MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.
(iii.) MELANCHOLY.
“Many new and old writers have spoken confusedly of it,
confounding melancholy and madness.”
(_Burton: “Anatomy of Melancholy.”_)
The representation of “melancholy” and of the disease which we know
as “melancholia” was extremely common in seventeenth century drama.
Its popularity with playwrights of all kinds can be traced to several
causes. In the first place it gave ample opportunity for introducing
poetry of no mean order, which seems to have been more popular on the
stage a few centuries ago than it is to-day. Then “melancholy” was
commonly associated with unrequited love, and the sad lover has always
been a favourite character both in comedy and in tragedy. Again, a
hero or heroine afflicted with “melancholy” was, after all, in the
seventeenth-century acceptation of the term, quite sane. “Melancholy,”
then, became a kind of “humour”—as in the eyes of the mediæval
physician it literally had been—and it was not regarded in at all the
same way as other species of mental disorder.
We must distinguish, however, between the variety of ways in which
the word “melancholy” is used in these dramas, where there are
“large volumes of it in print to very slender purpose.”[127:1] When
Shakespeare says in “Cymbeline”
“O melancholy!
Who ever yet could find thy bottom? find
The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare
Might easiliest harbour in,”[127:2]
he is expressing feelings shared by anyone who tries to fathom the
treatment of melancholy by Shakespeare’s own contemporaries. There was
no common and generally recognised conception of melancholy as of the
more obvious forms of insanity. Hence it becomes impossible to consider
the question of melancholy from the standpoint of medicine, still less
to make any division such as the threefold medical division of to-day,
into acute melancholia, excited melancholia, and that alternation of
depression and excitement known as “folie circulaire.” We shall instead
divide our subject more broadly and simply into Melancholy True and
Melancholy False, taking but a few typical cases to illustrate each of
these divisions in turn.
By Melancholy True is meant what we call nowadays “melancholia,”—that
is, a mental disease in which the prevailing symptom is depression,—a
mental disease from the author’s point of view and not merely from
ours. Some cases which would come under this heading have already, for
convenience’ sake, been treated above. There is the melancholia of
Penthea, hardly distinguishable from madness, and utilised dramatically
in a similar way. There is also the melancholy of Palador, which seems
to us less a case for the physician than it did to the author. Ford’s
conception of melancholy as a disease is clearly influenced by Burton,
and he would no doubt have agreed with the doctors of Christopher Sly
that “Melancholy is the Nurse of frenzy,”[128:1] if, indeed, he would
not have gone farther and declined to distinguish between them. Other
cases of melancholia are merely described, and will hardly repay study.
Such is Viola’s well-known description of one (imaginary) girl who
“Never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.”[128:2]
Shakespeare’s King John is thinking of another kind of melancholy when
he says to Hubert:
“. . . that surly spirit, melancholy,
Had baked thy blood and made it heavy-thick.”[128:3]
In the two characters which we shall now study,—Aspatia of the “Maid’s
Tragedy” and Euphrasia in “Philaster”—we shall see that there is
with Beaumont and Fletcher a considerable lightening of the subject,
with a consequent artistic gain, but possibly a loss in force and
impressiveness.
Aspatia is, of course, throughout the play, subordinated to Evadne,
and she appears only in the first two acts and the last, her death
occurring in the last scene. From her first appearance, after her
betrothed husband has taken Evadne to wife at the King’s command, the
pitiableness of her situation and the nobility and the purity of her
character endear her to us unchangeably. None of the indecency which
mars the play clings to the wronged Aspatia; many would go so far as to
consider her laments more effective, because less revolting, than those
of Ophelia. Wherever we see her
“Nothing but sad thoughts in her breast do dwell.”[129:1]
When Melantius offers her his ill-timed congratulations on the marriage
which he supposes to have been hers, her reply is short:
“My hard fortunes
Deserve not scorn; for I was never proud
When they were good.”[129:2]
In the next scene, however, when the presence of the bride makes the
hurt keener, her tongue is loosened. No sweeter song, in spite of the
rather vulgar criticism of Evadne, can be found outside Shakespeare
than the only one Aspatia gives us:
“Lay a garland on my hearse,
Of the dismal yew,
Maidens, willow trenches bear;
Say I died true;
My love was false, but I was firm
From my hour of birth.
Upon my buried body lie
Lightly, gentle earth.”[130:1]
“Fie on’t madam!” says Evadne, “The words are so strange, they are able
to make one dream of hobgoblins.”
The effect of Aspatia’s appearances enhances enormously the effect of
the play as a whole.
“She carries with her an infectious grief,
That strikes all her beholders.”[130:2]
Her father is distressed beyond measure; her betrothed, “servile ‘iure
divino’ royalist” as he is, is stricken with the keenest remorse. Even
the apparently buoyant Evadne is moved to pity.
Perhaps, in the scene between Aspatia and her waiting women, the
wronged woman loses a little of our sympathy. The dramatists have
evidently succumbed to the Muse of Poetry and Aspatia’s laments become
drawn-out and a little monotonous. Yet the poetry is at times almost
perfect; it is only her continual harping on the subject of “Man, Oh
that beast man!”[130:3] which makes us fear lest melancholy become
raving madness. When she subsides at last into “dull silence,” our
love for her is at its height: she is indeed “like Sorrow’s monument.”
In the last act she appears once more,[131:1] in the disguise of a
supposed brother, with the seeming intention of killing her faithless
lord. A tragic Viola indeed, she succeeds in getting wounded, and
eventually dies, not without witnessing the death of Evadne and holding
Amintor’s hand in token of reconciliation.
The girl Euphrasia, in “Philaster,” has less of tragedy and more of
romance, more even of Shakespeare’s own poetry. In her disguise as
Bellario, Philaster’s page, she appears as a “pretty, sad-talking
boy,”[131:2] and it would seem to be rather the prince, who sits
“cross-armed,” “sighs away the day” for love of Arethusa, and talks
furthermore in several places of going mad,[131:3] who should come
under this category of melancholiacs. But he himself proves to his own
satisfaction that he is sane enough; and though such a statement is not
always to be believed, it seems for once to correspond with the point
of view of the author. But Euphrasia herself is continually reminding
us of her melancholy, which has all the appearance of being conceived
as similar to that of Aspatia, although it is less pronounced. It
springs from love, it is nowhere put down to a mere caprice, and
although in neither of these two plays is any cure attempted, this is
because the characters are subordinated to others and for the sake of a
unified plot.
The melancholy of Mistress Constance, in Brome’s “Northern Lass,” was
probably meant by the author to be taken more seriously than most
people would find possible to-day. In conception it resembles the
melancholy-madness of Fletcher’s “Passionate Madman.” Its cause, to go
no further, is the same. Love has “overwhelmed her spirits, and turned
the faculties of all her senses into a rude confusion, sending forth
the uses of them extravagantly.” The method of her cure, according
to Pate (disguised as a Doctor) is as simple as are the lightning
cures of Fletcher: “The party that she loves must be the doctor, the
medicine and the cure.” This _médecin malgré lui_, however, finds his
patient too much for him. “I fear she is wiser than all of us, that
have to do with her. She knows my gown better than I do; for I have had
but two hours’ acquaintance with it.” Constance, though at times she
sings snatches of song, does not rave like Shattillion or the Gaoler’s
Daughter; the prevailing symptom of her melancholy is depression. As
a character she is peculiarly lacking in charm, though the title-page
of the play, which declares it to be “a comedy often acted with good
applause,” in high places, would suggest that the heroine was popular
enough at the time.
Almira, the daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily, in Massinger’s “A Very
Woman,” might profitably be considered in a later section dealing with
unclassified abnormal states of mind. However, the malady produced in
her by the supposed loss of her lover was apparently conceived by the
dramatist as “melancholy-madness,” and therefore it finds a place here.
Gifford, in a note in his edition of Massinger, describes Almira’s
complaint as “not madness, but light-headedness.” She is firmly
convinced that Cardenes, who has been wounded in a scuffle with his
rival, is dead, and all her friends’ attempts to convince her to the
contrary merely strengthen her belief.
“I know you,
And that in this you flatter me; he’s dead,
As much as could die of him: but look yonder!
Amongst a million of glorious lights
That deck the heavenly canopy, I have
Discern’d his soul, transform’d into a star.
Do you not see it?”[133:1]
The belief induces semi-hallucinations. She hears “a dismal sound”—it
is Antonio in hell, “on the infernal rack where murderers are
tormented.”[133:1] This sets a train of delusive ideas in motion;
her cousin fears “she’ll grow into a frenzy,” when one of her women
exclaims “Her fit begins to leave her,” and she is once more herself,
relating her “strangest waking dream of hell and heaven.”[134:1]
Notwithstanding these temperate intervals her father is alarmed, and
fears, not without reason, that
“She’ll do some violent act upon herself.”[134:2]
Her hands are therefore to be bound and a physician sent for. We hear
a good deal more of her melancholy during the play, but it becomes
conventional, and after the second act we think of her as quite a
rational human being—as a “Very Woman.” It is the strange change in
her affections which gives the great interest to her character which it
certainly possesses; for that reason it would hardly be fair to attempt
to compare her either with Aspatia or with Euphrasia, interest in whom
is dependent on other considerations.
A case of melancholy, both interesting and amusing, similar in
conception and treatment to the mania of Shattillion and of the
Passionate Lover mentioned above,[134:3] is furnished by Brome’s
“Antipodes.” As we should expect in an “approved Comedy” acted in
the year 1638, the subject is approached only from its lighter
side; within the limits which such a treatment necessarily imposes
the play is pleasant enough, and the principal characters are very
laughable. Joyless and Diana, it appears, have a son Peregrine, a
lad of twenty-five, who has been married for some years to a girl
named Martha. But Peregrine, whose inclination has always been for a
roving life, has developed a melancholy in consequence of his parents’
opposition to his desire for travel. The disease, when the play
opens, is “inclining still to worse, As he grows more in days,” and
the father’s anxiety is aggravated by the fact that Martha is also
afflicted with a similar trouble, caused by her husband’s neglect. Her
symptoms are somewhat different:
“Indeed she’s full of passion, which she utters
By the effects, as diversely, as several
Objects reflect upon her wand’ring fancy,
Sometimes in extreme weepings, and anon
In vehement laughter; now in sullen silence,
And presently in loudest exclamations.”[135:1]
Doctor Hughball, a physician of renown, undertakes both cases, and
in addition that of Joyless, whom “some few yellow spots” about the
temples proclaim to be “jealous-mad.” This doctor, like others of the
“cure-all” tribe whom we have recently encountered, has had great
experience of mental disease. He has cured
“A country gentleman, that fell mad
For spending of his land before he sold it.”[135:2]
A lady who fell mad with “tedious and painful study” to find “a way
to love her husband,” and “horn-mad citizens, he cures them by the
dozens”![136:1] Brought face to face with the melancholiac in one
of his “fits,” Hughball sets about humouring him, “applauding” his
“noble disposition,” and “adoring” his “spirit of travel.” He tells his
patient that he has been all over the world, even in the Antipodes,
meeting his praise of Mandeville, Drake, and other worthies with vivid
and imaginative descriptions of the unknown lands on the other side of
the world. Everything, it appears, goes by contraries:
“There the deer
Pursue the hounds, and (which you may think strange),
I ha’ seen one sheep worry a dozen foxes,
By moonshine, in a morning before day,
They hunt, trail scents with oxen and plough with dogs.”[136:2]
Peregrine is subdued; he could listen to the Doctor “a whole
fortnight,” and gladly accepts his offer to travel with him to this
wonderful land. Hence, in the next scene, by the device of a play
within a play,[136:3] the Doctor is able to effect a threefold cure.
Joyless’ jealousy is overcome; Martha (after being disguised as a Queen
and formally presented to her husband), wins back the love of the
melancholy Peregrine; and Peregrine himself, though falling back more
than once during the play-scenes to “Mandeville-madness,” is eventually
cured. In the concluding scenes, where music “upon the Recorders” is
being played, we are shewn the melancholiac’s return to complete sanity.
“I am what you are pleased to make me; but withal . . . ignorant
of my own condition, whether I sleep or wake, or talk, or
dream; whether _I_ be, or be not; or if I am, whether I do, or
do not anything.”[137:1]
Revelations and recognitions follow, in spite of the Doctor’s warning
against “troubling his brain with new discoveries.” Peregrine is then
made to “recover roundly” by means of a short masque (preceded by “a
most untunable flourish”!) introducing “Discord, Folly, Jealousy,
Melancholy, and Madness.” When these characters have been routed by
Harmony and her train, Peregrine declares “Indeed, I find me well.”
The treatment of melancholy in this play is in no way serious, and
shews us little of real value.
“Melancholy False”[137:2] is hard to define; the criterion must
ultimately be a subjective one. It is depicted as a state of the mind
in which the person concerned has full control of himself,—as a cloak
which he assumes for his own purposes, and which he is able to throw
off should necessity arise. At its very worst, it would only be spoken
of to-day as “depression.” Sometimes, it is true, this melancholy seems
to give a definite colour to the person whom it characterises—to
be, in fact, part of his temperament; but in these cases no mention
is made of any possible cure of the trouble—sometimes not even of
the cause—so that the suggestion of disease does not arise in the
spectator’s mind. No doubt such a condition, if persisted in, would
often have disastrous results. Such a “humour” was dangerous, but it
was nevertheless a “humour.”
It may be objected that many persons, using these tests, might well
put Euphrasia and Aspatia in the present category. It is true. But
if we made no distinctions and adopted no classifications but those
which were indisputable and self-evident, we should make very few,
and those would be of little value. We have it on excellent authority
that the only way to “part sadness and melancholy” is “by a familiar
demonstration of the working.”[138:1] To a layman it would probably
be clear that the melancholy of Aspatia and Euphrasia, of Mistress
Constance and Almira, is meant to be of a different kind from that of
several characters with whom we shall now have to deal.
The largest variety of “cases” is furnished by Shakespeare, and for
this reason our study of this type may be confined to his works. Some
of the “cases” are described by Dr. Bucknill:[139:1] “the melancholy
of pride in Achilles, of prosperity in Antonio, of constitution and
timidity in the Queen of ‘Richard II,’ of contemplation in Jacques.”
We might possibly add more, but here are instances enough (if they are
really instances) to shew the nature of this melancholy.
Surprise might perhaps be expressed that Shakespeare should make such
large use of this “humour”; it would be expected that he, whom we
have shewn to be familiar with all kinds of insanity, would conceive
of melancholia more nearly after the fashion of the present-day
physician. The explanation is simple. Shakespeare knew perfectly well
that melancholy could be a disease, and has described it as such. Let
us remember the quotations, given above,[139:2] from “Twelfth Night”
and “King John.” And who was it that “besieged with sable-coloured
melancholy . . . did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most
wholesome physic of thy health-giving air?”[140:1] Yet Shakespeare
was equally well acquainted with that hypochondriacal melancholia and
that temperamental depression which play a large part in modern life,
and both of these, to say nothing of the love-melancholy which varies
from slight depression to acute mania, he found it convenient to use.
The contemporary dramatists, however great or small their knowledge,
usually preferred the “love melancholy” and used it almost exclusively.
The melancholy of Achilles is quite superficial. He is “lion sick of
a proud heart”[140:2] just as Ajax is “melancholy without cause,” and
nobody in the play interprets his behaviour otherwise. The estimate
just quoted of him is one of the least violent of the opinions of Ajax;
Agamemnon calls him “over-proud and under-honest”;[140:3] Ulysses says
that he is
“possess’d . . . with greatness
And speaks not to himself but with a pride
That quarrels at self-breath.”[140:4]
Ulysses’ descriptions of the general’s occupations, of his jests at
Agamemnon and the Greeks, of his delight in Patroclus’ imitations,
and the “loud applause” which comes from his “deep chest”[140:5] are
sufficient proof that his malady is not very serious. Certainly,
judging from the care with which Shakespeare demonstrates the nature
of its source, we shall conclude that this melancholy is presented to
us as a “humour.”
The “Merchant of Venice” is coloured by the sadness of its hero, even
at the height of his prosperity. At the outset of the play he declares
to his friends:
“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad;
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn.
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself.”[141:1]
We at least are not at a loss to explain Antonio’s depression. It is
not alone the boredom of “unruffled prosperity”[141:2]—this sorts ill
with the character of the noble merchant: it is rather a peculiarity
of temperament which colours both adversity and prosperity. For such
melancholy as marks Antonio’s farewell to Bassanio:
“I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death,”[141:3]
is not the necessary concomitant either of prosperity or of adversity.
The two speeches quoted are examples of the same condition of mind;
the melancholy which they exhibit has the double dramatic purpose of
beautifying the character of Antonio and of giving the spectator that
“preadjustment” which is so valuable an aid to the plot.
Similarly we have in “Richard II” the melancholy of the Queen, which
prepares us for the troubles about to befall her. This melancholy may
best be attributed, not necessarily, as Dr. Bucknill suggests, to her
temperament, certainly not to any prosperity she may have enjoyed, but
rather to a vague fear as to the results of her husband’s perilous
journey, coupled possibly with her experience of the King’s rashness
and a recognition of his recent weakness in dealing with Mowbray and
Bolingbroke. It is, at all events, merely a passing sadness of the
“inward soul” and her “heavy sad”-ness is soon dispersed, changing
first to real grief, which gives place before her weaker husband—true
woman that she is!—to a resolution concealing for a time her sorrow.
In Jacques we have a character of more complexity. His humour he
describes as “a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of
my travels in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous
sadness.”[142:1] He wishes, in his own words, to
“Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.”[142:2]
But the Duke, usually so gentle, is quite out of sympathy with the
pseudo-reformer. Jacques, he says, has been a libertine, and like
many a reformed sinner, the ex-voluptuary would merely “disgorge into
the general world,” “all the embossèd sores and headed evils” of his
unregenerate days.[143:1]
So much discussion has been lavished on the “case” of Jacques that
we shall not attempt to do more than shew what we believe to be its
perfectly superficial nature. Judging from the play as a whole, and
more especially from the Duke’s contempt and Rosalind’s banter, we
should suppose this to be Shakespeare’s view. As Dr. Moulton very
justly remarks, egotism is plainly shewn to be at the root of his
disposition. He has lived out his life in a short time; now he turns
everything, for sheer self-love, into matter not for jests but for
scurrilous abuse, or at best for a malevolent, sarcastic humour.
Yet the morbidity of Jacques’ melancholy suggests that, more than any
other of Shakespeare’s similarly conceived characters, he carries about
with him a secret malady when he persists in his attitude towards
the world. One day the secret wound will fester; his “weeping” and
his “sullen fits” will become uncontrollable; his frantic abuse will
turn to frenzy; his ironic, half-humorous sallies will change to
the disconnected utterances of a maniac; or his surly humour will
sink lower and lower until it reaches the dead level of melancholic
depression.
Here, then, we have, in briefest outline, some of the types of
melancholy—true and false—presented by Shakespeare and certain of his
contemporaries. Numerous examples from other authors of the time might
be added, but we have seen enough to be clear on two points. These are,
the essential difference between the true and the false melancholy, and
the use of each to the dramatist in his work, both for its own sake
and because of the opportunities which it gives for the introduction
of poetical passages. From the character who entertains a “wilful
stillness”
“With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,”[144:1]
to the true victim of his sorrow, holding, against his will (like
Constance in “King John”)
“The eternal spirit . . .
In the vile prison of afflicted breath,”[144:2]
the melancholiac has great dramatic possibilities, of which, for the
most part, the fullest advantage is taken.
This seems to be the most convenient place to discuss the question
of the real (as distinguished from the assumed) mental condition of
Hamlet. That it is an abnormal condition most careful readers of the
play will not question. How otherwise can we explain his habitual
inaction, his sudden fits of energy, his violence to those whom he
loves, his strange self-questionings, and his even stranger apathy to
those things which should most move him? The whole question of the
cause of Hamlet’s procrastination depends on our estimate of his mental
state. Goethe’s description of Hamlet as “a beautiful, pure, noble,
and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which makes the
hero,” is clearly at variance with facts, and the estimates of both
Coleridge and Dowden largely ignore the practical side of the character
of Hamlet. Only by recognising what the play certainly tells us, that
the melancholy of Hamlet is really a disease, can we obtain anything
like a reasonable explanation of his strange movements. After all, he
is not the one-sided, unequally-developed weakling that certain school
editions of Shakespeare would have us suppose. He is, without any
doubt, a man of practical ability, capable of prompt, energetic action,
skilled in all manly exercises. Intellectually, his “noble mind”
compels the greatest regard, he has studied long at the University and
possesses besides such qualities as would serve him admirably as ruler
of Denmark. Fortinbras says of him that
“He was likely
Had he been put on, to have proved most royally.”[146:1]
His moral nature is equally praiseworthy. Ordinarily strong of will,
“most generous and free from all contriving,”[146:2] though probably at
times inclined to be passionate and on occasions headstrong to excess,
he was certainly not the man to procrastinate through “losing himself
in labyrinths of thought” as Schlegel asserts him to have done.
If we would find the key to this mystery, Hamlet himself will give it
us in his first soliloquy. He meditates suicide, from which he is only
kept by the fact that “the Everlasting” has “fix’d His canon ’gainst
self-slaughter.”[146:3] Then he explains why everything to him is
“weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”—it is the terrible shock of his
mother’s incestuous marriage following that of the death of his father,
and the suspicious circumstances which attended it, that has given
rise to this abnormal state of mind. His melancholy is augmented by
the nature of the command laid on him by the Ghost and the consequent
secrecy which he must put upon himself:
“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”[146:4]
This is Melancholy True—a state of mind which cannot be thrown
off like a cloak, yet which is abnormal. It is an excellent case
for the pathologist. Truly conceived, it furnishes the only
satisfying explanation of the strange phases of Hamlet’s so-called
“character”—the depression, the self-weariness, the irritability,
the violence, the satisfaction at the smallest thing achieved, the
impossibility of carrying out the original purpose—all these things
are the natural outcome of melancholia.
A two-fold objection to this view has to be met. It will be said that
such a conception of Hamlet destroys the moral lesson of the play. And
would that it did! It is unfortunate that certain critics are unable
to pick up a play without looking at once for the moral. Those who
have done this with “Hamlet” have succeeded in shifting the centre of
gravity from the author to themselves. They say that the play shews how
wrong it is to procrastinate, and how by procrastination we lose far
more than we gain. It is, according to these critics, a mere sermon
preached on the text
“That we would do
We should do when we would.”[147:1]
How, they say, can this sermon be preached if the chief
illustration—the man by whom we are all to be warned—is exculpated
from blame by illness?
They know little of tragedy—or at least of Shakespeare’s tragedy—who
hold a view like this. What Shakespeare habitually does is to shew us
a man, by nature fitted to be a hero of tragedy, with a fatal defect,
the consequences of which are worked out in the play. Looked at from
this point of view, the sentimental objection at once vanishes, and the
second objection arises. It is a more serious one: Can a man suffering
from melancholia—to put the thing in its most prosaic form—any more
than a man suffering from any other form of insanity, be admitted as
a tragic hero? The answer is that he can. And this partly because his
exact state of mind is not determined, partly because it is a condition
not generally recognised as one of disease, and tragedy has always
to be considered from the point of view, not of the doctor, but of
the author and the audience. As Dr. Bradley, who very ably sums up
the question, says in his Lectures on Shakespearean Tragedy: “The man
who suffers as Hamlet suffers—and thousands go about their business
suffering thus in greater or less degree—is considered irresponsible
neither by other people nor by himself: he is only too keenly conscious
of his responsibility. . . . . Hamlet’s state is not one which a healthy
mind is unable sufficiently to imagine. It is probably not further from
average experience, nor more difficult to realise, than the great
tragic passions of Othello, Antony or Macbeth.”[149:1]
Before we leave Hamlet, it should be emphasised that the state of mind
of the hero is quite a subordinate question in the play itself. “It
would be absurdly unjust to call ‘Hamlet’ a study of melancholy, but
it contains such a study,” is Dr. Bradley’s way of putting it.[149:2]
The significance of this is that we must not expect the indications of
Hamlet’s disease to be developed to any degree, nor refuse to claim for
it a place among our examples of “Melancholy True,” just because the
author fails to introduce the hero to a physician![149:3]
FOOTNOTES:
[127:1] As Pate says in Brome’s “Northern Lass” (v., 1).
[127:2] “Cymbeline,” iv., 2, 203.
[128:1] Induction, ii., 135.
[128:2] “Twelfth Night,” ii., 4, 113, etc.
[128:3] “King John,” iii., 3, 42.
[129:1] “The Maid’s Tragedy,” ii., 1.
[129:2] Ibid., i., 1.
[130:1] Ibid., ii., 1.
[130:2] Ibid., i., 1.
[130:3] Ibid., ii., 2.
[131:1] Ibid., v., 4.
[131:2] “Philaster,” ii., 3.
[131:3] _e.g._ iii., 1, 277; iii., 2, 83, etc.
[133:1] “A Very Woman,” ii., 3.
[134:1] Ibid., ii., 3.
[134:2] Ibid., ii., 3.
[134:3] pp. 105 ff.
[135:1] “The Antipodes,” i., 2.
[135:2] Ibid., i., 1.
[136:1] Ibid., i., 1.
[136:2] Ibid., i., 6.
[136:3] The scenes in which Joyless, Diana, Peregrine and the rest
listen to this play and pass comments on it often bear a striking
resemblance to the better known “Knight of the Burning Pestle.”
[137:1] “The Antipodes,” v., 9.
[137:2] A medical friend reminds me that there is, properly speaking,
no such thing as “melancholy false,” and that the characters mentioned
under this head are not suffering, in his opinion, from any form of
mental disease. I will therefore repeat here that the classification of
“melancholy” adopted in this chapter is _not_ a scientific one, that it
is made on a seventeenth century, rather than on a twentieth century
basis—we are trying, that is, to take up the positions of the several
dramatists. Few specialists of to-day would consider Jacques, Achilles
or Antonio to be in a state of disease, but that the Elizabethan doctor
would have diagnosed their malady as “melancholy” I have little doubt.
The ordinary spectator would probably not consider the question in any
detail.
[138:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Moth: i., 2, 9-10.
[139:1] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 310.
[139:2] p. 128.
[140:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” i., 1, 233, etc.
[140:2] “Troilus and Cressida,” ii., 3, 92, etc.
[140:3] Ibid., ii., 3, 132.
[140:4] Ibid., ii., 3, 180.
[140:5] Ibid., i., 3, 161, etc.
[141:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 1, etc.
[141:2] Bucknill, “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 307.
[141:3] “Merchant of Venice,” iv., 1, 114, etc.
[142:1] “As You Like It,” iv., 1, 15, etc.
[142:2] Ibid., ii., 7, 60.
[143:1] Ibid., ii., 7, 67-9.
[144:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 91-2.
[144:2] “King John,” iii., 4, 18.
[146:1] “Hamlet,” v., 2, 408.
[146:2] Ibid., iv., 7, 136—the King’s testimony.
[146:3] Ibid., i., 2, 131-2.
[146:4] Ibid., i., 2, 159.
[147:1] “Hamlet,” iv., 7, 119-20.
[149:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” p. 121.
[149:2] Ibid., p. 121.
[149:3] Beside the melancholy of Hamlet we might place that of
Haraldus, the young Prince of Shirley’s play, “_The Politician_,” were
it not that the part played by his melancholy is purely nominal. His
father—the Politician—sends two courtiers to cure him, and they make
him drunk. His excesses bring on a fever which causes his death. His
likeness to Hamlet only strikes us here and there, and the melancholy,
such as it is, is caused chiefly by the discovery that he is a bastard.