Sebastian, in “Twelfth Night,” gives similar evidence:
“This is the air; that is the glorious sun;
This pearl she gave me. I do feel’t and see’t;
And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus,
Yet ’tis not madness.”[21:2]
Another symptom of insanity was sleeping with open eyes. Meleander, in the “Lover’s Melancholy,” “sleeps . . . with eyes open, and that’s no good sign”[21:3] and the Duchess of Malfi is said to sleep “like a madman, with (her) eyes open.”[21:4]
A general wildness of demeanour was thought to be characteristic of both the earlier and the later stages of madness. Songs and dances are often associated with it; wild laughter, “the usher to a violent extremity,” accompanied by fulminations against the world in general; bitter sarcasm, sudden touches of pathos and consequent outbursts of anger; “thundering” and “roaring,” which can only be checked by like excesses on the part of others—these are all common symptoms, together with “raving” on all kinds of subjects. This wildness, however,
is not inconsistent with considerable force and pregnancy of speech, which might lead some to doubt the actual presence of insanity; and which is “a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.”[22:1] A sense of physical pain, of being “cut to the brains,” might also afflict the patient; and the disease frequently causes such suffering that
“Nor the exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was.”[22:2]