Role Of Madness In Elizabethan

An Elizabethan understanding of mental health is quite unlike our conception of mental illness in the modern era. To the Elizabethan, the most accepted theory of madness was based on the Greek conception of the ‘humours’. The Greeks eliminated supernatural understandings of madness by a secular understanding based on the imbalances of bodily humours- sanguine humour(associated with air) was responsible for optimism and irresponsibility, choleric humour was responsible for short temper and ambition, phlegmatic humour(associated with water) was responsible for laziness and corpulence and finally, melancholic humour(associated with earth) was responsible for introspection, sallowness and depression. The Romans added to this by positing that not only were physical causes responsible for madness, but emotional disturbances could in turn lead to physiological effects(Robinson, Daniel N. ‘An …show more content…
A.C. Bradley notes that Shakespeare often uses prose to indicate an abnormal state of mind.
Michel Foucault explains, “Language is the first and last structure of madness, its constituent form; on language are based all the cycles in which madness articulates its nature. That the essence of madness can be ultimately defined in the simple structure of a discourse does not reduce it to a purely psychological nature, but gives it a hold over the totality of soul and body; such discourse is both the silent language by which the mind speaks to itself in the truth proper to it, and the visible articulation in the movements of the body.”(Madness and Civilisation)
Instead of representing madness through its physical symptoms, or through some stereotyped behaviour, Shakespeare (perhaps anticipating Foucault) uses a peculiar language to dramatize insanity. This language may be in the form of prose or verse, but it is always characterized by fragmentation, obsession and