I.
Insomnia, the lack of "tired Nature's sweet restorer," is rapidly becoming the chronic terror of all men of active life who have passed 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 snatches 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 space by our telegraphs and railroads, the compressing thereby of the labors of months into hours or even minutes, the terrific competition 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 analyze 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 god 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 passed 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 unbruisèd 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 farcèd title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore 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 hell,
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 god, 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 passages 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 compass 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 god of sleep."
Titania 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 pressèd flowers dost sleep."
Titus, 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:—
"If Heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
Oh, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!"
The witch, in "Macbeth," cataloguing the calamities in store for the ambitious Thane, says:
"Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid."
It is curious also to remark, in the various lists of griefs which make life a burden and a sorrow, how often the climax of these woes is the lack of sleep, or the troubled dreams bearing their train of "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire," which come with broken rest. Lady Percy says to Hotspur:—
"Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?"
Macbeth says:—
"But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly; better be with the dead."
In "Othello" is a striking picture of the sudden change, in the direction we are considering, which comes over a tranquil mind from the commission of a great crime. Iago says to Othello, after he has wrought "the deed without a name":—
"Not poppy nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou own'dst yesterday."
The greatest punishment which comes to Macbeth after the murder of Duncan is lack of sleep. Nowhere in the language, in the same space, can be found so many pictures of the blessedness of repose as in the familiar lines:—
"Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast."
And the principal reason which deters Hamlet from suicide is the fear that even if he does sleep well "after life's fitful fever is over," still, that sleep may be full of troubled dreams.
"To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."
Richard III. says, when the catalogue of his crimes is full, and when he "sees as in a map the end of all":—
"The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,
And Anne, my queen, hath bid the world good night."
In addition to the fuller phrases wherein are shown the blessedness of sleep, or the remediless nature of its loss, many brief sentences occur scattered throughout the plays, and emphasizing the same great lesson. For instance:—
"Now o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep."
"With Him above
To ratify our work, we may again
Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights."
"You lack the season of all natures, sleep."
"My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep."
"For never yet one hour in his bed
Have I enjoyed the golden dew of sleep."
"For some must watch and some must sleep,
So runs the world away."
"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank."
"The best of rest is sleep."
"Our little lives are rounded with a sleep."
The various passages cited above prove and illustrate that no author has written so feelingly, so appreciatingly, as Shakespeare on the subject of sleep and its loss.
The diligent commentators on his works have investigated laboriously the sources from which he drew his plots and many of the very lines of his poems. He was a great borrower; absorbing, digesting, and making his own much of the material of his predecessors. But it is a noteworthy fact, that none of the exquisite lines in praise of sleep—that gift which the Psalmist says the Lord giveth to his beloved— can be traced to other source than the master. These are jewels of his own; transcripts from his own mournful experience. In middle life he remembered hopelessly the tranquil sleep of his lost youth, as
"He that is stricken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost."
He had suffered from insomnia, and he writes of this, not "as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown," but as one who, in words burning with indestructible life, lays open to us the sombre record of what was experience before it was song; who makes us the sharers of his griefs; who would awaken in the similarly afflicted of all time that compassionate sympathy which goes out to those whose burdens are almost greater than they can bear.