„LUNATIC, LOVER AND POET”: ON MENTAL DISORDERS OF SHAKESPEARE–S TRAGIC HEROES

Abstract

The motif of madness is very common in Shakespeare–s plays. Playful and light in comedies, painful and deadly in tragedies, it is always enlightening and strikingly clairvoyant. It used to be treated as possession, disease or legitimate punishment throughout history. In Renaissance, it was observed through the theory of humours, mainly ascribing melancholy to young, educated men and hysteria to young ladies or widows. Love is often the cause, besides disappointment, suffering and sin. Crime is also associated with it, be it as cause or consequence, as something that drives the perpetrator into madness or as the outcome of perturbed mind. This paper deals with characters from the four great tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. They all have a certain predisposition to madness, exacerbated by the adverse circumstances. Male characters usually regain sanity, having gone through painful recognition and self-examination. Female characters, once insane, never recover, so their common end is death – suicide. But the secrets of human soul are universal and not gender-limited, that is what Shakespeare reveals to us and that is what makes him timeless. Some Shakespearean characters have been case studies and material for proving theories in the twentieth century. Psychology and, especially psychoanalysis, on the other hand, can help Shakespeare scholars with a holistic approach, in a comprehensive analysis and deconstruction of many aspects and aparts that the bard built, seemingly at random, but probably very meticulously, putting them exactly where they belong. Subconsciousness is an important factor and source of many unresolved conflicts, which is why psychoanalysts provide us with a powerful tool to explain what is not visible „clinically”, on the face value. Madness in Shakespeare–s oeuvre is never an issue per se, but it is a very frequent motif. The image of madness is give through actions of maddened characters, be their madness real or feigned, and through comments of other characters, witnesses and interpreters. There are basically three forms of madness occuring here: madness of characters who suffer heavy blows, losses and disappointment; feigned madness for the sake of disguise, drawing attention precisely to avert it from the substance, or to cover the traces; and, finally, it is what the observers see and deem as madness, which is not necessarily so. Some images of madness are poetically very effective and touching. If Shakespeare attached great importance to catharsis as an important reason why people went to theatre, besides entertainment, laughter and fight, then he certainly managed to create cathartic scenes. Besides poetic, there is also an important dramaturgical function of madness, and the special category is the form of madness, or folly, communicating life wisdom or truth. Shakespeare–s contemporary Robert Armin forged a blendind foolosopher, and Erasmus dedicated his Praise to Folly. Loss of reason is almost always loss of life too, and this is why it is such a frequent motif in tragic stories. The feeling of grief, loss, mourning, that is something that overwhelms us while watching once might monarchs, chaste girls, great warriors or noble minds „overthrown”, saying vulgar words, broken sentences, hollering hysterically or threatening powerlessly. Those who manage to get over madness, return empowered by this horrible experience, like after clinical death. Those who don–t, find the only salvation in death. The very word „madness” is very frequent in Shakespeare–s plays, with rich semantic range, denotating mental disorder, ecstasis, foolish behaviour, rage and happiness. Not for nothing did Shakespeare call it „antic disposition” in Hamlet–s cases, because it was very present in ancient tragedies: Ajax, Cassandra, Philoctete, Orestes, Phaedra, Oedipus; they all have fits of madness. Madness is related to several deities, and Dionysus is the god of tragedy. To ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, Racine Shakespeare and Nietzche, the source of madness was in things „sad to know”. Collin McGinn, a British philosopher, analyses Shakespeare–s psychologism and wonders to what extent Shakespeare–s naturalism was proto-psychology. His interest in human soul and mind makes his plays „psychodramas”. While Freud was drawing Newtonian laws regulating human mind, making all men liable to Oedipal complex and suppression of sexual desire, which subsequently makes this repression manifest, to Shakespeare every human being was special, not variation of a type. He was a moral psychologist, attaching values to every psychological portrait.