ABSTRACT
Historians of mental illness see schizophrenia, along with depression, as corning closer to being a universal phenomenon, with the same symptomatology, than other forms of madness. Madness was traditionally regarded as a form of mental disharmony. In King Lear Cordelia prays to the gods to 'wind up' Lear's 'untun'd and jarring senses', as though his mind was a musical instrument that had gone wrong. Sir Orfeo tells a story about healing; it also has the capacity to heal its own listeners, to harmonize their discordant impulses, and to encourage them to believe that life's problems can be overcome, and that happy endings are possible, though only at the price of risk and suffering – and even ageing. Similarly in Sir Orfeo, Orfeo's 'ten yere & more' of living rough in the wilderness leaves its marks on his body, and when he encounters Heurodis among the hawking ladies she weeps to see him so changed.
