"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 authorityand 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
How to cite this record
Shakespeare, ""Though This Be Madness, Yet There Be Method In’t": Shakespeare and Insane Asylums". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av76489 (Accessed 26 Nov 2024)