What do a bunch of 400 year old plays have to tell us about mental health? A surprising bit actually. This episode we're looking at four character - Jaques from As You Like It, Hamlet and Ophelia from Hamlet, and Lady Macbeth from Macbeth - to consider how Shakespeare handled issues of mental health, how his audience would have understood these characters' issues, and how we understand and talk about them today.
Ancient Bickerings:
Which of our four characters selected today would most benefit from being transported to the modern day and receiving the full suite of mental health supports available today?
Notes:
We referred to a number of resources to help inform us about the understanding of mental health in Elizabethan & Jacobean England, including:
- John Hall's (Shakespeare's son-in-law) casebook on physical and mental ailments and his (always) successful treatments
- A quick summary of the four humours and how Shakespeare would have understood them
- The Shakespeare Birth Place, British Library, and the Shakespeare Blog all had good resources for understanding mental health in Elizabethan times and within Shakespeare's plays
- Shakespearances hosts the article speaking about personal experience with mental health issues and connecting them with Shakespeare, and also references the play Enter Ophelia, distracted