The Madness of Mr. Crouch - Shakespearian Connections

[coriolan at worldnet.att.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 11177

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., karob_7 at y... wrote:
> Chapter 28, The Madness of Mr. Crouch
> 

Many of us have noted the Shakesperian link in the "Priori 
Incantatem" chapter (specifically Richard III) - I don't know how 
much of a Shakespearian JKR is, but it seems to me that the "madness" 
of Crouch in this scene has more to do the Bard than the DSM manual, 
specifically like both Lady Macbeth and King Lear.  Like Lear, Crouch 
appears in a tangled and dissheveled state; like both Lear and Lady 
M, he alternates between re-enacting mundane bits of daily business:

  "and then send another owl to Madame Maxine, because she might want 
to up the number of students she's bringing........."

LEAR
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.
I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause? Adultery?
Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No.... (Act IV, Scene VI)

as well as intense paroxysms of guilt:

CROUCH
I..escaped...must warn...must tell...see Dumbledore..my fault..all my 
fault...Bertha...dead...all my fault...

LADY MACBETH
The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?--
What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o'
that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with
this starting.. (Act V, Scene I)

Both JKR and Shakespeare are more interested here in depicting the 
inner turmoil of the character's innermost soul rather than a 
clinically accurate dramatization of a psychiatric syndrome (of 
course, no one in the Elizabethan era would have had the slightest 
idea of what a "psychiatric syndrome" might be!) . Notice how both 
writers have their "mad" characters speaking in short jagged 
fragments of speech

   - CMC