{"collection":"ritual-magic","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_12890/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_12890","id":"gutenberg_12890","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12890","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: Literature - Other","Demonology -- England -- History -- 16th century","Demonology in literature","Devil in literature","Reformation -- England","Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Knowledge -- Occultism"],"text":"ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY\n\nAn Essay in Illustration of the Belief in the Existence of Devils,\nand the Powers Possessed By Them, as It Was Generally Held during the\nPeriod of the Reformation, and the Times Immediately Succeeding;\nwith Special Reference to Shakspere and His Works\n\nby\n\nTHOMAS ALFRED SPALDING, LL.B. (LOND.)\n\nBarrister-at-Law, Honorary Treasurer of The New Shakspere Society\n\nLondon\n\n1880\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTO\n\nROBERT BROWNING,\n\nPRESIDENT OF THE\n\nNEW SHAKSPERE SOCIETY,\n\nTHIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED.\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORDS.\n\n\nThis Essay is an expansion, in accordance with a preconceived scheme, of\ntwo papers, one on \"The Witches in Macbeth,\" and the other on \"The\nDemonology of Shakspere,\" which were read before the New Shakspere\nSociety in the years 1877 and 1878. The Shakspere references in the text\nare made to the Globe Edition.\n\nThe writer's best thanks are due to his friends Mr. F.J. Furnivall and\nMr. Lauriston E. Shaw, for their kindness in reading the proof sheets,\nand suggesting emendations.\n\nTEMPLE,\n   October 7, 1879.\n\n\n\n\n     \"We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for\n     fools for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us)\n     involved in their creed of witchcraft.\"--C. LAMB.\n\n     \"But I will say, of Shakspere's works generally, that we have no\n     full impress of him there, even as full as we have of many men. His\n     works are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the\n     world that was in him.\"--T. CARLYLE.\n\n\n\n\nANALYSIS.\n\nI.\n\n1. Difficulty in understanding our elder writers without a knowledge of\ntheir language and ideas. 2. Especially in the case of dramatic poets.\n3. Examples. Hamlet's \"assume a virtue.\" 4. Changes in ideas and law\nrelating to marriage. Massinger's \"Maid of Honour\" as an example. 5.\n_Sponsalia de futuro_ and _Sponsalia de praesenti_. Shakspere's\nmarriage. 6. Student's duty is to get to know the opinions and feelings\nof the folk amongst whom his author lived. 7. It will be hard work, but\na gain in the end. First, in preventing conceit. 8. Secondly, in\npreventing rambling reading. 9. Author's present object to illustrate\nthe dead belief in Demonology, especially as far as it concerns\nShakspere. He thinks that this may perhaps bring us into closer contact\nwith Shakspere's soul. 10. Some one objects that Shakspere can speak\nbetter for himself. Yes, but we must be sure that we understand the\nmedia through which he speaks. 11. Division of subject.\n\nII.\n\n12. Reasons why the empire of the supernatural is so extended amongst\nsavages. 13. All important affairs of life transacted under\nsuperintendence of Supreme Powers. 14. What are these Powers? Three\nprinciples regarding them. 15. (I.) Incapacity of mankind to accept\nmonotheism. The Jews. 16. Roman Catholicism really polytheistic,\nalthough believers won't admit it. Virgin Mary. Saints. Angels.\nProtestantism in the same condition in a less degree. 17. Francis of\nAssisi. Gradually made into a god. 18. (II.) Manichaeism. Evil spirits\nas inevitable as good. 19. (III.) Tendency to treat the gods of hostile\nreligions as devils. 20. In the Greek theology. [Greek: daimones].\nPlatonism. 21. Neo-Platonism. Makes the elder gods into daemons. 22.\nJudaism. Recognizes foreign gods at first. _Elohim_, but they get\ndegraded in time. Beelzebub, Belial, etc. 23. Early Christians treat\ngods of Greece in the same way. St. Paul's view. 24. The Church,\nhowever, did not stick to its colours in this respect. Honesty not the\nbest policy. A policy of compromise. 25. The oracles. Sosthenion and St.\nMichael. Delphi. St. Gregory's saintliness and magnanimity. Confusion of\npagan gods and Christian saints. 26. Church in North Europe. Thonar,\netc., are devils, but Balda gets identified with Christ. 27. Conversion\nof Britons. Their gods get turned into fairies rather than devils.\nDeuce. Old Nick. 28. Subsequent evolution of belief. Carlyle's Abbot\nSampson. Religious formulae of witchcraft. 29. The Reformers and\nCatholics revive the old accusations. The Reformers only go half-way in\nscepticism. Calfhill and Martiall. 30. Catholics. Siege of Alkmaar.\nUnfortunate mistake of a Spanish prisoner. 31. Conditions that tended to\nvivify the belief during Elizabethan era. 32. The new freedom. Want of\nrules of evidence. Arthur Hacket and his madnesses. Sneezing.\nCock-crowing. Jackdaw in the House of Commons. Russell and Drake both\nmistaken for devils. 33. Credulousness of people. \"To make one danse\nnaked.\" A parson's proof of transubstantiation. 34. But the Elizabethans\nhad strong common sense nevertheless. People do wrong if they set them\ndown as fools. If we had not learned to be wiser than they, we should\nhave to be ashamed of ourselves. We shall learn nothing from them if we\ndon't try to understand them.\n\nIII.\n\n35. The three heads. 36. (I.) Classification of devils. Greater and\nlesser devils. Good and bad angels. 37. Another classification, not\npopular. 38. Names of greater devils. Horribly uncouth. The number of\nthem. Shakspere's devils. 39. (II.) Form of devils of the greater. 40.\nOf the lesser. The horns, goggle eyes, and tail. Scot's\ncarnal-mindedness. He gets his book burnt, and written against by James\nI. 41. Spenser's idol-devil. 42. Dramatists' satire of popular opinion.\n43. Favourite form for appearing in when conjured. Devils in Macbeth.\n44. Powers of devils. 45. Catholic belief in devil's power to create\nbodies. 46. Reformers deny this, but admit that he deceives people into\nbelieving that he can do so, either by getting hold of a dead body, and\nrestoring animation. 47. Or by means of illusion. 48. The common people\nstuck to the Catholic doctrine. Devils appear in likeness of an ordinary\nhuman being. 49. Even a living one, which was sometimes awkward. \"The\nTroublesome Raigne of King John.\" They like to appear as priests or\nparsons. The devil quoting Scripture. 50. Other human shapes. 51.\nAnimals. Ariel. 52. Puck. 53. \"The Witch of Edmonton.\" The devil on the\nstage. Flies. Urban Grandier. Sir M. Hale. 54. Devils as angels. As\nChrist. 55. As dead friend. Reformers denied the possibility of ghosts,\nand said the appearances so called were devils. James I. and his\nopinion. 56. The common people believed in the ghosts. Bishop\nPilkington's troubles. 57. The two theories. Illustrated in \"Julius\nCaesar,\" \"Macbeth.\" 58. And \"Hamlet.\" 59. This explains an apparent\ninconsistency in \"Hamlet.\" 60. Possession and obsession. Again the\nCatholics and Protestants differ. 61. But the common people believe in\npossession. 62. Ignorance on the subject of mental disease. The\nexorcists. 63. John Cotta on possession. What the \"learned physicion\"\nknew. 64. What was manifest to the vulgar view. Will Sommers. \"The Devil\nis an Ass.\" 65. Harsnet's \"Declaration,\" and \"King Lear.\" 66. The\nBabington conspiracy. 67. Weston, alias Edmonds. His exorcisms. Mainy.\nThe basis of Harsnet's statements. 69. The devils in \"Lear.\" 70. Edgar\nand Mainy. Mainy's loose morals. 71. The devils tempt with knives and\nhalters. 72. Mainy's seven devils: Pride, Covetousness, Luxury, Envy,\nWrath, Gluttony, Sloth. The Nightingale business. 73. Treatment of the\npossessed: confinement, flagellation. 74. Dr Pinch. Nicknames. 75. Other\nmethods. That of \"Elias and Pawle\". The holy chair, sack and oil,\nbrimstone. 76. Firing out. 77. Bodily diseases the work of the devil.\nBishop Hooper on hygiene. 78. But devils couldn't kill people unless\nthey renounced God. 79. Witchcraft. 80. People now-a-days can't\nsympathize with the witch persecutors, because they don't believe in the\ndevil. Satan is a mere theory now. 81. But they believed in him once,\nand therefore killed people that were suspected of having to do with\nhim. 82. And we don't sympathize with the persecuted witches, although\nwe make a great fuss about the sufferings of the Reformers. 83. The\nwitches in Macbeth. Some take them to be Norns. 84. Gervinus. His\nopinion. 85. Mr. F.G. Fleay. His opinion. 86. Evidence. Simon Forman's\nnote. 87. Holinshed's account. 88. Criticism. 89. It is said that the\nappearance and powers of the sisters are not those of witches. 90. It is\ngoing to be shown that they are. 91. A third piece of criticism. 92.\nObjections. 93. Contemporary descriptions of witches. Scot, Harsnet.\nWitches' beards. 94. Have Norns chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards?\n95. Powers of witches \"looking into the seeds of time.\" Bessie Roy, how\nshe looked into them. 96. Meaning of first scene of \"Macbeth.\" 97.\nWitches power to vanish. Ointments for the purpose. Scot's instance of\ntheir efficacy. 98. \"Weird sisters.\" 99. Other evidence. 100. Why\nShakspere chose witches. Command over elements. 101. Peculiar to Scotch\ntrials of 1590-91. 102. Earlier case of Bessie Dunlop--a poor, starved,\nhalf daft creature. \"Thom Reid,\" and how he tempted her. Her canny\nScotch prudence. Poor Bessie gets burnt for all that. 103. Reason for\npeculiarity of trials of 1590. James II. comes from Denmark to Scotland.\nThe witches raise a storm at the instigation of the devil. How the\ntrials were conducted. 104. John Fian. Raising a mist. Toad-omen. Ship\nsinking. 105. Sieve-sailing. Excitement south of the Border. The\n\"Daemonologie.\" Statute of James against witchcraft. 106. The origin of\nthe incubus and succubus. 107. Mooncalves. 108. Division of opinion\namongst Reformers regarding devils. Giordano Bruno. Bullinger's opinion\nabout Sadducees and Epicures. 109. Emancipation a gradual process.\nExorcism in Edward VI.'s Prayer-book. 110. The author hopes he has been\nreverent in his treatment of the subject. Any sincere belief entitled to\nrespect. Our pet beliefs may some day appear as dead and ridiculous as\nthese.\n\nIV.\n\n111. Fairies and devils differ in degree, not in origin. 112. Evidence.\n113. Cause of difference. Folk, until disturbed by religious doubt,\ndon't believe in devils, but fairies. 114. Reformation shook people up,\nand made them think of hell and devils. 115. The change came in the\ntowns before the country. Fairies held on a long time in the country.\n116. Shakspere was early impressed with fairy lore. In middle life, came\nin contact with town thought and devils, and at the end of it returned\nto Stratford and fairydom. 117. This is reflected in his works. 118. But\nthere is progression of thought to be observed in these stages. 119.\nShakspere indirectly tells us his thoughts, if we will take the trouble\nto learn them. 120. Three stages of thought that men go through on\nreligious matters. Hereditary belief. Scepticism. Reasoned belief. 121.\nShakspere went through all this. 122. Illustrations. Hereditary belief.\n\"A Midsummer Night's Dream.\" Fairies chiefly an adaptation of current\ntradition. 123. The dawn of doubt. 124. Scepticism. Evil spirits\ndominant. No guiding good. 125. Corresponding lapse of faith in other\nmatters. Woman's purity. 126. Man's honour. 127. Mr. Ruskin's view of\nShakspere's message. 128. Founded chiefly on plays of sceptical period.\nMessage of third period entirely different. 129. Reasoned belief. \"The\nTempest.\" 130. Man can master evil of all forms if he go about it in the\nright way--is not the toy of fate. 131. Prospero a type of Shakspere in\nthis final stage of thought. How pleasant to think this!\n\n\n\n\nELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.\n\n\n1. It is impossible to understand and appreciate thoroughly the\nproduction of any great literary genius who lived and wrote in times far\nremoved from our own, without a certain amount of familiarity, not only\nwith the precise shades of meaning possessed by the vocabulary he made\nuse of, as distinguished from the sense conveyed by the same words in\nthe present day, but also with the customs and ideas, political,\nreligious and moral, that predominated during the period in which his\nworks were produced. Without such information, it will be found\nimpossible, in many matters of the first importance, to grasp the\nwriter's true intent, and much will appear vague and lifeless that was\nfull of point and vigour when it was first conceived; or, worse still,\nmodern opinion upon the subject will be set up as the standard of\ninterpretation, ideas will be forced into the writer's sentences that\ncould not by any manner of possibility have had place in his mind, and\nutterly false conclusions as to his meaning will be the result. Even the\nman who has had some experience in the study of an early literature,\noccasionally finds some difficulty in preventing the current opinions of\nhis day from obtruding themselves upon his work and warping his\njudgment; to the general reader this must indeed be a frequent and\nserious stumbling-block.\n\n2. This is a special source of danger in the study of the works of\ndramatic poets, whose very art lies in the representation of the current\nopinions, habits, and foibles of their times--in holding up the mirror\nto their age. It is true that, if their works are to live, they must\ndeal with subjects of more than mere passing interest; but it is also\ntrue that many, and the greatest of them, speak upon questions of\neternal interest in the particular light cast upon them in their times,\nand it is quite possible that the truth may be entirely lost from want\nof power to recognize it under the disguise in which it comes. A certain\nmotive, for instance, that is an overpowering one in a given period,\nsubsequently appears grotesque, weak, or even powerless; the consequent\naction becomes incomprehensible, and the actor is contemned; and a\nsimile that appeared most appropriate in the ears of the author's\ncontemporaries, seems meaningless, or ridiculous, to later generations.\n\n3. An example or two of this possibility of error, derived from works\nproduced during the period with which it is the object of these pages to\ndeal, will not be out of place here.\n\nA very striking illustration of the manner in which a word may mislead\nis afforded by the oft-quoted line:\n\n     \"Assume a virtue, if you have it not.\"\n\nBy most readers the secondary, and, in the present day, almost\nuniversal, meaning of the word assume--\"pretend that to be, which in\nreality has no existence;\"--that is, in the particular case, \"ape the\nchastity you do not in reality possess\"--is understood in this sentence;\nand consequently Hamlet, and through him, Shakspere, stand committed to\nthe appalling doctrine that hypocrisy in morals is to be commended and\ncultivated. Now, such a proposition never for an instant entered\nShakspere's head. He used the word \"assume\" in this case in its primary\nand justest sense; _ad-sumo_, take to, acquire; and the context plainly\nshows that Hamlet meant that his mother, by self-denial, would gradually\nacquire that virtue in which she was so conspicuously wanting. Yet, for\nlack of a little knowledge of the history of the word employed, the\nother monstrous gloss has received almost universal and applauding\nacceptance.\n\n4. This is a fair example of the style of error which a reader\nunacquainted with the history of the changes our language has undergone\nmay fall into. Ignorance of changes in customs and morals may cause\nequal or greater error.\n\nThe difference between the older and more modern law, and popular\nopinion, relating to promises of marriage and their fulfilment, affords\na striking illustration of the absurdities that attend upon the\ninterpretation of the ideas of one generation by the practice of\nanother. Perhaps no greater nonsense has been talked upon any subject\nthan this one, especially in relation to Shakspere's own marriage, by\ncritics who seem to have thought that a fervent expression of acute\nmoral feeling would replace and render unnecessary patient\ninvestigation.\n\nIn illustration of this difference, a play of Massinger's, \"The Maid of\nHonour,\" may be advantageously cited, as the catastrophe turns upon this\nquestion of marriage contracts. Camiola, the heroine, having been\nprecontracted by oath[1] to Bertoldo, the king's natural brother, and\nhearing of his subsequent engagement to the Duchess of Sienna,\ndetermines to quit the world and take the veil. But before doing so, and\nwithout informing any one, except her confessor, of her intention, she\ncontrives a somewhat dramatic scene for the purpose of exposing her\nfalse lover. She comes into the presence of the king and all the court,\nproduces her contract, claims Bertoldo as her husband, and demands\njustice of the king, adjuring him that he shall not--\n\n    \"Swayed or by favour or affection,\n    By a false gloss or wrested comment, alter\n    The true intent and letter of the law.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Act v. sc. I.]\n\nNow, the only remedy that would occur to the mind of the reader of the\npresent day under such circumstances, would be an action for breach of\npromise of marriage, and he would probably be aware of the very recent\norigin of that method of procedure. The only reply, therefore, that he\nwould expect from Roberto would be a mild and sympathetic assurance of\ninability to interfere; and he must be somewhat taken aback to find this\nclaim of Camiola admitted as indisputable. The riddle becomes somewhat\nfurther involved when, having established her contract, she immediately\nintimates that she has not the slightest intention of observing it\nherself, by declaring her desire to take the veil.\n\n5. This can only be explained by the rules current at the time regarding\nspousals. The betrothal, or handfasting, was, in Massinger's time, a\nceremony that entailed very serious obligations upon the parties to it.\nThere were two classes of spousals--_sponsalia de futuro_ and _sponsalia\nde praesenti_: a promise of marriage in the future, and an actual\ndeclaration of present marriage. This last form of betrothal was, in\nfact, marriage, as far as the contracting parties were concerned.[1] It\ncould not, even though not consummated, be dissolved by mutual consent;\nand a subsequent marriage, even though celebrated with religious rites,\nwas utterly invalid, and could be set aside at the suit of the injured\nperson.\n\n[Footnote 1: Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals, 1686, p. 236. In England\nthe offspring were, nevertheless, illegitimate.]\n\nThe results entailed by _sponsalia de futuro_ were less serious.\nAlthough no spousals of the same nature could be entered into with a\nthird person during the existence of the contract, yet it could be\ndissolved by mutual consent, and was dissolved by subsequent _sponsalia\nin praesenti_, or matrimony. But such spousals could be converted into\nvalid matrimony by the cohabitation of the parties; and this, instead of\nbeing looked upon as reprehensible, seems to have been treated as a\nlaudable action, and to be by all means encouraged.[1] In addition to\nthis, completion of a contract for marriage _de futuro_ confirmed by\noath, if such a contract were not indeed indissoluble, as was thought by\nsome, could at any rate be enforced against an unwilling party. But\nthere were some reasons that justified the dissolution of _sponsalia_ of\neither description. Affinity was one of these; and--what is to the\npurpose here, in England before the Reformation, and in those parts of\nthe continent unaffected by it--the entrance into a religious order was\nanother. Here, then, we have a full explanation of Camiola's conduct.\nShe is in possession of evidence of a contract of marriage between\nherself and Bertoldo, which, whether _in praesenti_ or _in futuro_,\nbeing confirmed by oath, she can force upon him, and which will\ninvalidate his proposed marriage with the duchess. Having established\nher right, she takes the only step that can with certainty free both\nherself and Bertoldo from the bond they had created, by retiring into a\nnunnery.\n\n[Footnote 1: Swinburne, p. 227.]\n\nThis explanation renders the action of the play clear, and at the same\ntime shows that Shakspere in his conduct with regard to his marriage may\nhave been behaving in the most honourable and praiseworthy manner; as\nthe bond, with the date of which the date of the birth of his first\nchild is compared, is for the purpose of exonerating the ecclesiastics\nfrom any liability for performing the ecclesiastical ceremony, which was\nnot at all a necessary preliminary to a valid marriage, so far as the\nhusband and wife were concerned, although it was essential to render\nissue of the marriage legitimate.\n\n6. These are instances of the deceptions that are likely to arise\nfrom the two fertile sources that have been specified. There can\nbe no doubt that the existence of errors arising from the former\nsource--misapprehension of the meaning of words--is very generally\nadmitted, and effectual remedies have been supplied by modern scholars\nfor those who will make use of them. Errors arising from the latter\nsource are not so entirely recognized, or so securely guarded against.\nBut what has just been said surely shows that it is of no use reading a\nwriter of a past age with merely modern conceptions; and, therefore,\nthat if such a man's works are worth study at all, they must be read\nwith the help of the light thrown upon them by contemporary history,\nliterature, laws, and morals. The student must endeavour to divest\nhimself, as far as possible, of all ideas that are the result of a\ndevelopment subsequent to the time in which his author lived, and to\nplace himself in harmony with the life and thoughts of the people of\nthat age: sit down with them in their homes, and learn the sources of\ntheir loves, their hates, their fears, and see wherein domestic\nhappiness, or lack of it, made them strong or weak; follow them to the\nmarket-place, and witness their dealings with their fellows--the honesty\nor baseness of them, and trace the cause; look into their very hearts,\nif it may be, as they kneel at the devotion they feel or simulate, and\nbecome acquainted with the springs of their dearest aspirations and most\nsecret prayers.\n\n7. A hard discipline, no doubt, but not more hard than salutary.\nSalutary in two ways. First, as a test of the student's own earnestness\nof purpose. For in these days of revival of interest in our elder\nliterature, it has become much the custom for flippant persons, who are\ncovetous of being thought \"well-read\" by their less-enterprising\ncompanions, to skim over the surface of the pages of the wisest and\nnoblest of our great teachers, either not understanding, or\nmisunderstanding them. \"I have read Chaucer, Shakspere, Milton,\" is the\nsublimely satirical expression constantly heard from the mouths of those\nwho, having read words set down by the men they name, have no more\ncapacity for reading the hearts of the men themselves, through those\nwords, than a blind man has for discerning the colour of flowers. As a\nconsequence of this flippancy of reading, numberless writers, whose\nworks have long been consigned to a well-merited oblivion, have of late\nyears been disinterred and held up for public admiration, chiefly upon\nthe ground that they are ancient and unknown. The man who reads for the\nsake of having done so, not for the sake of the knowledge gained by\ndoing so, finds as much charm in these petty writers as in the greater,\nand hence their transient and undeserved popularity. It would be well,\nthen, for every earnest student, before beginning the study of any one\nhaving pretensions to the position of a master, and who is not of our\nown generation, to ask himself, \"Am I prepared thoroughly to sift out\nand ascertain the true import of every allusion contained in this\nvolume?\" And if he cannot honestly answer \"Yes,\" let him shut the book,\nassured that he is not impelled to the study of it by a sincere thirst\nfor knowledge, but by impertinent curiosity, or a shallow desire to\nobtain undeserved credit for learning.\n\n8. The second way in which such a discipline will prove salutary is\nthis: it will prevent the student from straying too far afield in his\nreading. The number of \"classical\" authors whose works will repay such\nsevere study is extremely limited. However much enthusiasm he may throw\ninto his studies, he will find that nine-tenths of our older literature\nyields too small a harvest of instruction to attract any but the pedant\nto expend so much labour upon them. The two great vices of modern\nreading will be avoided--flippancy on the one hand, and pedantry on the\nother.\n\n9. The object, therefore, which I have had in view in the compilation of\nthe following pages, is to attempt to throw some additional light upon a\ncondition of thought, utterly different from any belief that has firm\nhold in the present generation, that was current and peculiarly\nprominent during the lifetime of the man who bears overwhelmingly the\ngreatest name, either in our own or any other literature. It may be\nsaid, and perhaps with much force, that enough, and more than enough,\nhas been written in the way of Shakspere criticism. But is it not better\nthat somewhat too much should be written upon such a subject than too\nlittle? We cannot expect that every one shall see all the greatness of\nShakspere's vast and complex mind--by one a truth will be grasped that\nhas eluded the vigilance of others;--and it is better that those who can\nby no possibility grasp anything at all should have patient hearing,\nrather than that any additional light should be lost. The useless,\nlifeless criticism vanishes quietly away into chaos; the good remains\nquietly to be useful: and it is in reliance upon the justice and\ncertainty of this law that I aim at bringing before the mind, as clearly\nas may be, a phase of belief that was continually and powerfully\ninfluencing Shakspere during the whole of his life, but is now well-nigh\nforgotten or entirely misunderstood. If the endeavour is a useless and\nunprofitable one, let it be forgotten--I am content; but I hope to be\nable to show that an investigation of the subject does furnish us with a\nkey which, in a manner, unlocks the secrets of Shakspere's heart, and\nbrings us closer to the real living man--to the very soul of him who,\nwith hardly any history in the accepted sense of the word, has left us\nin his works a biography of far deeper and more precious meaning, if we\nwill but understand it.\n\n10. But it may be said that Shakspere, of all men, is able to speak for\nhimself without aid or comment. His works appeal to all, young and old,\nin every time, every nation. It is true; he can be understood. He is,\nto use again Ben Jonson's oft-quoted words, \"Not of an age, but for\nall time.\" Yet he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit and opinions\nof his era, that without a certain comprehension of the men of\nthe Elizabethan period he cannot be understood fully. Indeed,\nhis greatness is to a large extent due to his sympathy with the men\naround him, his power of clearly thinking out the answers to the\nall-time questions, and giving a voice to them that his contemporaries\ncould understand;--answers that others could not for themselves\nformulate--could, perhaps, only vaguely and dimly feel after. To\nunderstand these answers fully, the language in which they were\ndelivered must be first thoroughly mastered.\n\n11. I intend, therefore, to attempt to sketch out the leading features\nof a phase of religious belief that acquired peculiar distinctness and\nprominence during Shakspere's lifetime--more, perhaps, than it ever did\nbefore, or has done since--the belief in the existence of evil spirits,\nand their influence upon and dealings with mankind. The subject will be\ntreated in three sections. The first will contain a short statement of\nthe laws that seem to be of universal operation in the creation and\nmaintenance of the belief in a multitudinous band of spirits, good and\nevil; and of a few of the conditions of the Elizabethan epoch that may\nhave had a formative and modifying influence upon that belief. The\nsecond will be devoted to an outline of the chief features of that\nbelief, as it existed at the time in question--the organization,\nappearance, and various functions and powers of the evil spirits, with\nspecial reference to Shakspere's plays. The third and concluding\nsection, will embody an attempt to trace the growth of Shakspere's\nthought upon religious matters through the medium of his allusions to\nthis subject.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n12. The empire of the supernatural must obviously be most extended\nwhere civilization is the least advanced. An educated man has to make a\nconscious, and sometimes severe, effort to refrain from pronouncing a\ndogmatic opinion as to the cause of a given result when sufficient\nevidence to warrant a definite conclusion is wanting; to the savage,\nthe notion of any necessity for, or advantage to be derived from, such\nself-restraint never once occurs. Neither the lightning that strikes\nhis hut, the blight that withers his crops, the disease that destroys\nthe life of those he loves; nor, on the other hand, the beneficent\nsunshine or life-giving rain, is by him traceable to any known\nphysical cause. They are the results of influences utterly beyond his\nunderstanding--supernatural,--matters upon which imagination is allowed\nfree scope to run riot, and from which spring up a legion of myths, or\nattempts to represent in some manner these incomprehensible processes,\ngrotesque or poetic, according to the character of the people with which\nthey originate, which, if their growth be not disturbed by extraneous\ninfluences, eventually develop into the national creed. The most\nordinary events of the savage's every-day life do not admit of a natural\nsolution; his whole existence is bound in, from birth to death, by a\nnetwork of miracles, and regulated, in its smallest details, by unseen\npowers of whom he knows little or nothing.\n\n13. Hence it is that, in primitive societies, the functions of\nlegislator, judge, priest, and medicine man are all combined in one\nindividual, the great medium of communication between man and the\nunknown, whose person is pre-eminently sacred. The laws that are to\nguide the community come in some mysterious manner through him from the\nhigher powers. If two members of the clan are involved in a quarrel, he\nis appealed to to apply some test in order to ascertain which of the two\nis in the wrong--an ordeal that can have no judicial operation, except\nupon the assumption of the existence of omnipotent beings interested in\nthe discovery of evil-doers, who will prevent the test from operating\nunjustly. Maladies and famines are unmistakeable signs of the\ndispleasure of the good, or spite of the bad spirits, and are to be\naverted by some propitiatory act on the part of the sufferers, or the\nmediation of the priest-doctor. The remedy that would put an end to a\nlong-continued drought will be equally effective in arresting an\nepidemic.\n\n14. But who, and of what nature, are these supernatural powers whose\ninfluences are thus brought to bear upon every-day life, and who appear\nto take such an interest in the affairs of mankind? It seems that there\nare three great principles at work in the evolution and modification of\nthe ideas upon this subject, which must now be shortly stated.\n\n15. (i.) The first of these is the apparent incapacity of the majority\nof mankind to accept a purely monotheistic creed. It is a demonstrable\nfact that the primitive religions now open to observation attribute\nspecific events and results to distinct supernatural beings; and there\ncan be little doubt that this is the initial step in every creed. It is\na bold and somewhat perilous revolution to attempt to overturn this\ndoctrine and to set up monotheism in its place, and, when successfully\naccomplished, is rarely permanent. The more educated portions of the\ncommunity maintain allegiance to the new teaching, perhaps; but among\nthe lower classes it soon becomes degraded to, or amalgamated with, some\nform of polytheism more or less pronounced, and either secret or\ndeclared. Even the Jews, the nation the most conspicuous for its\nsupposed uncompromising adherence to a monotheistic creed, cannot claim\nabsolute freedom from taint in this respect; for in the country places,\nfar from the centre of worship, the people were constantly following\nafter strange gods; and even some of their most notable worthies were\nliable to the same accusation.\n\n16. It is not necessary, however, that the individuality and\nspecialization of function of the supreme beings recognized by any\nreligious system should be so conspicuous as they are in this case, or\nin the Greek or Roman Pantheon, to mark it as in its essence\npolytheistic or of polytheistic tendency. It is quite enough that the\nimmortals are deemed to be capable of hearing and answering the prayers\nof their adorers, and of interfering actively in passing events, either\nfor good or for evil. This, at the root of it, constitutes the crucial\ndifference between polytheism and monotheism; and in this sense the\nRoman Catholic form of Christianity, representing the oldest undisturbed\nevolution of a strictly monotheistic doctrine, is undeniably\npolytheistic. Apart from the Virgin Mary, there is a whole hierarchy of\ninferior deities, saints, and angels, subordinate to the One Supreme\nBeing. This may possibly be denied by the authorized expounders of the\ndoctrine of the Church of Rome; but it is nevertheless certain that it\nis the view taken by the uneducated classes, with whom the saints are\nmuch more present and definite deities than even the Almighty Himself.\nIt is worth noting, that during the dancing mania of 1418, not God, or\nChrist, or the Virgin Mary, but St. Vitus, was prayed to by the populace\nto stop the epidemic that was afterwards known by his name.[1] There was\na temple to St. Michael on Mount St. Angelo, and Augustine thought it\nnecessary to declare that angel-worshippers were heretics.[2] Even\nProtestantism, though a much younger growth than Catholicism, shows a\nslight tendency towards polytheism. The saints are, of course, quite\nout of the question, and angels are as far as possible relegated from\nthe citadel of asserted belief into the vaguer regions of poetical\nsentimentality; but--although again unadmitted by the orthodox of the\nsect--the popular conception of Christ is, and, until the masses are\nmore educated in theological niceties than they are at present,\nnecessarily must be, as of a Supreme Being totally distinct from God the\nFather. This applies in a less degree to the third Person in the\nTrinity; less, because His individuality is less clear. George Eliot\nhas, with her usual penetration, noted this fact in \"Silas Marner,\"\nwhere, in Mrs. Winthrop's simple theological system, the Trinity is\nalways referred to as \"Them.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 85.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Bullinger, p. 348. Parker Society.]\n\n17. The posthumous history of Francis of Assisi affords a striking\nillustration of this strange tendency towards polytheism. This\nextraordinary man received no little reverence and adulation during his\nlifetime; but it was not until after his death that the process of\ndeification commenced. It was then discovered that the stigmata were not\nthe only points of resemblance between the departed saint and the Divine\nMaster he professed to follow; that his birth had been foretold by the\nprophets; that, like Christ, he underwent transfiguration; and that he\nhad worked miracles during his life. The climax of the apotheosis was\nreached in 1486, when a monk, preaching at Paris, seriously maintained\nthat St. Francis was in very truth a second Christ, the second Son of\nGod; and that after his death he descended into purgatory, and\nliberated all the spirits confined there who had the good fortune to be\narrayed in the Franciscan garb.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Maury, Histoire de la Magie, p. 354.]\n\n18. (ii.) The second principle is that of the Manichaeists: the division\nof spirits into hostile camps, good and evil. This is a much more common\nbelief than the orthodox are willing to allow. There is hardly any\nreligious system that does not recognize a first source of evil, as well\nas a first source of good. But the spirit of evil occupies a position of\nvarying importance: in some systems he maintains himself as co-equal of\nthe spirit of good; in others he sinks to a lower stage, remaining very\npowerful to do harm, but nevertheless under the control, in matters of\nthe highest importance, of the more beneficent Being. In each of these\ncases, the first principle is found operating, ever augmenting the\nranks; monodiabolism being as impossible as monotheism; and hence the\nimportance of fully establishing that proposition.\n\n19. (iii.) The last and most important of these principles is the\ntendency of all theological systems to absorb into themselves the\ndeities extraneous to themselves, not as gods, but as inferior, or even\nevil, spirits. The actual existence of the foreign deity is not for a\nmoment disputed, the presumption in favour of innumerable spiritual\nagencies being far too strong to allow the possibility of such a doubt;\nbut just as the alien is looked upon as an inferior being, created\nchiefly for the use and benefit of the chosen people--and what nation is\nnot, if its opinion of itself may be relied upon, a chosen people?--so\nthe god the alien worships is a spirit of inferior power and capacity,\nand can be recognized solely as occupying a position subordinate to that\nof the gods of the land.\n\nThis principle has such an important influence in the elaboration of the\nbelief in demons, that it is worth while to illustrate the generality of\nits application.\n\n20. In the Greek system of theology we find in the first place a number\nof deities of varying importance and power, whose special functions are\ndefined with some distinctness; and then, below these, an innumerable\nband of spirits, the souls of the departed--probably the relics of an\nearlier pure ancestor-worship--who still interest themselves in the\ninhabitants of this world. These [Greek: daimones] were certainly\naccredited with supernatural power, and were not of necessity either\ngood or evil in their influence or action. It was to this second class\nthat foreign deities were assimilated. They found it impossible,\nhowever, to retain even this humble position. The ceremonies of their\nworship, and the language in which those ceremonies were performed, were\nstrange to the inhabitants of the land in which the acclimatization was\nattempted; and the incomprehensible is first suspected, then loathed. It\nis not surprising, then, that the new-comers soon fell into the ranks of\npurely evil spirits, and that those who persisted in exercising their\nrites were stigmatized as devil-worshippers, or magicians.\n\nBut in process of time this polytheistic system became pre-eminently\nunsatisfactory to the thoughtful men whom Greece produced in such\nnumbers. The tendency towards monotheism which is usually associated\nwith the name of Plato is hinted at in the writings of other\nphilosophers who were his predecessors. The effect of this revolution\nwas to recognize one Supreme Being, the First Cause, and to subordinate\nto him all the other deities of the ancient and popular theology--to\nco-ordinate them, in fact, with the older class of daemons; the first\nstep in the descent to the lowest category of all.\n\n21. The history of the neo-Platonic belief is one of elaboration upon\nthese ideas. The conception of the Supreme Being was complicated in a\nmanner closely resembling the idea of the Christian Trinity, and all the\nsubordinate daemons were classified into good and evil geniuses. Thus, a\ntheoretically monotheistic system was established, with a tremendous\nhierarchy of inferior spirits, who frequently bore the names of the\nancient gods and goddesses of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, strikingly\nresembling that of Roman Catholicism. The subordinate daemons were not\nat first recognized as entitled to any religious rites; but in the\ncourse of time, by the inevitable operation of the first principle just\nenunciated, a form of theurgy sprang up with the object of attracting\nthe kindly help and patronage of the good spirits, and was tolerated;\nand attempts were made to hold intercourse with the evil spirits, which\nwere, as far as possible suppressed and discountenanced.\n\n22. The history of the operation of this principle upon the Jewish\nreligion is very similar, and extremely interesting. Although they do\nnot seem to have ever had any system of ancestor-worship, as the Greeks\nhad, yet the Jews appear originally to have recognized the deities of\ntheir neighbours as existing spirits, but inferior in power to the God\nof Israel. \"All the gods of the nations are idols\" are words that\nentirely fail to convey the idea of the Psalmist; for the word\ntranslated \"idols\" is _Elohim_, the very term usually employed to\ndesignate Jehovah; and the true sense of the passage therefore is: \"All\nthe gods of the nations are gods, but Jehovah made the heavens.\"[1] In\nanother place we read that \"The Lord is a great God, and a great King\nabove all gods.\"[2] As, however, the Jews gradually became acquainted\nwith the barbarous rites with which their neighbours did honour to their\ngods, the foreigners seem to have fallen more and more in estimation,\nuntil they came to be classed as evil spirits. To this process such\nnames as Beelzebub, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and Belial bear witness;\nBeelzebub, \"the prince of the devils\" of later time, being one of the\ngods of the hostile Philistines.\n\n[Footnote 1: Psalm xcvi. 5 (xcv. Sept.).]\n\n[Footnote 2: Psalm xcv. 3 (xciv. Sept.). Maury, p. 98.]\n\n23. The introduction of Christianity made no difference in this respect.\nPaul says to the believers at Corinth, \"that the things which the\nGentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils ([Greek: daimonia]), and\nnot to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with\ndevils;\"[1] and the Septuagint renders the word _Elohim_ in the\nninety-fifth Psalm by this [Greek: daimonia], which as the Christians\nhad already a distinct term for good spirits, came to be applied to evil\nones only.\n\n[Footnote 1: I Cor. x. 20.]\n\nUnder the influence therefore, of the new religion, the gods of Greece\nand Rome, who in the days of their supremacy had degraded so many\nforeign deities to the position of daemons, were in their turn deposed\nfrom their high estate, and became the nucleus around which the\nChristian belief in demonology formed itself. The gods who under the old\ntheologies reigned paramount in the lower regions became pre-eminently\ndiabolic in character in the new system, and it was Hecate who to the\nlast retained her position of active patroness and encourager of\nwitchcraft; a practice which became almost indissolubly connected with\nher name. Numerous instances of the completeness with which this process\nof diabolization was effected, and the firmness with which it retained\nits hold upon the popular belief, even to late times, might be given;\nbut the following must suffice. In one of the miracle plays, \"The\nConversion of Saul,\" a council of devils is held, at which Mercury\nappears as the messenger of Belial.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Digby Mysteries, New Shakspere Society, 1880, p. 44.]\n\n24. But this absolute rejection of every pagan belief and ceremony was\ncharacteristic of the Christian Church in its infancy only. So long as\nthe band of believers was a small and persecuted one, no temptation to\nviolate the rule could exist. But as the Church grew, and acquired\ninfluence and position, it discovered that good policy demanded that the\nsternness and inflexibility of its youthful theories should undergo some\nmodification. It found that it was not the most successful method of\nenticing stragglers into its fold to stigmatize the gods they ignorantly\nworshipped as devils, and to persecute them as magicians. The more\nimpetuous and enthusiastic supporters did persecute, and persecute most\nrelentlessly, the adherents of the dying faith; but persecution, whether\nof good or evil, always fails as a means of suppressing a hated\ndoctrine, unless it can be carried to the extent of extermination of its\nsupporters; and the more far-seeing leaders of the Catholic Church soon\nrecognized that a slight surrender of principle was a far surer road to\nsuccess than stubborn, uncompromising opposition.\n\n25. It was in this spirit that the Catholics dealt with the oracles of\nheathendom. Mr. Lecky is hardly correct when he says that nothing\nanalogous to the ancient oracles was incorporated with Christianity.[1]\nThere is the notable case of the god Sosthenion, whom Constantine\nidentified with the archangel Michael, and whose oracular functions were\ncontinued in a precisely similar manner by the latter.[2] Oracles that\nwere not thus absorbed and supported were recognized as existent, but\nunder diabolic control, and to be tolerated, if not patronized, by the\nrepresentatives of the dominant religion. The oracle at Delphi gave\nforth prophetic utterances for centuries after the commencement of the\nChristian era; and was the less dangerous, as its operations could be\nstopped at any moment by holding a saintly relic to the god or devil\nApollo's nose. There is a fable that St. Gregory, in the course of his\ntravels, passed near the oracle, and his extraordinary sanctity was such\nas to prevent all subsequent utterances. This so disturbed the presiding\ngenius of the place, that he appealed to the saint to undo the baneful\neffects his presence had produced; and Gregory benevolently wrote a\nletter to the devil, which was in fact a license to continue the\nbusiness of prophesying unmolested.[3] This nonsensical fiction shows\nclearly enough that the oracles were not generally looked upon as\nextinguished by Christianity. As the result of a similar policy we find\nthe names and functions of the pagan gods and the earlier Christian\nsaints confused in the most extraordinary manner; the saints assuming\nthe duties of the moribund deities where those duties were of a harmless\nor necessary character.[4]\n\n[Footnote 1: Rise and Influence of Rationalism, i. p. 31.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Maury, p. 244, et seq.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Scot, book vii. ch. i.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Middleton's Letter from Rome.]\n\n26. The Church carried out exactly the same principles in her missionary\nefforts amongst the heathen hordes of Northern Europe. \"Do you renounce\nthe devils, and all their words and works; Thonar, Wodin, and Saxenote?\"\nwas part of the form of recantation administered to the Scandinavian\nconverts;[1] and at the present day \"Odin take you\" is the Norse\nequivalent of \"the devil take you.\" On the other hand, an attempt was\nmade to identify Balda \"the beautiful\" with Christ--a confusion of\ncharacter that may go far towards accounting for a custom joyously\nobserved by our forefathers at Christmastide but which the false\nmodesty of modern society has nearly succeeded in banishing from amongst\nus, for Balda was slain by Lok\u00e9 with a branch of mistletoe, and Christ\nwas betrayed by Judas with a kiss.\n\n[Footnote 1: Milman, History of Latin Christianity, iii. 267; ix. 65.]\n\n27. Upon the conversion of the inhabitants of Great Britain to\nChristianity, the native deities underwent the same inevitable fate, and\nsank into the rank of evil spirits. Perhaps the juster opinion is that\nthey became the progenitors of our fairy mythology rather than the\nsubsequent devil-lore, although the similarity between these two classes\nof spirits is sufficient to warrant us in classing them as species of\nthe same genus; their characters and functions being perfectly\ninterchangeable, and even at times merging and becoming\nindistinguishable. A certain lurking affection in the new converts for\nthe religion they had deserted, perhaps under compulsion, may have led\nthem to look upon their ancient objects of veneration as less detestable\nin nature, and dangerous in act, than the devils imported as an integral\nportion of their adopted faith; and so originated this class of spirits\nless evil than the other. Sir Walter Scott may be correct in his\nassertion that many of these fairy-myths owe their origin to the\nexistence of a diminutive autochthonic race that was conquered by the\ninvading Celts, and the remnants of which lurked about the mountains and\nforests, and excited in their victors a superstitious reverence on\naccount of their great skill in metallurgy; but this will not explain\nthe retention of many of the old god-names; as that of the Dusii, the\nCeltic nocturnal spirits, in our word \"deuce,\" and that of the Nikr or\nwater-spirits in \"nixie\" and old \"Nick.\"[1] These words undoubtedly\nindicate the accomplishment of the \"facilis descensus Averno\" by the\nnative deities. Elves, brownies, gnomes, and trolds were all at one time\nScotch or Irish gods. The trolds obtained a character similar to that of\nthe more modern succubus, and have left their impression upon\nElizabethan English in the word \"trull.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Maury, p. 189.]\n\n28. The preceding very superficial outline of the growth of the belief\nin evil spirits is enough for the purpose of this essay, as it shows\nthat the basis of English devil-lore was the annihilated mythologies of\nthe ancient heathen religions--Italic and Teutonic, as well as those\nbrought into direct conflict with the Jewish system; and also that the\nmore important of the Teutonic deities are not to be traced in the\nsubsequent hierarchy of fiends, on account probably of their temporary\nor permanent absorption into the proselytizing system, or the refusal of\nthe new converts to believe them to be so black as their teachers\npainted them. The gradual growth of the superstructure it would be\nwell-nigh impossible and quite unprofitable to trace. It is due chiefly\nto the credulous ignorance and distorted imagination, monkish and\notherwise, of several centuries. Carlyle's graphic picture of Abbot\nSampson's vision of the devil in \"Past and Present\" will perhaps do more\nto explain how the belief grew and flourished than pages of explanatory\nstatements. It is worthy of remark, however, that to the last,\ncommunication with evil spirits was kept up by means of formulae and\nrites that are undeniably the remnants of a form of religious worship.\nIncomprehensible in their jargon as these formulae mostly are, and\nstrongly tinctured as they have become with burlesqued Christian\nsymbolism and expression--for those who used them could only supply the\nfast-dying memory of the elder forms from the existing system--they\nstill, in all their grotesqueness, remain the battered relics of a dead\nfaith.\n\n29. Such being the natural history of the conflict of religions, it will\nnot be a matter of surprise that the leaders of our English Reformation\nshould, in their turn, have attributed the miracles of the Roman\nCatholic saints to the same infernal source as the early Christians\nsupposed to have been the origin of the prodigies and oracles of\npaganism. The impulse given by the secession from the Church of Rome to\nthe study of the Bible by all classes added impetus to this tendency. In\nHoly Writ the Reformers found full authority for believing in the\nexistence of evil spirits, possession by devils, witchcraft, and divine\nand diabolic interference by way of miracle generally; and they\nconsequently acknowledged the possibility of the repetition of such\nphenomena in the times in which they lived--a position more tenable,\nperhaps, than that of modern orthodoxy, that accepts without murmur all\nthe supernatural events recorded in the Bible, and utterly rejects all\nsubsequent relations of a similar nature, however well authenticated.\nThe Reformers believed unswervingly in the truth of the Biblical\naccounts of miracles, and that what God had once permitted to take place\nmight and would be repeated in case of serious necessity. But they found\nit utterly impossible to accept the puerile and meaningless miracles\nperpetrated under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church as evidence\nof divine interference; and they had not travelled far enough upon the\nroad towards rationalism to be able to reject them, one and all, as in\ntheir very nature impossible. The consequence of this was one of those\ncompromises which we so often meet with in the history of the changes of\nopinion effected by the Reformation. Only those particular miracles that\nwere indisputably demonstrated to be impostures--and there were plenty\nof them, such as the Rood of Boxley[1]--were treated as such by them.\nThe unexposed remainder were treated as genuine supernatural phenomena,\nbut caused by diabolical, not divine, agency. The reforming divine\nCalfhill, supporting this view of the Catholic miracles in his answer to\nMartiall's \"Treatise of the Cross,\" points out that the majority of\nsupernatural events that have taken place in this world have been, most\nundoubtedly, the work of the devil; and puts his opponents into a rather\nembarrassing dilemma by citing the miracles of paganism, which both\nCatholic and Protestant concurred in attributing to the evil one. He\nthen clinches his argument by asserting that \"it is the devil's cunning\nthat persuades those that will walk in a popish blindness\" that they are\nworshipping God when they are in reality serving him. \"Therefore,\" he\ncontinues, consciously following an argument of St. Cyprianus against\nthe pagan miracles, \"these wicked spirits do lurk in shrines, in roods,\nin crosses, in images: and first of all pervert the priests, which are\neasiest to be caught with bait of a little gain. Then work they\nmiracles. They appear to men in divers shapes; disquiet them when they\nare awake; trouble them in their sleeps; distort their members; take\naway their health; afflict them with diseases; only to bring them to\nsome idolatry. Thus, when they have obtained their purpose that a lewd\naffiance is reposed where it should not, they enter (as it were) into a\nnew league, and trouble them no more. What do the simple people then?\nVerily suppose that the image, the cross, the thing that they have\nkneeled and offered unto (the very devil indeed) hath restored them\nhealth, whereas he did nothing but leave off to molest them. This is the\nhelp and cure that the devils give when they leave off their wrong and\ninjury.\"[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: Froude, History of England, cabinet edition, iii. 102.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Calfhill, pp. 317-8. Parker Society.]\n\n30. Here we have a distinct charge of devil-worship--the old doctrine\ncropping up again after centuries of repose: \"all the gods of our\nopponents are devils.\" Nor were the Catholics a whit behind the\nProtestants in this matter. The priests zealously taught that the\nProtestants were devil-worshippers and magicians;[1] and the common\npeople so implicitly believed in the truth of the statement, that we\nfind one poor prisoner, taken by the Dutch at the siege of Alkmaar in\n1578, making a desperate attempt to save his life by promising to\nworship his captors' devil precisely as they did[2]--a suggestion that\nfailed to pacify those to whom it was addressed.\n\n[Footnote 1: Hutchinson's Essay, p. 218. Harsnet, Declaration, p. 30.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 400.]\n\n31. Having thus stated, so far as necessary, the chief laws that are\nconstantly working the extension of the domain of the supernatural as\nfar as demonology is concerned, without a remembrance of which the\nsubject itself would remain somewhat difficult to comprehend fully, I\nshall now attempt to indicate one or two conditions of thought and\ncircumstance that may have tended to increase and vivify the belief\nduring the period in which the Elizabethan literature flourished.\n\n32. It was an era of change. The nation was emerging from the dim\ntwilight of mediaevalism into the full day of political and religious\nfreedom. But the morning mists, which the rising sun had not yet\ndispelled, rendered the more distant and complex objects distorted and\nportentous. The very fact that doubt, or rather, perhaps, independence\nof thought, was at last, within certain limits, treated as non-criminal\nin theology, gave an impetus to investigation and speculation in all\nbranches of politics and science; and with this change came, in the\nmain, improvement. But the great defect of the time was that this newly\nliberated spirit of free inquiry was not kept in check by any sufficient\nprevious discipline in logical methods of reasoning. Hence the\npossibility of the wild theories that then existed, followed out into\naction or not, according as circumstances favoured or discouraged:\nArthur Hacket, with casting out of devils, and other madnesses,\nvehemently declaring himself the Messiah and King of Europe in the year\nof grace 1591, and getting himself believed by some, so long as he\nremained unhanged; or, more pathetic still, many weary lives wasted day\nby day in fruitless silent search after the impossible philosopher's\nstone, or elixir of life. As in law, so in science, there were no\nsufficient rules of evidence clearly and unmistakably laid down for the\nguidance of the investigator; and consequently it was only necessary to\nbroach a novel theory in order to have it accepted, without any previous\nserious testing. Men do not seem to have been able to distinguish\nbetween an hypothesis and a proved conclusion; or, rather, the rule of\npresumptions was reversed, and men accepted the hypothesis as conclusive\nuntil it was disproved. It was a perfectly rational and sufficient\nexplanation in those days to refer some extraordinary event to some\ngiven supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link\nbetween the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast\nmajority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial\noccurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the\ncrowing of a cock, and events of like unimportance happening at a\nparticular moment, might, by some unseen concatenation of causes and\neffects, exercise an incomprehensible influence upon men, and\nconsequently had important bearings upon their conduct. It is solemnly\nrecorded in the Commons' Journals that during the discussion of the\nstatute against witchcraft passed in the reign of James I., a young\njackdaw flew into the House; which accident was generally regarded as\n_malum omen_ to the Bill.[1] Extraordinary bravery on the part of an\nadversary was sometimes accounted for by asserting that he was the devil\nin the form of a man; as the Volscian soldier does with regard to\nCoriolanus. This is no mere dramatist's fancy, but a fixed belief of the\ntimes. Sir William Russell fought so desperately at Zutphen, that he got\nmistaken for the Evil One;[2] and Drake also gave the Spaniards good\nreason for believing that he was a devil, and no man.[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: See also D'Ewes, p. 688.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Froude, xii. 87.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. 663.]\n\n33. This intense credulousness, childish almost in itself, but yet at\nthe same time combined with the strong man's intellect, permeated all\nclasses of society. Perhaps a couple of instances, drawn from strangely\ndiverse sources, will bring this more vividly before the mind than any\namount of attempted theorizing. The first is one of the tricks of the\njugglers of the period.\n\n     \"_To make one danse naked._\n\n\"Make a poore boie confederate with you, so as after charms, etc.,\nspoken by you, he unclothe himself and stand naked, seeming (whilest he\nundresseth himselfe) to shake, stamp, and crie, still hastening to be\nunclothed, till he be starke naked; or if you can procure none to go so\nfar, let him onlie beginne to stampe and shake, etc., and unclothe him,\nand then you may (for reverence of the companie) seeme to release\nhim.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Scott, p. 339.]\n\nThe second illustration must have demanded, if possible, more credulity\non the part of the audience than this harmless entertainment. Cranmer\ntells us that in the time of Queen Mary a monk preached a sermon at St.\nPaul's, the object of which was to prove the truth of the doctrine of\ntransubstantiation; and, after the manner of his kind, told the\nfollowing little anecdote in support of it:--\"A maid of Northgate parish\nin Canterbury, in pretence to wipe her mouth, kept the host in her\nhandkerchief; and, when she came home, she put the same into a pot,\nclose covered, and she spitted in another pot, and after a few days, she\nlooking in the one pot, found a little young pretty babe, about a\nshaftmond long; and the other pot was full of gore blood.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Cranmer, A Confutation of Unwritten Verities, p. 66. Parker\nSociety.]\n\n34. That the audiences before which these absurdities were seriously\nbrought, for amusement or instruction, could be excited in either case\nto any other feeling than good-natured contempt for a would-be impostor,\nseems to us now-a-days to be impossible. It was not so in the times when\nthese things transpired: the actors of them were not knaves, nor were\ntheir audiences fools, to any unusual extent. If any one is inclined to\nform a low opinion of the Elizabethans intellectually, on account of the\ndivergence of their capacities of belief in this respect from his own,\nhe does them a great injustice. Let him take at once Charles Lamb's\nwarning, and try to understand, rather than to judge them. We, who have\nhad the benefit of three hundred more years of experience and liberty of\nthought than they, should have to hide our faces for very shame had we\nnot arrived at juster and truer conclusions upon those difficult topics\nthat so bewildered our ancestors. But can we, with all our boasted\nadvantages of wealth, power, and knowledge, truly say that all our aims\nare as high, all our desires as pure, our words as true, and our deeds\nas noble, as those whose opinions we feel this tendency to contemn? If\nnot, or if indeed they have anything whatsoever to teach us in these\nrespects, let us remember that we shall never learn the lesson wholly,\nperhaps not learn it at all, unless, casting aside this first impulse to\ndespise, we try to enter fully into and understand these strange dead\nbeliefs of the past.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n35. It is in this spirit that I now enter upon the second division of\nthe subject in hand, in which I shall try to indicate the chief features\nof the belief in demonology as it existed during the Elizabethan period.\nThese will be taken up in three main heads: the classification, physical\nappearance, and powers of the evil spirits.\n\n36. (i.) It is difficult to discover any classification of devils as\nwell authenticated and as universally received as that of the angels\nintroduced by Dionysius the Areopagite, which was subsequently imported\ninto the creed of the Western Church, and popularized in Elizabethan\ntimes by Dekker's \"Hierarchie.\" The subject was one which, from its\nnature, could not be settled _ex cathedr\u00e2_, and consequently the subject\nhad to grow up as best it might, each writer adopting the arrangement\nthat appeared to him most suitable. There was one rough but popular\nclassification into greater and lesser devils. The former branch was\nsubdivided into classes of various grades of power, the members of\nwhich passed under the titles of kings, dukes, marquises, lords,\ncaptains, and other dignities. Each of these was supposed to have a\ncertain number of legions of the latter class under his command. These\nwere the evil spirits who appeared most frequently on the earth as the\nemissaries of the greater fiends, to carry out their evil designs. The\nmore important class kept for the most part in a mystical seclusion, and\nonly appeared upon earth in cases of the greatest emergency, or when\ncompelled to do so by conjuration. To the class of lesser devils\nbelonged the bad angel which, together with a good one, was supposed to\nbe assigned to every person at birth, to follow him through life--the\none to tempt, the other to guard from temptation;[1] so that a struggle\nsimilar to that recorded between Michael and Satan for the body of Moses\nwas raging for the soul of every existing human being. This was not a\nmere theory, but a vital active belief, as the beautiful well-known\nlines at the commencement of the eighth canto of the second book of \"The\nFaerie Queene,\" and the use made of these opposing spirits in Marlowe's\n\"Dr. Faustus,\" and in \"The Virgin Martyr,\" by Massinger and Dekker,\nconclusively show.\n\n[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 506.]\n\n37. Another classification, which seems to retain a reminiscence of the\norigin of devils from pagan deities, is effected by reference to the\nlocalities supposed to be inhabited by the different classes of evil\nspirits. According to this arrangement we get six classes:--\n\n(1.) Devils of the fire, who wander in the region near the moon.\n\n(2.) Devils of the air, who hover round the earth.\n\n(3.) Devils of the earth; to whom the fairies are allied.\n\n(4.) Devils of the water.\n\n(5.) Submundane devils.[1]\n\n(6.) Lucifugi.\n\nThese devils' power and desire to injure mankind appear to have\nincreased with the proximity of their location to the earth's centre;\nbut this classification had nothing like the hold upon the popular mind\nthat the former grouping had, and may consequently be dismissed with\nthis mention.\n\n[Footnote 1: Cf. I Hen. VI. V. iii. 10; 2 Hen. VI. I. ii. 77;\nCoriolanus, IV. v. 97.]\n\n38. The greater devils, or the most important of them, had\ndistinguishing names--strange, uncouth names; some of them telling of a\nheathenish origin; others inexplicable and almost unpronounceable--as\nAshtaroth, Bael, Belial, Zephar, Cerberus, Phoenix, Balam (why he?), and\nHaagenti, Leraie, Marchosias, Gusoin, Glasya Labolas. Scot enumerates\nseventy-nine, the above amongst them, and he does not by any means\nexhaust the number. As each arch-devil had twenty, thirty, or forty\nlegions of inferior spirits under his command, and a legion was composed\nof six hundred and sixty-six devils, it is not surprising that the\nlatter did not obtain distinguishing names until they made their\nappearance upon earth, when they frequently obtained one from the form\nthey loved to assume; for example, the familiars of the witches in\n\"Macbeth\"--Paddock (toad), Graymalkin (cat), and Harpier (harpy,\npossibly). Is it surprising that, with resources of this nature at his\ncommand, such an adept in the art of necromancy as Owen Glendower\nshould hold Harry Percy, much to his disgust, at the least nine hours\n\n    \"In reckoning up the several devils' names\n    That were his lackeys\"?\n\nOf the twenty devils mentioned by Shakspere, four only belong to the\nclass of greater devils. Hecate, the principal patroness of witchcraft,\nis referred to frequently, and appears once upon the scene.[1] The two\nothers are Amaimon and Barbazon, both of whom are mentioned twice.\nAmaimon was a very important personage, being no other than one of the\nfour kings. Ziminar was King of the North, and is referred to in \"Henry\nVI. Part I.;\"[2] Gorson of the South; Goap of the West; and Amaimon of\nthe East. He is mentioned in \"Henry IV. Part I.,\"[3] and \"Merry\nWives.\"[4] Barbazon also occurs in the same passage in the latter play,\nand again in \"Henry V.\"[5]--a fact that does to a slight extent help to\nbear out the otherwise ascertained chronological sequence of these\nplays. The remainder of the devils belong to the second class. Nine of\nthese occur in \"King Lear,\" and will be referred to again when the\nsubject of possession is touched upon.[6]\n\n[Footnote 1: It is perhaps worthy of remark that in every case except\nthe allusion in the probably spurious Henry VI., \"I speak not to that\nrailing Hecate,\" (I Hen. VI. III. ii. 64), the name is \"Hecat,\" a\ndi-syllable.]\n\n[Footnote 2: V. iii. 6.]\n\n[Footnote 3: II. iv. 370.]\n\n[Footnote 4: II. ii. 311.]\n\n[Footnote 5: II. i. 57. Scot, p. 393.]\n\n[Footnote 6: \u00a7 65.]\n\n39. (ii.) It would appear that each of the greater devils, on the rare\noccasion upon which he made his appearance upon earth, assumed a form\npeculiar to himself; the lesser devils, on the other hand, had an\nordinary type, common to the whole species, with a capacity for almost\ninfinite variation and transmutation which they used, as will be seen,\nto the extreme perplexity and annoyance of mortals. As an illustration\nof the form in which a greater devil might appear, this is what Scot\nsays of the questionable Balam, above mentioned: \"Balam cometh with\nthree heads, the first of a bull, the second of a man, and the third of\na ram. He hath a serpent's taile, and flaming eies; riding upon a\nfurious beare, and carrieng a hawke on his fist.\"[1] But it was the\nlesser devils, not the greater, that came into close contact with\nhumanity, who therefore demand careful consideration.\n\n[Footnote 1: p. 361.]\n\n40. All the lesser devils seem to have possessed a normal form, which\nwas as hideous and distorted as fancy could render it. To the conception\nof an angel imagination has given the only beautiful appendage the human\nbody does not possess--wings; to that of a devil it has added all those\norgans of the brute creation that are most hideous or most harmful.\nAdvancing civilization has almost exterminated the belief in a being\nwith horns, cloven hoofs, goggle eyes, and scaly tail, that was held up\nto many yet living as the avenger of childish disobedience in their\nearlier days, together perhaps with some strength of conviction of the\nmoral hideousness of the evil he was intended, in a rough way, to\ntypify; but this hazily retained impression of the Author of Evil was\nthe universal and entirely credited conception of the ordinary\nappearance of those bad spirits who were so real to our ancestors of\nElizabethan days. \"Some are so carnallie minded,\" says Scot, \"that a\nspirit is no sooner spoken of, but they thinke of a blacke man with\ncloven feet, a paire of hornes, a taile, and eies as big as a bason.\"[1]\nScot, however, was one of a very small minority in his opinion as to the\ncarnal-mindedness of such a belief. He in his day, like those in every\nage and country who dare to hold convictions opposed to the creed of the\nmajority, was a dangerous sceptic; his book was publicly burnt by the\ncommon hangman;[2] and not long afterwards a royal author wrote a\ntreatise \"against the damnable doctrines of two principally in our age;\nwhereof the one, called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public\nprint to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so\nmainteines the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits.\"[3] The\nabandoned impudence of the man!--and the logic of his royal opponent!\n\n[Footnote 1: p. 507. See also Hutchinson, Essay on Witchcraft, p. 13;\nand Harsnet, p. 71.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Bayle, ix. 152.]\n\n[Footnote 3: James I., Daemonologie. Edinburgh, 1597.]\n\n41. Spenser has clothed with horror this conception of the appearance of\na fiend, just as he has enshrined in beauty the belief in the guardian\nangel. It is worthy of remark that he describes the devil as dwelling\nbeneath the altar of an idol in a heathen temple. Prince Arthur strikes\nthe image thrice with his sword--\n\n      \"And the third time, out of an hidden shade,\n      There forth issewed from under th' altar's smoake\n      A dreadfull feend with fowle deform\u00e8d looke,\n      That stretched itselfe as it had long lyen still;\n      And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke,\n      That all the temple did with terrour fill;\n    Yet him nought terrifide that fear\u00e8d nothing ill.\n\n      \"An huge great beast it was, when it in length\n      Was stretch\u00e8d forth, that nigh filled all the place,\n      And seemed to be of infinite great strength;\n      Horrible, hideous, and of hellish race,\n      Borne of the brooding of Echidna base,\n      Or other like infernall Furies kinde,\n      For of a maide she had the outward face\n      To hide the horrour which did lurke behinde\n    The better to beguile whom she so fond did finde.\n\n      \"Thereto the body of a dog she had,\n      Full of fell ravin and fierce greedinesse;\n      A lion's clawes, with power and rigour clad\n      To rende and teare whatso she can oppresse;\n      A dragon's taile, whose sting without redresse\n      Full deadly wounds whereso it is empight,\n      And eagle's wings for scope and speedinesse\n      That nothing may escape her reaching might,\n    Whereto she ever list to make her hardy flight.\"\n\n42. The dramatists of the period make frequent references to this\nbelief, but nearly always by way of ridicule. It is hardly to be\nexpected that they would share in the grosser opinions held by the\ncommon people in those times--common, whether king or clown. In \"The\nVirgin Martyr,\" Harpax is made to say--\n\n        \"I'll tell you what now of the devil;\n    He's no such horrid creature, cloven-footed,\n    Black, saucer-eyed, his nostrils breathing fire,\n    As these lying Christians make him.\"[1]\n\nBut his opinion was, perhaps, a prejudiced one. In Ben Jonson's \"The\nDevil is an Ass,\" when Fitzdottrell, doubting Pug's statement as to his\ninfernal character, says, \"I looked on your feet afore; you cannot cozen\nme; your shoes are not cloven, sir, you are whole hoofed;\" Pug, with\ngreat presence of mind, replies, \"Sir, that's a popular error deceives\nmany.\" So too Othello, when he is questioning whether Iago is a devil or\nnot, says--\n\n     \"I look down to his feet, but that's a fable.\"[2]\n\nAnd when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Gloucester that he has in\nreality cast himself over the cliff, he describes the being from whom he\nis supposed to have just parted, thus:--\n\n    \"As I stood here below, methought his eyes\n    Were two full moons: he had a thousand noses;\n    Horns whelked and wav\u00e8d like the enridg\u00e8d sea:\n    It was some fiend.\"[3]\n\nIt can hardly be but that the \"thousand noses\" are intended as a\nsatirical hit at the enormity of the popular belief.\n\n[Footnote 1: Act I. sc. 2.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. ii. l. 285.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Lear, IV. vi. 69.]\n\n43. In addition to this normal type, common to all these devils, each\none seems to have had, like the greater devils, a favourite form in\nwhich he made his appearance when conjured; generally that of some\nanimal, real or imagined. It was telling of\n\n           \"the moldwarp and the ant,\n    Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies;\n    And of a dragon and a finless fish,\n    A clipwinged griffin, and a moulten raven,\n    A couching lion, and a ramping cat,\"[1]\n\nthat annoyed Harry Hotspur so terribly; and neither in this allusion,\nwhich was suggested by a passage in Holinshed,[2] nor in \"Macbeth,\"\nwhere he makes the three witches conjure up their familiars in the\nshapes of an armed head, a bloody child, and a child crowned, has\nShakspere gone beyond the fantastic conceptions of the time.\n\n[Footnote 1: I Hen. IV. III. i. 148.]\n\n[Footnote 2: p. 521, c. 2.]\n\n44. (iii.) But the third proposed section, which deals with the powers\nand functions exercised by the evil spirits, is by far the most\ninteresting and important; and the first branch of the series is one\nthat suggests itself as a natural sequence upon what has just been said\nas to the ordinary shapes in which devils appeared, namely, the capacity\nto assume at will any form they chose.\n\n45. In the early and middle ages it was universally believed that a\ndevil could, of his own inherent power, call into existence any manner\nof body that it pleased his fancy to inhabit, or that would most conduce\nto the success of any contemplated evil. In consequence of this belief\nthe devils became the rivals, indeed the successful rivals, of Jupiter\nhimself in the art of physical tergiversation. There was, indeed, a\ntradition that a devil could not create any animal form of less size\nthan a barley-corn, and that it was in consequence of this incapacity\nthat the magicians of Egypt--those indubitable devil-worshippers--failed\nto produce lice, as Moses did, although they had been so successful in\nthe matter of the serpents and the frogs; \"a verie gross absurditie,\" as\nScot judiciously remarks.[1] This, however, would not be a serious\nlimitation upon the practical usefulness of the power.\n\n[Footnote 1: p. 314.]\n\n46. The great Reformation movement wrought a change in this respect. Men\nbegan to accept argument and reason, though savouring of special\npleading of the schools, in preference to tradition, though never so\nvenerable and well authenticated; and the leaders of the revolution\ncould not but recognize the absurdity of laying down as infallible dogma\nthat God was the Creator of all things, and then insisting with equal\nvehemence, by way of postulate, that the devil was the originator of\nsome. The thing was gross and palpable in its absurdity, and had to be\ndone away with as quickly as might be. But how? On the other hand, it\nwas clear as daylight that the devil _did_ appear in various forms to\ntempt and annoy the people of God--was at that very time doing so in the\nmost open and unabashed manner. How were reasonable men to account for\nthis manifest conflict between rigorous logic and more rigorous fact?\nThere was a prolonged and violent controversy upon the point--the\nReformers not seeing their way to agree amongst themselves--and tedious\nas violent. Sermons were preached; books were written; and, when\nargument was exhausted, unpleasant epithets were bandied about, much as\nin the present day, in similar cases. The result was that two theories\nwere evolved, both extremely interesting as illustrations of the\nhair-splitting, chop-logic tendency which, amidst all their\nstraightforwardness, was so strongly characteristic of the Elizabethans.\nThe first suggestion was, that although the devil could not, of his own\ninherent power, create a body, he might get hold of a dead carcase and\ntemporarily restore animation, and so serve his turn. This belief was\nheld, amongst others, by the erudite King James,[1] and is pleasantly\nsatirized by sturdy old Ben Jonson in \"The Devil is an Ass,\" where Satan\n(the greater devil, who only appears in the first scene just to set the\nstorm a-brewing) says to Pug (Puck, the lesser devil, who does all the\nmischief; or would have done it, had not man, in those latter times, got\nto be rather beyond the devils in evil than otherwise), not without a\ntouch of regret at the waning of his power--\n\n    \"You must get a body ready-made, Pug,\n    I can create you none;\"\n\nand consequently Pug is advised to assume the body of a handsome\ncutpurse that morning hung at Tyburn.\n\n[Footnote 1: Daemonologie, p. 56.]\n\nBut the theory, though ingenious, was insufficient. The devil would\noccasionally appear in the likeness of a living person; and how could\nthat be accounted for? Again, an evil spirit, with all his ingenuity,\nwould find it hard to discover the dead body of a griffin, or a harpy,\nor of such eccentricity as was affected by the before-mentioned Balam;\nand these and other similar forms were commonly favoured by the\ninhabitants of the nether world.\n\n47. The second theory, therefore, became the more popular amongst the\nlearned, because it left no one point unexplained. The divines held that\nalthough the power of the Creator had in no wise been delegated to the\ndevil, yet he was, in the course of providence, permitted to exercise a\ncertain supernatural influence over the minds of men, whereby he could\npersuade them that they really saw a form that had no material objective\nexistence.[1] Here was a position incontrovertible, not on account of\nthe arguments by which it could be supported, but because it was\nimpossible to reason against it; and it slowly, but surely, took hold\nupon the popular mind. Indeed, the elimination of the diabolic factor\nleaves the modern sceptical belief that such apparitions are nothing\nmore than the result of disease, physical or mental.\n\n[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 4th Dialogue.\nBullinger, p. 361. Parker Society.]\n\n48. But the semi-sceptical state of thought was in Shakspere's time\nmaking its way only amongst the more educated portion of the nation. The\nmasses still clung to the old and venerated, if not venerable, belief\nthat devils could at any moment assume what form soever they might\nplease--not troubling themselves further to inquire into the method of\nthe operation. They could appear in the likeness of an ordinary human\nbeing, as Harpax[1] and Mephistopheles[2] do, creating thereby the most\nembarrassing complications in questions of identity; and if this belief\nis borne in mind, the charge of being a devil, so freely made, in the\ntimes of which we write, and before alluded to, against persons who\nperformed extraordinary feats of valour, or behaved in a manner\ndiscreditable and deserving of general reprobation, loses much of its\nbarbarous grotesqueness. There was no doubt as to Coriolanus,[3] as has\nbeen said; nor Shylock.[4] Even \"the outward sainted Angelo is yet a\ndevil;\"[5] and Prince Hal confesses that \"there is a devil haunts him in\nthe likeness of an old fat man ... an old white-bearded Satan.\"[6]\n\n[Footnote 1: In The Virgin Martyr.]\n\n[Footnote 2: In Dr. Faustus.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Coriolanus, I. x. 16.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Merchant of Venice, III. i. 22.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Measure for Measure, III. i. 90.]\n\n[Footnote 6: I Hen. IV., II. iv. 491-509.]\n\n49. The devils had an inconvenient habit of appearing in the guise of an\necclesiastic[1]--at least, so the churchmen were careful to insist,\nespecially when busying themselves about acts of temptation that would\nleast become the holy robe they had assumed. This was the ecclesiastical\nmethod of accounting for certain stories, not very creditable to the\npriesthood, that had too inconvenient a basis of evidence to be\ndismissed as fabricatious. But the honest lay public seem to have\nthought, with downright old Chaucer, that there was more in the matter\nthan the priests chose to admit. This feeling we, as usual, find\nreflected in the dramatic literature of our period. In \"The Troublesome\nRaigne of King John,\" an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere\nconstructed his own \"King John,\" we find this question dealt with in\nsome detail. In the elder play, the Bastard does \"the shaking of bags of\nhoarding abbots,\" _coram populo_, and thereby discloses a phase of\nmonastic life judiciously suppressed by Shakspere. Philip sets at\nliberty much more than \"imprisoned angels\"--according to one account,\nand that a monk's, imprisoned beings of quite another sort. \"Faire\nAlice, the nonne,\" having been discovered in the chest where the abbot's\nwealth was supposed to be concealed, proposes to purchase pardon for the\noffence by disclosing the secret hoard of a sister nun. Her offer being\naccepted, a friar is ordered to force the box in which the treasure is\nsupposed to be secreted. On being questioned as to its contents, he\nanswers--\n\n    \"Frier Laurence, my lord, now holy water help us!\n    Some witch or some divell is sent to delude us:\n    _Haud credo Laurentius_ that thou shouldst be pen'd thus\n    In the presse of a nun; we are all undone,\n    And brought to discredence, if thou be Frier Laurence.\"[2]\n\nUnfortunately it proves indubitably to be that good man; and he is\nordered to execution, not, however, without some hope of redemption by\nmoney payment; for times are hard, and cash in hand not to be despised.\n\n[Footnote 1: See the story about Bishop Sylvanus.--Lecky, Rationalism in\nEurope, i. 79.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Hazlitt, Shakspere Library, part ii. vol. i. p. 264.]\n\nIt is amusing to notice, too, that when assuming the clerical garb, the\ndevil carefully considered the religious creed of the person to whom he\nintended to make himself known. The Catholic accounts of him show him\ngenerally assuming the form of a Protestant parson;[1] whilst to those\nof the reformed creed he invariably appeared in the habit of a Catholic\npriest. In the semblance of a friar the devil is reported (by a\nProtestant) to have preached, upon a time, \"a verie Catholic sermon;\"[2]\nso good, indeed, that a priest who was a listener could find no fault\nwith the doctrine--a stronger basis of fact than one would have imagined\nfor Shakspere's saying, \"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Harsnet, p. 101.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Scot, p. 481.]\n\n50. It is not surprising that of human forms, that of a negro or Moor\nshould be considered a favourite one with evil spirits.[1] Iago makes\nallusion to this when inciting Brabantio to search for his daughter.[2]\nThe power of coming in the likeness of humanity generally is referred to\nsomewhat cynically in \"Timon of Athens,\"[3] thus--\n\n\"_Varro's Servant._ What is a whoremaster, fool?\n\n\"_Fool._ A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. 'Tis a spirit:\nsometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer; sometime like a\nphilosopher with two stones more than 's artificial one: he is very\noften like a knight; and, generally, in all shapes that man goes up and\ndown in, from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 89.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Othello, I. i. 91.]\n\n[Footnote 3: II. ii. 113.]\n\n\"All shapes that man goes up and down in\" seem indeed to have been at\nthe devils' control. So entirely was this the case, that to Constance\neven the fair Blanche was none other than the devil tempting Louis \"in\nlikeness of a new uptrimmed bride;\"[1] and perhaps not without a certain\nprophetic feeling of the fitness of things, as it may possibly seem to\nsome of our more warlike politicians, evil spirits have been known to\nappear as Russians.[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: King John, III. i. 209.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Harsnet, p. 139.]\n\n51. But all the \"shapes that man goes up and down in\" did not suffice.\nThe forms of the whole of the animal kingdom seem to have been at the\ndevils' disposal; and, not content with these, they seem to have sought\nfurther for unlikely shapes to assume.[1] Poor Caliban complains that\nProspero's spirits\n\n     \"Lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark,\"[2]\n\njust as Ariel[3] and Puck[4] (Will-o'-th'-wisp) mislead their victims;\nand that\n\n    \"For every trifle are they set upon me:\n    Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me,\n    And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which\n    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount\n    Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I\n    All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues,\n    Do hiss me into madness.\"\n\nAnd doubtless the scene which follows this soliloquy, in which Caliban,\nTrinculo, and Stephano mistake one another in turn for evil spirits,\nfully flavoured with fun as it still remains, had far more point for the\naudiences at the Globe--to whom a stray devil or two was quite in the\nnatural order of things under such circumstances--than it can possibly\npossess for us. In this play, Ariel, Prospero's familiar, besides\nappearing in his natural shape, and dividing into flames, and behaving\nin such a manner as to cause young Ferdinand to leap into the sea,\ncrying, \"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!\" assumes the forms\nof a water-nymph,[5] a harpy,[6] and also the goddess Ceres;[7] while\nthe strange shapes, masquers, and even the hounds that hunt and worry\nthe would-be king and viceroys of the island, are Ariel's \"meaner\nfellows.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: For instance, an eye without a head.--Ibid.]\n\n[Footnote 2: The Tempest, II. ii. 10.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. I. ii. 198.]\n\n[Footnote 4: A Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 39; III. i. 111.]\n\n[Footnote 5: I. ii. 301-318.]\n\n[Footnote 6: III. iii. 53.]\n\n[Footnote 7: IV. i. 166.]\n\n52. Puck's favourite forms seem to have been more outlandish than\nAriel's, as might have been expected of that malicious little spirit. He\nbeguiles \"the fat and bean-fed horse\" by\n\n    \"Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:\n    And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl,\n    In very likeness of a roasted crab;\n    And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,\n    And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.\n    The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,\n    Sometime for three-foot stool[1] mistaketh me;\n    Then slip I from her, and down topples she.\"\n\nAnd again:\n\n    \"Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,\n    A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;\n    And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,\n    Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.\"[2]\n\nWith regard to this last passage, it is worthy of note that in the year\n1584, strange news came out of Somersetshire, entitled \"A Dreadful\nDiscourse of the Dispossessing of one Margaret Cowper, at Ditchet, from\na Devil in the Likeness of a Headless Bear.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: A Scotch witch, when leaving her bed to go to a sabbath,\nused to put a three-foot stool in the vacant place; which, after charms\nduly mumbled, assumed the appearance of a woman until her\nreturn.--Pitcairn, iii. 617.]\n\n[Footnote 2: III. i. 111.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Hutchinson, p. 40.]\n\n53. In Heywood and Brome's \"Witch of Edmonton,\" the devil appears in the\nlikeness of a black dog, and takes his part in the dialogue, as if his\npresence were a matter of quite ordinary occurrence, not in any way\ncalling for special remark. However gross and absurd this may appear, it\nmust be remembered that this play is, in its minutest details, merely a\ndramatization of the events duly proved in a court of law, to the\nsatisfaction of twelve Englishmen, in the year 1612.[1] The shape of a\nfly, too, was a favourite one with the evil spirits; so much so that the\nterm \"fly\" became a common synonym for a familiar.[2] The word\n\"Beelzebub\" was supposed to mean \"the king of flies.\" At the execution\nof Urban Grandier, the famous magician of London, in 1634, a large fly\nwas seen buzzing about the stake, and a priest promptly seizing the\nopportunity of improving the occasion for the benefit of the onlookers,\ndeclared that Beelzebub had come in his own proper person to carry off\nGrandier's soul to hell. In 1664 occurred the celebrated witch-trials\nwhich took place before Sir Matthew Hale. The accused were charged with\nbewitching two children; and part of the evidence against them was that\nflies and bees were seen to carry into the victims' mouths the nails and\npins which they afterwards vomited.[3] There is an allusion to this\nbelief in the fly-killing scene in \"Titus Andronicus.\"[4]\n\n[Footnote 1: Potts, Discoveries. Edit. Cheetham Society.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Cf. B. Jonson's Alchemist.]\n\n[Footnote 3: A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts relating to\nWitchcraft, 1838.]\n\n[Footnote 4: III. ii. 51, et seq.]\n\n54. But it was not invariably a repulsive or ridiculous form that was\nassumed by these enemies of mankind. Their ingenuity would have been but\nlittle worthy of commendation had they been content to appear as\nordinary human beings, or animals, or even in fancy costume. The Swiss\ndivine Bullinger, after a lengthy and elaborately learned argument as to\nthe particular day in the week of creation upon which it was most\nprobable that God called the angels into being, says, by way of\nperoration, \"Let us lead a holy and angel-like life in the sight of\nGod's holy angels. Let us watch, lest he that transfigureth and turneth\nhimself into an angel of light under a good show and likeness deceive\nus.\"[1] They even went so far, according to Cranmer,[2] as to appear in\nthe likeness of Christ, in their desire to mislead mankind; for--\n\n    \"When devils will the blackest sins put on,\n    They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon. Parker Society.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Cranmer, Confutation, p. 42. Parker Society.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Othello, II. iii. 357. Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii.\n257; Comedy of Errors, IV. iii. 56.]\n\n55. But one of the most ordinary forms supposed at this period to be\nassumed by devils was that of a dead friend of the object of the\nvisitation. Before the Reformation, the belief that the spirits of the\ndeparted had power at will to revisit the scenes and companions of their\nearthly life was almost universal. The reforming divines distinctly\ndenied the possibility of such a revisitation, and accounted for the\nundoubted phenomena, as usual, by attributing them to the devil.[1]\nJames I. says that the devil, when appearing to men, frequently assumed\nthe form of a person newly dead, \"to make them believe that it was some\ngood spirit that appeared to them, either to forewarn them of the death\nof their friend, or else to discover unto them the will of the defunct,\nor what was the way of his slauchter.... For he dare not so illude anie\nthat knoweth that neither can the spirit of the defunct returne to his\nfriend, nor yet an angell use such formes.\"[2] He further explains that\nsuch devils follow mortals to obtain two ends: \"the one is the tinsell\n(loss) of their life by inducing them to such perrilous places at such\ntimes as he either follows or possesses them. The other thing that he\npreases to obtain is the tinsell of their soule.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: See Hooper's Declaration of the Ten Commandments. Parker\nSociety. Hooper, 326.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Daemonologie, p. 60.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Cf. Hamlet, I. iv. 60-80; and post, \u00a7 58.]\n\n56. But the belief in the appearance of ghosts was too deeply rooted in\nthe popular mind to be extirpated, or even greatly affected, by a\ndogmatic declaration. The masses went on believing as they always had\nbelieved, and as their fathers had believed before them, in spite of the\nReformers, and to their no little discontent. Pilkington, Bishop of\nDurham, in a letter to Archbishop Parker, dated 1564, complains that,\n\"among other things that be amiss here in your great cares, ye shall\nunderstand that in Blackburn there is a fantastical (and as some say,\nlunatic) young man, which says that he has spoken with one of his\nneighbours that died four year since, or more. Divers times he says he\nhas seen him, and talked with him, and took with him the curate, the\nschoolmaster, and other neighbours, who all affirm that they see him.\n_These things be so common here_ that none in authority will gainsay it,\nbut rather believe and confirm it, that everybody believes it. If I had\nknown how to examine with authority, I would have done it.\"[1] Here is a\nlittle glimpse at the practical troubles of a well-intentioned bishop of\nthe sixteenth century that is surely worth preserving.\n\n[Footnote 1: Parker Correspondence, 222. Parker Society.]\n\n57. There were thus two opposite schools of belief in this matter of the\nsupposed spirits of the departed:--the conservative, which held to the\nold doctrine of ghosts; and the reforming, which denied the possibility\nof ghosts, and held to the theory of devils. In the midst of this\ndisagreement of doctors it was difficult for a plain man to come to a\ndefinite conclusion upon the question; and, in consequence, all who were\nnot content with quiet dogmatism were in a state of utter uncertainty\nupon a point not entirely without importance in practical life as well\nas in theory. This was probably the position in which the majority of\nthoughtful men found themselves; and it is accurately reflected in three\nof Shakspere's plays, which, for other and weightier reasons, are\ngrouped together in the same chronological division--\"Julius Caesar,\"\n\"Macbeth,\" and \"Hamlet.\" In the first-mentioned play, Brutus, who\nafterwards confesses his belief that the apparition he saw at Sardis was\nthe ghost of Caesar,[1] when in the actual presence of the spirit,\nsays--\n\n     \"Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil?\"[2]\n\nThe same doubt flashes across the mind of Macbeth on the second entrance\nof Banquo's ghost--which is probably intended to be a devil appearing at\nthe instigation of the witches--when he says, with evident allusion to a\ndiabolic power before referred to--\n\n                \"What man dare, I dare:\n    Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,\n    The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger,\n    Take any shape but that.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Julius Caesar, V. v. 17.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Ibid. IV. iii. 279.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Macbeth, III. iv. 100.]\n\n58. But it is in \"Hamlet\" that the undecided state of opinion upon this\nsubject is most clearly reflected; and hardly enough influence has been\nallowed to the doubts arising from this conflict of belief, as urgent or\ndeterrent motives in the play, because this temporary condition of\nthought has been lost sight of. It is exceedingly interesting to note\nhow frequently the characters who have to do with the apparition of the\nlate King Hamlet alternate between the theories that it is a ghost and\nthat it is a devil which they have seen. The whole subject has such an\nimportant bearing upon any attempt to estimate the character of Hamlet,\nthat no excuse need be offered for once again traversing such\nwell-trodden ground.\n\nHoratio, it is true, is introduced to us in a state of determined\nscepticism; but this lasts for a few seconds only, vanishing upon the\nfirst entrance of the spectre, and never again appearing. His first\ninclination seems to be to the belief that he is the victim of a\ndiabolical illusion; for he says--\n\n    \"What art thou, that _usurp'st_ this time of night,\n    Together with that fair and warlike form\n    In which the majesty of buried Denmark\n    Did sometimes march?\"[1]\n\nAnd Marcellus seems to be of the same opinion, for immediately before,\nhe exclaims--\n\n     \"Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio;\"\n\nhaving apparently the same idea as had Coachman Toby, in \"The\nNight-Walker,\" when he exclaims--\n\n    \"Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,\n    And that will daunt the devil.\"[2]\n\nOn the second appearance of the illusion, however, Horatio leans to the\nopinion that it is really the ghost of the late king that he sees,\nprobably in consequence of the conversation that has taken place since\nthe former visitation; and he now appeals to the ghost for information\nthat may enable him to procure rest for his wandering soul. Again,\nduring his interview with Hamlet, when he discloses the secret of the\nspectre's appearance, though very guarded in his language, Horatio\nclearly intimates his conviction that he has seen the spirit of the late\nking.\n\n[Footnote 1: I. i. 46.]\n\n[Footnote 2: II. i.]\n\nThe same variation of opinion is visible in Hamlet himself; but, as\nmight be expected, with much more frequent alternations. When first he\nhears Horatio's story, he seems to incline to the belief that it must be\nthe work of some diabolic agency:\n\n    \"If it assume my noble father's person,\n    I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape,\n    And bid me hold my peace;\"[1]\n\nalthough, characteristically, in almost the next line he exclaims--\n\n     \"My father's spirit in arms! All is not well,\" etc.\n\nThis, too, seems to be the dominant idea in his mind when he is first\nbrought face to face with the apparition and exclaims--\n\n    \"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!--\n    Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,\n    Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,\n    Be thine intents wicked or charitable,\n    Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,\n    That I will speak to thee.\"[2]\n\nFor it cannot be supposed that Hamlet imagined that a \"goblin damned\"\ncould actually be the spirit of his dead father; and, therefore, the\nalternative in his mind must have been that he saw a devil assuming his\nfather's likeness--a form which the Evil One knew would most incite\nHamlet to intercourse. But even as he speaks, the other theory gradually\nobtains ascendency in his mind, until it becomes strong enough to induce\nhim to follow the spirit.\n\n[Footnote 1: I. ii. 244.]\n\n[Footnote 2: I. iv. 39.]\n\nBut whilst the devil-theory is gradually relaxing its hold upon Hamlet's\nmind, it is fastening itself with ever-increasing force upon the minds\nof his companions; and Horatio expresses their fears in words that are\nworth comparing with those just quoted from James's \"Daemonologie.\"\nHamlet responds to their entreaties not to follow the spectre thus--\n\n          \"Why, what should be the fear?\n    I do not set my life at a pin's fee;\n    And, for my soul, what can it do to that,\n    Being a thing immortal as itself?\"\n\nAnd Horatio answers--\n\n    \"What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,\n    Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff,\n    That beetles o'er his base into the sea,\n    And there assume some other horrible form,\n    Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,\n    And draw you into madness?\"\n\nThe idea that the devil assumed the form of a dead friend in order to\nprocure the \"tinsell\" of both body and soul of his victim is here\nvividly before the minds of the speakers of these passages.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: See ante, \u00a7 55.]\n\nThe subsequent scene with the ghost convinces Hamlet that he is not the\nvictim of malign influences--as far as he is capable of conviction, for\nhis very first words when alone restate the doubt:\n\n     \"O all you host of heaven! O earth! _What else?_ And shall I couple\n     hell?\"[1]\n\nand the enthusiasm with which he is inspired in consequence of this\ninterview is sufficient to support his certainty of conviction until the\ntime for decisive action again arrives. It is not until the idea of the\nplay-test occurs to him that his doubts are once more aroused; and then\nthey return with redoubled force:--\n\n                \"The spirit that I have seen\n    May be the devil: and the devil hath power\n    To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,\n    Out of my weakness and my melancholy,\n    (As he is very potent with such spirits,)\n    Abuses me to damn me.\"[2]\n\nAnd he again alludes to this in his speech to Horatio, just before the\nentry of the king and his train to witness the performance of the\nplayers.[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: I. v. 92.]\n\n[Footnote 2: II. ii. 627.]\n\n[Footnote 3: III. ii. 87.]\n\n59. This question was, in Shakspere's time, quite a legitimate element\nof uncertainty in the complicated problem that presented itself for\nsolution to Hamlet's ever-analyzing mind; and this being so, an apparent\ninconsistency in detail which has usually been charged upon Shakspere\nwith regard to this play, can be satisfactorily explained. Some critics\nare never weary of exclaiming that Shakspere's genius was so vast and\nuncontrollable that it must not be tested, or expected to be found\nconformable to the rules of art that limit ordinary mortals; that there\nare many discrepancies and errors in his plays that are to be condoned\nupon that account; in fact, that he was a very careless and slovenly\nworkman. A favourite instance of this is taken from \"Hamlet,\" where\nShakspere actually makes the chief character of the play talk of death\nas \"the bourne from whence no traveller returns\" not long after he has\nbeen engaged in a prolonged conversation with such a returned traveller.\n\nNow, no artist, however distinguished or however transcendent his\ngenius, is to be pardoned for insincere workmanship, and the greater the\nman, the less his excuse. Errors arising from want of information (and\nShakspere commits these often) may be pardoned if the means for\ncorrecting them be unattainable; but errors arising from mere\ncarelessness are not to be pardoned. Further, in many of these cases of\nsupposed contradiction there is an element of carelessness indeed; but\nit lies at the door of the critic, not of the author; and this appears\nto be true in the present instance. The dilemma, as it presented itself\nto the contemporary mind, must be carefully kept in view. Either the\nspirits of the departed could revisit this world, or they could not. If\nthey could not, then the apparitions mistaken for them must be devils\nassuming their forms. Now, the tendency of Hamlet's mind, immediately\nbefore the great soliloquy on suicide, is decidedly in favour of the\nlatter alternative. The last words that he has uttered, which are also\nthe last quoted here,[1] are those in which he declares most forcibly\nthat he believes the devil-theory possible, and consequently that the\ndead do not return to this world; and his utterances in his soliloquy\nare only an accentuate and outcome of this feeling of uncertainty. The\nvery root of his desire for death is that he cannot discard with any\nfeeling of certitude the Protestant doctrine that no traveller does\nafter death return from the invisible world, and that the so-called\nghosts are a diabolic deception.\n\n[Footnote 1: \u00a7 58, p. 59.]\n\n60. Another power possessed by the evil spirits, and one that excited\nmuch attention and created an immense amount of strife during\nElizabethan times, was that of entering into the bodies of human beings,\nor otherwise influencing them so as utterly to deprive them of all\nself-control, and render them mere automata under the command of the\nfiends. This was known as possession, or obsession. It was another of\nthe mediaeval beliefs against which the reformers steadily set their\nfaces; and all the resources of their casuistry were exhausted to expose\nits absurdity. But their position in this respect was an extremely\ndelicate one. On one side of them zealous Catholics were exorcising\ndevils, who shrieked out their testimony to the eternal truth of the\nHoly Catholic Church; whilst at the same time, on the other side, the\nzealous Puritans of the extremer sort were casting out fiends, who bore\nequally fervent testimony to the superior efficacy and purity of the\nProtestant faith. The tendency of the more moderate members of the\nparty, therefore was towards a compromise similar to that arrived at\nupon the question how the devils came by the forms in which they\nappeared upon the earth. They could not admit that devils could actually\nenter into and possess the body of a man in those latter days, although\nduring the earlier history of the Church such things had been permitted\nby Divine Providence for some inscrutable but doubtless satisfactory\nreason:--that was Catholicism. On the other hand, they could not for an\ninstant tolerate or even sanction the doctrine that devils had no power\nwhatever over humanity:--that was Atheism. But it was quite possible\nthat evil spirits, without actually entering into the body of a man,\nmight so infest, worry, and torment him, as to produce all the symptoms\nindicative of possession. The doctrine of obsession replaced that of\npossession; and, once adopted, was supported by a string of those\nquaint, conceited arguments so peculiar to the time.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 3rd\nDialogue.]\n\n61. But, as in all other cases, the refinements of the theologians had\nlittle or no effect upon the world outside their controversies. To the\nordinary mind, if a man's eyes goggled, body swelled, and mouth foamed,\nand it was admitted that these were the work of a devil, the question\nwhether the evil-doer were actually housed within the sufferer, or only\nhovered in his immediate neighbourhood, seemed a question of such minor\nimportance as to be hardly worth discussing--a conclusion that the lay\nmind is apt to come to upon other questions that appear portentous to\nthe divines--and the theory of possession, having the advantage in time\nover that of obsession, was hard to dislodge.\n\n62. One of the chief causes of the persistency with which the old belief\nwas maintained was the utter ignorance of the medical men of the period\non the subject of mental disease. The doctors of the time were mere\nchildren in knowledge of the science they professed; and to attribute a\ndisease, the symptoms of which they could not comprehend, to a power\noutside their control by ordinary methods, was a safe method of\nscreening a reputation which might otherwise have suffered. \"Canst thou\nnot minister to a mind diseased?\" cries Macbeth to the doctor, in one of\nthose moments of yearning after the better life he regrets, but cannot\nreturn to, which come over him now and again. No; the disease is beyond\nhis practice; and, although this passage has in it a deeper meaning than\nthe one attributed to it here, it well illustrates the position of the\nmedical man in such cases. Most doctors of the time were mere empirics;\ndabbled more or less in alchemy; and, in the treatment of mental\ndisease, were little better than children. They had for co-practitioners\nall who, by their credit with the populace for superior wisdom, found\nthemselves in a position to engage in a profitable employment. Priests,\npreachers, schoolmasters--Dr. Pinches and Sir Topazes--became so\ncommonly exorcists, that the Church found it necessary to forbid the\ncasting out of spirits without a special license for that purpose.[1]\nBut as the Reformers only combated the doctrine of possession upon\nstrictly theological grounds, and did not go on to suggest any\nsubstitute for the time-honoured practice of exorcism as a means for\ngetting rid of the admittedly obnoxious result of diabolic interference,\nit is not altogether surprising that the method of treatment did not\nimmediately change.\n\n[Footnote 1: 72nd Canon.]\n\n63. Upon this subject a book called \"Tryal of Witchcraft,\" by John\nCotta, \"Doctor in Physike,\" published in 1616, is extremely instructive.\nThe writer is evidently in advance of his time in his opinions upon the\nprincipal subject with which he professes to deal, and weighs the\nevidence for and against the reality of witchcraft with extreme\nprecision and fairness. In the course of his argument he has to\ndistinguish the symptoms that show a person to have been bewitched, from\nthose that point to a demoniacal possession.[1] \"Reason doth detect,\"\nsays he, \"the sicke to be afflicted by the immediate supernaturall power\nof the devil two wayes: the first way is by such things as are subject\nand manifest to the learned physicion only; the second is by such things\nas are subject and manifest to the vulgar view.\" The two signs by which\nthe \"learned physicion\" recognized diabolic intervention were: first,\nthe preternatural appearance of the disease from which the patient was\nsuffering; and, secondly, the inefficacy of the remedies applied. In\nother words, if the leech encountered any disease the symptoms of which\nwere unknown to him, or if, through some unforeseen circumstances, the\ndrug he prescribed failed to operate in its accustomed manner, a case of\ndemoniacal possession was considered to be conclusively proved, and the\nmedical man was merged in the magician.\n\n[Footnote 1: Ch. 10.]\n\n64. The second class of cases, in which the diabolic agency is palpable\nto the layman as well as the doctor, Cotta illustrates thus: \"In the\ntime of their paroxysmes or fits, some diseased persons have been seene\nto vomit crooked iron, coales, brimstone, nailes, needles, pinnes, lumps\nof lead, waxe, hayre, strawe, and the like, in such quantities, figure,\nfashion, and proportion as could never possiblie pass down, or arise up\nthorow the natural narrownesse of the throate, or be contained in the\nunproportionable small capacitie, naturall susceptibilitie, and position\nof the stomake.\" Possessed persons, he says, were also clairvoyant,\ntelling what was being said and done at a far distance; and also spoke\nlanguages which at ordinary times they did not understand, as their\nsuccessors, the modern spirit mediums, do. This gift of tongues was one\nof the prominent features of the possession of Will Sommers and the\nother persons exorcised by the Protestant preacher John Darrell, whose\nperformances as an exorcist created quite a domestic sensation in\nEngland at the close of the sixteenth century.[1] The whole affair was\ninvestigated by Dr. Harsnet, who had already acquired fame as an\niconoclast in these matters, as will presently be seen; but it would\nhave little more than an antiquarian interest now, were it not for the\nfact that Ben Jonson made it the subject of his satire in one of his\nmost humorous plays, \"The Devil is an Ass.\" In it he turns the\nlast-mentioned peculiarity to good account; for when Fitzdottrell, in\nthe fifth act, feigns madness, and quotes Aristophanes, and speaks in\nSpanish and French, the judicious Sir Paul Eithersides comes to the\nconclusion that \"it is the devil by his several languages.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: A True Relation of the Grievious Handling of William\nSommers, etc. London: T. Harper, 1641 (? 1601). The Tryall of Maister\nDarrell, 1599.]\n\n65. But more interesting, and more important for the present purpose,\nare the cases of possession that were dealt with by Father Parsons and\nhis colleagues in 1585-6, and of which Dr. Harsnet gave such a highly\nspiced and entertaining account in his \"Declaration of Egregious Popish\nImpostures,\" first published in the year 1603. It is from this work that\nShakspere took the names of the devils mentioned by Edgar, and other\nreferences made by him in \"King Lear;\" and an outline of the relation of\nthe play to the book will furnish incidentally much matter illustrative\nof the subject of possession. But before entering upon this outline, a\nbrief glance at the condition of affairs political and domestic, which\npartially caused and nourished these extraordinary eccentricities, is\nalmost essential to a proper understanding of them.\n\n66. The year 1586 was probably one of the most critical years that\nEngland has passed through since she was first a nation. Standing alone\namongst the European States, with even the Netherlanders growing cold\ntowards her on account of her ambiguous treatment of them, she had to\nfight out the battle of her independence against odds to all appearances\nirresistible. With Sixtus plotting her overthrow at Rome, Philip at\nMadrid, Mendoza and the English traitors at Paris, and Mary of Scotland\nat Chartley, while a third of her people were malcontent, and James the\nSixth was friend or enemy as it best suited his convenience, the outlook\nwas anything but reassuring for the brave men who held the helm in those\nstormy times. But although England owed her deliverance chiefly to the\nforethought and hardihood of her sons, it cannot be doubted that the\nsheer imbecility of her foes contributed not a little to that result. To\nboth these conditions she owed the fact that the great Armada, the\nembodiment of the foreign hatred and hostility, threatening to break\nupon her shores like a huge wave, vanished like its spray. Medina\nSidonia, with his querulous complaints and general ineffectuality,[1]\nwas hardly a match for Drake and his sturdy companions; nor were the\nleaders of the Babington conspiracy, the representatives and would-be\nleaders of the corresponding internal convulsion, the infatuated\nworshippers of the fair devil of Scotland, the men to cope for a moment\nwith the intellects of Walsingham and Burleigh.\n\n[Footnote 1: Froude, xii. p. 405.]\n\n67. The events which Harsnet investigated and wrote upon with\npolitico-theological animus formed an eddy in the main current of the\nBabington conspiracy. For some years before that plot had taken definite\nshape, seminary priests had been swarming into England from the\ncontinent, and were sedulously engaged in preaching rebellion in the\nrural districts, sheltered and protected by the more powerful of the\ndisaffected nobles and gentry--modern apostles, preparing the way before\nthe future regenerator of England, Cardinal Allen, the would-be Catholic\nArchbishop of Canterbury. Among these was one Weston, who, in his\nenthusiastic admiration for the martyr-traitor, Edmund Campion, had\nadopted the alias of Edmonds. This Jesuit was gifted with the power of\ncasting out devils, and he exercised it in order to prove the divine\norigin of the Holy Catholic faith, and, by implication, the duty of all\npersons religiously inclined, to rebel against a sovereign who was\nruthlessly treading it into the dust. The performances which Harsnet\nexamined into took place chiefly in the house of Lord Vaux at Hackney,\nand of one Peckham at Denham, in the end of the year 1585 and the\nbeginning of 1586. The possessed persons were Anthony Tyrell, another\nJesuit who rounded upon his friends in the time of their tribulation;[1]\nMarwood, Antony Babington's private servant, who subsequently found it\nconvenient to leave the country, and was never examined upon the\nsubject; Trayford and Mainy, two young gentlemen, and Sara and Friswood\nWilliams, and Anne Smith, maid-servants. Richard Mainy, the most\nedifying subject of them all, was seventeen only when the possession\nseized him; he had only just returned to England from Rheims, and, when\npassing through Paris, had come under the influence of Charles Paget and\nMorgan; so his antecedents appeared somewhat open to suspicion.[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: The Fall of Anthony Tyrell, by Persoun. See The Troubles of\nour Catholic Forefathers, by John Morris, p. 103.]\n\n[Footnote 2: He was examined by the Government as to his connection with\nthe Paris conspirators.--See State Papers, vol. clxxx. 16, 17.]\n\n68. With the truth or falsehood of the statements and deductions made by\nHarsnet, we have little or no concern. Western did not pretend to deny\nthat he had the power of exorcism, or that he exercised it upon the\npersons in question, but he did not admit the truth of any of the more\nridiculous stories which Harsnet so triumphantly brings forward to\nconvict him of intentional deceit; and his features, if the portrait in\nFather Morris's book is an accurate representation of him, convey an\nimpression of feeble, unpractical piety that one is loth to associate\nwith a malicious impostor. In addition to this, one of the witnesses\nagainst him, Tyrell, was a manifest knave and coward; another, Mainy, as\nconspicuous a fool; while the rest were servant-maids--all of them\ninterested in exonerating themselves from the stigma of having been\nadherents of a lost cause, at the expense of a ringleader who seemed to\nhave made himself too conspicuous to escape punishment. Furthermore, the\nevidence of these witnesses was not taken until 1598 and 1602, twelve\nand sixteen years after the events to which it related took place; and\nwhen taken, was taken by Harsnet, a violent Protestant and almost\nmaniacal exorcist-hunter, as the miscellaneous collection of literature\nevoked by his exposure of Parson Darrell's dealings with Will Sommers\nand others will show.\n\n69. Among the many devils' names mentioned by Harsnet in his\n\"Declaration,\" and in the examinations of witnesses annexed to it, the\nfollowing have undoubtedly been repeated in \"King Lear\":--Fliberdigibet,\nspelt in the play Flibbertigibbet; Hoberdidance called Hopdance and\nHobbididance; and Frateretto, who are called morris-dancers; Haberdicut,\nwho appears in \"Lear\" as Obidicut; Smolkin, one of Trayford's devils;\nModu, who possessed Mainy; and Maho, who possessed Sara Williams. These\ntwo latter devils have in the play managed to exchange the final vowels\nof their names, and appear as Modo and Mahu.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: In addition to these, Killico has probably been corrupted\ninto Pillicock--a much more probable explanation of the word than either\nof those suggested by Dyce in his glossary; and I have little doubt that\nthe ordinary reading of the line, \"Pur! the cat is gray!\" in Act III.\nvi. 47, is incorrect; that Pur is not an interjection, but the\nrepetition of the name of another devil, Purre, who is mentioned by\nHarsnet. The passage in question occurs only in the quartos, and\ntherefore the fact that there is no stop at all after the word \"Pur\"\ncannot be relied upon as helping to prove the correctness of this\nsupposition. On the other hand, there is nothing in the texts to justify\nthe insertion of the note of exclamation.]\n\n70. A comparison of the passages in \"King Lear\" spoken by Edgar when\nfeigning madness, with those in Harsnet's book which seem to have\nsuggested them, will furnish as vivid a picture as it is possible to\ngive of the state of contemporary belief upon the subject of\npossession. It is impossible not to notice that nearly all the allusions\nin the play refer to the performance of the youth Richard Mainy. Even\nEdgar's hypothetical account of his moral failings in the past seems to\nhave been an accurate reproduction of Mainy's conduct in some\nparticulars, as the quotation below will prove;[1] and there appears to\nbe so little necessity for these remarks of Edgar's, that it seems\nalmost possible that there may have been some point in these passages\nthat has since been lost. A careful search, however, has failed to\ndisclose any reason why Mainy should be held up to obloquy; and the\npassages in question were evidently not the result of a direct reference\nto the \"Declaration.\" After his examination by Harsnet in 1602, Mainy\nseems to have sunk into the insignificant position which he was so\ncalculated to adorn, and nothing more is heard of him; so the references\nto him must be accidental merely.\n\n[Footnote 1: \"He would needs have persuaded this examinate's sister to\nhave gone thence with him in the apparel of a youth, and to have been\nhis boy and waited upon him.... He urged this examinate divers times to\nhave yielded to his carnal desires, using very unfit tricks with her.\nThere was also a very proper woman, one Mistress Plater, with whom this\nexaminate perceived he had many allurements, showing great tokens of\nextraordinary affection towards her.\"--Evidence of Sara Williams,\nHarsnet, p. 190. Compare King Lear, Act iii. sc. iv. ll. 82-101; note\nespecially l. 84.]\n\n71. One curious little repetition in the play of a somewhat unimportant\nincident recorded by Harsnet is to be found in the fourth scene of the\nthird act, where Edgar says--\n\n\"Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through\nfire and through flame, and through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and\nquagmire; _that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his\npew_; set ratsbane by his porridge,\" etc.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: l. 51, et seq.]\n\nThe events referred to took place at Denham. A halter and some\nknife-blades were found in a corridor of the house. \"A great search was\nmade in the house to know how the said halter and knife-blades came\nthither, but it could not in any wise be found out, as it was pretended,\ntill Master Mainy in his next fit said, as it was reported, that the\ndevil layd them in the gallery, that some of those that were possessed\nmight either hang themselves with the halter, or kill themselves with\nthe blades.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Harsnet, p. 218.]\n\n72. But the bulk of the references relating to the possession of Mainy\noccur further on in the same scene:--\n\n\"_Fool._ This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.\n\n\"_Edgar._ Take heed o' the foul fiend: obey thy parents; keep thy word\njustly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse;[1] set not thy\nsweet heart on proud array: Tom's a-cold.\n\n\"_Lear._ What hast thou been?\n\n\"_Edgar._ A serving-man, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair,\nwore my gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did\nthe act of darkness with her;[2] swore as many oaths as I spake words,\nand broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that slept in the\ncontriving of lust, and waked to do it; wine loved I deeply; dice\ndearly; and in women out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of\near, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness,\ndog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the\nrustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to woman; keep thy foot out of\nbrothels, thy hand out of plackets,[3] thy pen from lenders' books, and\ndefy the foul fiend.\"[4]\n\n[Footnote 1: Cf. \u00a7 70, and note.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Cf. \u00a7 70, and note.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Placket probably here means pockets; not, as usual, the\nslip in a petticoat. Tom was possessed by Mahu, the prince of stealing.]\n\n[Footnote 4: l. 82, et seq.]\n\nThis must be read in conjunction with what Edgar says of himself\nsubsequently:--\n\n\"Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut;\nHobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder;\nFlibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses\nchamber-maids and waiting-women.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Act IV. i. 61.]\n\nThe following are the chief parts of the account given by Harsnet of the\nexorcism of Mainy by Weston--a most extraordinary transaction,--said to\nbe taken from Weston's own account of the matter. He was supposed to be\npossessed by the devils who represented the seven deadly sins, and \"by\ninstigation of the first of the seven, began to set his hands into his\nside, curled his hair, and used such gestures as Maister Edmunds present\naffirmed that that spirit was Pride.[1] Heerewith he began to curse and\nto banne, saying, 'What a poxe do I heare? I will stay no longer among a\ncompany of rascal priests, but goe to the court and brave it amongst my\nfellowes, the noblemen there assembled.'[2] ... Then Maister Edmunds did\nproceede againe with his exorcismes, and suddenly the sences of Mainy\nwere taken from him, his belly began to swell, and his eyes to stare,\nand suddainly he cried out, 'Ten pounds in the hundred!' he called for a\nscrivener to make a bond, swearing that he would not lend his money\nwithout a pawne.... There could be no other talke had with this spirit\nbut money and usury, so as all the company deemed this devil to be the\nauthor of Covetousnesse....[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: \"A serving-man, proud of heart and mind, that curled my\nhair,\" etc.--l. 87; cf. also l. 84. Curling the hair as a sign of\nMainy's possession is mentioned again, Harsnet, p. 57.]\n\n[Footnote 2: \"That ... swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke\nthem in the sweet face of heaven.\"--l. 90.]\n\n[Footnote 3: \"Keep ... thy pen out of lenders' books.\"--l. 100.]\n\n\"Ere long Maister Edmunds beginneth againe his exorcismes, wherein he\nhad not proceeded farre, but up cometh another spirit singing most\nfilthy and baudy songs: every word almost that he spake was nothing but\nribaldry. They that were present with one voyce affirmed that devill to\nbe the author of Luxury.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: \"Wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in women\nout-paramoured the Turk.\"--l. 93.]\n\n\"Envy was described by disdainful looks and contemptuous speeches;\nWrath, by furious gestures, and talke as though he would have fought;[1]\nGluttony, by vomiting;[2] and Sloth,[3] by gasping and snorting, as\nthough he had been asleepe.\"[4]\n\n[Footnote 1: \"Dog in madness, lion in prey.\"--l. 96.]\n\n[Footnote 2: \"Wolf in greediness.\"--Ibid.]\n\n[Footnote 3: \"Hog in sloth.\"--l. 95.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Harsnet, p. 278.]\n\nA sort of prayer-meeting was then held for the relief of the distressed\nyouth: \"Whereupon the spirit of Pride departed in the forme of a\nPeacocke; the spirit of Sloth in the likenesse of an Asse; the spirit of\nEnvy in the similitude of a Dog; the spirit of Gluttony in the forme of\na Wolfe.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: The words, \"Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in\ngreediness, dog in madness, lion in prey,\" are clearly an imperfect\nreminiscence of this part of the transaction.]\n\nThere is in another part of \"King Lear\" a further reference to the\nincidents attendant upon these exorcisms Edgar says,[1] \"The foul fiend\nhaunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale.\" This seems to refer to\nthe following incident related by Friswood Williams:--\n\n\"There was also another strange thing happened at Denham about a bird.\nMistris Peckham had a nightingale, which she kept in a cage, wherein\nMaister Dibdale took great delight, and would often be playing with it.\nThis nightingale was one night conveyed out of the cage, and being next\nmorning diligently sought for, could not be heard of, till Maister\nMainie's devil, in one of his fits (as it was pretended), said that the\nwicked spirit which was in this examinate's sister[2] had taken the bird\nout of the cage, and killed it in despite of Maister Dibdale.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Act III. sc. vi. l. 31.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Sara Williams.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Harsnet, p. 225.]\n\n73. The treatment to which, in consequence of his belief in possession,\nunfortunate persons like Mainy and Sommers, who were probably only\nsuffering from some harmless form of mental disease, were subjected, was\nhardly calculated to effect a cure. The most ignorant quack was\nconsidered perfectly competent to deal with cases which, in reality,\nrequire the most delicate and judicious management, combined with the\nprofoundest physiological, as well as psychological, knowledge. The\nordinary method of dealing with these lunatics was as simple as it was\nirritating. Bonds and confinement in a darkened room were the specifics;\nand the monotony of this treatment was relieved by occasional visits\nfrom the sage who had charge of the case, to mumble a prayer or mutter\nan exorcism. Another popular but unpleasant cure was by flagellation; so\nthat Romeo's\n\n    \"Not mad, but bound more than a madman is,\n    Shut up in prison, kept without my food,\n    Whipped and tormented,\"[1]\n\nif an exaggerated description of his own mental condition is in itself\nno inflated metaphor.\n\n[Footnote 1: I. ii. 55.]\n\n74. Shakspere, in \"The Comedy of Errors,\" and indirectly also in\n\"Twelfth Night,\" has given us intentionally ridiculous illustrations of\nscenes which he had not improbably witnessed, in the country at any\nrate, and which bring vividly before us the absurdity of the methods of\ndiagnosis and treatment usually adopted:--\n\n    _Courtesan._ How say you now? is not your husband mad?\n\n    _Adriana._ His incivility confirms no less.\n    Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;\n    Establish him in his true sense again,\n    And I will please you what you will demand.\n\n    _Luciana._ Alas! how fiery and how sharp he looks!\n\n    _Courtesan._ Mark how he trembles in his extasy!\n\n    _Pinch._ Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.[1]\n\n    _Ant. E._ There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.\n\n    _Pinch._ I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,\n    To yield possession to my holy prayers,\n    And to thy state of darkness his thee straight;\n    I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.\n\n    _Ant. E._ Peace, doting wizard, peace; I am not mad.\n\n    _Pinch._ O that thou wert not, poor distressed soul![2]\n\nAfter some further business, Pinch pronounces his opinion:\n\n    \"Mistress, both man and master are possessed;\n    I know it by their pale and deadly looks:\n    They must be bound, and laid in some dark room.\"[3]\n\nBut \"good doctor Pinch\" seems to have been mild even to feebleness in\nhis conjuration; many of his brethren in art had much more effective\nformulae. It seems that devils were peculiarly sensitive to any\nopprobrious epithets that chanced to be bestowed upon them. The skilful\nexorcist took advantage of this weakness, and, if he could only manage\nto keep up a flow of uncomplimentary remarks sufficiently long and\noffensive, the unfortunate spirit became embarrassed, restless,\nagitated, and finally took to flight. Here is a specimen of the\n\"nicknames\" which had so potent an effect, if Harsnet is to be\ncredited:--\n\n\"Heare therefore, thou senceless false lewd spirit, maister of devils,\nmiserable creature, tempter of men, deceaver of bad angels, captaine of\nheretiques, father of lyes, fatuous bestial ninnie, drunkard, infernal\ntheefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger-bitten impure sow,\nseely beast, truculent beast, cruel beast, bloody beast, beast of all\nblasts, the most bestiall acherontall spirit, smoakie spirit, Tartareus\nspirit!\"[4] Whether this objurgation terminates from loss of breath on\nthe part of the conjurer, or the precipitate departure of the spirit\naddressed, it is impossible to say; it is difficult to imagine any\nlogical reason for its conclusion.\n\n[Footnote 1: The cessation of the pulse was one of the symptoms of\npossession. See the case of Sommers, Tryal of Maister Darrell, 1599.]\n\n[Footnote 2: IV. iv. 48, 62.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. 95.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Harsnet, p. 113.]\n\n75. Occasionally other, and sometimes more elaborate, methods of\nexorcism than those mentioned by Romeo were adopted, especially when the\noperation was conducted for the purpose of bringing into prominence some\ngreat religious truth. The more evangelical of the operators adopted the\nplan of lying on the top of their patients, \"after the manner of Elias\nand Pawle.\"[1] But the Catholic exorcists invented and carried to\nperfection the greatest refinement in the art. The patient, seated in a\n\"holy chair,\" specially sanctified for the occasion, was compelled to\ndrink about a pint of a compound of sack and salad oil; after which\nrefreshment a pan of burning brimstone was held under his nose, until\nhis face was blackened by the smoke.[2] All this while the officiating\npriest kept up his invocation of the fiends in the manner illustrated\nabove; and, under such circumstances, it is extremely doubtful whether\nthe most determined character would not be prepared to see somewhat\nunusual phenomena for the sake of a short respite.\n\n[Footnote 1: The Tryall of Maister Darrell, 1599, p. 2.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Harsnet, p. 53.]\n\n76. Another remarkable method of exorcism was a process termed \"firing\nout\" the fiend.[1] The holy flame of piety resident in the priest was so\nterrible to the evil spirit, that the mere contact of the holy hand with\nthat part of the body of the afflicted person in which he was resident\nwas enough to make him shrink away into some more distant portion; so,\nby a judicious application of the hand, the exorcist could drive the\ndevil into some limb, from which escape into the body was impossible,\nand the evil spirit, driven to the extremity, was obliged to depart,\ndefeated and disgraced.[2] This influence could be exerted, however,\nwithout actual corporal contact, as the following quaint extract from\nHarsnet's book will show:--\n\n\"Some punie rash devil doth stay till the holy priest be come somewhat\nneare, as into the chamber where the demoniacke doth abide, purposing,\nas it seemes, to try a pluck with the priest; and then his hart sodainly\nfailing him (as Demas, when he saw his friend Chinias approach), cries\nout that he is tormented with the presence of the priest, and so is\nfierd out of his hold.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: This expression occurs in Sonnet cxliv., and evidently with\nthe meaning here explained; only the bad angel is supposed to fire out\nthe good one.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Harsnet, pp. 77, 96, 97.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. p. 65.]\n\n77. The more violent or uncommon of the bodily diseases were, as the\nquotation from Cotta's book shows[1], attributed to the same diabolic\nsource. In an era when the most profound ignorance prevailed with regard\nto the simplest laws of health; when the commoner diseases were\nconsidered as God's punishment for sin, and not attributable to natural\ncauses; when so eminent a divine as Bishop Hooper could declare that\n\"the air, the water, and the earth have no poison in themselves to hurt\ntheir lord and master man,\"[2] unless man first poisoned himself with\nsin; and when, in consequence of this ignorance and this false\nphilosophy, and the inevitable neglect attendant upon them, those\nfearful plagues known as \"the Black Death\" could, almost without notice,\nsweep down upon a country, and decimate its inhabitants--it is not\nwonderful that these terrible scourges were attributed to the\nmalevolence of the Evil One.\n\n[Footnote 1: See \u00a7\u00a7 63, 64.]\n\n[Footnote 2: I Hooper, p. 308. Parker Society.]\n\n78. But it is curious to notice that, although possessing such terrible\npowers over the bodies and minds of mortals, devils were not believed to\nbe potent enough to destroy the lives of the persons they persecuted\nunless they could persuade their victims to renounce God. This theory\nprobably sprang out of the limitation imposed by the Almighty upon the\npower of Satan during his temptation of Job, and the advice given to the\nsufferer by his wife, \"Curse God, and die.\" Hence, when evil spirits\nbegan their assaults upon a man, one of their first endeavours was to\ninduce him to do some act that would be equivalent to such a\nrenunciation. Sometimes this was a bond assigning the victim's soul to\nthe Evil One in consideration of certain worldly advantages; sometimes a\nformal denial of his baptism; sometimes a deed that drives away the\nguardian angel from his side, and leaves the devil's influence\nuncounteracted. In \"The Witch of Edmonton,\"[1] the first act that Mother\nSawyer demands her familiar to perform after she has struck her bargain,\nis to kill her enemy Banks; and the fiend has reluctantly to declare\nthat he cannot do so unless by good fortune he could happen to catch him\ncursing. Both Harpax[2] and Mephistophiles[3] suggest to their victims\nthat they have power to destroy their enemies, but neither of them is\nable to exercise it. Faust can torment, but not kill, his would-be\nmurderers; and Springius and Hircius are powerless to take Dorothea's\nlife. In the latter case it is distinctly the protection of the guardian\nangel that limits the diabolic power; so it is not unnatural that\nGratiano should think the cursing of his better angel from his side the\n\"most desperate turn\" that poor old Brabantio could have done himself,\nhad he been living to hear of his daughter's cruel death.[4] It is next\nto impossible for people in the present day to have any idea what a\nconsolation this belief in a good attendant spirit, specially appointed\nto guard weak mortals through life, to ward off evils, and guide to\neternal safety, must have been in a time when, according to the current\nbelief, any person, however blameless, however holy, was liable at any\nmoment to be possessed by a devil, or harried and tortured by a witch.\n\n[Footnote 1: Act II. sc. i.]\n\n[Footnote 2: The Virgin Martyr, Act III. sc. iii.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Dr. Faustus, Act I. sc. iii.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Othello, Act V. sc. ii. 204.]\n\n79. This leads by a natural sequence to the consideration of another and\nmore insidious form of attack upon mankind adopted by the evil spirits.\nPossession and obsession were methods of assault adopted against the\nwill of the afflicted person, and hardly to be avoided by him without\nthe supernatural intervention of the Church. The practice of witchcraft\nand magic involved the absolute and voluntary barter of body and soul to\nthe Evil One, for the purpose of obtaining a few short years of\nsuperhuman power, to be employed for the gratification of the culprit's\navarice, ambition, or desire for revenge.\n\n80. In the strange history of that most inexplicable mental disease, the\nwitchcraft epidemic, as it has been justly called by a high authority on\nsuch matters,[1] we moderns are, by the nature of our education and\nprejudices, completely incapacitated for sympathizing with either the\npersecutors or their victims. We are at a loss to understand how\nclear-sighted and upright men, like Sir Matthew Hale, could consent to\nbecome parties to a relentless persecution to the death of poor helpless\nbeings whose chief crime, in most cases, was, that they had suffered\nstarvation both in body and in mind. We cannot understand it, because\nnone of us believe in the existence of evil spirits. None; for although\nthere are still a few persons who nominally hold to the ancient faith,\nas they do to many other respectable but effete traditions, yet they\nwould be at a loss for a reason for the faith that is in them, should\nthey chance to be asked for one; and not one of them would be prepared\nto make the smallest material sacrifice for the sake of it. It is true\nthat the existence of evil spirits recently received a tardy and\nsomewhat hesitating recognition in our ecclesiastical courts,[2] which\nat first authoritatively declared that a denial of the existence of the\npersonality of the devil constituted a man a notorious evil liver, and\ndepraver of the Book of Common Prayer;[3] but this was promptly reversed\nby the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, under the auspices of\ntwo Low Church law lords and two archbishops, with the very vague\nproviso that \"they do not mean to decide that those doctrines are\notherwise than inconsistent with the formularities of the Church of\nEngland;\"[4] yet the very contempt with which these portentous\ndeclarations of Church law have been received shows how great has been\nthe fall of the once almost omnipotent minister of evil. The ancient\nSatan does indeed exist in some few formularies, but in such a\nwashed-out and flimsy condition as to be the reverse of conspicuous. All\nthat remains of him and of his subordinate legions is the ineffectual\nghost of a departed creed, for the resuscitation of which no man will\nmove a finger.\n\n[Footnote 1: See Dr. Carpenter in _Frazer_ for November, 1877.]\n\n[Footnote 2: See Jenkins v. Cooke, Law Reports, Admiralty and\nEcclesiastical Cases, vol. iv. p. 463, et seq.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. p. 499, Sir R. Phillimore.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Law Reports, I Probate Division, p. 102.]\n\n81. It is perfectly impossible for us, therefore, to comprehend,\nalthough by an effort we may perhaps bring ourselves to imagine, the\nhorror and loathing with which good men, entirely believing in the\nexistence and omnipresence of countless legions of evil spirits, able\nand anxious to perpetrate the mischiefs that it has been the object of\nthese pages in some part to describe, would regard those who, for their\nown selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered their hopes of\neternal happiness in exchange for an alliance with the devils, which\nwould render these ten times more capable than before of working their\nwicked wills. To men believing this, no punishment could seem too sudden\nor too terrible for such offenders against religion and society, and no\nmeans of possible detection too slight or far-fetched to be neglected;\nindeed, it might reasonably appear to them better that many innocent\npersons should perish, with the assurance of future reward for their\nundeserved sufferings, than that a single guilty one should escape\nundetected, and become the medium by which the devil might destroy more\nsouls.\n\n82. But the persecuted, far more than the persecutors, deserve our\nsympathy, although they rarely obtain it. It is frequently asserted that\nthe absolute truth of a doctrine is the only support that will enable\nits adherents successfully to weather the storms of persecution. Those\nwho assent to this proposition must be prepared to find a large amount\nof truth in the beliefs known to us under the name of witchcraft, if the\nposition is to be successfully maintained; for never was any sect\npersecuted more systematically, or with more relentlessness, than these\nlittle-offending heretics. Protestants and Catholics, Anglicans and\nCalvinists, so ready at all times to commit one another to the flames\nand to the headsman, found in this matter common ground, upon which all\ncould heartily unite for the grand purpose of extirpating error. When,\nout of the quiet of our own times, we look back upon the terrors of the\nTower, and the smoke and glare of Smithfield, we think with mingled pity\nand admiration of those brave men and women who, in the sixteenth\ncentury, enriched with their blood and ashes the soil from whence was to\nspring our political and religious freedom. But no whit of admiration,\nhardly a glimmer of pity, is even casually evinced for those poor\ncreatures who, neglected, despised, and abhorred, were, at the same\ntime, dying the same agonizing death, and passing through the torment of\nthe flames to that \"something after death--the undiscovered country,\"\nwithout the sweet assurance which sustained their better-remembered\nfellow-sufferers, that beyond the martyr's cross was waiting the\nmartyr's crown. No such hope supported those who were condemned to die\nfor the crime of witchcraft: their anticipations of the future were as\ndreary as their memories of the past, and no friendly voice was raised,\nor hand stretched out, to encourage or console them during that last sad\njourney. Their hope of mercy from man was small--strangulation before\nthe application of the fire, instead of the more lingering and painful\ndeath at most;--their hope of mercy from Heaven, nothing; yet, under\nthese circumstances, the most auspicious perhaps that could be imagined\nfor the extirpation of a heretical belief, persecution failed to effect\nits object. The more the Government burnt the witches, the more the\ncrime of witchcraft spread; and it was not until an attitude of\ncontemptuous toleration was adopted towards the culprits that the belief\ndied down, gradually but surely, not on account of the conclusiveness of\nthe arguments directed against it, but from its own inherent lack of\nvitality.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: See Mr. Lecky's elaborate and interesting description of\nthe demise of the belief in the first chapter of his History of the Rise\nof Rationalism in Europe.]\n\n83. The history and phenomena of witchcraft have been so admirably\ntreated by more than one modern investigator, as to render it\nunnecessary to deal exhaustively with a subject which presents such a\nvast amount of material for arrangement and comment. The scope of the\nfollowing remarks will therefore be limited to a consideration of such\nfeatures of the subject as appear to throw light upon the\nsupernaturalism in \"Macbeth.\" This consideration will be carried out\nwith some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological\nlearning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into\nthe interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who\nplay such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but\nare, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian\npaganism. It will be the object of the following pages to illustrate the\ncontemporary belief concerning witches and their powers, by showing that\nnearly every characteristic point attributed to the sisters has its\ncounterpart in contemporary witch-lore; that some of the allusions,\nindeed, bear so strong a resemblance to certain events that had\ntranspired not many years before \"Macbeth\" was written, that it is not\nimprobable that Shakspere was alluding to them in much the same\noff-hand, cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when writing\n\"King Lear.\"\n\n84. The first critic whose comments upon this subject call for notice is\nthe eminent Gervinus. In evident ignorance of the history of witchcraft,\nhe says, \"In the witches Shakspere has made use of the popular belief in\nevil geniuses and in adverse persecutors of mankind, and has produced a\nsimilar but darker race of beings, just as he made use of the belief in\nfairies in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' This creation is less\nattractive and complete, but not less masterly. The poet, in the text of\nthe play itself, calls these beings witches only derogatorily; they call\nthemselves weird sisters; the Fates bore this denomination, and the\nsisters remind us indeed of the Northern Fates or Valkyries. They appear\nwild and weather-beaten in exterior and attire, common in speech,\nignoble, half-human creatures, ugly as the Evil One, and in like manner\nold, and of neither sex. They are guided by more powerful masters, their\nwork entirely springs from delight in evil, and they are wholly devoid\nof human sympathies.... They are simply the embodiment of inward\ntemptation; they come in storm and vanish in air, like corporeal\nimpulses, which, originating in the blood, cast up bubbles of sin and\nambition in the soul; they are weird sisters only in the sense in which\nmen carry their own fates within their bosoms.\"[1] This criticism is so\nentirely subjective and unsupported by evidence that it is difficult to\ndeal satisfactorily with it. It will be shown hereafter that this\ndescription does not apply in the least to the Scandinavian Norns,\nwhile, so far as it is true to Shakspere's text, it does not clash with\ncontemporary records of the appearance and actions of witches.\n\n[Footnote 1: Shakspere Commentaries, translated by F.E. Bunnert, p.\n591.]\n\n85. The next writer to bring forward a view of this character was the\nRev. F.G. Fleay, the well-known Shakspere critic, whose ingenious\nefforts in iconoclasm cause a curious alternation of feeling between\nadmiration and amazement. His argument is unfortunately mixed up with a\nquestion of textual criticism; for he rejects certain scenes in the play\nas the work of the inferior dramatist Middleton.[1] The question\nrelating to the text will only be noticed so far as it is inextricably\ninvolved with the argument respecting the nature of the weird sisters.\nMr. Fleay's position is, shortly, this. He thinks that Shakspere's play\ncommenced with the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the third scene of\nthe first act, and that the weird sisters who subsequently take part in\nthat scene are Norns, not witches; and that in the first scene of the\nfourth act, Shakspere discarded the Norns, and introduced three\nentirely new characters, who were intended to be genuine witches.\n\n[Footnote 1: Of the witch scenes Mr. Fleay rejects Act I. sc. i., and\nsc. iii. down to l. 37, and Act III. sc. v.]\n\n86. The evidence which can be produced in support of this theory, apart\nfrom question of style and probability, is threefold. The first proof is\nderived from a manuscript entitled \"The Booke of Plaies and Notes\nthereof, for Common Pollicie,\" written by a somewhat famous\nmagician-doctor, Simon Forman, who was implicated in the murder of Sir\nThomas Overbury. He says, \"In 'Macbeth,' at the Globe, 1610, the 20th\nApril, Saturday, there was to be observed first how Macbeth and Banquo,\ntwo noblemen of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them\nthree women fairies, or nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times\nunto him, 'Hail, Macbeth, King of Codor, for thou shalt be a king, but\nthou shalt beget no kings,'\" etc.[1] This, if Forman's account held\ntogether decently in other respects, would be strong, although not\nconclusive, evidence in favour of the theory; but the whole note is so\nfull of inconsistencies and misstatements, that it is not unfair to\nconclude, either that the writer was not paying marvellous attention to\nthe entertainment he professed to describe, or that the player's copy\ndiffered in many essential points from the present text. Not the least\nconspicuous of these inconsistencies is the account of the sisters'\ngreeting of Macbeth just quoted. Subsequently Forman narrates that\nDuncan created Macbeth Prince of Cumberland; and that \"when Macbeth had\nmurdered the king, the blood on his hands could not be washed off by\nany means, nor from his wife's hands, which handled the bloody daggers\nin hiding them, by which means they became both much amazed and\naffronted.\" Such a loose narration cannot be relied upon if the text in\nquestion contains any evidence at all rebutting the conclusion that the\nsisters are intended to be \"women fairies, or nymphs.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: See Furness, Variorum, p. 384.]\n\n87. The second piece of evidence is the story of Macbeth as it is\nnarrated by Holinshed, from which Shakspere derived his material. In\nthat account we read that \"It fortuned as Makbeth and Banquho journied\ntoward Fores, where the king then laie, they went sporting by the waie\ntogither without other companie, saue onlie themselues, passing thorough\nthe woods and fields, when suddenlie in the middest of a laund there met\nthem three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of\nelder world, whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering much at the\nsight, the first of them spake and said; 'All haile, Makbeth, thane of\nGlammis' (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie and office by\nthe death of his father Sinell). The second of them said; 'Haile,\nMakbeth, thane of Cawder.' But the third said; 'All haile, Makbeth, that\nheereafter shall be King of Scotland.' ... Afterwards the common opinion\nwas that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would\nsay) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued\nwith knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science, because\neveriething came to passe as they had spoken.\"[1] This is all that is\nheard of these \"goddesses of Destinie\" in Holinshed's narrative. Macbeth\nis warned to \"beware Macduff\"[2] by \"certeine wizzards, in whose words\nhe put great confidence;\" and the false promises were made to him by \"a\ncerteine witch, whome he had in great trust, (who) had told him that he\nshould neuer be slaine with man borne of anie woman, nor vanquished till\nthe wood of Bernane came to the castell of Dunsinane.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Holinshed, Scotland, p. 170, c. 2, l. 55.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Macbeth, IV. l. 71. Holinshed, p. 174, c. 2, l. 10.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. l. 13.]\n\n88. In this account we find that the supernatural communications adopted\nby Shakspere were derived from three sources; and the contention is that\nhe has retained two of them--the \"goddesses of Destinie\" and the\nwitches; and the evidence of this retention is the third proof relied\non, namely, that the stage direction in the first folio, Act IV. sc. i.,\nis, \"Enter Hecate and the _other_ three witches,\" when three characters\nsupposed to be witches are already upon the scene. Holinshed's narrative\nmakes it clear that the idea of the \"goddesses of Destinie\" was\ndistinctly suggested to Shakspere's mind, as well as that of the\nwitches, as the mediums of supernatural influence. The question is, did\nhe retain both, or did he reject one and retain the other? It can\nscarcely be doubted that one such influence running through the play\nwould conduce to harmony and unity of idea; and as Shakspere, not a\nservile follower of his source in any case, has interwoven in \"Macbeth\"\nthe totally distinct narrative of the murder of King Duffe,[1] it is\nhardly to be supposed that he would scruple to blend these two\ndifferent sets of characters if any advantage were to be gained by so\ndoing. As to the stage direction in the first folio, it is difficult to\nsee what it would prove, even supposing that the folio were the most\nscrupulous piece of editorial work that had ever been effected. It\npresupposes that the \"weird sisters\" are on the stage as well as the\nwitches. But it is perfectly clear that the witches continue the\ndialogue; so the other more powerful beings must be supposed to be\nstanding silent in the background--a suggestion so monstrous that it is\nhardly necessary to refer to the slovenliness of the folio stage\ndirections to show how unsatisfactory an argument based upon one of them\nmust be.\n\n[Footnote 1: Ibid. p. 149. \"A sort of witches dwelling in a towne of\nMurreyland called Fores\" (c. 2, l. 30) were prominent in this account.]\n\n89. The evidence of Forman and Holinshed has been stated fully, in order\nthat the reader may be in possession of all the materials that may be\nnecessary for forming an accurate judgment upon the point in question;\nbut it seems to be less relied upon than the supposition that the\nappearance and powers of the beings in the admittedly genuine part of\nthe third scene of the first act are not those formerly attributed to\nwitches, and that Shakspere, having once decided to represent Norns,\nwould never have degraded them \"to three old women, who are called by\nPaddock and Graymalkin, sail in sieves, kill swine, serve Hecate, and\ndeal in all the common charms, illusions, and incantations of vulgar\nwitches. The three who 'look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth, and\nyet are on't;' they who can 'look into the seeds of time, and say which\ngrain will grow;' they who seem corporal, but melt into the air, like\nbubbles of the earth; the weyward sisters, who make themselves air, and\nhave in them more than mortal knowledge, are not beings of this\nstamp.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: New Shakspere Society Transactions, vol. i. p.342; Fleay's\nShakspere Manual, p. 248.]\n\n90. Now, there is a great mass of contemporary evidence to show that\nthese supposed characteristics of the Norns are, in fact, some of the\nchief attributes of the witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth\ncenturies. If this be so--if it can be proved that the supposed\n\"goddesses of Destinie\" of the play in reality possess no higher powers\nthan could be acquired by ordinary communication with evil spirits, then\nno weight must be attached to the vague stage direction in the folio,\noccurring as it does in a volume notorious for the extreme carelessness\nwith which it was produced; and it must be admitted that the \"goddesses\nof Destinie\" of Holinshed were sacrificed for the sake of the witches.\nIf, in addition to this, it can be shown that there was a very\nsatisfactory reason why the witches should have been chosen as the\nrepresentatives of the evil influence instead of the Norns, the argument\nwill be as complete as it is possible to make it.\n\n91. But before proceeding to examine the contemporary evidence, it is\nnecessary, in order to obtain a complete conception of the mythological\nview of the weird sisters, to notice a piece of criticism that is at\nonce an expansion of, and a variation upon, the theory just stated.[1]\nIt is suggested that the sisters of \"Macbeth\" are but three in number,\nbut that Shakspere drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a portion of the\nmaterial he used in constructing these characters, and that he derived\nthe rest from the traditions of contemporary witchcraft; in fact, that\nthe \"sisters\" are hybrids between Norns and witches. The supposed proof\nof this is that each sister exercises the special function of one of the\nNorns. \"The third is the special prophetess, whilst the first takes\ncognizance of the past, and the second of the present, in affairs\nconnected with humanity. These are the tasks of Urda, Verdandi, and\nSkulda. The first begins by asking, 'When shall we three meet again?'\nThe second decides the time: 'When the battle's lost or won.' The third,\nthe future prophesies: 'That will be ere set of sun.' The first again\nasks, 'Where?' The second decides: 'Upon the heath.' The third, the\nfuture prophesies: 'There to meet with Macbeth.'\" But their _r\u00f4le_ is\nmost clearly brought out in the famous \"Hails\":--\n\n     _1st. Urda._ [Past.] All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of\n     Glamis!\n\n     _2nd. Verdandi._ [Present.] All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane\n     of Cawdor!\n\n     _3rd. Skulda._ All hail, Macbeth! thou shalt be king hereafter.[2]\n\nThis sequence is supposed to be retained in other of the sisters'\nspeeches; but a perusal of these will soon show that it is only in the\nsecond of the above quotations that it is recognizable with any\ndefiniteness; and this, it must be remembered, is an almost verbal\ntranscript from Holinshed, and not an original conception of\nShakspere's, who might feel himself quite justified in changing the\ncharacters of the speakers, while retaining their utterances. In\naddition to this, the natural sequence is in many cases utterly and\nunnecessarily violated; as, for instance, in Act I. sc. iii., where\nUrda, who should be solely occupied with past matters, predicts, with\nextreme minuteness, the results that are to follow from her projected\nvoyage to Aleppo, and that without any expression of resentment, but\nrather with promise of assistance, from Skulda, whose province she is\nthus invading.\n\n[Footnote 1: In a letter to _The Academy_, 8th February, 1879, signed\n\"Charlotte Carmichael.\"]\n\n[Footnote 2: I have taken the liberty of printing this quotation as it\nstands in the text. The writer in _The Academy_ has effected a\nrearrangement of the dialogue by importing what might be Macbeth's\nreplies to the three sisters from his speech beginning at l. 70, and\nalternating them with the different \"Hails,\" which, in addition, are not\ncorrectly quoted--for what purpose it is difficult to see. It may be\nadded here that in a subsequent number of _The Academy_, a long letter\nupon the same subject appeared from Mr. Karl Blind, which seems to prove\nlittle except the author's erudition. He assumes the Teutonic origin of\nthe sisters throughout, and, consequently, adduces little evidence in\nfavour of the theory. One of his points is the derivation of the word\n\"weird\" or \"wayward,\" which, as will be shown subsequently, was applied\nto witches. Another point is, that the witch scenes savour strongly of\nthe staff-rime of old German poetry. It is interesting to find two\nupholders of the Norn-theory relying mainly for proof of their position\nupon a scene (Act I. sc. i.) which Mr Fleay says that the very statement\nof this theory (p. 249) must brand as spurious. The question of the\nsisters' beards too, regarding which Mr. Blind brings somewhat\nfar-fetched evidence, is, I think, more satisfactorily settled by the\nquotations in the text.]\n\n92. But this latter piece of criticism seems open to one grave\nobjection to which the former is not liable. Mr. Fleay separates the\nportions of the play which are undoubtedly to be assigned to witches\nfrom the parts he gives to his Norns, and attributes them to different\ncharacters; the other mixes up the witch and Norn elements in one\nconfused mass. The earlier critic saw the absurdity of such a\nsupposition when he wrote: \"Shakspere may have raised the wizard and\nwitches of the latter parts of Holinshed to the weird sisters of the\nformer parts, but the converse process is impossible.\"[1] Is it\nconceivable that Shakspere, who, as most people admit, was a man of some\npoetic feeling, being in possession of the beautiful Norn-legend--the\nsilent Fate-goddesses sitting at the foot of Igdrasil, the mysterious\ntree of human existence, and watering its roots with water from the\nsacred spring--could, ruthlessly and without cause, mar the charm of the\nlegend by the gratuitous introduction of the gross and primarily\nunpoetical details incident to the practice of witchcraft? No man with a\nglimmer of poetry in his soul will imagine it for a moment. The\nseparation of characters is more credible than this; but if that theory\ncan be shown to be unfounded, there is no improbability in supposing\nthat Shakspere, finding that the question of witchcraft was, in\nconsequence of events that had taken place not long before the time of\nthe production of \"Macbeth,\" absorbing the attention of all men, from\nking to peasant, should set himself to deal with such a popular subject,\nand, by the magic of his art, so raise it out of its degradation into\nthe region of poetry, that men should wonder and say, \"Can this be\nwitchcraft indeed?\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Shakspere Manual, p. 249.]\n\n93. In comparing the evidence to be deduced from the contemporary\nrecords of witchcraft with the sayings and doings of the sisters in\n\"Macbeth,\" those parts of the play will first be dealt with upon which\nno doubt as to their genuineness has ever been cast, and which are\nasserted to be solely applicable to Norns. If it can be shown that these\ndescribe witches rather than Norns, the position that Shakspere\nintentionally substituted witches for the \"goddesses of Destinie\"\nmentioned in his authority is practically unassailable. First, then, it\nis asserted that the description of the appearance of the sisters given\nby Banquo applies to Norns rather than witches--\n\n    \"They look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,\n    And yet are on't.\"\n\nThis question of applicability, however, must not be decided by the\nconsideration of a single sentence, but of the whole passage from which\nit is extracted; and, whilst considering it, it should be carefully\nborne in mind that it occurs immediately before those lines which are\nchiefly relied upon as proving the identity of the sisters with Urda,\nVerdandi, and Skulda.\n\nBanquo, on seeing the sisters, says--\n\n                          \"What are these,\n    So withered and so wild in their attire,\n    That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,\n    And yet are on't? Live you, or are you aught\n    That man may question? You seem to understand me,\n    By each at once her chappy finger laying\n    Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,\n    And yet your beards forbid me to interpret\n    That you are so.\"\n\nIt is in the first moment of surprise that the sisters, appearing so\nsuddenly, seem to Banquo unlike the inhabitants of this earth. When he\nrecovers from the shock and is capable of deliberate criticism, he sees\nchappy fingers, skinny lips--in fact, nothing to distinguish them from\npoverty-stricken, ugly old women but their beards. A more accurate\npoetical counterpart to the prose descriptions given by contemporary\nwriters of the appearance of the poor creatures who were charged with\nthe crime of witchcraft could hardly have been penned. Scot, for\ninstance, says, \"They are women which commonly be old, lame,\nbleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles.... They are leane and\ndeformed, showing melancholie in their faces;\"[1] and Harsnet describes\na witch as \"an old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees\nmeeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff, hollow-eyed,\nuntoothed, furrowed, having her lips trembling with palsy, going\nmumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, yet\nhath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab.\"[2] It must be remembered\nthat these accounts are by two sceptics, who saw nothing in the witches\nbut poor, degraded old women. In a description which assumes their\nsupernatural power such minute details would not be possible; yet there\nis quite enough in Banquo's description to suggest neglect, squalor, and\nmisery. But if this were not so, there is one feature in the\ndescription of the sisters that would settle the question once and for\never. The beard was in Elizabethan times the recognized characteristic\nof the witch. In one old play it is said, \"The women that come to us for\ndisguises must wear beards, and that's to say a token of a witch;\"[3]\nand in another, \"Some women have beards; marry, they are half\nwitches;\"[4] and Sir Hugh Evans gives decisive testimony to the fact\nwhen he says of the disguised Falstaff, \"By yea and no, I think, the\n'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard; I\nspy a great peard under her muffler.\"[5]\n\n[Footnote 1: Discoverie, book i. ch. 3, p. 7.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Harsnet, Declaration, p. 136.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Honest Man's Fortune, II. i. Furness, Variorum, p. 30.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Dekker's Honest Whore, sc. x. l. 126.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. sc. ii.]\n\n94. Every item of Banquo's description indicates that he is speaking of\nwitches; nothing in it is incompatible with that supposition. Will it\napply with equal force to Norns? It can hardly be that these mysterious\nmythical beings, who exercise an incomprehensible yet powerful influence\nover human destiny, could be described with any propriety in terms so\nrevolting. A veil of wild, weird grandeur might be thrown around them;\nbut can it be supposed that Shakspere would degrade them by representing\nthem with chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards? It is particularly to\nbe noticed, too, that although in this passage he is making an almost\nverbal transcript from Holinshed, these details are interpolated without\nthe authority of the chronicle. Let it be supposed, for an instant,\nthat the text ran thus--\n\n    _Banquo._ ... What are these\n    So withered and so wild in their attire,[1]\n    That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,\n    And yet are on't?[2] Live you, or are you ought\n    That man may question?[3]\n\n     _Macbeth._ Speak if you can, what are you?\n\n     _1st Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis![4]\n\n     _2nd Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor![5]\n\n     _3rd Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! thou shall be king hereafter.[6]\n\nThis is so accurate a dramatization of the parallel passage in\nHolinshed, and so entire in itself, that there is some temptation to ask\nwhether it was not so written at first, and the interpolated lines\nsubsequently inserted by the author. Whether this be so or not, the\nquestion must be put--Why, in such a passage, did Shakspere insert three\nlines of most striking description of the appearance of witches? Can any\nother reason be suggested than that he had made up his mind to replace\nthe \"goddesses of Destinie\" by the witches, and had determined that\nthere should be no possibility of any doubt arising about it?\n\n[Footnote 1: Three women in strange and wild apparel,]\n\n[Footnote 2: resembling creatures of elder world,]\n\n[Footnote 3: whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering much at the\nsight, the first of them spake and said;]\n\n[Footnote 4: 'All haile, Makbeth, thane of Glammis' (for he had latelie\nentered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father\nSinell).]\n\n[Footnote 5: The second of them said; 'Haile, Makbeth, thane of\nCawder.']\n\n[Footnote 6: But the third said; 'All haile, Makbeth, that heereafter\nshalt be king of Scotland.']\n\n95. The next objection is, that the sisters exercise powers that witches\ndid not possess. They can \"look into the seeds of time, and say which\ngrain will grow, and which will not.\" In other words, they foretell\nfuture events, which witches could not do. But this is not the fact. The\nrecorded witch trials teem with charges of having prophesied what things\nwere about to happen; no charge is more common. The following, quoted by\nCharles Knight in his biography of Shakspere, might almost have\nsuggested the simile in the last-mentioned lines. Johnnet Wischert is\n\"indicted for passing to the green growing corn in May, twenty-two years\nsince or thereby, sitting thereupon tymous in the morning before the\nsun-rising, and being there found and demanded what she was doing,\nthou[1] answered, I shall tell thee; I have been peeling the blades of\nthe corn. I find it will be a dear year, the blade of the corn grows\nwithersones [contrary to the course of the sun], and when it grows\nsonegatis about [with the course of the sun] it will be good cheap\nyear.\"[2] The following is another apt illustration of the power, which\nhas been translated from the unwieldy Lowland Scotch account of the\ntrial of Bessie Roy in 1590. The Dittay charged her thus: \"You are\nindicted and accused that whereas, when you were dwelling with William\nKing in Barra, about twelve years ago, or thereabouts, and having gone\ninto the field to pluck lint with other women, in their presence made a\ncompass in the earth, and a hole in the midst thereof; and afterwards,\nby thy conjurations thou causedst a great worm to come up first out of\nthe said hole, and creep over the compass; and next a little worm came\nforth, which crept over also; and last [thou] causedst a great worm to\ncome forth, which could not pass over the compass, but fell down and\ndied. Which enchantment and witchcraft thou interpretedst in this form:\nthat the first great worm that crept over the compass was the goodman\nWilliam King, who should live; and the little worm was a child in the\ngoodwife's womb, who was unknown to any one to be with child, and that\nthe child should live; and, thirdly, the last great worm thou\ninterpretedst to be the goodwife, who should die: _which came to pass\nafter thy speaking_.\"[3] Surely there could hardly be plainer instances\nof looking \"into the seeds of time, and saying which grain will grow,\nand which will not,\" than these.\n\n[Footnote 1: Sic.]\n\n[Footnote 2: p. 438.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, I. ii. 207. Cf. also Ibid. pp. 212, 213, and 231,\nwhere the crime is described as \"foreknowledge.\"]\n\n96. Perhaps this is the most convenient place for pointing out the full\nmeaning of the first scene of \"Macbeth,\" and its necessary connection\nwith the rest of the play. It is, in fact, the fag-end of a witches'\nsabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong resemblance to\nthe scene at the commencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on\nsuch a subject would be tedious and unmeaning at the commencement of the\nplay. The audience is therefore left to assume that the witches have\nmet, performed their conjurations, obtained from the evil spirits the\ninformation concerning Macbeth's career that they desired to obtain, and\nperhaps have been commanded by the fiends to perform the mission they\nsubsequently carry through. All that is needed for the dramatic effect\nis a slight hint of probable diabolical interference, and that Macbeth\nis to be the special object of it; and this is done in as artistic a\nmanner as is perhaps imaginable. In the first scene they obtain their\ninformation; in the second they utter their prediction. Every minute\ndetail of these scenes is based upon the broad, recognized facts of\nwitchcraft.\n\n97. It is also suggested that the power of vanishing from the sight\npossessed by the sisters--the power to make themselves air--was not\ncharacteristic of witches. But this is another assertion that would not\nhave been made, had the authorities upon the subject been investigated\nwith only slight attention. No feature of the crime of witchcraft is\nbetter attested than this; and the modern witch of story-books is still\nrepresented as riding on a broomstick--a relic of the enchanted rod with\nwhich the devil used to provide his worshippers, upon which to come to\nhis sabbaths.[1] One of the charges in the indictment against the\nnotorious Dr. Fian ran thus: \"Fylit for suffering himself to be careit\nto North Berwik kirk, as if he had bene souchand athoirt [whizzing\nabove] the eird.\"[2] Most effectual ointments were prepared for\neffecting this method of locomotion, which have been recorded, and are\ngiven below[3] as an illustration of the wild kind of recipes which\nShakspere rendered more grim in his caldron scene. The efficacy of these\nointments is well illustrated by a story narrated by Reginald Scot,\nwhich unfortunately, on account of certain incidents, cannot be given in\nhis own terse words. The hero of it happened to be staying temporarily\nwith a friend, and on one occasion found her rubbing her limbs with a\ncertain preparation, and mumbling the while. After a time she vanished\nout of his sight; and he, being curious to investigate the affair,\nrubbed himself with the remaining ointment, and almost immediately he\nfound himself transported a long distance through the air, and\ndeposited right in the very midst of a witches' sabbath. Naturally\nalarmed, he cried out, \"'In the name of God, what make I heere?' and\nupon those words the whole assemblie vanished awaie.\"[4]\n\n[Footnote 1: Scot, book iii. ch. iii. p. 43.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Pitcairn, I. ii. 210. Cf. also Ibid. p. 211. Scot, book\niii. ch. vii. p. 51.]\n\n[Footnote 3: \"Sundrie receipts and ointments made and used for the\ntransportation of witches, and other miraculous effects.\n\n\"Rx. The fat of yoong children, & seeth it with water in a brazen\nvessell, reseruing the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the\nbottome, which they laie up & keep untill occasion serveth to use it.\nThey put hereinto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas, & Soote.\"\nThis is given almost verbatim in Middleton's Witch.\n\n\"Rx. Sium, Acarum Vulgare, Pentaphyllon, the bloud of a Flittermouse,\nSolanum Somniferum, & oleum.\"\n\nIt would seem that fern seed had the same virtue.--I Hen. IV. II. i.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Scot, book iii. ch. vi. p. 46.]\n\n98. The only vestige of a difficulty, therefore, that remains is the use\nof the term \"weird sisters\" in describing the witches. It is perfectly\nclear that Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym for the\n\"goddesses of Destinie;\" but with such a mass of evidence as has been\nproduced to show that Shakspere elected to introduce witches in the\nplace of the Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose that\nhe might retain this term as a poetical and not unsuitable description\nof the characters to whom it was applied. And this is the less\nimprobable as it can be shown that both words were at times applied to\nwitches. As the quotation given subsequently[1] proves, the Scotch\nwitches were in the habit of speaking of the frequenters of a particular\nsabbath as \"the sisters;\" and in Heywood's \"Witches of Lancashire,\" one\nof the characters says about a certain act of supposed witchcraft, \"I\nremember that some three months since I crossed a wayward woman; one\nthat I now suspect.\"[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: \u00a7 107, p. 114.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. iii.]\n\n99. Here, then, in the very stronghold of the supposed proof of the\nNorn-theory, it is possible to extract convincing evidence that the\nsisters are intended to be merely witches. It is not surprising that\nother portions of the play in which the sisters are mentioned should\nconfirm this view. Banquo, upon hearing the fulfilment of the prophecy\nof the second witch, clearly expresses his opinion of the origin of the\n\"foreknowledge\" he has received, in the exclamation, \"What, can the\ndevil speak true?\" For the devil most emphatically spoke through the\nwitches; but how could he in any sense be said to speak through Norns?\nAgain, Macbeth informs his wife that on his arrival at Forres, he made\ninquiry into the amount of reliance that could be placed in the\nutterances of the witches, \"and learned by the perfectest report that\nthey had more in them than mortal knowledge.\"[1] This would be possible\nenough if witches were the subjects of the investigation, for their\nchief title to authority would rest upon the general opinion current in\nthe neighbourhood in which they dwelt; but how could such an inquiry be\ncarried out successfully in the case of Norns? It is noticeable, too,\nthat Macbeth knows exactly where to find the sisters when he wants them;\nand when he says--\n\n    \"More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,\n    By the worst means, the worst,\"[2]\n\nhe makes another clear allusion to the traffic of the witches with the\ndevil. After the events recorded in Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of\nthe prophecies upon which he relies as \"the equivocation of the\nfiend,\"[3] and the prophets as \"these juggling fiends;\"[4] and with\nreason--for he has seen and heard the very devils themselves, the\nmasters of the witches and sources of all their evil power. Every point\nin the play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show that\nShakspere intentionally replaced the \"goddesses of Destinie\" by witches;\nand that the supposed Norn origin of these characters is the result of a\nsomewhat too great eagerness to unfold a novel and startling theory.\n\n[Footnote 1: Act I. sc. v. l. 2.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Mr. Fleay avoids the difficulty created by this passage,\nwhich alludes to the witches as \"the weird sisters,\" by supposing that\nthese lines were interpolated by Middleton--a method of criticism that\nhardly needs comment. Act III. sc. iv. l. 134.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Act V. sc. v. l. 43.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Ibid. sc. viii. l. 19.]\n\n100. Assuming, therefore, that the witch-nature of the sisters is\nconclusively proved, it now becomes necessary to support the assertion\npreviously made, that good reason can be shown why Shakspere should\nhave elected to represent witches rather than Norns.\n\nIt is impossible to read \"Macbeth\" without noticing the prominence given\nto the belief that witches had the power of creating storms and other\natmospheric disturbances, and that they delighted in so doing. The\nsisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or rain. To them \"fair is\nfoul, and foul is fair,\" as they \"hover through the fog and filthy air.\"\nThe whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one\nblast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind\nthe winds,[1] cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate\nwrecked bodies.[2] They describe themselves as \"posters of the sea and\nland;\"[3] the heath they meet upon is blasted;[4] and they vanish \"as\nbreath into the wind.\"[5] Macbeth conjures them to answer his questions\nthus:--\n\n    \"Though you untie the winds, and let them fight\n    Against the churches; though the yesty waves\n    Confound and swallow navigation up;\n    Though bladed corn be lodged, and trees blown down;\n    Though castles topple on their warders' heads;\n    Though palaces and pyramids do slope\n    Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure\n    Of nature's germens tumble all together,\n    Even till destruction sicken.\"[6]\n\n[Footnote 1: I. iii. 11, 12.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Act I. sc. iii. l. 28.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. l. 32.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Ibid. l. 77.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Ibid. ll. 81, 82.]\n\n[Footnote 6: Act IV. sc. i. ll. 52-60.]\n\n101. Now, this command over the elements does not form at all a\nprominent feature in the English records of witchcraft. A few isolated\ncharges of the kind may be found. In 1565, for instance, a witch was\nburnt who confessed that she had caused all the tempests that had taken\nplace in that year. Scot, too, has a few short sentences upon this\nsubject, but does not give it the slightest prominence.[1] Nor in the\nearlier Scotch trials recorded by Pitcairn does this charge appear\namongst the accusations against the witches. It is exceedingly curious\nto notice the utter harmless nature of the charges brought against the\nearlier culprits; and how, as time went on and the panic increased, they\ngradually deepened in colour, until no act was too gross, too repulsive,\nor too ridiculously impossible to be excluded from the indictment. The\nfollowing quotations from one of the earliest reported trials are given\nbecause they illustrate most forcibly the condition of the poor women\nwho were supposed to be witches, and the real basis of fact upon which\nthe belief in the crime subsequently built itself.\n\n[Footnote 1: Book iii. ch. 13, p. 60.]\n\n102. Bessie Dunlop was tried for witchcraft in 1576. One of the\nprincipal accusations against her was that she held intercourse with a\ndevil who appeared to her in the shape of a neighbour of hers, one Thom\nReed, who had recently died. Being asked how and where she met Thom\nReed, she said, \"As she was gangand betwixt her own house and the yard\nof Monkcastell, dryvand her ky to the pasture, and makand heavy sair\ndule with herself, gretand[1] very fast for her cow that was dead, her\nhusband and child that wer lyand sick in the land ill, and she new\nrisen out of gissane,[2] the aforesaid Thom met her by the way,\nhealsit[3] her, and said, 'Gude day, Bessie,' and she said, 'God speed\nyou, guidman.' 'Sancta Marie,' said he, 'Bessie, why makes thow sa great\ndule and sair greting for ony wardlie thing?' She answered 'Alas! have I\nnot great cause to make great dule, for our gear is trakit,[4] and my\nhusband is on the point of deid, and one babie of my own will not live,\nand myself at ane weak point; have I not gude cause then to have ane\nsair hart?' But Thom said, 'Bessie, thou hast crabit[5] God, and askit\nsome thing you suld not have done; and tharefore I counsell thee to mend\nto Him, for I tell thee thy barne sall die and the seik cow, or you come\nhame; and thy twa sheep shall die too; but thy husband shall mend, and\nshall be as hale and fair as ever he was.' And then I was something\nblyther, for he tauld me that my guidman would mend. Then Thom Reed went\naway fra me in through the yard of Monkcastell, and I thought that he\ngait in at ane narrower hole of the dyke nor anie erdlie man culd have\ngone throw, and swa I was something fleit.\"[6]\n\n[Footnote 1: Weeping. I have only half translated this passage, for I\nfeared to spoil the sad simplicity of it.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Child-bed.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Saluted.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Dwindled away.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Displeased.]\n\n[Footnote 6: Frightened.]\n\nThis was the first time that Thom appeared to her. On the third occasion\nhe asked her \"if she would not trow[1] in him.\" She said \"she would trow\nin ony bodye did her gude.\" Then Thom promised her much wealth if she\nwould deny her christendom. She answered that \"if she should be riven at\nhorsis taillis, she suld never do that, but promised to be leal and\ntrew to him in ony thing she could do,\" whereat he was angry.\n\n[Footnote 1: Trust.]\n\nOn the fourth occasion, the poor woman fell further into sin, and\naccompanied Thom to a fairy meeting. Thom asked her to join the party;\nbut she said \"she saw na proffeit to gang thai kind of gaittis, unless\nshe kend wherefor.\" Thom offered the old inducement, wealth; but she\nreplied that \"she dwelt with her awin husband and bairnis,\" and could\nnot leave them. And so Thom began to be very crabit with her, and said,\n\"if so she thought, she would get lytill gude of him.\"\n\nShe was then demanded if she had ever asked any favour of Thom for\nherself or any other person. She answered that \"when sundrie persons\ncame to her to seek help for their beast, their cow, or ewe, or for any\nbarne that was tane away with ane evill blast of wind, or elf grippit,\nshe gait and speirit[1] at Thom what myght help them; and Thom would\npull ane herb and gif her out of his awin hand, and bade her scheir[2]\nthe same with ony other kind of herbis, and oppin the beistes mouth, and\nput thame in, and the beist wald mend.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Inquired.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Chop.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, I. ii. 51, et seq.]\n\nIt seems hardly possible to believe that a story like this, which is\nhalf marred by the attempt to partially modernize its simple pathetic\nlanguage, and which would probably bring a tear to the eye, if not a\nshilling from the pocket, of the most unsympathetic being of the present\nday, should be considered sufficient three hundred years ago, to convict\nthe narrator of a crime worthy of death; yet so it was. This sad\npicture of the breakdown of a poor woman's intellect in the unequal\nstruggle against poverty and sickness is only made visible to us by the\nlight of the flames that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie\nDunlop away for ever from the sick husband, and weakly children, and the\n\"ky,\" and the humble hovel where they all dwelt together, and from the\ndaily, heart-rending, almost hopeless struggle to obtain enough food to\nkeep life in the bodies of this miserable family. The historian--who\nmakes it his chief anxiety to record, to the minutest and most\nirrelevant details, the deeds, noble or ignoble, of those who have\nmanaged to stamp their names upon the muster-roll of Fame--turns\ncarelessly or scornfully the page which contains such insignificant\nmatter as this; but those who believe\n\n    \"That not a worm is cloven in vain;\n      That not a moth with vain desire\n      Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,\n    Or but subserves another's gain,\"\n\nwill hardly feel that poor Bessie's life and death were entirely without\ntheir meaning.\n\n103. As the trials for witchcraft increase, however, the details grow\nmore and more revolting; and in the year 1590 we find a most\nextraordinary batch of cases--extraordinary for the monstrosity of the\ncharges contained in them, and also for the fact that this feature, so\ninsisted upon in Macbeth, the raising of winds and storms, stands out in\nextremely bold relief. The explanation of this is as follows. In the\nyear 1589, King James VI. brought his bride, Anne of Denmark, home to\nScotland. During the voyage an unusually violent storm raged, which\nscattered the vessels composing the royal escort, and, it would appear,\ncaused the destruction of one of them. By a marvellous chance, the\nking's ship was driven by a wind which blew directly contrary to that\nwhich filled the sails of the other vessels;[1] and the king and queen\nwere both placed in extreme jeopardy. James, who seems to have been as\nperfectly convinced of the reality of witchcraft as he was of his own\ninfallibility, at once came to the conclusion that the storm had been\nraised by the aid of evil spirits, for the express purpose of getting\nrid of so powerful an enemy of the Prince of Darkness as the righteous\nking. The result was that a rigorous investigation was made into the\nwhole affair; a great number of persons were tried for attempting the\nking's life by witchcraft; and that prince, undeterred by the apparent\nimpropriety of being judge in what was, in reality, his own cause,\npresided at many of the trials, condescended to superintend the tortures\napplied to the accused in order to extort a confession, and even went so\nfar in one case as to write a letter to the judges commanding a\ncondemnation.\n\n[Footnote 1: Pitcairn, I. ii. 218.]\n\n104. Under these circumstances, considering who the prosecutor was, and\nwho the judge, and the effectual methods at the service of the court for\nextorting confessions,[1] it is not surprising that the king's surmises\nwere fully justified by the statements of the accused. It is impossible\nto read these without having parts of the witch-scenes in \"Macbeth\"\nringing in the ears like an echo. John Fian, a young schoolmaster, and\nleader of the gang, or \"coven\" as it was called, was charged with having\ncaused the leak in the king's ship, and with having raised the wind and\ncreated a mist for the purpose of hindering his voyage.[2] On another\noccasion he and several other witches entered into a ship, and caused it\nto perish.[3] He was also able by witchcraft to open locks.[4] He\nvisited churchyards at night, and dismembered bodies for his charms; the\nbodies of unbaptized infants being preferred.[5]\n\n[Footnote 1: The account of the tortures inflicted upon Fian are too\nhorrible for quotation.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Pitcairn, I. ii. 211.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. 212. He confessed that Satan commanded him to chase\ncats \"purposlie to be cassin into the sea to raise windis for\ndestructioune of schippis.\" Macbeth, I. iii. 15-25.]\n\n[Footnote 4: \"Fylit for opening of ane loke be his sorcerie in David\nSeytounis moderis, be blawing in ane woman's hand, himself sittand att\nthe fyresyde.\"--See also the case of Bessie Roy, I. ii. 208. The English\nmethod of opening locks was more complicated than the Scotch, as will\nappear from the following quotation from Scot, book xii. ch. xiv. p.\n246:--\n\n\"A charme to open locks. Take a peece of wax crossed in baptisme, and\ndoo but print certeine floures therein, and tie them in the hinder skirt\nof your shirt; and when you would undoo the locke, blow thrice therein,\nsaieing, 'Arato hoc partico hoc maratarykin; I open this doore in thy\nname that I am forced to breake, as thou brakest hell gates. In nomine\npatris etc. Amen.'\" Macbeth, IV. i. 46.]\n\n[Footnote 5:\n\n    \"Finger of birth-strangled babe,\n    Ditch-delivered by a drab.\"\n\nMacbeth, IV. i. 30.]\n\nAgnes Sampsoune confessed to the king that to compass his death she took\na black toad and hung it by the hind legs for three days, and collected\nthe venom that fell from it. She said that if she could have obtained a\npiece of linen that the king had worn, she could have destroyed his\nlife with this venom; \"causing him such extraordinarie paines as if he\nhad beene lying upon sharpe thornes or endis of needles.\"[1] She went\nout to sea to a vessel called _The Grace of God_, and when she came away\nthe devil raised a wind, and the vessel was wrecked.[2] She delivered a\nletter from Fian to another witch, which was to this effect: \"Ye sall\nwarne the rest of the sisteris to raise the winde this day at ellewin\nhouris to stay the queenis cuming in Scotland.\"[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Pitcairn, I. ii. 218.\n\n    \"Toad, that under cold stone\n    Days and nights has thirty-one\n    Sweltered venom sleeping got.\"\n\nMacbeth, IV. i. 6.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Ibid. 235.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Ibid. 236.]\n\nThis is her confession as to the methods adopted for raising the storm.\n\"At the time when his Majestie was in Denmarke, shee being accompanied\nby the parties before speciallie named, took a cat and christened it,\nand afterwards bounde to each part of that cat the cheefest parts of a\ndead man, and the severall joyntes of his bodie; and that in the night\nfollowing the said cat was conveyed into the middest of the sea by all\nthese witches, sayling in their riddles or cives,[1] as is afore said,\nand so left the said cat right before the town of Leith in Scotland.\nThis done, there did arise such a tempest in the sea as a greater hath\nnot been seene, which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a\nvessell coming over from the town of Brunt Ilande to the town of\nLeith.... Againe, it is confessed that the said christened cat was the\ncause that the kinges Majesties shippe at his coming forth of Denmarke\nhad a contrarie wind to the rest of his shippes....\"[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: Macbeth, I. iii. 8.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Pitcairn, Reprint of Newes from Scotland, I. ii. 218. See\nalso Trial of Ewsame McCalgane, I. ii. 254.]\n\n105. It is worth a note that this art of going to sea in sieves, which\nShakspere has referred to in his drama, seems to have been peculiar to\nthis set of witches. English witches had the reputation of being able to\ngo upon the water in egg-shells and cockle-shells, but seem never to\nhave detected any peculiar advantages in the sieve. Not so these Scotch\nwitches. Agnes told the king that she, \"with a great many other witches,\nto the number of two hundreth, all together went to sea, each one in a\nriddle or cive, and went into the same very substantially, with flaggons\nof wine, making merrie, and drinking by the way in the same riddles or\ncives, to the kirke of North Barrick in Lowthian, and that after they\nlanded they tooke hands on the lande and daunced a reill or short\ndaunce.\" They then opened the graves and took the fingers, toes, and\nknees of the bodies to make charms.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Pitcairn, I. ii. 217.]\n\nIt can be easily understood that these trials created an intense\nexcitement in Scotland. The result was that a tract was printed,\ncontaining a full account of all the principal incidents; and the fact\nthat this pamphlet was reprinted once, if not twice,[1] in London,\nshows that interest in the affair spread south of the Border; and this\nis confirmed by the publisher's prefatorial apology, in which he states\nthat the pamphlet was printed to prevent the public from being imposed\nupon by unauthorized and extravagant statements of what had taken\nplace.[2] Under ordinary circumstances, events of this nature would form\na nine days' wonder, and then die a natural death; but in this\nparticular case the public interest continued for an abnormal time; for\neight years subsequent to the date of the trials, James published his\n\"Daemonologie\"--a work founded to a great extent upon his experiences at\nthe trials of 1590. This was a sign to both England and Scotland that\nthe subject of witchcraft was still of engrossing interest to him; and\nas he was then the fully recognized heir-apparent to the English crown,\nthe publication of such a work would not fail to induce a great amount\nof attention to the subject dealt with. In 1603 he ascended the English\nthrone. His first parliament met on the 19th of March, 1604, and on the\n27th of the same month a bill was brought into the House of Lords\ndealing with the question of witchcraft. It was referred to a committee\nof which twelve bishops were members; and this committee, after much\ndebating, came to the conclusion that the bill was imperfect. In\nconsequence of this a fresh one was drawn, and by the 9th of June a\nstatute had passed both Houses of Parliament, which enacted, among other\nthings, that \"if any person shall practise or exercise any invocation or\nconjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or shall consult with,\nentertain, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit,[3] or take up any\ndead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave ... or the\nskin, bone, or any other part of any dead person to be employed or used\nin any manner of witchcraft,[4] ... or shall ... practise ... any\nwitchcraft ... whereby any person shall be killed, wasted, pined, or\nlamed in his or her body or any part thereof,[5] such offender shall\nsuffer the pains of death as felons, without benefit of clergy or\nsanctuary.\" Hutchinson, in his \"Essay on Witchcraft,\" published in 1720,\ndeclares that this statute was framed expressly to meet the offences\nexposed by the trials of 1590-1; but, although this cannot be\nconclusively proved, yet it is not at all improbable that the hurry with\nwhich the statute was passed into law immediately upon the accession of\nJames, would recall to the public mind the interest he had taken in\nthose trials in particular and the subject in general, and that\nShakspere producing, as nearly all the critics agree, his tragedy at\nabout this date, should draw upon his memory for the half-forgotten\ndetails of those trials, and thus embody in \"Macbeth\" the allusions to\nthem that have been pointed out--much less accurately than he did in the\ncase of the Babington affair, because the facts had been far less\ncarefully recorded, and the time at which his attention had been called\nto them far more remote.[6]\n\n[Footnote 1: One copy of this reprint bears the name of W. Wright,\nanother that of Thomas Nelson. The full title is--\n\n\"Newes from Scotland,\n\n\"Declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, who was\nburned at Edenborough in Januarie last, 1591; which Doctor was Register\nto the Deuill, that sundrie times preached at North Barricke kirke to a\nnumber of notorious witches; with the true examinations of the said\nDoctor and witches as they uttered them in the presence of the Scottish\nking: Discouering how they pretended to bewitch and drowne his Majestie\nin the sea, comming from Denmarke, with such other wonderfull matters,\nas the like hath not bin heard at anie time.\n\n\"Published according to the Scottish copie.\n\n\"Printed for William Wright.\"]\n\n[Footnote 2: These events are referred to in an existing letter by the\nnotorious Thos. Phelippes to Thos. Barnes, Cal. State Papers (May 21,\n1591), 1591-4, p. 38.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Such as Paddock, Graymalkin, and Harpier.]\n\n[Footnote 4: \"Liver of blaspheming Jew,\" etc.--Macbeth, IV. i. 26.]\n\n[Footnote 5:\n\n    \"I will drain him dry as hay;\n    Sleep shall neither night nor day\n    Hang upon his pent-house lid;\n    He shall live a man forbid:\n    Weary se'nnights, nine times nine,\n    Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.\"\n\nMacbeth, I. iii. 18-23.]\n\n[Footnote 6: The excitement about the details of the witch trials would\nculminate in 1592. Harsnet's book would be read by Shakspere in 1603.]\n\n106. There is one other mode of temptation which was adopted by the evil\nspirits, implicated to a great extent with the traditions of witchcraft,\nbut nevertheless more suitably handled as a separate subject, which is\nof so gross and revolting a nature that it should willingly be passed\nover in silence, were it not for the fact that the belief in it was, as\nScot says, \"so stronglie and universallie received\" in the times of\nElizabeth and James.\n\nFrom the very earliest period of the Christian era the affection of one\nsex for the other was considered to be under the special control of the\ndevil. Marriage was to be tolerated; but celibacy was the state most\nconducive to the near intercourse with heaven that was so dearly sought\nafter. This opinion was doubtless generated by the tendency of the early\nChristian leaders to hold up the events of the life rather than the\nteachings of the sacred Founder of the sect as the one rule of conduct\nto be received by His followers. To have been the recipients of the\nstigmata was a far greater evidence of holiness and favour with Heaven\nthan the quiet and unnoted daily practice of those virtues upon which\nChrist pronounced His blessing; and in less improbable matters they did\nnot scruple, in their enthusiasm, to attempt to establish a rule of life\nin direct contradiction to the laws of that universe of which they\nprofessed to believe Him to be the Creator. The futile attempt to\nimitate His immaculate purity blinded their eyes to the fact that He\nnever taught or encouraged celibacy among His followers, and this\ngradually led them to the strange conclusion that the passion which,\nsublimed and brought under control, is the source of man's noblest and\nholiest feelings, was a prompting proceeding from the author of all\nevil. Imbued with this idea, religious enthusiasts of both sexes immured\nthemselves in convents; took oaths of perpetual celibacy; and even, in\ncertain isolated cases, sought to compromise with Heaven, and baffle the\ntempter, by rendering a fall impossible--forgetting that the victory\nover sin does not consist in immunity from temptation, but, being\ntempted, not to fall. But no convent walls are so strong as to shut\ngreat nature out; and even within these sacred precincts the ascetics\nfound that they were not free from the temptations of their arch-enemy.\nIn consequence of this, a belief sprang up, and spread from its original\nsource into the outer world, in a class of devils called incubi and\nsuccubi, who roamed the earth with no other object than to tempt people\nto abandon their purity of life. The cases of assault by incubi were\nmuch more frequent than those by succubi, just as women were much more\naffected by the dancing manias in the fifteenth century than\nmen;[1]--the reason, perhaps, being that they are much less capable of\nresisting physical privation;--but, according to the belief of the\nMiddle Ages, there was no generic difference between the incubus and\nsuccubus. Here was a belief that, when the witch fury sprang up,\nattached itself as a matter of course as the phase of the crime; and it\nwas an almost universal charge against the accused that they offended in\nthis manner with their familiars, and hundreds of poor creatures\nsuffered death upon such an indictment. More details will be found in\nthe authorities upon this unpleasant subject.[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 136.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Hutchinson, p. 52. The Witch of Edmonton, Act V. Scot,\nDiscoverie, book iv.]\n\n107. This intercourse did not, as a rule, result in offspring; but this\nwas not universally the case. All badly deformed or monstrous children\nwere suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage, and there\nwas a great tendency to believe that they ought to be destroyed. Luther\nwas a decided advocate of this course, deeming the destruction of a life\nfar preferable to the chance of having a devil in the family. In\nDrayton's poem, \"The Mooncalf,\" one of the gossips present at the birth\nof the calf suggests that it ought to be buried alive as a monster.[1]\nCaliban is a mooncalf,[2] and his origin is distinctly traced to a\nsource of this description. It is perfectly clear what was the one\nthing that the foul witch Sycorax did which prevented her life from\nbeing taken; and it would appear from this that the inhabitants of\nArgier were far more merciful in this respect than their European\nneighbours. Such a charge would have sent any woman to the stake in\nScotland, without the slightest hope of mercy, and the usual plea for\nrespite would only have been an additional reason for hastening the\nexecution of the sentence.[3]\n\n[Footnote 1: Ed. 1748, p. 171.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Tempest, II. ii. 111, 115.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Cf. Othello, I. i. 91. Titus Andronicus, IV. ii.]\n\n108. In the preceding pages an endeavour has been made to delineate the\nmost prominent features of a belief which the great Reformation was\ndestined first to foster into unnatural proportions and vitality, and in\nthe end to destroy. Up to the period of the Reformation, the creed of\nthe nation had been practically uniform, and one set of dogmas was\nunhesitatingly accepted by the people as infallible, and therefore\nhardly demanding critical consideration. The great upheaval of the\nsixteenth century rent this quiescent uniformity into shreds; doctrines\nuntil then considered as indisputable were brought within the pale of\ndiscussion, and hence there was a great diversity of opinion, not only\nbetween the supporters of the old and of the new faith, but between the\nReformers themselves. This was conspicuously the case with regard to the\nbelief in the devils and their works. The more timid of the Reformers\nclung in a great measure to the Catholic opinions; a small band, under\nthe influence possibly of that knight-errant of freedom of thought,\nGiordano Bruno, who exercised some considerable influence during his\nvisit to England by means of his Oxford lectures and disputations,\nentirely denied the existence of evil spirits; but the great majority\ngave in their adherence to a creed that was the mean between the\ndoctrines of the old faith and the new scepticism. Their strong common\nsense compelled them to reject the puerilities advanced as serious\nevidence by the Catholic Church; but they cast aside with equal\nvehemence and more horror the doctrines of the Bruno school. \"That there\nare devils,\" says Bullinger, reduced apparently from argument to\ninvective, \"the Sadducees in times past denied, and at this day also\nsome scarce religious, nay, rather Epicures, deny the same; who, unless\nthey repent, shall one day feel, to their exceeding great pain and\nsmart, both that there are devils, and that they are the tormentors and\nexecutioners of all wicked men and Epicures.\"[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon, p. 348, Parker\nSociety.]\n\n109. It must be remembered, too, that the emancipation from medievalism\nwas a very gradual process, not, as we are too prone to think it, a\nrevolution suddenly and completely effected. It was an evolution, not an\nexplosion. There is found, in consequence, a great divergence of\nopinion, not only between the earliest and the later Reformers, but\nbetween the statements of the same man at different periods of his\ncareer. Tyndale, for instance, seems to have believed in the actual\npossession of the human body by devils;[1] and this appears to have\nbeen the opinion of the majority at the beginning of the Reformation,\nfor the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. contained the Catholic form of\nexorcism for driving devils out of children, which was expunged upon\nrevision, the doctrine of obsession having in the mean time triumphed\nover the older belief. It is necessary to bear these facts in mind\nwhilst considering any attempt to depict the general bearings of a\nbelief such as that in evil spirits; for many irreconcilable statements\nare to be found among the authorities; and it is the duty of the writer\nto sift out and describe those views which predominated, and these must\nnot be supposed to be proved inaccurate because a chance quotation can\nbe produced in contradiction.\n\n[Footnote 1: I Tyndale, p. 82. Parker Society.]\n\n110. There is great danger, in the attempt to bring under analysis any\nphase of religious belief, that the method of treatment may appear\nunsympathetic if not irreverent. The greatest effort has been made in\nthese pages to avoid this fault as far as possible; for, without doubt,\nany form of religious dogma, however barbarous, however seemingly\nridiculous, if it has once been sincerely believed and trusted by any\nportion of mankind, is entitled to reverent treatment. No body of great\nand good men can at any time credit and take comfort from a lie pure and\nsimple; and if an extinct creed appears to lack that foundation of truth\nwhich makes creeds tolerable, it is safer to assume that it had a\nmeaning and a truthfulness, to those who held it, that lapse of time\nhas tended to destroy, together with the creed itself, than to condemn\nmen wholesale as knaves and hypocrites. But the particular subject which\nhas here been dealt with will surely be considered to be specially\nentitled to respect, when it is remembered that it was once an integral\nportion of the belief of most of our best and bravest ancestors--of men\nand women who dared to witness to their own sincerity amidst the fires\nof persecution and in the solitude of exile. It has nearly all\ndisappeared now. The terrific hierarchy of fiends, which was so real, so\nfull of horror three hundred years ago[1], has gradually vanished away\nbefore the advent of fuller knowledge and purer faith, and is now hardly\nthought of, unless as a dead mediaeval myth. But let us deal tenderly\nwith it, remembering that the day may come when the beliefs that are\nnearest to our hearts may be treated as open to contempt or ridicule,\nand the dogmas to which we most passionately cling will, \"like an\ninsubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: Perhaps the following prayer, contained in Thomas Becon's\n\"Pomander,\" shows more clearly than the comments of any critic the\nreality of the terror:--\n\n\"An infinite number of wicked angels there are, O Lord Christ, which\nwithout ceasing seek my destruction. Against this exceeding great\nmultitude of evil spirits send Thou me Thy blessed and heavenly angels,\nwhich may deliver me from then tyranny. Thou, O Lord, hast devoured\nhell, and overcome the prince of darkness and all his ministers; yea,\nand that not for Thyself, but for those that believe in Thee. Suffer me\nnot, therefore, to be overcome of Satan and of his servants, but rather\nlet me triumph over them, that I, through strong faith and help of the\nblessed angels, having the victory of the hellish army, may with a\njoyful heart say, Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy\nvictory?--and so for ever and ever magnify Thy Holy Name. Amen.\" Parker\nSociety, p. 84.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n111. Little attempt has hitherto been made, in the way of direct proof,\nto show that fairies are really only a class of devils who exercise\ntheir powers in a manner less terrible and revolting than that depicted\nby theologians; and for this reason chiefly--that the proposition is\nalready more than half established when it has been shown that the\nattributes and functions possessed by both fairy and devil are similar\nin kind, although differing in degree. This has already been done to a\ngreat extent in the preceding pages, where the various actions of Puck\nand Ariel have been shown to differ in no essential respect from those\nof the devils of the time; but before commencing to study this phase of\nsupernaturalism in Shakspere's works as a whole, and as indicative, to a\ncertain extent, of the development of his thought upon the relation of\nman to the invisible world about and above him, it is necessary that\nthis identity should be admitted without a shadow of a doubt.\n\n112. It has been shown that fairies were probably the descendants of the\nlesser local deities, as devils were of the more important of the\nheathen gods that were overturned by the advancing wave of\nChristianity, although in the course of time this distinction was\nentirely obliterated and forgotten. It has also been shown, as before\nmentioned, that many of the powers exercised by fairies were in their\nessence similar to those exercised by devils, especially that of\nappearing in divers shapes. These parallels could be carried out to an\nalmost unlimited extent; but a few proofs only need be cited to show\nthis identity. In the mediaeval romance of \"King Orfeo\" fairyland has\nbeen substituted for the classical Hades.[1] King James, in his\n\"Daemonologie,\" adopts a fourfold classification of devils, one of which\nhe names \"Phairie,\" and co-ordinates with the incubus.[2] The name of\nthe devil supposed to preside at the witches' sabbaths is sometimes\ngiven as Hecat, Diana, Sybilla; sometimes Queen of Elfame,[3] or\nFairie.[4] Indeed, Shakspere's line in \"The Comedy of Errors,\" had it\nnot been unnecessarily tampered with by the critics--\n\n     \"A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough,\"[5]\n\nwould have conclusively proved this identity of character.\n\n[Footnote 1: Fairy Mythology of Shakspere, Hazlitt, p. 83.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Daemonologie, p. 69. An instance of a fairy incubus is\ngiven in the \"Life of Robin Goodfellow,\" Hazlitt's Fairy Mythology, p.\n176.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, iii. p. 162.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Fairy has been altered to \"fury,\" but compare Peele, Battle\nof Alcazar: \"Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel.\"]\n\n113. The real distinction between these two classes of spirits depends\non the condition of national thought upon the subject of\nsupernaturalism in its largest sense. A belief which has little or no\nfoundation upon indisputable phenomena must be continually passing\nthrough varying phases, and these phases will be regulated by the nature\nof the subjects upon which the attention of the mass of the people is\nmost firmly concentrated. Hence, when a nation has but one religious\ncreed, and one that has for centuries been accepted by them, almost\nwithout question or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the mind\nassumes an attitude of passive receptivity, undisturbed by doubts or\nquestionings. Under such conditions, a belief in evil spirits ever ready\nand watching to tempt a man into heresy of belief or sinful act, and\nthus to destroy both body and soul, although it may exist as a theoretic\nportion of the accepted creed, cannot possibly become a vital doctrine\nto be believed by the general public. It may exist as a subject for\nlearned dispute to while away the leisure hours of divines, but cannot\nby any possibility obtain an influence over the thoughts and lives of\ntheir charges. Mental disturbance on questions of doctrinal importance\nbeing, for these reasons, out of the question, the attention of the\npeople is almost entirely riveted upon questions of material ease and\nadvantage. The little lets and hindrances of every-day life in\nagricultural and domestic matters are the tribulations that appeal most\nincessantly to the ineradicable sense of an invisible power adverse to\nthe interests of mankind, and consequently the class of evil spirits\nbelieved in at such a time will be fairies rather than devils--malicious\nlittle spirits, who blight the growing corn; stop the butter from\nforming in the churn; pinch the sluttish housemaid black and blue; and\nwhose worst act is the exchange of the baby from its cot for a fairy\nchangeling;--beings of a nature most exasperating to thrifty housewife\nand hard-handed farmer, but nevertheless not irrevocably prejudiced\nagainst humanity, and easily to be pacified and reduced into a state of\nfawning friendship by such little attentions as could be rendered\nwithout difficulty by the poorest cotter. The whole fairy mythology is\nperfumed with an honest, healthy, careless joy in life, and a freedom\nfrom mental doubt. \"I love true lovers, honest men, good fellowes, good\nhuswives, good meate, good drinke, and all things that good is, but\nnothing that is ill,\" declares Robin Goodfellow;[1] and this jovial\nmaterialism only reflects the state of mind of the folk who were not\nunwilling to believe that this lively little spirit might be seen of\nnights busying himself in their houses by the dying embers of the\ndeserted fire.\n\n[Footnote 1: Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology, p. 182.]\n\n114. Such seems to have been the condition of England immediately before\nthe period of the great Reformation. But with the progress of that\nrevolution of thought the condition changes. The one true and eternal\ncreed, as it had been deemed, is shattered for ever. Men who have\nhitherto accepted their religious convictions in much the same way as\nthey had succeeded to their patrimonies are compelled by this tide of\nopposition to think and study for themselves. Each man finds himself\nleft face to face with the great hereafter, and his relation to it.\nTerrible doctrines are formulated, and press themselves with remorseless\nvigour upon his understanding--original sin, justification by faith,\neternal damnation for even honest error of belief,--doctrines that throw\nan atmosphere of solemnity, if not gloom, about national thought, in\nwhich no fairy mythology can flourish. It is no longer questions of\nmaterial ease and gain that are of the chief concern; and consequently\nthe fairies and their doings, from their own triviality, fall far into\nthe background, and their place is occupied by a countless horde of\nremorseless schemers, who are never ceasing in their efforts to drag\nboth body and soul to perdition.\n\n115. But it is in the towns, the centres of interchange of thought, of\nlearning, and of controversy, that this revolution first gathers power;\nthe sparsely populated country-sides are far more impervious to the new\nideas, and the country people cling far longer and more tenaciously to\nthe dying religion and its attendant beliefs. The rural districts were\nbut little affected by the Reformation for years after it had triumphed\nin the towns, and consequently the beliefs of the inhabitants were\nhardly touched by the struggle that was going on within so short a\ndistance. We find a Reginald Scot, indeed, complaining, half in joke,\nhalf in sarcasm, that Robin Goodfellow has long disappeared from the\nland;[1] but it is only from the towns that he has fled--towns in which\nthe spirit of the Cartwrights and the Latimers, the Barnhams and the\nDelabers, is abroad. In the same Cambridge where Scot had been educated,\na young student had hanged himself because the shadow of the doctrine of\npredestination was too terrible for him to live under;[2] and such a\nplace was surely no home for Puck and his merry band. But in the country\nplaces, remote from the growl and trembling of this mental earthquake,\nhe still loved to lurk; and even at the very moment when Scot was\npenning the denial of his existence, he was nestling amongst the woods\nand flowers of Avonside, and, invisible, whispering in the ear of a\ncertain fair-haired youth there thoughts of no inconsiderable moment.\nAnd long time after that--after the youth had become a man, and had\ncoined those thoughts into words that glitter still; after his monument\nhad been erected in the quiet Stratford churchyard--Puck revelled,\nharmless and undisturbed, along many a country-side; nay, even to the\npresent day, in some old-world nooks, a faint whispering rumour of him\nmay still be heard.\n\n[Footnote 1: Scot, Introduction.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Foxe, iv. p. 694.]\n\n116. Now, perhaps one of the most distinctive marks of literary genius\nis a certain receptivity of mind; a capability of receiving impressions\nfrom all surrounding circumstance--of extracting from all sources,\nwhether from nature or man, consciously or unconsciously, the material\nupon which it shall work. For this process to be perfectly accomplished,\nan entire and enthusiastic sympathy with man and the current ideas of\nthe time is absolutely essential, and in proportion as this sympathy is\ncontracted and partial, so will the work produced be stunted and untrue;\nand, on the other hand, the more universal and entire it is, the more\nperfect and vital will be the art. Bearing this in mind, and also the\nfacts that Shakspere's early training was effected in a little country\nvillage; that upon the verge of manhood, he came to London, where he\nspent his prime in contact with the bustle and friction of busy town\nlife; and that the later years of his life were passed in the quiet\nretirement of the home of his boyhood--there would be good ground for an\nargument, _a priori_, even were there none of a more conclusive nature,\nthat his earlier works would be found impregnated with the country\nfairy-myths with which his youth would come in contact; that the result\nof the labours of his middle life would show that these earlier\nreminiscenses had been gradually obliterated by the gloomier influence\nof ideas that were the result of the struggle of opposed theories that\nhad not then ceased to rage in the towns, and that the diabolic element\nand questions relating thereto would predominate; and that, finally, his\nlater works, written under the calmer influence of Stratford life, would\nshow a certain return to the fairy-lore of his earlier years.\n\n117. But fortunately we are not left to rely upon any such hypothetical\nevidence in this matter, however probable it may appear. Although the\ngeneral reading public cannot be asked to accept as infallible any\nchronological order of Shakspere's plays that dogmatically asserts a\nparticular sequence, or to investigate the somewhat dry and specialist\narguments upon which the conclusions are founded, yet there are certain\ngroupings into periods which are agreed upon as accurate by nearly all\ncritics, and which, without the slightest danger of error, may be\nasserted to be correct. For instance, it is indisputable that \"Love's\nLabour's Lost,\" \"The Comedy of Errors,\" \"Romeo and Juliet,\" and \"A\nMidsummer Night's Dream\" are amongst Shakspere's earliest works; that\nthe tragedies of \"Julius Caesar,\" \"Hamlet,\" \"Othello,\" \"Macbeth,\" and\n\"Lear\" are the productions of his middle life, between 1600 and 1606;\nand that \"A Winter's Tale\" and \"The Tempest\" are amongst the latest\nplays which he wrote.[1] Here we have everything that is required to\nprove the question in hand. At the commencement and at the end of his\nwritings--when a youth fresh from the influence of his country nurture\nand education, and when a mature man, settling down into the old life\nagain after a long and victorious struggle with the world, with his\naccumulated store of experience--we find plays which are perfectly\nsaturated with fairy-lore: \"The Dream\" and \"The Tempest.\" These are the\npoles of Shakspere's thought in this respect; and in the centre,\nimbedded as it were between two layers of material that do not bear any\ndistinctive stamp of their own, but appear rather as a medium for\nuniting the diverse strata, lie the great tragedies, produced while he\nwas in the very rush and swirl of town life, and reflecting accurately,\nas we have seen, many of the doubts and speculations that were agitating\nthe minds of men who were ardently searching out truth. It is worth\nnoting too, in passing, that directly Shakspere steps out of his beaten\npath to depict, in \"The Merry Wives of Windsor,\" the happy country life\nand manners of his day, he at the same time returns to fairyland again,\nand brings out the Windsor children trooping to pinch and plague the\ntown-bred, tainted Falstaff.\n\n[Footnote 1: For an elaborate and masterly investigation of the question\nof the chronological order of the plays, which must be assumed here, see\nMr. Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere.]\n\n118. But this is not by any means all that this subject reveals to us\nabout Shakspere; if it were, the less said about it the better. To look\nupon \"The Tempest\" as in its essence merely a return to \"The Dream\"--the\nend as the beginning; to believe that his thoughts worked in a weary,\nunending circle--that the Valley of the Shadow of Death only leads back\nto the foot of the Hill Difficulty--is intolerable, and not more\nintolerable than false. Although based upon similar material, the ideas\nand tendencies of \"The Tempest\" upon supernaturalism are no more\nidentical with those of \"A Midsummer Night's Dream\" than the thoughts of\nBerowne upon things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet's those of\nProspero. But before it is possible to point out the nature of this\ndifference, and to show that the change is a natural growth of thought,\nnot a mere retrogression, a few explanatory remarks are necessary.\n\nThere is no more insufficient and misleading view of Shakspere and his\nwork than that which until recently obtained almost universal credence,\nand is even at the present time somewhat loudly asserted in some\nquarters; namely, that he was a man of considerable genius, who wrote\nand got acted some thirty plays more or less, simply for commercial\npurposes and nothing more; made money thereby, and died leaving a will;\nand that, beyond this, he and his works are, and must remain, an\ninexplicable mystery. The critic who holds this view, and finds it\nequally advantageous to commence a study of Shakspere's work by taking\n\"The Tempest\" or \"Love's Labour's Lost\" as his text, is about as\njudicious as the botanist who would enlarge upon the structure of the\nseed-pod without first explaining the preliminary stages of plant\ngrowth, or the architect who would dilate upon the most convenient\narrangement of chimney-pots before he had discussed the laws of\nfoundation. The plays may be studied separately, and studied so are\nfound beautiful; but taken in an approximate chronological order, like a\nstring of brilliant jewels, each one gains lustre from those that\nprecede and follow it.\n\n119. For no man ever wrote sincerely and earnestly, or indeed ever did\nany one thing in such a spirit, without leaving some impress upon his\nwork of his mental condition whilst he was doing it; and no such man\never continued his literary labours from the period of youth right\nthrough his manhood, without leaving behind him, in more or less legible\ncharacter, a record of the ripening of his thought upon matters of\neternal importance, although they may not be of necessity directly\nconnected with the ostensible subject in hand. Insincere men may ape\nsentiments they do not really believe in; but in the end they will\neither be exposed and held up to ridicule, or their work will sink into\nobscurity. Sincerity in the expression of genuine thought and feeling\nalone can stand the test of time. And this is in reality no\ncontradiction to what has just been said as to the necessity of a\nreceptive condition of mind in the production of works of true genius.\nThis capacity of receiving the most delicate objective impressions is,\nindeed, one essential; but without the cognate power to assimilate this\nfood, and evolve the result that these influences have produced\nsubjectively, it is, worse than useless. The two must co-exist and act\nand react upon one another. Nor must we be induced to surrender these\nprinciples, in the present particular case, on account of the usual fine\nbut vague talk about Shakspere's absolute self-annihilation in favour of\nthe characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere so identifies\nhimself with each person in his dramas, that it is impossible to detect\nthe great master and his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen.\nIf this means that Shakespere has always a perfect comprehension of his\ncharacters, is competent to measure out to each absolute and unerring\njustice, and is capable of sympathy with even the most repulsive, it\nwill not be disputed for an instant. It is so true, that it is dangerous\nto take a sentence out of the mouth of any one of his characters and say\nfor certain, \"This Shakspere thought,\" although there are many\ncharacters with whom every one must feel that Shakspere identified\nhimself for the time being rather than others. But if it is intended to\nassert that Shakspere has so eliminated himself from his writings as to\nmake it impossible to trace anywhere the tendencies of his own thought\nat the time when he was writing, it must be most emphatically denied for\nthe reasons just stated. Freedom from prejudice must be carefully\ndissociated from lack of interest in the motive that underlies the\nconstruction of each play. There is a tone or key-note in each drama\nthat indicates the author's mental condition at the time when it was\nproduced; and if several plays, following each other in brisk\nsuccession, all have the same predominant tone, it seems to be past\nquestion that Shakspere is incidentally and indirectly uttering his own\npersonal thought and experience.\n\n120. If it be granted, then, that it is possible to follow thus the\ngrowth of Shakspere's thought through the medium of his successive\nworks, there is only one small point to be glanced at before attempting\nto trace this growth in the matter of supernaturalism.\n\nThe natural history of the evolution of opinion upon matters which, for\nwant of a more embracing and satisfactory word, we must be content to\ncall \"religious,\" follows a uniform course in the minds of all men,\nexcept those \"duller than the fat weed that roots itself at ease on\nLethe's wharf,\" who never get beyond the primary stage. This course is\nseparable into three periods. The first is that in which a man accepts\nunhesitatingly the doctrines which he has received from his spiritual\nteachers--customary not intellectual, belief. This sits lightly on him;\nentails no troublesome doubts and questionings; possesses, or appears to\npossess, formulae to meet all possible emergencies, and consequently\nbrings with it a happiness that is genuine, though superficial. But this\ncustomary belief rarely satisfies for long. Contact with the world\nbrings to light other and opposed theories: introspection and\nindependent investigation of the bases of the hereditary faith are\ncommenced; many doctrines that have been hitherto accepted as eternally\nand indisputably true are found to rest upon but slight foundation,\napart from their title to respect on account of age; doubts follow as to\nthe claim to acceptance of the whole system that has been so easily and\nunhesitatingly swallowed; and the period of scepticism, or no-belief,\nwith its attendant misery, commences--for although Dagon has been but\nlittle honoured in the time of his strength, in his downfall he is much\nregretted. Then comes that long, weary groping after some firm, reliable\nbasis of belief: but heaven and earth appear for the time to conspire\nagainst the seeker; an intellectual flood has drowned out the old order\nof things; not even a mountain peak appears in the wide waste of\ndesolation as assurance of ultimate rest; and in the dark, overhanging\nfirmament no arc of promise is to be seen. But this is a state of mind\nwhich, from its very nature, cannot continue for ever: no man could\nendure it. While it lasts the struggle must be continuous, but\nsomewhere through the cloud lies the sunshine and the land of peace--the\nfinal period of intellectual belief. Out of the chaos comes order; ideas\nthat but recently appeared confused, incoherent, and meaningless assume\ntheir true perspective. It is found that all the strands of the old\nconventional faith have not been snapped in the turmoil; and these,\nre-knit and strengthened with the new and full knowledge of experience\nand investigation, form the cable that secures that strange holy\nconfidence of belief that can only be gained by a preliminary warfare\nwith doubt--a peace that truly passes all understanding to those who\nhave never battled for it,--as to its foundation, diverse to a miracle\nin diverse minds, but still, a peace.\n\n121. If this be a true history of the course of development of every\nmind that is capable of independent thought upon and investigation of\nsuch high matters, it follows that Shakspere's soul must have\nexperienced a similar struggle--for he was a man of like passions with\nourselves; indeed, to so acute and sensitive a mind the struggle would\nbe, probably, more prolonged and more agonizing than to many; and it is\nthese three mental conditions--first, of unthinking acceptance of\ngenerally received teaching; second, of profound and agitating\nscepticism; and, thirdly, of belief founded upon reason and\nexperience--that may be naturally expected to be found impressed upon\nhis early, middle, and later works.\n\n122. It is impossible here to do more than indicate some of the\nevidence that this supposition is correct, for to attempt to investigate\nthe question exhaustively would involve the minute consideration of a\nmajority of the plays. The period of Shakspere's customary or\nconventional belief is illustrated in \"A Midsummer Night's Dream,\" and\nto a certain extent also in the \"Comedy of Errors.\" In the former play\nwe find him loyally accepting certain phases of the hereditary Stratford\nbelief in supernaturalism, throwing them into poetical form, and making\nthem beautiful. It has often before been observed, and it is well worthy\nof observation, that of the three groups of characters in the play, the\ncountry folk--a class whose manner and appearance had most vividly\nreflected themselves upon the camera of Shakspere's mind--are by far the\nmost lifelike and distinct; the fairies, who had been the companions of\nhis childhood and youth in countless talks in the ingle and ballads in\nthe lanes, come second in prominence and finish; whilst the ostensible\nheroes and heroines of the piece, the aristocrats of Athens, are\ncolourless and uninteresting as a dumb-show--the real shadows of the\nplay. This is exactly the ratio of impressionability that the three\nclasses would have for the mind of the youthful dramatist. The first is\na creation from life, the second from traditionary belief, the third\nfrom hearsay. And when it has been said that the fairies are a creation\nfrom traditionary belief, a full and accurate description of them has\nbeen afforded. They are an embodiment of a popular superstition, and\nnothing more. They do not conceal any thought of the poet who has\ncreated them, nor are they used for any deeper purpose with regard to\nthe other persons of the drama than temporary and objectless annoyance.\nThroughout the whole play runs a healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost\nriotous happiness; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt\nbeing perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully\nawakened; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous\nmerely, and of only transitory influence, and \"the summer still doth\ntend upon their state,\" brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and\nflowers. Man has absolutely no power to govern these supernatural\npowers, and they have but unimportant influence over him. They can\naffect his comfort, but they cannot control his fate. But all this is\nmerely an adapting and elaborating of ideas which had been handed down\nfrom father to son for many generations. Shakspere's Puck is only the\nPuck of a hundred ballads reproduced by the hand of a true poet; no\noriginal thought upon the connection of the visible with the invisible\nworld is imported into the creation. All these facts tend to show that\nwhen Shakspere wrote \"A Midsummer Night's Dream,\" that is, at the\nbeginning of his career as a dramatic author, he had not broken away\nfrom the trammels of the beliefs in which he had been brought up, but\naccepted them unhesitatingly and joyously.\n\n123. But there is a gradual toning down of this spirit of unbroken\ncontent as time wears on. Putting aside the historical plays, in which\nShakspere was much more bound down by his subject-matter than in any\nother species of drama, we find the comedies, in which his room for\nexpression of individual feeling was practically unlimited, gradually\nlosing their unalloyed hilarity, and deepening down into a sadness of\nthought and expression that sometimes leaves a doubt whether the plays\nshould be classed as comedies at all. Shakspere has been more and more\nin contact with the disputes and doubts of the educated men of his time,\nand seeds have been silently sowing themselves in his heart, which are\nsoon to bring forth a plenteous harvest in the great tragedies of which\nthese semi-comedies, such as \"All's Well that Ends Well\" and \"Measure\nfor Measure,\" are but the first-fruits.\n\n124. Thus, when next we find Shakspere dealing with questions relating\nto supernaturalism, the tone is quite different from that taken in his\nearlier work. He has reached the second period of his thought upon the\nsubject, and this has cast its attendant gloom upon his writings. That\nhe was actually battling with questions current in his time is\ndemonstrated by the way in which, in three consecutive plays, derived\nfrom utterly diverse sources, the same question of ghost or devil is\nagitated, as has before been pointed out. But it is not merely a point\nof theological dogma which stamps these plays as the product of\nShakspere's period of scepticism, but a theory of the influence of\nsupernatural beings upon the whole course of human life. Man is still\nincapable of influencing these unseen forces, or bending them to his\nwill; but they are now no longer harmless, or incapable of anything but\ntemporary or trivial evil. Puck might lead night wanderers into\nmischance, and laugh mischievously at the bodily harm that he had caused\nthem; but Puck has now disappeared, and in his stead is found a\nmalignant spirit, who seeks to laugh his fiendish laughter over the soul\nhe has deceived into destruction. Questions arise thick and fast that\nare easier put than answered. Can it be that evil influences have the\nupper hand in this world? that, be a man never so honest, never so pure,\nhe may nevertheless become the sport of blind chance or ruthless\nwickedness? May a Hamlet, patiently struggling after truth and duty, be\nput upon and abused by the darker powers? May Macbeth, who would fain do\nright, were not evil so ever present with him, be juggled with and led\nto destruction by fiends? May an undistinguishing fate sweep away at\nonce the good with the evil--Hamlet with Laertes; Desdemona with Iago;\nCordelia with Edmund? And above the turmoil of this reign of terror, is\nthere no word uttered of a Supreme Good guiding and controlling the\nunloosed ill--no word of encouragement, none of hope? If this be so\nindeed, that man is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this\nlife. It is not worth the living; for what power has man against the\nfiends? But at this point arises a further question to demand solution:\nwhat shall be hereafter? If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in\nthat undiscovered country,--that life to come? The dreams that may come\ngive him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and\nincapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. In\neither case his life becomes like to a tale\n\n    \"Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\n     Signifying--nothing!\"\n\n125. It is strange to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism\nupon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds\nforce to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world\naround. \"Hamlet,\" \"Macbeth,\" and \"Othello\" give place to \"Lear,\"\n\"Troilus and Cressida,\" \"Antony and Cleopatra,\" and \"Timon.\" So true is\nit that \"unfaith in aught is want of faith in all,\" that in these later\nplays it would seem that honour, honesty, and justice were virtues not\npossessed by man or woman; or, if possessed, were only a curse to bring\ndown disgrace and destruction upon the possessor. Contrast the women of\nthese plays with those of the comedies immediately preceding the Hamlet\nperiod. In the latter plays we find the heroines, by their sweet womanly\nguidance and gentle but firm control, triumphantly bringing good out of\nevil in spite of adverse circumstance. Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola,\nHelena, and Isabella are all, not without a tinge of knight-errantry\nthat does not do the least violence to the conception of tender,\ndelicate womanhood, the good geniuses of the little worlds in which\ntheir influence is made to be felt. Events must inevitably have gone\ntragically but for their intervention. But with the advent of the second\nperiod all this changes. At first the women, like Brutus' Portia,\nOphelia, Desdemona, however noble or sweet in character and well\nmeaning in motive, are incapable of grasping the guiding threads of the\nevents around them and controlling them for good. They have to give way\nto characters of another kind, who bear the form without the nature of\nwomen. Commencing with Lady Macbeth, the conception falls lower and\nlower, through Goneril and Regan, Cressida, Cleopatra, until in the\nclimax of this utter despair, \"Timon,\" there is no character that it\nwould not be a profanity to call by the name of woman.\n\n126. And just as womanly purity and innocence quail before unwomanly\nself-assertion and voluptuousness, so manly loyalty and unselfishness\ngive way before unmanly treachery and self-seeking. It is true that the\nbad men do not finally triumph, but they triumph over the good with whom\nthey happen to come in contact. In \"King Lear,\" what man shows any\nvirtue who does not receive punishment for the same? Not Gloucester,\nwhose loyal devotion to his king obtains for him a punishment that is\nonly merciful in that it prevents him from further suffering the sight\nof his beloved master's misery; not Kent, who, faithful in his\nself-denying service through all manner of obloquy, is left at last with\na prayer that he may be allowed to follow Lear to the grave; and beyond\nthese two there is little good to be found. But \"Lear\" is not by any\nmeans the climax. The utter despair of good in man or woman rises higher\nin \"Troilus and Cressida,\" and reaches its culminating point in \"Timon,\"\na fragment only of which is Shakspere's. The pen fell from the tired\nhand; the worn and distracted brain refused to fulfil the task of\ndepicting the depth to which the poet's estimate of mankind had fallen;\nand we hardly know whether to rejoice or to regret that the clumsy hand\nof an inferior writer has screened from our knowledge the full\ndisclosure of the utter and contemptuous cynicism and want of faith with\nwhich, for the time being, Shakspere was infected.\n\n127. Before passing on to consider the plays of the third period as\nevidence of Shakspere's final thought, it will be well to pause and\nre-read with attention a summing-up of Shakspere's teaching as it has\nbeen presented to us by one of the greatest and most earnest teachers of\nmorality of the present day. Every word that Mr. Ruskin writes is so\nevidently from the depth of his own good heart, and every doctrine that\nhe enunciates so pure in theory and so true in practice, that a\ndifference with him upon the final teaching of Shakspere's work cannot\nbe too cautiously expressed. But the estimate of this which he has given\nin the third Lecture of \"Sesame and Lilies\"[1] is so painful, if\nregarded as Shakspere's latest and most mature opinion, that everybody,\neven Mr. Ruskin himself, would be glad to modify its gloom with a few\nrays of hope, if it were possible to do so. \"What then,\" says Mr.\nRuskin, \"is the message to us of our own poet and searcher of hearts,\nafter fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over\nthe graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's\n(Homer)? is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading of\nfate more happy? Ah no! He differs from the heathen poet chiefly in\nthis, that he recognizes for deliverance no gods nigh at hand, and that,\nby petty chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by fool's\ntyranny, or traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are\nbrought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope. He, indeed, as\npart of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of\nhabitual devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine\nis bright with visions of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing\nby his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the hand that can save\nalike by many or by few. But observe that from those who with deepest\nspirit meditate, and with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words\nas these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the\nperpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all\nheathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in\nexile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the\ngreat Christian poet the consciousness of a moral law, through which\n'the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to\nscourge us;' and of the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that\nconclude into precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began; and\nforce us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots do\npall, to the confession that 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends,\nrough-hew them how we will.'\"[2]\n\n[Footnote 1: 3rd edition, \u00a7 115.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Mr. Ruskin has analyzed \"The Tempest,\" in \"Munera\nPulveris,\" \u00a7 124, et seqq., but from another point of view.]\n\n128. Now, it is perfectly clear that this criticism was written with two\nor three plays, all belonging to one period, very conspicuously before\nthe mind. Of the illustrative exceptions that are made to the general\nrule, one is derived from a play which Shakspere wrote at a very early\ndate, and the other from a scene which he almost certainly never wrote\nat all; the whole of the rest of the passage quoted is founded upon\n\"Hamlet,\" \"Macbeth,\" \"Othello,\" and \"Lear\"--that is, upon the earlier\nproductions of what we must call Shakspere's sceptical period. But these\nplays represent an essentially transient state of thought. Shakspere was\nto learn and to teach that those who most deeply meditate and most\npassionately mourn are not the men of noblest or most influential\ncharacter--that such may command our sympathy, but hardly our respect or\nadmiration. Still less did Shakspere finally assert, although for a time\nhe believed, that a blind destiny concludes into precision what we\nfeebly and blindly begin. Far otherwise and nobler was his conception of\nman and his mission, and the unseen powers and their influences, in the\nthird and final stage of his thought.\n\n129. Had Shakspere lived longer, he would doubtless have left us a\nseries of plays filled with the bright and reassuring tenderness and\nconfidence of this third period, as long and as brilliant in execution\nas those of the second period. But as it is we are in possession of\nquite enough material to enable us to form accurate conclusions upon the\nstate of his final thought. It is upon \"The Tempest\" that we must in\nthe main rely for an exposition of this; for though the other plays and\nfragments fully exhibit the restoration of his faith in man and woman,\nwhich was a necessary concurrence with his return from scepticism, yet\nit is in \"The Tempest\" that he brings himself as nearly face to face as\ndramatic possibilities would allow him with circumstances that admit of\nthe indirect expression of such thought. It is fortunate, too, for the\npurpose of comparing Shakspere's earliest and latest opinions, that the\ncharacters of \"The Tempest\" are divisible into the same groups as those\nof \"The Dream.\" The gross _canaille_ are represented, but now no longer\nthe most accurate in colour and most absorbing in interest of the\ncharacters of the play, or unessential to the evolution of the plot.\nThey have a distinct importance in the movement of the piece, and\nrepresent the unintelligent, material resistance to the work of\nregeneration that Prospero seeks to carry out, and which must be\ncontrolled by him, just as Sebastian and Antonio form the intelligent,\ndesigning resistance. The spirit world is there too, but they, like the\nformer class, have no independent plot of their own, and no independent\noperation against mankind; they only represent the invisible forces over\nwhich Prospero must assert control if he would insure success for his\nschemes. Ariel is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary of all\nShakspere's creations. He is, indeed, formed upon a basis half fairy,\nhalf devil, because it was only through the current notions upon\ndemonology that Shakspere could speak his ideas. But he certainly is not\na fairy in the sense that Puck is a fairy; and he is very far indeed\nfrom bearing even a slight resemblance to the familiars whom the\nmagicians of the time professed to call from the vasty deep. He is\nindeed but air, as Prospero says--the embodiment of an idea, the\nrepresentative of those invisible forces which operate as factors in the\nshaping of events which, ignored, may prove resistant or fatal, but,\nproperly controlled and guided, work for good.[1] Lastly, there are the\nheroes and heroine of the play, now no longer shadows, but the centres\nof interest and admiration, and assuming their due position and\nprominence.\n\n[Footnote 1: It is difficult to accept Mr. Ruskin's view of Ariel as\n\"the spirit of generous and free-hearted service\" (Mun. Pul. \u00a7 124); he\nis throughout the play the more-than-half-unwilling agent of Prospero.]\n\n130. It is probable, therefore, that it is not merely a student's fancy\nthat in Prospero's storm-girt, spirit-haunted island can be seen\nShakspere's final and matured image of the mighty world. If this be so,\nhow far more bright and hopeful it is than the verdict which Mr. Ruskin\nfinds Shakspere to have returned. Man is no longer \"a pipe for fortune's\nfingers to sound what stop she please.\" The evil elements still exist in\nthe world, and are numerous and formidable; but man, by nobleness of\nlife and word, by patience and self-mastery, can master them, bring them\ninto subjection, and make them tend to eventual good. Caliban, the\ngross, sensual, earthly element--though somewhat raised--would run riot,\nand is therefore compelled to menial service. The brute force of\nStephano and Trinculo is vanquished by mental superiority. Even the\nsupermundane spirits, now no longer thirsting for the destruction of\nbody and soul, are bound down to the work of carrying out the decrees of\ntruth and justice. Man is no longer the plaything, but the master of his\nfate; and he, seeing now the possible triumph of good over evil, and his\nduty to do his best in aid of this triumph, has no more fear of the\ndreams--the something after death. Our little life is still rounded by a\nsleep, but the thought which terrifies Hamlet has no power to affright\nProspero. The hereafter is still a mystery, it is true; he has tried to\nsee into it, and has found it impenetrable. But revelation has come like\nan angel, with peace upon its wings, in another and an unexpected way.\nDuty lies here, in and around him in this world. Here he can right\nwrong, succour the weak, abase the proud, do something to make the world\nbetter than he found it; and in the performance of this he finds a\nholier calm than the vain strivings after the unknowable could ever\nafford. Let him work while it is day, for \"the night cometh, when no man\ncan work.\"\n\n131. It is not a piece of pure sentimentality that sees in Prospero a\ntype of Shakspere in his final stage of thought. It is a type altogether\nas it should be; and it is pleasing to think of him, in the full\nmaturity of his manhood, wrapping his seer's cloak about him, and, while\nwaiting calmly the unfolding of the mystery which he has sought in vain\nto solve, watching with noble benevolence the gradual working out of\ntruth, order, and justice. It is pleasing to think of him as speaking\nto the world the great Christian doctrine so universally overlooked by\nChristians, that the only remedy for sin demanded by eternal justice \"is\nnothing but heart's sorrow, and a clear life ensuing\"--a speech which,\nthough uttered by Ariel, is spoken by Prospero, who himself beautifully\niterates part of the doctrine when he says--\n\n                                  \"The rarer action is\n    In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,\n    The sole drift of my purpose doth extend\n    Not a frown further.\"[1]\n\nIt is pleasant to dwell upon his sympathy with Ferdinand and\nMiranda--for the love of man and woman is pure and holy in this\nregenerate world: no more of Troilus and Cressida--upon his patient\nwaiting for the evolution of his schemes; upon his faith in their\nultimate success; and, above all, upon the majestic and unaffected\nreverence that appears indirectly in every line--\"reverence,\" to adapt\nthe words of the great teacher whose opinion about Shakspere has been\nperhaps too rashly questioned, \"for what is pure and bright in youth;\nfor what is true and tried in age; for all that is gracious among the\nliving, great among the dead, and marvellous in the Powers that cannot\ndie.\"\n\n[Footnote 1: V. l. 27.]","title":"Elizabethan Demonology: An Essay in Illustration of the Belief in the Existence of Devils, and the Powers Possessed By Them, as It Was Generally Held during the Period of the Reformation, and the Times Immediately Succeeding; with Special Reference to Shakspere and His Works","tradition":"ritual-magic","translated_text":null,"word_count":42060}