CHAPTER IV.
Mad Folk in Comedy and Tragedy—(i.) The Maniacs.
“Whom if you’ll see, you must be weaponless.”
(The Honest Whore.)
In the division of our study upon which we have now entered, the various figures of madmen will be considered under some five or six headings. We shall naturally exclude the mere crowds of madmen who enter the plays as lay figures rather than as personalities of the drama. The largest of the remaining classes will be dealt with first, namely, that which includes “maniacs,” or “madmen” in the proper acceptation of the term. Next come the half-witted, who will not detain us long; then the melancholiacs, who appear so frequently that they demand a section to themselves; next those suffering from hallucinations and delusions, who have not perhaps crossed the border-line, or who exhibit abnormal symptoms which can hardly be included in the term insanity, though they are very near it. Lastly, there is a group of pretenders,—of whom Hamlet and Edgar are the chief,—members of which attract our attention in several other plays.
Greene’s Orlando, a rude and undeveloped character, whose frenzy is quite conventional, may be briefly mentioned by way of prelude. His ravings are composed mainly of scraps of classical lore: “Woods, trees, leaves; leaves, trees, woods, tria sequuntur tria; ergo optimus vir non est optimus magistratus, a peny for a pote of beer and sixe pence for a peec of beife? wounds! what am I the worse? O Minerva! salve; good morrow; how do you to-day? Sweet goddesse, now I see thou lovest thy ulisses, lovely Minerva, tell thy ulisses, will Jove send Mercury to Calipso to lett me goe?”[61:1] It will be seen that Greene has no idea of making his madman anything more than a source of amusement. His violence is noteworthy: more than once he “beats” those who listen to his ravings. Scraps of incident like the fight with Brandimant, King of the Isles, are highly significant:
Brandimant. “Frantic companion, lunatic and wood,
Get thee hence, or else I vow by heaven,
Thy madness shall not privilege thy life.”