MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY—(iv.) DELUSIONS,
HALLUCINATIONS AND OTHER ABNORMAL STATES.
“How now; who’s there? spirits, spirits?”
(“_Spanish Tragedy._”)
Delusions and hallucinations occurring in cases of real madness we have
already encountered, but since these phenomena are themselves symptoms
of a disordered state of mind we must not neglect instances in which
they occur with persons otherwise sane. These spring to the memory;
who, for example, can ever forget the sights which Faustus sees in his
last hour on earth?
“O, I’ll leap up to my God; who pulls me down?
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.
One drop would save my soul, half a drop—Ah, my Christ!
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on Him: Oh, spare me, Lucifer!
Where is it now? ’tis gone: And see where God
Stretcheth out His arm, and bends His ireful brows;
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God.”[150:1]
More examples of such hallucinations in moments of great stress might
be quoted. It will best serve our purpose if we consider one typical
case (Frank, in “The Witch of Edmonton,”) and afterwards discuss a case
of special interest—that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Frank Thorney, in “The Witch of Edmonton,” has married one Winifred,
but is forced into a bigamous marriage with Susan, whom he afterwards
murders, without letting any suspicion fall on himself. He is tormented
on his sick-bed by phantoms indistinguishable from realities, more
particularly by the ghost of Susan, and at last reveals to Winifred the
awful truth.
“I am not idle,” he says, and he is right. But thick-coming fancies
disturb him. The ghost of Susan appears. He stares at it fixedly, then
turns to the other side, only to be confronted again by the apparition.
When it vanishes he is raving of “a force in which were drawn a
thousand ghosts, leap’d newly from their graves, to pluck me into a
winding-sheet.” He has, so he says, “Some windmill in my brains for
want of sleep,” but sleep only comes with the unburdening of the guilty
conscience.[151:1]
Macbeth (like Frank Thorney) is at no time in the play insane, but
he becomes the victim of “horrible imaginings” which beyond a certain
point seem to him to be real.[152:1] Macbeth is predisposed to
hallucinations by a remarkably vivid power of imagination, which finds
expression from the very outset of the play. The mere suggestion of
the murder of Duncan he describes as a “horrid image” which unfixes
his hair and makes his seated heart knock at his ribs, against the use
of nature. Thus we have a character whose imagination torments him
throughout his career of crime till he has “supped full of horrors” and
the “taste of fears” has almost lost all significance.[152:2]
In the well-known “Dagger Scene”[152:3] we are confronted with the
first of Macbeth’s hallucinations. It is before the murder of Duncan,
and the spectral dagger only deceives him for a moment. Making an
unsuccessful attempt to clutch it, he is for a short moment at a loss
to explain a weapon which he can see but cannot handle. Then he rightly
concludes that it is but a “dagger of the mind, a false creation”; his
eyes “are made the fools o’ the other senses,” yet the image does not
disappear till courage comes again and with it “the heat of deeds.”
Duncan is murdered; “after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,” but the
regicide’s better self torments him more and more, and the Lady fears
for his sanity:
“These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.”[153:1]
Macbeth, however, is losing his self-control. At the moment of the
murder a fresh hallucination troubled him, and though its true nature
is now recognised, and he can “moralise” upon it, its very mention
fills the Lady with fears.
“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder sleep’. . . .
Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house:
‘Glamis hath murther’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.’”[153:2]
Dr. Bucknill, it is true, considers that this is not an hallucination,
on account of the word “methought.”[153:3] But the same word would
have been used of the dagger, which the critic himself admits to have
been an hallucination. Nor is the length of the fancied speeches any
obstacle, the greater part of the speech in which they occur being
Macbeth’s own embellishment of the event.
The hallucination at the banquet is more formidable. Macbeth, having
caused Banquo to be murdered—the murder being unknown to his
guests—is regretting his absence, “thus by a voluntary mental act
calling before his mind’s eye the image of the murdered man.”[154:1] At
the mention of him, an image rises in the place reserved for Macbeth
himself. It shakes its “gory locks” at the murderer, it nods but will
not speak, and only vanishes like the “air-drawn dagger,” when Macbeth
begins to overcome his fear and brave it. When he pledges Banquo it
appears again; once more he declaims violently against it and it
vanishes, but not before he has
. . “displac’d the mirth, broke the good meeting
With most admir’d disorder.”[154:2]
to say nothing of a certain amount of suspicion attached to it.
The remainder of the story, from the psychological point of view, can
best be told in Dr. Bucknill’s words.[154:3] “Macbeth,” he says, “saved
himself from actual insanity by rushing from the maddening horrors of
meditation into a course of decisive resolute action. From henceforth
he gave himself no time to reflect; he made the firstlings of his
heart the firstlings of his hand; he became a fearful tyrant to his
country; but he escaped madness. This change in him, however, effected
a change in his relation to his wife, which in her had the opposite
result. . . . Her attention, heretofore directed to her husband and to
outward occurrences, was forced inwards upon that wreck of all-content
which her meditation supplied.” She becomes mad; no medicine can
minister to her mind, diseased by crime and remorse, and her madness
is fatal. But Macbeth never becomes insane. “Some say he’s mad,” it is
true, yet
“Others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury.”[155:1]
He has saved his own mental life, but he has flung away the “eternal
jewel” of his soul.
Lady Macbeth, at every point in the play, is strongly contrasted with
her husband. She is frankly distressed at the developments of Macbeth’s
criminal career. He bids her be “innocent of the knowledge” till she
applaud his deeds. She thus drifts farther away from him and leaves him
to pursue his bloody course alone. Her meditation breeds madness. She
lacks, even as her husband had done,
“the season of all natures, sleep,”
being
“Troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.”[155:2]
The scene in which she betrays her secret in her sleep is full of
significance, shewing the terrible impression made on her by the
murder of Duncan, and no less by the slaughter of Lady Macduff. After
her fainting fit, which follows the discovery of Duncan’s murder, she
ceases to occupy a prominent place in the tragedy. Her death is almost
unnoticed. Whether she died naturally or whether her attendants were
unable to keep from her the “means of all annoyance,” it is hard to
say. But once again Shakespeare shews his dramatic skill in relating
rather than portraying the scene of her death.
Returning to Macbeth, one must remark in conclusion that it is only
when Shakespeare’s art in delineating the various types of insanity
is studied as a whole that this character can be fully appreciated.
Yet even from a superficial examination of the play the value to the
dramatist of Macbeth’s hallucinations must be clear. For they not only
add to the scenic effect of the play, but they constitute a striking
contrast between the murderer and his wife, besides clarifying the
already powerful idea of his accusing imagination.
* * * * *
We must now briefly consider another kind of abnormality which has
not yet been mentioned. Occasionally, in reading the dramatists of the
period, we meet with persons whom at first we suppose to be insane,
but who are, in reality, not so. Yet their states of mind are far
from normal. Occasionally they seem to be possessed by insane desires
and ambitions; sometimes lust has taken complete possession of them;
sometimes remorse, vengeance or similar passion dominates all their
actions. It is hard to point to any of their actions and to say: “That
is the act of a madman.” To-day, no doubt, did they exist in the flesh,
they would be removed to a Mental Hospital and treated for disease of
the mind. But looked at by their author and by his audience and in an
Elizabethan environment, they were not, in all probability, and in the
ordinary sense of the word, madmen. And for that reason we can only
allow them a passing consideration here, though every one of them would
repay detailed study.
One or two examples may be cited from Shakespeare—the first being
Constance, in “King John.” Dr. Bucknill, without the least hesitation,
styles her mad,—but he is a physician. Shakespeare, who may be
supposed to have known better, represents her as passionate by nature,
and half-demented with grief. But she is never more than half-crazy,
always retaining sufficient of her native strength of will to control
her wonderful imagination. Her own explanation of her conduct:
“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,”[158:1]
is quite sufficient. Her reply to Pandulph’s accusation,
“Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow,”[158:2]
is conclusive proof that she is to be regarded as sane. She does
not, like many a lunatic, merely protest that she is not mad; she
gives what, according to the standard of the day, would pass as clear
evidence of her sanity:
“I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost!
I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then, ’tis like I should forget myself . . .
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.”[158:3]
Constance, even when her blemishes are taken into account, is a sublime
figure. At times the poet’s instinct seems for a moment to fail him;
his touch is less sure and his Fury becomes dangerously like a common
scold. But at her best she is unsurpassed, and if we wonder at the
skill with which Shakespeare portrays and utilises true madness on the
stage, we must not forget to withhold a portion of our admiration for
his sure-footed walk on the border line.
Timon of Athens, too, is a wonderful character—the wonder of the
play. A good-natured, generous and wealthy noble, he has attracted to
him crowds of parasites whom he calls friends, but who in reality do
nothing but receive his favours. At length he discovers their essential
baseness, and becoming, in his own words, “misanthropos” who “hates
mankind,”[159:1] leaves Athens, with oaths and curses, for a cave near
the sea-shore. There he ends his days—the manner of his death is
uncertain. His friends consider him beyond all doubt insane. A creditor
says that his debts “may well be called desperate ones, for a madman
owes ’em”;[159:2] others sum the matter up tersely by saying “Lord
Timon’s mad.”[159:3] Alcibiades excuses Timon’s behaviour on the ground
that
“his wits
Are drown’d and lost in his calamities.”[159:4]
Only Flavius, his faithful steward, gives no hint that he considers his
lord insane, though even he is struck with Timon’s unhappy condition,
so “full of decay and failing.”[159:5] Flavius, in this as in other
particulars, seems, like Ulysses, in “Troilus and Cressida” and other
characters in different plays, to be Shakespeare’s mouthpiece. There
is nothing in his representation of Timon which gives us cause to
impute madness to the protagonist. His state of mind is one of acute
depression, which we should call melancholia, were there any hint that
such a conception entered into the mind of the author. The condition of
Timon is not unlike that of Hamlet, and we could easily understand his
feigning madness to avoid the real evil coming upon him.
If any further proof were needed that Timon is not a maniac his
speeches would suffice. The objection that “all satire upon the
hollowness of the world would lose much of its point if it came from
the lips of an undoubted lunatic,”[160:1] is perfectly valid. In “King
Lear” the speeches which contain the most sarcasm, as well as the most
poetry, are those of the earlier scenes, in which Lear has not yet
become entirely a maniac. This kind of speech is characteristic of
Timon to the end. His very last words, though lacking the force of the
first outburst, are equally coherent and contain far more poetry:
“Come not to me again: but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come
And let my gravestone be your oracle.
Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
What is amiss plague and infection mend!
Graves only be men’s works and death their gain!
Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.”[161:1]
A character far more repulsive, but depicted with the greatest force,
is Malefort Senior, of Massinger’s “Unnatural Combat.” Malefort is an
Admiral of Marseilles who is challenged by his apostate son to a duel
and comes off victorious, the son being slain. Shortly afterwards,
Theocrine, Malefort’s daughter, is sought in marriage by the son of the
Governor; the father consents, but his strange extravagances towards
her, as he loads her with jewels, riches and a superfluity of caresses,
is generally commented upon, and before long it appears that he has
fallen in love with her. The remainder of the plot hastens to the
catastrophe, Theocrine being dishonoured and virtually murdered by a
false friend of her father’s. Malefort himself is persecuted by ghosts,
and is finally killed by a flash of lightning.
A modern author would no doubt represent such a character as Malefort
as suffering from some mental disease, but Massinger appears to have
considered the unnatural passion of the father for his daughter as
the fruit of the unnatural combat in which he kills his son. He cares
more for the development of this idea than for the mental condition
of Malefort, who speaks, in one place, of his son’s blood as growing
upon him like Hercules’ poisoned shirt, though he seems also to feel an
inward cause of his passion which he cannot explain. Montreville, the
false friend, supposes that he may be mad, and recommends:
“A deep-read man, that can with charms and herbs
Restore you to your reason.”[162:1]
But from the general character of the play it is easy to see that he is
not considered insane.
Here, then, we have an attempt made to subject an outrageous and
unnatural passion, the manifestations of which bear at times the
closest resemblance to mania, to the dramatic treatment of tragedy.
That Massinger has wholly succeeded, few would be rash enough to
assert. He has given us a grim and ghastly picture, full of brute
strength but wanting in that higher power which restrains and subdues.
He has created a character at times human, always terrible, but only
partially effective in the highest sense of the word.
It is probable that if Constance and Malefort had been portrayed
as mad and not merely as possessed by an overpowering passion, the
result in each case would have been a considerable dramatic gain.
The death of the Lady Constance “in a frenzy”—like the deaths of
Lady Macbeth and the Queen in “Cymbeline”—is only reported by a
messenger. Had that frenzy actually been depicted, the result would
have been a weakening of the whole plot, but a decided increase in
the effectiveness of Constance. In the two plays which we shall now
consider, a comparatively poor theme is treated in such a way that the
passion portrayed is heightened,—without being raised, however, to the
level of madness. It is interesting to speculate on the result had this
been done—whether the madness would have elevated the drama or whether
the paucity or the inconsequence of the theme would have debased the
presentation of insanity.
Grimaldi, the remorse-stricken renegade of Massinger’s play “The
Renegado,” who first immures a young girl, and afterwards repents, is
reduced in the fourth act to a state approaching insanity. He is a
poor sort of creature, at any rate until the concluding portion of the
play, where he contrives a remarkable stratagem which brings about the
dénouement. His remorse bears many of the signs of madness, and indeed
may have been intended for such by the author. For days he has taken no
food; the mention of the words “church” and “high altar” increases his
melancholy; his speech ends ever with “those dreadful words damnation
and despair.”[163:1] His “ravings” lead him to contemplate all kinds of
extravagances; he would do a “bloody justice” on himself, pull out his
eyes, lop off his legs, and give his body to those whom he has injured.
He does none of these things, however,—a Jesuit priest, habited like a
Bishop, curing him by the very simple means of granting him absolution.
The wild ravings give place to calmer expressions of contrition and
he goes off with a riming couplet! It is unnecessary to follow him;
one only wishes that the extreme nature of his remorse had not made it
advisable for us to include such a creature, for whom little can be
felt but contempt.
Our last example is Memnon, in Fletcher’s play, “The Mad Lover.” Here
is a character for whom we cannot help entertaining some regard, but we
are at a loss to know what exactly to make of him. If he is really mad,
as seems at first sight unlikely, it is a very unreal kind of madness,
with more dramatic purpose than realism. One of the characters,
indeed, calls him “stupid mad,” and the term is not an inapt one. We
should be inclined to group him with the pretenders, but for three
considerations. Firstly, he never declares nor even hints to anyone
that he is not what he seems, as Hamlet does to Horatio and as Memnon
himself might with perfect ease have done—for example, to Siphax. Then
his recovery, however sudden, complete and unreal, is only the sort
of thing one would expect from Fletcher, and may be left out of the
question. Lastly, in the scene where he refuses the whore, it is true
that he shews considerable sagacity and discrimination. Nevertheless
it is no more than has actually been found in “cases” arising from
the same cause as Memnon’s. Yet obviously, as we shall see, the mad
lover is not mad in the acceptation of the word then common, and the
hypothesis of an abnormal passion will meet the case, better perhaps
than if we consider our hero either mad or sane.
The plot has already been sketched, and a few references should make
this statement clear. The lover’s rude courtship is the fruit of long
campaignings and absence from court; when he is told by his friend
of the strange impression he has made he speaks perfectly rationally
and merely becomes confirmed in his purpose. The extravagant idea of
cutting out his heart is the first sign of the strength of his passion.
Yet his soliloquy:
“’Tis but to die. Dogs do it, ducks with dabbling,
Birds sing away their souls, and babies sleep ’em . . .”[165:1]
is spoken in a temper quite unlike the madman’s. His argument might
even by some be considered valid: “For in the other world she is bound
to have me,” he says, “Her princely word is past.” When others enter,
he grows wilder, and throughout the play talks in the most extravagant
vein, more particularly to the surgeon whom he tries to persuade to cut
out his heart. “Here I am, sir,” says Memnon,
“Come, look upon me, view the best way boldly;
Fear nothing, but cut home. If your hand shake, sirrah,
Or any way deface my heart i’ the cutting,
Make the least scratch upon it . . . .
. . . I’ll slice thee to the soul. . . .
I will not have you smile, sirrah, when you do it,
As though you cut a lady’s corn; ’tis scurvy.
Do me it, as thou dost thy prayers, seriously.”[166:1]
Here is a man whose mind is certainly in an abnormal condition, and,
whatever the precise nature of that condition may be, it alone gives
to the play the least vestige of probability. If Memnon were sane, the
play would be absurd; if he were mad, then madness would once more be
degraded. As it is, he is not an unpleasing fellow; at times he is
even touched with pathos: any verdict on him would assuredly be more
favourable than a just verdict on the play as a whole.
FOOTNOTES:
[150:1] Dr. Faustus, l. 1419, etc. (Oxford text.)
[151:1] The insanity of Ann Ratcliff, in this play, may also be
noticed, though it is of the same rude type as that of Greene’s
Orlando. “See, see, see,” she cries, “the Man in the Moon has built a
new windmill, and what running there’s from all quarters of the city,
to learn the art of grinding.” The only feature of interest in her
frenzy is the expression of physical pain which we noticed in “King
Lear.” Her ribs are like to break, and “there’s a Lancashire horn-pipe
in my throat. Hark how it tickles it, with Doodle, doodle, doodle,
doodle,” etc.
[152:1] With Macbeth might be compared two other remorse-stricken
murderers in little known plays. Glapthorne’s “Albertus Wallenstein”
is the story of a man who causes his son and his son’s betrothed to
be killed and is then haunted by his crimes. His soul “is shaken with
a nipping frost”; he mistakes his son’s page for a ghost and murders
him; after this false visions of spirits are ever before him. Only
when mortally wounded by conspirators is his mind at rest. In Denham’s
“Sophy” (which is in spirit outside our period, though it was acted in
1641), Abbas, King of Persia, is likewise tormented by the ghosts of
those whom he has murdered. Abbas, unlike Macbeth and Wallenstein, is
quite a maniac, and does not recover his senses before his death.
[152:2] cf. “Macbeth,” v., 5, 9, etc. “I have almost forgot the taste
of fears . . .”
[152:3] Act ii., Scene 1.
[153:1] “Macbeth,” ii., 3, 32-3.
[153:2] Ibid., ii., 2, 35, etc.
[153:3] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 20.
[154:1] Ibid., p. 24.
[154:2] “Macbeth,” iii., 4, 109.
[154:3] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 29.
[155:1] “Macbeth,” v., 2, 13.
[155:2] Ibid., v., 2, 37-8.
[158:1] “King John,” iii., 4, 93.
[158:2] l. 43.
[158:3] ll. 45, etc.
[159:1] “Timon of Athens,” iv., 3, 53.
[159:2] Ibid., iii., 4, 101-2.
[159:3] Ibid., iii., 6, 129.
[159:4] Ibid., iv., 3, 88.
[159:5] Ibid., iv., 3, 465.
[160:1] Raised and disputed by Bucknill, “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 259.
[161:1] “Timon of Athens,” v., 1, 217, etc.
[162:1] “The Unnatural Combat,” iv., 1.
[163:1] “The Renegado,” iv., 1.
[165:1] “The Mad Lover,” ii., 1.
[166:1] Ibid., iii., 2.