PART I..

SHAKSPEARE'S

DELINEATIONS OF INSANITY.

THE

THE extent and accuracy of the medical, physiological, and psychological knowledge displayed in the dramas of William Shakspeare, like the knowledge there manifested on all matters. upon which the rays of his mighty genius fell, has excited the wonder and astonishment of all men who, since his time, have brought their minds to the investigation of these subjects, upon which so much light has been thrown by the researches of modern science.

Shakspeare's knowledge extended far beyond the range of ordinary observation, and comprehended subjects such, as in our day, and we may suppose in his, were regarded as strictly professional and special. This fact has led some intelligent investigators and critics to believe that these immortal works were not the offspring of one individual mind, and that, from the very nature of things, the man who wrote "Lear" and "Hamlet" could not have written, unassisted, the "Merchant

of Venice." This argument has been maintained with much apparent plausibility. Its fallacy, however, is rendered sufficiently apparent by the fact, that the knowledge displayed was very far in advance of the age in which he lived, and, as we shall have occasion to show, was not possessed by any one in his time, however eminent in any special department of science to which he might be devoting himself; and many facts not known or recognized by men of his age appear to have been grasped by the inspired mind of the poet, to whose acute mental vision, it would seem from his writings, they were as clear and certain as they have been rendered by the positive deductions of modern experimental science. This power of entering into the deep and hidden mysteries of nature and the universe — of lifting the veil, and drawing thence facts not yet manifested to the world, and perhaps not to be made manifest until after centuries of patient scientific investigation and deduction - is a characteristic of what has been termed poetic inspiration; a power, we maintain, without fear of contradiction, more evident in the poet we have under consideration, than in any other who has ever written in the English language, and perhaps it would not be unsafe to add, in any other, ancient or modern. This, power consists, without doubt, first, of an extraordinary faculty for close observation, and an acute perception of the nature and relations of all things which come up before the eye and mind; and in the second place, of a