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Consider the first sentences of “The Seven Simons,” by Ruth Manning-Sanders: “Once upon a time there was a great Emperor who felt himself to be so clever and so handsome that nowhere in the world could he find a wife worthy of him. This vexed him sorely, and he became irritable and mopish.”

These give an insight into the physical and mental anxieties of Shakespearean England - whether being "thrust with a rapier in his privy parts" or suffering from being "mopish" or "melancholy".

You are too mopish to act for yourself.

"This mopish place affects your nerves, and no wonder," he said.

It must be mischievous fudge about those cakes; a silly tittle-tattle of ignorant servants, to which Gabrielle, mopish and morbid, had given too willing an ear.