LUNACY AND LOVE.
This is a play with six characters, written in 1556, by Louise Labe, sometimes called the Belle Cordiere.
Love, at all periods of time, has served as an inexhaustible subject of analysis and observation, not only to poets and novelists, but also to moralists, and especially physicians. Psychologists have always considered love, when excessive, as an evidence of insanity. Esquirol says that “love has lost its empire in France, indifference having captivated the hearts of our people, who, given over to amorous passions, having neither purity nor exhaltation, engender attacks of erotic lunacy.” This learned alienist has also discovered that out of 323 cases of insanity among the poor, love figured as a cause in forty-six cases; and out of 167 cases among the rich, twenty-five persons went insane on account of love. These close relations between “Lunacy and Love,” admitted since mankind entered into society, have served as a text for the Middle Ages, as is witnessed by the title of the play we have mentioned; a work the more curious, for reason of its finesse, notwithstanding the jests employed by its author as the following analysis will witness.
Love and Lunacy arrive at the same moment at a festival to which Jupiter has convened all the Gods. Lunacy, full of arrogance, wishes to enter the banquet-hall before Love, and in order to do so turns everything topsy-turvy to secure his end. The vindictive Love, in order to be avenged, discharges a flight of arrows from the historical quiver; but Lunacy avoids these by becoming invisible, and in his wrath pulls out Love’s eyes, but afterwards skilfully puts them back in place with a bandage.
Love, in despair at being blinded, goes to implore the help of his mother. The latter desires the boy to remove the bandages from his eyes, but his efforts are useless; they are full of knots. Venus calls on Jupiter for justice for the injury done her boy. The Father of Gods accepts the position of arbitrator and cites the offender to appear before his tribunal. Mercury acts as attorney for Lunacy and Apollo does the special pleading for Love. In the cross-examination, Love tries to inform Jupiter of the fashions of loving, and tells him if he desires true affection and happiness to descend to earth, drop all appearances of greatness, and, under the guise of a simple mortal, seek to captivate some earthly beauty. Apollo, speaking for his client, young Cupid, is so eloquent that all the assemblage of Gods is seduced by his oratory, and condemns Lunacy without even giving him a hearing. But Jupiter is impartial in his tribunal, and allows Mercury to argue for the defense. The latter pleads, in turn, with such eloquence that one-half the jury is ready to say that Lunacy is not guilty—at least among Olympian jurors. Jupiter is undecided; he is very wise, however, and makes the following decision. “Owing to the differences of witnesses and the importance of the case, we have set the case for a re-hearing in three times seven times nine centuries—18,900 years—until which time Folly, or Lunacy, shall lead the Blind (Cupid) anywhere she chooses to go; and, at the end of the time named, should Cupid’s eyes be restored, the Fates may decree otherwise.”
Lunacy and Love are thus rendered inseparable and eternal on earth; they are connected together for the happiness of humanity and the delight of psychologists, philosophers and moralists, who will always find in these subjects something new for meditation and study. Need we add, also, that the alienists will secure any number of clients owing to Jupiter’s decision?
Let us now turn to a brief mention of