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Approximation Algorithms and Semidefinite
Programming
Bernd Gärtner • Jiřı́ Matoušek

Approximation Algorithms
and Semidefinite
Programming

123
Bernd Gärtner Jiřı́ Matoušek
ETH Zurich Charles University
Institute of Theoretical Computer Science Department of Applied Mathematics
8092 Zurich Malostranské nám. 25
Switzerland 118 00 Prague 1
[email protected] Czech Republic
[email protected]

ISBN 978-3-642-22014-2 e-ISBN 978-3-642-22015-9

DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-22015-9
Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943166

Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 68W25, 90C22

c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
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Preface

This text, based on a graduate course taught by the authors, introduces

the reader to selected aspects of semidefinite programming and its use in
approximation algorithms. It covers the basics as well as a significant amount
of recent and more advanced material, sometimes on the edge of current
research.
Methods based on semidefinite programming have been the big thing in
optimization since the 1990s, just as methods based on linear programming
had been the big thing before that – at least this seems to be a reasonable
picture from the point of view of a computer scientist. Semidefinite programs
constitute one of the largest classes of optimization problems that can be
solved reasonably efficiently – both in theory and in practice. They play an
important role in a variety of research areas, such as combinatorial opti-
mization, approximation algorithms, computational complexity, graph the-
ory, geometry, real algebraic geometry, and quantum computing.
We develop the basic theory of semidefinite programming; we present one
of the known efficient algorithms in detail, and we describe the principles of
some others. As for applications, we focus on approximation algorithms.
There are many important computational problems, such as MaxCut,1
for which one cannot expect to obtain an exact solution efficiently, and in
such cases one has to settle for approximate solutions.
The main theoretical goal in this situation is to find efficient (polynomial-
time) algorithms that always compute an approximate solution of some guar-
anteed quality. For example, if an algorithm returns, for every possible input,
a solution whose quality is at least 87% of the optimum, we say that such an
algorithm has approximation ratio 0.87.
In the early 1990s it was understood that for MaxCut and several
other problems, a method based on semidefinite programming yields a bet-
ter approximation ratio than any other known approach. But the question

1
Dividing the vertex set of a graph into two parts interconnected by as many edges
as possible.

v
vi Preface

remained, could this approximation ratio be further improved, perhaps by

some new method?
For several important computational problems, a similar question was
solved in an amazing wave of progress, also in the early 1990s: the best
approximation ratio attainable by any polynomial-time algorithm (assuming
P = NP) was determined precisely in these cases.
For MaxCut and its relatives, a tentative but fascinating answer came
considerably later. It tells us that the algorithms based on semidefinite pro-
gramming deliver the best possible approximation ratio, among all possible
polynomial-time algorithms. It is tentative since it relies on an unproven
(but appealing) conjecture, the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC). But if one
believes in that conjecture, then semidefinite programming is the ultimate
tool for these problems – no other method, known or yet to be discovered,
can bring us any further.
We will follow the “semidefinite side” of these developments, presenting
some of the main ideas behind approximation algorithms based on semidefi-
nite programming.
The origins of this book. When we wrote a thin book on linear program-
ming some years ago, Nati Linial told us that we should include semidefinite
programming as well. For various reasons we did not, but since one should
trust Nati’s fantastic instinct for what is, or will become, important in theo-
retical computer science, we have kept that suggestion in mind.
In 2008, also motivated by the stunning progress in the field, we decided
to give a course on the topics of the present book at ETH Zurich. So we came
to the question, what should we teach in a one-semester course? Somewhat
naively, we imagined we could more or less use some standard text, perhaps
with a few additions of recent results.
To make a long story short, we have not found any directly teachable text,
standard or not, that would cover a significant part of our intended scope.
So we ended up reading stacks of research papers, producing detailed lecture
notes, and later reworking and publishing them. This book is the result.
Some FAQs. Q: Why are there two parts that look so different in typography
and style?
A: Each of the authors wrote one of the parts in his own style. We have not
seen sufficiently compelling reasons for trying to unify the style. Also see the
next answer.
Q: Why does the second part have this strange itemized format – is it just
some kind of a draft?
A: It is not a draft; it has been proofread and polished about as much as other
books of the second author. The unusual form is intentional; the (experimen-
tal) idea is to split the material into small and hierarchically organized chunks
of text. This is based on the author’s own experience with learning things,
as well as on observing how others work with textbooks. It should make the
Preface vii

text easier to digest (for many people at least) and to memorize the most
important things. It probably reads more slowly, but it is also more compact
than a traditional text. The top-level items are systematically numbered for
an easy reference. Of course, the readers are invited to form their own opinion
on the suitability of such a presentation.
Q: Why haven’t you included many more references and historical remarks?
A: Our primary goal is to communicate the key ideas. One usually does
not provide the students with many references in class, and adding survey-
style references would change the character of the book. Several surveys are
available, and readers who need more detailed references or a better overview
of known results on a particular topic should have no great problems looking
them up given the modern technology.
Q: Why don’t you cover more about the Unique Games Conjecture and inap-
proximability, which seems to be one of the main and most exciting research
directions in approximation algorithms?
A: Our main focus is the use of semidefinite programming, while the UGC
concerns lower bounds (inapproximability). We do introduce the conjecture
and cite results derived from it, but we have decided not to go into the
technical machinery around it, mainly because this would probably double
the current size of the book.
Q: Why is topic X not covered? How did you select the material?
A: We mainly wanted to build a reasonable course that could be taught in
one semester. In the current flood of information, we believe that less mate-
rial is often better than more. We have tried to select results that we perceive
as significant, beautiful, and technically manageable for class presentation.
One of our criteria was also the possibility of demonstrating various general
methods of mathematics and computer science in action on concrete exam-
ples.
Sources. As basic sources of information on semidefinite programming in
general one can use the Handbook of Semidefinite Programming [WSV00]
and the surveys by Laurent and Rendl [LR05] and Vandenberghe and Boyd
[VB96]. There is also a brand new handbook in the making [AL11]. The books
by Ben-Tal and Nemirovski [BTN01] and by Boyd and Vandenberghe [BV04]
are excellent sources as well, with a somewhat wider scope. The lecture notes
by Ye [Ye04] may also develop into a book in the near future.
A new extensive monograph on approximation algorithms, including a
significant amount of material on semidefinite programming, has recently
been completed by Williamson and Shmoys [WS11]. Another source worth
mentioning are Lovász’ lecture notes on semidefinite programming [Lov03],
beautiful as usual but not including recent results.
Lots of excellent material can be found in the transient world
of the Internet, often in the form of slides or course notes. A
site devoted to semidefinite programming is maintained by Helmberg
viii Preface

[Hel10], and another current site full of interesting resources is http://

homepages.cwi.nl/~monique/ow-seminar-sdp/ by Laurent. We have par-
ticularly benefited from slides by Arora (http://pikomat.mff.cuni.
cz/honza/napio/arora.pdf), by Feige (http://www.wisdom.weizmann.
ac.il/~feige/Slides/sdpslides.ppt), by Zwick (www.cs.tau.ac.il/
~zwick/slides/SDP-UKCRC.ppt), and by Raghavendra (several sets at
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/praghave/). A transient world indeed –
some of the materials we found while preparing the course in 2009 were no
longer on-line in mid-2010.
For recent results around the UGC and inapproximability, one of the best
sources known to us is Raghavendra’s thesis [Rag09]. The DIMACS lecture
notes [HCA+ 10] (with 17 authors!) appeared only after our book was nearly
finished, and so did two nice surveys by Khot [Kho10a, Kho10b].
In another direction, the lecture notes by Vallentin [Val08] present inter-
actions of semidefinite programming with harmonic analysis, resulting in
remarkable outcomes. Very enlightening course notes by Parrilo [Par06] treat
the use of semidefinite programming in the optimization of multivariate poly-
nomials and such. A recent book by Lasserre [Las10] also covers this kind of
topics.
Prerequisites. We assume basic knowledge of mathematics from standard
undergraduate curricula; most often we make use of linear algebra and basic
notions of graph theory. We also expect a certain degree of mathematical
maturity, e.g., the ability to fill in routine details in calculations or in proofs.
Finally, we do not spend much time on motivation, such as why it is inter-
esting and important to be able to compute good graph colorings – in this
respect, we also rely on the reader’s previous education.
Acknowledgments. We would like to thank Sanjeev Arora, Michel Baes,
Nikhil Bansal, Elad Hazan, Martin Jaggi, Nati Linial, Prasad Raghavendra,
Tamás Terlaky, Dominik Scheder, and Yinyu Ye for useful comments, sugges-
tions, materials, etc., Helena Nyklová for a great help with typesetting, and
Ruth Allewelt, Ute McCrory, and Martin Peters from Springer Heidelberg
for a perfect collaboration (as usual).
Errors. If you find errors in the book, especially serious ones, we would
appreciate it if you would let us know (email: [email protected],
[email protected]). We plan to post a list of errors at http://www.
inf.ethz.ch/personal/gaertner/sdpbook.
Contents

Part I (by Bernd Gärtner)

1 Introduction: MAXCUT Via Semidefinite Programming . . . 3

1.1 The MaxCut Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Approximation Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 A Randomized 0.5-Approximation Algorithm for MaxCut . . 6
1.4 The Goemans–Williamson Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 Semidefinite Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 From Linear to Semidefinite Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Positive Semidefinite Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Cholesky Factorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Semidefinite Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Non-standard Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.6 The Complexity of Solving Semidefinite Programs . . . . . . . . . . 20

3 Shannon Capacity and Lovász Theta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3.1 The Similarity-Free Dictionary Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2 The Shannon Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3 The Theta Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.4 The Lovász Bound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.5 The 5-Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.6 Two Semidefinite Programs for the Theta Function . . . . . . . . . 36
3.7 The Sandwich Theorem and Perfect Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

4 Duality and Cone Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.2 Closed Convex Cones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.3 Dual Cones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.4 A Separation Theorem for Closed Convex Cones . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.5 The Farkas Lemma, Cone Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

ix
x Contents

4.6 Cone Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

4.7 Duality of Cone Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.8 The Largest Eigenvalue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

5 Approximately Solving Semidefinite Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

5.1 Optimizing Over the Spectahedron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2 The Case of Bounded Trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.3 The Semidefinite Feasibility Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.4 Convex Optimization Over the Spectahedron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.5 The Frank–Wolfe Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.6 Back to the Semidefinite Feasibility Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.7 From the Linearized Problem to the Largest Eigenvalue . . . . . 90
5.8 The Power Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

6 An Interior-Point Algorithm for Semidefinite Programming 99

6.1 The Idea of the Central Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.2 Uniqueness of Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.3 Necessary Conditions for Optimality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.4 Sufficient Conditions for Optimality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.5 Following the Central Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

7 Copositive Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

7.1 The Copositive Cone and Its Dual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
7.2 A Copositive Program for the Independence Number
of a Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
7.3 Local Minimality Is coNP-hard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Part II (by Jiřı́ Matoušek)

8 Lower Bounds for the Goemans–Williamson MAXCUT

Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
8.1 Can One Get a Better Approximation Ratio? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
8.2 Approximation Ratio and Integrality Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
8.3 The Integrality Gap Matches the Goemans–Williamson Ratio 136
8.4 The Approximation Ratio Is At Most αGW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
8.5 The Unique Games Conjecture for Us Laymen, Part I . . . . . . . 152

9 Coloring 3-Chromatic Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

9.1 The 3-Coloring Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
9.2 From a Vector Coloring to a Proper Coloring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
9.3 Properties of the Normal Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
9.4 The KMS Rounding Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
9.5 Difficult Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Contents xi

10 Maximizing a Quadratic Form on a Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

10.1 Four Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
10.2 Quadratic Forms on Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
10.3 The Rounding Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
10.4 Estimating the Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
10.5 The Relation to ϑ(G) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

11 Colorings with Low Discrepancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

11.1 Discrepancy of Set Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
11.2 Vector Discrepancy and Bansal’s Random Walk Algorithm . . 182
11.3 Coordinate Walks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
11.4 Set Walks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

12 Constraint Satisfaction Problems, and Relaxing Them

Semidefinitely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
12.2 Constraint Satisfaction Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
12.3 Semidefinite Relaxations of 2-CSP’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
12.4 Beyond Binary Boolean: Max-3-Sat & Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

13 Rounding Via Miniatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

13.1 An Ultimate Rounding Method? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
13.2 Miniatures for MaxCut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
13.3 Rounding the Canonical Relaxation of Max-3-Sat
and Other Boolean CSP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
 Part I
(by Bernd Gärtner)
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 The girl Euphrasia, in “Philaster,” has less of tragedy and more of
romance, more even of Shakespeare’s own poetry. In her disguise as
Bellario, Philaster’s page, she appears as a “pretty, sad-talking
boy,”[131:2] and it would seem to be rather the prince, who sits
“cross-armed,” “sighs away the day” for love of Arethusa, and talks
furthermore in several places of going mad,[131:3] who should come
under this category of melancholiacs. But he himself proves to his
own satisfaction that he is sane enough; and though such a
statement is not always to be believed, it seems for once to
correspond with the point of view of the author. But Euphrasia
herself is continually reminding us of her melancholy, which has all
the appearance of being conceived as similar to that of Aspatia,
although it is less pronounced. It springs from love, it is nowhere put
down to a mere caprice, and although in neither of these two plays
is any cure attempted, this is because the characters are
subordinated to others and for the sake of a unified plot.
The melancholy of Mistress Constance, in Brome’s “Northern
Lass,” was probably meant by the author to be taken more seriously
than most people would find possible to-day. In conception it
resembles the melancholy-madness of Fletcher’s “Passionate
Madman.” Its cause, to go no further, is the same. Love has
“overwhelmed her spirits, and turned the faculties of all her senses
into a rude confusion, sending forth the uses of them extravagantly.”
The method of her cure, according to Pate (disguised as a Doctor) is
as simple as are the lightning cures of Fletcher: “The party that she
loves must be the doctor, the medicine and the cure.” This médecin
malgré lui, however, finds his patient too much for him. “I fear she is
wiser than all of us, that have to do with her. She knows my gown
better than I do; for I have had but two hours’ acquaintance with it.”
Constance, though at times she sings snatches of song, does not
rave like Shattillion or the Gaoler’s Daughter; the prevailing symptom
of her melancholy is depression. As a character she is peculiarly
lacking in charm, though the title-page of the play, which declares it
to be “a comedy often acted with good applause,” in high places,
would suggest that the heroine was popular enough at the time.
 Almira, the daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily, in Massinger’s “A
Very Woman,” might profitably be considered in a later section
dealing with unclassified abnormal states of mind. However, the
malady produced in her by the supposed loss of her lover was
apparently conceived by the dramatist as “melancholy-madness,”
and therefore it finds a place here. Gifford, in a note in his edition of
Massinger, describes Almira’s complaint as “not madness, but light-
headedness.” She is firmly convinced that Cardenes, who has been
wounded in a scuffle with his rival, is dead, and all her friends’
attempts to convince her to the contrary merely strengthen her
belief.

“I know you,
And that in this you flatter me; he’s dead,
As much as could die of him: but look yonder!
Amongst a million of glorious lights
That deck the heavenly canopy, I have
Discern’d his soul, transform’d into a star.
Do you not see it?”[133:1]

The belief induces semi-hallucinations. She hears “a dismal

sound”—it is Antonio in hell, “on the infernal rack where murderers
are tormented.”[133:1] This sets a train of delusive ideas in motion;
her cousin fears “she’ll grow into a frenzy,” when one of her women
exclaims “Her fit begins to leave her,” and she is once more herself,
relating her “strangest waking dream of hell and heaven.”[134:1]
Notwithstanding these temperate intervals her father is alarmed, and
fears, not without reason, that

“She’ll do some violent act upon herself.”[134:2]

Her hands are therefore to be bound and a physician sent for. We

hear a good deal more of her melancholy during the play, but it
becomes conventional, and after the second act we think of her as
quite a rational human being—as a “Very Woman.” It is the strange
change in her affections which gives the great interest to her
character which it certainly possesses; for that reason it would
hardly be fair to attempt to compare her either with Aspatia or with
Euphrasia, interest in whom is dependent on other considerations.
A case of melancholy, both interesting and amusing, similar in
conception and treatment to the mania of Shattillion and of the
Passionate Lover mentioned above,[134:3] is furnished by Brome’s
“Antipodes.” As we should expect in an “approved Comedy” acted in
the year 1638, the subject is approached only from its lighter side;
within the limits which such a treatment necessarily imposes the
play is pleasant enough, and the principal characters are very
laughable. Joyless and Diana, it appears, have a son Peregrine, a lad
of twenty-five, who has been married for some years to a girl named
Martha. But Peregrine, whose inclination has always been for a
roving life, has developed a melancholy in consequence of his
parents’ opposition to his desire for travel. The disease, when the
play opens, is “inclining still to worse, As he grows more in days,”
and the father’s anxiety is aggravated by the fact that Martha is also
afflicted with a similar trouble, caused by her husband’s neglect. Her
symptoms are somewhat different:

“Indeed she’s full of passion, which she utters

By the effects, as diversely, as several
Objects reflect upon her wand’ring fancy,
Sometimes in extreme weepings, and anon
In vehement laughter; now in sullen silence,
And presently in loudest exclamations.”[135:1]

Doctor Hughball, a physician of renown, undertakes both cases, and

in addition that of Joyless, whom “some few yellow spots” about the
temples proclaim to be “jealous-mad.” This doctor, like others of the
“cure-all” tribe whom we have recently encountered, has had great
experience of mental disease. He has cured

“A country gentleman, that fell mad

 For spending of his land before he sold it.”[135:2]
A lady who fell mad with “tedious and painful study” to find “a
way to love her husband,” and “horn-mad citizens, he cures them by
the dozens”![136:1] Brought face to face with the melancholiac in one
of his “fits,” Hughball sets about humouring him, “applauding” his
“noble disposition,” and “adoring” his “spirit of travel.” He tells his
patient that he has been all over the world, even in the Antipodes,
meeting his praise of Mandeville, Drake, and other worthies with
vivid and imaginative descriptions of the unknown lands on the other
side of the world. Everything, it appears, goes by contraries:

“There the deer

Pursue the hounds, and (which you may think strange),
I ha’ seen one sheep worry a dozen foxes,
By moonshine, in a morning before day,
They hunt, trail scents with oxen and plough with
dogs.”[136:2]

Peregrine is subdued; he could listen to the Doctor “a whole

fortnight,” and gladly accepts his offer to travel with him to this
wonderful land. Hence, in the next scene, by the device of a play
within a play,[136:3] the Doctor is able to effect a threefold cure.
Joyless’ jealousy is overcome; Martha (after being disguised as a
Queen and formally presented to her husband), wins back the love
of the melancholy Peregrine; and Peregrine himself, though falling
back more than once during the play-scenes to “Mandeville-
madness,” is eventually cured. In the concluding scenes, where
music “upon the Recorders” is being played, we are shewn the
melancholiac’s return to complete sanity.

“I am what you are pleased to make me; but withal . . .

ignorant of my own condition, whether I sleep or wake, or
talk, or dream; whether I be, or be not; or if I am,
whether I do, or do not anything.”[137:1]
 Revelations and recognitions follow, in spite of the Doctor’s
warning against “troubling his brain with new discoveries.” Peregrine
is then made to “recover roundly” by means of a short masque
(preceded by “a most untunable flourish”!) introducing “Discord,
Folly, Jealousy, Melancholy, and Madness.” When these characters
have been routed by Harmony and her train, Peregrine declares
“Indeed, I find me well.”
The treatment of melancholy in this play is in no way serious, and
shews us little of real value.
“Melancholy False”[137:2] is hard to define; the criterion must
ultimately be a subjective one. It is depicted as a state of the mind
in which the person concerned has full control of himself,—as a cloak
which he assumes for his own purposes, and which he is able to
throw off should necessity arise. At its very worst, it would only be
spoken of to-day as “depression.” Sometimes, it is true, this
melancholy seems to give a definite colour to the person whom it
characterises—to be, in fact, part of his temperament; but in these
cases no mention is made of any possible cure of the trouble—
sometimes not even of the cause—so that the suggestion of disease
does not arise in the spectator’s mind. No doubt such a condition, if
persisted in, would often have disastrous results. Such a “humour”
was dangerous, but it was nevertheless a “humour.”
It may be objected that many persons, using these tests, might
well put Euphrasia and Aspatia in the present category. It is true.
But if we made no distinctions and adopted no classifications but
those which were indisputable and self-evident, we should make
very few, and those would be of little value. We have it on excellent
authority that the only way to “part sadness and melancholy” is “by
a familiar demonstration of the working.”[138:1] To a layman it would
probably be clear that the melancholy of Aspatia and Euphrasia, of
Mistress Constance and Almira, is meant to be of a different kind
from that of several characters with whom we shall now have to
deal.
 The largest variety of “cases” is furnished by Shakespeare, and
for this reason our study of this type may be confined to his works.
Some of the “cases” are described by Dr. Bucknill:[139:1] “the
melancholy of pride in Achilles, of prosperity in Antonio, of
constitution and timidity in the Queen of ‘Richard II,’ of
contemplation in Jacques.” We might possibly add more, but here
are instances enough (if they are really instances) to shew the
nature of this melancholy.
Surprise might perhaps be expressed that Shakespeare should
make such large use of this “humour”; it would be expected that he,
whom we have shewn to be familiar with all kinds of insanity, would
conceive of melancholia more nearly after the fashion of the present-
day physician. The explanation is simple. Shakespeare knew
perfectly well that melancholy could be a disease, and has described
it as such. Let us remember the quotations, given above,[139:2] from
“Twelfth Night” and “King John.” And who was it that “besieged with
sable-coloured melancholy . . . did commend the black-oppressing
humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving
air?”[140:1] Yet Shakespeare was equally well acquainted with that
hypochondriacal melancholia and that temperamental depression
which play a large part in modern life, and both of these, to say
nothing of the love-melancholy which varies from slight depression
to acute mania, he found it convenient to use. The contemporary
dramatists, however great or small their knowledge, usually
preferred the “love melancholy” and used it almost exclusively.
The melancholy of Achilles is quite superficial. He is “lion sick of a
proud heart”[140:2] just as Ajax is “melancholy without cause,” and
nobody in the play interprets his behaviour otherwise. The estimate
just quoted of him is one of the least violent of the opinions of Ajax;
Agamemnon calls him “over-proud and under-honest”;[140:3] Ulysses
says that he is

“possess’d . . . with greatness

And speaks not to himself but with a pride
 That quarrels at self-breath.”[140:4]
Ulysses’ descriptions of the general’s occupations, of his jests at
Agamemnon and the Greeks, of his delight in Patroclus’ imitations,
and the “loud applause” which comes from his “deep chest”[140:5]
are sufficient proof that his malady is not very serious. Certainly,
judging from the care with which Shakespeare demonstrates the
nature of its source, we shall conclude that this melancholy is
presented to us as a “humour.”
The “Merchant of Venice” is coloured by the sadness of its hero,
even at the height of his prosperity. At the outset of the play he
declares to his friends:

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad;

It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn.
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself.”[141:1]

We at least are not at a loss to explain Antonio’s depression. It is not

alone the boredom of “unruffled prosperity”[141:2]—this sorts ill with
the character of the noble merchant: it is rather a peculiarity of
temperament which colours both adversity and prosperity. For such
melancholy as marks Antonio’s farewell to Bassanio:

“I am a tainted wether of the flock,

Meetest for death,”[141:3]

is not the necessary concomitant either of prosperity or of adversity.

The two speeches quoted are examples of the same condition of
mind; the melancholy which they exhibit has the double dramatic
purpose of beautifying the character of Antonio and of giving the
spectator that “preadjustment” which is so valuable an aid to the
plot.
Similarly we have in “Richard II” the melancholy of the Queen,
which prepares us for the troubles about to befall her. This
melancholy may best be attributed, not necessarily, as Dr. Bucknill
suggests, to her temperament, certainly not to any prosperity she
may have enjoyed, but rather to a vague fear as to the results of her
husband’s perilous journey, coupled possibly with her experience of
the King’s rashness and a recognition of his recent weakness in
dealing with Mowbray and Bolingbroke. It is, at all events, merely a
passing sadness of the “inward soul” and her “heavy sad”-ness is
soon dispersed, changing first to real grief, which gives place before
her weaker husband—true woman that she is!—to a resolution
concealing for a time her sorrow.
In Jacques we have a character of more complexity. His humour
he describes as “a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many
simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry
contemplation of my travels in which my often rumination wraps me
in a most humorous sadness.”[142:1] He wishes, in his own words, to

“Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,

If they will patiently receive my medicine.”[142:2]

But the Duke, usually so gentle, is quite out of sympathy with the
pseudo-reformer. Jacques, he says, has been a libertine, and like
many a reformed sinner, the ex-voluptuary would merely “disgorge
into the general world,” “all the embossèd sores and headed evils” of
his unregenerate days.[143:1]
So much discussion has been lavished on the “case” of Jacques
that we shall not attempt to do more than shew what we believe to
be its perfectly superficial nature. Judging from the play as a whole,
and more especially from the Duke’s contempt and Rosalind’s banter,
we should suppose this to be Shakespeare’s view. As Dr. Moulton
very justly remarks, egotism is plainly shewn to be at the root of his
disposition. He has lived out his life in a short time; now he turns
everything, for sheer self-love, into matter not for jests but for
scurrilous abuse, or at best for a malevolent, sarcastic humour.
Yet the morbidity of Jacques’ melancholy suggests that, more
than any other of Shakespeare’s similarly conceived characters, he
carries about with him a secret malady when he persists in his
attitude towards the world. One day the secret wound will fester; his
“weeping” and his “sullen fits” will become uncontrollable; his frantic
abuse will turn to frenzy; his ironic, half-humorous sallies will change
to the disconnected utterances of a maniac; or his surly humour will
sink lower and lower until it reaches the dead level of melancholic
depression.
Here, then, we have, in briefest outline, some of the types of
melancholy—true and false—presented by Shakespeare and certain
of his contemporaries. Numerous examples from other authors of
the time might be added, but we have seen enough to be clear on
two points. These are, the essential difference between the true and
the false melancholy, and the use of each to the dramatist in his
work, both for its own sake and because of the opportunities which
it gives for the introduction of poetical passages. From the character
who entertains a “wilful stillness”

“With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,”[144:1]

to the true victim of his sorrow, holding, against his will (like
Constance in “King John”)

“The eternal spirit . . .

In the vile prison of afflicted breath,”[144:2]

the melancholiac has great dramatic possibilities, of which, for the

most part, the fullest advantage is taken.
This seems to be the most convenient place to discuss the
question of the real (as distinguished from the assumed) mental
condition of Hamlet. That it is an abnormal condition most careful
readers of the play will not question. How otherwise can we explain
his habitual inaction, his sudden fits of energy, his violence to those
whom he loves, his strange self-questionings, and his even stranger
apathy to those things which should most move him? The whole
question of the cause of Hamlet’s procrastination depends on our
estimate of his mental state. Goethe’s description of Hamlet as “a
beautiful, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength
of nerve which makes the hero,” is clearly at variance with facts, and
the estimates of both Coleridge and Dowden largely ignore the
practical side of the character of Hamlet. Only by recognising what
the play certainly tells us, that the melancholy of Hamlet is really a
disease, can we obtain anything like a reasonable explanation of his
strange movements. After all, he is not the one-sided, unequally-
developed weakling that certain school editions of Shakespeare
would have us suppose. He is, without any doubt, a man of practical
ability, capable of prompt, energetic action, skilled in all manly
exercises. Intellectually, his “noble mind” compels the greatest
regard, he has studied long at the University and possesses besides
such qualities as would serve him admirably as ruler of Denmark.
Fortinbras says of him that

“He was likely

Had he been put on, to have proved most royally.”[146:1]

His moral nature is equally praiseworthy. Ordinarily strong of will,

“most generous and free from all contriving,”[146:2] though probably
at times inclined to be passionate and on occasions headstrong to
excess, he was certainly not the man to procrastinate through
“losing himself in labyrinths of thought” as Schlegel asserts him to
have done.
If we would find the key to this mystery, Hamlet himself will give
it us in his first soliloquy. He meditates suicide, from which he is only
kept by the fact that “the Everlasting” has “fix’d His canon ’gainst
self-slaughter.”[146:3] Then he explains why everything to him is
“weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”—it is the terrible shock of his
mother’s incestuous marriage following that of the death of his
father, and the suspicious circumstances which attended it, that has
given rise to this abnormal state of mind. His melancholy is
augmented by the nature of the command laid on him by the Ghost
and the consequent secrecy which he must put upon himself:

“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”[146:4]

This is Melancholy True—a state of mind which cannot be thrown off

like a cloak, yet which is abnormal. It is an excellent case for the
pathologist. Truly conceived, it furnishes the only satisfying
explanation of the strange phases of Hamlet’s so-called “character”—
the depression, the self-weariness, the irritability, the violence, the
satisfaction at the smallest thing achieved, the impossibility of
carrying out the original purpose—all these things are the natural
outcome of melancholia.
A two-fold objection to this view has to be met. It will be said that
such a conception of Hamlet destroys the moral lesson of the play.
And would that it did! It is unfortunate that certain critics are unable
to pick up a play without looking at once for the moral. Those who
have done this with “Hamlet” have succeeded in shifting the centre
of gravity from the author to themselves. They say that the play
shews how wrong it is to procrastinate, and how by procrastination
we lose far more than we gain. It is, according to these critics, a
mere sermon preached on the text

“That we would do
We should do when we would.”[147:1]

How, they say, can this sermon be preached if the chief illustration—
the man by whom we are all to be warned—is exculpated from
blame by illness?
They know little of tragedy—or at least of Shakespeare’s tragedy
—who hold a view like this. What Shakespeare habitually does is to
shew us a man, by nature fitted to be a hero of tragedy, with a fatal
defect, the consequences of which are worked out in the play.
Looked at from this point of view, the sentimental objection at once
vanishes, and the second objection arises. It is a more serious one:
Can a man suffering from melancholia—to put the thing in its most
prosaic form—any more than a man suffering from any other form of
insanity, be admitted as a tragic hero? The answer is that he can.
And this partly because his exact state of mind is not determined,
partly because it is a condition not generally recognised as one of
disease, and tragedy has always to be considered from the point of
view, not of the doctor, but of the author and the audience. As Dr.
Bradley, who very ably sums up the question, says in his Lectures on
Shakespearean Tragedy: “The man who suffers as Hamlet suffers—
and thousands go about their business suffering thus in greater or
less degree—is considered irresponsible neither by other people nor
by himself: he is only too keenly conscious of his responsibility. . . . .
Hamlet’s state is not one which a healthy mind is unable sufficiently
to imagine. It is probably not further from average experience, nor
more difficult to realise, than the great tragic passions of Othello,
Antony or Macbeth.”[149:1]
Before we leave Hamlet, it should be emphasised that the state of
mind of the hero is quite a subordinate question in the play itself. “It
would be absurdly unjust to call ‘Hamlet’ a study of melancholy, but
it contains such a study,” is Dr. Bradley’s way of putting it.[149:2] The
significance of this is that we must not expect the indications of
Hamlet’s disease to be developed to any degree, nor refuse to claim
for it a place among our examples of “Melancholy True,” just
because the author fails to introduce the hero to a physician![149:3]
 FOOTNOTES:
[127:1] As Pate says in Brome’s “Northern Lass” (v., 1).
[127:2] “Cymbeline,” iv., 2, 203.
[128:1] Induction, ii., 135.
[128:2] “Twelfth Night,” ii., 4, 113, etc.
[128:3] “King John,” iii., 3, 42.
[129:1] “The Maid’s Tragedy,” ii., 1.
[129:2] Ibid., i., 1.
[130:1] Ibid., ii., 1.
[130:2] Ibid., i., 1.
[130:3] Ibid., ii., 2.
[131:1] Ibid., v., 4.
[131:2] “Philaster,” ii., 3.
[131:3] e.g. iii., 1, 277; iii., 2, 83, etc.
[133:1] “A Very Woman,” ii., 3.
[134:1] Ibid., ii., 3.
[134:2] Ibid., ii., 3.
[134:3] pp. 105 ff.
[135:1] “The Antipodes,” i., 2.
[135:2] Ibid., i., 1.
[136:1] Ibid., i., 1.
[136:2] Ibid., i., 6.
[136:3] The scenes in which Joyless, Diana, Peregrine and the
rest listen to this play and pass comments on it often bear a
striking resemblance to the better known “Knight of the Burning
Pestle.”
[137:1] “The Antipodes,” v., 9.
[137:2] A medical friend reminds me that there is, properly
speaking, no such thing as “melancholy false,” and that the
characters mentioned under this head are not suffering, in his
opinion, from any form of mental disease. I will therefore repeat
here that the classification of “melancholy” adopted in this
chapter is not a scientific one, that it is made on a seventeenth
century, rather than on a twentieth century basis—we are trying,
that is, to take up the positions of the several dramatists. Few
specialists of to-day would consider Jacques, Achilles or Antonio
to be in a state of disease, but that the Elizabethan doctor would
have diagnosed their malady as “melancholy” I have little doubt.
The ordinary spectator would probably not consider the question
in any detail.
[138:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Moth: i., 2, 9-10.
[139:1] “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 310.
[139:2] p. 128.
[140:1] “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” i., 1, 233, etc.
[140:2] “Troilus and Cressida,” ii., 3, 92, etc.
[140:3] Ibid., ii., 3, 132.
[140:4] Ibid., ii., 3, 180.
[140:5] Ibid., i., 3, 161, etc.
[141:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 1, etc.
[141:2] Bucknill, “Mad Folk,” etc., p. 307.
[141:3] “Merchant of Venice,” iv., 1, 114, etc.
[142:1] “As You Like It,” iv., 1, 15, etc.
[142:2] Ibid., ii., 7, 60.
[143:1] Ibid., ii., 7, 67-9.
[144:1] “Merchant of Venice,” i., 1, 91-2.
[144:2] “King John,” iii., 4, 18.
[146:1] “Hamlet,” v., 2, 408.
[146:2] Ibid., iv., 7, 136—the King’s testimony.
[146:3] Ibid., i., 2, 131-2.
[146:4] Ibid., i., 2, 159.
[147:1] “Hamlet,” iv., 7, 119-20.
[149:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” p. 121.
[149:2] Ibid., p. 121.
[149:3] Beside the melancholy of Hamlet we might place that of
Haraldus, the young Prince of Shirley’s play, “The Politician,” were
it not that the part played by his melancholy is purely nominal.
His father—the Politician—sends two courtiers to cure him, and
they make him drunk. His excesses bring on a fever which causes
his death. His likeness to Hamlet only strikes us here and there,
and the melancholy, such as it is, is caused chiefly by the
discovery that he is a bastard.
 CHAPTER VII.
Mad Folk in Comedy and Tragedy—(iv.) Delusions, Hallucinations
and other Abnormal States.

“How now; who’s there? spirits, spirits?”

(“Spanish Tragedy.”)
Delusions and hallucinations occurring in cases of real madness
we have already encountered, but since these phenomena are
themselves symptoms of a disordered state of mind we must not
neglect instances in which they occur with persons otherwise sane.
These spring to the memory; who, for example, can ever forget the
sights which Faustus sees in his last hour on earth?

“O, I’ll leap up to my God; who pulls me down?

See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.
One drop would save my soul, half a drop—Ah, my
Christ!
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on Him: Oh, spare me, Lucifer!
Where is it now? ’tis gone: And see where God
Stretcheth out His arm, and bends His ireful brows;
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God.”[150:1]

More examples of such hallucinations in moments of great stress

might be quoted. It will best serve our purpose if we consider one
typical case (Frank, in “The Witch of Edmonton,”) and afterwards
discuss a case of special interest—that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Frank Thorney, in “The Witch of Edmonton,” has married one
Winifred, but is forced into a bigamous marriage with Susan, whom
he afterwards murders, without letting any suspicion fall on himself.
He is tormented on his sick-bed by phantoms indistinguishable from
realities, more particularly by the ghost of Susan, and at last reveals
to Winifred the awful truth.
“I am not idle,” he says, and he is right. But thick-coming fancies
disturb him. The ghost of Susan appears. He stares at it fixedly, then
turns to the other side, only to be confronted again by the
apparition. When it vanishes he is raving of “a force in which were
drawn a thousand ghosts, leap’d newly from their graves, to pluck
me into a winding-sheet.” He has, so he says, “Some windmill in my
brains for want of sleep,” but sleep only comes with the unburdening
of the guilty conscience.[151:1]
Macbeth (like Frank Thorney) is at no time in the play insane, but
he becomes the victim of “horrible imaginings” which beyond a
certain point seem to him to be real.[152:1] Macbeth is predisposed
to hallucinations by a remarkably vivid power of imagination, which
finds expression from the very outset of the play. The mere
suggestion of the murder of Duncan he describes as a “horrid
image” which unfixes his hair and makes his seated heart knock at
his ribs, against the use of nature. Thus we have a character whose
imagination torments him throughout his career of crime till he has
“supped full of horrors” and the “taste of fears” has almost lost all
significance.[152:2]
In the well-known “Dagger Scene”[152:3] we are confronted with
the first of Macbeth’s hallucinations. It is before the murder of
Duncan, and the spectral dagger only deceives him for a moment.
Making an unsuccessful attempt to clutch it, he is for a short
moment at a loss to explain a weapon which he can see but cannot
handle. Then he rightly concludes that it is but a “dagger of the
mind, a false creation”; his eyes “are made the fools o’ the other
senses,” yet the image does not disappear till courage comes again
and with it “the heat of deeds.”
 Duncan is murdered; “after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,” but
the regicide’s better self torments him more and more, and the Lady
fears for his sanity:

“These deeds must not be thought

After these ways; so, it will make us mad.”[153:1]

Macbeth, however, is losing his self-control. At the moment of the

murder a fresh hallucination troubled him, and though its true
nature is now recognised, and he can “moralise” upon it, its very
mention fills the Lady with fears.

“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!

Macbeth doth murder sleep’. . . .
Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house:
‘Glamis hath murther’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no
more.’”[153:2]

Dr. Bucknill, it is true, considers that this is not an hallucination, on

account of the word “methought.”[153:3] But the same word would
have been used of the dagger, which the critic himself admits to
have been an hallucination. Nor is the length of the fancied speeches
any obstacle, the greater part of the speech in which they occur
being Macbeth’s own embellishment of the event.
The hallucination at the banquet is more formidable. Macbeth,
having caused Banquo to be murdered—the murder being unknown
to his guests—is regretting his absence, “thus by a voluntary mental
act calling before his mind’s eye the image of the murdered
man.”[154:1] At the mention of him, an image rises in the place
reserved for Macbeth himself. It shakes its “gory locks” at the
murderer, it nods but will not speak, and only vanishes like the “air-
drawn dagger,” when Macbeth begins to overcome his fear and brave
it. When he pledges Banquo it appears again; once more he
declaims violently against it and it vanishes, but not before he has
 . . “displac’d the mirth, broke the good meeting
With most admir’d disorder.”[154:2]

to say nothing of a certain amount of suspicion attached to it.

The remainder of the story, from the psychological point of view,
can best be told in Dr. Bucknill’s words.[154:3] “Macbeth,” he says,
“saved himself from actual insanity by rushing from the maddening
horrors of meditation into a course of decisive resolute action. From
henceforth he gave himself no time to reflect; he made the firstlings
of his heart the firstlings of his hand; he became a fearful tyrant to
his country; but he escaped madness. This change in him, however,
effected a change in his relation to his wife, which in her had the
opposite result. . . . Her attention, heretofore directed to her
husband and to outward occurrences, was forced inwards upon that
wreck of all-content which her meditation supplied.” She becomes
mad; no medicine can minister to her mind, diseased by crime and
remorse, and her madness is fatal. But Macbeth never becomes
insane. “Some say he’s mad,” it is true, yet

“Others, that lesser hate him,

Do call it valiant fury.”[155:1]

He has saved his own mental life, but he has flung away the “eternal
jewel” of his soul.
Lady Macbeth, at every point in the play, is strongly contrasted
with her husband. She is frankly distressed at the developments of
Macbeth’s criminal career. He bids her be “innocent of the
knowledge” till she applaud his deeds. She thus drifts farther away
from him and leaves him to pursue his bloody course alone. Her
meditation breeds madness. She lacks, even as her husband had
done,

“the season of all natures, sleep,”

being
 “Troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.”[155:2]

The scene in which she betrays her secret in her sleep is full of
significance, shewing the terrible impression made on her by the
murder of Duncan, and no less by the slaughter of Lady Macduff.
After her fainting fit, which follows the discovery of Duncan’s murder,
she ceases to occupy a prominent place in the tragedy. Her death is
almost unnoticed. Whether she died naturally or whether her
attendants were unable to keep from her the “means of all
annoyance,” it is hard to say. But once again Shakespeare shews his
dramatic skill in relating rather than portraying the scene of her
death.
Returning to Macbeth, one must remark in conclusion that it is
only when Shakespeare’s art in delineating the various types of
insanity is studied as a whole that this character can be fully
appreciated. Yet even from a superficial examination of the play the
value to the dramatist of Macbeth’s hallucinations must be clear. For
they not only add to the scenic effect of the play, but they constitute
a striking contrast between the murderer and his wife, besides
clarifying the already powerful idea of his accusing imagination.

We must now briefly consider another kind of abnormality which

has not yet been mentioned. Occasionally, in reading the dramatists
of the period, we meet with persons whom at first we suppose to be
insane, but who are, in reality, not so. Yet their states of mind are
far from normal. Occasionally they seem to be possessed by insane
desires and ambitions; sometimes lust has taken complete
possession of them; sometimes remorse, vengeance or similar
passion dominates all their actions. It is hard to point to any of their
actions and to say: “That is the act of a madman.” To-day, no doubt,
did they exist in the flesh, they would be removed to a Mental
Hospital and treated for disease of the mind. But looked at by their
author and by his audience and in an Elizabethan environment, they
were not, in all probability, and in the ordinary sense of the word,
madmen. And for that reason we can only allow them a passing
consideration here, though every one of them would repay detailed
study.
One or two examples may be cited from Shakespeare—the first
being Constance, in “King John.” Dr. Bucknill, without the least
hesitation, styles her mad,—but he is a physician. Shakespeare, who
may be supposed to have known better, represents her as
passionate by nature, and half-demented with grief. But she is never
more than half-crazy, always retaining sufficient of her native
strength of will to control her wonderful imagination. Her own
explanation of her conduct:

“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,”[158:1]

is quite sufficient. Her reply to Pandulph’s accusation,

“Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow,”[158:2]

is conclusive proof that she is to be regarded as sane. She does not,

like many a lunatic, merely protest that she is not mad; she gives
what, according to the standard of the day, would pass as clear
evidence of her sanity:

“I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;

My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost!
I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then, ’tis like I should forget myself . . .
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.”[158:3]
 Constance, even when her blemishes are taken into account, is a
sublime figure. At times the poet’s instinct seems for a moment to
fail him; his touch is less sure and his Fury becomes dangerously like
a common scold. But at her best she is unsurpassed, and if we
wonder at the skill with which Shakespeare portrays and utilises true
madness on the stage, we must not forget to withhold a portion of
our admiration for his sure-footed walk on the border line.
Timon of Athens, too, is a wonderful character—the wonder of
the play. A good-natured, generous and wealthy noble, he has
attracted to him crowds of parasites whom he calls friends, but who
in reality do nothing but receive his favours. At length he discovers
their essential baseness, and becoming, in his own words,
“misanthropos” who “hates mankind,”[159:1] leaves Athens, with
oaths and curses, for a cave near the sea-shore. There he ends his
days—the manner of his death is uncertain. His friends consider him
beyond all doubt insane. A creditor says that his debts “may well be
called desperate ones, for a madman owes ’em”;[159:2] others sum
the matter up tersely by saying “Lord Timon’s mad.”[159:3] Alcibiades
excuses Timon’s behaviour on the ground that

“his wits
Are drown’d and lost in his calamities.”[159:4]

Only Flavius, his faithful steward, gives no hint that he considers his
lord insane, though even he is struck with Timon’s unhappy
condition, so “full of decay and failing.”[159:5] Flavius, in this as in
other particulars, seems, like Ulysses, in “Troilus and Cressida” and
other characters in different plays, to be Shakespeare’s mouthpiece.
There is nothing in his representation of Timon which gives us cause
to impute madness to the protagonist. His state of mind is one of
acute depression, which we should call melancholia, were there any
hint that such a conception entered into the mind of the author. The
condition of Timon is not unlike that of Hamlet, and we could easily
understand his feigning madness to avoid the real evil coming upon
him.
If any further proof were needed that Timon is not a maniac his
speeches would suffice. The objection that “all satire upon the
hollowness of the world would lose much of its point if it came from
the lips of an undoubted lunatic,”[160:1] is perfectly valid. In “King
Lear” the speeches which contain the most sarcasm, as well as the
most poetry, are those of the earlier scenes, in which Lear has not
yet become entirely a maniac. This kind of speech is characteristic of
Timon to the end. His very last words, though lacking the force of
the first outburst, are equally coherent and contain far more poetry:

“Come not to me again: but say to Athens,

Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come
And let my gravestone be your oracle.
Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
What is amiss plague and infection mend!
Graves only be men’s works and death their gain!
Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.”[161:1]

A character far more repulsive, but depicted with the greatest

force, is Malefort Senior, of Massinger’s “Unnatural Combat.” Malefort
is an Admiral of Marseilles who is challenged by his apostate son to
a duel and comes off victorious, the son being slain. Shortly
afterwards, Theocrine, Malefort’s daughter, is sought in marriage by
the son of the Governor; the father consents, but his strange
extravagances towards her, as he loads her with jewels, riches and a
superfluity of caresses, is generally commented upon, and before
long it appears that he has fallen in love with her. The remainder of
the plot hastens to the catastrophe, Theocrine being dishonoured
and virtually murdered by a false friend of her father’s. Malefort
himself is persecuted by ghosts, and is finally killed by a flash of
lightning.
A modern author would no doubt represent such a character as
Malefort as suffering from some mental disease, but Massinger
appears to have considered the unnatural passion of the father for
his daughter as the fruit of the unnatural combat in which he kills his
son. He cares more for the development of this idea than for the
mental condition of Malefort, who speaks, in one place, of his son’s
blood as growing upon him like Hercules’ poisoned shirt, though he
seems also to feel an inward cause of his passion which he cannot
explain. Montreville, the false friend, supposes that he may be mad,
and recommends:

“A deep-read man, that can with charms and herbs

Restore you to your reason.”[162:1]

But from the general character of the play it is easy to see that he is
not considered insane.
Here, then, we have an attempt made to subject an outrageous
and unnatural passion, the manifestations of which bear at times the
closest resemblance to mania, to the dramatic treatment of tragedy.
That Massinger has wholly succeeded, few would be rash enough to
assert. He has given us a grim and ghastly picture, full of brute
strength but wanting in that higher power which restrains and
subdues. He has created a character at times human, always
terrible, but only partially effective in the highest sense of the word.
It is probable that if Constance and Malefort had been portrayed
as mad and not merely as possessed by an overpowering passion,
the result in each case would have been a considerable dramatic
gain. The death of the Lady Constance “in a frenzy”—like the deaths
of Lady Macbeth and the Queen in “Cymbeline”—is only reported by
a messenger. Had that frenzy actually been depicted, the result
would have been a weakening of the whole plot, but a decided
increase in the effectiveness of Constance. In the two plays which
we shall now consider, a comparatively poor theme is treated in such
a way that the passion portrayed is heightened,—without being
raised, however, to the level of madness. It is interesting to
speculate on the result had this been done—whether the madness
would have elevated the drama or whether the paucity or the
inconsequence of the theme would have debased the presentation
of insanity.
Grimaldi, the remorse-stricken renegade of Massinger’s play “The
Renegado,” who first immures a young girl, and afterwards repents,
is reduced in the fourth act to a state approaching insanity. He is a
poor sort of creature, at any rate until the concluding portion of the
play, where he contrives a remarkable stratagem which brings about
the dénouement. His remorse bears many of the signs of madness,
and indeed may have been intended for such by the author. For days
he has taken no food; the mention of the words “church” and “high
altar” increases his melancholy; his speech ends ever with “those
dreadful words damnation and despair.”[163:1] His “ravings” lead him
to contemplate all kinds of extravagances; he would do a “bloody
justice” on himself, pull out his eyes, lop off his legs, and give his
body to those whom he has injured. He does none of these things,
however,—a Jesuit priest, habited like a Bishop, curing him by the
very simple means of granting him absolution. The wild ravings give
place to calmer expressions of contrition and he goes off with a
riming couplet! It is unnecessary to follow him; one only wishes that
the extreme nature of his remorse had not made it advisable for us
to include such a creature, for whom little can be felt but contempt.
Our last example is Memnon, in Fletcher’s play, “The Mad Lover.”
Here is a character for whom we cannot help entertaining some
regard, but we are at a loss to know what exactly to make of him. If
he is really mad, as seems at first sight unlikely, it is a very unreal
kind of madness, with more dramatic purpose than realism. One of
the characters, indeed, calls him “stupid mad,” and the term is not
an inapt one. We should be inclined to group him with the
pretenders, but for three considerations. Firstly, he never declares
nor even hints to anyone that he is not what he seems, as Hamlet
does to Horatio and as Memnon himself might with perfect ease
have done—for example, to Siphax. Then his recovery, however
sudden, complete and unreal, is only the sort of thing one would
expect from Fletcher, and may be left out of the question. Lastly, in
the scene where he refuses the whore, it is true that he shews
considerable sagacity and discrimination. Nevertheless it is no more
than has actually been found in “cases” arising from the same cause
as Memnon’s. Yet obviously, as we shall see, the mad lover is not
mad in the acceptation of the word then common, and the
hypothesis of an abnormal passion will meet the case, better
perhaps than if we consider our hero either mad or sane.
The plot has already been sketched, and a few references should
make this statement clear. The lover’s rude courtship is the fruit of
long campaignings and absence from court; when he is told by his
friend of the strange impression he has made he speaks perfectly
rationally and merely becomes confirmed in his purpose. The
extravagant idea of cutting out his heart is the first sign of the
strength of his passion. Yet his soliloquy:

“’Tis but to die. Dogs do it, ducks with dabbling,

Birds sing away their souls, and babies sleep
’em . . .”[165:1]

is spoken in a temper quite unlike the madman’s. His argument

might even by some be considered valid: “For in the other world she
is bound to have me,” he says, “Her princely word is past.” When
others enter, he grows wilder, and throughout the play talks in the
most extravagant vein, more particularly to the surgeon whom he
tries to persuade to cut out his heart. “Here I am, sir,” says Memnon,

“Come, look upon me, view the best way boldly;

Fear nothing, but cut home. If your hand shake, sirrah,
Or any way deface my heart i’ the cutting,
Make the least scratch upon it . . . .
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