The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes
Thereof, by Franklin H. Head

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Title: Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof

Author: Franklin H. Head

Release Date: April 11, 2004 [EBook #11990]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SHAKESPEARE'S INSOMNIA _And the Causes Thereof_

BY FRANKLIN H. HEAD

1887

[**Transcriber's Note: The following is a literary hoax, and the letters
quoted below are fictitious.]

SHAKESPEARE'S INSOMNIA, AND THE CAUSES THEREOF.

I.

Insomnia, the lack of "tired Nature's sweet restorer," is rapidly
becoming the chronic terror of all men of active life who have passed
the age of thirty-five or forty years. In early life, while yet he
"wears the rose of youth upon him," man rarely, except in sickness,
knows the want of sound, undreaming sleep. But as early manhood is left
behind and the cares and perplexities of life weigh upon him, making
far more needful than ever the rest which comes only through unbroken
sleep, this remedial agent cannot longer be wooed and won. Youth would
"fain encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in his arms." To those of
riper years the "blanket of the dark" often ushers in a season of
terrors,--a time of fitful snatches of broken sleep and of tormenting
dreams; of long stretches of wakefulness; of hours when all things
perplexing and troublesome in one's affairs march before him in sombre
procession: in endless disorder, in labyrinths of confusion, in
countless new phases of disagreeableness; and at length the morning
summons him to labor, far more racked and weary than when he sought
repose.

It has been of late years much the fashion in the literature of this
subject to attribute sleeplessness to the rapid growth of facilities for
activities of every kind. The practical annihilation of time and space
by our telegraphs and railroads, the compressing thereby of the labors
of months into hours or even minutes, the terrific competition in all
kinds of business thereby made possible and inevitable, th