“Take this sword And search how temperate a heart I have . . . .”
“. . . Am I raging now? If I were mad, I should desire to live. Sir, feel my pulse, whether have you known A man in a more equal tune to die.”
“Alas, my lord, your pulse keeps madman’s time! So does your tongue.”[19:3]
That these tests were inadequate is proved by a simple illustration—in the “Comedy of Errors,” Pinch the exorcist, mistakes Antipholus’ anger for madness. Luciana cries:
“Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!”
“Mark, how he trembles in his ecstasy!”[20:1]
Pinch attempts to feel the “madman’s” pulse, but in any case he knows that both man and master are possessed:
“I know it by their pale and deadly looks.”[20:2]
The madman was supposed not to be aware of the nature of his disease. “That proves you mad,” says the Officer in Dekker’s “Honest Whore,” by a strange piece of reasoning, “because you know it not.”[20:3] Throughout the plays occurs the same phenomenon. Even when certain of the mad folk recognise that they are afflicted with some sort of disease, they resent questioning on it. Guildenstern’s account of Hamlet is significant of a large number of cases:
“Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, But with a crafty madness, keeps aloof When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.”[20:4]
The resentment is no doubt due to a subconscious wish of the madman to hide his loss of that sense of personal identity which is used by Shakespeare as one of the criteria of madness. Constance’ proof to Pandulph of her entire sanity will be remembered:
“I am not mad; this hair I tear is mine. My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife; Young Arthur is my son and he is lost: I am not mad[21:1]. . .”
Sebastian, in “Twelfth Night,” gives similar evidence:
“This is the air; that is the glorious sun; This pearl she gave me. I do feel’t and see’t; And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus, Yet ’tis not madness.”[21:2]
Another symptom of insanity was sleeping with open eyes. Meleander, in the “Lover’s Melancholy,” “sleeps . . . with eyes open, and that’s no good sign”[21:3] and the Duchess of Malfi is said to sleep “like a madman, with (her) eyes open.”[21:4]
A general wildness of demeanour was thought to be characteristic of both the earlier and the later stages of madness. Songs and dances are often associated with it; wild laughter, “the usher to a violent extremity,” accompanied by fulminations against the world in general; bitter sarcasm, sudden touches of pathos and consequent outbursts of anger; “thundering” and “roaring,” which can only be checked by like excesses on the part of others—these are all common symptoms, together with “raving” on all kinds of subjects. This wildness, however, is not inconsistent with considerable force and pregnancy of speech, which might lead some to doubt the actual presence of insanity; and which is “a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.”[22:1] A sense of physical pain, of being “cut to the brains,” might also afflict the patient; and the disease frequently causes such suffering that