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In the light of the Freudian theory of humor it would scarcely be surprising that the wit of W. S. Gilbert should furnish a serious confirmation of the psychoanalytic theory of manic-depressive psychosis. It is, in fact, not unlikely that Gilbert had a cyclothymic personality and that the delightful clang associations of his verse are attributable to a manic compensation for underlying depression. This brief note, however, is intended only to present for re-reading in a new context the first published of the famous Bab1 Ballads (forerunner of the Savoy operettas), “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell” Its author relates in the preface to one edition of these ballads that when the poem was originally offered to Punch, it was declined by the editor (Mark Lemon) on the ground of its being “too cannibalistic for his readers' tastes” The psychoanalyst being less finicky about his pabulum may be counted on to digest it with double delight.
Only two words need be said by way of introduction before the ballad is allowed to speak for itself. For the first, it should be noted that the hero of the yarn is characterized consistently as a depressed person. He recites his tale “in a singular minor key,”and as he says himself at the end of his narrative,
“… I never grin, and I never smile, And I never larf nor play”
As for the second, the central place of oral incorporation in the Freudian theory of melancholia should be recalled. The uniqueness of the present case history lies in the extraordinary manifestness of the latent content; but sailors—if we are to believe them—have often been participants in just such “experiments of nature,” and it is high time that at least one of their reports should come into scientific standing.