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Title: Stages of Madness

Stages of Madness

Sin, Sickness and Seneca in Shakespearean Drama

by Andrew J. Power (Author)
©2023 Monographs XVI, 162 Pages
English Studies

Summary

«Stages of Madness　is an important new study of the representation of madness on the early modern English stage. Rigorously researched yet also highly readable, Andrew J. Power’s book provides original and compelling close readings of early modern plays such as　The Spanish Tragedy　and　Hamlet　while establishing a lineage of ideas about madness stemming from classical and medieval drama.»
(Dr Rory Loughnane, Reader in Early Modern Studies, University of Kent)
　
«Power propels the reader through an enlightened tour of madness. From the Bedlam-laden performance of Edgar in　King Lear, through the schism-inflected demonic possession of　The Comedy of Errors, to the furious revenges of　Titus Andronicus, this book asks the biggest questions imaginable about the evolution of cultural understandings of how mind relates to self and how notions of sanity are constructed through the reflection of madness in religious and medical contexts.»
(Dr Timothy Ryan Day, Associate Professor of English, Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus)
　
In re-evaluating the contemporary staging of madness in the early modern period this book provides a clearer understanding and interpretation of characters who suffer from mental and emotional extremities in Shakespearean drama. It addresses three factors that contribute to early modern concepts of madness. These are theories of the «self» current and emergent in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries; contemporary medical writings on madness; and the legacy of portrayals of madness from classical Greek and Roman drama, with a particular focus on the Roman tragedian, Seneca. The more complete understanding that this combined approach provides, facilitates a better-informed reading of Shakespeare’s plays, plays that so often deal with mental and emotional extremities that were once thought of as «madness».

Table Of Contents


Figures

All figures are taken from the second edition of Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (Basilea, 1555) copy in the Bibliotheca Histórica de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid Sig.: BH MED85

Figure 1. Octava musculorum tabula / Eighth table of muscles

Figure 2. Secundo musculorum tabula / Second table of muscles

Figure 3. Tertia musculorum tabula / Third layer of muscles

Figure 4. Humani corporis ossium ex latero delineatio / Bones of the human body drawn from the side

Acknowledgements

Work on this book began during my PhD years at Trinity College Dublin and the book that it has become remains (as my thinking as a scholar does) in many ways indebted to my thesis supervisor Amanda Piesse. I am also grateful to Mike Pincombe and John Scattergood, who were the examiners of the thesis that it once was, for the suggestions and advice that they gave at that stage. I have also greatly benefitted from the scholarly communities that I have encountered at the four other Universities at which I have been employed in the intervening years, and I am grateful for the friends and colleagues who I made at University College Dublin, University of Cyprus, Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus, and the University of Sharjah, UAE. I also beleaguered many a student at these institutions with my thoughts and with my questions to them about the plays and ideas discussed herein. My students at all of these places have helped me to refine my thinking on the book, and I am particularly thankful to the students of my “Body and Self” course in Cyprus, and of my “Madness” course in Madrid.

I also owe thanks to the organisers and participants of several conferences where I have aired some of the ideas for this book; “Staging Transgression” (Trinity College Dublin 2011), the SEDERI conference on “Faces, Facades and Frontispieces: Public and Private Selves” (Madrid 2011), the FMRSI conference on the “Senses: Sight and Visual Perception” (University College Dublin 2016) as well as conferences at Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus on “Desire, Death, and Dialogue” (2015) and on “Sense and the Senses: The Mind and the Body” (2016). The Early Modern Tavern Society deserve special thanks. They are a unique group of scholars who have collaborated and conspired with me and with each other on some wonderful and amazing projects since we first met in 2006. They are my intellectual touchstone (or, at least, bar) and my thanks especially are extended to Rory Loughnane, Edel Semple and Darragh Greene who have each read the guts of the book in its making.

At Peter Lang I have found an enormously patient team who have allowed me to take the time necessary to do the book right. I’m very grateful particularly to Christobel Scaif for liking the idea in the first place and standing by it when my life got in the way of finishing. Also to the anonymous readers who saw potential in a proposal that was not quite perfect and whose advice was instrumental in reshaping this from what it was. And, indeed, to Laura Beth Shanahan, Simon Phillimore, Emma Clarke, Philip Dunshea, Shruthi Maniyodath and everyone else at Peter Lang who have had a hand in bringing the work through the press.

To all of these people a debt of gratitude is due for improving my work and for saving me from errors, inaccuracies and inelegances. Mistakes that remain are mine alone. My final thanks are due to my family. My mother suffered through much of this in the early years of its formation. I can’t claim that she kept me sane, but she has been a rock of support especially when she could not. In more recent years, my wife and children have proved that it is infinitely better to be mad about someone than just to be mad.

A Note on Quotations from Early Modern Sources

Because early modern text can, at times, be difficult to read – especially in its inconsistency – I have silently modernised where I judged it safe to do so without altering meaning or glossing over controversy.

Introduction

The country gives me proof and precedent

Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,

Strike in their numb’d and mortified bare arms

Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;

And with this horrible object, from low farms,

Details

Pages
XVI, 162
Year
2023
ISBN (PDF)
9781803740768
ISBN (ePUB)
9781803740775
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783034308298
DOI
10.3726/b20457
Language
English
Publication date
2023 (June)
Keywords
Seneca Melancholy Sin Psychology Drama Theatre Early Modern Shakespeare Madness Early Modern Drama Shakespeare's plays
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2023. XVI, 162 pp., 4 fig. b/w.

Biographical notes

Andrew J. Power (Author)

Andrew J. Power teaches at the University of Sharjah, UAE. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin where he took his PhD (2006). He has taught in Trinity, at University College Dublin, the University of Cyprus, and Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus. He is the editor of The Birth and Death of the Author (2020) and of Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613 (2012) and Early Shakespeare, 1588-1594 (2020). He was the Research Dramaturge for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2017).

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Title: Stages of Madness