The madness of King George III was never diagnosed. He likely suffered from bipolarity. One of his uncontrollable bouts of madness was triggered by his reading of Shakespeare’s play of a mad king, King Lear. “This morning he is … more agitated and confused, perhaps from having been permitted to read King Lear,” wrote his doctor, in papers released only six years ago. The story upset King George, his equerry recounted: “His Majesty became so ungovernable that recourse was had to the strait waistcoat.”
King George’s straitjacketing occurred in 1788, a year after the constitutional convention created the United States government to prevent the rise of any king – mad or not. The American revolution, waged against the absolute sovereignty of a monarch, had the madness of King George in mind as the office of president of the United States was being framed. The president, wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No 69, would be subject to impeachment and removal, and “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution.”
