HAMLET’S INSANITY.
It is strange that there should be any doubts whether Hamlet was really or feignedly insane. His assertion to the Queen, after putting off his assumed tricks (iii. 4.),
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft,
is surely admissible testimony. But he gives us other evidence based upon the difficulty of recalling a train of thought, an invariable accompaniment of insanity, inasmuch as it is an act in which both brains are concerned. He says,—
Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.
There are no instances of insanity on record, however slight and uncognizable by any but an experienced medical man, where the patient, after relating a short history of his complaints, physical, moral, and social, could, on being requested to reiterate the narrative, follow the same series, and repeat the same words, even with the limited correctness of a sane person.[[37]]