tagion."

[610] "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 121.

_Insanity._ That is a common idea that the symptoms of madness are
increased by the full moon. Shakespeare mentions this popular fallacy in
"Othello" (v. 2), where he tells us that the moon makes men insane when
she comes nearer the earth than she was wont.[611]

[611] See p. 73.

Music as a cure for madness is, perhaps, referred to in "King Lear" (iv.
7), where the physician of the king says: "Louder the music there."[612]
Mr. Singer, however, has this note: "Shakespeare considered soft music
favorable to sleep. Lear, we may suppose, had been thus composed to
rest; and now the physician desires louder music to be played, for the
purpose of waking him."

[612] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare"
(1866), p. 333.

So, in "Richard II." (v. 5), the king says:

"This music mads me: let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad."

The power of music as a medical agency has been recognized from the
earliest times, and in mental cases has often been highly
efficacious.[613] Referring to music as inducing sleep, we may quote the
touching passage in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 5), where the king says:

"Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;
Unless some dull and favourable hand
Will whisper music to my weary spirit.

_Warwick._ Call for the music in the other room."

[613] "A Book of Musical Anecdote," by F. Crowest (1878), vol.
ii. pp. 251, 252.

Ariel, in "The Tempest" (ii. 1), enters playing _solemn music_ to
produce this effect.

A mad-house seems formerly to have been designated a "dark house."
Hence, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), the reason for putting Malvolio into
a dark room was, to make him believe that he was mad. In the following
act (iv. 2) he says: "Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad; they have
laid me here in hideous darkness;" and further on (v. 1) he asks,

"Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house?"

In "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Rosalind says that "Love is merely a
madness, and ... deserves as well a dark-house and a whip as madmen do."

The expression "horn-mad," _i. e._, quite mad, occurs in the "Comedy of
Errors" (ii. 1): "Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad." And,
again, in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4), Mistress Quickly says, "If he
had found the young