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.