Acting madness in these plays means acting a character who becomes increasingly opaque to himself. There is not a cure, but a catastrophe. The plays are something other than therapeutic, something less instrumental in their intent. But these plays dramatize the relationship between the hero’s need and his sociability, as all dramas do. The difference – which is not entirely a difference between the dramas of the mad and the dramas of the normal – or, shall we say, the dramas of the less mad – is that the mad tend to be defined by the obscurity of their need and the threat their sociability
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