The Madness of George III

  LADY PEMBROKE (Anxious lest they be discovered in the King’s apartment): Ma’am.

  PITT: You should also be aware, Dr Willis, that there are physicians in attendance who do not think His Majesty will recover.

  QUEEN: And who are not anxious that he should recover.

  WILLIS: He will recover, ma’am. I promise you.

  (The QUEEN and LADY PEMBROKE leave. GREVILLE enters.)

  PITT: This is Captain Greville, the King’s equerry. Good day, Dr Willis. (PITT leaves.)

  GREVILLE: Dr Willis, Mr Pitt is anxious that the King should recover because his Government depends on it. I am anxious that the King recover, but that is because I love His Majesty. Before you meet him I should tell you that his manner is unusual. Abrupt, spasmodic, so that what might seem odd in an ordinary person, in him is normal, just his way.

  WILLIS: The state of monarchy and the state of lunacy share a frontier. Some of my lunatics fancy themselves kings. He is King, so where shall his fancy take refuge?

  GREVILLE: We do not use the word lunatic, sir, in relation to His Majesty.

  WILLIS: Who is to say what is normal in a king? Deferred to, agreed with, acquiesced in. Who could flourish on such a daily diet of compliance? To be curbed, stood up to, in a word thwarted, exercises the character, elasticates the spirit, makes it pliant. It is the want of such exercise that makes rulers rigid. So we must begin by giving him that exercise as we would exercise a horse, and break him as we would break a horse.

  GREVILLE: This is not some creature taught to show paces like a managed filly. This is the King.

  WILLIS: Whom I must cure.

  (‘Sharp! Sharp! The King! The King!’ and a babble of talk outside announces the imminent arrival of the KING.)

  GREVILLE: One feature of His Majesty’s disorder was that having arrived at a word he found himself unable to leave it. That seems to be passing and now he simply talks without ceasing – yesterday four hours at a stretch. You must not be bound by etiquette – interrupt him.

  WILLIS: Etiquette? Never fear, Mr … Greville? … I am a doctor. I am not here to make myself agreeable.

  (Accompanied by FITZROY, PAPANDIEK and BRAUN, the KING comes on, talking all the time, very fast and without pause. His legs are bandaged and a stained cloth is tied round his middle like a nappy. Nevertheless he is still wearing the ribbon of the Garter. He slowly circles

  WILLIS, looking at him keenly but with no change in his tone.)

  KING: (The speech begins offstage) Talking of land we saw the sea first when we were thirty-five. Five sevens are thirty-five, five eights are forty. We had been told it was blue, all the poets said it was blue, we read, we read, read, read, read it was blue, blue, and it wasn’t blue, blue at all, grey, grey, grey. Weren’t we disappointed, it’s like everything else, you go see for yourself and it’s not the case at all. Sea not blue more of I don’t know what colour it was when we went in, sea bathing, we couldn’t bathe now, why? The water would soak into our skin. We leak. There are holes in our skin. We take in water. We would sink, founder. The doctors have made more holes so we would go to the bottom in an instant.

  We can plough a furrow, you know, give us a field, a decent plough and we could plough you a furrow as straight as a ruler, straight as a ruler done by a ruler, and another beside it and another beside that until you had as pretty a ploughed field as you could find this side of Cirencester. Put us out of our kingdom tomorrow and I would not want for employment.

  WILLIS: I have a farm.

  KING: Give me the management of fifty acres and ploughing and sowing and harvest, and I could do it and make me a handsome profit into the bargain.

  WILLIS: I said I have a farm, Your Majesty.

  (The KING stops, looks at him, then starts again.)

  GREVILLE: This gentleman, sir, has made the illness under which Your Majesty labours his special study.

  WILLIS: (To GREVILLE) Hush, sir.

  KING: A mad doctor, is it? I am not mad, just nervous.

  WILLIS: I will endeavour to alleviate some of the inconveniences from which Your Majesty suffers.

  KING: Inconveniences? Insults. Assaults. And salts beside rubbed into these wounds, sir. See. (WILLIS loosens the bandages to look at the sores on his legs.) I eat my meals with a spoon, sir. A pusher. George by the Grace of God King of England, Ireland, Scotland, Elector of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick. A pusher. By your dress, sir, and general demeanour I would say you were a minister of God.

  WILLIS: That is true, Your Majesty. I was once in the service of the Church, now I practise medicine.

  KING: Then I am sorry for it. You have quitted a profession I have always loved, and embraced one I most heartily detest.

  WILLIS: Our Saviour went about healing the sick.

  KING: Yes, but he had not £700 a year for it.

  (GREVILLE and the PAGES laugh but not WILLIS.)

  Yes, but he had not £700 a year for it, eh? Not bad for a madman.

  WILLIS: I have a hospital in Lincolnshire, sir.

  KING: I know Lincolnshire. Fine sheep. Admirable sheep. There are pigs, too. Pigs can be very fine. Hay is the means of maintenance of the cow, grass of the sheep, oats of the horse, and pigs will eat anything. I have a fondness for pigs. But I know of no hospitals.

  WILLIS: We have cows and sheep and pigs also.

  KING: In the hospital? Are they mad too?

  WILLIS: My patients work, sir. They till the soil. They cultivate and in so doing they acquire a better conceit of themselves.

  KING: I am King of England, sir. A man can have no better conceit of himself than that.

  (WILLIS suddenly takes hold of the KING’s shoulder, and the KING freezes. FITZROY, GREVILLE and the pages are plainly shocked and the KING rigid with anger. WILLIS deliberately looks the KING in the eye.)

  KING: Do you look at me, sir?

  WILLIS: I do, sir.

  KING: I have you in my eye.

  WILLIS: No. I have you in my eye.

  KING: You are bold, but by God I am bolder.

  (The KING suddenly goes for WILLIS but WILLIS dodges and the force of the rush makes the KING fall down. He remains sitting on the ground, while WILLIS lectures him.)

  WILLIS: You can control your utterance, sir, if you would. I believe you can be well if only you will.

  KING: Do not look at me. I am not one of your farmers.

  WILLIS: Your Majesty must behave, or endeavour to do so.

  KING: (Still struggling) Must, must? Whose must? Your must or my must? No must. Get away from me, you scabby bumsucker.

  PAPANDIEK: Easy sir, easy.

  KING: (As they try to get him up) No, no. Leave me, boys. Let me sit upon the ground and tell … tell-tell-tell-tell … tell this lump-headed fool to shut his gob box. You spunk-splasher, you Lincolnshire lickfingers …

  WILLIS: Clean your tongue, sir. Clean your tongue.

  GREVILLE: Hush, sir.

  PAPANDIEK: Be still, sir.

  KING: I will not be still. I will be a guest in the graveyard first.

  WILLIS: Very well. If Your Majesty does not behave, you must be restrained.

  (WILLIS opens the door and three of his servants, grim-faced and in leather aprons, wheel in the restraining chair, a wooden contraption with clamps for the arms and legs and a band for the head. The sight of the restraining chair momentarily silences the KING.)

  KING: When felons were induced to talk they were first shown the instrument of their torture. The King is shown the instrument of his to induce him not to talk. Well, I won’t, I won’t. Not for you and all your ding boys.

  (The KING begins abusing them again, with a torrent of obscenity, as, quietly at first, but growing louder as the scene comes to its climax, we hear Handel’s Coronation Anthem, Zadok the Priest. One servant thrusts aside the protesting PAGES while the other two lift the KING up and amid the ensuing pandemonium manhandle him into the restraining chair.)

  You clap-ridden shit-sack. See them off boys! See them off! (As he is ha
uled to the chair) Goddam you. I’ll have you all thrashed for this! Horse-whipped. Lie off, you rascals. Lie off.

  Shut up, you sanctimonious piss-hole.

  FITZROY: This is unseemly, sir. Who are these bully boys?

  GREVILLE: You have no business, sir. His Majesty is ill.

  BRAUN: Go easy, my old love.

  PAPANDIEK: Steady, Your Majesty, steady. Leave off, leave off.

  FITZROY: I must inform His Royal Highness. This is a scandal.

  GREVILLE: Call off your dogs, sir. Who are these barkers?

  WILLIS: If the King refuses food he will be restrained. If he claims to have no appetite he will be restrained. If he swears and indulges in meaningless discourse he will be restrained. If he throws off his bedclothes, tears away his bandages, scratches at his sores, and if he does not strive every day and always towards his own recovery, then he must be restrained.

  (Willis’s men stand back from the KING and we see that he has been strapped into the chair, feet and arms clamped, his head held rigid by a band round his forehead.)

  KING: (Howling) I am the King of England.

  WILLIS: No, sir. You are the patient.

  (The Coronation Anthem finally reaches its climax and bursts forth in the chorus of Zadok the Priest, as the KING struggles, howling, in the chair, with Willis’s men lined up behind him.

  PART 2

  WINDSOR

  BAKER and WARREN alone on the stage.

  BAKER: No, no. You have not understood the arrangements.

  WARREN: I understand the arrangements perfectly well. Can’t you see how clever he’s been?

  BAKER: We are all to be consulted. You and I arrive at eleven, discuss the day’s treatment with Willis, then share a rota for the rest of the day.

  WARREN: Exactly. But Willis is in residence here at Windsor; we spend half our time on the road from London. So whereas we are in attendance part of the day, Willis has access to the King at any time and can give him what treatment he chooses. The Prince don’t like it either.

  BAKER: I wouldn’t want to upset His Royal Highness.

  WARREN: Besides, Willis is not a member of the Royal College of Physicians. He’s drab, provincial and unconnected, but I tell you, we would do well to speak with one voice, or he will displace us all. Look at you, George. The King’s first physician. For how long, I wonder?

  BAKER: I hadn’t thought of that.

  WARREN: And another thing. You and I, George … we may be a trifle old-fashioned, but we are both skilled in the practice of all-round medicine. Present us with any of the body’s multifarious ailments, and we can diagnose and treat.

  BAKER: We’re general practitioners.

  WARREN: Exactly. But Willis isn’t. Willis specialises. You and I, George, we treat the whole man. Willis confines himself to the understanding, the intellectual parts, the head. Well, what sort of medicine is that?

  BAKER: It’s profitable medicine. And if you’ve got a madhouse like Willis, there’s all the board and lodging money as well.

  WARREN: But isn’t it narrow? Circumscribed? The body colonized, divided up … One man’s empire the stomach, another the supreme authority where joints are concerned. That isn’t the general physic we were taught, is it? We’ll have to be careful, George, because if that sort of partial medicine catches on, we’re finished, you and I. A general physician will be a poor man’s physician.

  (PEPYS bustles in with something hidden behind his back.)

  PEPYS: Good news!

  (He brings it out with a flourish. It is a chamber-pot covered with a towel, which he removes like a conjuror as he thrusts the chamber-pot under WARREN’s nose.)

  A fetid and a stinking stool! The colour good, well-shaped and a prodigious quantity.

  WARREN: Pepys. I am saying to Baker there must be a firm alliance between us against this interloper.

  PEPYS: Quite so. Quite so. Mind you, the urine is a little dark. Or is it the light?

  BRAUN: Doctor Willis.

  (WILLIS enters with GREVILLE and BRAUN.)

  WARREN: One voice, remember.

  WILLIS: Sir George. I understand we are to issue a daily bulletin as to His Majesty’s condition.

  BAKER: (Very haughty) Perhaps. But then perhaps not. I don’t know what you’ve been given to understand, I’m sure.

  WILLIS: I have prepared one if you would care to look it over.

  WARREN: (Snatching it) We were not meant to look this over. We were meant to draw this up together. ‘A good night’s sleep’? The pages say he never slept for more than an hour together.

  BAKER: And there’s no mention of the pulse.

  PEPYS: Or the stool.

  WARREN: It’s a concoction. (He screws it up.) It must be rewritten. Now. The Privy Council says we must decide on treatment together. What’s your suggestion, Willis? More damned lectures, I suppose.

  WILLIS: I talk to His Majesty in order to recall him to a proper sense of himself.

  WARREN: Talk. Baker?

  BAKER: As his pulse is quite steady, now might be the moment for some more James’s Powders. A good sweat never did anybody any harm. And some musk, I think, though the stench is so obnoxious he may not be able to keep it down - though that may be a good thing, too. Yes, a good spew and a good sweat.

  WARREN: Pepys?

  PEPYS: I prefer to come at it from the other direction. If one purgative produces such a prodigious quantity as this, I’d be a fool not to double the dose.

  WARREN: My instinct is to apply more blisters to the legs, then shave his head and apply them there.

  WILLIS: His legs are still suppurating from your last course of blisters.

  WARREN: Of course they are. That is the point of them, doctor. The poison is finding its way out through the legs. So, Willis’s talk, Baker’s sweats, Pepys’s purge or my blisters. Which is it to be?

  BAKER: I think all of them. (To WARREN) Yes? After all, one of us must have it right. Prepare the blisters.

  (BRAUN goes off.)

  GREVILLE: May I beg you not to blister His Majesty’s head, sir.

  (The DOCTORS look askance at this interference.)

  His skin is so tender he cannot even bear his wig.

  WARREN: Good. That will make it all the more efficacious.

  (FORTNUM comes on and whispers to GREVILLE.)

  GREVILLE: His Majesty has just been sick.

  WARREN: Yes. That will be the emetic I introduced into his gruel. No need for all that food festering in his insides. One last thing. I am of the opinion that His Majesty would benefit were he to be lodged nearer London … at the Palace at Kew, for instance.

  PEPYS: Oh yes, Kew would be much handier for me.

  GREVILLE: His Majesty is fond of Windsor.

  WARREN: What has that got to do with it?

  GREVILLE: Will not the familiarity of his surroundings assist in his recovery?

  BAKER: If it did, you would not know it. You’re not a doctor.

  WARREN: A change of scene might be just the ticket. Willis. You have no objection?

  WILLIS: It’s all one to me. I would have him in Lincolnshire if I had my way. He would be on the mend there in no time. (WARREN, BAKER and PEPYS leave, as, sitting but not fastened in the chair of restraint, the KING is wheeled in by PAPANDIEK. The KING still holds the bowl in which he has been sick and as he wipes the KING’s face with a cloth, GREVILLE calls for FITZROY to assist, but FITZROY remains aloof.)

  KING: Oh God, please restore me to my senses, or let me die directly, for Thy Mercy’s sake. Thrown in the chair, enthroned in the chair, the chair a machine for punishing, a fastening chair, a fasten-in chair, a fashioning chair to fashion the King to the ordinary fashion. To fashion the King to the ordinary passion. This is the English way. This is how they would have their kings. This is the Glorious Revolution. A king in shackles. They would have all their kings mad in England. It is convenient.

  GREVILLE: Captain Fitzroy. Captain Fitzroy.

  (PAPANDIEK attends to the KI
NG while GREVILLE takes FITZROY aside.)

  FITZROY: I will not handle the King, sir. I cannot do it.

  GREVILLE: Fitzroy, please.

  FITZROY: Sir, it is not my function.

  GREVILLE: Is it the treatment?

  FITZROY: Hang the treatment. My function is to frame the monarch for public view. I am the lens, sir. I am to do with appearances. My function is to expurgate his humanity, expunge all that is common, and present him as an object fit for public veneration. With this?

  (During this exchange between GREVILLE and FITZROY the KING has been chattering away to himself, the first part of his monologue largely inaudible to the audience, but the last part (from ‘This is the English way’) clearly heard.)

  I will attend, but no more.

  (BRAUN comes in with the blisters.)

  KING: What’s this? What’s this? The hot cups? No, please. I beg you. I have been scal-scal-scal-scalded enough.

  BRAUN: Sorry, sir. Doctor’s orders.

  KING: Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws; we have left undone the things we ought to have done and we have done the things we ought not to have done and there is no health in us. But thou, Ο God, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders, spare thou them that confess their faults, restore thou them that are penitent according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.

  (PAPANDIEK, wincing, holds the KING’s head while BRAUN with obvious relish applies the blistering glass to the KING’s forehead.)

  No, oh oh, mercy. Oh my God. No, no.

  (BRAUN is about to apply another blister.)

  WILLIS: Leave it, leave it.

  BRAUN: But I’ve scarcely started, sir. (He manages to put on another blister with more screams from the KING.)

  WILLIS: I don’t care whether you’ve started or finished. Stop, I say. The treatment does not signify.

  KING: Oh, thank God. Thank God.

  WILLIS: Thank God, yes, sir. But also thank me.

  KING: Thank you, sir? No, sir. You are a fiend.

  WILLIS: Dry His Majesty’s head.