midnight
Add to this his sensibility , and his kindness to others , and his eloquent grief at the heart-rending situation which his father 's and mother 's son was placed in and had brains to realise , though his psychological critics , it seems , have not ; and add to all that the prodigious extent of his mind , his keen observation , his deep reflection ; his brilliant fancy , united for once in a way with the great Academic , or judicial , intellect , that looks down and sees all the sides of everything -- and what can this rare intellectual compound be ? Wycherley decided the question . Hamlet was too much greater in the world of mind than S. T. Coleridge and his German criticasters ; too much higher , deeper , and broader than Esquirol , Pinel , Sauze , Haslam , Munro , Pagan , Wigan , Prichard , Romberg , Wycherley , and such small deer , to be anything less than a madman . Now , in their midnight discussions , Dr. Wycherley more than once alluded to the insanity of Hamlet ; and offered proofs . But Alfred declined the subject as too puerile . `` A man must exist before he can be insane , '' said the Oxonian philosopher , severe in youthful gravity . But when he found that Dr. Wycherley , had he lived in Denmark at the time , would have conferred cannily with Hamlet 's uncle , removed that worthy relative 's disbelief in Hamlet 's insanity , and signed the young gentleman away behind his back into a lunatic asylum , Alfred began to sympathise with this posthumous victim of Psychological Science .