Before Robert Burton begins to anatomise the causes, symptoms, and cures of melancholy, he offers his reader a poem. Or is it a song? The refrain might make us want to sing along, and when Stan’s Cafe adapted The Anatomy of Melancholy for the stage (Figure 10.1), they did exactly that – to the accompaniment of a lute. While the odd verses end with ‘sweet’ melancholy, elevated to ‘divine’ at the end, the even ones only decline: the closing line goes from ‘mad’ and ‘sour’ to ‘damned’ melancholy.