In the climax of The Changeling, the hero Alsemero remarks that nearly everyone around him has been transformed by their desires: “here’s beauty changed to ugly whoredom,” he laments, “here servant obedience to a master sin.” These most extreme examples refer to the beautiful Beatrice and her servant DeFlores, who, motivated by various sexual longings, have conspired together to commit murder. But even in the play’s more comedic subplot, courtiers Antonio and Franciscus disguise themselves as fools and madmen to gain access to Isabella, the madhouse owner’s wife. And though at first Antonio and Franciscus claim that they are only pretending, Isabella sees that these two men—not to mention her husband Alibius and his assistant Lollio—are actually driven insane by their desire for her; as she wonders in a moment of frustration, “does love turn fool, run mad, and all at once?”
At every turn, the play demonstrates how characters’ strong sexual feelings can cloud their judgment and motivate their bad behavior. But more than that, the aptly titled The Changeling suggests that passion and desire can literally transform people, erasing their identities and “changing” them into something less stable and more dangerous. By the end of the play’s five acts, only characters who can distance themselves from their emotions (like Alsemero and Isabella) are able to stay true to the identities they have established at the beginning of the play. And even then, passion can be deforming; when Alsemero erupts in a moment of jealousy, he has to ask his friend Jasperino, “prithee do not weigh my by passions.” In other words, The Changeling suggest that one’s passions are almost separate from oneself—and that strong emotions, left unchecked, can threaten both individual sanity and stable personhood.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Passion, Sanity, and Identity ThemeTracker
Passion, Sanity, and Identity Quotes in The Changeling
LOLLIO: Yes, sir, for every part has his hour: we wake at six and look about us, that’s eye-hour; at seven we should pray, that's knee-hour; at eight walk, that's leg-hour; at nine gather flowers and pluck a rose, that's nose-hour; at ten we drink, that’s mouth-hour; at eleven lay about us for victuals, that’s hand-hour; at twelve go to dinner, that’s belly-hour.
LOLLIO: Tony; mark my question: how many fools and knaves are here? A fool before a knave, a fool behind a knave, between every two fools a knave; how many fools, how many knaves?
ANTONIO: I never learnt so far, cousin […].
LOLLIO: I’ll make him understand it easily; cousin, stand there […]. Master, stand you next the fool […]. Here’s my place; mark now, Tony, there a fool before a knave.
ANTONIO: That’s I, cousin.
LOLLIO: Here’s a fool behind a knave, that’s I, and between us two fools there is a knave, that’s my master; ‘tis but we three, that’s all.
ALONZO: I should depart
An enemy, a dangerous, deadly one
To any but thyself, that should but think
She knew the meaning of inconstancy,
Much less the use practice; yet w’are friends.
Pray let no more be urg’d; I can endure
Much, till I meet an injury to her,
Then I am not myself. Farewell, sweet brother.
How much we are bound to heaven to depart lovingly.
Exit.
TOMAZO: Why, here is love's tame madness; thus a man
Quickly steals into his vexation.
LOLLIO: This is easy, sir, I’ll warrant you: you have about you fools and madmen that can dance very well; and ‘tis no wonder, your best dancers are not the wisest men; the reason is, with often jumping they jolt their brains down into their feet, that their wits lie more in their heels than their heads […]
ISABELLA: Y’have a fine trade on’t,
Madmen and fools are a staple commodity.
ALIBIUS: O wife, we must eat, wear clothes, and live;
Just at the lawyer’s haven we arrive,
By madmen and fools we both do thrive.
DEFLORES: Look but into your conscience, read me there,
‘Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.
Push! Fly not to your birth, but settle you
In what the act has made you, y’are no more now;
You must forget your parentage to me:
Y’are the deed’s creature; by that name
You lost your first condition, and I challenge you,
As peace and innocency has turn’d you out, and made you one with me […]
Though thou writ’st made, thou whore in thy affection!
‘Twas changed from thy first love, and that's a kind
Of whoredom in thy heart.
ISABELLA: Does love turn fool, run mad, and all at once?
Sirrah, here’s a madman, akin to the fool too,
A lunatic lover.
LOLLIO: No, no, not he I brought the letter from?
ISABELLA: Compare his inside with his out, and tell me.
ANTONIO: I’ll kick thee if again thou touch me,
Thou wild unshapen antic; I am no fool,
You bedlam!
ISABELLA: But you are, as sure as I am, mad.
Have I put on this habit of a frantic,
With love as full of fury, to beguile
The nimble eye of watchful jealousy,
And am I thus rewarded?
[Reveals herself.]
ANTONIO: Ha! Dearest beauty!
ISABELLA: No, I have no beauty now,
But what was in my garments.
You a quick-sighted lover? Come not near me!
Keep your caparisons, y’are aptly clad;
I came a feigner to return stark mad.
[VOICE] (within): Fire, fire, fire!
BEATRICE: Already? How rare is that man’s speed!
How heartily he serves me! His face loathes one,
But look upon his care, who would not love him?
The east is not more beauteous than his service.
[VOICE] (within): Fire, fire, fire!
ALSEMERO: Here’s beauty chang’d
To ugly whoredom; here, servant obedience
Changed to a master sin, imperious murder;
I, a suppos’d husband, chang’d embraces
With wantonness, but that was paid before;
Your change is come too, from an ignorant wrath
To a knowing friendship. Are there any more on’s?
ANTONIO: Yes, sir; I was chang’d too, from a little ass as I was to a great fool as I am […]
FRANCISCUS: I was chang’d from a little wit to be stark mad,
Always for the same purpose.
ALSEMERO: All we can do to comfort one another,
To stay a brother’s sorrow for a brother,
To dry a child from a kind father’s eyes,
Is to no purpose, it rather multiplies:
Your only smiles have power to cause relive
The dead again, or in their rooms to give
Brother a new brother, father a child;
If these appear, all griefs are reconcil’d.
