Session 15: Wickedness Onstage

Session 15: Wickedness Onstage
Chair: Agnieszka Tworek

Sinful Stages of Madness: The Relationship Between Sin and Madness on the Early Modern Stage
Andrew Power
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

This paper will trace the development of mad characters on the English stage and the close relation between sin and madness in drama. From Herod, the first English stage madman, in The Shearmen and Tailors medieval mystery play, there has been a close link between sin and madness. Everyman is described as ‘mad’ because of his sinful life, reason should dictate that he amend his life, that he does not that goes against reason is madness. Pickering’s Horestes, retells the story of Orestes within and allegorical framework, merging classical Greek traditions of madness as a punishment from the gods for hubris with the allegorical Christian rhetoric of sin. English renaissance drama brought a curious abundance of madmen to the stage, drawing on a variety of traditions ranging from penitential and instructional manuals and exempla detailing the seven deadly sins and traditions of demonic possession, to medical treatises on melancholy (mostly written by clerics) which warn of the humoural imbalance caused by sinful living. The paper will investigate how these traditions variously treat the relationship between sin and madness while also investigating some of the symbolism of stage madness that develops out of these traditions. Appearing on the English renaissance stage with a book in hand for instance is often an early sign of madness. Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi brings a curious mix of contemporary medical theory and moral damnation to the bestial madness of the evil Duke Ferdinand. Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Lady Macbeth form the pinnacle of renaissance stage evil and madness. Shakespeare’s mad anti-heroes remain indebted to the range of traditions discussed and consequently to ideas equating evil and sin with madness.

Peter Shaffer’s play Equus (1973) produced an important upheaval when it was first staged, due to what critics considered to be a defence of madness and even of psychopathic behaviour, which seemed to be explained by contradictory upbringing and societal paradoxes. Young Alan Strang’s rebelliousness, which culminates in an scene where he blinds the horses he takes care of, strains our understanding of how an apparently normal, well-adjusted teenager may revert to appalling and senseless violence which can only be explained by closely analyzing the contradictions and double binds he has been subjected to while growing up. In our paper, we intend to analyze how labelling works as a useful tool for society where education or social adaptation have failed, and how psychiatry, society and the family may plot so as to label ‘bad’ behaviour as ‘mad’, in an attempt to refuse responsibility for it. We will be closely following labelling theory as formulated by Howard S. Becker, in its understanding of how deviant behaviour is defined as such by the very society that is responsible for the behaviour in the first place, and we will focus on how being labelled as ‘deviant’, as Alan Strang is in Equus, reinforces the deviant behaviour itself. We will also refer to the way ‘mad’ behaviour or mental illness and ‘bad’ or evil behaviour have often been likened and confused, drawing examples not only from Equus but also from a series of literary works which question the subject of madness and evil, and portray how psychosis (‘madness’) and antisocial personality disorders are often confused with psychopathy (‘badness’). Though both terms seem to be related, they make reference to two completely different states, where the psychopath is inscribed in reality and the psychotic is very loosely connected to the real world.

Download Conference Paper –

Evil, Exploitation, and The Elephant Man
Darren Oldridge
Department of History, University College Worcester, United Kingdom

Born with a rare and disfiguring condition, Joseph Merrick displayed himself as a “great freak of nature” in Victorian sideshows. In 1884 he was also the subject of a medical presentation to the Pathological Society. After a disastrous tour of Europe in 1886, Merrick spent the last years of his life as a celebrated patient in London Hospital. This paper draws on contemporary accounts of Merrick’s career as a “freak”, alongside recent work on the social construction of human oddities, to argue that the modern assumption that freak shows were inherently evil is mistaken. Indeed, Merrick was probably able to present himself more sympathetically during his early career as a sideshow performer than as a medical specimen in 1884. The paper considers the misrepresentations of Merrick’s life in popular accounts of his story – notably David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) – and argues that these reflect contemporary assumptions about medicine and unease about the public display of physical anomalies. It concludes by reflecting on our own responses, emotional and intellectual, to Merrick’s extraordinary appearance.