Separate Theaters: Bethlem ("Bedlam") Hospital and the Shakespearean StageUniversity of Delaware Press, 2005 - 309 pages This 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. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 7 |
The Magnificent | 106 |
Making Bethlem a Jest and Conceding to Jonson | 132 |
Copyright | |
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Alibius Alinda Antonio argues audience Bedlam Bednarz beggars Bellamont Ben Jonson Beth Bethlem Hospital Bosola Bridewell Cambridge 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 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 Poets Polonius poor laws poor relief popular stage Prospero reason relationship Renaissance representational stage response Roy Porter Satiromastix scene seems sense Shakespeare show of Bethlem show of madness social spectacle suggested theater of Bethlem theatrical thlem Thorello tion tragedy tragic understanding University Press visitation