Hard-hearted Furies, when will you dig my grave?
You do not hear him, thunder shakes Heaven first.
Before dull earth can feel it:—
My dear, dear’st Queen is dead.
The King is distracted. “Without a woman,” he says, he will himself “run mad at midnight.” The physician is to use his “skill,” but if that prove unavailing the King’s resolve is taken nevertheless.
The lunatic lady, she shall be my Queen,
Proclaim her so.”[58:1]
So saying, he leaves the room, and almost simultaneously Tormiella enters. She plays the madwoman for some time before the physician; but, discovering at length that he is in reality an agent for her husband, she reveals her sanity to him, together with the reasons for her assumption of madness. The action hurries on from this point with increasing rapidity; and, after several plots have been thwarted, the dead come to life and sinners are converted, after the approved manner of romantic comedy. But enough has been said to shew how the somewhat vulgar plot is given a startling and unexpected turn, at a point where, to tell the truth, it is badly needed. The actual “mad scene” is extremely short, but it serves a true dramatic purpose and is far from being the worst thing in the play. We are a long way from the comic scenes of the “Changeling” and the “Honest Whore” of Dekker himself.
In these few pages we have briefly considered the places occupied by mad folk in some of the most representative of our tragedies and comedies. In many of them sublime passion is degraded for the most vulgar of purposes; in many more there is little attempt to realise the