6]

[116] For further examples, see Douce's "Illustrations of
Shakespeare," p. 17.

Reverting again to the moon's eclipse, such a season, being considered
most unlucky for lawful enterprises, was held suitable for evil designs.
Thus, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), one of the witches, speaking of the
ingredients of the caldron, says:

"Gall of goat, and slips of yew,
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse."

As a harbinger of misfortune it is referred to in "Antony and
Cleopatra," where (iii. 13), Antony says:

"Alack, our terrene moon
Is now eclipsed; and it portends alone
The fall of Antony!"

Milton, in his "Paradise Lost" (bk. i. 597), speaks much in the same
strain:

"as when the sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations."

And in "Lycidas," he says of the unlucky ship that was wrecked:

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark
Built in the eclipse."

Its sanguine color is also mentioned as an indication of coming
disasters in "Richard II." (ii. 4), where the Welsh captain remarks how:

"The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth."

And its paleness, too, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 2), is spoken
of as an unpropitious sign.

According to a long-accepted theory, insane persons are said to be
influenced by the moon: and many old writers have supported this notion.
Indeed, Shakespeare himself, in "Othello" (v. 2), tells how the moon
when

"She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad."

Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his "Light: its Influence on Life and Health,"
says that "it is impossible altogether to ignore the evidence of such
men as Pinel, Daquin, Guislain, and others, yet the experience of modern
psychological physicians is to a great degree opposed to the deductions
of these eminent men." He suggests that the alleged changes observed
among the insane at certain phases of the moon may arise, not from the
direct, but the indirect, influence of the planet. It is well known that
certain important meteorological phenomena result from the various
phases of the moon, such as the rarity of the air, the electric
conditions of the atmosphere, the degree of heat, dryness, moisture, and
amount of wind prevailing. It is urged, then, that those suffering from
diseases of the brain and ner