We need not stay long over the numerous characters who speak of anger as leading to madness. The term “horn-mad,” however, is sufficiently interesting to be cleared up here.[15:3]
It is used in two senses. Often it is no more than an emphatic way of expressing the simple adjective. In this sense it may be connected with the Scottish word “harns,” meaning “brains,” an alternative form being “horn-wood.” When Joculo, in Day’s “Law Tricks,” suggests that “the better half of the townsmen will run horn-mad,”[16:1] this is clearly the sense in which the words are to be taken. But in another sense, the source of which is evident, “horn-mad” is the word used to denote a kind of madness unknown as a technical term to the medical profession, but very common in the less elevated portions of our drama. This madness is a thing
“Created Of woman’s making and her faithless vows”;
the madness, in a word, of the cuckold. Falstaff seems to be punning on the two senses of the term when he says: “If I have horns to make me mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn mad.”[16:2] Dekker exhibits an especial fondness for this particular pun. Cordolente, the shopkeeper of “Match Me in London,” whose wife the King has seduced, says on being informed by that monarch that he is mad: “I am indeed horn-mad. O me! In the holiest place of the Kingdom have I caught my undoing.”[16:3] Similar passages can be found in nearly all Dekker’s plays, whether true madness is actually in question or not.
A world of meaning lies beneath such phrases as “dog-madness,” “midsummer madness,” “March mad,” “as mad as May butter.”[17:1] The first refers primarily to hydrophobia, though it is not always used in that sense; the second is accounted for by the old belief that insanity was fiercest and most prevalent in midsummer. The phrase “March mad” is connected with the saying “As mad as a March hare.” Its explanation is that during the month of March, their breeding season, hares are wilder than usual. An example of the use of the phrase might be quoted from Drayton’s (non-dramatic) work, “Nymphidia”:
“Oberon . . . Grew mad as any hare When he had sought each place with care And found his queen was missing.”
“May butter” is unsalted butter, preserved during May for medicinal use in healing wounds. The connexion of the phrase with madness, however, is so deep as to be no longer understood!