When we find, as recorded in the book of Samuel, that the great Psalmist resorted to imposture and “feigned himself mad and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard;” we cannot be surprised if minds less gifted should, for whatever purpose, assume the character of a madman. The beautiful conceptions of Shakespeare unfold to us in its highest fulness the rôle to be sustained by the player who is “but mad in craft.” We are told how Hamlet:—

Repulsed,
Fell into a sadness; then into a fast;
Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness;
Thence to a lightness, and by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And all we mourn for,

and how Edgar, amid all his witless jabbering, himself exclaims aside :—