Separate Theaters: Bethlem ("Bedlam") Hospital and the Shakespearean StageThis book seeks to update the still standard reference on the topic of London's notorious psychiatric hospital, Bethlem, and the Shakespearean stage - Robert Reed's Bedlam on the Jacobean Stage (1953) - by challenging its assumption that Bethlem was a house of horrors that showed its patients to visitors for entertainment, a practice supposedly then depicted on the stage to please primitive tastes. As the recent History of Bethlem has suggested, the hospital was first and foremost a charity, one that showed its patients to elicit alms for the mad poor. Seeing the mad poor living in squalor moved people to give; that some spectators also laughed at this show may complicate, but does not contradict, Bethlem's charitable function. In contrast to our popular understanding of charity, which generally involves the efforts of the givers to at least mask any feelings of contempt for recipients, early modern charitable impulses coexisted easily with a clear disgust for and a- willingness to laugh at the recipients of charity. |
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Page 14
... culture . Correspondingly , it seems that the enjoyment some spectators took in viewing the mad could coexist with rather than negate their charity . This is in disturbing contrast to our popular sense of charity , which generally in ...
... culture . Correspondingly , it seems that the enjoyment some spectators took in viewing the mad could coexist with rather than negate their charity . This is in disturbing contrast to our popular sense of charity , which generally in ...
Page 15
... cultural practice . In her recent book , Distracted Subjects : Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture ( 2004 ) , Carol Thomas Neely goes as far as to suggest that " visitation " did not occur at all in this time ...
... cultural practice . In her recent book , Distracted Subjects : Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture ( 2004 ) , Carol Thomas Neely goes as far as to suggest that " visitation " did not occur at all in this time ...
Page 17
... culture simply may have been becoming more conscious of Bethlem's show as show , as aligned with emerging categories of theater and drama — about which I will say more momentarily — rather than starting any distinctly " new " practice ...
... culture simply may have been becoming more conscious of Bethlem's show as show , as aligned with emerging categories of theater and drama — about which I will say more momentarily — rather than starting any distinctly " new " practice ...
Page 18
... culture where the show of Bethlem was not yet considered inherently perverse , but charitable or potentially charitable . A close consideration of " Bedlam " dramas between 1598 and 1630 , in short , supports the larger thesis of the ...
... culture where the show of Bethlem was not yet considered inherently perverse , but charitable or potentially charitable . A close consideration of " Bedlam " dramas between 1598 and 1630 , in short , supports the larger thesis of the ...
Page 19
... cultural register of some " new historical " kind , but because the show of Bethlem became part of a nuanced , literary dispute over what the dramatic stage was and should be . Bethlem and the show of madness actually end up playing a ...
... cultural register of some " new historical " kind , but because the show of Bethlem became part of a nuanced , literary dispute over what the dramatic stage was and should be . Bethlem and the show of madness actually end up playing a ...
Contents
11 | |
A pastime That Can prompt us to have mercy Putting Malvolio Ben Jonson? in a Dark Room | 46 |
Though this be madness yet there is method int Poetaster Satiromastix and Shakespeares Defense of the Popular Stage in Hamlet | 79 |
A very piteous sight The Magnificent Entertainment The Honest Whore Part One The Honest Whore Part Two | 106 |
Making Bethlem a Jest and Conceding to Jonson in Westward Ho Eastward Ho and Northward Ho | 132 |
I know not Where I did lodge last night? Shakespeares King Lear and the Search for Bethlem Bedlam Hospital | 154 |
Twin shows of madness John Websters Stage Management of Bethlem in The Duchess of Malfi | 183 |
Shadows and Shows of Charity The Changeling The Pilgrim and the Protestant Critique of Catholic Good Works | 204 |
Foucault was right? | 235 |
Notes | 263 |
Bibliography | 292 |
Index | 303 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alibius Alinda Antonio argues audience Bedlam Bednarz beggars Bellamont Ben Jonson Beth Bethlem Hospital Bosola Bridewell Candido caritas Catholic century Changeling character charitable show citizen figure confinement critical critique culture cure Deflores Dekker and Middleton Dekker and Webster Dionysian dramatic Duchess of Malfi early modern Eastward Ho Edgar elicit pity England entertainment Fletcher fool Foucault gallants gulling Hamlet Hieronimo Hippolito historians History of Bethlem Honest Whore hospital hovel humours Ibid institutions Jacobean Jonson Jonsonian King Lear literary London madhouse madmen Madness and Civilization Malvolio Medieval mocking ness Northward Ho patients perverse play play's playwrights Poetaster poetry Poets Polonius poor laws poor relief popular stage Prospero reason Reformation relationship Renaissance representational stage response Roy Porter Satiromastix scene seems sense Shakespeare show of Bethlem show of madness social suggested theater of Bethlem theatrical thlem Thomas Thorello tion tragedy tragic understanding visitation
Popular passages
Page 24 - The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of Imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is, the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as Imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.
Page 95 - I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord ! [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you : — Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit...
Page 173 - Not where he eats, but where he is eaten : a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet : we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots...
Page 180 - Not to a rage. Patience and sorrow strove Who should express her goodliest. You have seen Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears Were like, a better way.
Page 58 - So in every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition : As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his effects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.
Page 171 - Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these...
Page 189 - tis fittest. Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty? Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out o' the grave. — Thou art a soul in bliss ; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.
Page 94 - Do you hear, let them be well used ; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
Page 168 - scape, I will preserve myself; and am bethought To take the basest and most poorest shape That ever penury, in contempt of man, Brought near to beast...
Page 25 - But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigured so together, More witnesseth than fancy's images, And grows to something of great constancy ; But, howsoever, strange and admirable.