IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 102, 26 October 1929, Page 25

IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

Madness in Shakespearian Tragedy." By H. Somerville, London: The Richards Press, Ltd.

Dr. Somerville, an eminent English authority on mental ailments, has undertaken in this work a diagnosis of tho mental condition of many of Shakespeare's characters, and deals with them as though they were "patients." He should clear up doubts in the minds of many students of Shakespeare as to the mental condition of some of the leading characters in die tragedies. To him these characters are as living persons, and as an alienist he examines them in the presence of his invisible audience of students. Polonius's definition of true madness—"what, is't, but to be nothing else than mad" —will not satisfy Dr. Somerville. The lay person if asked what ho means by "insanity," if honest with himself, would probably reply, "I don't.know," the specialist would also reply, "I do not know what insanity is, but although I cannot define 'madness' or 'insanity,' I can generally. tell when a person is mad. and I can also tell you the form of madness from which he is suffering"—and this only after years of observation and practice. Dr. Somerville . stresses the . importance of "catastrophe" in considering the mental condition of certain characters, and he precedes this by the observation that "the principal characters in Shakespearian tragedy aro all more or less mad—some more, some less." But a "mad" character is not necessarily mad during the action of the play in which he appears. He is generally quite mad at the end. A beginning is made with Hamlet. Was he mad? Dr.. Somerville holds that for the most part Hamlet was sane, but when delivering his soliliquy, "To be or not to be," he was very close to melancholia which is very close to insanity, and when he speaks, " 'Tis now tho very witching time of night," then Hamlet was evidently suffering from acute mania, and his mother herself remarks, "This is mere madness," referring, too, to the fit upon him. The type of insanity to which Hamlet's "madness" most nearly corresponds, in Dr. Somerville's view, is "manic-depressive, which he defines as "a kind of varying mentality in which a person appears at times over-excited and at other times overdepressed, whilo he may or may not enjoy •' intervals of relative sanity." Following the study of Hamlet as a "case" Dr. Somerville remarks:— Wo are all apt to And ourselves in varying moods of elation or depression—frequently without being able to assign any cause for our particular mental state at a given time, Fortunately for the great majority of us the elevations and depressions from an arbitrary normal are not so pronounced as in the manicdepressive. Analysis of tho character of Macbeth Dr. Somorvillo finds most difficult, but he describes the character as that of a paranoiac—mental conflicts before, and remorso after the murder of tho king determine the insanity of Macbeth. For physical and other reasons, Othello was unfitted to ,be the husband to Desdemona,' and had they married, had Ingo not intervened, Dr. Somerville cannot see that this union would have been happy. But Othello deluded himself into believing, as many people, young, and especially the middle-aged, that their marriage will "somehow turn out all right." But Othello was a prey to jealousy, and it mastered him; his unreasoned suspicious and tho importance ho attached to hearsay cvidonce wero his undoing. Dr. Somerville shows that one may meet people in a condition of suffering (as he holds Othello did) from "bottledup" thoughts, unpleasant memories, repressed emotions, unpermissible or unattainable desires, reaching such a high pressure as to explode and manifest itself in tragedy. ' King Loar is tho subject of an illuminating if pathetic study of the acceleration towards madness of a mind already on tho downgrade Troubles in great crashing, battering waves fall on tho old man until he falls a victim to acute mania, but his hallucinations have for him the shape and substance of fact, and the things he sees, hears, and feels aro real to him. Lear's death eamo as a merciful doliverance from "tho rack of this tough world," for had ho lived he would havo boon without a mind. Goneril, Dr. Somerville regards as "a mental monstrosity"; Ophelia ho defines as a clear case of acute mania from which it is doubtful if she would ever have recovered had sho lived, and, incidentally, he thinks sho accidentally fell into the brook and was drowned. Lady Macbeth, ho believes was becoming mad beforo the murdor of Duncan was contemplated. Brutus is shown to havo boen drifting towards melancholia, a victim to hallucinations; Timon of Athens was a megalomaniac, tho sufferer from a diseased brain. Into tho mouth of tho Lady Constance, a victim of mania, Shakespeare put tho ghastly address to tho King of Terrors, urging, "Death, death: O amiable lovely death,'' and she, Dr. Somerville observes, is "tho only ono of Shakospearo's mad characters who died of madness." Mr. Wyndhuni Lewis, in his ablywritten proface to this book, does not always see eye to eye with Dr. Somorvillo holding that moro of tho characters examined by the author are mad for him than they are for the writer of the preface. The book is ono that tho student of Shakespeare cannot very well do without, because it contains tho conclusions of a specialist thrown as condensed light upon tho mentality of somo of tho greatest characters ever intended to be seen upon a stage.