that betray his “nature.” Such a “humour” or complexion is described as an addiction. Melancholics, he goes onto explain, are “kyteglew’d, blacke, both sortes of dunnes, Iron-gray, or pyed with anie of these colours,” for they are connected to “the earth.” Thus despite the word “inclination” seeming to indicate preference rather than determination, Markham’s description suggests an inevitability to the humor or addiction—it is a condition determined by one’s physical state, it influences our tastes and character, and it can be regulated but not overcome.
Michel de Montaigne also views a humoral state such as melancholy as a fixed addiction, and directly cautions readers against its entrapping power. Montaigne writes: “We must not cleave so fast unto our humours and dispositions…. It is not to bee the friend (lesse the master) but the slave of ones selfe to follow uncessantly, and bee so addicted to his inclinations, as hee cannot stray from them, nor wrest them.”13 Montaigne, like Markham, links addiction to inclination, humour, and disposition, arguing even more vehemently that such fixity is a form of slavery. If we are addicted to our own inclinations, we “cleave” to our humor, we become a “slave” and “follow uncessantly,” we “cannot stray from them, nor wrest them.” This humoral addiction is limiting; it designates a particular character, one that is fixed and rigid. It is worth noting Montaigne’s language of bondage: to be “addicted to … inclinations” is to “be tied,” to be “the slave of oneself.” With this enslavement comes compulsion, “necessity,” and “incessant” bondage, a form of the ethico-spiritual slavery that attests to the “weakness or self-indulgence of the paradigmatically ‘free’ agent,” to invoke Nyquist’s formulation rehearsed in the introduction.14
In the above examples, melancholy threatens to overwhelm the individual, who becomes defined through a humoral disease. Such is the case with Robert Burton, who famously takes a thousand pages to catalogue melancholy’s contours. A predisposition becomes enslaving without proper management. This view of humoral addiction as a form of tyranny recalls the Roman understanding of addiction, noted in the Preface. The contracted “addict,” bound to service, is enslaved and compelled. It might seem, then, that addiction and melancholy function as synonyms, both accounting for a tyrannical, entrapped state: addiction is the state of being enslaved, and melancholy is the enslaving condition or power. Montaigne’s French, and Florio’s translation of it, reinforces this link. When Montaigne cautions against clinging to humors, what Florio translates as “addicted to his inclinations” appears in the original as “être prisonnier de ses propres inclinations.”15 To be imprisoned is to be addicted. Taken this way, Maria’s use of the term “addicted” helps illuminate Olivia’s condition: she is in a state of incarceration, overcome by a humor. The yoking of addiction to disease and melancholy in the citations above further bolsters this reading. Addiction, in anticipation of its modern applications, appears as pathological or enslaving compulsion.
Yet Florio’s use of “addicted” in his own dictionary suggests a slightly different signification to the term, and challenges the linkage of addiction and humor. In his A Worlde of Wordes: or, Most copious, and exact Dictionarie in Italian and English, Florio uses the word “addicted” not as a synonym for imprisoned but instead in connection with words like dedication and affection. He defines Dédito as “given, addicted, dedicated, enclined,” while Affettionato appears as “affected, affectionated, addicted.”16 To be addicted, here, seems to be attached or dedicated. Similarly he designates Dedicare as “to dedicate, to consecrate, to addict” and Dicare as “to vowe, to dedicate, to addict, to promise.”17 Notably, the word “addicted” never designates a state of confinement. It does, however, help define the more dramatic terms Revólto and Volgiuto, volto, appearing in their definitions as “turned, overturned, tossed, tumbled, transformed … addicted, converted.”18
To be addicted, at least in Florio’s lexigraphical glosses, is to experience a converting, transforming devotion. And this resonance of “addict” with devotion and dedication can be further elucidated through other early modern dual-language dictionaries, where addiction suggests less compulsion than devotion, a form of fixity and determination but one with a positive valiance. As in the case of Calvin’s writings, explored in Chapter 1, “addiction” often appears as a translation for adonner. Randle Cotgrave in his Dictionary of the French and English Tongues uses addict to define s’adonner, writing “s’Addonner à. To give, bend, addict, affect, apply, devote, incline, render, yeeld himselfe unto.”19 Guy Miège, in his New Dictionary French and English, with another English and French (1677) defines s’adonner similarly: “to give (addict, or apply) himself to something,” as in “s’addonner à la virtue, to give himself to virtue.”20 Drawing on these framings of addiction not as compulsion but as devotion helps illuminate the danger, as well as the promise, of melancholy addiction. The individual suffers from the humoral disease of melancholy. But the propensity for addiction, namely devotional attachment, presages the ability to give or apply oneself fully. Addiction at once signals agency and excess, giving oneself over to a condition voluntarily and entirely. Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s imprisonment as “addicted” arguably reveals this, shifting from a permanent state to one that is chosen through devotion.
Turning to English language dictionaries further exposes the common understanding of addiction as, initially, a form of choice. Indeed, it is English language lexicographers who illuminate precisely the devotional and transformative potential of the addict in terms that resonate with Shakespeare’s stagings. In dictionaries, “addiction” is defined largely as a laudable preoccupation; far from signaling a form of slavery or tyranny, addiction signals the deepest form of chosen attachment. In Thomas Cooper’s thesaurus, he defines “addiction” (namely “Addico, addîcis, pen. prod. addixi, addictum, addícere”) as a form of giving over or bequeathing: it is “to say: to avow: to deliver: to sell” or “to alienate from him selfe or an other, and permit, graunt, and appoint the same to some other person.”21 In his examples of such addiction, Cooper turns to Latin invocations of the term from Cicero, Quintilian, and Caesar: “Addicere se alicui homini, siue cuipiam rei. Cicer. To addict or give him selfe: to bequeath. Addicere se sectæ alicuius. Quintil. To addict or give himselfe to ones sect or opinion. Seruituti se addicere. Cæsar. To bequeath him selfe.” The Latin addīcere becomes “approve,” “allow,” “give,” or “bequeath” in English. Furthermore, the English and French terms “devote” in turn draw on the English word “addict.” Cooper defines “to devote Deuoueo, déuoues, deuôtum. pe. pro. Denouêre)” as “to vowe: addict or give: solemnly to promise: to bequeath.”22
Each of these definitions grants agency to the addict. Addiction is an active process of giving oneself over, or delivering oneself, precisely as Calvin counsels in the writings examined in Chapter 1. The addict consents to be overtaken. These definitions also frame such consent in terms of promising, bequeathing, allowing, and giving—transactions that are relational and potentially generous. Cooper describes, in accordance with the term’s original usage in Roman law, addiction to service: “Addicere quempiam pro debito dicitur Prætor. Cic. To deliver a debtour to his creditors to be vsed at their pleasure. Addicere in seruitutem. Liu. To judge one to be bonde: to deliver as a bondman.”23 It is only in this last definition that any sense of bondage or compulsion appears, although even such apparently servile enslavement can signify, as in the case of Faustus, a desire for metaphysical merger. More frequently than bondage, addiction resonates with notions of faithful devotion, a kind of bequeathing that evokes friendship and marriage. Thus John Baret defines “addicte” as a form of devoted giving: “to addicte & geue him selfe to ones friend ship for ever.”24 Thomas Thomas, too, defines devotion as a form of addiction or giving: “Dēvoveo, es, ōvi, ōtum, ére. To vow, to addict or give, solemnlie to promise.”25 Most specifically, this addiction evokes notions of love. Cotgrave employs
