Peregrine is subdued; he could listen to the Doctor “a whole fortnight,” and gladly accepts his offer to travel with him to this wonderful land. Hence, in the next scene, by the device of a play within a play,[136:3] the Doctor is able to effect a threefold cure. Joyless’ jealousy is overcome; Martha (after being disguised as a Queen and formally presented to her husband), wins back the love of the melancholy Peregrine; and Peregrine himself, though falling back more than once during the play-scenes to “Mandeville-madness,” is eventually cured. In the concluding
scenes, where music “upon the Recorders” is being played, we are shewn the melancholiac’s return to complete sanity.
“I am what you are pleased to make me; but withal . . . ignorant of my own condition, whether I sleep or wake, or talk, or dream; whether I be, or be not; or if I am, whether I do, or do not anything.”[137:1]
Revelations and recognitions follow, in spite of the Doctor’s warning against “troubling his brain with new discoveries.” Peregrine is then made to “recover roundly” by means of a short masque (preceded by “a most untunable flourish”!) introducing “Discord, Folly, Jealousy, Melancholy, and Madness.” When these characters have been routed by Harmony and her train, Peregrine declares “Indeed, I find me well.”
The treatment of melancholy in this play is in no way serious, and shews us little of real value.
“Melancholy False”[137:2] is hard to define; the
criterion must ultimately be a subjective one. It is depicted as a state of the mind in which the person concerned has full control of himself,—as a cloak which he assumes for his own purposes, and which he is able to throw off should necessity arise. At its very worst, it would only be spoken of to-day as “depression.” Sometimes, it is true, this melancholy seems to give a definite colour to the person whom it characterises—to be, in fact, part of his temperament; but in these cases no mention is made of any possible cure of the trouble—sometimes not even of the cause—so that the suggestion of disease does not arise in the spectator’s mind. No doubt such a condition, if persisted in, would often have disastrous results. Such a “humour” was dangerous, but it was nevertheless a “humour.”
It may be objected that many persons, using these tests, might well put Euphrasia and Aspatia in the present category. It is true. But if we made no distinctions and adopted no classifications but those which were indisputable and self-evident, we should make very few, and those would be of little value. We have it on excellent authority that the only way to “part sadness and melancholy” is “by a familiar demonstration of the working.”[138:1] To a layman it would probably be clear that the melancholy
of Aspatia and Euphrasia, of Mistress Constance and Almira, is meant to be of a different kind from that of several characters with whom we shall now have to deal.
The largest variety of “cases” is furnished by Shakespeare, and for this reason our study of this type may be confined to his works. Some of the “cases” are described by Dr. Bucknill:[139:1] “the melancholy of pride in Achilles, of prosperity in Antonio, of constitution and timidity in the Queen of ‘Richard II,’ of contemplation in Jacques.” We might possibly add more, but here are instances enough (if they are really instances) to shew the nature of this melancholy.