https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=158 This paper focuses on three Jacobean plays appropriating Bedlam and/or Bedlamites and hence creating extra theatricality and effects of mise en abyme on stage: Thomas Dekker’s The Honest Whore, Part 1 (1604), John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614) and Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling  (1622). It first concentrates on Bedlam to see how and why the London asylum exploited the theatrical potential of its inmates by encouraging visitors to come and see them. It then considers the economy of the spectacular and the meta-spectacular generated by madness on stage, with analyses of strategies of entertainment, the use of instruments of torture and the place of such displays within the syntaxes of the plays. It finally points to the satirical dimension which targets not so much the madmen’s insanity as the poor running of and abuses within the pioneer mental hospital. Shakespeare en devenir N°3 — 2009 fr jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:42:45 +0100 sam., 14 déc. 2024 17:13:23 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=158 0