Mad George III’S fit after reading King Lear
Royal medical records reveal monarch suffered bout of mental illness after reading Shakespeare play
KING GEORGE III suffered a bout of mental illness after reading King Lear – Shakespeare’s play about a monarch who descends into madness – according to royal medical records that have been published online.
Documents detailing how the “ungovernable” King was put in a straitjacket and tied down during the 1789 Regency Crisis also reveal how Shakespeare’s tragedy left the sovereign in an “agitated and confused” state.
The play, drafted in 1605, was not performed during George III’S reign because it was regarded as insulting.
The revelation that the then 51-yearold King was “maddened” by the plot, which sees Lear divide his kingdom according to the flattery his three daughters bestowed upon him, is at odds with The Madness of King George, the 1994 film of Alan Bennett’s play, which suggests the ruler was temporarily cured after reading a moving passage from the play.
Mark Gatiss, who is currently playing George III in a revival of the play at Nottingham Playhouse, recently revealed how he had drawn on his experiences growing up opposite a psychiatric hospital in County Durham to prepare for the role.
According to the papers released by the Royal Archives – the first royal medical records to be published – George III suffered significant periods of ill health during his 60-year reign from 1760-1820 that were largely misunderstood and treated with “remedies” such as purging, bleeding, blistering and even doses of opium.
Changes in the King’s manner and health during 1788-89 – when Parliament tried to establish a regency because of his behaviour – were documented in a diary kept by Robert Fulke Greville, his equerry.
In an entry from October 1788, he notes that “His Majesty had become more peevish than he used to be” and is agitated and talking incessantly and incoherently.
By December, the King’s health had worsened and a physician, Dr Francis Willis, who had experience of dealing with mentally ill patients, was summoned. Later that month, on Dec 20, his condition deteriorated further.
“HM became so ungovernable that recourse was had to the strait waistcoat: His legs were tied, and he was secured down across his breast, and in this melancholy situation he was, when I came to make my morning enquiries,” wrote Greville.
Throughout George III’S illness, the Prince of Wales (latterly the Prince Regent and then George IV), received regular letters from his father’s physicians. In one, dated Dec 18 1788, Sir Lucas Pepys informed the prince of a deterioration in his father’s health, which he attributed to the King’s reading of Shakespeare.
“This morning he is in nearly the same state he was in the evening, but is more agitated and confused, perhaps from having been permitted to read King Lear,” Pepys wrote.
By March 1789, the King had recovered but he suffered further spells of ill health in 1801 and 1804, before the final, long period of illness from 1810 until his death in 1820.
A volume entitled The Progress of the Symptoms of the King’s Illness since November 1810 provides a daily account of the King’s well-being and highlights the close monitoring he was subject to.
The entry for March 21 1811 stated: “There is a nervousness and anxiety to be declared well; and a distrust of the physicians. Slept four hours. Occupied when awake in adjusting the bedclothes, by rolling them down and up again. Did not talk much but twice betrayed delusion.”
The regular reports to the Prince of Wales continued until the King died, aged 81.
The final letter sent that day, signed by four physicians Henry Halford, Matthew Bailie, Robert Willis and David Dundas, stated: “His Majesty’s pulse is still regular, but very feeble, and we cannot conceal from Your Royal Highness our fears that His Majesty may not be spared to us much longer.”
The documents were released as part of the Georgian Papers Programme, which is transforming access to more than 350,000 papers in the Royal Archives and Royal Library relating to the Georgian period.
‘Recourse was had to the strait waistcoat: His legs were tied, and he was secured across his breast’