In an earlier post, I wrote about the way that a ‘Gentleman’ in the second quarto of Hamlet was renamed a ‘Doctor’, and taken to task for his care of Ophelia, at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ conference. In the post I mentioned another Shakespearean doctor who reports on a disordered mind, in Macbeth. I thought I might revisit that character, because, as in Hamlet, it’s striking how sketchy he is. This is not Shakespeare’s indictment of psychiatry, because it is not psychiatry at all; but it does suggest how difficult it is to deal with someone else’s thoughts. There is another thing the ‘two doctors’ share: they both have to answer to people far more powerful than they are. Diagnosis never happens in a social vacuum.

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Act 5 Scene 1 features a Doctor and a Gentlewoman observing Lady Macbeth while she sleepwalks. The Gentlewoman describes past instances of what the Doctor deems ‘a great perturbation in nature’, but she will not repeat what she heard being said. Then the Queen comes in, rubbing her hands as if washing them, and talking about a ‘spot’. The Doctor says that he will write down what she says ‘to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly’. It is clear that they realise that she is revealing terrible secrets; the Doctor says ‘you have known what you should not’. Nevertheless he remembers his therapeutic function and advises the Gentlewoman to ‘remove from her the means of all annoyance / And keep eyes upon her’. His parting words are ‘I think, but dare not speak’.
      Soon after this, in Act 5 Scene 3, which is shortly before Lady Macbeth dies offstage in what may well be a suicide, Macbeth hears the Doctor’s report:

MACBETH
How does your patient, doctor?
DOCTOR
Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming ,
That keep her from her rest.
MACBETH
Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
DOCTOR
Therein the patient
Must minister to .
MACBETH
Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

There is not much more care at Macbeth’s castle than there is at Elsinore, and soon after this the Doctor expresses, in an aside, his wish to leave. Of course the Doctor cannot cleanse someone’s conscience, or someone’s state of grace. To that extent everyone ministers to themselves. And of course he cannot reveal too much to his murderous monarch. Nevertheless, it is still telling that this Doctor, in his only reappearance, is so casual about the ‘care plan’ for Lady Macbeth.
      This is very partial evidence indeed, but it seems as if Shakespeare, who is credited with a lot of insight in his portrayals of disordered minds, did not display much faith in our ability to solve their problems.

The title will reveal itself to be ironic as this post proceeds. However, I suppose, it is true that I am about to give away a major plot twist in one of Shakespeare’s plays, The Winter’s Tale. Does knowing in advance spoil, or even change things? That is part of the point. This post is a follow-up to earlier attempts to think about evidence that literature ‘changes the way we think’ – or indeed produces any effects at all. See here, and here.

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Once, when I was writing about The Winter’s Tale, I wanted to argue that the audience of that play is not truly surprised when the statue of Hermione comes to life (or, at least, reveals itself not to be a statue). It seemed to me that for a variety of reasons we inwardly know it’s coming and/or we see it arising naturally from the action. I had the good fortune of being edited by Stanley Wells, who argued that in his experience of watching the play, many in Stratford RSC audiences – first timers especially – were palpably shocked. I was ready to defer to him, knowing that he had certainly seen the play more times than me, and that I didn’t actually remember paying any attention to other people in the theatre at the critical moment. I think probably I wasn’t referring to the moment itself anyway, but to a more considered form of surprise, a residue left after the full experience of the literary work puts it into some sort of context.

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I could imagine a couple of experiments that would produce data to help address the question ‘is the audience surprised when Hermione’s statue comes to life?’.

(i) ASK DIRECTLY IN RETROSPECT
As the audience is leaving the theatre you could ask each person to evaluate their level of surprise during the statue scene.

(ii) TEST UNCONSCIOUS RESPONSES IN REAL TIME
During the performance audience members could be rigged up with sensors measuring surprise responses (facial movements? tensed muscles?).

The outcome of this would be some data. The difference between the two options is, I think, that in case (i) the audience would have the opportunity to manipulate their memories or stories of what happened in the moment, over- or under-playing surprise according to the reactions of others around them, the rest of the denouement, and the social situation in which the question was posed. In case (ii) the surprise would be more immediate, and could not be feigned.

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It is not clear to me, though, that this gives (ii) an advantage in authenticity. Perhaps the kind of literary surprise that matters is a combination of response plus socialization plus reflection. In general literature is a form in which feelings can be considered, where immediacy and a pause for thought meet one another. This is not quite , but it is not a million miles away.
      In saying this I am indirectly rejoining my discussion with Stanley Wells, in that the moment of sudden reaction may not necessarily be where the value of surprise lies in The Winter’s Tale. More purposefully, I am trying to get at why experiment (i), which seems in some ways to miss the right time to test surprise, may actually be closer to what really matters. And this is even without noting that an audience member covered with electrodes is not so clearly experiencing The Winter’s Tale as it should be experienced, whereas the audience member in (i) has had the chance to respond in the moment and over time.

It is difficult to experiment on literary responses and/or effects. Surprise!

UPDATE: it occurs to me that the either/or set up here between two kinds of experiment might be a red herring. The interesting thing might be to do both, and compare the differences.