He has in several plays shown his contempt for the “prating mountebank” or “doting wizard.”
They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac’d villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller; A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch, A living dead man: this pernicious slave, Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face, as ’twere, out-facing me, Cries out I was possessed Comedy of Errors, Act V., Sc. I.
I say we must not So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope. To prostitute our past-cure malady To empirics; or to dissever so Our great self and our credit, to esteem A senseless help, when help past sense we deem. All’s Well, Act II., Sc. I.
PART II.
PRACTICE OF MEDICINE.
Shakespeare’s maladies are many and the symptoms very well defined. Diseases of the nervous system seem to have been a favorite study, especially insanity; Lear, Timon, and Hamlet being excellent examples.
And he * * * (a short tale to make), Fell into a sadness; then into a fast; Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness; Thence to a lightness; and, by this declension Into the madness wherein now he raves. Hamlet, Act II., Sc. II.
He took me by the wrist and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arm; And with his other hand thus o’er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face, As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so; At last,—a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He raised a sigh so piteous and profound, That it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being: That done, he lets me go: And, with his head o’er his shoulder turn’d, He seem’d to find his way without his eyes; For out o’ doors he went without their help, And, to the last, bended their light on me. Hamlet, Act II., Sc. I.
Alas, how is it with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up, and stands on end. Hamlet, Act III., Sc. IV.