ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK.
Elizabethan Drama and its Mad Folk. By Edgar Allison Peers. (W. Heifer and Sons. 3s. 6d. net.)—This entertaining essay won the Harness Prize at Cambridge last year. Mr. Peers chose a subject full of possibilities, and he has handled it skilfully. His criterion of madness is rather literary than medical—the author's own judgment is accepted on the question: consequently we are spared the lengthy disquisition as to whether Hamlet was really mad which might have been expected by some readers. The mad folk of the Elizabethan drama make a lengthy list—probably there is no period of literature down to our own day which took so lively an interest in the matter. Mr. Peers classifies them under four heads : (1) The maniacs (King Lear and Ophelia); (2) imbecility (Lear's fool); (3) melancholy (Jaques and Antonio); (4) abnormal states (Macbeth). Hamlet falls into the category of pretenders. The book is readable, though one might pick holes in it—if Antonio was mad, who is sane P
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