Shakespeare's Insomnia, and the Causes Thereof

"Shakespeare's Insomnia, and the Causes Thereof" by Franklin H. Head is a quirky late 19th-century book that blends literary analysis with playful fiction to explore the idea that even Shakespeare might have suffered from insomnia. It looks at passages in Shakespeare's plays where sleep and sleeplessness appear, proposing that Shakespeare’s personal and professional worries seeped into his writing. The book is split into two sections. The first section looks at insomnia as a common human problem, connecting it to the stresses of life and arguing that Shakespeare's works contain hints of his own struggles with sleeplessness. The second section is a series of funny, made-up letters that describe the money problems, social pressures, and love interests that could have kept Shakespeare up at night. The mix of humor, analysis, and imagined letters gives the book a unique perspective on Shakespeare's work, inviting the reader to consider it through an ironic lens.