Shakespeare's Insomnia, and the Causes Thereof Part 1

Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof.

by Franklin H. Head.

I.

Insomnia, the lack of "tired Nature's sweet restorer," is rapidly becoming the chronic terror of all men of active life who have pa.s.sed the age of thirty-five or forty years. In early life, while yet he "wears the rose of youth upon him," man rarely, except in sickness, knows the want of sound, undreaming sleep. But as early manhood is left behind and the cares and perplexities of life weigh upon him, making far more needful than ever the rest which comes only through unbroken sleep, this remedial agent cannot longer be wooed and won. Youth would "fain encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in his arms." To those of riper years the "blanket of the dark" often ushers in a season of terrors,--a time of fitful s.n.a.t.c.hes of broken sleep and of tormenting dreams; of long stretches of wakefulness; of hours when all things perplexing and troublesome in one's affairs march before him in sombre procession: in endless disorder, in labyrinths of confusion, in countless new phases of disagreeableness; and at length the morning summons him to labor, far more racked and weary than when he sought repose.

It has been of late years much the fashion in the literature of this subject to attribute sleeplessness to the rapid growth of facilities for activities of every kind. The practical annihilation of time and s.p.a.ce by our telegraphs and railroads, the compressing thereby of the labors of months into hours or even minutes, the terrific compet.i.tion in all kinds of business thereby made possible and inevitable, the intense mental activity engendered in the mad race for fame or wealth, where the nervous and mental force of man is measured against steam and lightning,--these are usually credited with having developed what is considered a modern and even an almost distinctively American disease.

As the maxim, "There is nothing new under the sun," is of general application, it may be of interest to investigate if an exception occurs in the case of sleeplessness; if it be true that among our ancestors, before the days of working steam and electricity, the glorious sleep of youth was prolonged through all one's three or four score years.

Medical books and literature throw no light upon this subject three hundred years ago. We must therefore turn to Shakespeare--human nature's universal solvent--for light on this as we would on any other question of his time. Was he troubled with insomnia, then, is the first problem to be solved.

Dr. Holmes, our genial and many-sided poet-laureate, who is also a philosopher, in his "Life of Emerson," has finely worked out the theory that no man writes other than his own experience: that consciously or otherwise an author describes himself in the characters he draws; that when he loves the character he delineates, it is in some measure his own, or at least one of which he feels its tendencies and possibilities belong to himself. Emerson, too, says of Shakespeare, that all his poetry was first experience.

When we seek to a.n.a.lyze what we mean by the term Shakespeare, to endeavor to define wherein he was distinct from all others and easily pre-eminent, to know why to us he ever grows wiser as we grow wise, we find that his especial characteristic was an unequalled power of observation and an ability accurately to chronicle his impressions. He was the only man ever born who lived and wrote absolutely without bias or prejudice. Emerson says of him that "he reported all things with impartiality; that he tells the great greatly, the small subordinately,--he is strong as Nature is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the one as the other." Says he, further: "Give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality will presently appear: he has certain opinions which he disposes other things to bring into prominence; he crams this part and starves the other part, consulting not the fitness of the thing but his fitness and strength." But Shakespeare has no peculiarity; all is duly given.

Thus it is that his dramas are the book of human life. He was an accurate observer of Nature: he notes the markings of the violet and the daisy; the haunts of the honeysuckle, the mistletoe, and the woodbine.

He marks the fealty of the marigold to its G.o.d the sun, and even touches the freaks of fashion, condemning in some woman of his time an usage, long obsolete, in accordance with which she adorned her head with "the golden tresses of the dead." But it was as an observer and a delineator of man in all his moods that he was the bright, consummate flower of humanity. His experiences were wide and varied. He had absorbed into himself and made his own the pith and wisdom of his day. As the fittest survives, each age embodies in itself all worthy of preservation in the ages gone before. In Shakespeare's pages we find a reflection, perfect and absolute, of the age of Elizabeth, and therefore of all not transient in the foregone times,--of all which is fixed and permanent in our own. He "held the mirror up to Nature." So "his eternal summer shall not fade," because

"He sang of the earth as it will be When the years have pa.s.sed away."

If, therefore, insomnia had prevailed in or before his time, in his pages shall we find it duly set forth. If he had suffered, if the "fringed curtains of his eyes were all the night undrawn," we shall find his dreary experiences--his hours of pathetic misery, his nights of desolation--voiced by the tongues of his men and women.

Shakespeare speaks often of the time in life when men have left behind them the dreamless sleep of youth. Friar Laurence says:--

"Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, And where care lodges, sleep can never lie; But where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign."

Shakespeare describes, too, with lifelike fidelity, the causes of insomnia, which are not weariness or physical pain, but undue mental anxiety. He constantly contrasts the troubled sleep of those burdened with anxieties and cares, with the happy lot of the laborer whose physical weariness insures him a tranquil night's repose. Henry VI.

says:--

"And to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds, His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, Are far beyond a prince's delicates."

And Henry V. says:--

"'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced t.i.tle running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high sh.o.r.e of this world,-- No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, Who, with a body filled and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, that child of h.e.l.l, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium....

And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Hath the forehand and vantage of a king."

Prince Henry says, in "Henry IV.":--

"O polished perturbation! Golden care!

That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night, sleep with it now!

Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet As he whose brow with homely biggin bound Snores out the watch of night."

In this same play, too, is found the familiar and marvellous soliloquy of Henry IV.:--

"How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O Sleep, O gentle Sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull G.o.d, why liest thou with the vile In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude, imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deafening clamor in the slippery shrouds, That with the hurly, death itself awakes?

Canst thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Caesar, whom Shakespeare characterizes as "the foremost man of all this world," says:--

"Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights."

And again, it is not an "old man broken with the storms of state" whom he describes when he says:--

"Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men; Therefore thou sleep'st so sound."

The poet also in various pa.s.sages expresses his emphatic belief as to what is the brightest blessing or the deadliest calamity which can be laid upon our frail humanity. Rarely is a blessing invoked which does not include the wish for tranquil sleep; and this, too, as the best and greatest boon of all. His gracious benediction may compa.s.s honors and wealth and happiness and fame,--that one's "name may dwell forever in the mouths of men;" but

"The earth hath bubbles as the water hath, And these are of them,"

as compared with the royal benison, "Sleep give thee all his rest."

The spectres of the princes and Queen Anne, in "Richard III.," invoking every good upon Richmond, say:--

"Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace and wake in joy."

And again:--

"Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep."

Romeo's dearest wish to Juliet is,--

"Sleep dwell upon thine eyes; peace in thy breast."

The crowning promise of Lady Mortimer, in "Henry IV.," is that

"She will sing the song that pleaseth thee, And on thy eyelids crown the G.o.d of sleep."

t.i.tania promises her fantastic lover,--

"I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep."

t.i.tus, welcoming again to Rome the victorious legions, says of the heroes who have fallen:

"There greet in silence, as the dead are wont, And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars,"

promising them that in the land of the blest

"are no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep."

Constantly also in anathemas throughout the plays are invoked, as the deadliest of curses, broken rest and its usual accompaniment of troublous dreams. Thus note the climax in Queen Margaret's curse upon the traitorous Gloster:--