The doctor and the stage

Abstract

This is a slightly abridged version of the St. Luke's Day Lecture delivered to the Malta Branch of the British Medical Association on the 17th October 1970 at the Medical School of the Royal University of Malta. The various scenarios related to the doctor`s representations on stage is well presented throughout the different historical periods, as depicted by the 17th century dramatist John Lacey, as portrayed by G.B. Shaw`s outrageous preface to his play, “The Doctor`s dilemma”, as seen in the prologue to “The Canterbury Tales” of Geoffrey Chaucer – who gives a balanced characterization of a Doctor of Physic, whom he praises for his knowledge of etiology and all of all the classical literature on medicine. The medical profession is also depicted through Nicolo`s Machiavelli`s “La mandragola”, as well as in Christopher Marlow`s play “Tamburlaine”, whereby in the latter play the doctor is in fact being presented with all the dignity which a royal physician acquires by reflection from his illustrious patient. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the greatest dramatist interested in the medical profession is not an Englishman but the French Jean Baptiste Moliere. Coming to the eighteenth century, we meet one of the most genial of Italian dramatists, Carlo Goldoni, who learned much from Moliere but does not seem to have shared his views about the medical profession.