Before clinical depression was first diagnosed, a person afflicted with the condition was referred to as melancholy. It was believed that our physical and emotional states were determined by the distribution of the four humours, or bodily fluids, each of which had a different effect if it fell out of balance. If you had an excess of black bile, for example, you were melancholic, and would seem moody and sad. Today, we understand this to be depression, but in Shakespeare’s time, the humours were the best science of the day, and the affliction was called melancholy.

Melancholy can be found throughout Shakespeare. Don John begins Much Ado About Nothing in a sadness. Hamlet is definitely depressed, and is often given the nickname The Melancholy Dane. You might argue that they both have reason to be. But Antonio’s first line of The Merchant of Venice, in fact the first line of the play, “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,” leaves little doubt that Shakespeare was familiar with the concept of clinical depression by another name.

After Hamlet, perhaps the most famous melancholic in Shakespeare is Jaques from As You Like It. He is referred to in the play as “the melancholy Jaques” and even seems to take some pleasure in the description himself. From this, we might gather that he is depressed as well. But I would actually argue that he’s bipolar.

Bipolar disorder (which also used to be misdiagnosed as melancholy) is characterized by extreme mood swings between depression and bursts of manic energy. People with bipolar disorder used to be called manic depressive. And even though it wasn’t known about in Shakespeare’s time, Shakespeare must have been aware of different ways that “melancholy” affected certain people, and wrote Jaques as bipolar. How else can we explain the outburst by “the melancholy Jaques” in the beginning of Act 2, Scene 7:

A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool;
Who laid him down and bask’d him in the sun,
And rail’d on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.
“Good morrow, fool,” quoth I. “No, sir,” quoth he,
“Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.”
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, “It is ten o’clock;
Thus may we see,” quoth he, “how the world wags:
“Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ’twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.” When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative,
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear.

Does that sound depressed to you? Does it sound neutral? Or does it sound manic? In addition to the numerous exclamation points, the exaggerated repetition (used as an emphatic) and run-on sentences (notice how many lines begin with “And”) seem to indicate manic speech patterns. Hamlet doesn’t have any speeches like that, or if he does, they are soliloquies, and can be more closely equated to the thoughts racing through his own mind than to his behavior in public.

Depression is marked by listlessness and inaction. Hamlet is almost defined by his inaction. He is withdrawn and other characters must come to him. But throughout As You Like It, Jaques actively seeks out relationships and interactions with the other characters, first with Amiens and the other lords, then with Touchstone (off-stage), then with the Duke Senior and his assembly, then with Orlando (!), then with Touchstone again, then with Ganymede/Rosalind (!!), and finally with Duke Frederick (!!!). He may be bitter and dismissive, but he can hardly be called aloof or withdrawn. When we first hear of Jaques, he is being mocked by his friends for his melancholy, but their story is of an extremely compassionate and sensitive soul who weeps for a wounded deer.

Jaques: Melancholic, Misunderstood, Bipolar.

Oh yeah, and Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream clearly has adult ADHD with delusions of grandeur. A topic, perhaps, for another time.

This week, 60 Minutes did a fascinating piece on a remarkable young man named Daniel Tammet:

Twenty-four years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie “Rainman.” George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited.

Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called “Brain Man” in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain.

Tammet has a condition known as synesthesia, which is when the brain gets its wires crossed, and two or more senses overlap. In some cases, days of the week might seem to the afflicted to have their own personalities (as they do here at Shakespeare Teacher). In other cases, particular years might, for an individual, occupy specific locations in space. In Tammet’s case, he can actually see numbers.

“I see numbers in my head as colors and shapes and textures. So when I see a long sequence, the sequence forms landscapes in my mind,” Tammet explains. “Every number up to 10,000, I can visualize in this way, has it’s own color, has it’s own shape, has it’s own texture.”

For Tammet, 289 is an ugly number. He describes 333 as very beautiful. Pi is “one of the most beautiful things in all the world.” In fact, Tammet holds the European record for reciting the digits of pi from memory, rattling off 22,514 digits without error in just over 5 hours. In my very best attempt, I have not been able to recite half that many.

Fans of the blog know me as an armchair brain science researcher, so I’m naturally fascinated by the idea of synesthesia. What other forms might it take? Could there be people who can smell the letters of the alphabet? Would a metaphor have a different taste than a hyperbole? Could you fall in love with a time of day? And would all people with the same kinds of synesthesia map their senses out the same way? We all know what a green square looks like, but would another person with Tammet’s brand of synesthesia agree with him about what 2,192 looks like? In other words, does 2,192 have an inherent visual representation and he’s the only one who can tell us what it looks like, or is his mind inventing its own unique schema to help it make sense of a neural configuration that was never supposed to happen? And if it’s the latter, what is the logic behind that system? Every question leads to more questions. But for scientists – um, real scientists – some of the answers may lie with Tammet himself.

There are maybe 50 savants alive today. These abilities generally go along with some kind of autism, making it difficult for researchers to interview the subjects and learn about the condition. But Tammet’s autism is very mild, and he’s able to articulate his experiences and provide researchers with a unique insight.

Tammet’s abilities, and disabilities, are described in much greater detail in this article in the Guardian from about two years ago, as well as some insight on what brain science researchers hope to gain from working with him:

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at Cambridge University, is interested in what Mänti might teach us about savant ability. “I know of other savants who also speak a lot of languages,” says Baron-Cohen. “But it’s rare for them to be able to reflect on how they do it – let alone create a language of their own.” The ARC team has started scanning Tammet’s brain to find out if there are modules (for number, for example, or for colour, or for texture) that are connected in a way that is different from most of us. “It’s too early to tell, but we hope it might throw some light on why we don’t all have savant abilities.”

The clip below is the second of two from a British documentary about Tammet. You can view the first one here if you’re interested. The clip below is just over eight minutes long. I’m including it here so you can see the first four minutes, where Tammet describes how he “sees” numbers. If you want to watch the last four minutes, though, you can see Tammet meet Kim Peek, the real-life person on whom “Rain Man” is based.

Now, the gloves come off.

I’ve blogged about gay muppets, the Iraq War, and the sexual proclivities of a certain 13th century Mongolian conqueror who shall remain nameless, but now I’m ready to tackle some real controversy. Read on, but please use discretion.

I have a group that meets once a month to do readings of Shakespeare’s plays. This past weekend, we read The Winter’s Tale.

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of The Winter’s Tale. But a lot of serious Shakespeare fans list it among their favorites, which leads me to believe there’s more there than I’m seeing, and perhaps I will like it more when I’ve given it more attention. I don’t know. Events seem to happen haphazardly and without cause. The characters give me no reason to want to wish them well. And I feel kind of cheated that the reunion of the king with his daughter is presented second-hand in an exposition scene, rather than the brilliant dialogue Shakespeare could have chosen to write.

The play is usually classified as a “Romance” which is a lesser-known Shakespearean genre (compared to Comedy, Tragedy, and History) that Shakespeare experimented with late in his career. It is believed that he started with Pericles and Cymbeline (not usually considered among his best works), gradually improved the form in The Winter’s Tale, and finally created The Tempest, which is usually considered to be the finest of his works in the genre. Romances (as they are found in Shakespeare) are generally characterized by fairy tale elements such as long-lost relatives; gods, spirits, and other supernatural elements; and exploring a relationship with nature. Intrestingly enough, the Comedy As You Like It, written much earlier, contains all of these elements, but is never classified as a Romance (though it is sometimes classified, by itself, as a Pastoral). But the Romances Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale in particular are very closely connected by their treatment of these elements.

Which leads me to my point. I think that Cymbeline is a much better play than The Winter’s Tale, but doesn’t get nearly the respect. Cymbeline has a beautiful fairy-tale quality, better poetic language, more human characters, a logical (albeit far-fetched) structured motivated plot, a clear moral code of values, and a satisfying ending. Imogen is one of the great female roles in Shakespeare, and — I know this is heresy — Hermione is not.

Oh, yeah. I went there.

Most memorable moment of Cymbeline? The funeral dirge:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Most memorable moment of The Winter’s Tale? A stage direction:

Exit, pursued by a bear.

Look, I don’t hate The Winter’s Tale. I just don’t understand why it holds a special place in the hearts of so many, when Cymbeline doesn’t. The plays are closely connected, so I think it’s fair to compare the two. I wouldn’t try to compare, say, Othello with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I can say this:

Cymbeline is a much better play than The Winter’s Tale.

Does anybody have a problem with that?

All visitors to the blog who are familiar with both plays are welcome to debate the issue in the comments section of this post. If a lively discussion ensues (and how could it possibly not?), I will jump in and defend my position.

The President has challenged critics of his Iraq War policy to come up with their own ideas:

Speaking in his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr Bush said members of Congress had the right to express their views but he challenged his critics to propose their own ideas for halting the violence in Iraq.

“Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance of success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” said Mr Bush.

It’s a fair point, but one can’t help but be reminded of Homer Simpson’s exasperated line to Marge, “First, you didn’t want me to get the pony. Now, you want me to take it back. Make up your mind!”

President Bush’s request for alternative points of view is heartwarming. But since he doesn’t even listen to his own hand-picked experts on such matters, why take his latest offer to listen to those he has belittled and marginalized for the past six years as anything other than petulant and defensive?

I’m tempted to echo the sentiments in this Tom Tomorrow cartoon from November. If only we could travel back to February 2003 and heed the words of, among many others, Gov. Howard Dean:

I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America’s security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein.

Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the President to use unilateral force against Iraq – unlike others in that body now seeking the presidency.

I do not believe the President should have been given a green light to drive our nation into conflict without the case having first been made to Congress and the American people for why this war is necessary, and without a requirement that we at least try first to work through the United Nations.

But in the words of Lady Macbeth, “What’s done cannot be undone.” All we can do now is find the best way forward, and hold the people who blundered accountable.

By the way, in case anybody actually wanted to know, progressives do have a plan for Iraq. It’s called strategic redeployment:

To strike the right balance, expectations must change to fit today’s grim realities. The Bush administration must recognize that Iraq is not yet a real democracy nor will it be anytime soon, and it is not going to trigger a wave of democracy in the Middle East. Americans need and deserve a clear exit strategy for Iraq that spells out how much longer American troops will be involved in large numbers and what it will cost. Iraq’s leaders need to understand that the United States is not going to serve as a crutch indefinitely and that no one is going to solve their problems for them.

The end goals of this strategic shift are clear: to protect the American people at home and abroad; to get Iraq to the most stable position as quickly as possible; to make sure Iraq’s tensions do not spill over into a regional conflict; and to turn the tide against extremist Islamists. To accomplish this, the United States must implement a policy of strategic redeployment that has five parts:

You can read a PDF of the entire plan here.

Despite my many years of training as a Shakespeare teacher, I find myself surprisingly unprepared to evaluate this plan on a practical level, though there’s much in here that I like. But I just wanted to make the point that the progressive movement does actually have a plan. So when President Bush, or his supporters, ask — petulantly, defensively, as they will — “So, what’s your plan?,” it’s worth noting that those who were most against the war to begin with really do have a serious answer. I doubt that anyone in this administration is serious about listening to it.

On this day, we remember a visionary leader who fought against injustice and worked tirelessly for a better society.

But as we remember and honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enormous contribution to the civil rights movement, let us also remember and honor what he stood for later in his life. FAIR published this article in 1995, explaining the migration of King’s focus, and the reluctance of the media to follow:

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” – including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

You should really read the whole thing. The article goes on to talk about King’s opposition to the Vietnam War, which has chilling resonance today, in a way that it wouldn’t have in 1995. But the article returns to King’s efforts to fight poverty:

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington – engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be – until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.”

King’s economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America’s cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its “hostility to the poor” – appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

You can see his increasing focus on economic justice in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. After discussing the evil of racial injustice, King moves on to note that, “A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty.” His rhetorical eloquence doesn’t lend itself well to excerpt, but his conclusion cuts right to the point:

So it is obvious that if man is to redeem his spiritual and moral “lag”, he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the “haves” and the “have nots” of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life.

Perhaps, if King had lived, he might have helped us bridge that gulf. Perhaps those special qualities he had within him that helped him win those essential victories in the struggle for civil rights might have helped him solve that puzzle we have yet to crack even today. Hurricane Katrina briefly blew the curtains back, and revealed the shameful truth on a national stage. But the winds have died down now, and the audience has lost interest and turned away.

So on this day, let’s remember King for who he was, and for what he believed in. For what he did, and for what he might have done. For the dream that he helped move toward reality, and for the nightmare from which he tried to awaken us.

There has been some Internet buzz over an obnoxious Christopher Hitchen’s piece (is there any other kind) in a recent issue of Vanity Fair. This post isn’t about the piece or the buzz, but if you’re interested, you can read some good responses here and here by people who seem to like Hitchens less than I do and are willing to use more ribald language than I am to say so.

The reason I even bring it up at all is that he cites a study from Stanford University that’s far more worth discussing than anything he has to say about it:

According to a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, gender affects the way a person’s brain responds to humor.

The first-of-its-kind imaging study showed that women activate the parts of the brain involved in language processing and working memory more than men when viewing funny cartoons. Women were also more likely to activate with greater intensity the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings in response to new experiences.

Okay, that makes sense. The brain is stimulated when it has to readjust to an unexpected outcome to a scenario, like the caption of a cartoon or the punchline of a joke. The result of this dissonance is perceived by our brains as funny, and this study demonstrates that women experience the effect more profoundly than men.

But, wait a minute! Doesn’t that sound a lot like the effect that was described by the University of Liverpool study that I blogged about last week:

Professor Philip Davis, from the University’s School of English, said: “The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he godded me’ from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. If it is easy to see which pieces slot together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don’t appear to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited. By throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces a sudden burst of activity – a sense of drama created out of the simplest of things.”

Just like a joke! Except that instead of a one-shot deal that makes us laugh, Shakespeare hits us with shift after shift until we’re carried away on a brain-chemical high. When Shakespeare finally gives us a release, it can be extremely intense emotionally. But the two studies appear to be describing the very same process.

So, based on these two studies, one might expect women to be more profoundly affected by Shakespeare than men would be. That is to say that women would feel more intensely the rewarding feelings (Stanford study) that Shakespeare’s use of language has been demonstrated to generate (Liverpool study).

I don’t mean to be an armchair brain science researcher or anything, but this might make for an interesting follow-up study. And clearly, some informal preliminary field research on my part is in order immediately.

I saw this story on the front page of the local newspapers on my way to work yesterday morning, but haven’t really had time to comment until now.

WASHINGTON – President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

I don’t want to go on a rant about “worst civil liberties abuse yet” because the phrase is overworn these days, and it will be hard to top the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But I do want to address the broader issue of this and other signing statements that President Bush keeps making to re-define the bills that come across his desk.

A signing statement is a written statement made by the president when signing a bill into law. It is entered into the “Legislative History” section of the United States Congressional Code and Administrative News (USCCAN) and can be used by the courts in interpreting the law.

Just to repeat, the signing statement “contradicted the bill he had just signed” and can be used by the courts in interpreting the law.

This truly isn’t an issue of conservatives vs. liberals, but rather the scope of the powers of any president regardless of political affiliation, though there have been a number of serious concerns raised about this particular president abusing powers he may not actually have:

Presidential signing statements that assert President Bush’s authority to disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, according to a report released today by a blue-ribbon American Bar Association task force.

To address these concerns, the task force urges Congress to adopt legislation enabling its members to seek court review of signing statements that assert the President’s right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress, and urges the President to veto bills he feels are not constitutional.

If the president vetoes a bill, Congress has the opportunity to override that veto. These are the checks and balances that have been so carefully built into our system. If the framers of the Constitution wanted the president to be able to modify bills, they would have given the office the power of the line-item veto. But the Supreme Court has ruled the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional, as the Constitution clearly grants all legislative powers to Congress. But President Bush has made it clear that he still wants the line-item veto. Failing that, he will continue to use the backdoor of the signing statement, unless Congress takes the recommendation of the American Bar Association and stops him.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’m pretty sure the framers didn’t intend for the executive to be able to make a statement defining what a law was going to mean. If President Bush really has this power, I disagree that he’s been abusing it. If anything, he has shown remarkable restraint. Imagine the many, many things that President Bush can do if he does actually have the power to make a law just by making a statement. But it seems pretty clear that he has no such power. He should not be permitted to behave as though he does.