Winwife’s, succeeds in duping and eventually marrying the Dame, and although Trouble-all discovers the ruse, all ends happily. It will be seen, when a sketch of the madman is attempted on another page, how carefully the lunatic is portrayed.
It is needless to examine all the comedies in which the madman is more intricately interwoven with the plot than in “Bartholomew Fair,” for the work is seldom done with any appreciable dramatic skill, or with the least vestige of sympathy. The plot of “The Mad Lover,” a play in Fletcher’s worst style, will serve as a typical example. Madness here forms the basis and theme of the plot. Memnon, a valiant general somewhat advanced in years, albeit a blunt, uncourtly fellow, has returned from his victories to the Court of Paphos. He falls in love with Calis, the King’s sister, who is herself in love with Memnon’s brother, Polydore. The General proposes in truly singular fashion; his courtship begins and ends with three remarks: “I love thee, lady,” “With all my heart I love thee,” and finally, “Good lady, kiss me!” Calis, supposing not unnaturally that he is mad, ignores him; when she has left the room, the Mad Lover suddenly grows quarrelsome, talks wildly, and declares that his suit shall succeed. Calis, re-entering, is held up, and, growing fearful, tries to humour him, but
he rushes from her presence with wild threats. In the next act, we find him contemplating death for the purpose of presenting his lady with his heart. This announcement of his project sends more than one of his friends to plead for him with the Princess. Meanwhile, Polydore, who has overheard his brother entreating the surgeon to cut out his heart and seen the surgeon beat a hasty retreat, concludes that the “cause is merely heat” and contrives a double expedient. For Memnon he dresses up another woman as the Princess, in the hope that he may be satisfied with her; at the same time, he reports to Calis that Memnon has carried out his threat and makes believe to present the General’s heart in a cup together with some verses from her “dead” lover. This makes her a little remorseful. But Memnon refuses to be deceived, and it is only when Polydore himself pretends to be dead that the Princess is induced to change her mind and marry Memnon. Instantly the Mad Lover becomes sane, and all is well.
Of the tragi-comedies into which this theme is introduced we may take two—“The Lover’s Melancholy” and “Match Me in London”—as being representative. Each shows some improvement on the “Mad Lover.” The “Lover’s Melancholy” is based, as the name partly implies, on the melancholy of Palador, Prince of Cyprus,
whose love Eroclea has “disappeared,” though in reality she is present in disguise during the whole play. The plot turns on the situation caused by the heroine’s secret presence. Among the disasters occasioned by her “loss” is the madness of her father, Meleander; his recovery, in the fifth act, is the best part of that act, the Prince having rediscovered his love long before (iv., 3.). Dr. Ward considers that the melancholy of Palador “recalls Hamlet.”[56:1] The young Prince is certainly an interesting character, and the curtness of his exclamations and replies, together with the natural grace of his disposition, afford quite a noticeable contrast with the now coherent, now raving old father. Both characters are intimately connected with the plot; and both present traits, as will be seen, which are fully in harmony with their conditions. It only remains to wish that Ford had not been inspired by Burton, and that the zealous physician Corax had refrained from presenting the Prince with that “trifle” of his “own brain,” to wit, the tedious and unnecessary “Masque of Melancholy.”
It may at first appear a violent anti-climax to come to Dekker’s “Match Me in London.” Nevertheless the working into the plot of Tormiella’s feigned madness is quite in the true dramatic spirit, and one scene leaves us a little
suspicious, as is so often the case with the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, of the influence of Ophelia. Tormiella is a young shopkeeper’s wife whom the King tries to seduce; he visits her in disguise and she is beguiled away, with the compliance of her father. The situation develops thus: Malevento, Tormiella’s father, rushes on the stage, crying out that his daughter has lost her reason:[57:1]
Mal. O royal Sir, my daughter Tormiella
Has lost her use of reason and gone mad.
King. When?