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A Caveat for Critics Against Invoking Elizabethan Psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
A few years ago one bold critic rose in defense of Jaques and protested against “the disturbing intrusion of antiquarian learning” in the interpretation of Shakespeare. Apparently, however, this troublesome academic ghost is still unlaid. Indeed, so much erudite nonsense has been talked about “Elizabethan psychology” in the last quarter of a century that it has come to seem either mortal ignorance or scholarly apostasy to challenge it. We may no longer read the Elizabethans and Jacobeans for their plain poetical meanings: any phrase that speaks however faintly of souls and deeds, or of thoughts and feelings, we must interpret literally in terms of a dutifully mastered sixteenth century jargon. If a plotting villain who sees his intended victim approaching so much as cries “Dive, thoughts, down to my soul!” his words are found heavy with psychological import he little dreamed of: he is using “words which represent the final perversion of the will. In the light of Elizabethan thinking, they probably mean the wilful subjection of intellect to a mode of thought and action guided by the desires of the heart.”
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References
1 Elmer Edgar Stoll, “Jaques, and the Antiquaries,” MLN, liv (1939), 79.
2 King Richard the Third, i. i. 41. All references are to the Oxford standard edition, ed. W. J. Craig, N. Y., n.d.
3 Ruth L. Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays, University of Iowa Humanistic Studies, First Series, iii, No. 4 (1927), 147.
4 Stoll, MLN, liv (1939), 79.
5 Ibid., p. 82.
6 This is briefly but stringently questioned by Sidney Thomas in “The Elizabethan Idea of Melancholy,” MLN, lvi (1941), 262.
7 H. K. Russell, “Elizabethan Dramatic Poetry and Philosophy,” PQ, xii (1933), 189.
8 Ibid., pp. 190-193.
9 Lawrence Babb, “The Physiological Conception of Love in the Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama,” PMLA, lvi (1941), 1020.
10 Ibid., p. 1026.
11,12 Martin Lluellin and F. Palmer, complimentary verses prefixed to James Ferrand, Erotomania (London, 1640), sigs. b v and b4v.
13 Oscar J. Campbell, “What is the Matter with Hamlet?” Yale Review, xxxii (1942), 309-322.
14 Ibid., p. 312.
15 Ibid., p. 319.
16 Ibid., p. 313.
17 Levinus Lemnius, The Touchstone of Complexions, trans. Thomas Newton (London 1576), p. 143r.
18 Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie (London, 1586), p. 113. References are to the Vautrollier edition.
19 Ibid., p. 134.
20 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 66.
21 Thomas Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors (London, [1631?]), p. 117.
22 Bright, A Treatise, p. 131.
23 Lemnius, The Touchstone, pp. 146r, 146v.
24 See Richard Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1676), Part i., Sect. i., Memb. 3. Subsect. 1., pp. 18, 19.
25 Ibid., p. 22. If “Elizabethan melancholy” were really what modern scholars would have us believe, Burton would have had no need to write his Anatomy, and he assuredly would not have needed a half century to complete it.
26 Andreus Laurentius, A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age, trans. Richard Surphlet, 1599, Shakespeare Association Facsimiles No. 15 (London, 1938), pp. 96, 97.
27 Leonard, Lessius, Hygiasticon (London, 1634).
28 Thomas Cogan, The Hauen of Health (London, 1596).
29 Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generali (London, 1604).
30 There are two exceptions. Sidney Thomas (MLN, lvi [1941], 262) refers pointedly to “the particular type of psychology we choose to apply”; and Lawrence Babb, in “The Background of ‘Il Penseroso‘” (SP, xxxvii [1940], 265), mentions in passing “the general confusion” of Elizabethan opinion about melancholy, pointing out the two opposite sets of belief concerning it, which he attributes to the contradictory Aristotelian and Galenic traditions.
31 Twelfth Night, i. iii. 92, 93.
32 William Vaughan, The Newlanders Cure (London, 1630), p. 3.
33 Ferrand, Erotomania, p. 37.
34 See Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Age of Elizabeth (Manchester, 1909); Louis B. Wright, Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935); and L. C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (London, 1937); Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare's Audience (New York, 1941).
35 Richard Brathwaite, The Schollers Medley (London, 1614), pp. 47-49.
36 Pierre Bouaistuau, Theatrum Mundi, trans. John Alday (London, 1566), sigs. [A6v], [A7].
37 Pierre Charron, Of Wisdome, trans. Samson Lennard (London, 1612) p. 27.
38 See Bright, A Treatise, p. 38, for example. The same is true of “spirit.”
39 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Batman vppon Bartholome, his book De proprietatibus retum (London, 1582), iii. Ch. 14.
40 Joseph Duchesne, The Practise of Chymicall, and Hermeticall Physicke for the Preservation of Health (London, 1605), sig. C4v.
41 Thomas Adams, Mystical Bedlam (London, 1615), pp. 36, 37.
42 Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 164.
43 Hamlet, i, v, 85, 86.
44 Duchesne, The Practise of Chymicall and Hermeticall Physicke, sigs. C4v and L2v.
45 Bright, A Treatise, p. 57.
46 David Person, Varieties; or a Suneigh of Rare and Excellent matters … (London, 1635), p. 7; quoted in Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 29.
47 Juan de Huarte, Examen de Ingenios, trans. from the Italian by R. C(arew) (London, 1604), p. 301.
48 Nemesius, The Nature of Man, trans. George Wither (London, 1636), pp. 231, 232.
49 Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helth (London, 1541), sig. B2.
50 John Davies of Hereford, “Microcosmos,” The Complete Works, 2 vols., ed. A. B. Grossart (Edinburgh, 1878), p. 30.
51 Henry Cuffe, The Differences of the Ages of Mans Life (London, 1607), pp. 114, 77.
52 Bright, A Treatise, pp. 85, 86; Huarte, Examen, p. 301.
53 Cuffe, The Differences of the Ages, p. 113.
54 Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 31. But see Bright, A Treatise, p. 85: “the humeurs have so small force in making temper and framing the complexion, that themselves are all thereof framed.”
55 John Jones, The Arte and Science of preserving Bodie and Soule (London, 1579), p. 84.
56 Bright, A Treatise, p. 97.
57 Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 36.
58 Charron, Of Wisdome, p. 48.
59 This is true even leaving out of account all the secondary popular uses—or misuses—of the word. The Elizabethans quite frequently took the sacred names of their psychology in vain.
60 Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 34. But they allowed no atheistic determinism: “no man is to thincke or perswade himselfe, that an ill nature may not be altered” (Lemnius, The Touchstone, p. 4).
61 The Practise of Chymicall, and Hermeticall Physicke, sigs. L4, Y3, etc.
62 Lemnius, The Touchstone, p. 7v.
63 Babb, “The Background of ‘Il Penseroso’,” SP, xxxvii (1940), pp. 257-268.
64 Andreus Laurentius, A Discourse … of Melancholike Diseases, p. 86.
65 Lemnius, The Touchstone, p. 148v.
66 Thomas Rogers, A Philosophical Discourse Entituled The Anatomie of the Minde (London, 1576), p. 79: “The Sanguines are of the best nature.” Lemnius, The Touchstone, p. 66.
67 Even Burton declared of the material he incorporated, “That's onely taken, which was to my purpose.” (The Anatomy, Preface, p. 8.)
68 Duchesne, The Practise of Chymicall, and Hermetical Physiche, sig. [C4v].
69 See Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 11.
70 Nemesius, The Nature of Man, pp. 311, 312.
71 See Boaistuau, Theatrum Mundi, sigs. [O5v]-[O6].
72 Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 73.
73 Nemesius, The Nature of Man, pp. 352, 353.
74 Nicholas Coeffeteau, A Table of Humane Passions, trans. Edward Grimeston (London, 1621), p. 27.
75 Ferrand, Erotomania, pp. 115, 116. But see Wright (The Passions, p. 33): “The very seate of all Passions, is the hearte.”
76 Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, p. 77.
77 Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (London, 1604), p. 17.
78 Bright, A Treatise, pp. 53, 54.
79 Ibid., pp. 32, 33; pp. 2, 110.
80 Laurentius, A Discourse, pp. 81, 82.
81 Lemnius, A Touchstone, p. 153.
82 Bright, A Treatise, pp. 65, 62, 47.
83 Romeo and Juliet, iv, iii. 15, 16.
84 Hardin Craig, “Shakespeare's Depiction of the Passions,” PQ, iv (1925), 298.
85 To Coffeteau (A Table, pp. 461-466), the cold caused by withdrawal of blood and spirits is plainly an after-effect, and felt primarily in the extremities, but in any case so thickens the spirits they could not “thrill” through the veins. To Nemesius (Nature of Man, p. 390), the fear is the result of the cold, not the cause. Only “when the objects are present, and possessed by sense,” “whereas any sensitive operation is exercised,” i.e. where a definite sensory stimulus is causing pain or pleasure, etc. can the “passion” be said to be felt through the whole body. (Wright, The Passions, p. 34.) See also Nemesius, A Table, pp. 354-356.
86 De la Primaudaye, The French Academic (London, 1594), ii, 261.
87 Cuffe, The Differences of the Ages, pp. 104, 105.
88 Compare Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology, pp. 48, 49, “he gives an elaborate and exact analysis of the power of wine,” and Russell, PQ, xii (1933), 191, “Falstaff characteristically reverses the doctrine of natural philosophy to suit his own appetites.”