Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/14

Rh country, than the then poor and small establishment of Bethlem Hospital, the property of which had been taken from the monks by Henry the Eighth, and presented to the city of London for conversion into an asylum, only seventeen years before the poet's birth. In his time the insane members of society were not secluded from the world as they are now. If their symptoms were prominent and dangerous, they were, indeed, thrust out of sight very harshly and effectually; but if their liberty was in any degree tolerable, it was tolerated, and they were permitted to live in the family circle, or to wander the country. Thus every one must have been brought into immediate contact with examples of every variety of mental derangement; and any one who sought the knowledge of their peculiarities would find it at every turn. Opportunities of crude observation would, therefore, be ample, it only required the alembic of a great mind to convert them into psychological science.

Shakespeare's peculiar capacity for effecting such conversion would consist in his intimate knowledge of the normal state of the mental functions in every variety of character, with which he would be able to compare and estimate every direction and degree of aberration. His knowledge of the mental physiology of human life would be brought to bear upon all the obscurities and intricacies of its pathology. To this power would be added that indefinable possession of genius, call it spiritual tact or insight, or whatever other term may suggest itself, by which the great lords of mind estimate all phases of mind with little aid from reflected light. The peculiarities of a certain character being observed, the great mind which contains all possibilities within itself, imagines the act of mental transmigration, and combining the knowledge of others with the knowledge of self, every variety of character possible in nature would become possible in conception and delineation.

That abnormal states of mind were a favourite study of Shakespeare would be evident from the mere number of characters to which he has attributed them, and the extent alone to which he has written on the subject. On no other subject,