Definition of "ecstasy"

This is the very ecstasy of love, / Whose violent property fordoes itself / And leads the will to desperate undertakings / As oft as any passion under heaven / That does afflict our natures.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene i]

He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing; / Which when I did, he on the tender grass / Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy,

1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, lines 623-5

They were thrown into ecstasies of suspicion by finding that we possessed a French translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XIV, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg

What! are you dreaming, Son! with Eyes cast upwards / Like a mad Prophet in an Ecstasy?

1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes‎, act IV, scene I

Come, let us leave him; in his ireful mood / Our words will but increase his ecstasy.

c. 1589–1590, Christopher Marlo[we], edited by Tho[mas] Heywood, The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Ievv of Malta. […], London: […] I[ohn] B[eale] for Nicholas Vavasour, […], published 1633, Act I

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, / That suck'd the honey of his music vows, / Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, / Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; / That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene i]

The instant I drew out my case of instruments, the lady roused herself from her ecstasy, and has never had a similar attack.

1822 April, John Ware, “Dr. Reid's Essays on Hypochondriasis”, in The New-England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, volume 11, number 2, page 185

Ecstasy bears a strong resemblance to catalepsy: in both cases the patients, during the paroxysm, lose all connexion with the physical world, being deprived of sense and voluntary motion; but in ecstasy, associations of the most pleasing and enchanting nature are established with an ideal existence in an unknown region, which might perhaps be poetically designated the fairy land of an undescried Elysium.

1835 May 2, Andrew Ellis, “Clinical Lecture on a case of Catalepsy, Occurring in the Jervis-Street Hospital, Dublin”, in The Lancet, volume 2, page 130

In ecstasy the mind is absorbed with some fixed idea, generally of a religious character, and the patient becomes oblivious of surrounding events and objects.

1885, James Ross, Handbook of the Diseases of the Nervous System, page 344

Ali Agha jumped up, seized the visitor by the shoulder, compelled him to sit down, and, ecstasied by the old man's horror at the scene, filled a tumbler, and with the usual grotesque grimaces insisted upon his drinking it.

2011, Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah