“She’ll do some violent act upon herself.”[134:2]
Her hands are therefore to be bound and a physician sent for. We hear a good deal more of her melancholy during the play, but it becomes conventional, and after the second act we think of her as quite a rational human being—as a “Very Woman.” It is the strange change in her affections which gives the great interest to her character which it certainly possesses; for that reason it would hardly be fair to attempt to compare her either with Aspatia or with Euphrasia, interest in whom is dependent on other considerations.
A case of melancholy, both interesting and amusing, similar in conception and treatment to the mania of Shattillion and of the Passionate Lover mentioned above,[134:3] is furnished by Brome’s “Antipodes.” As we should expect in an “approved Comedy” acted in the year 1638, the subject is approached only from its lighter side; within the limits which such a treatment necessarily imposes the play is pleasant enough, and the principal characters are very laughable.
Joyless and Diana, it appears, have a son Peregrine, a lad of twenty-five, who has been married for some years to a girl named Martha. But Peregrine, whose inclination has always been for a roving life, has developed a melancholy in consequence of his parents’ opposition to his desire for travel. The disease, when the play opens, is “inclining still to worse, As he grows more in days,” and the father’s anxiety is aggravated by the fact that Martha is also afflicted with a similar trouble, caused by her husband’s neglect. Her symptoms are somewhat different:
“Indeed she’s full of passion, which she utters
By the effects, as diversely, as several
Objects reflect upon her wand’ring fancy,
Sometimes in extreme weepings, and anon
In vehement laughter; now in sullen silence,
And presently in loudest exclamations.”[135:1]