Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;
And what’s a fever but a fit of madness?
Thou say’st his sports were hinder’d by thy brawls:
Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy . . .
Have scared thy husband from the use of wits.”[15:2]
We need not stay long over the numerous characters who speak of anger as leading to madness. The term “horn-mad,” however, is sufficiently interesting to be cleared up here.[15:3]
It is used in two senses. Often it is no more than an emphatic way of expressing the simple adjective. In this sense it may be connected
with the Scottish word “harns,” meaning “brains,” an alternative form being “horn-wood.” When Joculo, in Day’s “Law Tricks,” suggests that “the better half of the townsmen will run horn-mad,”[16:1] this is clearly the sense in which the words are to be taken. But in another sense, the source of which is evident, “horn-mad” is the word used to denote a kind of madness unknown as a technical term to the medical profession, but very common in the less elevated portions of our drama. This madness is a thing
“Created