Mad About You

In The Changeling, the behavior of those in a tight social circle is mirrored up to those in a corruptly guarded insane asylum. The castle keep is just another kind of madhouse. In both venues, people are held against their will because of some social or prideful devotion. Beatrice’s virginity is kept wrapped up tight by her father, who holds on to his commodity like mature bonds about to come due. Isabella, like a bird in a cage, is kept hostage in her husband’s madhouse because of his paranoid jealousy. When Beatrice falls from grace in her husband’s eyes, Alsemero becomes another jailer, “Meantime you shall be my prisoner only. Enter my closet; I’ll be your keeper yet.” (5.3.91). Madmen and fools are asked to perform for a wedding ceremony and those in the castle are asked to behave like the madhouse players when Alsemero bids De Flores and Beatrice to perform, “where howls and gnashings shall be music to you.” (5.3.126). But the craziest behavior is when Beatrice’s fierce loathing for De Flores turns him into an instrument of lunatic invention, and where she must invite him to bed her (and even to kneel down to propose to her). Wrangling has proved the mistress of good pastime” (2.1.87)