The Antipodes, or The World Turned Upside Down

British Medical Journal, Sept 9, 2000 by Clare Dover

Shakespeare's Globe, Bankside, London, until 22 September 2000

Psychiatry provided a rich vein of mirth in the post-Shakespearean age. In The Antipodes (or The World Turned Upside Down) Richard Brome, playwright and manservant to Ben Jonson, introduced one of the first practising psychiatrists on to the English stage. The play, written in 1638, was performed at the Salisbury Court Theatre off Fleet Street, the last theatre to be built in London before the Puritans closed down all playhouses in 1642.

The neglected masterpiece has now been rediscovered and "dedicated to all psychiatrists" in performances at Shakespeare's Globe. The long forgotten psychiatrist is once more raising laughs--complete with his psychiatrist's couch, which converts into a sedan chain The patient, who "has too much sorrow to fill one house," has been plunged into melancholy by a frustrated obsession to travel the world. His wife of three years has gone mad from neglect. She "cannot guess what a husband does in child getting." The psychiatrist comes highly recommended, "having cured a lady who was more a man." Not only are the young couple affected, but the patient's father and his young second wife are also finding their lives adversely changed, in an early observation that mental illness affects the whole family and that depression cannot be lifted by the admonition to "pull yourself together."

The psychiatrist's medicine for the mind is to slip his patient a sleeping draught and convince him that he has been travelling for eight months to the Antipodes, a topsyturvy world where lawyers beg not to be paid, women rule men, and cats are kept in cages for protection against predatory mice. This is a world--peopled by actors in a play within a play--in which a cleric is "instructing some pious politician in hypocrisy" and a judge is giving the wronged party a hard time. Ancient bearded sages play with catapults, and their sons send them to school again if they live to three score years.

Our patient is crowned king and expected to sort out this delightfully convoluted muddle. As he throws himself into the responsibilities of being king in a land where common sense has flown out of the window, his spirits lift. By transporting the mind and psyche to a fantasy world, theatre is shown as a healing art. The patient wins the approval of his peers and regains his self respect. He falls in love with his wife, comes to his senses, and is cured. There is a happy ending--and, from the cheers, a very happy audience.

Clare Dover medical journalist, London