from the author to themselves. They say that the play shews how -wrong it is to procrastinate, and how by procrastination we lose far -more than we gain. It is, according to these critics, a mere sermon -preached on the text - - “That we would do - We should do when we would.”[147:1] - -How, they say, can this sermon be preached if the chief -illustration—the man by whom we are all to be warned—is exculpated -from blame by illness? - -They know little of tragedy—or at least of Shakespeare’s tragedy—who -hold a view like this. What Shakespeare habitually does is to shew us -a man, by nature fitted to be a hero of tragedy, with a fatal defect, -the consequences of which are worked out in the play. Looked at from -this point of view, the sentimental objection at once vanishes, and the -second objection arises. It is a more serious one: Can a man suffering -from melancholia—to put the thing in its most prosaic form—any more -than a man suffering from any other form of insanity, be admitted as -a tragic hero? The answer is that he can. And this partly because his -exact state of mind is not determined, partly because it is a condition -not generally recognised as one of disease, and tragedy has always -to be considered from the point of view, not of the doctor, but of -the author and the audience. As Dr. Bradley, who very ably sums up -the question, says in his Lectures on Shakespearean Tragedy: “The man -who suffers as Hamlet suffers—and thousands go about their business -suffering thus in greater or less degree—is considered irresponsible -neither by other people nor by himself: he is only too keenly conscious -of his responsibility. . . . . Hamlet’s state is not one which a healthy -mind is unable sufficiently to imagine. It is probably not further from -average experience, nor more difficult to realise, than the great -tragic passions of Othello, Antony or Macbeth.”[149:1] - -Before we leave Hamlet, it should be emphasised that the state of mind -of the hero is quite a subordinate question in the play itself. “It -would be absurdly unjust to call ‘Hamlet’ a study of melancholy, but -it contains such a study,” is Dr. Bradley’s way of putting it.[149:2] -The significance of this is that we must not expect the indications of -Hamlet’s disease to be developed to any degree, nor refuse to claim for -it a place among our examples of “Melancholy True,” just because the -author fails to introduce the hero to a physician![149:3] - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[127:1] As Pate says in Brome’s “Northern Lass” (v., 1). - -[127:2] “Cymbeline,” iv., 2, 203. - -[128:1] Induction, ii., 135. - -[128:2] “Twelfth Night,” ii., 4, 113, etc. - -[128:3] “King John,” iii., 3, 42. - -[129:1] “The Maid’s Tragedy,” ii., 1. - -[129:2] Ibid., i., 1. - -[130:1] Ibid., ii., 1. - -[130:2] Ibid., i., 1. - -[130:3] Ibid., ii., 2. - -[131:1] Ibid., v., 4. - -[131:2] “Philaster,” ii., 3. - -[131:3] _e.g._ iii., 1, 277; iii., 2, 83, etc. - -[133:1] “A Very Woman,” ii., 3. - -[134:1] Ibid., ii., 3. - -[134:2] Ibid., ii., 3. - -[134:3] pp. 105 ff. - -[135:1] “The Antipodes,” i., 2. - -[135:2] Ibid., i., 1. - -[136:1] Ibid., i., 1. - -[136:2] Ibid., i., 6. - -[136:3] The scenes in which Joyless, Diana, Peregrine and the rest -listen to this play and pass comments on it often bear a striking -resemblance to the better known “Knight of the Burning Pestle.” - -[137:1] “The Antipodes,” v., 9. - -[137:2] A medical friend reminds me that there is, properly speaking, -no such thing as “melancholy false,” and that the characters mentioned -under this head are not suffering, in his opinion, from any form of -mental disease. I will therefore repeat here that the classification of -“melancholy” adopted in this chapter is _not_ a scientific one, that it -is made on a seventeenth century, rather than on a twentieth century -basis—we are trying, that is, to take up the positions of the several -dramatists. Few specialists of to-day would consider Jacques, Achilles -or Antonio to be in a state of disease, but that the Elizabethan doctor -would have diagnosed their malady as “melancholy” I have little doubt. -The ordinary spectator would probably not consider the question in any -detail. - -[138:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Moth: i., 2, 9-10. - -[139:1] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 310. - -[139:2] p. 128. - -[140:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” i., 1, 233, etc. - -[140:2] “Troilus and Cressida,” ii., 3, 92, etc. - -[140:3] Ibid., ii., 3, 132. - -[140:4] Ibid., ii., 3, 180. - -[140:5] Ibid., i., 3, 161, etc. - -[141:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 1, etc. - -[141:2] Bucknill, “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 307. - -[141:3] “Merchant of Venice,” iv., 1, 114, etc. - -[142:1] “As You Like It,” iv., 1, 15, etc. - -[142:2] Ibid., ii., 7, 60. - -[143:1] Ibid., ii., 7, 67-9. - -[144:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 91-2. - -[144:2] “King John,” iii., 4, 18. - -[146:1] “Hamlet,” v., 2, 408. - -[146:2] Ibid., iv., 7, 136—the King’s testimony. - -[146:3] Ibid., i., 2, 131-2. - -[146:4] Ibid., i., 2, 159. - -[147:1] “Hamlet,” iv., 7, 119-20. - -[149:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” p. 121. - -[149:2] Ibid., p. 121. - -[149:3] Beside the melancholy of Hamlet we might place that of -Haraldus, the young Prince of Shirley’s play, “_The Politician_,” were -it not that the part played by his melancholy is purely nominal. His -father—the Politician—sends two courtiers to cure him, and they make -him drunk. His excesses bring on a fever which causes his death. His -likeness to Hamlet only strikes us here and there, and the melancholy, -such as it is, is caused chiefly by the discovery that he is a bastard. - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY—(iv.) DELUSIONS, -HALLUCINATIONS AND OTHER ABNORMAL STATES. - - “How now; who’s there? spirits, spirits?” - - (“_Spanish Tragedy._”) - - -Delusions and hallucinations occurring in cases of real madness we have -already encountered, but since these phenomena are themselves symptoms -of a disordered state of mind we must not neglect instances in which -they occur with persons otherwise sane. These spring to the memory; -who, for example, can ever forget the sights which Faustus sees in his -last hour on earth? - - “O, I’ll leap up to my God; who pulls me down? - See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament. - One drop would save my soul, half a drop—Ah, my Christ! - Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! - Yet will I call on Him: Oh, spare me, Lucifer! - Where is it now? ’tis gone: And see where God - Stretcheth out His arm, and bends His ireful brows; - Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me, - And hide me from the heavy wrath of God.”[150:1] - -More examples of such hallucinations in moments of great stress might -be quoted. It will best serve our purpose if we consider one typical -case (Frank, in “The Witch of Edmonton,”) and afterwards discuss a case -of special interest—that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. - -Frank Thorney, in “The Witch of Edmonton,” has married one Winifred, -but is forced into a bigamous marriage with Susan, whom he afterwards -murders, without letting any suspicion fall on himself. He is tormented -on his sick-bed by phantoms indistinguishable from realities, more -particularly by the ghost of Susan, and at last reveals to Winifred the -awful truth. - -“I am not idle,” he says, and he is right. But thick-coming fancies -disturb him. The ghost of Susan appears. He stares at it fixedly, then -turns to the other side, only to be confronted again by the apparition. -When it vanishes he is raving of “a force in which were drawn a -thousand ghosts, leap’d newly from their graves, to pluck me into a -winding-sheet.” He has, so he says, “Some windmill in my brains for -want of sleep,” but sleep only comes with the unburdening of the guilty -conscience.[151:1] - -Macbeth (like Frank Thorney) is at no time in the play insane, but -he becomes the victim of “horrible imaginings” which beyond a certain -point seem to him to be real.[152:1] Macbeth is predisposed to -hallucinations by a remarkably vivid power of imagination, which finds -expression from the very outset of the play. The mere suggestion of -the murder of Duncan he describes as a “horrid image” which unfixes -his hair and makes his seated heart knock at his ribs, against the use -of nature. Thus we have a character whose imagination torments him -throughout his career of crime till he has “supped full of horrors” and -the “taste of fears” has almost lost all significance.[152:2] - -In the well-known “Dagger Scene”[152:3] we are confronted with the -first of Macbeth’s hallucinations. It is before the murder of Duncan, -and the spectral dagger only deceives him for a moment. Making an -unsuccessful attempt to clutch it, he is for a short moment at a loss -to explain a weapon which he can see but cannot handle. Then he rightly -concludes that it is but a “dagger of the mind, a false creation”; his -eyes “are made the fools o’ the other senses,” yet the image does not -disappear till courage comes again and with it “the heat of deeds.” - -Duncan is murdered; “after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,” but the -regicide’s better self torments him more and more, and the Lady fears -for his sanity: - - “These deeds must not be thought - After these ways; so, it will make us mad.”[153:1] - -Macbeth, however, is losing his self-control. At the moment of the -murder a fresh hallucination troubled him, and though its true nature -is now recognised, and he can “moralise” upon it, its very mention -fills the Lady with fears. - - “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! - Macbeth doth murder sleep’. . . . - Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: - ‘Glamis hath murther’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor - Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.’”[153:2] - -Dr. Bucknill, it is true, considers that this is not an hallucination, -on account of the word “methought.”[153:3] But the same word would -have been used of the dagger, which the critic himself admits to have -been an hallucination. Nor is the length of the fancied speeches any -obstacle, the greater part of the speech in which they occur being -Macbeth’s own embellishment of the event. - -The hallucination at the banquet is more formidable. Macbeth, having -caused Banquo to be murdered—the murder being unknown to his -guests—is regretting his absence, “thus by a voluntary mental act -calling before his mind’s eye the image of the murdered man.”[154:1] At -the mention of him, an image rises in the place reserved for Macbeth -himself. It shakes its “gory locks” at the murderer, it nods but will -not speak, and only vanishes like the “air-drawn dagger,” when Macbeth -begins to overcome his fear and brave it. When he pledges Banquo it -appears again; once more he declaims violently against it and it -vanishes, but not before he has - - . . “displac’d the mirth, broke the good meeting - With most admir’d disorder.”[154:2] - -to say nothing of a certain amount of suspicion attached to it. - -The remainder of the story, from the psychological point of view, can -best be told in Dr. Bucknill’s words.[154:3] “Macbeth,” he says, “saved -himself from actual insanity by rushing from the maddening horrors of -meditation into a course of decisive resolute action. From henceforth -he gave himself no time to reflect; he made the firstlings of his -heart the firstlings of his hand; he became a fearful tyrant to his -country; but he escaped madness. This change in him, however, effected -a change in his relation to his wife, which in her had the opposite -result. . . . Her attention, heretofore directed to her husband and to -outward occurrences, was forced inwards upon that wreck of all-content -which her meditation supplied.” She becomes mad; no medicine can -minister to her mind, diseased by crime and remorse, and her madness -is fatal. But Macbeth never becomes insane. “Some say he’s mad,” it is -true, yet - - “Others, that lesser hate him, - Do call it valiant fury.”[155:1] - -He has saved his own mental life, but he has flung away the “eternal -jewel” of his soul. - -Lady Macbeth, at every point in the play, is strongly contrasted with -her husband. She is frankly distressed at the developments of Macbeth’s -criminal career. He bids her be “innocent of the knowledge” till she -applaud his deeds. She thus drifts farther away from him and leaves him -to pursue his bloody course alone. Her meditation breeds madness. She -lacks, even as her husband had done, - - “the season of all natures, sleep,” - -being - - “Troubled with thick-coming fancies - That keep her from her rest.”[155:2] - -The scene in which she betrays her secret in her sleep is full of -significance, shewing the terrible impression made on her by the -murder of Duncan, and no less by the slaughter of Lady Macduff. After -her fainting fit, which follows the discovery of Duncan’s murder, she -ceases to occupy a prominent place in the tragedy. Her death is almost -unnoticed. Whether she died naturally or whether her attendants were -unable to keep from her the “means of all annoyance,” it is hard to -say. But once again Shakespeare shews his dramatic skill in relating -rather than portraying the scene of her death. - -Returning to Macbeth, one must remark in conclusion that it is only -when Shakespeare’s art in delineating the various types of insanity -is studied as a whole that this character can be fully appreciated. -Yet even from a superficial examination of the play the value to the -dramatist of Macbeth’s hallucinations must be clear. For they not only -add to the scenic effect of the play, but they constitute a striking -contrast between the murderer and his wife, besides clarifying the -already powerful idea of his accusing imagination. - - * * * * * - -We must now briefly consider another kind of abnormality which has -not yet been mentioned. Occasionally, in reading the dramatists of the -period, we meet with persons whom at first we suppose to be insane, -but who are, in reality, not so. Yet their states of mind are far -from normal. Occasionally they seem to be possessed by insane desires -and ambitions; sometimes lust has taken complete possession of them; -sometimes remorse, vengeance or similar passion dominates all their -actions. It is hard to point to any of their actions and to say: “That -is the act of a madman.” To-day, no doubt, did they exist in the flesh, -they would be removed to a Mental Hospital and treated for disease of -the mind. But looked at by their author and by his audience and in an -Elizabethan environment, they were not, in all probability, and in the -ordinary sense of the word, madmen. And for that reason we can only -allow them a passing consideration here, though every one of them would -repay detailed study. - -One or two examples may be cited from Shakespeare—the first being -Constance, in “King John.” Dr. Bucknill, without the least hesitation, -styles her mad,—but he is a physician. Shakespeare, who may be -supposed to have known better, represents her as passionate by nature, -and half-demented with grief. But she is never more than half-crazy, -always retaining sufficient of her native strength of will to control -her wonderful imagination. Her own explanation of her conduct: - - “Grief fills the room up of my absent child,”[158:1] - -is quite sufficient. Her reply to Pandulph’s accusation, - - “Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow,”[158:2] - -is conclusive proof that she is to be regarded as sane. She does -not, like many a lunatic, merely protest that she is not mad; she -gives what, according to the standard of the day, would pass as clear -evidence of her sanity: - - “I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; - My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife; - Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost! - I am not mad; I would to heaven I were! - For then, ’tis like I should forget myself . . . - If I were mad, I should forget my son, - Or madly think a babe of clouts were he. - I am not mad; too well, too well I feel - The different plague of each calamity.”[158:3] - -Constance, even when her blemishes are taken into account, is a sublime -figure. At times the poet’s instinct seems for a moment to fail him; -his touch is less sure and his Fury becomes dangerously like a common -scold. But at her best she is unsurpassed, and if we wonder at the -skill with which Shakespeare portrays and utilises true madness on the -stage, we must not forget to withhold a portion of our admiration for -his sure-footed walk on the border line. - -Timon of Athens, too, is a wonderful character—the wonder of the -play. A good-natured, generous and wealthy noble, he has attracted to -him crowds of parasites whom he calls friends, but who in reality do -nothing but receive his favours. At length he discovers their essential -baseness, and becoming, in his own words, “misanthropos” who “hates -mankind,”[159:1] leaves Athens, with oaths and curses, for a cave near -the sea-shore. There he ends his days—the manner of his death is -uncertain. His friends consider him beyond all doubt insane. A creditor -says that his debts “may well be called desperate ones, for a madman -owes ’em”;[159:2] others sum the matter up tersely by saying “Lord -Timon’s mad.”[159:3] Alcibiades excuses Timon’s behaviour on the ground -that - - “his wits - Are drown’d and lost in his calamities.”[159:4] - -Only Flavius, his faithful steward, gives no hint that he considers his -lord insane, though even he is struck with Timon’s unhappy condition, -so “full of decay and failing.”[159:5] Flavius, in this as in other -particulars, seems, like Ulysses, in “Troilus and Cressida” and other -characters in different plays, to be Shakespeare’s mouthpiece. There -is nothing in his representation of Timon which gives us cause to -impute madness to the protagonist. His state of mind is one of acute -depression, which we should call melancholia, were there any hint that -such a conception entered into the mind of the author. The condition of -Timon is not unlike that of Hamlet, and we could easily understand his -feigning madness to avoid the real evil coming upon him. - -If any further proof were needed that Timon is not a maniac his -speeches would suffice. The objection that “all satire upon the -hollowness of the world would lose much of its point if it came from -the lips of an undoubted lunatic,”[160:1] is perfectly valid. In “King -Lear” the speeches which contain the most sarcasm, as well as the most -poetry, are those of the earlier scenes, in which Lear has not yet -become entirely a maniac. This kind of speech is characteristic of -Timon to the end. His very last words, though lacking the force of the -first outburst, are equally coherent and contain far more poetry: - - “Come not to me again: but say to Athens, - Timon hath made his everlasting mansion - Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; - Who once a day with his embossed froth - The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come - And let my gravestone be your oracle. - Lips, let sour words go by and language end: - What is amiss plague and infection mend! - Graves only be men’s works and death their gain! - Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.”[161:1] - -A character far more repulsive, but depicted with the greatest force, -is Malefort Senior, of Massinger’s “Unnatural Combat.” Malefort is an -Admiral of Marseilles who is challenged by his apostate son to a duel -and comes off victorious, the son being slain. Shortly afterwards, -Theocrine, Malefort’s daughter, is sought in marriage by the son of the -Governor; the father consents, but his strange extravagances towards -her, as he loads her with jewels, riches and a superfluity of caresses, -is generally commented upon, and before long it appears that he has -fallen in love with her. The remainder of the plot hastens to the -catastrophe, Theocrine being dishonoured and virtually murdered by a -false friend of her father’s. Malefort himself is persecuted by ghosts, -and is finally killed by a flash of lightning. - -A modern author would no doubt represent such a character as Malefort -as suffering from some mental disease, but Massinger appears to have -considered the unnatural passion of the father for his daughter as -the fruit of the unnatural combat in which he kills his son. He cares -more for the development of this idea than for the mental condition -of Malefort, who speaks, in one place, of his son’s blood as growing -upon him like Hercules’ poisoned shirt, though he seems also to feel an -inward cause of his passion which he cannot explain. Montreville, the -false friend, supposes that he may be mad, and recommends: - - “A deep-read man, that can with charms and herbs - Restore you to your reason.”[162:1] - -But from the general character of the play it is easy to see that he is -not considered insane. - -Here, then, we have an attempt made to subject an outrageous and -unnatural passion, the manifestations of which bear at times the -closest resemblance to mania, to the dramatic treatment of tragedy. -That Massinger has wholly succeeded, few would be rash enough to -assert. He has given us a grim and ghastly picture, full of brute -strength but wanting in that higher power which restrains and subdues. -He has created a character at times human, always terrible, but only -partially effective in the highest sense of the word. - -It is probable that if Constance and Malefort had been portrayed -as mad and not merely as possessed by an overpowering passion, the -result in each case would have been a considerable dramatic gain. -The death of the Lady Constance “in a frenzy”—like the deaths of -Lady Macbeth and the Queen in “Cymbeline”—is only reported by a -messenger. Had that frenzy actually been depicted, the result would -have been a weakening of the whole plot, but a decided increase in -the effectiveness of Constance. In the two plays which we shall now -consider, a comparatively poor theme is treated in such a way that the -passion portrayed is heightened,—without being raised, however, to the -level of madness. It is interesting to speculate on the result had this -been done—whether the madness would have elevated the drama or whether -the paucity or the inconsequence of the theme would have debased the -presentation of insanity. - -Grimaldi, the remorse-stricken renegade of Massinger’s play “The -Renegado,” who first immures a young girl, and afterwards repents, is -reduced in the fourth act to a state approaching insanity. He is a -poor sort of creature, at any rate until the concluding portion of the -play, where he contrives a remarkable stratagem which brings about the -dénouement. His remorse bears many of the signs of madness, and indeed -may have been intended for such by the author. For days he has taken no -food; the mention of the words “church” and “high altar” increases his -melancholy; his speech ends ever with “those dreadful words damnation -and despair.”[163:1] His “ravings” lead him to contemplate all kinds of -extravagances; he would do a “bloody justice” on himself, pull out his -eyes, lop off his legs, and give his body to those whom he has injured. -He does none of these things, however,—a Jesuit priest, habited like a -Bishop, curing him by the very simple means of granting him absolution. -The wild ravings give place to calmer expressions of contrition and -he goes off with a riming couplet! It is unnecessary to follow him; -one only wishes that the extreme nature of his remorse had not made it -advisable for us to include such a creature, for whom little can be -felt but contempt. - -Our last example is Memnon, in Fletcher’s play, “The Mad Lover.” Here -is a character for whom we cannot help entertaining some regard, but we -are at a loss to know what exactly to make of him. If he is really mad, -as seems at first sight unlikely, it is a very unreal kind of madness, -with more dramatic purpose than realism. One of the characters, -indeed, calls him “stupid mad,” and the term is not an inapt one. We -should be inclined to group him with the pretenders, but for three -considerations. Firstly, he never declares nor even hints to anyone -that he is not what he seems, as Hamlet does to Horatio and as Memnon -himself might with perfect ease have done—for example, to Siphax. Then -his recovery, however sudden, complete and unreal, is only the sort -of thing one would expect from Fletcher, and may be left out of the -question. Lastly, in the scene where he refuses the whore, it is true -that he shews considerable sagacity and discrimination. Nevertheless -it is no more than has actually been found in “cases” arising from -the same cause as Memnon’s. Yet obviously, as we shall see, the mad -lover is not mad in the acceptation of the word then common, and the -hypothesis of an abnormal passion will meet the case, better perhaps -than if we consider our hero either mad or sane. - -The plot has already been sketched, and a few references should make -this statement clear. The lover’s rude courtship is the fruit of long -campaignings and absence from court; when he is told by his friend -of the strange impression he has made he speaks perfectly rationally -and merely becomes confirmed in his purpose. The extravagant idea of -cutting out his heart is the first sign of the strength of his passion. -Yet his soliloquy: - - “’Tis but to die. Dogs do it, ducks with dabbling, - Birds sing away their souls, and babies sleep ’em . . .”[165:1] - -is spoken in a temper quite unlike the madman’s. His argument might -even by some be considered valid: “For in the other world she is bound -to have me,” he says, “Her princely word is past.” When others enter, -he grows wilder, and throughout the play talks in the most extravagant -vein, more particularly to the surgeon whom he tries to persuade to cut -out his heart. “Here I am, sir,” says Memnon, - - “Come, look upon me, view the best way boldly; - Fear nothing, but cut home. If your hand shake, sirrah, - Or any way deface my heart i’ the cutting, - Make the least scratch upon it . . . . - . . . I’ll slice thee to the soul. . . . - I will not have you smile, sirrah, when you do it, - As though you cut a lady’s corn; ’tis scurvy. - Do me it, as thou dost thy prayers, seriously.”[166:1] - -Here is a man whose mind is certainly in an abnormal condition, and, -whatever the precise nature of that condition may be, it alone gives -to the play the least vestige of probability. If Memnon were sane, the -play would be absurd; if he were mad, then madness would once more be -degraded. As it is, he is not an unpleasing fellow; at times he is -even touched with pathos: any verdict on him would assuredly be more -favourable than a just verdict on the play as a whole. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[150:1] Dr. Faustus, l. 1419, etc. (Oxford text.) - -[151:1] The insanity of Ann Ratcliff, in this play, may also be -noticed, though it is of the same rude type as that of Greene’s -Orlando. “See, see, see,” she cries, “the Man in the Moon has built a -new windmill, and what running there’s from all quarters of the city, -to learn the art of grinding.” The only feature of interest in her -frenzy is the expression of physical pain which we noticed in “King -Lear.” Her ribs are like to break, and “there’s a Lancashire horn-pipe -in my throat. Hark how it tickles it, with Doodle, doodle, doodle, -doodle,” etc. - -[152:1] With Macbeth might be compared two other remorse-stricken -murderers in little known plays. Glapthorne’s “Albertus Wallenstein” -is the story of a man who causes his son and his son’s betrothed to -be killed and is then haunted by his crimes. His soul “is shaken with -a nipping frost”; he mistakes his son’s page for a ghost and murders -him; after this false visions of spirits are ever before him. Only -when mortally wounded by conspirators is his mind at rest. In Denham’s -“Sophy” (which is in spirit outside our period, though it was acted in -1641), Abbas, King of Persia, is likewise tormented by the ghosts of -those whom he has murdered. Abbas, unlike Macbeth and Wallenstein, is -quite a maniac, and does not recover his senses before his death. - -[152:2] cf. “Macbeth,” v., 5, 9, etc. “I have almost forgot the taste -of fears . . .” - -[152:3] Act ii., Scene 1. - -[153:1] “Macbeth,” ii., 3, 32-3. - -[153:2] Ibid., ii., 2, 35, etc. - -[153:3] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 20. - -[154:1] Ibid., p. 24. - -[154:2] “Macbeth,” iii., 4, 109. - -[154:3] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 29. - -[155:1] “Macbeth,” v., 2, 13. - -[155:2] Ibid., v., 2, 37-8. - -[158:1] “King John,” iii., 4, 93. - -[158:2] l. 43. - -[158:3] ll. 45, etc. - -[159:1] “Timon of Athens,” iv., 3, 53. - -[159:2] Ibid., iii., 4, 101-2. - -[159:3] Ibid., iii., 6, 129. - -[159:4] Ibid., iv., 3, 88. - -[159:5] Ibid., iv., 3, 465. - -[160:1] Raised and disputed by Bucknill, “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 259. - -[161:1] “Timon of Athens,” v., 1, 217, etc. - -[162:1] “The Unnatural Combat,” iv., 1. - -[163:1] “The Renegado,” iv., 1. - -[165:1] “The Mad Lover,” ii., 1. - -[166:1] Ibid., iii., 2. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY. - -(vi.) THE PRETENDERS. - - “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I - know a hawk from a handsaw.” - - (“_Hamlet._”) - - -Last of all in the long train of madmen which has now almost passed -us come the Pretenders—characters who have feigned insanity for -some purpose. We need not, of course, devote much space here to -pseudo-lunatics like Morose in “The Silent Woman,” Bellamont in -“Northward Ho,” Malvolio and Christopher Sly. These are all sane enough -and have no wish to be thought otherwise. They are victimised by the -pretences of others, and shew none of the signs which were supposed -to characterise insanity. Thus they have small interest for us and no -place in the present section. - -A somewhat different example may be taken from Day’s “Law -Tricks,”[167:1] where Polymetes, son of the reigning Duke, pretends, on -his father’s sudden return from a long journey, to be deeply immersed -in his studies, in order to avert the Duke’s reproaches for his neglect -and loose living. His page, a boy “worth his weight in pearl,” comes -to the Duke with a cock-and-bull story about an “English poet” who is -with the Prince. This is presently supplemented by Julio, who explains -that “the boy is lunatic.” His description of the supposed origin -of the lunacy is most interesting. “Coming abruptly to the Prince’s -chamber about some ordinary service, I found him in his study and a -company of bottle-nosed devils dancing the Irish hay about him, which -on the sudden so started the poor boy as he clean lost his wits, and -ever since talks thus idle as your Excellence hath heard him.” The -“studies” of Polymetes, it later appears, are in astrology! - -The “true Pretenders”—if the term may be allowed—have on the other -hand considerable interest, and are well worthy of attention. Among -other things we may take into consideration the intention with which -they are portrayed, how far they fulfil that intention, how closely -they counterfeit insanity—if any such attempt is really made,—and -what worth they have as characters—how nearly, in other words, they -resemble men and women. - -Beginning at the bottom of the scale, let us take Middleton’s -“Changeling,” a play already studied, in which Antonio, the -“Changeling” of the piece, counterfeits idiocy, and Franciscus his -companion, pretends to be a madman. Their devices, which form the -substance of a somewhat coarse underplot, are not successful. This -would surprise nobody; the intention of the author (or authors) being -mainly comic relief, little care is shewn and the characters are -almost worthless. Franciscus says in the last scene, “I was changed -from a little wit to be stark mad”; and Antonio, “I was changed too -from a little ass as I was to a great fool as I am!”[169:1] The last -statement we can take literally. For, after all, idiocy is fairly easy -to counterfeit, and he would be a fool indeed who could not do at least -equally well. Franciscus is rather better, and might really be very -effective on the stage. He is supposed to have “run mad for love,” and -was a “pretty poet” till the muses forsook him. He discourses most -appropriately of “Titania” and “flowery banks,” invokes his imaginary -mistress, and pledges her in imaginary wine.[169:2] He succeeds in -extorting the pity of Isabella with his ravings. The least spark -sets him alight; the mere mention of “Luna” is sufficient for him to -rhapsodise upon, and he works himself up to a state of violence which -has to be calmed by the whip. His snatches of song are equally true -to life. But he does not re-appear for any length of time after this -scene, and he never again reaches the same level of excellence. Apart -from this skill in counterfeit Franciscus appears to have no character -worthy of the name, and is therefore of small importance. - -Something has already been said of the shopkeeper’s wife, Tormiella, -of Dekker’s tragi-comedy “Match me in London”; here, as in “The -Changeling,” and as in many another minor play, the feigned madness is -utilised for the plot and makes little difference to the character. -We have seen that Dekker has shewn considerable skill in weaving this -pretended madness into the plot as well as in introducing it at a -favourable place. But the scene is so short, and its place in the play -of such relatively small importance, that we need do no more here than -repeat that the “feigning” is well done and serves its purpose. - -Space may also be found for Dol in Jonson’s “Alchemist.” She goes mad -for the benefit of Sir Epicure Mammon in the fourth act of the play, -but unfortunately the learned dramatist infuses little probability into -her feigning. She is not so successful a lunatic as Quarlous, though -her task is certainly less simple. She appears before Mammon “in her -fit of raving” to discourse of “Alexander’s death,” the “communion of -vowels and consonants,” “Pythagoras,” “the tongue of Eber and Javan” -and so forth. The alleged reason for this is given us earlier in the -play in a speech by Face already quoted.[170:1] - -In the “Honest Whore,”[171:1] Bellafront, for her own purposes, -feigns madness. Her pretence is skilful, though Friar Anselmo does not -consider her dangerous. “How now, huswife,” he says good-humouredly, -“whether gad you?” “A-nutting forsooth,” answers Bellafront, “How do -you, gaffer? How do you, gaffer? there’s a French curt’sy for you too.” -“Do you not know me?” she enquires. “No,” reply all. “What are they?” -asks Anselmo, “come tell me, what are they?” Her answer reminds us of -“Hamlet.” “They’re fish-wives,” she says, “will you buy any gudgeons?” -At a later stage in the proceedings, she is anxious to tell everyone’s -fortunes and demands sugar-plums as a reward. This madness, however, is -not without method, for the fortune-telling leads to discoveries and -explanations. When at last Matheo, whom Bellafront wishes to marry, -declares that if her wits are restored he will consent, she at once -reveals her sanity: - - “Matheo, thou art mine. - I am not mad; but put on this disguise - Only for you.” - -We now come without any further slips of prolixity to the only two -pretenders for whom we can entertain the least enthusiasm—to the -classical examples of feigned madness in English Drama, Edgar and -Hamlet. - -Edgar is represented as simulating “Poor Tom” of Bedlam, one of the -lunatics who roamed about the countryside, possessed by the “foul -fiend,” and dependent upon such charity as kindly hearts might prompt. -How well he counterfeits need only be suggested. It is, after all, an -easy matter for an author to portray feigned madness for a scene or two -with something like accuracy. But what a genius is required to lead his -pretender, so to say, “through fire and through flame,” place him in -all kinds of situations, cause him to change his disguise from lunatic -to peasant, then back to lunatic again, marking all the time by subtle -touches the most delicate shades of expression. The burthen of his cry, -as one would expect, is “Poor Tom’s a-cold. . . . The foul fiend follows -me.” Persistently he raves and consistently, but at times “the natural -touch” overcomes him, - - “My tears begin to take his part so much - They mar my counterfeiting.”[172:1] - -An even more wonderful effect of art is pointed out by Mr. Cowden -Clarke. Gloster, now blind, would seem to recognise amidst the wild -ravings of his son “some tone or inflection in Edgar’s voice . . . and -he links (his son’s conduct) with that of Lear’s daughters. Edgar, -instinctively feeling this, perseveres with his Bedlam cry, to drown -the betrayed sound of his own voice and maintain the impression of his -assumed character.” If this is really Shakespeare’s art and not the -imagination of the critic—as some might think it to be—it is but one -more illustration of his dramatic genius. - -Apart from such details as these, the character of Edgar, especially -during his feigned madness, is a genuine masterpiece. At times during -the play he has certainly some of the frigidity—closely allied to -a quality which is dangerously like self-righteousness—which marks -Shakespeare’s own Isabella. But in these scenes of madness he is all -tenderness and forgiveness. His compassion on his blinded father we -feel the more keenly in contrast with Gloster’s own conduct and the -ingratitude of Lear’s children. Edgar is Shakespeare at his best and -truest—he rings true—we may even say that he stands for Truth itself. -And thus his feigned madness is no ordinary stage-device requisitioned -by an unmanageable plot. It has uses connected with the plot, indeed, -but beyond these it brings out characteristics of the man which endear -him to the most hostile spectator. - -Lastly we come to Hamlet and his feigned madness. Like most of the -Pretenders he is introduced into a play where real madness also plays -a part, but unlike any of them he is actually in a condition verging -on madness. Possibly it is by a kind of self-preservative instinct -that he chooses that disguise for his purpose of deceiving the King. -Fortunately he is able to prevent his mind actually giving way, and so -he defeats the King’s designs, seeing “a cherub that sees them.” He -shrinks from nothing; his demeanour towards those whom he loves, and -especially towards Ophelia, fully bears out his supposed affliction. He -appears with doublet all unbraced, - - “No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d, - Ungarter’d and down-gyved to his ancle; - Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, - And with a look so piteous in purport - As if he had been loosed out of hell - To speak of horrors.”[174:1] - -His attitude and his words seem to confirm the judgment of Polonius: -“This is the very ecstasy of love.”[174:2] He is caught in no trap. The -presence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern does not suffice to - - “Get from him why he puts on this confusion - Grating so harshly all his days of quiet - With turbulent and dangerous lunacy.”[174:3] - -Only the faithful Horatio knows that; elsewhere Hamlet “keeps aloof” -from the topic with true madman’s instinct, whenever his state is -mentioned. The King pretends to Polonius that while the disease is not -so serious as it seems, only Hamlet’s absence from Denmark can prevent -it from becoming so. In this way he gets him removed. But throughout -the play, whether in his attempts to deceive the Court or in his -foiling of the King’s design, Hamlet acts with what might be called the -craft of true madness. - -It is unnecessary to insist on the complexity and the lifelike truth -of Hamlet’s character. No personage in the world’s drama has excited -more criticism. The Prince of Denmark is on all sides acknowledged to -be supreme. And for that reason it is needless to attempt to prove what -otherwise would be the main contention of this chapter—that Hamlet is -in every way the greatest of the Pretenders whom we have studied, and, -indeed, of the madmen, true and false, who form the subject of this -essay. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[167:1] Act iv., scene 2. - -[169:1] “The Changeling,” v., 3. - -[169:2] Ibid., iii., 3. - -[170:1] Page 14, note 2. - -[171:1] “Honest Whore,” v., 13. - -[172:1] “King Lear,” iii., 6, 63-4. - -[174:1] “Hamlet,” ii., 1, 78, etc. - -[174:2] Ibid., l. 102. - -[174:3] Ibid., iii., 1, 2-4. - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - -CONCLUSION.—SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. - - “All pains the immortal spirit must endure, - All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, - Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.” - - (_Matthew Arnold: “Shakespeare.”_) - - -In such a study as this, dealing largely with the work of Shakespeare’s -contemporaries, it is to be hoped that it will not be out of place to -centre the concluding portion around Shakespeare himself. It is but one -aspect of our study to compare our greatest dramatist and his fellows -with respect to their presentation of madness, and it is throwing a -dim light on Shakespeare’s greatness to make the comparison in such a -trivial sphere. Our conclusion is thus doubly insignificant, yet we -enter upon it nevertheless. For if it tells us nothing that is new, it -serves at least to strengthen our present convictions, and this from an -entirely new standpoint. We shall, then, compare Shakespeare and his -contemporaries from three points of view: in their general ideas and -sentiments concerning madness, in their dramatic use of madness, and in -their representation of mad folk as complete figures, the Elizabethan -dramatists bow one and all before their master. - - -_General Ideas and Sentiments._ - -1. To a certain extent, in madness as in other departments of life, -Shakespeare took over the general notions of his day and introduced -them fairly liberally into his work. He could hardly do otherwise, -for the subject of lunacy was so commonplace and found so ready a way -into ordinary conversation that the dramatist who, like Shakespeare, -mirrored the life and speech of every day, would find himself, even -against his will, borrowing figures from Bedlam. Many of these we -have already noticed; a very few more will show the diversity of the -references. The shipwrecked mariners in “The Tempest,” “felt a fever of -the mad and play’d Some tricks of desparation.” Theseus speaks of “The -lunatic, the lover and the poet” as being “of imagination all compact.” -Rosalind mentions “the dark house and the whip,” Romeo the prison, the -bonds and the torments, Othello the popular view of the influence of -the moon. This breadth of treatment in casual allusions alone might -be contrasted with the meagre work of his contemporaries. But we must -pass on to notice that Shakespeare himself was far in advance of his -time, seeing in some way features of insanity which were commonly -overlooked, and using remedies which we consider quite “modern,” even -to-day. His tests for insanity are certainly somewhat crude, but they -occur rather as allusions, where, as we have seen, he adopted the ideas -of his day, than in full-length portraits, in which he is remarkably -exact. A physician of the last century[178:1] remarks on Lear: “Lear’s -is a genuine case of insanity from the beginning to the end, such as -we often see in aged persons. On reading it we cannot divest ourselves -of the idea that it is a real case correctly reported.” This is high -praise; and although Shakespeare hardly requires such commendation, it -is interesting to notice the small details which are true to life. We -have such phrases in “King Lear” as - - “O Lear, Lear, Lear! - Beat at this gate that let thy folly in, - And thy dear judgment out,”[178:2] - -where the old king beats his head, as - - “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! - Keep me in temper; I would not be mad,”[178:3] - -as: - - “O how this mother swells up towards my heart!”[178:4] - -“My wits begin to turn,” “I am cut to the brains,” and the like. These -are touches which can be paralleled by none other of the authors who -have been dealt with in this study. They are the result of a shrewd, -penetrating observation applied to those mental phenomena which were -displayed before the gaze of any who cared to notice them. If we would -contrast genius with mediocrity, we have only to look at the general -attitude of Shakespeare’s contemporaries towards madness and their -representation of it. Take the scene of Lear’s partial restoration to -reason. With its soft, sweet music, with the loving faces surrounding -the sleeping sufferer, with the gradual re-awakening of sanity—what a -contrast there is between this and the metamorphosis of Memnon, the mad -lover, or even the rude art of Ford when he pictures the restoration of -Meleander. - - -_Dramatic use of Madness._ - -2. The superiority of Shakespeare, again, in his dramatic use of -madness! If there is one thing more than another which arrests a -student of this subject it is Shakespeare’s refusal to sacrifice so -grand a passion to the interests of comedy, to expose it as a butt for -the jests of the groundlings and a subject for idle conversation. His -madmen are among his sublimest figures; he introduces them, not after -the manner of Dekker and Middleton, as characters of light comedy, -but as the agents or the victims of tragedy, “more sinned against -than sinning.” They contribute to no coarse underplot, they are not -introduced to enhance the supposed terrors of melodrama—they form part -of the plot itself, are inextricably interwoven with it, colour its -very texture, determine its whole character. This is no imagination, -but sheer fact. “Lear” _is_ the mad king. The word “Hamlet” calls up -an image, either of the hero’s “antic disposition” or (which is still -more likely) of the lonely pathos of Ophelia in her last passion. -Think, on the contrary, of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. There is -Fletcher, whose Mad Lover certainly colours the play, but what a play -of farce and absurdity! There is Webster, whose sole use of the madman -is for the pageantry, and for the intensification by means of it of -the effect of his catastrophe. Or there is Dekker, who paints the -interior of a Bedlam, for the same reason as elsewhere he leads us -into a brothel-house—for the sake of a so-called realism. Or, if you -prefer it, there is Middleton, whose madmen supply material for the -introduction of a trivial underplot and a few coarse jests and songs. -Nowhere, except perhaps in Ford, who appears to have been attracted by -insanity, to have studied it and to have painted it with some insight -and sympathy, is there any approach in this body of drama to the -sustained excellence of Shakespeare. - - -_Mad Folk._ - -3. The same fact emerges when we take the complete figures and consider -them, as has been done, from a purely literary standpoint. We need -not go over the whole story again; it will be sufficient if we cast -our eye back over each group and seize upon the most prominent figures -in it. Take Trouble-all, Meleander, Shattillion, and the Passionate -Madman, and, following the prescription which Paulina gives to Leontes -in the “Winter’s Tale,” choose the best traits from each, concentrate, -add, improve—and you are still far from the august figure of Lear. -Surround Ophelia with the heroines of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. -Will anyone assert that either Aspatia, or the Gaoler’s Daughter, or -Penthea approaches the fair Ophelia? Take the Pretenders: where have -you so admirable a pretence as that of Hamlet, a pretence so realistic -that many critics of to-day maintain that it is reality, and most -allow that, if not actually mad, the Prince of Denmark was perilously -near a state of insanity? It is certainly not in the antics of the boy -of Polymetes, or of the fool “Tony” represented in “The Changeling.” -Considered from this point of view alone, there is no pretender who -does the thing so well as Hamlet,—as a masterpiece of literary art no -character can touch him. If anyone could be said to have the slightest -claim to do so it would be Shakespeare’s own Edgar, less important in -relation to the plot, far less universal in his appeal to mankind as a -representative of humanity, yet perhaps more wonderfully impressive in -the place he occupies than any other personage could possibly be. - -Or let us look at that unimportant yet not wholly negligible group of -persons who have been made the victims of others, written down as asses -by the world at large, and are cowering over there in a corner. Even -here we see that Shakespeare’s figures are by far the most noteworthy. -Morose is not uninteresting, and the dismay of Bellamont, the -“reverent” poet, as he is apprehended for a madman and seems to be in -danger of confinement in Bedlam, is quite a diverting incident in the -plot. But compare them with Shakespeare’s figures. Here is Christopher -Sly, “old Sly’s son of Burton-heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a -card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession -a tinker.” There is individuality here, conveyed in a few lines,—which -are quite sufficient, notwithstanding, to stamp the character with the -impress of Shakespeare’s seal. Better still, take Malvolio, who is -accused of madness for a jest, but whose character as previously drawn -would make an admirable reason for the jest being taken seriously. So -much does he take things to heart that Sir Toby thinks he may actually -go mad through disappointment. “Why, thou hast put him in such a dream -that when the image of it leaves him he must run mad.”[183:1] Thorough -as always, true to life, this is very Shakespeare: none other can -approach him in his own arena of the stage. - - * * * * * - -The last figure seems to have disappeared from the stage, the unmeaning -groups of madmen have dispersed, and with them the crowd. We turn to -go. Yet, as for a moment we look back on the scene we have just left, -a solitary figure meets our eye. It is no madman, no pretender, and no -dupe. It is just the Fool, the Fool unparalleled, the Fool of Lear. Ere -his master’s afflictions could drive him mad like that master, he went -“to bed at noon.” Now he returns to remind us of his other master,—of -his creator,—who painted him on the same canvas which holds Edgar and -Lear, a figure - - “sublime - With tears and laughter for all time.” - -With no more fitting words, inasmuch as they describe not alone the -Fool but all Shakespeare’s mad folk, could we close our study. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[178:1] Dr. Brigham. - -[178:2] “King Lear,” i., 4, 292. - -[178:3] Ibid., i., 5, 50. - -[178:4] Ibid., ii., 4, 53, and passim. - -[183:1] “Twelfth Night,” ii., 5, 211. - - - - -BIBLIOGRAPHY. - - -1. HISTORY AND CRITICISM. - - The Cambridge History of English Literature. - - English Dramatic Literature—A. W. Ward. - - History of English Poetry—W. J. Courthope. - - The Mad Folk of Shakespeare—Dr. Bucknill. - - Notes on Shakespeare in various editions—notably the Variorum. - - Shakespearean Tragedy—A. C. Bradley. - - Shakespeare, his mind and art—Ed. Dowden. - - Introductions to the various editions mentioned below under - “Drama.” - - Notes and Lectures—S. T. Coleridge. - - Francis Beaumont—G. C. Macaulay. - - The Oxford Dictionary—passim. - - Encyclopædia Britannica—s.v. Insanity. - - History of the Insane in the British Isles—Tuke. - - The Psychology of Insanity—B. Hart. - - Survey of London—Stow, ed. Kingsford. - - “Have with you to Saffron Walden”—Nash. - - “The Belman of London”—Dekker. - - “Anatomie of the Bodie of Man”—Vicary. - - “Nymphidia”—Drayton. - - “The Battle of Agincourt”—Drayton. - - -2. DRAMA. - -The Works of: - - Shakespeare Globe Edn. (and others). - Lyly edn. 1858. - Marlowe Oxford Press. - Beaumont & Fletcher ed. Dyce (11 vol.). - Massinger ed. Gifford (4 vol.). - Webster Mermaid Edn. - Ford ed. Gifford (2 vol.). - Middleton ed. Bullen (8 vol.). - Dekker ed. Pearson (4 vol.). - Jonson Mermaid Edn. - Marston ed. Bullen. - Shirley ed. Dyce; ed. Gifford. - Brome edn. 1873. - Day ed. Bullen. - Chettle: Hoffman ed. 1852. - -N.B.—References are to the editions named above. Specific notes are -given where possible to all quotations directly bearing on the subject -of the essay. - - - - -INDEX OF WORKS DEALT WITH OR QUOTED. - -[_The letters ff. denote that the work is dealt with in some detail in -the pages referred to._] - - - “Albertus Wallenstein.” 152. - - “Alchemist, The.” 14, 170. - - “American Journal of Insanity.” 67. - - “Anatomie of the Bodie of Man, The.” 13. - - “Anatomy of Melancholy, The.” 8-9, 27, 126. - - “Antipodes, The.” 92, 134 ff. - - “As You Like It.” 6, 28, 137, 139, 142-4, 177. - - - “Ball, The.” 12. - - “Bartholomew Fair.” 23, 53-4, 113 ff., 181. - - “Battle of Agincourt, The.” 5. - - “Belman of London, The.” 26. - - “Bird in a Cage, The.” 29. - - “Broken Heart, The.” 51, 87, 128, 181. - - “Bulwark of Defence, A.” 14. - - - “Caliban upon Setebos.” 121-2. - - “Changeling, The.” 12, 25, 32 ff., 48, 50, 58, 124, 168 ff., 181. - - “City Wit, The.” 12. - - “Comedy of Errors, The.” 15, 20, 52. - - “Compendious Pygment, etc., A.” 27. - - “Coronation, The,” 12. - - “Cymbeline.” 52, 119, 120, 125, 127, 162. - - - “Dr. Faustus.” 150. - - “Duchess of Malfi, The.” 18, 21, 25, 41, 46, 51, 103 ff. - - - “Elizabethan Literature” (Saintsbury). 90. - - “Emperor of the East.” 14. - - “English Dramatic Literature” (Ward). 56, 89. - - “English Moor, The.” 11. - - “Epicene.” 19, 23, 25, 52, 167, 182. - - - “Færie Queene, The.” 87. - - “Fair Quarrel, A.” 11. - - - “Gentleman Usher, The.” 119. - - - “Hamlet.” 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 47, 49, 50, 51, 56, 60, 75 ff., 81, - 82, 87, 88, 89, 91, 97, 107, 129, 144 ff., 160, 164, 173 ff., - 180, 181. - - “Have with you to Saffron Walden.” 122. - - “Henry VI., Part II.” 14. - - “Hoffman, The Tragedy of.” 96 ff., 119-20. - - “Honest Whore, The.” 20, 23, 29, 32 ff., 58, 171. - - - “Julius Cæsar.” 52, 149. - - - “King John.” 4, 21, 52, 128, 139, 144, 157 ff., 162. - - “King Lear.” 3, 10-11, 26, 27, 37, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 60, - 66 ff., 80, 93, 95, 121, 122 ff., 151, 160, 172 ff., 178-9, 180, - 181, 183. - - “Knight of the Burning Pestle, The.” 136. - - - “Law Tricks.” 16, 167-8. - - “Lover’s Melancholy, The.” 18, 21, 23, 24, 55, 91 ff., 128, 179, - 181. - - “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” 5, 35, 138, 140. - - - “Macbeth.” 9, 43, 47, 149, 151 ff., 162. - - “Mad Folk of Shakespeare, The.” 70, 79, 141, 142, 153, 154-5. - - “Mad Lover, The.” 7, 54-5, 164 ff., 179. - - “Maid’s Tragedy, The.” 128 ff., 134, 138, 139, 181. - - “Match me in London.” 16, 55, 56-8, 170. - - “Measure for Measure.” 76, 173. - - “Merchant of Venice, The.” 82, 137, 139, 141, 144. - - “Merry Wives of Windsor, The.” 16. - - “Midsummer Night’s Dream, A.” 6, 177. - - “Mother Bombie.” 120-1. - - “Much Ado about Nothing.” 15, 28. - - - “New Way to Pay Old Debts, A.” 53, 102 ff. - - “Nice Valour, The.” See “Passionate Madman.” - - “Noble Gentleman, The.” 105, 108 ff., 116-7, 132, 134, 181. - - “Northern Lass, The.” 30, 127, 132 ff. - - “Northward Ho!” 32 ff., 48, 52, 167. - - “Nymphidia,” 17. - - - “Old Wives’ Tale, The.” 65. - - “Orlando Furioso.” 61 ff., 151. - - “Othello.” 12, 44, 85, 149, 177. - - - “Passionate Madman, The.” 105 ff., 134, 181. - - “Philaster.” 5, 19, 129, 131 ff., 138, 139. - - “Pilgrim, The.” 12, 32 ff., 48. - - “Politician, The.” 149. - - “Popish Impostures, A Dictionary of.” 11. - - - “Renegado, The.” 163-4. - - “Richard II.” 139, 142. - - “Romeo and Juliet.” 6, 14, 28, 177. - - - “Shakespeare, his Mind and Art.” 66. - - “Shakespearean Tragedy.” 122-3, 125, 148-9. - - “Silent Woman, The.” See “Epicene.” - - “Sophy, The.” 152. - - “Spanish Tragedy, The.” 62 ff. - - “Survey of London, A.” 31. - - - “Taming of the Shrew, The.” 17, 128, 167, 182. - - “Tempest, The.” 121, 177. - - “Timon of Athens.” 4, 159 ff., 161. - - “’Tis pity she’s a Whore.” 119. - - “Troilus and Cressida.” 6, 18, 125, 137, 139, 140-1, 159. - - “Twelfth Night.” 10, 21, 37, 52, 128, 139, 167, 182-3. - - “Two Noble Kinsmen, The.” 7, 49, 81 ff., 91, 97, 132, 134, 181. - - - “Unnatural Combat, The.” 161, 162. - - - “Very Woman, A.” 99 ff., 133 ff., 139. - - “Vulgar Errors.” 14. - - - “What you will” (Marston). 29. - - “Winter’s Tale, The.” 5, 181. - - “Witch, The.” 9. - - “Witch of Edmonton, The.” 151. - - - W. HEFFER & SONS LTD., - 104, HILLS ROAD, CAMBRIDGE. - - - - - * * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - -Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the -original. Words with and without accents appear as in the original. - -Ellipses match the original. - -The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the -public domain. - -The Table of Contents’ entry for the Preface was added by the -Transcriber. - -The following corrections have been made to the original text: - - Page 14: “Romeo and Juliet” (iv., 3,[original has a period] - 47-8) - - On page 19, footnote anchor [19:3] has been added by the - Transcriber. - - Page 20: Guildenstern’s[original has “Guildernstern’s”] account - of Hamlet - - Page 31: mad-houses in the Seventeenth[original has - “Seventeeth”] Century - - Page 35: expressions of an idée[original has “idèe”] fixe - - Page 37: “You keep him here to teach him madness.”[quotation - mark missing in original] - - Page 55: melancholy of Palador, Prince of Cyprus,[comma missing - in original] - - Page 57: _King._ When?[original has exclamation point] - - Page 95: “[quotation mark missing in original]Sits on my heart - so heavy - - Page 143: unregenerate days.[143:1][original has “2”] - - Page 185: References are to the editions named above.[original - has a comma] - - Page 187: entry “Epicene.”[original has “Epicure.”] - - Page 187: entry “Færie[original has “Faerie”] Queene, The.” - - Page 187, entry “Hamlet.”: 173 ff.,[comma missing in original] - 180, 181 - - Page 188, entry “Philaster.”: 5, 19, 129,[original has a - semi-colon] 131 ff., 138, 139. - - [14:2] Act[original has extraneous period] iii. Sc. iv. - - [11:5] Ibid.,[original has two commas], iii., 5, 31. - - [74:4] Ibid., v., 3,[original has “.,”] 272-4. - - [77:2] Ibid., iv.,[comma missing in original] 5, 23, etc. - - [111:1] Ibid., iv.,[comma missing in original] 3. - - [141:3] “Merchant of Venice,” iv., 1, 114[original has - “1-114”], etc. - - [144:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 91-2[original has “1-91, - 2”]. - - [151:1] may also be noticed, though[original has “thought”] it - is - - [159:2] Ibid., iii., 4, 101-2.[period missing in original] - - [174:1] “Hamlet,[comma missing in original]” ii., 1, 78, etc. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK*** - - -******* This file should be named 63896-0.txt or 63896-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/8/9/63896 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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