The Anatomy of Melancholy

Subsection 6. Shame and disgrace as causes.

Shame and disgrace cause the most violent emotions and bitter pangs. “Noble minds are often disturbed by shame and public dishonour, by some fault they have committed”—Felix Platter, On Mental Alienation, book 3. Noble minds are often driven by shame to despair over some public disgrace. And whoever submits himself to fear, grief, ambition and shame, says Philo in On the Providence of God, book 2, is not happy but utterly miserable, tormented by continual toil, care and suffering.

It strikes as hard as any of the other passions. Many people disregard the world’s commotions and care nothing for glory, yet fear infamy, rejection and disgrace—Cicero, On Duties, book 1. They can sternly despise pleasure and bear grief with indifference, yet reproach and slander batter and break them completely, “since life and reputation walk hand in hand.” Often they are so cast down by some public injury or disgrace—a slap on the ear from someone beneath them, defeat by an adversary, a reverse in battle, losing their way in a speech, some foul deed committed or exposed, and so on—that for the rest of their lives they dare not go out, but brood in corners and hide in holes.

The noblest spirits are most subject to it: “It breaks lofty and noble spirits,” says Jerome. Aristotle drowned himself from grief and shame because he could not understand the currents of the Euripus: Caelius Rhodiginus, Ancient Readings, book 29, chapter 8. “Homer was consumed by shame”: this passion swallowed him up because he could not solve the fisherman’s riddle. Sophocles killed himself because one of his tragedies was hissed off the stage: Valerius Maximus, book 9, chapter 12.

Lucretia stabbed herself, and Cleopatra did the same when she saw that she was being kept for a triumph, to escape the dishonour. After his defeat by the enemy, Mark Antony sat alone for three days in the bow of his ship, avoiding all company, even Cleopatra’s; afterwards he butchered himself from sheer shame, Plutarch, Life of Antony. Apollonius of Rhodes voluntarily went into exile, abandoning his country and all his dear friends because he faltered while reciting his poems, Pliny, book 7, chapter 23. Ajax went mad because his arms were awarded to Ulysses.

In China it is common for those rejected in their celebrated examinations, or candidates for degrees, to lose their minds from shame and grief: Matteo Ricci, Expedition to China, book 3, chapter 9. The friar Hoogstraten took so deeply to heart the book Reuchlin had written against him, entitled Letters of Obscure Men, that shame and grief drove him to kill himself: Giovio, Eulogies.