ABSTRACT
The mad scene for Dejanira in act 3, scene 3 of Hercules constitutes one of the most dramatically riveting moments in all of Handel’s works. Having learned that she has unwittingly brought her husband Hercules to his death, Dejanira goes mad in an electrifying scene that thwarts the listener’s expectations of normative baroque musical procedures at every turn. My aim is to elucidate this scene within the specific context of Handel’s Hercules, as well as within one area of the larger sociocultural realm of early eighteenth-century England: namely, widespread beliefs about the nature of hysteria in women. Indeed, Dejanira’s madness cannot be understood solely in relation to the classical sources for the libretto of Hercules; those sources must also be placed within the context of eighteenth-century medical beliefs about the nature of melancholy and mania.
