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----------------------------------------------------------------------- Shakespeare's Less Than "Gentle Sleep" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The restlessness of some of his most troubled characters reveals William Shakespeare's deep understanding of sleep disorders, experts say. The Bard of Avon "vividly described many clinical disorders, including those of sleep," conclude a group of neurologists led by Dr. Yury Furman of the Sleep Disorders Center at Los Angeles' Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. Their analysis appears in the current issue of the journal Neurology. The great Elizabethan dramatist well understood the lure and comfort of sleep. In his despair and confusion Prince Hamlet longs for death's ultimate repose: "To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream...." But for Shakespeare's most troubled characters, even a good night's slumber remains elusive. The Los Angeles researchers say four distinct sleep disorders crop up throughout the Bard's oeuvre: -- Somnambulism. In "Macbeth," the Gentlewoman remarks that she has seen Lady Macbeth rise, dress, write letters, and return to bed -- "yet all this while in a most fast sleep." Somnambulism -- sleepwalking -- and its verbal counterpart, somniloquy, "is most common in childhood but may persist in adulthood," according to the Los Angeles experts. Stress and depression (even in the non-regicidal) can trigger the activity. Medication, therapy, and hypnosis can all help treat somnambulism. -- Insomnia. In his guilt Macbeth, like his troubled wife, cannot find the "Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care." In "Henry IV," the restless king recognizes the emotional roots of his sleeplessness when he reports that "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The study authors agree with Shakespeare that an excess of worry "may produce a hyperarousal that prevents a person from falling asleep." -- Nightmares. In "Richard III," the bloody deeds of the title character come back to haunt him in nightmares, as do those of the Duke of Clarence, who moans "O, I have pass'd a miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights." The study authors may well sympathize: they say frightening dreams have the ability to "awaken the sleeper from REM sleep." -- Sleep apnea. Drunkenness and obesity may be behind Falstaff's obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). OSA can occur when the upper respiratory tracts are obstructed by weight gain, and exacerbated by alcohol abuse. In "Henry IV," Pointz ridicules the portly Falstaff, seen "Fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a horse." The Prince agrees, saying, "Hark, how hard he fetches breath...." The Los Angeles experts say reduction in alcohol consumption, proper sleep position, and surgery can each help alleviate OSA. Shakespeare may have longed for twentieth-century answers to Elizabethan restlessness. In "Macbeth," the title character begs the rather ineffectual Doctor to cure his lady's restlessness: "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuft bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart...." By E.J. Mundell 1997, Reuters Health eLine <http://www.medscape.com/reuters/tue/t1027-4f.html> SOURCE: Neurology (1997;49:1171-1172) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- janet paterson - 50/9 - sinemet/selegiline/prozac - [log in to unmask]