PART I.
THE PHYSICIAN.
Shakespeare’s education was not, by any means, hedged in by plots and
characters; besides these, his mighty mind seems to have teemed with
the knowledge of languages, medicine, law and court etiquette. It is
wonderful that one brain could shine forth such a vast variety, and
surprising that he has even gone into the minutiæ of the different
avenues of learning through which he has stridden. Shakespeare paid
considerable attention to medicine, and has furnished some of the
finest specimens of the medical character that have ever been drawn by
any writer. His Cerimon, in Pericles, is a most noble one. He speaks
for himself:
’Tis known, I ever
Have studied physic, through which secret art,
By turning o’er authorities, I have
(Together with my practice,) made familiar
To me and to my aid, the bless’d infusions
That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;
And I can speak of the disturbances
That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me
A more content in course of true delight
Than to be thirsty after tottering honour,
Or tie my treasure up in silken bags
To please the fool and death.
Act III., Sc. II.
And others speak of him:
Hundreds call themselves
Your creatures, who by you have been restored:
And not your knowledge, your personal pain, but even
Your purse, still open, hath built lord Cerimon
Such strong renown as time shall ne’er decay.
Act III., Sc. II.
Dowden says, “Cerimon, who is master of the secrets of nature, who is
liberal in his ‘learned charity,’ who held it ever
‘Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches,’
is like a first study of Prospero;” while Furnivall thinks
that he represents to some extent the famous Stratford physician, Dr. John
Hall, who married Shakespeare’s eldest daughter Susanna.
What an excellent physician was Gerard de Narbon, Helena’s father, who
is referred to in All’s Well:
This young gentlewoman had a father, whose skill was almost as great as
his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made Nature immortal,
and death should have play for lack of work. Would, for the king’s
sake, he were living! I think it would be the death of the king’s
disease. * * * * He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was
his right to be so. * * * The king * * * spoke of him admiringly and
mournfully: he was skillful enough to have lived still, if knowledge
could be set up against mortality.
Act I., Sc. I.
How long is’t, count,
Since the physician at your father’s died?
If he were living, I would try him yet;—
* * * * * the rest have worn me out
With several applications: nature and sickness
Debate it at their leisure.
Act I., Sc. II.
My father’s skill, which was the greatest of his profession.
Act I., Sc. III.
Another worthy physician is to be found in Cymbeline. Cornelius argues
with the queen against her designs, and failing in this he completely
thwarts her murderous intentions by giving her a false compound.
Queen. Now, master doctor, have you brought those drugs?
Cor. * * * I beseech your grace, without offence,
My conscience bids me ask,—wherefore you have
Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds,
Which are the movers of a languishing death;
But though slow, deadly?
Your highness
Shall from this practice but make hard your heart:
Besides, the seeing these effects will be
Both noisome and infectious.
[Aside.] I do suspect you, madame;
But you shall do no harm.
* * * I do not like her. She doth think she has
Strange ling’ring poisons: I do know her spirit,
And will not trust one of her malice with
A drug of such damn’d nature. Those she has
Will stupify and dull the sense awhile;
* * * * * * but there is
No danger in what show of death it makes,
More than the locking up the spirits a time,
To be more fresh, reviving. She is fool’d
With a most false effect; and I the truer
So to be false with her.
Act I., Sc. V.
The queen, sir, very oft importun’d me
To temper poisons for her; still pretending
The satisfaction of her knowledge only
In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs,
Of no esteem: I, dreading that her purpose
Was of more danger, did compound for her
A certain stuff, which, being ta’en, would cease
The present power of life; but in short time
All offices of nature should again
Do their due function.
Act V., Sc. V.
Macbeth supplies us with a wise member of the profession, who, at
a time when charlatans without number were promising to cure every
malady, sees clearly that Lady Macbeth’s disease is beyond his power,
and so informs Macbeth.
This disease is beyond my practice:
* * * * * * infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine than the physician:
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her.
Act V., Sc. I.
King Macb. How does your patient, doctor?
Doct. Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
King Macb. Cure her of that:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doct. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
King Macb. Throw physic to the dogs,
I’ll none of it.
Macbeth, Act V., Sc. III.
In King Lear also appears a physician worthy of the name. The last
scene of the fourth act shows his excellent skill in treating Lear’s
case. Dr. Bucknill, of England, in writing of it twenty-five years ago,
says: “We confess, almost with shame, that although near two centuries
and a half have passed since Shakespeare thus wrote we have very little
to add to his method of treating the insane as thus pointed out.”
Dr. Butts, in Henry VIII, and Dr. Caius, in Merry Wives, play rather
unimportant parts. He compliments the profession by putting this speech
in the mouth of a madman:
Timon to Banditti:
Trust not the physician;
His antidotes are poison, and he slays
More than you rob.
Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.
And bringing this one from the lips of an ignorant prostitute:
Nay, will you cast away your child on a fool and a physician?
Merry Wives, Act III., Sc. IV.
Reference to the physician is frequently made throughout his works.
Cor. The queen is dead.
Cym. Whom worse than a physician
Would this report become. But I consider,
By med’cine life may be prolong’d, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.
Cymbeline, Act V., Sc. V.
* * * * doctor-like, controlling skill.
Sonnets, LXVI.
We * * * may not be so credulous of cure,
When our most learned doctors leave us.
All’s Well, Act II., Sc. I.
Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow
Upon the foul disease.
King Lear, Act I., Sc. I.
Thou speak’st like a physician, Helicanus;
That minister’st a potion unto me,
That thou would’st tremble to receive thyself.
Pericles, Act I., Sc. II.
The patient dies while the physician sleeps.
Lucrece.
The physician
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept
Hath left me.
Sonnets, CXLVII.
Testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know.
Sonnets, CXL.
His friends, like physicians, thrice give him over.
Timon of Athens, Act III., Sc. III.
He is the wiser man, master doctor; he is a curer of souls,
and you a curer of bodies.
Merry Wives, Act II., Sc. III.
A poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain
Rather corrupt me ever.
All’s Well, Act II., Sc. III.
Doctors, less famous for their cures than fees.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto XIV., Verse XLVIII.
Like a port sculler, one physician plies
And all his art and all his skill he tries;
But two physicians, like a pair of oars,
Conduct you faster to the Stygian shores.
This is the way physicians mend or end us,
Secundum artem: but although we sneer
In health—when ill, we call them to attend us
Without the least propensity to jeer;
While that “hiatus maxime deflendus”
To be filled up by spade or mattock, ’s near,
Instead of gliding graciously down Lethe,
We tease mild Baillie, or soft Abernethy.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto X, Verse XLII.
God and the doctor we alike adore,
But only when in danger, not before;
The danger o’er, both are alike requited,
God is forgotten, and the doctor slighted.
The doctor says so * * * * * *
* * * * * * * they sometimes
Are soothsayers and always cunning men.
Which doctor was it?
Ben Jonson—Magnetic Lady, Act II., Sc. I.
A side thrust at the experimenters in the profession is found in Cymbeline.
I do know her spirit,
And will not trust one of her malice with
A drug of such damn’d nature. Those she has
Will stupify and dull the sense awhile;
Which first, perchance, she’ll prove on cats and dogs,
Then afterwards up higher.
Act I., Sc. V.
I can smile, and murder whiles I smile.
Henry VI.—3d, Act III., Sc. II.
He has in several plays shown his contempt for the “prating mountebank”
or “doting wizard.”
They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac’d villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller;
A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as ’twere, out-facing me,
Cries out I was possessed
Comedy of Errors, Act V., Sc. I.
I say we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope.
To prostitute our past-cure malady
To empirics; or to dissever so
Our great self and our credit, to esteem
A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.
All’s Well, Act II., Sc. I.
