With Overreach may be compared Webster’s Ferdinand, who, after causing his sister, the Duchess of Malfi, with her little children, to be murdered, is driven by remorse to self-questionings and fears, and thence to raving madness. Webster’s presentation of insanity is far superior, in these scenes, to that by Massinger just cited. For the ravings of Ferdinand come upon us with the greatest force after the awful tragedy for which he has been responsible—we are spared the comments of Justice Greedy on the situation. Further, the madness of Ferdinand is what we should expect from one of so passionate a nature, and its course, as will now be seen, is depicted with realistic force to its terrible end.
His insanity takes the form, so we are told, of lycanthropia,[103:3] victims of which, we learn
imagine themselves transformed into wolves and do deeds of violence to dead bodies; the Duke has already been found at night, has “howled fearfully” and seems in danger of his life. When he enters, he is persecuted by a fear of his shadow, which he tries unreasoningly to kill. The Doctor approaches him, but can do nothing with his patient beyond extracting one expression of fear: “Hide me from him; physicians are like kings, they brook no contradiction.” But the timidity lasts but a moment, and Ferdinand leaves the stage in a fit of insane passion.
When he reappears, it is but for a moment; his words are few but tense, and recall the terrible crime he has committed. “Strangling is a very quiet death . . . So, it must be done in the dark: the Cardinal would not for a thousand pounds the doctor should see it.” In the next scene, he is more violent. Interrupting a struggle between Bosola, his bloody instrument, and his brother the crafty Cardinal, he wounds them both, in spite of the latter’s cry for assistance, and is himself stabbed by Bosola, who stigmatises him as “thou main cause of my undoing.” In his last moments he recovers something of his reason.
“He seems to come to himself,” says Bosola,
“Now he’s so near the bottom.”
And in truth the last words which fall from
the Duke’s lips reiterate the remorse which he feels for his crime.
As concluding examples of the presentation of the madman, in the most usual sense of the word, may be taken two of Fletcher’s characters and one of Jonson’s. Fletcher’s productions shall be considered briefly in succession: they are “The Passionate Madman,” in the play, with that sub-title, usually known as “The Nice Valour,”[105:1] and Shattillion in “The Noble Gentleman.”
“The Passionate Madman,” who has no name besides, is inspired, like many of his fellows, rather by a desire to please the public than by a passion for probability. His peculiar mania takes the form of a succession of “fits,” characterised as the “love fit,” the “merry fit,” the “angry fit” and so on. There is seldom any reason adduced for the change from one state to another, which is probably governed by the dramatic situation. There seems to be no authority for the classification of insanity in so many compartments in this manner; if the author ever thought about this at all, he probably arrived at a generalisation of the most common attribute of mania—the violent and rapid succession of emotions—in much the same way as Jonson generalised traits of character into “humours.”