Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/192

Rh Cor. Be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed I’ the sway of your own will. Is he array'd : Gent. Ay, madam ; in the heaviness of sleep, We }} fresh garments on him. Phys. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him ; I doubt not of his temperance. Cor. Very well. Phys. Please you, draw near—Louder the music there.” This seems a bold experiment, and one not unfraught with danger. The idea that the insane mind is beneficially influenced by music is, indeed, a very ancient and uni versal one ; but that the medicated sleep of insanity should be interrupted by it, and that the first object presented to the consciousness should be the very person most likely to excite profound emotion, appear to be expedients little calculated to promote that tranquillity of the mental functions, which is, undoubtedly, the safest state to induce, after the excitement of mania. A suspicion of this may have crossed Shakespeare's mind, for he represents Lear in imminent dan ger of passing into a new form of delusion. The employment of music in the treatment of the insane would form an

interesting chapter in the history of ancient and modern psychology. The earliest note of it is in Holy Writ: “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp and played with his hand, so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him” (1 Sam. xvi.) In Elisha it produced inspiration: he called for a minstrel, and “when the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon him” (2 Kings iii.) Asclepiades effected many cures of insane persons by this means; and Galen reports that AEsculapius did the same. “Jason Pra tensis (cap. De maniá) hath many examples how Clinias and Empedocles cured some desperately melancholy, and some mad, by this, our music.”—Burton. But there is danger in its use, “for there are some whom,” saith Plutarch, “musica N