To many wise children . . .
A great scholar may beget an idiot,
And from the ploughtail may come a great scholar.”[11:6]
The supposed justice of the same law is illustrated by a passage in Brome’s “English Moor,” where among punishments for sin is included:
“That his base offspring proves a natural idiot.”
One of the most popular of the physical causes assigned by seventeenth century dramatists to madness is the worm in the brain. “Madam,” says Arcadius in Shirley’s “Coronation,” “my uncle is something craz’d; there is a worm in’s brain.”[12:1] Shirley frequently refers to this particular “cause,” and Winfield, one of the characters in “The Ball,” adds to it another superstition when he says: “He has a worm in’s brain, which some have suppos’d at some time o’ the moon doth ravish him into perfect madness.”[12:2]
Superstition is responsible for many of the “causes” of madness in our drama, and among these the most prominent is probably the superstition responsible for the English word “lunatic.” The supposed influence of the moon on insanity and of its deviations on the recurrence of maniacal periods is clearly the source of those words which Shakespeare gives to Othello after the murder of Desdemona:
“It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont
And makes men mad.”[12:3]