User:Hedgehogscholar/Arthur Symons edits

In early 1908, Symons received news that a translated version one of his plays, Tristan and Iseult: A Play in Four Acts (1917), was to be put on in Italy. Symons and his wife decided to tour Europe that autumn. While in Venice, Symons began to become overstimulated and feverish, and soon left his wife behind while traveling between several different hotels around the region. His letters to friends and family started to read vastly different than his previous work. After wandering lost through the countryside for two days, suffering fatigue and symptoms of madness, he was found and arrested by two Italian soldiers and held in prison in Ferrara. His wife soon located him, and he was within a few months transferred from an Italian ward to a doctor's care back in England.

After Symons's psychotic breakdown, he published very little new work for a period of more than twenty years. His wife Rhoda took over the management of his affairs. His Confessions: A Study in Pathology (1930) has a moving description of his breakdown and treatment.