"Though This Be Madness, Yet There Be Method In’t": Shakespeare and Insane Asylums

Alternative title

Shakespeare and Insane Asylums

Synopsis

Podcast from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Rebecca Sheir interviews Benjamin Reiss, a professor in the English department at Emory University and the author of Theaters of Madness: Insane Asylums and Nineteenth-Century American Culture. "From the mid-1840s through about the mid-1860s in the United States, during the first generation of American psychiatry, no figure was cited as an authority on insanity and mental functioning more frequently than William Shakespeare," says Reiss. Such citations were not just in medical journals but in sworn legal testimony. Modern psychiatry was a fledgling field, regarded with distrust and little respect by many Americans. What it needed, above all, was authority—and what better, more respected authority than Shakespeare.

Series

Shakespeare Unlimited

Language

English

Country

United States

Medium

Audio

Recording date

2014

Duration

18 mins

Credits

Contributor

Benjamin Reiss; Rebecca Sheir; Richard Paul

Additional Details

Production type

Documentary/Educational/News

Subjects

Drama; Psychiatry

Keywords

mental illness; psychiatry; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Notes

Notes

http://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-9 (accessed 2/2015)

Production Company

Name

R.L. Paul Productions