Can't help you with the origin of the phrase, but I suggest a more accurate rhetorical term for the phrase is MERISM.
Think of a merism as the counterpart to synecdoche, since both figures of speech concern parts and wholes. Synecdoche can be a
part to whole substitution, as in "All hands on deck!" When the ship captain gives that order, he doesn't expect a bunch of severed hands to show up on deck. "Hands," therefore, is a part to the whole, the substitution of a body part for the whole body. In like fashion, when someone requests that you "count noses," they're asking you to take attendance, not to literally count proboscises! The nose--a part--is a substitute for the whole person.
whole to a part substitution, as in "In my rearview mirror I could see the law as he approached my stopped car, and I could tell he was going to give me a speeding ticket." Here we have the whole, in this case "the law," substituting for the part; namely, a cop, or a state trooper, or an officer of the law.
Merism, on the other hand, expresses
- a totality--the whole--through contrasting parts, as in "The competition was open to all comers, both young and old and everyone in-between." Or, "Then the LORD God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil' . . ." (Genesis 3:22a). Or, "She packed up all her possessions in record time: lock, stock, and barrel," meaning all, total, everything. (That merism may have had its genesis in the letters of Sir Walter Scott in, circa 1817.)
Merisms frequently figure in the writing of lawyers, and are a hallmark of legal style. The two parts of the legal merism "Last Will and Testament" at one time referred to two documents, enforced in two separate courts: the will disposed of a decedent's real property while the testament disposed of chattels. It became customary to combine the instruments in a single dispositive document, and the name has continued long after the doctrines that required its use became obsolete in common law.
A lawyer who writes a will typically includes a residuary clause that disposes of any property not covered by a prior section. The weight of tradition is such that the lawyer writing such a document will often phrase it something like this:
"I bequeath, convey, and devise the rest, residue, and remainder of
my property, real or personal, and wheresoever it may be situated, to Sally Jones, of 456 Elm Street, Hanover, Massachusetts."
While the inclusion of merisms in a legal document might give the people who are paying the lawyer $400 an hour the feeling they're getting their money's worth, it does virtually nothing to make a given writing (or document) somehow "more legal"! Merisms also tend to obfuscate, rather than elucidate, a writing.
Some merisms were introduced during the period when Norman French words were being absorbed into English. In order to assure that a document was clear to both Normans and Saxons, it was desirable to use both the Saxon-root and French-root synonyms for important words, to avoid a pretext for someone to claim a misunderstanding.
Perhaps researching your "way, shape, or form" as a merism might go a long way toward finding out who was the first person to use the expression.
In conclusion, I did come across a modern use of your expression from Stefan Constantinescu's website IntoMobile, from Friday, November 27th, 2009.
"Walter Cronkite, the man, is in no way, shape, or form similar to Twitter, the medium"
Best wishes, and happy hunting!
As Jim notes in a comment above, Etymology Online reports that
Phrase mad as a March hare is attested from 1520s, via notion of breeding season;
Christine Ammer, It's Raining Cats and Dogs... and Other Beastly Expressions (1989) goes Etymonline one better by finding a related expression in Chaucer:
Older than all of these [hare-related] terms is the saying mad as a March hare, which dates from at least 1500 and possibly much earlier (about 1385 Chaucer wrote, "This somnour wood [mad] were as an hare..."). The most famous colorfully crazy March Hare was the one that joined in the mad tea party in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, where it buttered the Mad Hatter's watch to make it run again, then dipped it into his tea, and remarked, "It was the best butter, you know."
Ammer also discusses at some length the habits of hares in breeding season:
It was long believed that hares are unusually wild in March, during the rutting season. According to Erasmus, their behavior could be accounted for by the absence of hedges and other cover at that time of year; but Erasmus mistook the saying for "mad as a marsh hare," somehow confusing the month with a swamp. At any rate, during rutting season, it was reported, hares boxed each other's ears with their clublike forepaws and kicked at each other with their strong hind legs, exhibiting, it was concluded, normal mating behavior in which the males fight each other over females. In the 1970s some British naturalists undertook a study of hares in Somerset, ... Mating among hares takes place at night and not just in March, but from January through August. ... Moreover, the embattled hares are not males fighting against males, but females fighting against males, presumably to resist their advances. Since the females are generally bigger than males, they often win these battles. Nor do the fighting partners end their battles in mating; the triumphant female simply hops away.
Ammer's quotation from Chaucer is from near the beginning of "The Friar's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales. The friar begins his tale by painting a picture of an avaricious summoner working hand in hand with an equally venal arch-deacon:
He [the "erchedeken"] hadde a Somnour redy to his hond,/A slyer boy was noon in Egelond;/For subtilly he hadde his espiaille/That taughte him, wher that him might availle./He could spare of lechours onn or two,/To techen him to foure and twenty mo./For thogh this Somnour wood were as an hare,/To telle his harlotrye I wol nat spare;/For we been out of his correccioun;/They han of us no Iurisdiccioun,/Ne never shullen, terme of alle hir lyves.
In the context given, wood does indeed mean "mad."
Best Answer
As a supplement to lbf's interesting and useful answer, I note one surprisingly early relevant instance of the phrase "barking mad." From a letter "To the Printer of the London Chronicle" by Dr. Henry Bracken, published in the London Chronicle (October 23–25, 1760):
I couldn't find a copy of this periodical that provides a full view of its contents, but stalwart site participant JEL did—and I have altered my link accordingly.
I did find an excerpt from Dr. Harken's letter (including the "barking mad" passage) in William Robertson & Caleb Parry, Tentamen Medicum Inauguralis de Rabie Contagiosa (1778). A full version of the letter is to be found in Joseph Dalby, The Virtues of Cinnabar and Musk, Against the Bite of a Mad Dog (1762). Dalby and Bracken were evidently bitter enemies in the rabies cure racket, with Dalby championing a preparation of cinnabar and musk, while Bracken favored a nostrum that Dalby dismissed as "goose-grease." Clearly the best course was not to get rabies.
It thus appears that use of the phrase "barking mad" in reference to someone infected with (and dying of) hydrophobia after being bitten by a mad dog goes back at least to 1760—a time when the nature of the disease was obviously not well understood.