at the grave of Ophelia, and the despicable lie he utters by way of apology in the presence of the King, whom he detests, must stamp him as the most cruel, senseless, and cowardly miscreant that ever disgraced the human form.' FARREN cites Dr MASON GOOD'S Study of Medicine, where, in treating of Ecphronia melancholia, it is stated that: the disease shows itself sometimes suddenly, but more generally by slow and imperceptible degrees. There is a desire of doing well, but the will is wayward and unsteady, and produces an inability of firmly pursuing any laudable exertion, or even purpose. Melancholia Attonita, the First Variety, most commonly commences with this character, and creeps on so gradually that it is for some time mistaken for a mere attack of hypochondrism, or lowness of spirits, till the mental alienation is at length decided by the wildness of the patient's eyes, &c. The first stage of this disease is thus admirably expressed by Hamlet: "I have of late, but wherefore I know not, Lost all my mirth," &c. Grief (and particularly the loss of friends) have frequently produced it.'. . . . ‘The unhappy individuals are at the same time not only sensible of what they do or say, but occasionally sensible of its being wrong, and will express their sorrow for it immediately afterwards, and say they will not do so again.'-Vol. iii, p. 86. 'Hamlet's momentary regret,' adds FARREN, 'for having killed Polonius, the expression of his sorrow that to Laertes he did forget himself, and his more explicit declaration of repentance before the King, are striking instances of the correctness of the medical opinions of Dr Good.' 'It may not be unimportant to point attention to the fact that feigning madness is a theory with many persons subject to mental aberrations.' .... FARREN devotes much attention to the inconsistencies in Hamlet's character and expressions, and finds therein proofs of mental disease: How can that man be sane who is deterred from suicide by God's canon 'gainst self-slaughter, and yet shortly afterwards so forget this canon, which can only be that which says: Thou shalt do no murder," as to meditate a murder of the most fiendish kind, where soul as well as body of the victim is to be killed? What sound mind would believe that the Almighty had fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter and not against murder? Will it be believed that the studious and virtuous Prince, who in the First Act considered this world as an unweeded garden, and looked to other realms for a more blissful state of being, but was deterred from seeking them by his steady belief in the revelation which awards punishment for those who shall be guilty of selfslaughter, could be so entirely divested of his religious impressions, and, indeed, of his philosophy, as to utter, in the Third Act, a soliloquy in which his very existence in a future state is made a subject of doubt? Will it find belief, that in two Acts such a change in the mind of man could be wrought without supervening malady to effect the change?' The belief is forced upon us that the poet intended to mark the growth of Hamlet's mental disorder' by 'contrasting the states of his thoughts in the two soliloquies.' Not only is the defective logic which FARREN finds in the soliloquy, To be, or not to be,' an additional proof of Hamlet's insanity, but also the confusion of his metaphors: It certainly would be extremely difficult to paint as a metaphor on canvas :-Enterprises of pith, taking regard of the fear of a dream, and turning their currents awry.' In the First Act Hamlet is fully impressed with a belief in a future state, and is studious, religious, and virtuous. The interview with the Ghost unsettles his reason, and his mind takes a more horrid hent, but in the Third Act he endeavors to recover his original train of thought,—and to be, if possible, his former self. THIS IS A VERY COMMON EFFORT WITH THOSE WHO HAVE SUFFERED MENTAL ABERRATIONS; and the result is the same in most cases, the sufferer either reasons correctly on false premises, or makes erroneous deductions from correct premises,-SO IT WAS WITH HAMLET.' Finally, FARREN finds it difficult to imagine how the poet's intention could ever have been mistaken; as, from the first scene to the last, he seizes every occasion to prepare his audience for a display of insanity by Hamlet, and when the mental eclipse has commenced, loses no opportunity in which he can fix their belief in the nature of his malady.' SIR HENRY HALFORD (1829) In an Essay on Popular and Classical Illustrations of Insanity, read in June, 1829, and published in a volume of Essays, &c., in 1833 (p. 47), Sir HENRY HALFORD adopted the same test for insanity proposed by Hamlet to his mother: bring me to the test And I the matter will re-word, which madness Would gambol from ' (III, iv, 142–144), and illustrated it by several striking examples which had occurred in his own practice, serving to prove the correctness' of Shakespeare's discrimination. This volume of Essays was reviewed in an article in the Quarterly Review, from which the following extracts are taken. QUARTERLY REVIEW (1833) (Review of Sir Henry Halford's Essays, vol. xlix, p. 184.)—Hamlet's criterion of madness, however excellent as a mark for incoherence of intellect, will scarcely be used in detecting the more intricate forms of this Protean malady. The Prince's testimony in favor of his own perfect sanity is treated with as little ceremony by the commentators as similar words from the lips of a staring lunatic would be by the phalanx of modern mad-doctors. Some of them, however, are of opinion that the poet means to describe a mind disordered, and that the feigned madness is a part of the plot quite compatible with such a state of intellect; while others see nothing but the assumption of insanity in the inconsistencies of Hamlet. This discrepancy springs from the different notions included by different men in their definitions of madness. In fact, however, madness, like sense, admits of no adequate definition; no one set of words will include all its grades and varieties. Some of the existent definitions of insanity would let loose half the inmates of Bedlam, while others are wide enough to place nine-tenths of the world in strait-jackets. The vulgar error consists in believing the powers of the mind to be destroyed by the malady; but general disturbance of the intellect is only one form. The aberration may be confined to a few objects or trains of ideas; sometimes the feelings, passions, and even instincts of our nature may assume an undue ascendency over a mind not disjointed, but warped, urging it with resistless force to the commission of forbidden deeds, and to form the most consistent plans for their accomplishment. [Page 186.] We have no doubt that Shakespeare intended to display in the character of Hamlet a species of mental malady, which is of daily occurrence in our own experience, and every variety of which we find accurately described by his contemporary, the author of the Anatomie of Melancholy. Suspicion and jealousy,' says Burton, are general symptoms. If two talk together, discourse, whisper, jest, he thinks presently they mean him,-de se putat omnia,—or, if they talk with him, he is ready to misconstrue every word they speak, and interpret it to the worst. Inconstant they are in all their actions; vertiginous, restless, unapt to resolve of any business; they will and they will not, persuaded to and from upon every occasion; yet, if once resolved, obstinate and hard to be reconciled. They do, and by and by repent them of what they have done; so that both ways they are disquieted of all hands, soon weary. They are of profound judgements in some things, excellent apprehensions, judicious, wise, and witty; for melancholy advanceth men's conceits more than any humor whatever. Fearful, suspicious of all, yet again many of them desperate hair-brains; rash, careless, fit to be assassinates, as being void of all ruth and sorrow. Tædium vitæ is a common symptom; they soon are tired with all things,-sequitur nunc vivendi nunc moriendi cupido; often tempted to make away with themselves,-vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt; they cannot die, they will not live; they complain, lament, weep, and think they lead a most melancholy life.' It would be difficult to find a criticism more applicable to the character of Hamlet than in this page of old Burton, who drew the picture as much from himself as from observation made on others. This form of madness (the melancholia attonita of nosologists) begins with lowness of spirits and a desire for solitude. [Page 187.] Perhaps some may find it difficult to believe that Shakespeare observed these minute and almost technical distinctions of madness, which appear to belong rather to the province of the pathologist than that of the poet. But everything is still to be learned concerning this extraordinary man's habits of study and observation. The variety and individual clearness of his delineations of mental malady leave on our minds no doubt that he had made the subject his especial study, as both Crabbe and Scott certainly did after him, and with hardly inferior success. The various forms of the malady he has described,―the perfect keeping of each throughout the complications of dramatic action,—the exact adjustment of the peculiar kind of madness to the circumstances which induce it, and to the previous character of the sound man,' leave us lost in astonishment. DR MAGINN (Fraser's Maga. 1836) (Shakespeare Papers. London, 1860, p. 330.)—In a word, Hamlet, to my mind, is essentially a psychological exercise and study. The hero, from whose acts and feelings everything in the drama takes its color and pursues its course, is doubtless insane, as I shall prove hereafter. But the species of intellectual disturbance, the peculiar form of mental malady, under which he suffers, is of the subtlest character. The hero of another of these dramas, King Lear, also mad; and his malady is traced from the outbreak, when it became visible to all, down to the agony of his death. But we were prepared for this malady,—the predisposing cause existed always; it only wanted circumstance to call it forth. Shakespeare divined and wrote upon the knowledge of the fact which has since been proclaimed formally by the physician, that it is with the mind as with the body: there can be no local affection without a constitutional disturbance,-there can be no constitutional disturbance without a local affection. Thus there can be no constitutional disturbance of the mind without that which is analogous to a local affection of the body, namely, disease, or injury affecting the nervous system and the mental organs,—some previous irregularity in their functions or intellectual faculties, or in the operation of their affections and passions; and, again, general intellectual disturbance will always be accompanied by some particular affection. But I am using well-nigh the words of Esquirol. He says, 'Presque tous' (and by this qualification he only intends to exclude those in whom he had not the means of ascertaining the fact) Presque tous les alienés confiés à mes soins avoient offert quelques irregularités dans leur fonctions, dans leur facultés intellectuelles, dans leur affections, avant d'être malades, et souvent de la première enfance. Les uns avoient été d'un orgueil excessif, les autres très colérés; ceux-ci souvent tristes, ceux-là d'une gaiété ridicule; quelquesuns d'une instabilité désolante pour leur instruction, quelques autres d'une applica tion opiniâtre à ce qu'ils entreprennoient, mais sans fixité; plusieurs vétilleux minutieux, craintifs, timides, irresolus; presque tous avoient eu une grande activité de facultés intellectuelles et morales qui avoient redoublés d'énergie quelque temps avant l'acces; la plupart avoient eu des maux des nerfs; les femmes avoient épreuves des convulsions ou de spasmes hystériques; les hommes avoient été sujets à des crampes, des palpitations, des paralysies. Avec ces dispositions primitives ou acquises, il ne manque plus qu'une affection morale pour déterminer l'explosion de la fureur ou l'accablement de la melancolie.' Now, in all Shakespeare's insane characters, however slight may be the mental malady, with the exception only of Hamlet, we have accurately described to us the temperament on which madness is engrafted. [Page 333.] But of Hamlet alone we have no account of any positive predisposing cause to mania or faulty temperament; nor can we catch from the lips of any third person anything which might lead us to question his sanity before the commencement of the play. All is to his praise. He is the esteemed of Fortinbras, the friend of Horatio, the beloved of Ophelia. We are abruptly brought to contemplate the noble nature warped, the lofty mind o'erthrown, the gentleman 'in his blown youth blasted with ecstasy.' To comprehend and account for this, we must study the drama with the same pervading sweep of thought that we would passages in human life occurring within our observation, from which we wished to wring a meaning, and by which we hoped to solve a mystery. There is nothing beyond to look to. We must judge Hamlet by what he said and did; I open the volume in which this is recorded. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE .... (On the Feigned Madness of Hamlet. October, 1839, p. 452.)—One very manifest purpose of adopting the disguise of feigned madness was to obtain access to the King in some moment of unguarded privacy. . . . . The rambling of a maniac over all parts of the palace, and at all hours, would excite no suspicion; and thus an opportunity might be afforded of striking the fatal blow. . . . . The ordinary tone of social intercourse would be the last he would willingly or successfully support. This feint of madness offered a disguise to him more welcome, and which called for less constraint, than the labored support of an ordinary, unnoticeable demeanor. The mimicry of madness was but the excess of that levity and wildness which naturally sprang from his impatient and overwrought spirit. It afforded some scope to those disquieted feelings which it served to conceal. The feint of madness covered all,— even the sarcasm, and disgust, and turbulence, which it freed in some measure from an intolerable restraint. Nor was it a disguise ungrateful to a moody spirit, grown careless of the respect of men, and indifferent to all the ordinary projects and desires of life. The masquerade brought with it no sense of humiliation,-it pleased a misanthropic humor,-it gave him shelter and a sort of escape from society, and it cost him little effort. That mingled bitterness and levity, which served for the representation of insanity, was often the most faithful expression of his feelings. [Page 454.] It is not to be supposed that this state of mind, thus prompting to the choice of this disguise, would be one of long continuance; and, accordingly, we find, towards the close of the piece, that the feint of madness, which has never in fact been very sedulously supported, is laid aside, and that without any seeming einbarrassment. As the excitement of his mind wears itself out, Hamlet assumes an ordinary tone. He jests with Osric; and, from that time to the conclusion of the drama, he presents to us the aspect of one exhausted by the violence and intensity of his feelings. The Ghost might appear to him now, we think, and have been seen without a start,—the tragedy of life was becoming as indifferent as its pleasures, --and the secrets of another world would soon have been as little exciting as they had previously made the interests of this. The bidding of his father's spirit is still remembered; but we might almost doubt whether it would have been fulfilled if the treachery of the King had not suddenly rekindled his wrath, and called upon him to revenge his own as well as his father's death. . . . . A mind unhinged, vexed, tortured, and bewildered, adopts as a scheme of action what, after all, is more impulse than policy. KNIGHT (1841) (Introductory Notice to Hamlet, p. 89.)-It is curious that in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy we have the stages of melancholy, madness, and frenzy indicated as described by Celsus; and Burton himself mentions frenzy as the worst stage of madness clamorous, continual.' In Q,, therefore, Hamlet, according to the description of Polonius, is not only the prey of melancholy and madness, but by continuance' of frenzy. In Q2 the symptoms, according to the same description, are much milder,— a sadness—a fast-a watch-a weakness-a lightness,—and a madness. The reason of this change appears to us tolerably clear. Shakspere did not, either in his first sketch or his amended copy, intend his audience to believe that Hamlet was essentially mad; and he removed, therefore, the strong expressions which might encourage that belief. DR RAY (1847) [This article, from which the following extracts are taken, first appeared in The American Journal of Insanity, April, 1847. It was afterwards reprinted in Contributions to Mental Pathology, Boston, 1873, p. 485.]-It is not to be supposed that [Shakespeare] was guided solely by intuition. He unquestionably did observe the insane, but he observed them as the great comparative anatomist of our age observed the remains of extinct species of animals,—from one of the smallest bones reconstructing the whole skeleton of the creature, re-investing it with flesh and blood, and divining its manners and habits. By a similar kind of sagacity, Shakespeare, from a single trait of mental disease that he did observe, was enabled to infer the existence of many others that he did not observe, and from this profound insight into the law of psychological relations he derived the light that special observation had failed to supply. [Page 506.] Hamlet's mental condition furnishes in abundance the characteristic symptoms of insanity in wonderful harmony and consistency. |