Shakespeare the Naturalist

BENJAMIN REISS: 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.

His unrivalled power was understood largely in the nineteenth century as his ability to portray human nature accurately in all of its manifestations. He was understood as a kind of naturalist. And scientists, medical figures generally, were drawn to him in part because he didn't offer supernatural explanations for why people behaved the way they did. He offered naturalistic, almost empirical, descriptions of human behavior and accounts for why people behaved as they did.

And so the psychiatrists were particularly drawn to him because what they were trying to establish for themselves was the authority over human nature. And they turned to Shakespeare in large part because of his authority. Because he was presumed to be the one who understood more fully than any person who'd ever lived, why people act the way they do.