Elizabethan Drama and Its Mad Folk / The Harness Prize Essay for 1913

General Ideas and Sentiments.

1. To a certain extent, in madness as in other departments of life, Shakespeare took over the general notions of his day and introduced them fairly liberally into his work. He could hardly do otherwise, for the subject of lunacy was so commonplace and found so ready a way into ordinary conversation that the dramatist who, like Shakespeare, mirrored the life and speech of every day, would find himself, even against his will, borrowing figures from Bedlam. Many of these we have already noticed; a very few more will show the diversity of the references. The shipwrecked mariners in “The Tempest,” “felt a fever of the mad and play’d Some tricks of desparation.” Theseus speaks of “The lunatic, the lover and the poet” as being “of imagination all compact.” Rosalind mentions “the dark house and the whip,” Romeo the prison, the bonds and the torments, Othello the popular view of the influence of the moon. This breadth of treatment in casual allusions alone might be contrasted with the meagre work of his contemporaries. But we must pass on to notice that Shakespeare himself was far in advance of his time, seeing in some way features of insanity which were commonly overlooked, and using remedies which we consider quite “modern,” even to-day. His tests for insanity are certainly somewhat crude, but they occur rather as allusions, where, as we have seen, he adopted the ideas of his day, than in full-length portraits, in which he is remarkably exact. A physician of the last century[178:1] remarks on Lear: “Lear’s is a genuine case of insanity from the beginning to the end, such as we often see in aged persons. On reading it we cannot divest ourselves of the idea that it is a real case correctly reported.” This is high praise; and although Shakespeare hardly requires such commendation, it is interesting to notice the small details which are true to life. We have such phrases in “King Lear” as

where the old king beats his head, as

as:

“My wits begin to turn,” “I am cut to the brains,” and the like. These are touches which can be paralleled by none other of the authors who have been dealt with in this study. They are the result of a shrewd, penetrating observation applied to those mental phenomena which were displayed before the gaze of any who cared to notice them. If we would contrast genius with mediocrity, we have only to look at the general attitude of Shakespeare’s contemporaries towards madness and their representation of it. Take the scene of Lear’s partial restoration to reason. With its soft, sweet music, with the loving faces surrounding the sleeping sufferer, with the gradual re-awakening of sanity—what a contrast there is between this and the metamorphosis of Memnon, the mad lover, or even the rude art of Ford when he pictures the restoration of Meleander.

Dramatic use of Madness.

2. The superiority of Shakespeare, again, in his dramatic use of madness! If there is one thing more than another which arrests a student of this subject it is Shakespeare’s refusal to sacrifice so grand a passion to the interests of comedy, to expose it as a butt for the jests of the groundlings and a subject for idle conversation. His madmen are among his sublimest figures; he introduces them, not after the manner of Dekker and Middleton, as characters of light comedy, but as the agents or the victims of tragedy, “more sinned against than sinning.” They contribute to no coarse underplot, they are not introduced to enhance the supposed terrors of melodrama—they form part of the plot itself, are inextricably interwoven with it, colour its very texture, determine its whole character. This is no imagination, but sheer fact. “Lear” is the mad king. The word “Hamlet” calls up an image, either of the hero’s “antic disposition” or (which is still more likely) of the lonely pathos of Ophelia in her last passion. Think, on the contrary, of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. There is Fletcher, whose Mad Lover certainly colours the play, but what a play of farce and absurdity! There is Webster, whose sole use of the madman is for the pageantry, and for the intensification by means of it of the effect of his catastrophe. Or there is Dekker, who paints the interior of a Bedlam, for the same reason as elsewhere he leads us into a brothel-house—for the sake of a so-called realism. Or, if you prefer it, there is Middleton, whose madmen supply material for the introduction of a trivial underplot and a few coarse jests and songs. Nowhere, except perhaps in Ford, who appears to have been attracted by insanity, to have studied it and to have painted it with some insight and sympathy, is there any approach in this body of drama to the sustained excellence of Shakespeare.

Mad Folk.

3. The same fact emerges when we take the complete figures and consider them, as has been done, from a purely literary standpoint. We need not go over the whole story again; it will be sufficient if we cast our eye back over each group and seize upon the most prominent figures in it. Take Trouble-all, Meleander, Shattillion, and the Passionate Madman, and, following the prescription which Paulina gives to Leontes in the “Winter’s Tale,” choose the best traits from each, concentrate, add, improve—and you are still far from the august figure of Lear. Surround Ophelia with the heroines of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. Will anyone assert that either Aspatia, or the Gaoler’s Daughter, or Penthea approaches the fair Ophelia? Take the Pretenders: where have you so admirable a pretence as that of Hamlet, a pretence so realistic that many critics of to-day maintain that it is reality, and most allow that, if not actually mad, the Prince of Denmark was perilously near a state of insanity? It is certainly not in the antics of the boy of Polymetes, or of the fool “Tony” represented in “The Changeling.” Considered from this point of view alone, there is no pretender who does the thing so well as Hamlet,—as a masterpiece of literary art no character can touch him. If anyone could be said to have the slightest claim to do so it would be Shakespeare’s own Edgar, less important in relation to the plot, far less universal in his appeal to mankind as a representative of humanity, yet perhaps more wonderfully impressive in the place he occupies than any other personage could possibly be.

Or let us look at that unimportant yet not wholly negligible group of persons who have been made the victims of others, written down as asses by the world at large, and are cowering over there in a corner. Even here we see that Shakespeare’s figures are by far the most noteworthy. Morose is not uninteresting, and the dismay of Bellamont, the “reverent” poet, as he is apprehended for a madman and seems to be in danger of confinement in Bedlam, is quite a diverting incident in the plot. But compare them with Shakespeare’s figures. Here is Christopher Sly, “old Sly’s son of Burton-heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker.” There is individuality here, conveyed in a few lines,—which are quite sufficient, notwithstanding, to stamp the character with the impress of Shakespeare’s seal. Better still, take Malvolio, who is accused of madness for a jest, but whose character as previously drawn would make an admirable reason for the jest being taken seriously. So much does he take things to heart that Sir Toby thinks he may actually go mad through disappointment. “Why, thou hast put him in such a dream that when the image of it leaves him he must run mad.”[183:1] Thorough as always, true to life, this is very Shakespeare: none other can approach him in his own arena of the stage.

The last figure seems to have disappeared from the stage, the unmeaning groups of madmen have dispersed, and with them the crowd. We turn to go. Yet, as for a moment we look back on the scene we have just left, a solitary figure meets our eye. It is no madman, no pretender, and no dupe. It is just the Fool, the Fool unparalleled, the Fool of Lear. Ere his master’s afflictions could drive him mad like that master, he went “to bed at noon.” Now he returns to remind us of his other master,—of his creator,—who painted him on the same canvas which holds Edgar and Lear, a figure

With no more fitting words, inasmuch as they describe not alone the Fool but all Shakespeare’s mad folk, could we close our study.

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