[149:2] Ibid., p. 121.
[149:3] Beside the melancholy of Hamlet we might place that of Haraldus, the young Prince of Shirley’s play, “The Politician,” were it not that the part played by his melancholy is purely nominal. His father—the Politician—sends two courtiers to cure him, and they make him drunk. His excesses bring on a fever which causes his death. His likeness to Hamlet only strikes us here and there, and the melancholy, such as it is, is caused chiefly by the discovery that he is a bastard.
CHAPTER VII.
Mad Folk in Comedy and Tragedy—(iv.) Delusions, Hallucinations and other Abnormal States.
“How now; who’s there? spirits, spirits?”
(“Spanish Tragedy.”)
Delusions and hallucinations occurring in cases of real madness we have already encountered, but since these phenomena are themselves symptoms of a disordered state of mind we must not neglect instances in which they occur with persons otherwise sane. These spring to the memory; who, for example, can ever forget the sights which Faustus sees in his last hour on earth?
“O, I’ll leap up to my God; who pulls me down?
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.