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= Madness in Shakespeare =

The famous playwright, William Shakespeare is known still today for his keen insight into his characters' psyche, despite the fact that he had no psychological basis for his characterizations available. Scholars have marveled at the various themes Shakespeare employed, one of which was outlining certain characters' descent into madness. It is a recurring theme, process, and characterization weaving itself throughout several of Shakespeare's works.

Theories of Madness in the Renaissance England
Note: Categories are listed in no particular order

For further reading, see Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault, Mystical Bedlam by Michael MacDonald, and Distracted Subjects by Carol Thomas Neely.

The theories regarding madness during the sixteenth and seventeenth century were very different than our contemporary understanding of being mad or insane. This is especially true because the medical and biological understanding of the human body had not changed dramatically from the early years of the common era. During this time, Greek medical theorist Galen hypothesized about the ways in which our bodies go through daily processes. His theory, which lasted through the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century, explained the human body as having four humors: "The four primary humors, chole (bile), melanchole (black bile). sanguis (blood) and flegma (phlegm), were understood in terms of a general cosmological theory in which fire, earth, air and water were the four basic elements of all things. Physical constitution and psychological characteristics were determined by the balance or blend (L. temperare) of the humors."This was the way that Renaissance physicians, surgeons, and medical personnel understood human physiology. An excess of one humor or a deficit of another could leave an individual incapacitated, both physically and mentally. Thus, it was in this light that madness or psychological imbalances were understood as well.

Hysteria
Main article: Hysteria

Hysteria, during the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, was considered an excess of fluid in the uterus, and therefore, an ailment pertaining to females. Furthermore, hysteria was seen as an extremely sexual and sex-related affliction: without sexual release, women could become hysterical, and the only form of sexual satisfaction appropriate was inter-marital intercourse.

Symptoms of Hysteria include anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, insomnia, irritability, nervousness, as well as sexually forward behavior.

Melancholy
Main article: Melancholia

A Treatise of Melancholy by Timothie Bright
Written in 1586 at Cambridge University, Timothie Bright's A Treatise of Melancholy was one of the first written and most important prognoses of the illness. It was also written contemporary to Shakespeare's day and age. Bright wrote to an unnamed companion who was suffering from a "straunge affliction", and he outlines the causes and treatments of ‘feare, sadness, desperation, teares, weeping, sobbing, sighing’, as well as irrational laughter.

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
Main article: The Anatomy of Melancholy

Originally written in Latin and published in 1621, Robert Burton's book provides a key insight into what Renaissance clinicians and scholars considered to be melancholy. Today, we would describe melancholy as "clinical depression". One important note he mentioned is a "settled humor" which many considered to be an excess of black bile.

He described melancholy as follows:"Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In disposition, is that transitory Melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing forwardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality... This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed."The work was expanded, edited, and republished several times during the course of Burton's life.

Insanity
As defined in Ruth Leila Anderson's Elizabeth Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays, madness, in terms of insanity, is "either a temporary dethronement of reason in heightened passion, or the more permanent affliction, insanity..." Some scholars from Renaissance England considered insanity what it means etymologically: in-, not or lacking, sane, bereft of reason. Others considered it a lack of self-awareness, an inability to communicate sequentially, or being unable to recognize the world around the individual.

Bewitchment/Possession
Main article: Demonic Possession

A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother by Edward Jorden
In his book, published in 1603, Edward Jorden primarily discusses hysteria, but he also focuses on witchcraft. He explains that witchcraft does not exist, it is simply a woman falling victim to her own body's overproduction of certain humors, primarily in the womb.

Major Cases
Note: Characters listed alphabetically by play.

Hamlet
Hamlet's madness has been debated among scholars from the beginnings of literary theory and analysis as to whether it is genuine or feigned. It is after Hamlet converses with the Ghost of the late King Hamlet that he warns Horatio and Marcellus that he may begin exhibiting odd behavior: But come, Here as before: never – so help you mercy, How strange or odd some'er I bear myself (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on) – That you at such times seeing me never shall With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase As 'Well, well, we know', or 'We could an if we would', Or 'If we list to speak', or 'There be an if they might', That you aught know aught of me. This do swear, So grace and mercy at your most need help you.

Hamlet is also famous for his apparent melancholy. As the British Library explains, "Although there is some dispute over whether Shakespeare read Bright’s Treatise, there are striking parallels with the play. These give us a strong insight into how contemporary audiences might have viewed the character. Bright says melancholy can cause ‘distrust, doubt, diffidence, or dispaire’, leading both to anger and ‘false laughter’ or sardonic wit. Sufferers are distracted by ‘phantasticall apparations’ and ‘counterfeit goblins’. Their ‘dreames are fearefull’ and their ‘resolution’ delayed by ‘long deliberation’. Even their house may seem ‘a prison or dungeon, rather than a place of repose or rest’. Hamlet is, of course, troubled by his ‘conscience’. He is plagued by distrust of the Ghost’s words and Ophelia’s purity; he suffers despair over his own delay in avenging his father’s murder; and anger over his mother’s ‘o’ erhasty marriage’. The Prince is playfully sardonic in his interactions with the players and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He is troubled by a ghostly ‘apparition’ whom he fears ‘may be a dev’l’ or a ‘goblin damn’d’. Like Bright’s melancholy man, Hamlet is tormented by ‘bad dreams’ and for him ‘Denmark’s a prison’."Secondly, Ophelia is one of two female characters in Hamlet. After she hears of her father's death, in her very last scene onstage, Ophelia sings and appears to have gone mad. Many scholars and literary theorists have tried to puzzle the seemingly religious undertones. Much has also been questioned, because of this song, about the true source of Ophelia's madness. Furthermore, scholars argue whether or not her death was a suicide. As scholar Carroll Thomas Neely describes, "Shakespeare represents distinctions between female hysteria and feigned male hysteria in Hamlet." In her essay, she argues that Hamlet and Ophelia "act out distinctions between feigned and actual madness and between rational and mad suicide, distinctions that the culture was gradually establishing."

King Lear
King Lear's madness is also a subject of debate and controversy. As scholar Dr. Sholom J. Kahn points out, the Quarto text of Lear provides the stage direction, "Enter Lear mad" in Act IV, scene vi. Others theorize that Lear goes mad at the beginning of his scene with Edgar as Poor Tom. In his essay on Lear, English poet and literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggests, referring to scene iv, "the scene ends with the first signs of positive derangement—here how judiciously interrupted [by the fifth scene] in order to allow an interval for Lear in full madness to appear."

Another character who exhibits a feigned madness is Edgar/Poor Tom. He opens Act III, scene iii with a soliloquy, in which he decides to disguise himself so that he may escape his death sentence. He explains: While I may 'scape, I will preserve myself; and am bethought To take the basest and most poorest shape That ever penury in contempt of man Brought near to beast. My face I'll grime with filth, Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots, And with presented nakedness outface The winds and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars who with roaring voices Strike in their numb'd and mortifièd bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary And, with this horrible object, from low farms, Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills, Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, Enforce their charity. 'Poor Turlygod! Poor Tom!' That's something yet. 'Edgar' I nothing am. Some scholars argue that Edgar continues his feigned madness to comfort Lear. Either way, it is important to note that Edgar's madness is not real.

Macbeth
It is with Macbeth that scholars suggest less a notion of insanity and more one of "unreason". Scholar Karin S. Coddon proposes that it is during the banquet scene that this comes to a head. During the moment when the royal hierarchy is meant to be affirmed, Banquo's ghost appears and Macbeth's frenzy interrupts the ritual. It is this treasonous, traitorous milieu in which the play takes place and both Macbeth and his wife betray one another and lead themselves to paranoia, a subset of madness.

Lady Macbeth's madness comes most famously with her sleepwalking scene and her compulsive washing of her hands. As scholars Maurice and Hanna Charney point out"Lady Macbeth comes closest to a modern feeling of anxiety symptoms. Her sleepwalking scene (5.1) is also a mad scene, since she speaks in a free-associational, nonrational, broken discourse that we expect from Elizabethan madwomen on stage. She plays on the forbidden acts that she cannot properly suppress. Her hands cannot be washed clean of the blood that has stained them-the characteristic gesture of the scene is the attempt to remove from her hands imaginary spots that will not disappear-and she speaks throughout to her husband, who she thinks is with her. Her hallucinations echo a bloody reality that is only too emphatically true. Under these circumstances, Macbeth understands with chilling clarity that his questions to the doctor are purely rhetorical."

Minor Cases
Note: Characters listed alphabetically by play.

The Two Noble Kinsmen
The jailer's daughter goes mad after falling in love with one of her father's prisoners, Palamoun. As scholar Douglas Bruster explains, that once in the woods, she suffers from lack of sleep, lack of food, and love unrequited, all of which drive her to madness.

Twelfth Night
Malvolio provides a more complicated example of madness in Shakepeare's plays. He is forced into madness when the characters around him, orchestrated by Feste, treat him like a madman. While this is similar to Hamlet's position, the characters in Twelfth Night are aware that Malvolio is in fact not mad, unlike the King, Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia in Hamlet.

Other Cases
Note: These plays and characters are not widely documented by the Shakespeare scholarly community.

Note: Characters listed alphabetically by play.