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.