Il medico a teatro: Lucius Junius Brutus di “Mad Nat” Lee

The original style and contents of Nathaniel Lee’s production have often been interpreted as indicative of the author’s alleged mental illness. This contribution proposes a new approach to Lee’s works, suggesting that the tragedy Brutus (1680), which contains a sort of nosology of alterations in thought and behaviour, is a liminal text on the border between literature and medical treatise. Lee appropriates the scientific discourse of his time not only to question recent notions of mental disorder, but also to articulate a reflection on the condition of power in the political world. DOI : 10.17456/SIMPLE-156 Keywords Nathaniel Lee, madness, internment, Restoration drama, history of medicine. Bibliography Andrews, Jonathan  et al . 1997.  The History of Bethlem . London-New York: Routledge. Andrews, Jonathan. 1998. Begging the Question of Idiocy: The Definition and Socio-cultural Meaning of Idiocy in Early Modern Britain: Part 1.  History of Psychiatry , 9: 65-95. Armistead, J. M. 1979.  Nathaniel Lee . Boston: Twayne. Auchter, Dorothy. 2001.  Dictionary of Literary and Dramatic Censorship in Tudor and Stuart England . Westport (CT): Greenwood Press. Bacon, Francis. 1972 [1597]. Of Boldness. Michael J. Hawkins ed.  Essays . London: Dent. Brown, Richard. 1983. Heroics Satirized by “Mad Nat. Lee”.  Papers on Language and Literature , 19, 4: 385-401. Burton, Robert (pseud. Democritus Junior). 1638 [1621].  The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds causes, symptomes, prognostickes & seuerall cures of it . Oxford: Henry Cripps. Chambers, Robert & William Chambers eds. 1844.  Cyclopaedia of English Literature (Vol. 1). Edinburgh: William & Robert Chambers. Crooke, Helkiah. 1615.  Microcosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man . London: Jaggard. D’Aquino, Tommaso. 1969.  La somma teologica. Traduzione e commento a cura dei domenicani italiani; testo latino dell’edizione leonina . Vol. XXIV:  Incarnazione: b) difetti assunti e implicanze . Firenze: Salani. Danby, Jennifer Renee. 2014. Burning and Stoic Men: Mad Rants and the Performance of Passionate Pain in the Plays of Nathaniel Lee, 1674 to 1678. Kathryn Lowerre ed.  The Lively Arts of the London Stage ,  1675-1725 . Farnham: Ashgate, 191-208. Dossi, Carlo. 1995 [1883].  Dal calamajo di un medico . Isella Dante (a cura di).  Opere . Milano: Adelphi. Felman, Shoshana. 2003 [1985].  Writing and Madness (Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis) . Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Ficino, Marsilio. 1987 [1491].  El libro dell’amore . Sandra Niccoli (a cura di). Firenze: Olschki. Frank, Marcie. 2003.  Gender, Theatre, and the Origins of Criticism: From Dryden to Manley . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayne, Victoria. 1996. “All Language Then is Vile”: The Theatrical Critique of Political Rhetoric in Nathaniel Lee’s  Lucius Junius Brutus .  ELH , 63, 2: 337-365. Hermanson, Anne. 2014.  The Horror Plays of the English Restoration . Farnham: Ashgate. Hobbes, Thomas. 2011 [1651].  Leviathan . A. P. Martinich & Brian Battiste eds. New York: Broadview. Hughes, Derek. 2008 [2001]. Heroic Drama and Tragicomedy. Susan J. Owen ed.  A Companion to Restoration Drama . Oxford: Blackwell, 195-210. Ingram, Allan & Michelle Faubert. 2003.  Cultural Constructions of Madness . New York: Palgrave. Lee, Nathaniel. 1967 [1680].  Lucius Junius Brutus . John Loftis ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Livio, Tito. 1841.  Titi Livii Patavini historiarum ab Urbe condita libri /  La storia romana di Tito Livio . Luigi Mabil (a cura di) (Vol. 1). Venezia: Giuseppe Antonelli. Locke, John. 1975 [1690].  Essay Concerning Human Understanding . P. H. Nidditch ed. Oxford: Claredon. Locke, John. 2004 [1690].  The Second Treatise of Government . Jospeh Carrig ed. New York: Barnes & Noble. Loftis, John. ed. 1967. Introduction. Nathaniel Lee,  Lucius Junius Brutus . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, xi-xxiv. MacDonald, Michael. 1981.  Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth Century England . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1962 [1532].  Il Principe e altri scritti . Vittorio De Caprariis (a cura di). Bari: Laterza. Machiavelli, Niccolo. 2000 [1531].  Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio . Corrado Vivanti (a cura di). Torino: Einaudi. Natali, Ilaria. 2016.  “Remov’d from human eyes”: Madness and Poetry 1676-1774 . Firenze: Firenze University Press. Nicoll, Allardyce. 1952 [1923].  A History of Restoration Drama 1600-1700 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, Roy. 2000.  Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World . London: The Penguin Press. Porter, Roy. 2002.  Madness: A Brief History . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scull, Andrew T. 2015.  Madness and Civilization. A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Verdurmen, Peter. 1989.  Lucius Junius Brutus and Restoration Tragedy: The Politics of Trauma.  Journal of European Studies , 19, 2: 81-98. Vieth, David M. 1975. Psychological Myth as Tragedy: Nathaniel Lee’s  Lucius Junius Brutus .  Huntington Library Quarterly , 39, 1: 57-76. Ward, William Adolphus. 1875.  A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne (Vol. 2). London: Macmillan & Co. Willis, Thomas. 1683.  Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes . London: Thomas Dring. Willis, Thomas. 1685 [1681].  The London Practice of Physick . London: Thomas Basset  et al . Wilmot John, Earl of Rochester. 1800 [1675]. An Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace. Samuel Johnson ed.  The Works of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (Vol. II). London: Andrew Miller, 16-17. Wilson, John Harold. 1968.  A Preface to Restoration Drama . Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.