Both Lewis Carroll and William Shakespeare appear to have made clinical observations of sleep apnea syndromes long before they were discovered by medical science, and to have understood something about their physiological mechanisms. The somnolent dormouse in Alice in Wonderland indicates that his problem is one of sleep and breathing and is subject to modern treatment for obstructive apnea. Shakespeare in Henry IV presents a case of obstructive apnea along with a case of Cheyne-Stokes breathing and uses the plot of these history plays to explain by analogy the theoretical basis for periodic breathing.