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ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 
/ Y 9- rY 
 
 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 IMME- 
 DIATELY SUCCEEDING; WITH SPECIAL 
 REFERENCE TO SHAKSPERE AND 
 HIS WORKS 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS ALFRED SPALDING, LL.B. (Lond.) 
 
 BARRISTER-AT-LAW, HONORARY TREASURER OF THE 
 NEW SHAKSPERE SOCIETY. 
 
 r* 
 
 V 
 
 Hontion 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1880 
 
 [ The right of translation is reserved] 
 
PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BECCLES- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE 
 
 NEW SHAKSPERE SOCIETY, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. 
 
FOREWORDS. 
 
 THIS Essay is an expansion, in accordance with a 
 preconceived scheme, of two papers, one on “ The 
 Witches in Macbeth,” and the other on “ The Demon- 
 ology of Shakspere,” which were read before the 
 New Shakspere Society in the years 1877 and 1878. 
 The Shakspere references in the text are made to 
 the Globe Edition. 
 
 The writer’s best thanks are due to his friends 
 Mr. F. J. Furnivall and Mr. Lauriston E. Shaw, for 
 their kindness in reading the proof sheets, and sug- 
 gesting emendations. 
 
 Temple, 
 
 October 7, 1879. 
 
“ We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the 
 gross for fools for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem 
 to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft.” — C. Lamb. 
 
 “ But I will say, of Shakspere’s works generally, that we have 
 no full impress of him there, even as full as we have of many 
 men. His works are so many windows, through which we see 
 a glimpse of the world that was in him.” — T. Carlyle. 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 I. 
 
 i. Difficulty in understanding our elder writers without a knowledge of 
 their language and ideas, -'g. Especi ally_in the case of dramatic poets. 
 
 ^37 Examples. Hamlet's “ assume a virtue." 4. Changes in ideas and law 
 relating to marriage. Massinger’s " Maid of Honour ” as an example. 3. 
 Sponsalia de futuro and Sponsalia de proesenti. Shakspere's marriage, t-- 
 6. Student's duty is to get to know the opinions and feelings of the folk 
 amongst whom his author lived. 7. It will be hard work ; but a gain in 
 the end. First, in preventing conceit. 8. Secondly, in preventing rambling 
 reading. 9?> Author’s present object to illustrate the dead belief in Demon- 
 ology, especially as far as it concerns Shakspere. He thinks that this may 
 perhaps bring us into closer contact with Shakspere’s soul. 10. Some one 
 objects that Shakspere can speak better for himself. Yes, blit we must 
 be sure that we understand the media through which he speaks. 11. 
 Division of subject. 
 
 II. 
 
 12. Reasons why the empire of the supernatural is so extended amongst 
 savages. 13. All important affairs of life transacted under superintendence 
 of Supreme Powers. 14. What are these Powers ? Three principles re- 
 garding them. 15. (i.) Incapacity of mankind to accept monotheism. The 
 Jews. 16. Roman Catholicism really polytheistic, although believers won’t 
 admit it. Virgin Mary. Saints. Angels. Protestantism in the same 
 condition in a less degree. 17. Francis of Assisi. Gradually made into a 
 god. 18. (ii.) Manichasism. Evil spirits as inevitable as good. 19. (iii. ) 
 Tendency to treat the gods of hostile religions as devils. 20. In the Greek 
 theology. <kc <>ove?. Platonism. 21. Neo-Platonism. Makes the elder 
 gods into daemons. 22. Judaism. Recognizes foreign gods at first. Elohim; 
 but they get degraded in time. Beelzebub, Belial, etc. 23. Early Christians 
 treat gods of Greece in the same way. St. Paul’s view. 24. The Church, 
 
X 
 
 ANALYSIS. 
 
 however, did not stick to its colours in this respect. Honesty not the best 
 policy. A policy of compromise. 25. The oracles. Sosthenion and St. 
 Michael. Delphi. St. Gregory's saintliness and magnanimity. Confusion 
 of pagan gods and Christian saints. 26. Church in North Europe. Thonar, 
 etc., are devils ; but Baida gets identified with Christ. 27. Conversion of 
 Britons. Their gods get turned into fairies rather than devils. Deuce. 
 Old Nick. 28. Subsequent evolution of belief. Carlyle's Abbot Sampson. 
 Religious formulae of witchcraft. 29. The Reformers and Catholics revive 
 the old accusations. The Reformers only go half-way in scepticism. Calf- 
 hill and Martiall. 30. Catholics. Siege of Alkmaar. Unfortunate mistake 
 of a Spanish prisoner. 31. Conditions that tended to vivify the belief 
 during Elizabethan era. 32. The new freedom. Want of rules of evidence. 
 Arthur Hacket and his madnesses. Sneezing. Cock-crowing. Jackdaw in 
 the House of Commons. Russell and Drake both mistaken for devils. 
 33. Credulousness of people. “ To make one danse naked. " A parson's 
 proof of transubstantiation. 34. But the Elizabethans had strong common 
 sense, nevertheless. People do wrong if they set them down as fools. If 
 we had not learned to be wiser than they, we should have to be ashamed 
 of ourselves. We shall learn nothing from them if we don't try to under- 
 stand them. 
 
 III. 
 
 33. The three heads. 36. (i.) Classification of devils. Greater and 
 lesser devils^ Good and bad angels. 37. Another classification ; not 
 popular. ('38) Names of greater devils. Horribly uncouth. The number 
 of them. Shakspere's devils. 39. (ii.) Form of devils of the greater. 
 
 40. Of the lesser. The horns, goggle eyes, and tail. Scot's carnal- 
 mindedness. He gets his book burnt ; and written against by James I. 
 
 41. Spenser's idol-devil. 42. Dramatists' satire of popular opinion. (43^ 
 Favourite form for appearing in when conjured. Devils in Macbeth. 44. 
 Powers of devils^^s. Catholic belief in devil’s power to create bodies. 
 46^ Reformers deny this, but admit that he deceives people into believing 
 that he can do so : either by getting hold of a dead body, and restoring 
 animation. 47. Or by means of illusion. 48. The common people stuck 
 to the Catholic doctrine. Devils appear in likeness of an ordinary human 
 being. ( 4 ^) Even a living one, which was sometimes awkward. “The 
 Troublesome Raigne of King John.” They like to appear as priests or 
 parsons. The devil quoting Scripture. 50. Other human shapes. (jiT) 
 Animals. Ariel. (52) Puck. 53. “ The Witch of Edmonton." The devil on 
 the stage. Flies. Urban Grandier. Sir M. Hale. 54. Devils as angels. 
 As Christ— 1 55. As dead friend. Reformers denied the possibility of -ghosts, 
 and said- the appearances so-called were devils. James I. and his opinion. 
 •jjsTThe common people believed in the ghosts. Bishop Pilkington's troubles. 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 xi 
 
 (^)The two theories. Illustrated in “Julius Caesar." “Macbeth." (58^ And 
 “ Hamlet.” This explains an apparent inconsistency in “Hamlet." 
 
 60. Possessionand obsession. Again the Catholics and Protestants differ. 
 
 61. But the common people believe in possession. 62. Ignorance on t he 
 subject of mental disease . The exorcists. 63. John Cotta on possession, 
 ww tVip “ iparncH nhvsirinn ” knew. 64. What was manifest to the vulgar 
 view! Will Sommers. “ The Devil is an Ass.” Harsnet’s 11 Declara- 
 tion,” and “ King Lear.” 66. The Babington conspiracy. 67. Weston, alias 
 Edmonds. His exorcisms. Mainy. The basis of Harsnet's statements. 
 (69} The devils in “ Lear.” 70. Edgar and Mainy. Mainy’s loose morals. 
 71. The devils tempt with knives and halters. 72. Mainy’s seven devils : 
 Pride; Covetousness; Luxury; Envy; Wrath; Gluttony; Sloth. The 
 Nightingale business. 73. T reatment of _the__EgssessetL; confinement; 
 flagellation. 74. Dr. Pinch. Nicknames. 75. Other methods. That of 
 
 brimstone. 76. Firing 
 Bishop H ooper o n 
 
 Elias and Pawle. ” The holy chair ; sack and oil ; 
 
 C out. 77. Bodi ly diseases the work of the devil, 
 
 ^ hygiene. 78. “"But devils couldn’t kill people unless thMrTWi minced rtoH 
 TTtchcrafT- bo. People now-a-days can't sympathize with the witch 
 persecutors, because they don't believe in the devil. Satan is a mere 
 theory now. 81. But they believed in him once, and therefore killed 
 people that were suspected of having to do with him. 82. And we 
 don't sympathize with the persecuted witches, although we make a great 
 fuss about the sufferings of the Reformers. @ The witches in Macbeth. 
 Some take them to be Norns. 84. Gervinus. His opinion. 85. Mr. 
 F. G. Fleay. His opinion. 86. Evidence. Simon Forman’s note. (§2) 
 Holinshed's account. ( 88 . ) Criticism. |k£) It is said that the appearance 
 and powers of the sisters are not those of witches. (goT) It is going to 
 be shown that they are. (^x?i A third piece of criticism. 192. Objections. 
 93. Contemporary descriptions of witches : Scot ; Harsnet. Witches’ 
 beards. 94. Have Norns chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards ? 95. 
 Powers of witches : “looking into the seeds of time.” Bessie Roy : how she 
 looked into them. (cj6,) Meaning of first scene of “ Macbeth.” 97. Witches' 
 power to vanish. Ointments for the purpose. Scot’s instance of their 
 efficacy. (<58^ “ Weird sisters.” 99. Other evidence, (raij' Why Shakspere 
 chose witches. Command over elements. Peculiar to Scotch trials 
 
 of 1590-91. 102. Earlier case of Bessie Dunlop — a poor, starved, half-daft 
 
 creature. “Thom Reid,” and how he tempted her. Her canny Scotch 
 prudence. Poor Bessie gets burnt for all that. 103. Reason for peculiarity 
 of trials of 1590. James II. comes from Denmark to Scotland. The witches 
 raise a storm at the instigation of the devil. How the trials were conducted. 
 104. John Fian. Raising a mist. Toad-omen. Ship-sinking. 105. Sieve- 
 sailing. Excitement south of the Border. The “ Dsemonologie.” Statute 
 of James against witchcraft. 106. The origin of the incubus and succubus. 
 107. Mooncalves. 108. Division of opinion amongst Reformers regarding 
 devils. Giordano Bruno. Bullinger’s opinion about Sadducees and Epicures. 
 109. Emancipation a gradual process. Exorcism in Edward VI. ’s. Prayer- 
 
 ( S a . 
 
 V 
 
 7 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 xii 
 
 /' 
 
 book. iio. The author hopes he has been reverent in his treatment of the 
 subject. Any sincere belief entitled to respect. Our pet beliefs may some 
 day appear as dead and ridiculous as these. 
 
 IV. 
 
 iii. Fairies and devils differ in degree, not in origin. 112. Evidence. 
 'iiJj. Cause of difference. Folk, until disturbed by religious doubt, don’t 
 Believe in devils, but fairies. Reformation shook people up, and made 
 
 them think of hell and devilsl The change came in the towns before 
 
 the country. Fairies held on a long time in the country. Cri 6 ~ 7 ) Shakspere 
 was early impressed with fairy lore. In middle life, came in contact with 
 town thought and devils ; and at the end of it returned to Stratford and 
 fairydom. tfi7jThis is reflected in his works. (iT|. But there is progres- 
 sion of thougKt to be observed in these stages. 1 19) Shakspere indirectly 
 tells us his thoughts, if we will take the trouble to learn them. 120. Three 
 stages of thought that men go through on religious matters. Hereditary 
 belief. Scepticism. Reasoned belief. f yiT^ Shakspere went through all 
 this. ;ih2'. Illustrations. Hereditary belief. “A Midsummer Night’s 
 Dream. Fairies chiefly an adaptation of current tradition. 123. The 
 dawn of doubt. 124. Scepticism. Etui spirits dominant. No guiding 
 good. 125. Corresponding lapse™«£ faith in other matters. Woman’s 
 purity. 126. Man’s honour. (ia^j.lMr. Ruskin’s view of Shakspere’s 
 message. 128. Founded chiefly on plays of sceptical period. Message 
 of third period entirely different. (12^ Reasoned belief. “ The Tempest.’ 
 130. Man can maste r evil o f all forms if he go about it in the right way: — is 
 not the toy of fate.^ r^iT ^Prospero a type of Shakspere in this final stage 
 of thought. How pleasant to think this ! 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 i. It is impossible to understand and appreciate 
 thoroughly the production of any great literary genius 
 who lived and wrote in times far removed from our 
 own, without a certain amount of familiarity, not only 
 with the precise shades of meaning possessed by the 
 vocabulary he made use of, as distinguished from the 
 sense conveyed by the same words in the present day, 
 but also with the customs and ideas, political, reli- 
 gious, and moral, that predominated during the period 
 in which his works were produced. Without such 
 information, it will be found impossible, in many 
 matters of the first importance, to grasp the writer’s 
 true intent, and much will appear vague and lifeless 
 that was full of point and vigour when it was first 
 conceived ; or, worse still, modern opinion upon the 
 subject will be set up as the standard of interpre- 
 tation, ideas will be forced into the writer’s sentences 
 that could not by any manner of possibility have had 
 place in his mind, and utterly false conclusions as to 
 his meaning will be the result. Even the man who 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 has had some experience in the study of an early 
 literature, occasionally finds some difficulty in prevent- 
 ing the current opinions of his day from obtruding 
 themselves upon his work and warping his judgment ; 
 to the general reader this must indeed be a frequent 
 and serious stumbling-block. 
 
 2. This is a special source of danger in the study 
 of the works of dramatic poets, whose very art 
 lies in the representation of the current opinions, 
 habits, and foibles of their times — in holding up the 
 mirror to their age. It is true that, if their works are 
 to live, they must deal with subjects of more than mere 
 passing interest ; but it is also true that many, and the 
 greatest of them, speak upon questions of eternal in- 
 terest in the particular light cast upon them in their 
 times, and it is quite possible that the truth may be 
 entirely lost from want of power to recognize it under 
 the disguise in which it comes. A certain motive, for 
 instance, that is an overpowering one in a given 
 period, subsequently appears grotesque, weak, or 
 even powerless ; the consequent action becomes in- 
 comprehensible, and the actor is contemned ; and a 
 simile that appeared most appropriate in the ears 
 of the author’s contemporaries, seems meaningless, 
 or ridiculous, to later generations. 
 
 3. An example or two of this possibility of error, 
 derived from works produced during the period with 
 which it is the object of these pages to deal, will not 
 be out of place here. 
 
 A very striking illustration of the manner in 
 
SOURCES OF ERROR. 
 
 which a word may mislead is afforded by the oft- 
 quoted line : 
 
 “ Assume a virtue, if you have it not.” 
 
 By most readers the secondary, and, in the present 
 day, almost universal, meaning of the word assume — 
 “pretend that to be, which in reality has no exist- 
 ence ; ” — that is, in the particular case, “ ape the 
 chastity you do not in reality possess” — is understood 
 in this sentence ; and consequently Hamlet, and 
 through him, Shakspere, stand committed to the 
 appalling doctrine that hypocrisy in morals is to be 
 commended and cultivated. Now, such a proposition 
 never for an instant entered Shakspere’s head. He 
 used the word “ assume ” in this case in its primary 
 and justest sense; ad-sumo, take to, acquire ; and the 
 context plainly shows that Hamlet meant that his 
 mother, by self-denial, would gradually acquire that 
 virtue in which she was so conspicuously wanting. Yet, 
 for lack of a little knowledge of the history of the word 
 employed, the other monstrous gloss has received 
 almost universal and applauding acceptance. 
 
 4. This is a fair example of the style of error 
 which a reader unacquainted with the history of the 
 changes our language has undergone may fall into. 
 Ignorance of changes in customs and morals may 
 cause equal or greater error. 
 
 The difference between the older and more modern 
 law, and popular opinion, relating to promises of 
 marriage and their fulfilment, affords a striking illus- 
 tration of the absurdities that attend upon the inter- 
 pretation of the ideas of one generation by the practice 
 
4 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 of another. Perhaps no greater nonsense has been 
 talked upon any subject than this one, especially in 
 relation to Shakspere’s own marriage, by critics 
 who seem to have thought that a fervent expression 
 of acute moral feeling would replace and render un- 
 necessary patient investigation. 
 
 In illustration of this difference, a play of Mas- 
 singer’s, “ The Maid of Honour,” may be advan- 
 tageously cited, as the catastrophe turns upon this 
 question of marriage contracts. Camiola, the heroine, 
 having been precontracted by oath 1 to Bertoldo, the 
 king’s natural brother, and hearing of his subsequent 
 engagement to the Duchess of Sienna, determines to 
 quit the world and take the veil. But before doing so, 
 and without informing any one, except her confessor, 
 of her intention, she contrives a somewhat dramatic 
 scene for the purpose of exposing her false lover. 
 She comes into the presence of the king and all the 
 court, produces her contract, claims Bertoldo as her 
 husband, and demands justice of the king, adjuring 
 him that he shall not — 
 
 “ Swayed or by favour or affection, 
 
 By a false gloss or wrested comment, alter 
 The true intent and letter of the law.” 
 
 Now, the only remedy that would occur to the 
 mind of the reader of the present day under such 
 circumstances, would be an action for breach of promise 
 of marriage, and he would probably be aware of the 
 very recent origin of that method of procedure. The 
 only reply, therefore, that he would expect from 
 Roberto would be a mild and sympathetic assurance 
 
 1 Act v. sc. i. 
 
ILL USTRA TIONS. 
 
 5 
 
 of inability to interfere ; and he must be some- 
 what taken aback to find this claim of Camiola ad- 
 mitted as indisputable. The riddle becomes some- 
 what further involved when, having established her 
 contract, she immediately intimates that she has not 
 the slightest intention of observing it herself, by 
 declaring her desire to take the veil. 
 
 5. This can only be explained by the rules current 
 at the time regarding spousals. The betrothal, or 
 handfasting, was, in Massinger’s time, a ceremony that 
 entailed very serious obligations upon the parties to 
 it. There were two classes of spousals — sponsalia dc 
 futuro and sponsalia de proesenti : a promise of mar- 
 riage in the future, and an actual declaration of present 
 marriage. This last form of betrothal was, in fact, 
 marriage, as far as the contracting parties were con- 
 cerned. 1 It could not, even though not consummated, 
 be dissolved by mutual consent ; and a subsequent 
 marriage, even though celebrated with religious rites, 
 was utterly invalid, and could be set aside at the 
 suit of the injured person. 
 
 The results entailed by sponsalia de futuro were 
 less serious. Although no spousals of the same 
 nature could be entered into with a third person 
 during the existence of the contract, yet it could be 
 dissolved by mutual consent, and was dissolved by 
 subsequent sponsalia in proesenti , or matrimony. 
 But such spousals could be converted into valid 
 matrimony by the cohabitation of the parties ; and 
 
 1 Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals, 1686, p. 236. In England 
 the offspring were, nevertheless, illegitimate. 
 
6 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 this, instead of being looked upon as reprehensible, 
 seems to have been treated as a laudable action, and 
 to be by all means encouraged . 1 In addition to this, 
 completion of a contract for marriage de futuro con- 
 firmed by oath, if such a contract were not indeed 
 indissoluble, as was thought by some, could at any 
 rate be enforced against an unwilling party. But 
 there were some reasons that justified the dissolution 
 of sponsalia of either description. Affinity was one 
 of these ; and — what is to the purpose here, in Eng- 
 land, before the Reformation, and in those parts of 
 the continent unaffected by it — the entrance into a 
 religious order was another. Here, then, we have 
 a full explanation of Camiola’s conduct. She is in 
 possession of evidence of a contract of marriage 
 between herself and Bertoldo, which, whether in 
 prcssenti or in futuro, being confirmed by oath, she 
 can force upon him, and which will invalidate his 
 proposed marriage with the duchess. Having estab- 
 lished her right, she takes the only step that can with 
 certainty free both herself and Bertoldo from the bond 
 they had created, by retiring into a nunnery. 
 
 This explanation renders the action of the play 
 clear, and at the same time shows that Shakspere 
 in his conduct with regard to his marriage may have 
 been behaving in the most honourable and praise- 
 worthy manner ; as the bond, with the date of which 
 the date of the birth of his first child is compared, is 
 for the purpose of exonerating the ecclesiastics from 
 any liability for performing the ecclesiastical cere- 
 mony, which was not at all a necessary preliminary to 
 a valid marriage, so far as the husband and wife were 
 1 Swinburne, p. 227. 
 
KNOW A MAN’S COMPANY. 
 
 7 
 
 concerned, although it was essential to render issue 
 of the marriage legitimate. 
 
 6. These are instances of the deceptions that 
 are likely to arise from the two fertile sources that 
 have been specified. There can be no doubt that the 
 existence of errors arising from the former source — 
 misapprehension of the meaning of words — is very 
 generally admitted, and effectual remedies have been 
 supplied by modern scholars for those who will make 
 use of them. Errors arising from the latter source 
 are not so entirely recognized, or so securely guarded 
 against. But what has just been said surely shows 
 that it is of no use reading a writer of a past age 
 with merely modern conceptions ; and, therefore, that 
 if such a man’s works are worth study at all, they 
 must be read with the help of the light thrown upon 
 them by contemporary history, literature, laws, and 
 morals. The student must endeavour to divest him- 
 self, as far as possible, of all ideas that are the result 
 of a development subsequent to the time in which 
 his author lived, and to place himself in harmony 
 with the life and thoughts of the people of that age : 
 sit down with them in their homes, and learn the 
 sources of their loves, their hates, their fears, and see 
 wherein domestic happiness, or lack of it, made them 
 strong or weak ; follow them to the market-place, 
 and witness their dealings with their fellows — the 
 honesty or baseness of them, and trace the cause ; 
 look into their very hearts, if it may be, as they kneel 
 at the devotion they feel or simulate, and become 
 acquainted with the springs of their dearest aspirations 
 and most secret prayers. 
 
8 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 7. A hard discipline, no doubt, but not more hard 
 than salutary. Salutary in two ways. First, as a test 
 of the student’s own earnestness of purpose. For in 
 these days of revival of interest in our elder literature, 
 it has become much the custom for flippant persons, 
 who are covetous of being thought “ well-read ” by 
 their less-enterprising companions, to skim over the 
 surface of the pages of the wisest and noblest of our 
 great teachers, either not understanding, or misunder- 
 standing them. “ I have read Chaucer, Shakspere, 
 Milton,” is the sublimely satirical expression con- 
 stantly heard from the mouths of those who, having 
 read words set down by the men they name, have no 
 more capacity for reading the hearts of the men 
 themselves, through those words, than a blind man 
 has for discerning the colour of flowers. As a con- 
 sequence of this flippancy of reading, numberless 
 writers, whose works have long been consigned to a 
 well-merited oblivion, have of late years been dis- 
 interred and held up for public admiration, chiefly 
 upon the ground that they are ancient and unknown. 
 The man who reads for the sake of having done so, 
 not for the sake of the knowledge gained by doing 
 so, finds as much charm in these petty writers as in 
 the greater, and hence their transient and undeserved 
 popularity. It would be well, then, for every earnest 
 student, before beginning the study of any one having 
 pretensions to the position of a master, and who is 
 not of our own generation, to ask himself, “ Am I pre- 
 pared thoroughly to sift out and ascertain the true 
 import of every allusion contained in this volume ? ” 
 And if he cannot honestly answer “Yes," let him 
 
FLIPPANCY AND PEDANTRY. 
 
 9 
 
 shut the book, assured that he is not impelled to the 
 study of it by a sincere thirst for knowledge, but by 
 impertinent curiosity, or a shallow desire to obtain 
 undeserved credit for learning. 
 
 8. The second way in which such a discipline will 
 prove salutary is this : it will prevent the student 
 from straying too far afield in his reading. The 
 number of “ classical ” authors whose works will repay 
 
 ‘"'such severe study is extremely limited. However 
 much enthusiasm he may throw into his studies, he 
 will find that nine-tenths of our older literature 
 yields too small a harvest of instruction to attract 
 any but the pedant to expend so much labour upon 
 them. The two great vices of modern reading will 
 be avoided — flippancy on the one hand, and pedantry 
 on the other. 
 
 9. The object, therefore, which I have had in view 
 in the compilation of the following pages, is to 
 attempt to throw some additional light upon a con- 
 dition of thought, utterly different from any belief 
 that has firm hold in the present generation, that was 
 current and peculiarly prominent during the lifetime 
 of the man who bears overwhelmingly the greatest 
 name, either in our own or any other literature. It 
 may be said, and perhaps with much force, that 
 enough, and more than enough, has been written in 
 the way of Shakspere criticism. But is it not 
 better that somewhat too much should be written 
 upon such a subject than too little? We cannot 
 expect that every one shall see all the greatness of 
 
10 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 Shakspere’s vast and complex mind — by one a 
 truth will be grasped that has eluded the vigilance 
 of others ; — and it is better that those who can by 
 no possibility grasp anything at all should have 
 patient hearing, rather than that any additional light 
 should be lost. The useless, lifeless criticism vanishes 
 quietly away into chaos ; the good remains quietly 
 to be useful : and it is in reliance upon the justice 
 and certainty of this law that I aim at bringing before 
 the mind, as clearly as may be, a phase of belief that 
 was continually and powerfully influencing Shak- 
 spere during the whole of his life, but is now well- 
 nigh forgotten or entirely misunderstod. If the 
 endeavour is a useless and unprofitable one, let it be 
 forgotten — I am content ; but I hope to be able to 
 show that an investigation of the subject does furnish 
 us with a key which, in a manner, unlocks the secrets 
 of Shakspere’s heart, and brings us closer to the 
 real living man — to the very soul of him who, with 
 hardly any history in the accepted sense of the word, 
 has left us in his works a biography of far deeper and 
 more precious meaning, if we will but understand it. 
 
 io. But it may be said that Shakspere, of all men, 
 is able to speak for himself without aid or com- 
 ment. His works appeal to all, young and old, in 
 every time, every nation. It is true ; he can be under- 
 stood. He is, to use again Ben Jonson’s oft-quoted 
 words, “ Not of an age, but for all time.” Yet he is 
 so thoroughly imbued with the spirit and opinions of 
 his era, that without a certain comprehension of the 
 men of the Elizabethan period he cannot be under- 
 
OBJECT IN VIEW. 
 
 ii 
 
 stood fully. Indeed, his greatness is to a large 
 extent due to his sympathy with the men around 
 him, his power of clearly thinking out the answers to 
 the all-time questions, and giving a voice to them 
 that his contemporaries could understand ; — answers 
 that others could not for themselves formulate — could, 
 perhaps, only vaguely and dimly feel after. To under- 
 stand these answers fully, the language in which they 
 were delivered must be first thoroughly mastered. 
 
 II. I intend, therefore, to attempt to sketch out 
 the leading features of a phase of religious belief that 
 acquired peculiar distinctness and prominence during 
 Shakspere’s lifetime — more, perhaps, than it ever did 
 before, or has done since — the belief in the existence 
 of evil spirits, and their influence upon and dealings 
 with mankind. The subject will be treated in three 
 sections. The first will contain a short statement of 
 the laws that seem to be of universal operation in 
 the creation and maintenance of the belief in a 
 multitudinous band of spirits,' good and evil ; and of 
 a few of the conditions of the Elizabethan epoch that 
 may have had a formative and modifying influence 
 upon that belief. The second will be devoted to an 
 outline of the chief features of that belief, as it existed 
 at the time in question — the organization, appearance, 
 and various functions and powers of the evil spirits, 
 with special reference to Shakspere’s plays. The 
 third^and concluding section, will embody an attempt 
 to trace the growth of Shakspere’s thought upon 
 religious matters through the medium of his allusions 
 to this subject. 
 
12. The empire of the supernatural must obviously 
 be most extended where civilization is the least 
 advanced. An educated man has to make a con- 
 scious, and sometimes severe, effort to refrain from 
 pronouncing a dogmatic opinion as to the cause of a 
 given result when sufficient evidence to warrant a 
 definite conclusion is wanting ; to the savage, the 
 notion of any necessity for, or advantage to be 
 derived from, such self-restraint never once occurs. 
 Neither the lightning that strikes his hut, the blight 
 that withers his crops, the disease that destroys the 
 life of those he loves ; nor, on the other hand, the 
 beneficent sunshine or life-giving rain, is by him 
 traceable to any known physical cause. They are 
 the results of influences utterly beyond his under- 
 standing — supernatural, — matters upon which imagi- 
 nation is allowed free scope to run riot, and from 
 which spring up a legion of myths, or attempts to 
 represent in some manner these incomprehensible 
 processes, grotesque or poetic, according to the 
 character of the people with which they originate, 
 which, if their growth be not disturbed by extraneous 
 
PRIMITIVE SUPERNATURALISM. 
 
 13 
 
 influences, eventually develop into the national creed. 
 The most ordinary events of the savage’s every-day 
 life do not admit of a natural solution ; his whole 
 existence is bound in, from birth to death, by a net- 
 work of miracles, and regulated, in its smallest details, 
 by unseen powers of whom he knows little or 
 nothing. 
 
 13. Hence it is that, in primitive societies, the 
 functions of legislator, judge, priest, and medicine 
 man are all combined in one individual, the great 
 medium of communication between man and the 
 unknown, whose person is pre-eminently sacred. The 
 laws that are to guide the community come in some 
 mysterious manner through him from the higher 
 powers. If two members of the clan are involved in 
 a quarrel, he is appealed to to apply some test in 
 order to ascertain which of the two is in the wrong — 
 an ordeal that can have no judicial operation, except 
 upon the assumption of the existence of omnipo- 
 tent beings interested in the discovery of evil-doers, 
 who will prevent the test from operating unjustly. 
 Maladies and famines are unmistakeable signs of the 
 displeasure of the good, or spite of the bad spirits, 
 and are to be averted by some propitiatory act on 
 the part of the sufferers, or the mediation of the 
 priest-doctor. The remedy that would put an end 
 to a long-continued drought will be equally effective 
 in arresting an epidemic. 
 
 14. But who, and of what nature, are these super- 
 natural powers whose influences are thus brought to 
 
14 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 bear upon every-day life, and who appear to take such 
 an interest in the affairs of mankind ? It seems that 
 there are three great principles at work in the evolu- 
 tion and modification of the ideas upon this subject, 
 which must now be shortly stated. 
 
 15. (i.) The first of these is the apparent incapacity 
 of the majority of mankind to accept a purely mono- 
 theistic creed. It is a demonstrable fact that the 
 primitive religions now open to observation attribute 
 specific events and results to distinct supernatural 
 beings ; and there can be little doubt that this is the 
 initial step in eveiy creed. It is a bold .and some- 
 what perilous revolution to attempt to overturn this 
 doctrine and to set up monotheism in its place, and, 
 when Successfully accomplished, is rarely permanent. 
 The more educated portions of the community main- 
 tain allegiance to the new teaching, perhaps ; but 
 among the lower classes it soon becomes degraded to, 
 or amalgamated with, some form of polytheism more 
 or less pronounced, and either secret or declared. 
 Even the Jews, the nation the most conspicuous for 
 its supposed uncompromising adherence to a mono- 
 theistic creed, cannot claim absolute freedom from 
 taint in this respect ; for in the country places, far 
 from the centre of worship, the people were con- 
 stantly following after strange gods ; and even some 
 of their most notable worthies were liable to the same 
 accusation. 
 
 16. It is not necessary, however, that the indi- 
 viduality and specialization of function of the supreme 
 
MONOTHEISM IMPOSSIBLE. 15 
 
 beings recognized by any religious system should be 
 so conspicuous as they are in this case, or in the 
 Greek or Roman Pantheon, to mark it as in its 
 essence polytheistic or of polytheistic tendency. It is 
 quite enough that the immortals are deemed to be 
 capable of hearing and answering the prayers of their 
 adorers, and of interfering actively in passing events, 
 either for good or for evil. This, at the root of it, 
 constitutes the crucial difference between polytheism 
 and monotheism ; and in this sense the Roman 
 Catholic form of Christianity, representing the oldest 
 undisturbed evolution of a strictly monotheistic doc- 
 trine, is undeniably polytheistic. Apart from the 
 Virgin Mary, there is a whole hierarchy of inferior 
 deities, saints, and angels, subordinate to the One 
 Supreme Being. This may possibly be denied by 
 the authorized expounders of the doctrine of the 
 Church of Rome ; but it is nevertheless certain that 
 it is the view taken by the uneducated classes, with 
 whom the saints are much more present and definite 
 deities than even the Almighty Himself. It is worth 
 noting, that during the dancing mania of 1418, not 
 God, or Christ, or the Virgin Mary, but St. Vitus, was 
 prayed to by the populace to stop the epidemic that 
 was afterwards known by his name. 1 There was 
 a temple to St. Michael on Mount St. Angelo, and 
 Augustine thought it necessary to declare that angel- 
 worshippers were heretics. 2 Even Protestantism, 
 though a much younger growth than Catholicism, 
 shows a slight tendency towards polytheism. The 
 
 1 Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 85. 
 
 2 Bullinger, p. 348. Parker Society. 
 
16 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 saints are, of course, quite out of the question, and 
 angels are as far as possible relegated from the citadel 
 of asserted belief into the vaguer regions of poetical 
 sentimentality ; but — although again unadmitted by 
 the orthodox of the sect — the popular conception of 
 Christ is, and, until the masses are more educated in 
 theological niceties than they are at present, neces- 
 sarily must be, as of a Supreme Being totally distinct 
 from God the Father. This applies in a less degree 
 to the third Person in the Trinity; less, because His 
 individuality is less clear. George Eliot has, with 
 her usual penetration, noted this fact in “ Silas 
 Marner,” where, in Mrs. Winthrop’s simple theo- 
 logical system, the Trinity is always referred to as 
 “ Them.” 
 
 17. The posthumous history of Francis of Assisi 
 affords a striking illustration of this strange tendency 
 towards polytheism. This extraordinary man re- 
 ceived no little reverence and adulation during his 
 lifetime ; but it was not until after his death that the 
 process of deification commenced. It was then dis- 
 covered that the stigmata were not the only points of 
 resemblance between the departed saint and the Divine 
 Master he professed to follow ; that his birth had been 
 foretold by the prophets ; that, like Christ, he under- 
 went transfiguration ; and that he had worked miracles 
 during his life. The climax of the apotheosis was 
 reached in i486, when a monk, preaching at Paris, 
 seriously maintained that St. Francis was in very 
 truth a second Christ, the second Son of God ; and 
 that after his death he descended into purgatory, and 
 
MANICHJEISM UNIVERSAL. 
 
 1 7 
 
 liberated all the spirits confined there who had the 
 good fortune to be arrayed in the Franciscan garb. 1 
 
 1 8. (ii.) The second principle is that of the Mani- 
 chaeists : the division of spirits into hostile camps, 
 good and evil. This is a much more common belief 
 than the orthodox are willing to allow. There is 
 hardly any religious system that does not recognize 
 a first' source of evil, as well as a first source of good. 
 But the spirit of evil occupies a position of varying 
 importance : in some systems he maintains himself 
 as co-equal of the spirit of good ; in others he sinks 
 to a lower stage, remaining very powerful to do harm, 
 but nevertheless under the control, in matters of the 
 highest importance, of the more beneficent Being. 
 In each of these cases, the first principle is found 
 operating, ever augmenting the ranks ; monodiabolism 
 being as impossible as monotheism ; and hence the 
 importance of fully establishing that proposition. 
 
 19. (iii.) The last and most important of these 
 principles is the tendency of all theological systems 
 to absorb into themselves the deities extraneous to 
 themselves, not as gods, but as inferior, or even evil, 
 spirits. The actual existence of the foreign deity is 
 not for a moment disputed, the presumption in favour 
 of innumerable spiritual agencies being far too strong 
 to allow the possibility of such a doubt ; but just as 
 the alien is looked upon as an inferior being, created 
 chiefly for the use and benefit of the chosen people — 
 and what nation is not, if its opinion of itself may be 
 
 1 Maury, Histoire de la Magie, p. 354. 
 
 C 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 relied upon, a chosen people ? — so the god the alien 
 worships is a spirit of inferior power and capacity, and 
 can be recognized solely as occupying a position 
 subordinate to that of the gods of the land. 
 
 This principle has such an important influence in 
 the elaboration of the belief in demons, that it is 
 worth while to illustrate the generality of its applica- 
 tion. 
 
 20. In the Greek system of theology we find in 
 the first place a number of deities of varying im- 
 portance and power, whose special functions are 
 defined with some distinctness ; and then, below 
 these, an innumerable band of spirits, the souls of the 
 departed — probably the relics of an earlier pure 
 ^-ancestor-worship — who still interest themselves in the 
 inhabitants of this world. These Sa'ifioveg were cer- 
 tainly accredited with supernatural power, and were 
 not of necessity either good or evil in their influence 
 or action. It was to this second class that foreign 
 deities were assimilated. They found it impossible, 
 however, to retain even this humble position. The 
 ceremonies of their worship, and the language in 
 which those ceremonies were performed, were strange 
 to the inhabitants of the land in which the acclimatiza- 
 tion was attempted ; and the incomprehensible is first 
 suspected, then loathed. It is not surprising, then, 
 that the new-comers soon fell into the ranks of purely 
 evil spirits, and that those who persisted in exercising 
 their rites were stigmatized as devil-worshippers, or 
 magicians. 
 
 But in process of time this polytheistic system 
 
ENEMIES’ GODS ARE DEVILS. 19 
 
 became pre-eminently unsatisfactory to the thought- 
 ful men whom Greece produced in such numbers. 
 The tendency towards monotheism which is usually 
 associated with the name of Plato is hinted at in 
 the writings of other philosophers who were his 
 predecessors. The effect of this revolution was to 
 recognize one Supreme Being, the First Cause, and 
 to subordinate to him all the other deities of the 
 ancient and popular theology — to co-ordinate them, 
 in fact, with the older class of daemons ; the first step 
 in the descent to the lowest category of all. 
 
 21. The history of the neo-Platonic belief is one of 
 elaboration upon these ideas. The conception of the 
 Supreme Being was complicated in a manner closely 
 resembling the idea of the Christian Trinity, and all 
 the subordinate daemons were classified into good 
 and evil geniuses. Thus, a theoretically monotheistic 
 system was established, with a tremendous hierarchy 
 of inferior spirits, who frequently bore the names of 
 the ancient gods and goddesses of Egypt, Greece, 
 and Rome, strikingly resembling that of Roman 
 Catholicism. The subordinate daemons were not at 
 first recognized as entitled to any religious rites ; but 
 in the course of time, by the inevitable operation of 
 the first principle just enunciated, a form of theurgy 
 sprang up with the object of attracting the kindly 
 help and patronage of the good spirits, and was 
 tolerated ; and attempts were made to hold intercourse 
 with the evil spirits, which were, as far as possible, 
 suppressed and discountenanced. 
 
20 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 22. The history of the operation of this principle 
 upon the Jewish religion is very similar, and extremely 
 interesting. Although they do not seem to have ever 
 had any system of ancestor-worship, as the Greeks 
 had, yet the Jews appear originally to have recognized 
 the deities of their neighbours as existing spirits, 
 but inferior in power to the God of Israel. “ All 
 the gods of the nations are idols ” are words that 
 entirely fail to convey the idea of the Psalmist ; 
 for the word translated “ idols ” is Elohim , the very 
 term usually employed to designate Jehovah ; and 
 the true sense of the passage therefore is : “ All the 
 gods of the nations are gods, but Jehovah made the 
 heavens.” 1 In another place we read that “ The Lord 
 is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” 2 
 As, however, the Jews gradually becarpe acquainted 
 with the barbarous rites with which their neighbours 
 did honour to their gods, the foreigners seem to have 
 fallen more and more in estimation, until they came 
 to be classed as evil spirits. To this process such 
 names as Beelzebub, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and Belial 
 bear witness ; Beelzebub, “ the prince of the devils ” 
 of later time, being one of the gods of the hostile 
 Philistines. 
 
 23. The introduction of Christianity made no 
 difference in this respect. Paul says to the believers 
 at Corinth, “that the things which the Gentiles sacri- 
 fice, they sacrifice to devils ( Sat/j. 6 via ), and not to God ; 
 and I would not that ye should have fellowship 
 
 1 Psalm xcvi. 5 (xcv. Sept.). 
 
 - Psalm xcv. 3 (xciv. Sept.). Maury, p. 9S. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM. 
 
 21 
 
 with devils ; ” 1 and the Septuagint renders the word 
 Elohim in the ninety -fifth Psalm by this Srn/zo via, 
 which, as the Christians had already a distinct term 
 for good spirits, came to be applied to evil ones only. 
 
 Under the influence therefore, of the new religion, 
 the gods of Greece and Rome, who in the days of 
 their supremacy had degraded so many foreign deities 
 to the position of daemons, were in their turn deposed 
 from their high estate, and became the nucleus around 
 which the Christian belief in demonology formed 
 itself. The gods who under the old theologies reigned 
 paramount in the lower regions became pre-eminently 
 diabolic in character in the new system, and it was 
 Hecate who to the last retained her position of active 
 patroness and encourager of witchcraft ; a practice 
 which became almost indissolubly connected with her 
 name. Numerous instances of the completeness with 
 which this process of diabolization was effected, and 
 the firmness with which it retained its hold upon the 
 popular belief, even to late times, might be given ; 
 but the following must suffice. In one of the miracle 
 plays, “The Conversion of Saul,” a council of devils 
 is held, at which Mercury appears as the messenger 
 of Belial. 2 
 
 24. But this absolute rejection of every pagan 
 belief and ceremony was characteristic of the Christian 
 Church in its infancy only. So long as the band of 
 believers was a small and persecuted one, no tempta- 
 tion to violate the rule could exist. But as the 
 
 1 I Cor. x. 20. 
 
 2 Digby Mysteries, New Shakspere Society, iSSo, p. 44. 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 Church grew, and acquired influence and position, it 
 discovered that good policy demanded that the stern- 
 ness and inflexibility of its youthful theories should 
 undergo some modification. It found that it was not 
 the most successful method of enticing stragglers into 
 its fold to stigmatize the gods they ignorantly wor- 
 shipped as devils, and to persecute them as magicians. 
 The more impetuous and enthusiastic supporters did 
 persecute, and persecute most relentlessly, the adhe- 
 rents of the dying faith ; but persecution, whether of 
 good or evil, always fails as a means of suppressing 
 a hated doctrine, unless it can be carried to the 
 extent of extermination of its supporters ; and the 
 more far-seeing leaders of the Catholic Church soon 
 recognized that a slight surrender of principle was 
 a far surer road to success than stubborn, uncompro- 
 mising opposition. 
 
 25. It was in this spirit that the Catholics dealt 
 with the oracles of heathendom. Mr. Lecky is hardly 
 correct when he says that nothing analogous to the 
 ancient oracles was incorporated with Christianity. 1 
 There is the notable case of the god Sosthenion, 
 whom Constantine identified with the archangel 
 Michael, and whose oracular functions were continued 
 in a precisely similar manner by the latter. 2 Oracles 
 that were not thus absorbed and supported were re- 
 cognized as existent, but under diabolic control, and 
 to be tolerated, if not patronized, by the representa- 
 tives of the dominant religion. The oracle at Delphi 
 
 1 Rise and Influence of Rationalism, i. p. 31. 
 
 - Maury, p. 244, et seq. 
 
ORACLES ARE DIABOLIC. 
 
 23 
 
 gave forth prophetic utterances for centuries after the 
 commencement of the Christian era ; and was the less 
 dangerous, as its operations could be stopped at any 
 moment by holding a saintly relic to the god or devil 
 Apollo’s nose. There is a fable that St. Gregory, in 
 the course of his travels, passed near the oracle, and 
 his extraordinary sanctity was such as to prevent 
 all subsequent utterances. This so disturbed the 
 presiding genius of the place, that he appealed to the 
 saint to undo the baneful effects his presence had pro- 
 duced ; and Gregory benevolently wrote a letter to 
 the devil, which was in fact a license to continue the 
 business of prophesying unmolested. 1 This non- 
 sensical fiction shows clearly enough that the oracles 
 were not generally looked upon as extinguished by 
 Christianity. As the result of a similar policy we 
 find the names and functions of the pagan gods and 
 the earlier Christian saints confused in the most ex- 
 traordinary manner ; the saints assuming the duties 
 of the moribund deities where those duties were of a 
 harmless or necessary character. 2 
 
 26. The Church carried out exactly the same prin- 
 ciples in her missionary efforts amongst the heathen 
 hordes of Northern Europe. “Do you renounce 
 the devils, and all their words and works ; Thonar, 
 Wodin, and Saxenote ? ” was part of the form of re- 
 cantation administered to the Scandinavian con- 
 verts ; 3 and at the present day “ Odin take you ” is 
 the Norse equivalent of “the devil take you.” On the 
 
 1 Scot, book vii. ch. i. 2 Middleton’s Letter from Rome. 
 
 3 Milman, History of Latin Christianity, iii. 267; ix. 65. 
 
24 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 other hand, an attempt was made to identify Baida 
 “ the beautiful ” with Christ — a confusion of character 
 that may go far towards accounting for a custom 
 joyously observed by our forefathers at Christmas- 
 tide, but which the false modesty of modern society 
 has nearly succeeded in banishing from amongst us ; 
 for Baida was slain by Loke with a branch of 
 mistletoe, and Christ was betrayed by Judas with 
 a kiss. 
 
 27. Upon the conversion of the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain to Christianity, the native deities under- 
 went the same inevitable fate, and sank into the 
 rank of evil spirits. Perhaps the juster opinion is 
 that they became the progenitors of our fairy mytho- 
 logy rather than the subsequent devil-lore, although 
 the similarity between these two classes of spirits 
 is sufficient to warrant us in classing them as species 
 of the same genus ; their characters and functions 
 being perfectly interchangeable, and even at times 
 merging and becoming indistinguishable. A cer- 
 tain lurking affection in the new converts for the 
 religion they had deserted, perhaps under compulsion, 
 may have led them to look upon their ancient objects 
 of veneration as less detestable in nature, and dan- 
 gerous in act, than the devils imported as an integral 
 portion of their adopted faith ; and so originated this 
 class of spirits less evil than the other. Sir Walter 
 Scott may be correct in his assertion that many of 
 these fairy-myths owe their origin to the existence 
 of a diminutive autochthonic race that was con- 
 quered by the invading Celts, and the remnants of 
 
SCANDINAVIAN GODS. 
 
 which lurked about the mountains and forests, and 
 excited in their victors a superstitious reverence 
 on account of their great skill in metallurgy ; but 
 this will not explain the retention of many of the 
 old god-names ; as that of the Dusii, the Celtic noc- 
 turnal spirits, in our word “ deuce,” and that of the 
 Nikr or water-spirits in “nixie” and old “Nick.” 1 
 These words undoubtedly indicate the accomplish- 
 ment of the “ facilis descensus Averno ’’ by the native 
 deities. Elves, brownies, gnomes, and trolds were 
 all at one time Scotch or Irish gods. The trolds ob- 
 tained a character similar to that of the more modern 
 succubus, and have left their impression upon Eliza- 
 bethan English in the word “ trull.” 
 
 28. The preceding very superficial outline of the 
 growth of the belief in evil spirits is enough for the 
 purpose of this essay, as it shows that the basis of 
 English devil-lore was the annihilated mythologies 
 of the ancient heathen religions — Italic and Teutonic, 
 as well as those brought into direct conflict with the 
 Jewish system; and also that the more important 
 of the Teutonic deities are not to be traced in the 
 subsequent hierarchy of fiends, on account probably 
 of their temporary or permanent absorption into the 
 proselytizing system, or the refusal of the new converts 
 to believe them to be so black as their teachers 
 painted them. The gradual growth of the super- 
 structure it would be well-nigh impossible and quite 
 unprofitable to trace. It is due chiefly to the credu- 
 lous ignorance and distorted imagination, monkish 
 1 Maury, p. 189. 
 
26 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 and otherwise, of several centuries. Carlyle’s graphic 
 picture of Abbot Sampson’s vision of the devil in 
 “ Past and Present ” will perhaps do more to explain 
 how the belief grew and flourished than pages of 
 explanatory statements. It is w r orthy of remark, 
 however, that to the last, communication with evil 
 spirits was kept up by means of formulae and rites 
 that are undeniably the remnants of a form of re- 
 ligious worship. Incomprehensible in their jargon 
 as these formulae mostly are, and strongly tinctured as 
 they have become with burlesqued Christian sym- 
 bolism and expression — for those who used them could 
 only supply the fast-dying memory of the elder forms 
 from the existing system — they still, in all their 
 grotesqueness, remain the battered relics of a dead 
 faith. 
 
 29. Such being the natural history of the conflict 
 of religions, it will not be a matter of surprise that 
 the leaders of our English Reformation should, in 
 their turn, have attributed the miracles of the Roman 
 Catholic saints to the same infernal source as the 
 early Christians supposed to have been the origin of 
 the prodigies and oracles of paganism. The impulse 
 given by the secession from the Church of Rome to 
 the study of the Bible by all classes added impetus 
 to this tendency. In Holy Writ the Reformers found 
 full authority for believing in the existence of evil 
 spirits, possession by devils, witchcraft, and divine 
 and diabolic interference by way of miracle generally ; 
 and they consequently acknowledged the possibility of 
 the repetition of such phenomena in the times in which 
 
REFORMERS AND THE DEVILS. 
 
 27 
 
 they lived — a position more tenable, perhaps, than 
 that of modern orthodoxy, that accepts without 
 murmur all the supernatural events recorded in the 
 Bible, and utterly rejects all subsequent relations of 
 a similar nature, however well authenticated. The 
 Reformers believed unswervingly in the truth of the 
 Biblical accounts of miracles, and that what God had 
 once permitted to take place might and would be 
 repeated in case of serious necessity. But they found 
 it utterly impossible to accept the puerile and mean- 
 ingless miracles perpetrated under the auspices of the 
 Roman Catholic Church as evidence of divine inter- 
 ference ; and they had not travelled far enough upon 
 the road towards rationalism to be able to reject 
 them, one and all, as in their very nature impossible. 
 The consequence of this was one of those compromises 
 which we so often meet with in the history of the 
 changes of opinion effected by the Reformation. 
 Only those particular miracles that were indisputably 
 demonstrated to be impostures— and there were 
 plenty of them, such as the Rood of Boxley 1 — were 
 treated as such by them. The unexposed remainder 
 were treated as genuine supernatural phenomena, 
 but caused by diabolical, not divine, agency. The 
 reforming divine Calfhitt, supporting this view of the 
 Catholic miracles in his answer to Martiall’s “Treatise 
 of the Cross,” points out that the majority of super- 
 natural events that have taken place in this world 
 have been, most undoubtedly, the work of the devil ; 
 and puts his opponents into a rather embarrassing 
 dilemma by citing the miracles of paganism, which 
 
 1 Froude, History of England, cabinet edition, iii. 102. 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 both Catholic and Protestant concurred in attributing 
 to the evil one. He then clinches his argument by 
 asserting that “ it is the devil’s cunning that persuades 
 those that will walk in a popish blindness ” that they 
 are worshipping God when they are in reality serving 
 him. “Therefore,” he continues, consciously follow- 
 ing an argument of St. Cyprianus against the pagan 
 miracles, “ these wicke d sp irits do lurk m.HirhieSj in 
 roods, in crosses, in images : and first of all pervert 
 the priests, which are easiest to be caught wit h bait of 
 a little gain. Then work they miracles. They appear 
 to men in divers shapes ; disquiet them when they 
 are awake ; trouble them in their sleeps ; distort their 
 members ; take away their health ; afflict them with 
 diseases ; only to bring them to some idolatry. 
 Thus, when they have obtained their purpose that 
 a lewd affiance is reposed where it should not, they 
 enter (as it were) into a new league, and trouble 
 them no more. What do the simple people then ? 
 Verily suppose 1 that the image, the cross, the thing 
 that they have kneeled and offered unto (the very 
 devil indeed) hath restored them health, whereas he 
 did nothing but leave off to molest them. This is the 
 help and cure that the devils give when they leave off 
 their wrong and injury.” 1 
 
 30. Here we have a distinct charge of devil- 
 worship — the old doctrine cropping up again after 
 centuries of repose : “ all the gods of our opponents 
 are devils.” Nor were the Catholics a whit behind 
 the Protestants in this matter. The priests zealously 
 1 Calfhill, pp. 317-S. Parker Society. 
 
THE CATHOLICS' REPLY. 
 
 29 
 
 taught that the Protestants were devil-worshippers 
 and magicians ; 1 and the common people so im- 
 plicitly believed in the truth of the statement, that we 
 find one poor prisoner, taken by the Dutch at the 
 siege of Alkmaar in 1578, making a desperate attempt 
 to save his life by promising to worship his captors’ 
 devil precisely as they did 2 — a suggestion that failed 
 to pacify those to whom it was addressed. 
 
 31. Having thus stated, so far as necessary, the 
 chief laws that are constantly working the extension 
 of the domain of the supernatural as far as demon- 
 ology is concerned, without a remembrance of which 
 the subject itself would remain somewhat difficult to 
 comprehend fully, I shall now attempt to indicate 
 one or two conditions of thought and circumstance 
 that may have tended to increase and vivify the 
 belief during the period in which the Eliza bethan 
 literature flourished. 
 
 32. It was an era of change. The nation was 
 emerging from the dim twilight of medievalism into 
 the full day of political and religious freedom. But 
 the morning mists, which the rising sun had not yet 
 dispelled, rendered the more distant and complex 
 objects distorted and portentous. The very fact that 
 doubt, or rather, perhaps, independence of thought, 
 was at last, within certain limits, treated as non- 
 criminal in theology, gave an impetus to investiga- 
 tion and speculation in all branches of politics and 
 
 
 1 Hutchinson’s Essay, p. 218. Harsnet, Declaration, p. 30. 
 
 2 Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 400. 
 
3 ° 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 science ; and with this change came, in the main, 
 
 , improvement. But the great defect of the time was 
 that this newly liberated spirit of free inquiry was not 
 kept in check by any sufficient previous discipline in 
 logical methods of reasoning. . Hence the possibility 
 of the wild theories that then existed, followed out 
 into action or not, according a? circumstances favoured 
 or discouraged : Arthur Hacket, with casting out of 
 devils, and other madnesses, vehemently declaring 
 himself the Messiah and King of Europe in the year 
 of grace 1591, and getting himself believed by some, 
 so long as he remained unhanged ; or, more pathetic 
 still, many weary lives wasted day by day in fruitless 
 silent search after the impossible philosopher’s stone, 
 or elixir of life. As in law, so in science, there 
 were no sufficient rules of evidence clearly and 
 unmistakably laid down for the guidance of the 
 investigator ; and consequently it was only necessary 
 to broach a novel theory in order to have it accepted, 
 without any previous serious testing. Men do not 
 seem to have been able to distinguish between an 
 hypothesis and a proved conclusion ; or, rather, the 
 rule of presumptions was reversed, and men accepted 
 the hypothesis as conclusive until it was disproved. 
 It was a perfectly rational and sufficient explanation in 
 those days to refer some extraordinary event to some 
 given supernatural cause, even though there might be 
 no ostensible link between the two : now, such a sug- 
 gestion would be treated by the vast majority with 
 derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most 
 trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance 
 of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a cock, and 
 
SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 3i 
 
 events of like unimportance happening at a particular 
 moment, might, by some unseen concatenation of 
 causes and effects, exercise an incomprehensible in- 
 fluence upon men, and consequently had important 
 bearings upon their conduct. It is solemnly recorded 
 in the Commons’ journals that during the discussion 
 of the statute against witchcraft passed in the reign 
 of James I., a young jackdaw flew into the House ; 
 which accident was generally regarded as malum 
 omen to the Bill. 1 Extraordinary bravery on the 
 part of an adversary was sometimes accounted for by 
 asserting that he was the devil in the form of a man ; 
 
 as the Volscian soldier does with regard to Coriolanus. 
 
 This is no mere dramatist’s fancy, but a fixed belief 
 of the times. Sir William Russell fought so despe- 
 rately at Zutphen, that he got mistaken for the 
 Evil One ; 2 and Drake also gave the Spaniards good 
 reason for believing that he was a devil, and no man. 3 
 
 33. This intense credulousness, childish almost in 
 itself, but yet at the same time combined with the 
 strong man’s intellect, permeated all classes of society. 
 Perhaps a couple of instances, drawn from strangely 
 diverse sources, will bring this more vividly before 
 the mind than any amount of attempted theorizing. 
 The first is one of the tricks of the jugglers of the 
 period. 
 
 “ To make one danse naked. 
 
 “ Make a poore boie confederate with you, so as 
 after charms, etc., spoken by you, he unclothe him- 
 1 See also D’Ewes, p. 688. 2 Froude, xii. 87. 3 Ibid. 663. 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 self and stand naked, seeming (wildest he undresseth 
 himselfe) to shake, stamp, and crie, still hastening 
 to be unclothed, till he be starke naked ; or if you can 
 procure none to go so far, let him onlie beginne to 
 stampe and shake, etc., and unclothe him, and then 
 you may (for reverence of the companie) seeme to 
 release him.” 1 
 
 The second illustration must have demanded, if 
 possible, more credulity on the part of the audience 
 than this harmless entertainment. Cranmer tells us 
 that in the time of Queen Mary a monk preached 
 a sermon at St. Paul’s, the object of which was to 
 prove the truth of the doctrine of transubstantiation ; 
 and, after the manner of his kind, told the following 
 little anecdote in support of it : — “ A maid of North- 
 gate parish in Canterbury, in pretence to wipe her 
 mouth, kept the host in her handkerchief ; and, when 
 she came home, she put the same into a pot, close 
 covered, and she spitted in another pot, and after 
 a few days, she looking in the one pot, found a little 
 young pretty babe, about a shaftmond long ; and the 
 other pot was full of gore blood.” 2 
 
 34. That the audiences before which these ab- 
 surdities were seriously brought, for amusement or 
 instruction, could be excited in either case to any 
 other feeling than good-natured contempt for a 
 would-be impostor, seems to us now-a-days to be 
 impossible. It was not so in the times when these 
 
 1 Scott, p. 339. 
 
 ■ Cranmer, A Confutation of Unwritten Verities, p. 66. Parker 
 Society. 
 
ELIZABETHANS NOT FOOLS. 
 
 33 
 
 things transpired : the actors of them were not 
 knaves, nor were their audiences fools, to any unusual 
 extent. If any one is inclined to form a low opinion 
 of the Elizabethans intellectually, on ^account of the 
 divergence of their capacities of belief in this respect 
 from his own, he does them a great injustice. Let 
 him take at once Charles Lamb’s warning, and try to 
 understand, rather than to judge them. We, who 
 have had the benefit of three hundred more years of 
 experience and liberty of thought than they, should 
 have to hide our faces for very shame had we not 
 arrived at juster and truer conclusions upon those 
 difficult topics that so bewildered our ancestors. But 
 can we, with all our boasted advantages of wealth, 
 power, and knowledge, truly say that all our aims are as 
 high, all our desires as pure, our words as true, and 
 our deeds as noble, as those whose opinions we feel 
 this tendency to contemn ? If not, or if indeed they 
 have anything whatsoever to teach us in these re- 
 spects, let us remember that we shall never learn the 
 lesson wholly, perhaps not learn it at all, unless, cast- 
 ing aside this first impulse to despise, we try to entet- 
 fully into and understand these strange dead beliefs 
 of the past. 
 
 D 
 
35- It is in this spirit that I now enter upon the 
 second division of the subject in hand, in which I 
 shall try to indicate the chief features of the belief in 
 demonology as it existed during the Elizabethan 
 period. These will be taken up in three main heads : 
 the classification, physical appearance, and powers of 
 the evil spirits. 
 
 36. (i.) It is difficult to discover any classification 
 of devils as well authenticated and as universally 
 received as that of the angels introduced by Diony- 
 sius the Areopagite, which was subsequently imported 
 into the creed of the Western Church, and popular- 
 ized in Elizabethan times by Dekker’s “ Hierarchie.” 
 The subject was one which, from its nature, could not 
 be settled ex cathedra , and consequently the subject 
 had to grow up as best it might, each writer adopting 
 the arrangement that appeared to him most suitable. 
 There was one rough but popular classification into 
 greater and lesser devils. The former branch was 
 subdivided into classes of various grades of power, the 
 members of which passed under the titles of kings, 
 dukes, marquises, lords, captains, and other dignities. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF DEVILS. 
 
 35 
 
 Each of these was supposed to have a certain number 
 of legions of the latter class under his command. 
 These were the evil spirits who appeared most 
 frequently on the earth as the emissaries of the 
 greater fiends, to carry out their evil designs. The 
 more important class kept for the most part in a 
 mystical seclusion, and only appeared upon earth in 
 cases of the greatest emergency, or when compelled 
 to do so by conjuration. To the class of lesser devils 
 belonged the bad angel which, together with a good 
 one, was supposed to be assigned to every person at 
 birth, to follow him through life — the one to tempt, the 
 other to guard from temptation ; 1 so that a struggle 
 similar to that recorded between Michael and Satan 
 for the body of Moses was raging for the soul of every 
 existing human being. This was not a mere theory, 
 but a vital active belief, as the beautiful well-known 
 lines at the commencement of the eighth canto of 
 the second book of “ The Faerie Queene,” and the use 
 made of these opposing spirits in Marlowe’s “ Dr. 
 Faustus,” and in “ The Virgin Martyr,” by Mas- 
 singer and Dekker, conclusively show. 
 
 37. Another classification, which seems to retain 
 a reminiscence of the origin of devils from pagan 
 deities, is effected by reference to the localities 
 supposed to be inhabited by the different classes of 
 evil spirits. According to this arrangement we get 
 six classes : — 
 
 (1.) Devils of the fire, who wander in the region 
 near the moon. 
 
 1 Scot, p. 506. 
 
/ 
 
 36 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 (2.) Devils of the air, who hover round the earth. 
 
 (3.) Devils of the earth ; to whom the fairies are 
 
 allied. 
 
 (4.) Devils of the water. 
 
 (5.) Submundane devils. 1 
 
 (6.) Lucifugi. 
 
 These devils’ power and desire to injure mankind 
 appear to have increased with the proximity of their 
 location to the earth’s centre ; but this classification 
 had nothing like the hold upon the popular mind that 
 the former grouping had, and may consequently be 
 dismissed with this mention. 
 
 *> . 
 
 38. The greater devils, or the most important of 
 them, had distinguishing names — strange, uncouth 
 names ; some of them telling of a heathenish origin ; 
 others inexplicable and almost unpronounceable — as 
 Ashtaroth, Bael, Belial, Zephar, Cerberus, Phoenix, 
 Balam (why he ?), and Haagenti, Leraie, Marchosias, 
 Gusoin, Glasya Labolas. Scot enumerates seventy- 
 nine, the above amongst them, and he does not by 
 any means exhaust the number. As each arch-devil 
 had twenty, thirty, or forty legions of inferior spirits 
 under his command, and a legion was composed of 
 six hundred and sixty-six devils, it is not surprising 
 that the latter did not obtain distinguishing names 
 until they made their appearance upon earth, when 
 they frequently obtained one from the form they loved 
 to assume ; for example, the familiars of the witches in 
 I' Macbeth ” — Paddock (toad), Graymalkin (cat), and 
 
 1 Cf. I Hen. VI. v. iii. 10; 2 Hen. VI. I. ii. 77; Coriolanus, 
 iv. v. 97. 
 
THE SEVERAL DEVILS' NAMES. 
 
 37 
 
 Harpier (harpy, possibly).' Is it surprising that, 
 with resources of this n a threat his command, such an 
 adept in the art of necromancy .as Owen Glendower 
 should hold Harry Percy, much to his disgust, at the 
 least nine hours 
 
 “In reckoning up the several devils’ names 
 That were his lackeys ” ? 
 
 Of the twenty devils mentioned by Shakspere, 
 four only belong to the class of greater devils. Hecate, 
 the principal patroness of witchcraft, is referred to 
 frequently, and appears once upon the scene. 1 The 
 two others are Amaimon and Barbazon, both of whom 
 are mentioned twice. Amaimon was a very important 
 personage, being no other than one of the four kings. 
 Ziminar was King of the North, and is referred to 
 in “ Henry VI. Part I. ; ” 2 Gorson of the South ; 
 Goap of the West ; and Amaimon of the East. He 
 is mentioned in “Henry IV. Part I.,” 3 and “Merry 
 Wives.” 4 Barbazon also occurs in the same passage 
 in the latter play, and again in “Henry V.” 5 — a fact 
 that does to a slight extent help to bear out the 
 otherwise ascertained chronological sequence of these 
 plays. The remainder of the devils belong to the 
 second class. Nine of these occur in “ King Lear,” 
 and will be referred to again when the subject of 
 possession is touched upon. 0 
 
 1 It is perhaps worthy of remark that in every case except the 
 allusion in the probably spurious Henry VI., “ I speak not to that 
 railing Hecate,” (i Hen. VI. ill. ii. 64), the name is “Hecat,” a 
 dissyllable. 
 
 2 v. iii. 6. 3 11. iv. 370. 4 11. ii. 311. 
 
 5 11. i. 57. Scot, p. 393. 6 §65- 
 
33 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 39. (ii.) It would appear that each of the greater 
 devils, on the rare occasion upon which he made his 
 appearance upon earth, assumed a form peculiar to 
 himself ; the lesser devils, on the other hand, had an 
 ordinary type, common to the whole species, with a 
 capacity for almost infinite variation and transmuta- 
 tion, which they used, as will be seen, to the extreme 
 perplexity and annoyance of mortals. As an illustra- 
 tion of the form in which a greater devil might appear, 
 this is what Scot says of the questionable Balam, 
 above mentioned : “ Balam cometh with three heads, 
 the first of a bull, the second of a man, and the third 
 of a ram. He hath a serpent’s taile, and flaming eies ; 
 riding upon a furious beare, and carrieng a hawke on 
 his fist.” 1 But it was the lesser devils, not the 
 greater, that came into close contact with humanity, 
 who therefore demand careful consideration. 
 
 40. All the lesser devils seem to have possessed a 
 normal form, which was as hideous and distorted as 
 fancy could render it. To the conception of an angel 
 imagination has given the only beautiful appendage 
 the human body does not possess — wings ; to that of 
 a devil it has added all those organs of the brute 
 creation that are most hideous or most harmful. 
 Advancing civilization has almost exterminated the 
 belief in a being with horns, cloven hoofs, goggle eyes, 
 and scaly tail, that was held up to many yet living as 
 the avenger of childish disobedience in their earlier 
 days, together perhaps with some strength of con- 
 viction of the moral hideousness of the evil he was 
 
 1 p- 361. 
 
HORNS, HOOFS, AND GOGGLE EYES. 39 
 
 intended, in a rough way, to typify ; but this hazily 
 retained impression of the Author of Evil was the 
 universal and entirely credited conception of the ordi- 
 nary appearance of those bad spirits who were so 
 real to our ancestors of Elizabethan days. “ Some are 
 so carnallie minded,” says Scot, “ that a spirit is no 
 sooner spoken of, but they thinke of a blacke man with 
 cloven feet, a paire of homes, a taile, and eies as big 
 as a bason.” 1 Scot, however, was one of a very small 
 minority in his opinion as to the carnal-mindedness of 
 such a belief. He in his day, like those in every age 
 and country who dare to hold convictions opposed to 
 the creed of the majority, was a dangerous sceptic ; 
 his book was publicly burnt by the common hang- 
 man ; 2 and not long afterwards a royal author wrote 
 a treatise “ against the damnable doctrines of two 
 principally in our age ; whereof the one, called Scot, 
 an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny 
 that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so 
 mainteines the old error of the Sadducees in denying 
 of spirits.” 3 The abandoned impudence of the man ! 
 ^and the logic of his royal opponent ! 
 
 41. Spenser has clothed with horror this con- 
 ception of the appearance of a fiend, just as he has 
 enshrined in beauty the belief in the guardian angel. 
 It is worthy of remark that he describes the devil as 
 dwelling beneath the altar of an idol in a heathen 
 
 1 p. 507. See also Hutchinson, Essay on Witchcraft, p. 13 ; and 
 Harsnet, p. "]i. 
 
 2 Bayle, ix. 152. 
 
 James I., D semonologie. Edinb urgh, 1597. ^ 
 
40 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 temple. Prince Arthur strikes the image thrice with 
 his sword — 
 
 “ And the third time, out of an hidden shade, 
 
 There forth issewed from under th’ altar’s smoake 
 A dreadfull feend with fowle deformed looke, 
 
 That stretched itselfe as it had long lyen still ; 
 
 And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke, 
 
 That all the temple did with terrour till ; 
 
 Yet him nought terrifide that feared nothing ill. 
 
 “ An huge great beast it was, when it in length 
 Was stretched forth, that nigh filled all the place, 
 
 And seemed to be of infinite great strength ; 
 
 Horrible, hideous, and of hellish race, 
 
 Borne of the brooding of Echidna base, 
 
 Or other like infernall Furies kinde, 
 
 For of a maide she had the outward face 
 To hide the horrour which did lurke behinde 
 
 The better to beguile whom she so fond did finde. 
 
 “ Thereto the body of a dog she had, 
 
 Full of fell ravin and fierce greedinesse ; 
 
 A lion’s clawes, with power and rigour clad 
 To rende and teare whatso she can oppresse ; 
 
 A dragon’s taile, whose sting without redresse 
 F ull deadly wounds whereso it is empight, 
 
 And eagle’s wings for scope and speedinesse 
 That nothing may escape her reaching might, 
 
 Whereto she ever list to make her hardy flight.” 
 
 J 42. The dramatists of the period make frequent 
 references to this belief, but nearly always by way of 
 ridicule. It is hardly to be expected that they would 
 share in the grosser opinions held by the common 
 people in those times — common, whether king or 
 clown. In “ The Virgin Martyr,” Harpax is made 
 to say — 
 
NOT SO BLACK AS HE’S PAINTED. 
 
 4i 
 
 “ I’ll tell you what now of the devil ; 
 
 He’s no such horrid creature, cloven-footed, 
 
 Black, saucer-eyed, his nostrils breathing fire, 
 
 As these lying Christians make him.” 1 
 
 Bqt his opinion was, perhaps, a prejudiced one. 
 In Ben Jonson’s “The Devil is an Ass,” when Fitz- 
 dottrell, doubting Pug’s statement as to his infernal 
 character, says, “ I looked on your feet afore ; you 
 cannot cozen me ; your shoes are not cloven, sir, you 
 are whole hoofed Pug, with great presence of mind, 
 replies, “ Sir, that’s a popular error deceives many.” 
 So too Othello, when he is questioning whether Iago 
 is a devil or not, says — 
 
 “ I look down to his feet, but that’s a fable.” 2 
 
 And when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind 
 Gloucester that he has in reality cast himself over 
 the cliff, he describes the being from whom he is 
 supposed to have just parted, thus : — 
 
 “ As I stood here below, methought his eyes 
 Were two full moons : he had a thousand noses ; 
 
 Horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea : 
 
 It was some fiend.” 3 
 
 It can hardly be but that the “thousand noses” are 
 intended as a satirical hit at the enormity of the 
 popular belief. 
 
 43. In addition to this normal type, common to 
 all these devils, each one seems to have had, like 
 the greater devils, a favourite form in which he made 
 
 1 Act i. sc. 2. 2 Act v. sc. ii. 1 . 285. 3 Lear, IV. vi. 69. 
 
42 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 his appearance when conjured ; generally that of 
 some animal, real or imagined. It was telling of 
 
 “ the moldwarp and the ant, 
 
 Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies ; 
 
 And of a dragon and a finless fish, 
 
 A clipwinged griffin, and a moulten raven, 
 
 A couching lion, and a ramping cat,” 1 
 
 that annoyed Harry Hotspur so terribly ; and neither 
 in this allusion, which was suggested by a passage in 
 Holinshed, 2 nor in “ Macbeth,” where he makes the 
 three witches conjure up their familiars in the shapes 
 of an armed head, a bloody child, and a child 
 crowned, has Shakspere gone beyond the fantastic 
 conceptions of the time. 
 
 44. (iii.) But the third proposed section, which 
 deals with the powers and functions exercised by the 
 evil spirits, is by far the most interesting and im- 
 portant ; and the first branch of the series is one that 
 suggests itself as a natural sequence upon what has 
 just been said as to the ordinary shapes in which 
 devils appeared, namely, the capacity to assume at 
 will any form they chose. 
 
 45. In the early and middle ages it was uni- 
 versally believed that a devil could, of his own in- 
 herent power, call into existence any manner of body 
 that it pleased his fancy to inhabit, or that would 
 most conduce to the success of any contemplated 
 evil. In consequence of this belief the devils became 
 the rivals, indeed the successful rivals, of Jupiter him- 
 
 1 1 Hen. IV. iii. i. 148. 2 p. 521, c. 2. 
 
THE DEVIL A CREATOR. 
 
 43 
 
 self in the art of physical tergiversation. There was, 
 indeed, a tradition that a devil could not create any 
 animal form of less size than a barley-corn, and that 
 it was in consequence of this incapacity that the 
 magicians of Egypt — those indubitable devil-wor- 
 shippers — failed to produce lice, as Moses did, 
 although they had been so successful in the matter 
 of the serpents and the frogs ; “ a verie gross ab- 
 surditie,” as Scot judiciously remarks. 1 This, however, 
 would not be a serious limitation upon the practical 
 usefulness of the power. 
 
 46. The great Reformation movement wrought 
 a change in this respect. Men began to accept 
 argument and reason, though savouring of special 
 pleading of the schools, in preference to tradition, 
 though never so venerable and well authenticated ; 
 and the leaders of the revolution could not but 
 recognize the absurdity of laying down as infallible 
 dogma that God was the Creator of all things, and 
 then insisting with equal vehemence, by way of postu- 
 late, that the devil was the originator of some. The 
 thing was gross and palpable in its absurdity, and 
 had to be done away with as quickly as might be. 
 But how ? On the other hand, it was clear as day- 
 light that the devil did appear in various forms to , 
 tempt and annoy the people of God — was at that 
 very time doing so in the most open and unabashed 
 manner. How were reasonable men to account for _ 
 this manifest conflict between rigorous logic and more 
 rigorous fact ? There was a prolonged and violent 
 
 P- 314- 
 
44 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 'controversy upon the point — the Reformers not see- 
 ing their way to agree amongst themselves — and 
 tedious as violent. Sermons were preached ; books 
 were written ; and, when argument was exhausted, 
 unpleasant epithets were bandied about, much as in 
 the present day, in similar cases. The result was 
 that two theories were evolved, both extremely in- 
 teresting as illustrations of the hair-splitting, chop- 
 logic tendency which, amidst all their straightforward- 
 ness, was so strongly characteristic of the Elizabethans. 
 The first suggestion was, that although the devil could 
 not, of his own inherent power, create a body, he 
 might get hold of a dead carcase and temporarily 
 restore animation, and so serve his turn. This belief 
 was held, amongst others, by the erudite King James , 1 
 and is pleasantly satirized by sturdy old Ben Jonson 
 in “ The Devil is an Ass,” where Satan (the greater 
 devil, who only appears in the first scene just to set 
 the storm a-brewing) says to Pug (Puck, the lesser 
 devil, who does all the mischief ; or would have done 
 it, had not man, in those latter times, got to be rather 
 beyond the devils in evil than otherwise), not without 
 a touch of regret at the waning of his power — 
 
 “You must get a body ready-made, Pug, 
 
 I can create you none ; ” 
 
 and consequently Pug is advised to assume the body 
 of a handsome cutpurse that morning hung at 
 Tyburn. 
 
 But the theory, though ingenious, was insufficient. 
 The devil would occasionally appear in the likeness 
 
 1 Dsemonologie, p. 56. 
 
THEORIES FITTED TO FACTS. 
 
 45 
 
 of a living person ; and how could that be accounted 
 for ? Again, an evil spirit, with all his ingenuity, 
 would find it hard to discover the dead body of a 
 griffin, or a harpy, or of such eccentricity as was 
 affected by the before-mentioned Balam ; and these 
 and other similar forms were commonly favoured by 
 the inhabitants of the nether world. 
 
 47. The second theory, therefore, became the 
 more popular amongst the learned, because it left 
 no one point unexplained. The divines held that 
 although the power of the Creator had in no wise 
 been delegated to the devil, yet he was, in the course 
 of providence, permitted to exercise a certain super- 
 natural influence over the minds of men, whereby he 1 
 could persuade them that they really saw a form that j 
 had no material objective existence. 1 Here was a 
 position incontrovertible, not on account of the argu- 
 ments by which it could be supported, but because 
 it was impossible to reason against it ; and it slowly, 
 but surely, took hold upon the popular mind. In- 
 deed, the elimination of the diabolic factor leaves 
 the modern sceptical belief that such apparitions are 
 nothing more than the result of disease, physical or 
 mental. 
 
 48. But the semi-sceptical state of thought was 
 in Shakspere’s time making its way only amongst 
 the more educated portion of the nation. '■'''The masses 
 still clung to the old and venerated, if not venerable, 
 
 1 Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 4th Dialogue. 
 Bullinger, p. 361. Parker Society. 
 
 
46 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 belief that devils could at any moment assume what 
 form soever they might please — not troubling them- 
 selves further to inquire into the method of the 
 operation. ! They could appear in the likeness of an 
 ordinarymuman being, as Harpax 1 and Mephisto- 
 pheles 2 do, creating thereby the most embarrassing 
 complications in questions of identity; and if this 
 belief is borne in mind, the charge of being a devil, 
 so freely made, in the times of which we write, and 
 before alluded to, against persons who performed 
 extraordinary feats of valour, or behaved in a manner 
 discreditable and deserving of general reprobation, 
 loses much of its barbarous grotesqueness. There 
 was no doubt as to Coriolanus, 3 as has been said ; 
 nor Shylock. 4 Even “ the outward sainted Angelo is 
 yet a devil ;” 5 and Prince Hal confesses that “there 
 is a devil haunts him in the likeness of an old fat 
 man ... an old white-bearded Satan.” 6 
 
 49. The devils had an inconvenient habit of 
 v/appearing in the guise of an ecclesiastic 7 — at least, 
 so the churchmen were careful to insist, especially 
 when busying themselves about acts of temptation 
 that would least become the holy robe they had 
 assumed. This was the ecclesiastical method of 
 accounting for certain stories, not very creditable to 
 the priesthood, that had too inconvenient a basis of 
 evidence to be dismissed as fabricatious. But the 
 
 1 In The Virgin Martyr. 2 In Dr. Faustus. 
 
 3 Coriolanus, I. x. 16. * Merchant of Venice, III. i. 22. 
 
 5 Measure for Measure, III. i. 90. 6 1 Hen. IV., n. iv. 491-509. 
 
 7 See the story about Bishop Sylvanus. — Lecky, Rationalism in 
 Europe, i. 79. 
 
DEVILS’ ANTICS AS MEN. 
 
 47 
 
 honest lay public seem to have thought, with down- 
 right old Chaucer, that there was more in the matter 
 than the priests chose to admit. This feeling we, as 
 usual, find reflected in the dramatic literature of our 
 period. In “ The Troublesome Raigne of King John,” 
 an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere 
 constructed his own “ King John,” we find this ques- 
 tion dealt with in some detail. In the elder play, 
 the Bastard does “ the shaking of bags of hoarding 
 abbots,” coram populo, and thereby discloses a phase 
 of monastic life judiciously suppressed by Shak- 
 spere. Philip sets at liberty much more than “ im- 
 prisoned angels” — according to one account, and 
 that a monk’s, imprisoned beings of quite another sort. 
 
 “ Faire Alice, the nonne,” having been discovered in 
 the chest where the abbot’s wealth was supposed to 
 be concealed, proposes to purchase pardon for the 
 offence by disclosing the secret hoard of a sister nun. 
 Her offer being accepted, a friar is ordered to force 
 the box in which the treasure is supposed to be 
 secreted. On being questioned as to its contents, 
 
 ■ he answers — • 
 
 “ Frier Laurence, my lord, now holy water help us ! 
 
 Some witch or some divell is sent to delude us : 
 
 Hand credo Latirentius that thou shouldst be pen’d thus 
 In the presse of a nun ; we are all undone, 
 
 And brought to discredence, if thou be Frier Laurence.” 1 
 
 Unfortunately it proves indubitably to be that good 
 man ; and he is ordered to execution, not, however, 
 without some hope of redemption by money pay- 
 
 1 Hazlitt, Shakspere Library, part ii. vol. i. p. 264. 
 
48 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 ment ; for times are hard, and cash in hand not to 
 be despised. 
 
 \/ It is amusing to notice, too, that' when assuming 
 the clerical garb, the devil carefully considered the 
 religious creed of the person to whom he intended 
 ’ to make himself known. The Catholic accounts of 
 him show him generally assuming the form of a 
 Protestant parson ; 1 whilst to those of the reformed 
 creed he invariably appeared in the habit of a 
 
 Catholic priest. In the semblance of a friar the 
 
 devil is reported (by a Protestant) to have preached, 
 upon a time, “ a verie Catholic sermon ; ” 2 so good, 
 indeed, that a priest who was a listener could find no 
 fault with the doctrine — a stronger basis of fact than 
 one would have imagined for Shakspere’s saying, 
 — kj. “ The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” 
 
 v SO. It is not surprising that of human forms, 
 that of a negro or Moor should be considered a 
 favourite one with evil spirits . 3 Iago makes allusion 
 to this when inciting Brabantio to search for his 
 daughter . 4 The power of coming in the likeness of 
 humanity generally is referred to somewhat cynically 
 in “Timon of Athens,” 5 thus — 
 
 “ Varro's Servant. What is a whoremaster, fool ? 
 
 “ Fool. A fool in good clothes, and something 
 like thee. ’Tis a spirit : sometime ’t appears like a 
 lord ; sometime like a lawyer ; sometime like a philo- 
 sopher, with two stones more than ’s artificial one : 
 he is very often like a knight ; and, generally, in all 
 
 1 Harsnet, p. ioi. - Scot, p. 4S1. 
 
 3 Scot, p. S9. 4 Othello, 1. i. 91. s 11. ii. 113. 
 
DEVILS' IMAGINATIONS. 
 
 49 
 
 shapes that man goes up and down in, from fourscore 
 to thirteen, this spirit walks in.” 
 
 “ All shapes that man goes up and down in ” 
 seem indeed to have been at the devils’ control. So 
 entirely was this the case, that to Constance even the 
 fair Blanche was none other than the devil tempting 
 Louis “in likeness of a new uptrimmed bride ; ” 1 and 
 perhaps not without a certain prophetic feeling of the 
 fitness of things, as it may possibly seem to some of 
 our more warlike politicians, evil spirits have been 
 known to appear as Russians. 2 
 
 5 1 . But all the “ shapes that man goes up and down 
 in ” did not suffice. The forms of the whole of the 
 animal kingdom seem to have been at the devils’ 
 disposal ; and, not content with these, they seem to 
 have sought further for unlikely shapes to assume. 3 
 Poor Caliban complains that Prospero’s spirits 
 
 “ Lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark,” 4 
 
 just as Ariel 5 and Puck 6 (Will-o’-th’-wisp) mislead 
 their victims ; and that 
 
 “ For every trifle are they set upon me : 
 
 Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me, 
 
 And after bite me ; then like hedgehogs, which 
 Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount 
 Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I 
 All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues, 
 
 Do hiss me into madness.” 
 
 1 King John, m. i. 209. 2 Harsnet, p. 139. 
 
 3 For instance, an eye without a head. — Ibid. 
 
 4 The Tempest, II. ii. 10. 5 Ibid. I. ii. 198. 
 
 ' 0 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 11. i. 39; 111. i. 111. 
 
 E 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 So 
 
 And doubtless the scene which follows this soliloquy, 
 in which Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano mistake 
 one another in turn for evil spirits, fully flavoured 
 with fun as it still remains, had far more point for the 
 audiences at the Globe — to whom a stray devil or two 
 was quite in the natural order of things under such 
 circumstances — than it can possibly possess for us. 
 In this play, Ariel, Prospero’s familiar, besides ap- 
 pearing in his natural shape, and dividing into flames, 
 and behaving in such a manner as to cause young 
 Ferdinand to leap into the sea, crying, “ Hell is empty, 
 and all the devils are here!” assumes the forms of a 
 water-nymph, 1 a harpy, 2 and also the goddess Ceres ; 3 
 while the strange shapes, masquers, and even the 
 hounds that hunt and worry the would-be king and 
 viceroys of the island, are Ariel’s “ meaner fellows.” 
 
 52. Puck’s favourite forms seem to have been 
 more outlandish than Ariel’s, as might have been 
 expected of that malicious little spirit. He beguiles 
 “ the fat and bean-fed horse ” by 
 
 “ Neighing in likeness of a filly foal : 
 
 And sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl, 
 
 In very likeness of a roasted crab ; 
 
 And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, 
 
 And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. 
 
 The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, 
 
 Sometime for three-foot stool 4 mistaketh me ; 
 
 Then slip I from her, and down topples she.” 
 
 1 1. ii. 301-318. 2 in. iii. 53. 3 iv. i. 166. 
 
 4 A Scotch witch, when leaving her bed to go to a sabbath, used 
 to put a three-foot stool in the vacant place : which, after charms duly 
 mumbled, assumed the appearance of a woman until her return. — Pit- 
 cairn, iii. 617. 
 
L 
 
 “HORSE, HOUND, HOG, BEAR, FIRES 51 
 And again : 
 
 “ Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, 
 
 A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire ; 
 
 And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 
 
 Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.” 1 
 
 With regard to this last passage, it is worthy of note 
 that in the year 1584, strange news came out of 
 Somersetshire, entitled “ A Dreadful Discourse of the 
 Dispossessing of one Margaret Cowper, at Ditchet, 
 from a Devil in the Likeness of a Headless Bear." 2 
 
 53. In Heywood and Brome’s “Witch of Ed- 
 monton,’’ the devil appears in the likeness of a black 
 dog, and takes his part in the dialogue, as if his 
 presence were a matter of quite ordinary occurrence, 
 not in any way calling for special remark. However 
 gross and absurd this may appear, it must be remem- 
 bered that this play is, in its minutest details, merely 
 a dramatization of the events duly proved in a court 
 of law, to the satisfaction of twelve Englishmen, in the 
 year 16 12. 3 The shape of a fly, too, was a favourite ^ 
 one with the evil spirits ; so much so that the term 
 “ fly ” became a common synonym for a familiar. 4 
 The word “ Beelzebub ’’ was supposed to mean “ the __ 
 king of flies.’’ At the execution of Urban Grandier, 
 the famous ’ magician of London, in 1634, a large fly 
 was seen buzzing about the stake, and a priest, 
 promptly seizing the opportunity of improving the 
 
 1 in. i. ill. 2 Hutchinson, p. 40. 
 
 3 Potts, Discoveries. Edit. Cheetham Society. 
 
 4 Cf. B. Jonson’s Alchemist. 
 
S3 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 occasion for the benefit of the onlookers, declared 
 that Beelzebub had come in his own proper person 
 to carry off Grandier’s soul to hell. In 1664 occurred 
 the celebrated witch-trials which took place before 
 Sir Matthew Hale. The accused were charged with 
 bewitching two children ; and part of the evidence 
 against them was that flies and bees were seen to 
 carry into the victims’ mouths the nails and pins 
 which they afterwards vomited. 1 There is an allusion 
 to this belief in the fly-killing scene in “ Titus An- 
 dronicus.” 2 
 
 54. But it was not invariably a repulsive or 
 ridiculous form that was assumed by these enemies 
 of mankind. Their ingenuity would have been but 
 little worthy of commendation had they been content 
 to appear as ordinary human beings, or animals, or 
 even in fancy costume. The Swiss divine Bullinger, 
 after a lengthy and elaborately learned argument as to 
 the particular day in the week of creation upon which 
 it was most probable that God called the angels 
 into being, says, by way of peroration, “ Let us lead 
 a holy and angel-like life in the sight of God’s holy 
 angels. Let us watch, lest he that transfigureth and 
 turneth himself into an angel of light under a good 
 show and likeness deceive us.” 3 They even went so 
 far, according to Cranmer, 4 as to appear in the'like- 
 
 1 A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts relating to Witchcraft- 
 
 1838. 
 
 2 III. ii. 51, et Sc :q. 
 
 3 Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon. Parker Society. 
 
 * Cranmer, Confutation, p. 42. Parker Society. 
 
 7 
 
SUGGESTING WITH HEAVENLY SHOWS. 53 
 
 ness of Christ, in their desire to mislead mankind ; 
 for— 
 
 “ When devils will the blackest sins put on, 
 
 They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.” 1 
 
 55. But one of the most ordinary forms supposed 
 at this period to be assumed by devils was that of 
 a dead friend of the object of the visitation. Before 
 the Reformation, the belief that the spirits of the 
 departed had power at will to revisit the scenes and 
 companions of their earthly life was almost universal. 
 
 I The reforming divines distinctly denied the possi- 
 bility of such a revisitation, and accounted for the 
 undoubted phenomena, as usual, by attributing them 
 to the devil. 2 James I. says that the devil, when 
 appearing to men, frequently assumed the form of a 
 person newly dead, “ to make them believe that it was 
 some good spirit that appeared to them, either to 
 forewarn them of the death of their friend, or else 
 to discover unto them the will of the defunct, or what 
 was the way of his slauchter. . . . For he dare not 
 so illude anie that knoweth that neither can the spirit 
 of the defunct returne to his friend, nor yet an angell 
 use such formes.” 3 He further explains that such 
 devils follow mortals to obtain two ends : “ the one 
 is the tinsell (loss) of their life by inducing them to 
 such perrilous places at such times as he either follows 
 
 \ 
 
 1 Othello, 11. iii. 357. Cf. Love’s Labour’s Lost, iv. iii. 257 ; 
 Comedy of Errors, iv. iii. 56. 
 
 2 See Hooper’s Declaration of the Ten Commandments. Parker 
 Society. Hooper, 326. 
 
 3 Daemonologie, p. 60. 
 
) 
 
 54 
 
 ELIZA BE THA N DEMONOL OGY. 
 
 or possesses them. The other thing -that he preases 
 to obtain is the tinsell of their soule.” 1 
 
 J 5 6 . But the belief in the appearance of ghosts 
 was too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be ex- 
 tirpated, or even greatly affected, by a dogmatic 
 declaration. The masses went on believing as they 
 always had believed, and as their fathers had believed 
 before them, in spite of the Reformers, and to their 
 no little discontent./ Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, 
 in a letter to Archbishop Parker, dated 1564, com- 
 plains that, “ among other things that be amiss here 
 in your great cares, ye shall understand that in 
 Blackburn there is a fantastical (and as some say, 
 lunatic) young man, which says that he has spoken 
 with one of his neighbours that died four year since, 
 or more. Divers times he says he has seen him, and 
 talked with him, and took with him the curate, the 
 schoolmaster, and other neighbours, who all affirm 
 that they see him. These things be so common here 
 that none in authority will gainsay it, but rather 
 believe and confirm it, that everybody believes it. If 
 I had known how to examine with authority, I would 
 have done it.” 2 Here is a little glimpse at the prac- 
 tical troubles of a well-intentioned bishop of the 
 sixteenth century that is surely worth preserving. 
 
 v 
 
 57. There were thus two opposite schools of belief 
 in this matter of the supposed spirits of the departed : 
 — the conservative, which held to the old doctrine of 
 ghosts; and the reforming, which denied the possibility 
 
 1 Cf. Hamlet, 1. iv. 60-S0 ; and post, § 5S. 
 
 2 Parker Correspondence, 222. Parker Society. 
 
SOME ANGEL, OR SOME DEVIL ? 
 
 55 
 
 of ghosts, and held to the theory of devils. In the 
 midst of this disagreement of doctors it was difficult 
 for a plain man to come to a definite conclusion upon 
 the question ; and, in consequence, all who were not 
 content with quiet dogmatism were in a state of utter 
 uncertainty upon a point not entirely without import- 
 ance in practical life as well as in theory. This was 
 probably the position in which the majority of 
 thoughtful men found themselves ; and it is accurately 
 reflected in three of Shakspere’s plays, which, for 
 other and weightier reasons, are grouped together in 
 the same chronological division — “Julius Caesar,’’ 
 “Macbeth,” and “Hamlet.” In the first-mentioned 
 play, Brutus, who afterwards confesses his belief that 
 the apparition he saw at Sardis was the ghost of 
 Caesar, 1 when in the actual presence of the spirit, 
 says— 
 
 “ Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil ? ” 2 
 
 The same doubt flashes across the mind of Macbeth 
 on the second entrance of Banquo’s ghost — which is 
 probably intended to be a devil appearing at the 
 instigation of the witches — when he says, with evident 
 allusion to a diabolic power before referred to — 
 
 “ What man dare, I dare : 
 
 Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, 
 
 The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger, 
 
 Take any shape but that.” 3 
 
 58. But it is in “ Hamlet” th.lt the undecided state 
 of opinion upon this subject is most clearly reflected ; 
 
 1 Julius Csssar, v. v. 17. 2 Ibid. IV. iii. 279. 
 
 3 Macbeth, ill. iv. 100. 
 
56 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 and hardly enough influence has been allowed to the 
 doubts arising from this conflict of belief, as urgent or 
 deterrent motives in the play, because this temporary 
 condition of thought has been lost sight of. It is 
 exceedingly interesting to note how frequently the 
 characters who have to do with the apparition of the 
 late King Hamlet alternate between the theories that 
 it is a ghost and that it is a devil which they have 
 seen. The whole subject has such an important bear- 
 ing upon any attempt to estimate the character of 
 Hamlet, that no excuse need be offered for once 
 again traversing such well-trodden ground. 
 
 Horatio, it is true, is introduced to us in a state 
 of determined scepticism; but this lasts for a few 
 seconds only, vanishing upon the first entrance of the 
 spectre, and never again appearing. His first inclina- 
 tion seems to be to the belief that he is the victim of 
 a diabolical illusion ; for he says — 
 
 “ What art thou, that usurp' st this time of night, 
 Together with that fair and warlike form 
 In which the majesty of buried Denmark 
 Did sometimes march ? ” 1 
 
 And Marcellus seems to be of the same opinion, for 
 immediately before, he exclaims — 
 
 “ Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio 
 
 having apparently the same idea as had Coachman 
 Toby, in “ The Night-Walker,” when he exclaims — 
 
 “ Let’s call the butler up, for he speaks Latin, 
 
 And that will daunt the devil.” 2 
 
 On the second appearance of the illusion, however, 
 
 1 i. i. 46. 
 
 * u. 1. 
 
THE GHOST OF KING HAMLET. 
 
 57 
 
 Horatio leans to the opinion that it is really the 
 ghost of the late king that he sees, probably in con- 
 sequence of the conversation that has taken place 
 since the former visitation ; and he now appeals to the 
 ghost for information that may enable him to procure 
 rest for his wandering soul. Again, during his inter- 
 view with Hamlet, when he discloses the secret of 
 the spectre’s appearance, though very guarded in his 
 language, Horatio clearly intimates his conviction 
 that he has seen the spirit of the late king. 
 
 The same variation of opinion is visible in Hamlet 
 himself ; but, as might be expected, with much more 
 frequent alternations. When first he hears Horatio’s ~ 
 story, he seems to incline to the belief that it must be 
 the work of some diabolic agency : 
 
 “ If it assume my noble father’s person, 
 
 I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, 
 
 And bid me hold my peace ; ” 1 
 
 although, characteristically, in almost the next line 
 he exclaims — 
 
 “ My father’s spirit in arms ! All is not well,” etc. 
 
 This, too, seems to be the dominant idea in his mind 
 when he is first brought face to face with the appari- 
 tion, and exclaims — 
 
 “ Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! — 
 
 Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned, 
 
 Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, 
 
 Be thine intents wicked or charitable, 
 
 Thou corn’st in such a questionable shape, 
 
 That I will speak to thee.” 2 
 
 For it cannot be supposed that Hamlet imagined that 
 
 2 i. iv. 39. 
 
 i. a. 244. 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 58 
 
 a “ goblin damned ” could actually be the spirit of his 
 dead father ; and, therefore, the alternative in his 
 mind must have been that he saw a devil assuming 
 > his father’s likeness — a form which the Evil One knew 
 would most incite Hamlet to intercourse. But even 
 as he speaks, the other theory gradually obtains 
 ascendency in his mind, until it becomes strong 
 enough to induce him to follow the spirit. - ' 
 
 But whilst the devil-theory is gradually relaxing 
 its hold upon Hamlet’s mind, it is fastening itself with 
 ever-increasing force upon the minds of his com- 
 panions ; and Horatio expresses their fears in words 
 that are worth comparing with those just quoted from 
 James’s “ Daemonologie.” Hamlet responds to their 
 entreaties not to follow the spectre thus — 
 
 “ Why, what should be the fear ? 
 
 I do not set my life at a pin’s fee ; 
 
 And, for my soul, what can it do to that, 
 
 Being a thing immortal as itself? ” 
 
 And Horatio answers — 
 
 “ What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, 
 Or to the dreadful summit cf the cliff, 
 
 That beetles o’er his base into the sea, 
 
 And there assume some other horrible form, 
 Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason, 
 And draw you into madness ? ” 
 
 The idea that the devil assumed the form of a dead 
 friend in order to procure the “ tinsell ” of both body 
 and soul of his victim is here vividly before the minds 
 of the speakers of these passages . 1 
 
 The subsequent scene with the ghost convinces 
 
HAMLETS UNCERTAINTY. 
 
 59 
 
 Hamlet that he is not the victim of malign influences 
 — as far as he is capable of conviction, for his very 
 first words when alone restate the doubt : 
 
 “ O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! What else ? 
 And shall I couple hell ? ” 1 
 
 and the enthusiasm with which he is inspired in 
 consequence of this interview is sufficient to support 
 his certainty of conviction until the time for decisive 
 action again arrives. It is not until the idea of the 
 play-test occurs to him that his doubts are once more 
 aroused ; and then they return with redoubled 
 force : — 
 
 “ The spirit that I have seen 
 May be the devil : and the devil hath power 
 To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and, perhaps, 
 Out of my weakness and my melancholy, 
 
 (As he is very potent with such spirits,) 
 
 Abuses me to damn me.” 2 
 
 And he again alludes to this in his speech to Horatio, 
 just before the entry of the king and his train to 
 witness the performance of the players. 3 
 
 59. This question was, in Shakspere’s time, quite 
 a legitimate element of uncertainty in the compli- 
 cated problem that presented itself for solution to 
 Hamlet’s ever-analyzing mind ; and this being so, 
 an apparent inconsistency in detail which has usually 
 been charged upon Shakspere with regard to this 
 play, can be satisfactorily explained. Some critics 
 are never weary of exclaiming that Shakspere’s 
 genius was so vast and uncontrollable that it must 
 not be tested, or expected to be found conformable 
 
 1 I. v. 92. 2 11. ii. 627. 3 III. ii. 87. 
 
6o 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 to the rules of art that limit ordinary mortals ; that 
 there are many discrepancies and errors in his plays 
 that are to be condoned upon that account ; in fact, 
 that he was a very careless and slovenly workman. 
 A favourite instance of this is taken from “ Hamlet,” 
 ■"where Shakspere actually makes the chief character 
 of the play talk of death as “ the bourne from whence 
 no traveller returns ” not long after he has been 
 engaged in a prolonged conversation with such a 
 returned traveller. 
 
 Now, no artist, however distinguished or however 
 transcendent his genius, is to be pardoned for in- 
 sincere workmanship, and the greater the man, the 
 less his excuse. Errors arising from want of informa- 
 tion (and Shakspere commits these often) may be 
 pardoned if the means for correcting them be unattain- 
 able ; but errors arising from mere carelessness are 
 not to be pardoned. Further, in many of these cases 
 of supposed contradiction there is an element of 
 carelessness indeed ; but it lies at the door of the 
 critic, not of the author ; and this appears to be true 
 in the present instance. The dilemma, as it presented 
 itself to the contemporary mind, must be carefully 
 kept in view. Either the spirits of the departed could 
 revisit this world, or they could not. If they could 
 not, then the apparitions mistaken for them must be 
 devils assuming their forms. Now, the tendency of 
 Hamlet’s mind, immediately before the great soliloquy 
 on suicide, is decidedly in favour of the latter alterna- 
 tive. The last words that he has uttered, which are 
 also the last quoted here, 1 are those in which he 
 1 § 53, p. 59- 
 
POSSESSION— OBSESSION. 
 
 declares most forcibly that he believes the devil- 
 theory possible, and consequently that the dead do 
 not return to this world ; and his utterances in his 
 soliloquy are only an accentuation and outcome of 
 this feeling of uncertainty. The very root of his 
 desire for death is that he cannot discard with any 
 feeling of certitude the Protestant doctrine that no 
 traveller does after death return from the invisible 
 world, and that the so-called ghosts are a diabolic 
 deception. r 
 
 6q . Another power possessed by the evil spirits, 
 and one that excited much attention and created an 
 immense amount of strife during Elizabethan times, 
 was that of entering into the bodies of human beings, 
 or otherwise influencing them so as utterly to deprive ' 
 them of all self-control, and render them mere automata 
 under the command of the fiends. This was known / 
 as possession, or obsession. It was another of the 
 mediaeval beliefs against which the reformers steadily 
 set their faces ; and all the resources of their casuistry 
 were exhausted to expose its absurdity. But their 
 position in this respect was an extremely delicate one. 
 
 On one side of them zealous Catholics were exorcising 
 devils, who shrieked out their testimony to the eternal 
 truth of the Holy Catholic Church ; whilst at the 
 same time, on the other side, the zealous Puritans of 
 the extremer sort were casting out fiends, who bore 
 equally fervent testimony to the superior efficacy and 
 purity of the Protestant faith. The tendency of the 
 more moderate members of the party, therefore, was 
 towards a compromise similar to that arrived at upon 
 
62 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 the question how the devils came by the forms in 
 which they appeared upon the earth. They could 
 not admit that devils could actually enter into and 
 possess the body of a man in those latter days, 
 although during the earlier history of the Church such 
 things had been permitted by Divine Providence for 
 some inscrutable but doubtless satisfactory reason : — 
 that was Catholicism. On the other hand, they could 
 not for an instant tolerate or even sanction the 
 doctrine that devils had no power whatever over 
 humanity : — that was Atheism. But it was quite v' 
 possible that evil spirits, without actually entering 
 into the body of a man, might so infest, worry, and 
 torment him, as to produce all the symptoms indic- 
 ative of possession. The doctrine of obsession re^ 
 placed that of possession ; and, once adopted, was 
 supported by a string of those quaint, conceited 
 arguments so peculiar to the time. 1 
 
 6 1 . But, as in all other cases, the refinements of 
 the theologians had little or no effect upon the world 
 outside their controversies. To the ordinary mind, 
 if a man’s eyes goggled, body swelled, and mouth 
 foamed, and it was admitted that these were the 
 work of a devil, the question whether the evil-doer 
 were actually housed within the sufferer, or only 
 hovered in his immediate neighbourhood, seemed a 
 question of such minor importance as to be hardly 
 worth discussing — a conclusion that the lay mind 
 is apt to come to upon other questions that appear 
 portentous to the divines — and the theory of posses- 
 1 Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 3rd Dialogue. 
 
FOOLISH PHYSICIANS. 63 
 
 sion, having the advantage in time over that of 
 obsession, was hard to dislodge. 
 
 62. One of the chief causes of the persistency 
 with which the old belief was maintained was the 
 utter ignorance of the medical men of the period on 
 the subject of mental disease. The doctors of the 
 time were mere children in knowledge of -the science 
 they professed ; and to attribute a disease, the symp- 
 toms of which they could not comprehend, to a power 
 outside their control by ordinary methods, was a safe 
 method of screening a reputation which might other- 
 wise have suffered. “ Canst thou not minister to a 
 mind diseased?” cries Macbeth to the doctor, in one 
 of those moments of yearning after the better life 
 he regrets, but cannot return to, which come over 
 him now and again. No; the disease is beyond 
 his practice ; and, although this passage has in it 
 a deeper meaning than the one attributed to it 
 here, it well illustrates the position of the medical 
 man in such cases. Most doctors of the time were 
 mere empirics ; dabbled more or less in alchemy ; and, 
 in the treatment of mental disease, were little better 
 than children. They had for co-practitioners all who, 
 by their credit with the populace for superior wisdom, 
 found themselves in a position to engage in a profit- 
 able employment. Priests, preachers, schoolmasters 
 - — Dr. Pinches and Sir Topazes — became so com- 
 monly exorcists, that the Church found it necessary 
 to forbid the casting out of spirits without a special 
 license for that purpose. 1 But as the Reformers only 
 1 72nd Canon, 
 
64 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 combated the doctrine of possession upon strictly 
 theological grounds, and did not go on to suggest any 
 substitute for the time-honoured practice of exorcism 
 as a means for getting rid of the admittedly obnoxious 
 result of diabolic interference, it is not altogether 
 surprising that the method of treatment did not im- 
 mediately change. 
 
 63. Upon this subject a book called “ Tryal of 
 Witchcraft,” by John Cotta, “Doctor in Physike,” 
 published in 1616, is extremely instructive. The 
 writer is evidently in advance of his time in his 
 opinions upon the principal subject with which he 
 professes to deal, and weighs the evidence for and 
 against the reality of witchcraft with extreme precision 
 •jp and fairness. In the course of his argument he has 
 to distinguish the symptoms that show a person to 
 have been bewitched, from those that point to a 
 demoniacal possession. 1 “ Reason doth detect,” says 
 he, “ the sicke to be afflicted by the immediate super- 
 naturall power of the devil two wayes : the first 
 way is by such things as are subject and manifest to 
 the learned physicion only ; the second is by such 
 things as are subject and manifest to the vulgar view.” 
 The two signs by which the “ learned physicion ” 
 recognized diabolic intervention were : first, the pre- 
 ternatural appearance of the disease from which the 
 patient was suffering ; and, secondly, the inefficacy of 
 the remedies applied. In other words, if the leech 
 encountered any disease the symptoms of which were 
 unknown to him, or if, through some unforeseen 
 
 1 Ch. 10. 
 
SIGNS OF POSSESSION. 
 
 65 
 
 circumstances, the drug he prescribed failed to operate 
 in its accustomed manner, a case of demoniacal 
 possession was considered to be conclusively proved, 
 and the medical man was merged in the magician. 
 
 64. The second class of cases, in which the 
 diabolic agency is palpable to the layman as well as 
 the doctor, Cotta illustrates thus : “ In the time of 
 their paroxysmes or fits, some diseased persons have 
 been seene to vomit crooked iron, coales, brimstone, 
 nailes, needles, pinnes, lumps of lead, waxe, hayre, 
 strawe, and the like, in such quantities, figure, fashion, 
 and proportion as could never possiblie pass down, 
 or arise up thorow the natural narrownesse of the 
 throate, or be contained in the unproportionable 
 small capacitie, naturall susceptibilitie, and position 
 of the stomake.” Possessed persons, he says, were 
 also clairvoyant, telling what was being said and done 
 at a far distance; and also spoke languages which at 
 ordinary times they did not understand, as their 
 successors, the modern spirit mediums, do. This gift 
 of tongue? was one of the prominent features of the 
 possession of Will Sommers and the other persons 
 exorcised by the Protestant preacher John Darrell, 
 whose performances as an exorcist created quite a 
 domestic sensation in England at the close of the 
 sixteenth century. 1 The whole affair was investigated 
 by Dr. Harsnet, who had already acquired fame as an 
 iconoclast in these matters, as will presently be seen ; 
 
 1 A True Relation of the Grievous Handling of William Sommers, 
 etc. London: T. Harper, 1641 (? 1601). The Tryall of Maister 
 Darrell, 1599. 
 
66 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 but it would have little more than an antiquarian 
 interest now, were it not for the fact that Ben Jonson 
 made it the subject of his satire in one of his most 
 humorous plays, “ The Devil is an Ass.” In it he 
 turns the last-mentioned peculiarity to good account ; 
 for when Fitzdottrell, in the fifth act, feigns madness, 
 and quotes Aristophanes, and speaks in Spanish and 
 French, the judicious Sir Paul Eithersides comes to 
 the conclusion that “ it is the devil by his several 
 languages.” 
 
 f- 65. But more interesting, and more important for 
 the present purpose, are the cases of possession that 
 were dealt with by Father Parsons and his colleagues 
 in 1585-6, and of which Dr. Harsnet gave such a 
 highly spiced and entertaining account in his 
 “ Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures,” first 
 published in the year 1603. It is from this work that 
 Shakspere took the names of the devils mentioned by 
 Edgar, and other references made by him in “ King 
 Lear ; ” and an outline of the relation of the play to 
 the book will furnish incidentally much matter 
 illustrative of the subject of possession. But before 
 entering upon this outline, a brief glance at the 
 condition of affairs political and domestic, which 
 partially caused and nourished these extraordinary 
 eccentricities, is almost essential to a proper under- 
 standing of them. 
 
 66. The year 1586 was probably one of the most 
 critical years that England has passed through since 
 she was first a nation. Standing alone amongst the 
 
THE BABINGTON BUSINESS. 
 
 6 7 
 
 European States, with even the Netherlander growing 
 cold towards her on account of her ambiguous treat- 
 ment of them, she had to fight out the battle of 
 her independence against odds to all appearances 
 irresistible. With Sixtus plotting her overthrow at 
 Rome, Philip at Madrid, Mendoza and the English 
 traitors at Paris, and Mary of Scotland at Chartley, 
 while a third of her people were malcontent, and 
 J^rnes the Sixth was friend or enemy as it best 
 suited his convenience, the outlook was anything but 
 reassuring for the brave men who held the helm in 
 those stormy times. But although England owed her 
 deliverance chiefly to the forethought and hardihood 
 of her sons, it cannot be doubted that the sheer 
 imbecility of her foes contributed not a little to that 
 result. To both these conditions she owed the fact 
 that the great Armada, the embodiment of the 
 foreign hatred and hostility, threatening to break 
 upon her shores like a huge wave, vanished like its 
 spray. Medina Sidonia, with his querulous com- 
 plaints and general ineffectuality, 1 was hardly a 
 match for Drake and his sturdy companions; nor 
 were the leaders of the Babington conspiracy, the 
 representatives and would-be leaders of the corre- 
 sponding internal convulsion, the infatuated wor- 
 shippers of the fair devil of Scotland, the men to 
 cope for a moment with the intellects of Walsingham 
 and Burleigh. 
 
 67. The events which Harsnet investigated and 
 wrote upon with politico-theological animus formed 
 
 1 Froude, xii. p. 405. 
 
68 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 an eddy in the main current of the Babington 
 conspiracy. For some years before that plot had 
 taken definite shape, seminary priests had been 
 swarming into England from the continent, and were 
 sedulously engaged in preaching rebellion in the 
 rural districts, sheltered and protected by the more 
 powerful of the disaffected nobles and gentry — 
 modern apostles, preparing the way before the future 
 regenerator of England, Cardinal Allen, the would- 
 be Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. Among these 
 was one Weston, who, in his enthusiastic admiration 
 for the martyr-traitor, Edmund Campion, had adopted 
 the alias of Edmonds. This Jesuit was gifted with 
 the power of casting out devils, and he exercised it in 
 order to prove the divine origin of the Holy Catholic 
 faith, and, by implication, the duty of all persons 
 religiously inclined, to rebel against a sovereign who 
 was ruthlessly treading it into the dust. The per- 
 formances which Harsnet examined into took place 
 chiefly in the house of Lord Vaux at Hackney, and 
 of one Peckham at Denham, in the end of the year 1585 
 and the beginning of 1586. The possessed persons 
 were Anthony Tyrell, another Jesuit who rounded 
 upon his friends in the time of their tribulation ; 1 
 Marwood, Antony Babington’s private servant, who 
 subsequently found it convenient to leave the country, 
 and was never examined upon the subject ; Trayford 
 and Mainy, two young gentlemen, and Sara and 
 Friswood Williams, and Anne Smith, maid-servants. 
 Richard Mainy, the most edifying subject of them all, 
 
 1 The Fall of Anthony Tyrell, by Persoun. See The Troubles of our 
 Catholic Forefathers, by John Morris, p. 103. 
 
SEMINARY PRIESTS. 
 
 69 
 
 was seventeen only when the possession seized him ; 
 he had only just returned to England from Rheims, 
 and, when passing through Paris, had come under 
 the influence of Charles Paget and Morgan ; so his 
 antecedents appeared somewhat open to suspicion. 1 
 
 68. With the truth or falsehood of the statements 
 and deductions made by Harsnet, we have little or no 
 concern. Weston did not pretend to deny that he had 
 the power of exorcism, or that he exercised it upon 
 the persons in question, but he did not admit the 
 truth of any of the more ridiculous stories which 
 Harsnet so triumphantly brings forward to convict 
 him of intentional deceit ; and his features, if the 
 portrait in Father Morris’s book is an accurate repre- 
 sentation of him, convey an impression of feeble, 
 unpractical piety that one is loth to associate with a 
 malicious impostor. In addition to this, one of the 
 witnesses against him, Tyrell, was a manifest knave 
 and coward ; another, Mainy, as conspicuous a fool ; 
 while the rest were servant-maids — all of them 
 interested in exonerating themselves from the stigma 
 of having been adherents of a lost cause, at the 
 expense of a ringleader who seemed to have made 
 himself too conspicuous to escape punishment 
 furthermore, the evidence of these witnesses was 
 not taken until 1598 and 1602, twelve and sixteen 
 years after the events to which it related took place ; 
 and when taken, was taken by Harsnet, a violent Pro- 
 testant and almost maniacal exorcist-hunter, as the 
 
 1 He was examined by the Government as to his connection with the 
 Paris conspirators. — See State Papers, vol. clxxx. 16, 17. 
 
7o 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 miscellaneous collection of literature evoked by his 
 exposure of Parson Darrell’s dealings with Will 
 Sommers and others will show. 
 
 '<! 69. Among the many devils’ names mentioned by 
 Harsnet in his “ Declaration,” and in the examina- 
 tions of witnesses annexed to it, the following have 
 undoubtedly been repeated in “ King Lear” : — Fliber- 
 digibet, spelt in the play Flibbertigibbet ; Flober- 
 didance, called Hopdance and Hobbididance ; and 
 -Frateretto, who are called morris-dancers ; Flaber- 
 dicut, who appears in “ Lear ” as Obidicut ; Smolkin, 
 one of Trayford’s devils; Modu, who possessed 
 Mainy ; and Maho, who possessed Sara Williams. 
 These two latter devils have in the play managed 
 to exchange the final vowels of their names, and 
 appear as Modo and Mahu. 1 
 
 70. A comparison of the passages in “ King Lear” 
 spoken by Edgar when feigning madness, with those 
 in Harsnet’s book which seem to have suggested 
 them, will furnish as vivid a picture as it is possible to 
 give of the state of contemporary belief upon the 
 
 1 In addition to these, Killico has probably been corrupted into 
 Pillicock — a much more probable explanation of the word than either 
 of those suggested by Dyce in his glossary ; and I have little doubt 
 that the ordinary reading of the line, “ Pur! the cat is gray !” in Act 
 III. vi. 47, is incorrect; that Pur is not an interjection, but the repeti- 
 tion of the name of another devil, Purre, who is mentioned by Harsnet. 
 The passage in question occurs only in the quartos, and therefore the 
 fact that there is no stop at all after the word “ Pur ” cannot be relied 
 upon as helping to prove the correctness of this supposition. On the 
 other hand, there is nothing in the texts to justify the insertion of the 
 note of exclamation. 
 
MAI NY AND HIS DEVILS. 
 
 7i 
 
 subject of possession. It is impossible not to notice 
 that nearly all the allusions in the play refer to the 
 performance of the youth Richard Mainy. Even 
 Edgar’s hypothetical account of his moral failings in 
 the past seems to have been an accurate reproduction 
 of Mainy’s conduct in some particulars, as the quo- 
 tation below will prove ; 1 and there appears to be so 
 little necessity for these remarks of Edgar’s, that it 
 seems almost possible that there may have been some 
 point in these passages that has since been lost. A 
 careful search, however, has failed to disclose any 
 reason why Mainy should be held up to obloquy ; 
 and the passages in question were evidently not the 
 result of a direct reference to the “ Declaration.” 
 After his examination by Harsnet in 1602, Mainy 
 seems to have sunk into the insignificant position 
 which he was so calculated to adorn, and nothing 
 more is heard of him ; so the references to him must 
 be accidental merely. 
 
 71. One curious little repetition in the play of a 
 somewhat unimportant incident recorded by Harsnet 
 is to be found in the fourth scene of the third act, 
 where Edgar says — 
 
 “ Who gives anything to poor Tom ? whom the 
 
 1 “ He would needs have persuaded this examinate’s sister to have 
 gone thence with him in the apparel of a youth, and to have been his 
 boy, and waited upon him. . . . He urged this exanimate divers times 
 to have yielded to his carnal desires, using very unfit tricks with her. 
 There was also a very proper woman, one Mistress Plater, with whom 
 this examinate perceived he had many allurements, showing great tokens 
 of extraordinary affection towards her.” — Evidence of Sara Williams, 
 Harsnet, p. 190. Compare King Lear, Act iii. sc. iv. 11. 82-101 ; note 
 especially 1. 84. 
 
72 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 foul fiend hath led through fire and through flam,j- 
 and through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog ar,- 
 quagmire ; that hath laid knives under his pilla , 5 
 and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his pc_ 
 ridge,” etc. 1 ? 
 
 The events referred to took place at Denham, 
 halter and some knife-blades were found in a corrid 
 of the house. “ A great search was made in t 
 house to know how the said halter and knife-blac 
 came thither, but it could not in any wise be fou*. 
 out, as it was pretended, till Master Mainy in his nej 
 fit said, as it was reported, that the devil layd the: 
 in the gallery, that some of those that were possesse 
 might either hang themselves with the halter, or k: 
 themselves with the blades.” 2 
 
 72. But the bulk of the references relating to t 1 
 possession of Mainy occur further on in the sar 
 scene : — 
 
 “ Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools ai 
 madmen. 
 
 “ Edgar. Take heed o’ the foul fiend: obey th 
 parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commi 
 not with man’s sworn spouse ; 3 set not thy swee 
 heart on proud array : Tom’s a-cold. 
 
 “ Lear. What hast thou been ? 
 
 “ Edgar. A serving-man, proud in heart an. 
 mind, that curled my hair, wore my gloves in m; 
 cap, served the lust of my mistress’ heart, and die 
 
 5 Harsnet, p. 21S. 
 
 * Cf. § “o, and note. 
 
 1 1, 51, et seq. 
 
FIVE FIENDS IN POOR TOM. 
 
 73 
 
 the act of darkness with her ; 1 swore as many oaths 
 as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face 
 of heaven ; one that slept in the contriving of lust, 
 and waked to do it: wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; 
 and in women out-paramoured the Turk: 1 false of 
 heart, light of ear, bloody of hand ; hog in sloth, fox 
 in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion 
 in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the 
 j rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to woman ; 
 
 1 keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of 
 | plackets, 2 thy pen from lenders’ books, and defy the 
 foul fiend.” 3 
 
 This must be read in conjunction with what Edgar 
 says of himself subsequently : — 
 
 “ Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once ; of 
 lust, as Obidicut ; Hobbididance, prince of dumb- 
 ness ; Mahu, of stealing ; Modo, of murder ; Flib- 
 bertigibbet, of mopping and mowing ; who since 
 possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women.” 4 
 
 The following are the chief parts of the account 
 given by Harsnet of the exorcism of Mainy by 
 Weston — a most extraordinary transaction, — said to 
 be taken from Weston’s own account of the matter. 
 He was supposed to be possessed by the devils who 
 represented the seven deadly sins, and “ by instigation 
 of the first of the seven, began to set his hands into 
 his side, curled his hair, and used such gestures as 
 Maister Edmunds present affirmed that that spirit 
 
 v f 
 
 y 
 
 l 
 
 ) 
 
 'I ? 
 
 1 Cf. § 70, and note. 
 
 2 Placket probably here means pockets ; not, as usual, the slip in a 
 
 petticoat. Tom was possessed by Mahu, the prince of stealing. 
 
 2 1 . 82, et seq. * Act iv. i. 61. 
 
74 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 was Pride . 1 Heerewith he began to curse and to 
 banne, saying, ‘ What a poxe do I heare ? I will 
 stay no longer among a company of rascal priests, but 
 goe to the court and brave it amongst my fellowes, 
 the noblemen there assembled.’ 2 . . . Then Maister 
 Edmunds did proceede againe with his exorcismes, 
 and suddenly the sences of Mainy were taken from 
 him, his belly began to swell, and his eyes to stare, 
 and suddainly he cried out, ‘Ten pounds in the 
 hundred ! ’ he called for a scrivener to make a bond, 
 swearing that he would net lend his money without 
 a pawne. . . . There could be no other talke had 
 with this spirit but money and usury, so as all the 
 company deemed this devil to be the author of 
 Covetousnesse. . . , 3 
 
 “ Ere long Maister Edmunds beginneth againe his 
 exorcismes, wherein he had not proceeded farre, but 
 up cometh another spirit singing most filthy and 
 baudy songs : every word almost that he spake was 
 nothing but ribaldry. They that were present with 
 one voyce affirmed that devill to be the author of 
 Luxury . 4 
 
 “ Envy was described by disdainful looks and con- 
 temptuous speeches ; Wrath, by furious gestures, and 
 talke as though he would have fought ; 0 Gluttony, by 
 
 1 “A serving-man, proud of heart and mind, that curled my hair,” 
 etc. — 1 . 87 ; cf. also 1 . 84. Curling the hair as a sign of Mainy’s pos- 
 session is mentioned again, Harsnet, p. 57. 
 
 2 “ That . . . swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them 
 in the sweet face of heaven.” — 1. 90. 
 
 3 “Keep . . . thy pen out of lenders’ books. ” — 1 . 100. 
 
 4 “Wine loved I deeply ; dice dearly ; and in women out-paramoured 
 the Turk. — 1 . 93. 
 
 5 “Dog in madness, lion in prey.” — 1 . 96. 
 
CONVERSATIONAL DEVILS. 
 
 75 
 
 vomiting ; 1 and Sloth, 2 by gasping and snorting, as 
 though he had been asleepe.” 3 
 
 A sort of prayer-meeting was then held for the 
 relief of the distressed youth : “ Whereupon the spirit 
 of Pride departed in the forme of a Peacocke ; the 
 spirit of Sloth in the likenesse of an Asse ; the spirit 
 of Envy in the similitude of a Dog ; the spirit of 
 Gluttony in the forme of a Wolfe.” 4 
 
 There is in another part of “ King Lear ” a further 
 reference to the incidents attendant upon these exor- 
 cisms. Edgar says, 5 “ The foul fiend haunts poor 
 Tom in the voice of a nightingale.” This seems to 
 refer to the following incident related by Friswood 
 Williams : — 
 
 “ There was also another strange thing happened 
 at Denham about a bird. Mistris Peckham had a 
 nightingale, which she kept in a cage, wherein Maister 
 Dibdale took great delight, and would often be play- 
 ing with it. This nightingale was one night conveyed 
 out of the cage, and being next morning diligently 
 sought for, could not be heard of, till Maister Mainie’s 
 devil, in one of his fits (as it was pretended), said that 
 the wicked spirit which was in this examinate’s sister 3 
 had taken the bird out of the cage, and killed it in 
 despite of Maister Dibdale.” 7 
 
 73. The treatment to which, in consequence of 
 
 1 “ Wolf in greediness.” — Ibid. 3 “ Hog in sloth.”— 1 . 95. 
 
 3 Harsnet, p. 278. 
 
 * The words, “ Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog 
 in madness, lion in prey,” are clearly an imperfect reminiscence of this 
 part of the transaction. 
 
 5 Act in. sc. vi. 1 . 31. 
 
 6 Sara Williams. 
 
 7 Harsnet, p. 225. 
 
7 6 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 \ 
 
 his belief in possession, unfortunate persons like 
 Mainy and Sommers, who were probably only suffer- 
 ing from some harmless form of mental disease, were 
 subjected, was hardly calculated to effect a cure. 
 The most ignorant quack was considered perfectly 
 competent to deal with cases which, in reality, require 
 the most delicate and judicious management, com- 
 bined with the profoundest physiological, as well as 
 -V psychological, knowledge. The ordinary method of 
 dealing with these lunatics was as simple as it was 
 irritating. Bonds and confinement in a darkened 
 room were the specifics ; and the monotony of this 
 treatment was relieved by occasional visits from the 
 sage who had charge of the case, to mumble a prayer 
 or mutter an exorcism. Another popular but un- 
 pleasant cure was by flagellation ,; so that Romeo’s 
 
 “ Not mad, but bound more than a madman is, 
 
 Shut up in prison, kept without my food, 
 
 Whipped and tormented,” 1 
 
 if an exaggerated description of his own mental con- 
 dition, is in itself no inflated metaphor. 
 
 74. Shakspere, in “The Comedy of Errors,” and 
 indirectly also in “ Twelfth Night,” has given us 
 intentionally ridiculous illustrations of scenes which 
 he had not improbably witnessed, in the country at 
 any rate, and which bring vividly before us the 
 absurdity of the methods of diagnosis and treatment 
 usually adopted : — 
 
 “ Courtesan. How say you now ? is not your husband mad ? 
 
 Adriana. His incivility confirms no less. 
 
 1 I. h. 55- 
 
DOCTOR PINCH, CONJURER. 
 
 77 
 
 Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer; 
 
 Establish him in his true sense again, 
 
 And I will please you what you will demand. 
 
 Lutiana. Alas ! how fiery and how sharp he looks ! 
 Courtesan. Mark how he trembles in his extasy ! 
 
 Pinch. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse. 1 
 Ant. E. There is my hand, and let it feel your ear. 
 
 Pinch. I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man, 
 
 To yield possession to my holy prayers, 
 
 And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight ; 
 
 I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven. 
 
 A?it. E. Peace, doting wizard, peace ; I am not mad. 
 Pinch. O that thou wert not, poor distressed soul ! ” 2 
 
 After some further business, Pinch pronounces his 
 opinion : 
 
 “ Mistress, both man and master are possessed ; 
 
 I know it by their pale and deadly looks : 
 
 They must be bound, and laid in some dark room.” 3 
 
 But “ good doctor Pinch ” seems to have been mild 
 even to feebleness in his conjuration ; many of his 
 brethren in art had much more effective formulae. It 
 seems that devils were peculiarly sensitive to any 
 opprobrious epithets that chanced to be bestowed 
 upon them. The skilful exorcist took advantage of 
 this weakness, and, if he could only manage to keepl; 
 up a flow of uncomplimentary remarks sufficiently 
 long and offensive, the unfortunate spirit became 
 embarrassed, restless, agitated, and finally took to 
 flight. Here is a specimen of the “nicknames” which 
 had so potent an effect, if Harsnet is to be credited : — 
 “ Pleare therefore, thou senceless false lewd spirit, 
 
 1 The cessation of the pulse was one of the symptoms of possession. 
 See the case of Sommers, Tryal of Maister Darrell, 1599. 
 
 2 IV. iv. 48 62. 3 Ibid. 95. 
 
7S 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 maister of devils, miserable creature, tempter of men, 
 deceaver of bad angels, captaine of heretiques, father 
 of lyes, fatuous bestial ninnie, drunkard, infernal 
 theefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger- 
 bitten impure sow, seely beast, truculent beast, cruel 
 beast, bloody beast, beast of all beasts, the most 
 bestiall acherontall spirit, smoakie spirit, Tartareus 
 spirit!” 1 Whether this objurgation terminates from 
 loss of breath on the part of the conjurer, or the 
 precipitate departure of the spirit addressed, it is 
 impossible to say ; it is difficult to imagine any 
 logical reason for its conclusion. 
 
 k 75. Occasionally other, and sometimes more elabo- 
 rate, methods of exorcism than those mentioned 
 by Romeo were adopted, especially when the opera- 
 tion was conducted for the purpose of bringing into 
 prominence some great religious truth. The more 
 evangelical of the operators adopted the plan of 
 lying on the top of their patients, “ after the manner 
 of Elias and Pawle.” 2 But the Catholic exorcists 
 invented and carried to perfection the greatest refine- 
 ment in the art. The patient, seated in a “ holy 
 chair,” specially sanctified for the occasion, was com- 
 pelled to drink about a pint of a compound of sack 
 and salad oil ; after which refreshment a pan of 
 burning brimstone was held under his nose, until his 
 face was blackened by the smoke. 3 All this while 
 the officiating priest kept up his invocation of the 
 fiends in the manner illustrated above ; and, under 
 
 1 Harsnet, p. 113. 
 
 2 The Tryall of Maister Darrell, 1599, p. 2. 
 
 ITarsnet, p. 53. 
 
EXORCISMS INFALLIBLE. 
 
 79 
 
 such circumstances, it is extremely doubtful whether 
 the most determined character would not be pre- 
 pared to see somewhat unusual phenomena for the 
 sake of a short respite. 
 
 76. Another remarkable method of exorcism was 
 a process termed “ firing out ” the fiend. 1 The holy 
 ame of piety resident in the priest was so terrible 
 
 0 the evil spirit, that the mere contact of the holy 
 and with that part of the body of the afflicted 
 erson in which he was resident was enough to make 
 
 ^lim shrink away into some more distant portion ; 
 50, by a judicious application of the hand, the exorcist 
 t:ould drive the devil into some limb, from which 
 Escape into the body was impossible, and the evil 
 Spirit, driven to the extremity, was obliged to depart, 
 defeated and disgraced. 2 This influence could be 
 fxerted, however, without actual corporal contact, as 
 she following quaint extract from Harsnet’s book will 
 [how : — 
 
 1 “ Some punie rash devil doth stay till the holy 
 riest be come somewhat neare, as into the chamber 
 
 where the demoniacke doth abide, purposing, as it 
 Neemes, to try a pluck with the priest ; and then his 
 hart sodainly failing him (as Demas, when he saw 
 is friend Chinias approach), cries out that he is tor- 
 ented with the presence of the priest, and so is fierd 
 ut of his hold.” 3 
 
 1 This expression occurs in Sonnet cxliv., and evidently with the 
 
 [cleaning here explained ; only the bad angel is supposed to fire out 
 I he good one. 
 
 Harsnet, pp. 77, 96, 97. 3 Ibid. p. 65. 
 
8o 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 77- The more violent or uncommon of the bodil; 
 diseases were, as the quotation from Cotta’s bool 
 shows, 1 attributed to the same diabolic source. I. 
 an era when the most profound ignorance prevaile< 
 with regard to the simplest laws of health ; when th 
 commoner diseases were considered as God’s punish 
 ment for sin, and not attributable to natural causes 
 when so eminent a divine as Bishop Hooper coul< 
 declare that “ the air, the water, and the earth ha< 
 no poison in themselves to hurt their lord and maste 
 man,” 2 unless man first poisoned himself with sin; an' 
 when, in consequence of this ignorance and this fals 
 philosophy, and the inevitable neglect attendant upo 
 them, those fearful plagues known as “the Blac • 
 Death ” could, almost without notice, sweep dow 
 upon a country, and decimate its inhabitants — it i 
 not wonderful that these terrible scourges were at 
 tributed to the malevolence of the Evil One. 
 
 78. But it is curious to notice that, althoug. . 
 possessing such terrible powers over the bodies an ■ 
 minds of mortals, devils were not believed to b 
 potent enough to destroy the lives of the person 
 they persecuted unless they could persuade thei 
 victims to renounce God. This theory probabl t 
 sprang out of the limitation imposed by the Almight 
 upon the power of Satan during his temptation c - 
 Job, and the advice given to the sufferer by his wifi 
 “ Curse God, and die.” Hence, when evil spirit . 
 began their assaults upon a man, one of their firs . 
 endeavours was to induce him to do some act th? 
 
 1 See §§ 63, (14. * i Hooper, p. 30S. Parker Society. 
 
DEVILS BOAST: DON’T KILL. 
 
 81 
 
 1 would be equivalent to such a renunciation. Some- 
 times this was a bond assigning the victim’s soul to 
 
 I jihe Evil One in consideration of certain rvorldly ad- 
 :i yantages ; sometimes a formal denial of his baptism ; 
 
 ‘ K sometimes a deed that drives away the guardian 
 ' G angel from his side, and leaves the devil’s influence 
 :i 'uncounteracted. In “ The Witch of Edmonton,” 1 the 
 J ' 1 first act that Mother Sawyer demands her familiar 
 
 II to perform after she has struck her bargain, is to kill 
 ie her enemy Banks ; and the fiend has reluctantly to 
 1!U peclare that he cannot do so unless by good fortune 
 : ' s he could happen to catch him cursing. Both Harpax 2 
 P° and Mephistophiles 3 suggest to their victims that 
 1:Xl ;hey have power to destroy their enemies, but neither 
 °' vl j)f them is able to exercise it. Faust can torment, 
 
 1 but not kill, his would-be murderers; and Springius 
 ea ^nd Hircius are powerless to take Dorothea’s life, 
 n the latter case it is distinctly the protection of the 
 guardian angel that limits the diabolic power ; so it 
 ; not unnatural that Gratiano should think the 
 ursing of his better angel from his side the “ most 
 [ lesperate turn ” that poor old Brabantio could have 
 efflijione himself, had he been living to hear of his 
 aughter’s cruel death. 4 It is next to impossible for 
 eople in the present day to have any idea what a 
 nsolation this belief in a good attendant spirit, 
 °pecially appointed to guard weak mortals through 
 lisAfe, to ward off evils, and guide to eternal safety, 
 s P irlt |iust have been in a time when, according to the 
 urrent belief, any person, however blameless, how- 
 
 eir fas 
 act th? 
 
 iciety. 
 
 1 Act II. sc. i. 2 The Virgin Martyr, Act III. sc. iii. 
 
 3 Dr. Faustus, Act I. sc. iii.. 4 Othello, Act v. sc. ii. 204. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 ever holy, was liable at any moment to be possesse 
 by a devil, or harried and tortured by a witch. 
 
 79. This leads by a natural sequence to the cor ; 
 sideration of another and more insidious form c 
 attack upon mankind adopted by the evil spirit: 
 Possession and obsession were methods of assaul . 
 adopted against the will of the afflicted person, an< , 
 hardly to be avoided by him without the supernatura 
 intervention of the Church. TThe practice of witch 
 craft and magic involved the absolute and voluntary 
 barter of body and soul to the Evil One, for the purposi 
 of obtaining a few short years of superhuman power 
 to be employed for the gratification of the culprit’: 
 avarice, ambition, or desire for revenge. 
 
 80. In the strange history of that most inexplic 
 able mental disease, the witchcraft epidemic, as ii 
 has been justly called by a high authority on sucl 
 matters, 1 we moderns are, by the nature of our educa- 
 tion and prejudices, completely incapacitated foi 
 sympathizing with either the persecutors or their . 
 victims. We are at a loss to understand how clear- 
 sighted and upright men, like Sir Matthew Hale 
 could consent to become parties to a relentless perse- , 
 cution to the death of poor helpless beings whose 
 chief crime, in most cases, was, that they had suffered 
 starvation both in body and in mind. We cannot 
 understand it, because none of us believe in the 
 existence of evil spirits. None ; for although there 
 are still a few persons who nominally hold to the 
 
 1 See Dr. Carpenter in Frazer for November, 1S77. 
 
SATAN MORIBUND. 
 
 83 
 
 I 
 
 e( ;ancient faith, as they do to many other respectable 
 put effete traditions, yet they would be at a loss for 
 a reason for the faith that is in them, should they 
 ID phance to be asked for one; and not one of them 
 
 0 would be prepared to make the smallest material 
 ^bacrifice for the sake of it. It is true that the exist- 
 Mince of evil spirits recently received a tardy and 
 ll( fcmewhat hesitating recognition in our ecclesiastical 
 a jourts , 1 which at first authoritatively declared that a 
 Menial of the existence of the personality of the devil 
 Constituted a man a notorious evil liver, and depraver 
 Sf >f the Book of Common Prayer ; 2 but this was 
 ; f promptly reversed by the Judicial Committee of the 
 t’irrivy Council, under the auspices of two Low Church 
 
 jaw lords and two archbishops, with the very vague 
 proviso that “ they do not mean to decide that those 
 c 'loctrines are otherwise than inconsistent with the 
 'ormularities of the Church of England ; ” 3 yet the 
 /ery contempt with which these portentous declara- 
 a ' ions of Church law have been received shows how 
 
 01 jreat has been the fall of the once almost omnipotent 
 !I1 minister of evil. The ancient Satan does indeed 
 r ixist in some few formularies, but in such a washed- 
 e )ut and flimsy condition as to be the reverse of con- 
 e ' spicuous. All that remains of him and of his 
 if subordinate legions is the ineffectual ghost of a 
 :0 leparted creed, for the resuscitation of which no man 
 3 * vill move a finger. 
 
 1 C 
 
 Cf 1 See Jenkins v. Cooke, Law Reports, Admiralty and Ecclesiastical 
 )f lases, vol. iv. p. 463, et seq. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 499, Sir R. Phillimore. 
 
 3 Law Reports, 1 Probate Division, p. 102. 
 
s 4 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 
 8 1. It is perfectly impossible for us, therefore, t 
 comprehend, although by an effort we may perhap 
 bring ourselves to imagine, the horror and loathin 
 with which good men, entirely believing in the exist 
 ence and omnipresence of countless legions of ev 
 spirits, able and anxious to perpetrate the mischief 
 that it has been the object of these pages in som 
 part to describe, would regard those who, for thei • 
 own selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered thei : 
 hopes of eternal happiness in exchange for an allianc 
 with the devils, which would render these ten time 
 more capable than before of working their wicket 
 wills. To men believing this, no punishment couk 
 seem too sudden or too terrible for such offender 
 against religion and society, and no means of possibl 
 
 detection too slight or far-fetched to be neglected 
 
 indeed, it might reasonably appear to them bette 
 that many innocent persons should perish, with th< 
 assurance of future reward for their undeserved suffer 
 ings, than that a single guilty one should escapt 
 undetected, and become the medium by which the 
 devil might destroy more souls. 
 
 82. But the persecuted, far more than the perse 
 cutors, deserve our sympathy, although they rarelj 
 obtain it. It is frequently asserted that the absolute 
 truth of a doctrine is the only support that will enable 
 its adherents successfully to weather the storms o 
 persecution. Those who assent to this propositior 
 must be prepared to find a large amount of truth ir 
 the beliefs known to us under the name of witchcraft 
 if the position is to be successfully maintained ; foi 
 
BUT WAS ONCE BELIEVED IN. 
 
 35 
 
 never was any sect persecuted more systematically, 
 ebr with more relentlessness, than these little-offending 
 i|is,aeretics. Protestants and Catholics, Anglicans and 
 biCalvinists, so ready at all times to commit one another 
 t£o the flames and to the headsman, found in this 
 r matter common ground, upon which all could heartily 
 vunite for the grand purpose of extirpating error. 
 vjWhen, out of the quiet of our own times, we look back 
 njupon the terrors of the Tower, and the smoke and 
 ^ dare of Smithfield, we think with mingled pity and 
 e| admiration of those brave men and women who, in 
 the sixteenth century, enriched with their blood and 
 1( stashes the soil from whence was to spring our political 
 :r e,and religious freedom. But no whit of admiration, 
 
 1 shardly a glimmer of pity, is even casually evinced 
 i jjcfor those poor creatures who, neglected, despised, and 
 mcjabhorred, were, at the same time, dying the same 
 hf[<hgonizing death, and passing through the torment of 
 ;r|vthe flames to that “ something after death — the undis- 
 covered country,” without the sweet assurance which 
 ^sustained their better-remembered fellow-sufferers, 
 that beyond the martyr’s cross was waiting the 
 
 E artyr’s crown. No such hope supported those who 
 ere condemned to die for the crime of witchcraft ; 
 eir anticipations of the future were as dreary as 
 their memories of the past, and no friendly voice was 
 raised, or hand stretched out, to encourage or console 
 
 oil them during that last sad journey. Their hope of 
 or mercy from man was small — strangulation before the 
 ir application of the fire, instead of the more lingering 
 ift and painful death at most ; — their hope of mercy from 
 foj Heaven, nothing ; yet, under these circumstances, the 
 
86 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 I 
 
 most auspicious perhaps that could be imagined r 
 the extirpation of a heretical belief, persecution fail 
 to effect its object. The more the Government bui 
 the witches, the more the crime of witchcraft sprea 
 and it was not until an attitude of contemptuo 
 toleration was adopted towards the culprits that t 
 belief died down, gradually but surely, not on accou 
 of the conclusiveness of the arguments directed agair 
 it, but from its own inherent lack of vitality. 1 
 
 83. The history and phenomena of witchcraft ha 
 been so admirably treated by more than one mode 
 investigator, as to render it unnecessary to deal e 
 haustively with a subject which presents such a v; 
 amount of material for arrangement and comment c 
 The scope of the following remarks will therefore 
 be limited to a consideration of such features of the 
 subject as appear to throw light upon the super- 
 naturalism in “Macbeth.” This consideration will be 
 carried out with some minuteness, as certain modern 
 critics, importing mythological learning that is the 
 outcome of comparatively recent investigation intol 
 the interpretation of the text, have declared that the 
 three sisters who play such an important part in 
 that drama are not witches at all, but are, or an 
 intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scan 
 dinavian paganism. It will be the object of th 
 following pages to illustrate the contemporary belief 
 concerning witches and their powers, by showing that 
 
 1 See Mr. Lecky’s elaborate and interesting description of the 
 demise of the belief in the first chapter of his History of the Rise of 
 Rationalism in Europe. 
 
MACBETH WITCHES, NORNS ? 
 
 3 7 
 
 marly every characteristic point attributed to the 
 sisters has its counterpart in contemporary witch- 
 lore ; that some of the allusions, indeed, bear so 
 strong a resemblance to certain events that had 
 transpired not many years before “ Macbeth ” was 
 written, that it is not improbable that Shakspere 
 was alluding to them in much the same off-hand, 
 cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when 
 writing “ King Lear.” 
 
 • 
 
 . ' 84. The first critic whose comments upon this 
 
 .. subject call for notice is the eminent Gervinus. In 
 t evident ignorance of the history of witchcraft, he 
 Isays, “ In the witches Shakspere has made use of the ^ 
 ipopular belief in evil geniuses and in adverse perse- 
 cutors of mankind, and has produced a similar but 
 [darker race of beings, just as he made use of the 
 
 V belief in fairies in the ‘ Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ 
 
 This creation is less attractive and .complete, but not 
 less masterly. The poet, in the text of the play 
 itself, calls these beings witches only derogatorily ; 
 they call themselves weird sisters ; the Fates bore 
 this denomination, and the sisters remind us indeed of 
 the Northern Fates or Valkyries. They appear wild 
 and weather-beaten in exterior and attire, common in 
 
 speech, ignoble, half-human'creatures, ugly as the Evil 
 
 One, and in like manner’ old, and of neither sex. 
 They are guided by more powerful masters, their 
 work entirely springs from delight in evil, and they 
 are wholly devoid of human sympathies. . . . They 
 are simply the embodiment of inward temptation ; 
 they come in storm and vanish in air, like corporeal 
 
88 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 impulses, which, originating in the blood, cast i 
 bubbles of sin and ambition in the soul; they al 
 weird sisters only in the sense in which men can 1 
 their own fates within their bosoms.” 1 This criticisiUi 
 is so entirely subjective and unsupported by evidence 
 that it is difficult to deal satisfactorily with it. It wil 
 be shown hereafter that this description does ncl 
 apply in the least to the Scandinavian Xorns, whikl 
 so far as it is true to Shakspere’s text, it does ncl 
 clash with contemporary records of the appearancl 
 and actions of witches. 
 
 85. The next writer to bring forward a view ol 
 this character was the Rev. F. G. Fleay, the well -1 
 known Shakspere critic, whose ingenious efforts ini 
 iconoclasm cause a curious alternation of feelingl 
 between admiration and amazement. His argument! 
 is unfortunately mixed up with a question of textual 
 criticism ; for he rejects certain scenes in the play as 
 the work of the inferior dramatist Middleton. 2 The 
 question relating to the text will only be noticed so 
 far as it is inextricably involved with the argument 
 respecting the nature of the weird sisters. Mr. 
 Fleay ’s position is, shortly, this. He thinks that 
 Shakspere’s play commenced with the entrance of 
 Macbeth and Banquo in the third scene of the first | 
 act, and that the weird sisters who subsequently take 
 part in that scene are Norns, not witches ; and that 
 in the first scene of the fourth act, Shakspere dis- 
 
 1 Shakspere Commentaries, translated by F. E. Bunnett, p. 591. 
 
 1 Of the witch scenes Mr. Fleay rejects Act 1. sc. i., and sc. iii. 
 down to 1 . 37, and Act ill. sc. v. 
 
EVIDENCE FOR NORNS. 
 
 89 
 
 carded the Norns, and introduced three entirely new 
 characters, who were intended to be genuine witches. 
 
 86. The evidence which can be produced in sup- 
 tjport of this theory, apart from question of style and 
 c probability, is threefold. The first proof is derived 
 infrom a manuscript entitled “The Booke of Plaies and 
 w Notes thereof, for Common Pollicie,” written by a 
 ^somewhat famous magician-doctor, Simon Forman, 
 Ll jwho was implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas 
 Overbury. He says, “In ‘Macbeth,’ at the Globe, 
 1610, the 20th April, Saturday, there was to be 
 observed first how Macbeth and Banquo, two noble- 
 men of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood 
 before them three women fairies, or nymphs, and 
 saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, ‘ Hail, 
 Macbeth, King of Codor, for thou shalt be a king, 
 but thou shalt beget no kings,’ ” etc. 1 This, if For- 
 man’s account held together decently in other respects, 
 would be strong, although not conclusive, evidence 
 in favour of the theory ; but the whole note is so 
 full of inconsistencies and misstatements, that it is 
 
 | j . . # 
 
 not unfair to conclude, either that the writer was not 
 
 paying marvellous attention to the entertainment he 
 professed to describe, or that the player’s copy differed 
 in many essential points from the present text. Not 
 the least conspicuous of these inconsistencies is the 
 account of the sisters’ greeting of Macbeth just 
 quoted. Subsequently Forman narrates that Dun- 
 can created Macbeth Prince of Cumberland ; and 
 that “ when Macbeth had murdered the king, the 
 
 1 See Furness, Variorum, p. 384. 
 
90 
 
 'ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 blood on his hands could not be washed off by an; - 
 means, nor from his wife’s hands, which handled th< - 
 bloody daggers in hiding them, by which means the; 1 
 became \>oth much amazed and affronted.” Sue! • 
 a loose narration cannot be relied upon if the texi c 
 in question contains any evidence at all rebutting the 
 conclusion that the sisters are intended to be “women 
 fairies, or nymphs.” 
 
 87. The second piece of evidence is the story o: 
 Macbeth as it is narrated by Holinshed, from which 
 Shakspere derived his material. In that account w 
 read that “ It fortuned as Makbeth and Banquh 
 journied toward Fores, where the king then laie, the; 
 went sporting by the waie togither without othe: 
 companie, saue onlie themselues, passing thorough tin 
 woods and fields, when suddenlie in the middest of 
 laund there met them three women in strange anc 
 wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world 
 whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering much 
 at the sight, the first of them spake and said ; ‘ A 1 
 haile, Makbeth, thane of Glammis ’ (for he hadlateli 
 entered into that dignitie and office by the death o 
 his father Sinell). bffdie second of them said ; ‘ Haile 
 Makbeth, thane of Cawder.’ But the third said ; ‘ All 
 haile, Makbeth, that heereafter shall be King of Scot- 
 land.’ . . . Afterwards the common opinion was that 
 these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as 
 ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some 
 nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of pro- 
 phesie by their necromanticall science, because every- 
 thing came to passe as they had spoken.” 1 This is 
 
 1 Holinshed, Scotland, p. 170, c. 2, 1 . 55. 
 
“ GODDESSES OF DESTINIE ? 
 
 91 
 
 all that is heard of these “goddesses of Destinie ” 
 tfiefin Holinshed’s narrative. Macbeth is warned to 
 beware Macduff” 1 by “ certeine wizzards, in whose 
 words he put great confidence ; ” and the false 
 promises were made to him by “ a certeine witch, 
 whome he had in great trust, (who) had told him that 
 he should neuer be slaine with man borne of anie 
 (woman, nor vanquished till the wood of -Bernane came 
 f:o the castell of Dunsinane.” 2 
 
 88. In this account we find that the supernatural 
 Icommunications adopted by Shakspere were derived 
 .'om three sources ; and the contention is that he has 
 retained two of them — the “goddesses of Destinie” and 
 the witches ; and the evidence of this retention is the 
 third proof relied on, namely, that the stage direction 
 in the first folio, Act IV. sc. i., is, “Enter Hecate and 
 the other three witches,” when three characters supposed 
 to be witches are already upon the scene. Holinshed’s 
 narrative makes it clear that the idea of the “goddesses 
 of Destinie” was distinctly suggested to Shakspere’s 
 mind, as well as that of the witches, as the mediums 
 of supernatural influence. The question is, did he 
 retain both, or did he reject one and retain the other ? 
 It can scarcely be doubted that one such influence 
 running through the play would conduce to harmony 
 and unity of idea ; and as Shakspere, not a servile 
 follower of his source in any case, has interwoven 
 in “ Macbeth ” the totally distinct narrative of the 
 murder of King Duffe, 3 it is hardly to be supposed 
 
 1 Macbeth, IV. i. 71. Holinslied, p. 174, c. 2, 1 . 10. 2 Ibid. 1 . 13. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 149. “A sort of witches dwelling in a towne of Murrey- 
 land called Fores” (c. 2, 1 . 30) were prominent in this account. 
 
92 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 that he would scruple to blend these two different sel 
 of characters if any advantage were to be gained b 
 so doing. As to the stage direction in the first folic 
 it is difficult to see what it would prove, even sup . 
 posing that the folio were the most scrupulous piec 
 of editorial work that had ever been effected. It pre 
 supposes that the “ weird sisters ” are on the stage a: . 
 well as the witches. But it is perfectly clear thal 
 the witches continue the dialogue ; so the other morel 
 powerful beings must be supposed to be standingl 
 silent in the background — a suggestion so mon- 
 strous that it is hardly necessary to refer to thei 
 slovenliness of the folio stage directions to show how 
 unsatisfactory an argument based upon one of them 
 must be. 
 
 89. The evidence of Forman and Holinshed has 
 been stated fully, in order that the reader may be in 
 possession of all the materials that may be necessaryv. 
 for forming an accurate judgment upon the point in 
 question ; but it seems to be less relied upon than the 
 supposition that the appearance and powers of the 
 beings in the admittedly genuine part of the third 
 scene of the first act are not those formerly attributed 
 to witches, and that Shakspere, having once decided 
 to represent Norns, would never have degraded them 
 “ to three old women, who are called by Paddock and 
 Graymalkin, sail in sieves, kill swine, serve Hecate, 
 and deal in all the common charms, illusions, and 
 incantations of vulgar witches. The three who ‘ look 
 not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth, and yet are on't ; ’ 
 they who can ‘ look into the seeds of time, and say 
 
OR MIXED WITCHES AND NORNS ? 
 
 9 3 
 
 Jjvhich grain will grow ; ’ they who seem corporal, but 
 knelt into the air, like bubbles of the earth ; the 
 jveyward sisters, who make themselves air, and have 
 jn them more than mortal knowledge, are not beings 
 pf this stamp.” 1 
 
 90. Now, there is a great mass of contemporary 
 Jtvjividence to show that these supposed characteristics 
 |:h)f the Norns are, in fact, some of the chief attributes 
 ipf the witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. If this be so — if it can be proved that the 
 supposed “goddesses of Destinie” of the play in reality 
 possess no higher powers than could be acquired by 
 ordinary communication with evil spirits, then no 
 weight must be attached to the vague stage direction 
 in the folio, occurring as it does in a volume notorious 
 for the extreme carelessness with which it was pro- 
 duced ; and it must be admitted that the “goddesses 
 of Destinie” of Holinshed were sacrificed for the sake 
 of the witches. If, in addition to this, it can be shown 
 that there was a very satisfactory reason why the 
 witches should have been chosen as the representa- 
 tives of the evil influence instead of the Norns, the 
 argument will be as complete as it is possible to 
 make it. 
 
 91. But before proceeding to examine the con- 
 temporary evidence, it is necessary, in order to obtain 
 a complete conception of the mythological view of the 
 weird sisters, to notice a piece of criticism that is at 
 
 1 New Shakspere Society Transactions, vol. i. p. 342 ; Fleay’s. 
 Shalcspere Manual, p. 248. 
 
94 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 once an expansion of, and a variation upon, the theory 
 just stated . 1 It is suggested that the sisters o i 
 “ Macbeth ” are but three in number, but that Shak- 
 spere drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a 
 portion of the material he used in constructing these 
 characters, and that he derived the rest from the 
 traditions of contemporary witchcraft ; in fact, that} 
 the “ sisters ” are hybrids between Norns and witches, 
 The supposed proof of this is that each sister exercises 
 the special function of one of the Norns. “ The third^ 
 is the special prophetess, whilst the first takes cog- 
 nizance of the past, and the second of the present, in 
 affairs connected with humanity. These are the tasks 
 of Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda. The first begins by 
 asking, ‘ When shall we three meet again ? ’ The 
 second decides the time : ‘ When the battle’s lost or 
 won.’ The third, the future prophesies: ‘That will be 
 ere set of sun.’ The first again asks, ‘Where?’ The 
 second decides : ‘ Upon the heath.’ The third, the 
 future prophesies : ‘ There to meet with Macbeth.’ ” 
 But their role is most clearly brought out in the 
 famous “ Hails ” : — 
 
 “ 1st. Urda. [Past.] All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, Thane 
 of Glamis ! 
 
 md. Verdandi. [Present.] All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, 
 Thane of Cawdor ! 
 
 yd. Skulda. All hail, Macbeth ! thou shalt be king here- 
 after.” 2 
 
 1 In a letter to The Academy, Sth February, 1879, signed “Charlotte 
 Carmichael.” 
 
 - I have taken the liberty of printing this quotation as it stands in 
 tire text. Tire writer in The Academy has effected a rearrangement of 
 the dialogue by importing what might be Macbeth’s replies to the three 
 
MODERN HYPERCRITICISM. 
 
 95 
 
 leorj | 
 
 '3 ol 'his sequence is supposed to be retained in other 
 hak- i" the sisters’ speeches ; but a perusal of these will 
 ir ; Don show that it is only in the second of the above 
 tee flotations that it is recognizable with any definiteness; 
 tk nd this, it must be remembered, is an almost verbal 
 la ranscript from Holinshed, and not an original con- 
 ies, icption of Shakspere’s, who might feel himself quite 
 ses ustified in changing the characters of the speakers, 
 ird vhile retaining their utterances. In addition to this, 
 g. he natural sequence is in many cases utterly and 
 k unnecessarily violated; as, for instance, in Act I. sc. iii., 
 is ivhere Urda, who should be solely occupied with past 
 y matters, predicts, with extreme minuteness, the results 
 el that are to follow from her projected voyage to 
 r Aleppo, and that without any expression of resent- 
 : jnent, but rather with promise of assistance, from 
 : (Skulda, whose province she is thus invading. 
 
 1 92. But this latter piece of criticism seems open 
 
 sisters from his speech beginning at 1. 70, and alternating them with 
 the different “Hails,” which, in addition, are not correctly quoted — for 
 what purpose it is difficult to see. It may be added here that in a 
 subsequent number of The Academy, a long letter upon the same 
 subject appeared from Mr. Karl Blind, which seems to prove little 
 except the author’s erudition. He assumes the Teutonic origin of the 
 sisters throughout, and, consequently, adduces little evidence in favour 
 of the theory. One of his points is the derivation of the word “weird” 
 or “wayward,” which, as will be shown subsequently, was applied to 
 witches. Another point is, that the witch scenes savour strongly of the 
 staff-rime of old German poetry. It is interesting to find two upholders 
 of the Norn-theory relying mainly for proof of their position upon a scene 
 (Act 1. sc. i.) which Mr. Fleay says that the very statement of this 
 theory (p. 249) must brand as spurious. The question of the sisters’ 
 beards too, regarding which Mr. Blind brings somewhat far-fetched 
 evidence, is, I think, more satisfactorily settled by the quotations in 
 the text. 
 
9 6 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 to one grave objection to which the former is n< 
 liable. Mr. Fleay separates the portions of the pla 
 which are undoubtedly to be assigned to witche 
 from the parts he gives to his Norns, and attr 
 butes them to different characters ; the other mixe 
 up the witch and Norn elements in one confuse 
 mass. The earlier critic saw the absurdity of sue 
 a supposition when he wrote : “ Shakspere may hav 
 raised the wizard and witches of the latter parts c 
 Holinshed to the weird sisters of the former part: 
 but the converse process is impossible.” 1 Is it cor 
 ceivable that Shakspere, who, as most people admi 
 was a man of spine poetic feeling, being in possessio: 
 of the beautiful Norn-1 egend — the silent Fate-god 
 desses, sitting at the foot of Igdrasil, the mysteriou 
 tree of human existence, and watering its roots witl 
 water from the sacred spring — could, ruthlessly anc 
 without cause, mar the charm of the legend by th< 
 gratuitous introduction of the gross and primarih 
 unpoetical details incident to the practice of witch 
 craft ? No man Avith a glimmer of poetry in his sou 
 Avill imagine it for a moment. The separation o 
 characters is more credible than this ; but if tha 1 
 theory can be shoAvn to be unfounded, there is nc 
 improbability in supposing that Shakspere, finding 
 that the question of witchcraft Avas, in consequence ol 
 events that had taken place not long before the tirm 
 of the production of “ Macbeth,” absorbing the atten- 
 tion of all men, from king to peasant, should sei 
 himself to deal Avith such a popular subject, and, bj 
 the magic of his art, so raise it out of its degradatior 
 1 Shakspere Manual, p. 249. 
 
WITCH DIFFERS FROM NORN. 
 
 97 
 
 into the region of poetry, that men should wonder 
 and say, “ Can this be witchcraft indeed ? ” 
 
 93. In comparing the evidence to be deduced 
 from the contemporary records of witchcraft with 
 the sayings and doings of the sisters in “ Macbeth,” 
 those parts of the play will first be dealt with upon 
 which no doubt as to their genuineness has ever been 
 cast, and which are asserted to be solely applicable 
 to Norns. If it can be shown that these describe 
 witches rather than Norns, the position that Shak- 
 spere intentionally substituted witches for the “ god- 
 desses of Destinie” mentioned in his authority is prac- 
 tically unassailable. First, then, it is asserted that 
 the description of the appearance of the sisters given 
 by Banquo applies to Norns rather than witches — 
 
 “ They look not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth, 
 
 And yet are on’t.” 
 
 This question of applicability, however, must not 
 be decided by the consideration of a single 
 sentence, but of the whole passage from which it is 
 extracted ; and, whilst considering it, it should be 
 carefully borne in mind that it occurs immediately 
 before those lines which are chiefly relied upon as 
 proving the identity of the sisters with Urda, Ver- 
 dandi, and Skulda. 
 
 Banquo, on seeing the sisters, says — 
 
 “ What are these, 
 
 So withered and so wild in their attire, 
 
 That look not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth, 
 
 And yet are on’t ? Live you, or are you aught 
 
 That man may question ? You seem to understand me, 
 
 H 
 
 \ 
 
98 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 By each at once her chappy finger laying 
 Upon her skinny lips : you should be women, 
 And yet your beards forbid me to interpret 
 That you are so.” 
 
 It is in the first moment of surprise that the sisters, 
 appearing so suddenly, seem to Banquo unlike the 
 inhabitants of this earth. When he recovers from the 
 shock and is capable of deliberate criticism, he sees 
 chappy fingers, skinny lips — in fact, nothing to dis- 
 tinguish them from poverty-stricken, ugly old women 
 but their beards. A more accurate poetical counter- 
 part to the prose descriptions given by contemporary 
 writers of the appearance of the poor creatures who 
 were charged with the crime of witchcraft could 
 hardly have been penned. Scot, for instance, says, 
 
 “ They are women which commonly be old, lame, 
 bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles. . . . They 
 are leane and deformed, showing melancholie in their 
 faces 1 and Harsnet describes a witch as “an old 
 weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees 
 meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a 
 staff, hollow-eyed, untoothed, furrowed, having her 
 lips trembling with palsy, going mumbling in the 
 streets ; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, yet 
 hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab .'’ 2 It 
 must be remembered that these accounts are by two 
 sceptics, who saw nothing in the witches but poor, 
 degraded old women. In a description which assumes 
 their supernatural power such minute details would 
 not be possible ; yet there is quite enough in Ban-'— 
 quo’s description to suggest neglect, squalor, and 
 
 1 Discoverie, book i. ch. 3, p. 7. - Harsnet, Declaration, p. 136. 
 
WITCHES' APPEARANCE. 
 
 99 
 
 misery. But if this were not so, there is one feature 
 in the description of the sisters that would settle the 
 question once and for ever. The beard was in 
 Elizabethan times the recognized characteristic of 
 the witch. In one old play it is said, “ The women 
 that come to us for disguises must wear beards, and 
 that’s to say a token of a witch ; ” 1 and in another, 
 “ Some women have beards ; marry, they are half 
 witches ; ” 2 and Sir Hugh Evans gives decisive testi- 
 mony to the fact when he says of the disguised 
 Falstaff, “ By yea and no, I think, the ’oman is a 
 witch indeed : I like not when a ’oman has a great 
 peard ; I spy a great peard under her muffler.” 3 
 
 94. Every item of Banquo’s description indicates 
 that he is speaking of witches ; nothing in it is incom- 
 patible with that supposition. Will it apply with 
 equal force to Norns? It can hardly be that these 
 mysterious mythical beings, who exercise an incom- 
 prehensible yet powerful influence over human 
 destiny, could be described with any propriety in 
 terms so revolting. A veil of wild, weird grandeur 
 might be thrown around them ; but can it be sup- 
 posed that Shakspere would degrade them by repre- 
 senting them with chappy fingers, skinny lips, and 
 beards ? It is particularly to be noticed, too, that 
 although in this passage he is making an almost 
 verbal transcript from Holinshed, these details are 
 interpolated without the authority of the chronicle. 
 
 1 Honest Man’s Fortune, II. i. Furness, Variorum, p. 30. 
 
 2 Dekker’s Honest Whore, sc. x. 1 . 126. 
 
 3 Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. sc. ii. 
 
IOO 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 Let it be supposed, for an instant, that the text ran 
 thus — 
 
 “ Banquo What are these 
 
 So withered and so wild in their attire , 1 
 That look not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth, 
 
 And yet are on’t ? 2 Live you, or are you ought 
 That man may question ? 3 
 
 Macbeth. Speak if you can, what are you ? 
 
 ist Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of Glamis ! * 
 
 2nd Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of 
 Cawdor ! 5 
 
 3 rd Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! thou shalt be king hereafter .” 6 
 
 This is so accurate a dramatization of the parallel 
 passage in Holinshed, and so entire in itself, that 
 there is some temptation to ask whether it was not so 
 written at first, and the interpolated lines subsequently 
 inserted by the author. Whether this be so or not, 
 the question must be put — Why, in such a passage, did 
 Shakspere insert three lines of most striking de- 
 scription of the appearance ©f witches ? Can any 
 other reason be suggested than that he had made up 
 his mind to replace the “ goddesses of Destinie ” by 
 the witches, and had determined that there should be 
 no possibility of any doubt arising about it ? 
 
 95. The next objection is, that the sisters exer- 
 cise powers that witches did not possess. They can 
 
 1 “Three women in strange and wild apparell, 2 resembling crea- 
 tures of elder world, 3 whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering 
 much at the sight, the first of them spake and said ; 4 * All haile, Mak- 
 beth, thane of Glammis ’ (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie 
 and office by the death of his father Sinell). 5 The second of them 
 said ; ‘ Haile, Makbeth, thane of Cawder. ’ 6 But the third said ; ‘ All 
 haile, Makbeth, that heereafter shalt be king of Scotland. ” 
 
WITCHES CAN PROPHESY. 
 
 IOI 
 
 “ look into the seeds of time, and say which grain 
 will grow, and which will not.” In other words, they 
 foretell future events, which witches could not do. 
 But this is not the fact. The recorded witch trials 
 teem with charges of having prophesied what things 
 were about to happen ; no charge is more common. 
 The following, quoted by Charles Knight in his 
 biography of Shakspere, might almost have suggested 
 the simile in the last-mentioned lines. Johnnet 
 Wischert is “ indicted for passing to the green growing 
 corn in May, twenty-two years since or thereby, sitting 
 thereupon tymous in the morning before the sun-rising, 
 and being there found and demanded what she was 
 doing, thou 1 answered, I shall tell thee ; I have been 
 peeling the blades of the corn. I find it will be a 
 dear year, the blade of the corn grows withersones 
 [contrary to the course of the sun], and when it grows 
 sonegatis about [with the course of the sun] it will be 
 good cheap year.” 2 The following is another apt 
 illustration of the power, which has been translated 
 from the unwieldy Lowland Scotch account of the trial 
 of Bessie Roy in 1 590. The Dittay charged her thus : 
 “You are indicted and accused that whereas, when 
 you were dwelling with William King in Barra, about 
 twelve years ago, or thereabouts, and having gone 
 into the field to pluck lint with other women, in their 
 presence made a compass in the earth, and a hole in 
 the midst thereof ; and afterwards, by thy conjura- 
 tions, thou causedst a great worm to come up first out 
 of the said hole, and creep over the compass ; and 
 next a little worm came forth, which crept over also ; 
 
 1 Sic. 2 p. 438. 
 
102 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 and last [thou] causedst a great worm to come forth, 
 which could not pass over the compass, but fell down 
 and died. Which enchantment and witchcraft thou 
 interpretedst in this form : that the first great worm 
 that crept over the compass was the goodman 
 William King, who should live ; and the little worm 
 was a child in the goodwife’s womb, who was 
 unknown to any one to be with child, and that the 
 child should live ; and, thirdly, the last great worm 
 thou interpretedst to be the goodwife, who should die : 
 which came to pass after thy speaking !' 1 Surely there 
 could hardly be plainer instances of looking “ into the 
 seeds of time, and saying which grain will grow, and 
 which will not,” than these. 
 
 96. Perhaps this is the most convenient place for 
 pointing out the full meaning of the first scene of 
 “ Macbeth,” and its necessary connection with the 
 rest of the play. It is, in fact, the fag-end of a 
 witches’ sabbath, which, if fully represented, would 
 bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the com- 
 mencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on 
 such a subject would be tedious and unmeaning at 
 the commencement of the play. The audience is 
 therefore left to assume that the witches have met, 
 performed their conjurations, obtained from the 
 evil spirits the information concerning Macbeth’s 
 career that they desired to obtain, and perhaps have 
 been commanded by the fiends to perform the mission 
 they subsequently carry through. All that is needed 
 
 1 Pitcairn, I. ii. 207. Cf. also Ibid. pp. 212, 213, and 231, where 
 the crime is described as “foreknowledge.” 
 
WITCHES CAN VANISH. 
 
 103 
 
 for the dramatic effect is a slight hint of probable 
 diabolical interference, and that Macbeth is to be the 
 special object of it ; and this is done in as artistic a 
 manner as is perhaps imaginable. In the first scene 
 they obtain their information ; in the second they utter 
 their prediction. Every minute detail of these scenes yl 
 is based upon the broad, recognized facts of witchcraft. 
 
 97. It is also suggested that the power of vanish- if 
 ing from the sight possessed by the sisters — the 
 power to make themselves air — was not characteristic 
 of witches. But this is another assertion that would 
 not have been made, had the authorities upon the 
 subject been investigated with only slight attention. 
 
 No feature of the crime of witchcraft is better attested 
 than this ; and the modern witch of story-books is 
 still represented as riding on a broomstick— a relic of 
 the enchanted rod with which the devil used to 
 provide his worshippers, upon which to come to his 
 sabbaths. 1 One of the charges in the indictment 
 against the notorious Dr. Fian ran thus : “ Fylit for 
 suffering himself to be careit to North Berwik kirk, 
 as if he had bene souchand athoirt [whizzing above] 
 the eird.” 2 Most effectual ointments were prepared 
 for effecting this method of locomotion, which have 
 been recorded, and are given below 3 as an illustration 
 
 1 Scot, book iii. ch. iii. p. 43. 
 
 2 Pitcairn, 1. ii. 210. Cf. also Ibid. p. 21 1. Scot, book iii. ch. vii. 
 
 P- 51 - 
 
 3 “ Sundrie receipts and ointments made and used for the transpor- 
 tation of witches, and other miraculous effects. 
 
 “ Rx. The fat of yoong children, & seeth it with water in a brazen 
 vessell, reseruing the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the 
 bottome, which they laie up & keep untill occasion serveth to use it. 
 
104 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 of the wild kind of recipes which Shakspere rendered 
 more grim in his caldron scene. The efficacy of 
 these ointments is well illustrated by a story narrated 
 by Reginald Scot, which unfortunately, on account of 
 certain incidents, cannot be given in his own terse 
 words. The hero of it happened to be staying 
 temporarily with a friend, and on one occasion found 
 her rubbing her limbs with a certain preparation, and 
 mumbling the while. After a time she vanished out 
 of his sight ; and he, being curious to investigate the 
 affair, rubbed himself with the remaining ointment, 
 and almost immediately he found himself transported 
 a long distance through the air, and deposited right 
 in the very midst of a witches’ sabbath. Naturally 
 alarmed, he cried out, “ ‘ In the name of God, what 
 make I heere ? ’ and upon those words the whole 
 assemblie vanished awaie.” 1 
 
 98. The only vestige of a difficulty, therefore, that 
 remains is the use of the term “ weird sisters ” in 
 describing the witches. It is perfectly clear that 
 Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym 
 for the “goddesses of Destinie ; ’’ but with such a mass 
 of evidence as has been produced to show that Shak- 
 spere elected to introduce witches in the place of the 
 Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose 
 that he might retain this term as a poetical and not 
 
 They put hereinto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas, & Soote. ” 
 This is given almost verbatim in Middleton’s Witch. 
 
 “ Rx. Sium, Acarum Vulgare, Pentaphyllon, the bloud of a Flitter- 
 mouse, Solanum Somniferum, & oleum.” 
 
 It would seem that fern seed had the same virtue. — 1 Hen. 'IV. 11. i. 
 
 1 Scot, book iii. ch. vi. p. 46. 
 
 9 S. 
 
“WAYWARD WOMEN? SISTERS. 
 
 105 
 
 unsuitable description of the characters to whom it 
 was applied. And this is the less improbable as it 
 can be shown that both words were at times applied 
 to witches. As the quotation given subsequently 1 
 proves, the Scotch witches were in the habit of 
 speaking of the frequenters of a particular sabbath as 
 “ the sisters ; ” and in Heywood’s “ Witches of Lanca- 
 shire,” one of the characters says about a certain act 
 of supposed witchcraft, “ I remember that some three 
 months since I crossed a wayward woman ; one that 
 I now suspect.” 2 
 
 99. Here, then, in the very stronghold of the sup- 
 posed proof of the Norn-theory, it is possible to 
 extract convincing evidence th^t the sisters are in- 
 tended to be merely witches. It is not surprising 
 that other portions of the play in which the sisters 
 are mentioned should confirm this view. Banquo, 
 upon hearing the fulfilment of the prophecy of the 
 second witch, clearly expresses his opinion of the 
 origin of the “ foreknowledge ” he has received, in 
 the exclamation, “ What, can the devil speak true ? ” 
 For the devil most emphatically spoke through the 
 witches ; but how could he in any sense be said to 
 speak through Norns ? Again, Macbeth informs his 
 wife that on his arrival at Forres, he made inquiry 
 into the amount of reliance that cpuld be placed in 
 the utterances of the witches, “ and learned by the 
 perfectest report that they had more in them than 
 mortal knowledge.” 3 This would be possible enough 
 if witches were the subjects of the investigation, for 
 
 1 § 107, p. 1 14. * Act v. sc. iii. 3 Act 1. sc. v. 1 . 2. 
 
106 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 their chief title to authority would rest upon the 
 general opinion current in the neighbourhood in 
 which they dwelt ; but how could such an inquiry 
 be carried out successfully in the Case of Norns ? It 
 is noticeable, too, that Macbeth knows exactly where ' 
 to find the sisters when he wants them ; and when he 
 says— 
 
 “ More shall they speak ; for now I am bent to know, 
 
 By the worst means, the worst,” 1 
 
 he makes another clear allusion to the traffic of the 
 witches with the devil. After the events recorded in 
 Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of the prophecies upon 
 which he relies as “ the equivocation of the fierick" 2 
 and the prophets as “these juggling fiends ;” 8 and 
 with reason — for he has seen and heard the very 
 devils themselves, the masters of the witches and 
 sources of all their evil power. Every point in the 
 play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show 
 that Shakspere intentionally replaced the “ goddesses 
 of Destinie ” by witches ; and that the supposed Norn 
 origin of these characters is the result of a somewhat 
 too great eagerness to unfold a novel and startling 
 theory. 
 
 ioo. Assuming, therefore, that the witch-nature 
 of the sisters is conclusively proved, it now becomes 
 necessary to support the assertion previously made, 
 
 1 Mr. Fleay avoids the difficulty created by this passage, which 
 alludes to the witches as “ the weird sisters,” by supposing that these 
 lines were interpolated by Middleton — a method of criticism that hardly 
 needs comment. Act ill. sc. iv. 1 . 134- 
 
 2 Act v. sc. v. 1 . 43. 3 Ibid. sc. viii. 1 . 19. 
 
UNTYING THE WINDS. 
 
 that good reason can be shown why Shakspere should 
 have elected to represent witches rather than Norns. 
 
 It is impossible to read “ Macbeth ” without 
 noticing the prominence given to the belief that 
 witches had the power of creating storms and other 
 atmospheric disturbances, and that they delighted in so 
 doing. The sisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, 
 or rain. To them “fair is foul, and foul is fair,” as they 
 “ hover through the fog and filthy air.” The whole of 
 the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is 
 one blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. 
 They can loose and bind the winds , 1 cause vessels 
 to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate wrecked 
 bodies . 2 They describe themselves as “ posters of 
 the sea and land ; ” 3 the heath they meet upon is 
 blasted ; 4 and they vanish “ as breath into the 
 wind .” 5 Macbeth conjures them to answer his 
 questions thus : — 
 
 “ Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 
 Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 
 Confound and swallow navigation up ; 
 
 Though bladecl com be lodged, and trees blown down ; 
 Though castles topple on their warders’ heads ; 
 
 Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
 
 Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
 
 Of nature’s germens tumble all together, 
 
 Even till destruction sicken.” 6 
 
 / 
 
 io I. Now, this command over the elements does 
 not form at all a prominent feature in the English 
 records of witchcraft. A few isolated charges of the 
 
 1 i. iii. n, 12. 3 Act i. sc. iii. 1 . 28. 
 
 V3 Ibid. 1 . 32. 4 Ibid. 1 . 77. 5 Ibid. 11 . 81, 82. 
 
 6 Act iv. sc. i. 11 . 52-60. 
 
io8 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 kind may be found. In 1565, for instance, a witch 
 was burnt who confessed that she had caused all the 
 tempests that had taken place in that year. Scot, 
 too, has a few short sentences upon this subject, but 
 does not give it the slightest prominence. 1 Nor in 
 the earlier Scotch trials recorded by Pitcairn does this 
 charge appear amongst the accusations against the 
 witches. It is exceedingly curious to notice the utter 
 harmless nature of the charges brought against the 
 earlier culprits ; and how, as time went on and the 
 panic increased, they gradually deepened in colour, 
 until no act was too gross, too repulsive, or too 
 ridiculously impossible to be excluded from the in- 
 dictment. The following quotations from one of the 
 earliest reported trials are given because they illus- 
 trate most forcibly the condition of the poor women 
 who were supposed to be witches, and the real basis 
 of fact upon which the belief in the crime subse- 
 quently built itself. 
 
 102. Bessie Dunlop was tried for witchcraft in 
 1576. One of the principal accusations against her 
 was that she held intercourse with a devil who ap- 
 peared to her in the shape of a neighbour of hers, 
 one Thom Reed, who had recently died. Being 
 asked how and where she met Thom Reed, she said, 
 “ As she was gangand betwixt her own house and the 
 yard of Monkcastell, dryvand her ky to the pasture, 
 and makand heavy sair dule with herself, gretand 2 
 very fast for her cow that was dead, her husband and 
 
 1 Book iii. ch. 13, p. 60. 
 
 2 Weeping. I have only half translated this passage, for I feared 
 to spoil the sad simplicity of it. 
 
BESSIE DUNLOP— HER CRIMES. 109 
 
 child that wer lyand sick in the land ill, and she new 
 risen out of gissane , 1 the aforesaid Thom met her by 
 the way, healsit 2 her, and said, ‘ Gude day, Bessie,’ 
 and she said, ‘ God speed you, guidman.’ ‘ Sancta 
 Marie,’ said he, ‘ Bessie, why makes thow sa great dule 
 and sair greting for ony wardlie thing ? ’ She an- 
 swered, ‘ Alas ! have I not great cause to make great 
 dule, for our gear is trakit , 3 and my husband is on the 
 point of deid, and one babie of my own will not live, 
 and myself at ane weak point ; have I not gude cause 
 then to have ane sair hart ? ’ But Thom said, ‘ Bessie, 
 thou hast crabit 4 [God, and askit some thing you 
 suld not have done ; and tharefore I counsell thee to 
 mend to Him, for I tell thee thy barne sail die and 
 the seik cow, or you come hame ; and thy twa sheep 
 shall die too ; but thy husband shall mend, and shall 
 be as hale and fair as ever he was.’ And then I was 
 something blyther, for he tauld me that my guidman 
 would mend. Then Thom Reed went away fra me 
 in through the yard of Monkcastell, and I thought 
 that he gait in at ane narrower hole of the dyke nor 
 anie erdlie man culd have gone throw, and swa I was 
 something fleit.” 5 
 
 This was the first time that Thom appeared to 
 her. On the third occasion he asked her “ if she 
 would not trow 6 in him.” She said “she would 
 trow in ony bodye did her gude.” Then Thom pro- 
 mised her much wealth if she would deny her 
 Christendom. She answered that “ if she should be 
 riven at horsis taillis, she suld never do that, but 
 
 1 Child-bed. 2 Saluted. 2 Dwindled away. 
 
 4 Displeased. 5 Frightened. 6 Trust. 
 
no 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 promised to be leal and trew to him in ony thing she 
 could do,” whereat he was angry. 
 
 On the fourth occasion, the poor woman fell 
 further into sin, and accompanied Thom to a fairy 
 meeting. Thom asked her to join the party ; but 
 she said “she saw na proffeit to gang thai kind of 
 gaittis, unless she kend wherefor.” Thom offered 
 the old inducement, wealth ; but she replied that 
 “ she dwelt with her awin husband and bairnis,” and 
 could not leave them. And so Thom began to be 
 very crabit with her, and said, “ if so she thought, she 
 would get lytill gude of him.” 
 
 She was then demanded if she had ever asked 
 any favour of Thom for herself or any other person. 
 She answered that “ when sundrie persons came to 
 her to seek help for their beast, their cow, or ewe, or 
 for any barne that was tane away with ane evill blast 
 of wind, or elf grippit, she gait and speirit 1 at Thom 
 what myght help them ; and Thom would pull ane 
 herb and gif her out of his awin hand, and bade her 
 scheir 2 the same with ony other kind of herbis, and 
 oppin the beistes mouth, and put thame in, and the 
 beist wald mend.” 3 
 
 It seems hardly possible to believe that a story 
 like this, which is half marred by the attempt to 
 partially modernize its simple pathetic language, and 
 which would probably bring a tear to the eye, if not 
 a shilling from the pocket, of the most unsympathetic 
 being of the present day, should be considered suffi- 
 cient, three hundred years ago, to convict the narrator 
 of a crime worthy of death ; yet so it was. This sad 
 
 1 Inquired. 2 Chop. 3 Pitcairn, I. ii. 51, et seq. 
 
STRUGGLE AGAINST BEGGARY. hi 
 
 picture of the breakdown of a poor woman’s intellect 
 in the unequal struggle against poverty and sickness 
 is only made visible to us by the light of the flames 
 that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie 
 Dunlop away for ever from the sick husband, and 
 weakly children, and the “ ky,” and the humble hovel 
 where they all dwelt together, and from the daily, 
 heart-rending, almost hopeless struggle to obtain 
 enough food to keep life in the bodie-s of this miser- 
 able family. The historian — who makes it his chief 
 anxiety to record, to the minutest and most irrelevant 
 details, the deeds, noble or ignoble, of those who 
 have managed to stamp their names upon the muster- 
 roll of Fame — turns carelessly or scornfully the page 
 which contains such insignificant matter as this ; but 
 those who believe 
 
 “ That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
 
 That not a moth with vain desire 
 Is shrivel ’d in a fruitless fire, 
 
 Or but subserves another’s gain,” 
 
 will hardly feel that poor Bessie’s life and death were 
 entirely without their meaning. 
 
 103. As the trials for witchcraft increase, however, 
 the details grow more and more revolting ; and in 
 the year 1590 we find a most extraordinary batch of 
 cases — extraordinary for the monstrosity of the 
 charges contained in them, and also for the fact that 
 this feature, so insisted upon in Macbeth, the raising 
 of winds and storms, stands out in extremely bold 
 relief. The explanation of this is as follows. In the 
 year 1589, King James VI. brought his bride, Anne 
 
112 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 of Denmark, home to Scotland. During the voyage 
 an unusually violent storm raged, which scattered the 
 vessels composing the royal escort, and, it would 
 appear, caused the destruction of one of them. By 
 a marvellous chance, the king’s ship was driven by a 
 wind which blew directly contrary to that which filled 
 the sails of the other vessels ; 1 and the king and 
 queen were both placed in extreme jeopardy. James, 
 who seems to have been as perfectly convinced of the 
 reality of witchcraft as he was of his own infallibility, 
 at once came to the conclusion that the storm had 
 been raised by the aid of evil spirits, for the express 
 purpose of getting rid of so powerful an enemy of the 
 Prince of Darkness as the righteous king. The result 
 was that a rigorous investigation was made into the 
 whole affair ; a great number of persons were tried 
 for attempting the king’s life by witchcraft ; and that 
 prince, undeterred by the apparent impropriety of 
 being judge in what was, in reality, his own cause, 
 presided at many of the trials, condescended to 
 superintend the tortures applied to the accused in 
 order to extort a confession, and even went so far in 
 one case as to write a letter to the judges command- 
 ing a condemnation. 
 
 104. Under these circumstances, considering who 
 the prosecutor was, and who the judge, and the 
 effectual methods at the service of the court for ex- 
 torting confessions, 2 it is not surprising that the king’s 
 surmises were fully justified by the statements of the 
 
 1 Pitcairn, I. ii. 218. 
 
 1 The account of the tortures inflicted upon Fian are too horrible 
 for quotation. 
 
 7 
 
JAMES'S VOYAGE TO SCOTLAND. 113 
 
 accused. It is impossible to read these without 
 having parts of the witch-scenes in “ Macbeth ” ring- 
 ing in the ears like an echo. John Fian, a young 
 schoolmaster, and leader of the gang, or “ coven ” as 
 it was called, was charged with having caused the 
 leak in the king’s ship, and with having raised the 
 wind and created a mist for the purpose of hindering 
 his voyage . 1 On another occasion he and several 
 other witches entered into a ship, and caused it to 
 perish . 2 He was also able by witchcraft to open 
 locks . 3 He visited churchyards at night, and dis- 
 membered bodies for his charms ; the bodies of un- 
 baptized infants being preferred . 4 
 
 Agnes Sampsoune confessed to the king that to 
 compass his death she took a black toad and hung it 
 by the hind legs for three days, and collected the 
 venom that fell from it. She said that if she could 
 have obtained a piece of linen that the king had 
 
 1 Pitcairn, I. ii. 21 1. 
 
 - Ibid. 212. He confessed that Satan commanded him to chase cats 
 “ pitrposlie to be cassin into the sea to raise windis for destructioune of 
 schippis.” Macbeth, 1. iii. 15-25. 
 
 3 “ Fylit.for opening of ane loke be his sorcerie in David Seytounis 
 moderis, be blawing in ane woman’s hand, himself sittand att the fyre- 
 syde.” — See also the case of Bessie Roy, 1. ii. 208. The English method 
 of opening locks was more complicated than the Scotch, as will appear 
 from the following quotation from Scot, book xii. ch. xiv. p. 246 : — 
 
 “A charme to open locks. Take a peece of wax crossed in bap- 
 tisme, and doo but print certeine floures therein, and tie them in the 
 hinder skirt of your shirt ; and when you would undoo the locke, blow 
 thrice therein, saieing, ‘ Arato hoc partico hoc maratarykin ; I open 
 this doore in thy name that I am forced to breake, as thou brakest hell 
 gates. In nomine patris etc Amen.’” Macbeth, iv. i. 46. 
 
 * “ Finger of birth-strangled babe, 
 
 Ditch-delivered by a drab.” 
 
 Macbeth, IV. i. 30. 
 
 I 
 
EL1ZABETHA N DEMO NO L 0 G V. 
 
 114 
 
 worn, she could have destroyed his life with this 
 venom ; “ causing him such extraordinarie paines as 
 if he had beene lying upon sharpe thornes or endis 
 of needles.” 1 She went out to sea to a vessel called 
 The Grace of God, and when she came away the 
 devil raised a wind, and the vessel was wrecked.- 
 She delivered a letter from Fian to another witch, 
 which was to this effect: “Ye sail warne the rest of 
 the sisteris to raise the winde this day at ellewin 
 houris to stay the queenis cuming in Scotland.” 3 
 
 This is her confession as to the methods adopted 
 for raising the storm. “ At the time when his 
 Majestie was in Denmarke, shee being accompanied 
 by the parties before speciallie named, took a cat 
 and christened it, and afterwards bounde to each part 
 of that cat the cheefest parts of a dead man, and the 
 severall joyntes of his bodie; and that in the night 
 following the said cat was conveyed into the middest 
 of the sea by all these witches, sayling in their riddles 
 or cives , 4 as is afore said, and so left the said cat right 
 before the town of Leith in Scotland. This done, 
 there did arise such a tempest in the sea as a greater 
 hath not been seene, which tempest was the cause of 
 the perishing of a vessell coming over from the town 
 of Brunt Ilande to the town of Leith. . . . Againe, 
 it is confessed that the said christened cat was the 
 cause that the kinges Majesties shippe at his coming 
 
 1 Pitcairn, I. ii. 218. 
 
 “Toad, that under cold stone 
 Days and nights has thirty-one 
 Sweltered venom sleeping got.” 
 
 Macbeth, iv. i. 6. 
 
 2 Ibid. 235. 3 Ibid. 236. 4 Macbeth, 1. iii. 8. 
 
STORMS BY WITCHCRAFT. 
 
 forth of Denmarke had a contrarie wind to the rest of 
 his shippes. . . 1 
 
 105. It is worth a note that this art of going to 
 in sieves, which Shakspere has referred to in his 
 ma, seems to have been peculiar to this set of 
 witches. English witches had the reputation of being 
 able to go upon the water in egg-shells and cockle- 
 shells, but seem never to have detected any peculiar 
 advantages in the sieve. Not so these Scotch witches. 
 Agnes told the king that she, “ with a jjreat many 
 other witches, to the number of two hundreth, all 
 together went to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and 
 went into the same very substantially, with flaggons 
 of wine, making merrie, and drinking by the way in 
 the same riddles or cives, to the kirke of North Barrick 
 in Lowthian, and that after they landed they tooke 
 hands on the lande and daunced a reill or short 
 daunce.” They then opened the graves and took the 
 fingers, toes, and knees of the bodies to make charms. 2 
 
 It can be easily understood that these trials 
 created an intense excitement in Scotland. The 
 result was that a tract was printed, containing a full 
 account of all the principal incidents ; and the fact 
 it this pamphlet was reprinted once, if not twice, 3 
 
 1 Pitcairn, Reprint of Newes from Scotland, 1. ii. 218. See also 
 Trial of Ewsame McCalgane, 1. ii. 254. 
 
 2 Pitcairn, I. ii. 217. 
 
 3 One copy of this reprint bears the name of W. Wright, another 
 that of Thomas Nelson. The full title is — 
 
 “Newes from Scotland, 
 
 “ Declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, who 
 was burned at Edenborough in Januarie last, 1591 ; which Doctor was 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 1 16 
 
 in London, shows that interest in the affair spread 
 south of the Border ; and this is confirmed by the 
 publisher’s prefatorial apology, in which he states that 
 the pamphlet was printed to prevent the public from 
 being imposed upon by unauthorized and extravagant 
 statements of what had taken place. 1 Under ordi- 
 nary circumstances, events of this nature would form 
 a nine days’ wonder, and then die a natural death ; 
 but in this particular case the public interest con- 
 tinued for an abnormal time ; for eight years sub- 
 sequent to the date of the trials, James published his 
 “ Dmmonologie ” — a work founded to a great extent 
 upon his experiences at the trials of 1590. This was 
 a sign to both England and Scotland that the subject 
 of witchcraft was still of engrossing interest to him ; 
 and as he was then the fully recognized heir-apparent 
 to the English crown, the publication of such a work 
 would not fail to induce a great amount of attention 
 to the subject dealt with. In 1603 he ascended the 
 English throne. His first parliament met on the 
 19th of March, 1604, and on the 27th of the same 
 month a bill was brought into the House of Lords 
 dealing with the question of witchcraft. It was re- 
 
 Register to the Deuill, that sundrie times preached at North Barricke 
 kirke to a number of notorious witches ; with the true examinations of 
 the said Doctor and witches as they uttered them in the presence of the 
 Scottish king : Discouering how they pretended to bewitch and drowne 
 his Majestie in the sea, comming from Denmarke, with such other 
 wonderfull matters, as the like hath not bin heard at anie time. 
 
 “ Published according to the Scottish copie. 
 
 “ Printed for William Wright.” 
 
 1 These events are referred to in an existing letter by the notorious 
 Thos. Phelippes to Thos. Bames, Cal. State Papers (May 21, 1591), 
 1591-4, p. 38. 
 
JAMES'S “ DsEMONOLOGIE 117 
 
 ferred to a committee of which twelve bishops were 
 members ; and this committee, after much debating, 
 came to the conclusion that the bill was imperfect. 
 In consequence of this a fresh one was drawn, and 
 by the 9th of June a statute had passed both Houses 
 of Parliament, which enacted, among other things, 
 that “if any person shall practise or exercise any 
 invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, 
 or shall consult with, entertain, feed, or reward any 
 evil and wicked spirit, 1 or take up any dead man, 
 woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave ... or 
 the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person 
 to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, 2 
 . . . or shall . . . practise . . . any witchcraft . . . 
 whereby any person shall be killed, wasted, pined, or 
 lamed in his or her body or any part thereof, 3 such 
 offender shall suffer the pains of death as felons, with- 
 out benefit of clergy or sanctuary.” Hutchinson, in 
 his “Essay on Witchcraft,” published in 1720, declares 
 that this statute was framed expressly to meet the 
 offences exposed by the trials of 1 590-1 ; but, 
 although this cannot be conclusively proved, yet it 
 is not at all improbable that the hurry with which 
 the statute was passed into law immediately upon 
 the accession of James, would recall to the public 
 
 1 Such as Paddock, Graymalkin, and Harpier. 
 
 2 “ Liver of blaspheming Jew, ” etc. — Macbeth, IV. i. 26. 
 
 3 ' “ I will drain him dry as hay ; 
 
 Sleep shall neither night nor day 
 Hang upon his pent-house lid ; 
 
 He shall live a man forbid : 
 
 Weary se’nnights, nine times nine, 
 
 Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.” 
 
 Macbeth, 1. iii. 1S-23. 
 
ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 1 1 8 
 
 mind the interest he had taken in those trials in 
 particular and the subject in general, and that Shak- 
 spere, producing, as nearly all the critics agree, his 
 tragedy at about this date, should draw upon his 
 memory for the half-forgotten details of those trials, 
 and thus embody in “ Macbeth ” the allusions to them 
 that have been pointed out— much less accurately 
 than he did in the case of the Babington affair, 
 because the facts had been far less carefully recorded, 
 and the time at which his attention had been called 
 to them far more remote. 1 
 
 106. There is one other mode of temptation which 
 
 was adopted by the evil spirits, implicated to a great 
 extent with the traditions of witchcraft, but neverthe- 
 lesT"more suitably handled as a separate subject, 
 which is of so gross and revolting a nature that: "It 
 should willingly be passed over in silence, were it 
 not for the fact that the belief in it was, as Scot says, 
 “ so stronglie and universallie received ” in the times 
 of Elizabeth and James. 
 
 From the very earliest period of the Christian 
 era the affection of one sex for the other was con- 
 sidered to be under the special control of the devil. 
 Marriage was to be tolerated ; but celibacy was the 
 state most conducive to the near intercourse with 
 heaven that was so dearly sought after. This opinion 
 was doubtless generated by the tendency of the early 
 Christian leaders to hold up the events of the life 
 rather than the teachings of the sacred Founder of 
 
 1 The excitement about the details of the witch-trials would culmi- 
 nate in 1592. Harsnet’s book would be read by Shaltspere in 1003. 
 
INCUBUS— SUCCUBUS. 119 
 
 the sect as the one rule of conduct to be received by 
 His followers. To have been the recipients of the 
 stigmata was a far greater evidence of holiness and 
 favour with Heaven than the quiet and unnoted daily 
 practice of those virtues upon which Christ pro- 
 nounced His blessing ; and in less improbable matters 
 they did not scruple, in their enthusiasm, to attempt 
 to establish a rule of life in direct contradiction to 
 the laws of that universe of which they professed to 
 believe Him to be the Creator. The futile attempt 
 to imitate His immaculate purity blinded their eyes 
 to the fact that He never taught or encouraged 
 celibacy among His followers, and this gradually led 
 them to the strange conclusion that the passion which, 
 sublimed and brought under control, is the source 
 of man’s noblest and holiest feelings, was a prompt- 
 ing proceeding from the author of all evil. Imbued 
 with this idea, religious enthusiasts of both sexes 
 immured themselves in convents ; took oaths of per- 
 petual celibacy ; and even, in certain isolated cases, 
 sought to compromise with Heaven, and baffle the 
 tempter, by rendering a fall impossible — forgetting 
 that the victory over sin does not consist in immunity 
 from temptation, but, being tempted, not to fall. 
 But no convent walls are so strong as to shut great 
 nature out ; and even within these sacred precincts 
 the ascetics found that they were not free from the 
 temptations of their arch-enemy. In consequence of 
 this, a belief sprang up, and spread from its original 
 source into the outer world, in a class of devils called 
 incubi and succubi, who roamed the earth with no 
 other object than to tempt people to abandon their 
 
120 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 purity of life. The cases of assault by incubi were 
 much more frequent than those by succubi, just as 
 women were much more affected by the dancing 
 manias in the fifteenth century than men; 1 — the reason, 
 perhaps, being that they are much less capable of 
 resisting physical privation ;■ — but, according to the 
 belief of the Middle Ages, there was no generic 
 difference between the incubus and succubus. Here 
 was a belief that, when the witch fury sprang up, 
 attached itself as a matter of course as the phase of 
 the crime ; and it was an almost universal charge 
 against the accused that they offended in this manner 
 with their familiars, and hundreds of poor creatures 
 suffered death upon such an indictment. More 
 details will be found in the authorities upon this 
 unpleasant subject. 2 
 
 107. This intercourse did not, as a rule, result in 
 offspring ; but this was not universally the case. All 
 badly deformed or monstrous children were suspected 
 of having had such an undesirable parentage, and 
 there was a great tendency to believe that they ought 
 to be destroyed. Luther was a decided advocate of 
 this course, deeming the destruction of a life far pre- 
 ferable to the chance of having a devil in the family. 
 In Drayton’s poem, “The Mooncalf,” one of the 
 gossips present at the birth of the calf suggests that 
 J it ought to be buried alive as a monster. 3 Caliban 
 is a mooncalf, 4 and his origin is distinctly traced to a 
 
 
 /'i . 
 
 1 1 Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 136. 
 
 * c Hutchinson, p. 52. The Witch of Edmonton, Act v. Scot, 
 Discoverie, book iv. 
 
 3 Ed. 1748, p. 171. 
 
 4 Tempest, II. ii. 111, 115. 
 
CALIBAN THE MOONCALF. 
 
 121 
 
 source of this description. It is perfectly clear what 
 _was the one thing that the foul witch Sycorax did 
 which prevented her life from being taken ; and it 
 would appear from this that the inhabitants of Argier 
 were far more merciful in this respect than their 
 European neighbours. Such a charge would have 
 sent any woman to the stake in Scotland, without the 
 slightest hope of mercy, and the usual plea for respite 
 would only have been an additional reason for hasten- 
 ing the execution of the sentence. 1 
 
 108. In the preceding pages an endeavour has 
 been made to delineate the most prominent features 
 of a belief which the great Reformation was destined 
 first to foster into unnatural proportions and vitality, 
 and in the end to destroy. Up to the period of the 
 Reformation, the creed of the nation had been prac- 
 tically uniform, and one set of dogmas was unhesi- 
 tatingly accepted by the people as infallible, and 
 therefore hardly demanding critical consideration. 
 The great upheaval of the sixteenth century rent this 
 quiescent uniformity into shreds ; doctrines until then 
 considered as indisputable were brought within the pale 
 of discussion, and hence there was a great diversity 
 of opinion, not only between the supporters of the old 
 and of the new faith, but between the Reformers 
 themselves. This was conspicuously the case with 
 regard to the belief in the devils and their works. 
 The more timid of the Reformers clung in a great 
 measure to the Catholic opinions ; a small band, 
 under the influence possibly of that knight-errant 
 
 1 Cf. Othello, I. i. 91. Titus Andronicus, iv. ii. 
 
122 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 <?f freedom of thought, Giordano Bruno, who exer- 
 cised some considerable influence during his visit to 
 England by means of his Oxford lectures and dis- 
 putations, entirely denied the existence of evil spirits ; 
 but the great majority gave in their adherence to a 
 creed that was the mean between the doctrines of 
 the old faith and the new scepticism. Their strong 
 common sense compelled them to reject the puerilities 
 advanced as serious evidence by the Catholic Church ; 
 but they cast aside with equal vehemence and more 
 horror the doctrines of the Bruno school. “ That 
 there are devils,” says Bullinger, reduced apparently 
 from argument to invective, “ the Sadducees in times 
 past denied, and at this day also some scarce re- 
 ligious, nay, rather Epicures, deny the same ; who, 
 unless they repent, shall one day feel, to their exceed- 
 ing great pain and smart, both that there are devils, 
 and that they are the tormentors and executioners of 
 all wicked men and Epicures.” 1 
 
 109. It must be remembered, too, that the emanci- 
 pation from medievalism was a very gradual process, 
 not, as we are too prone to think it, a revolution 
 suddenly and completely effected. It was an evolu- 
 tion, not an explosion. There is found, in conse- 
 quence, a great divergence of opinion, not only 
 between the earliest and the later Reformers, but 
 between the statements of the same man at different 
 periods of his career. Tyndale, for instance, seems 
 to have believed in the actual possession of the 
 
 1 Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon, p. 34S. Parker Society. 
 
GRADUAL CHANGE OF BELIEF. 
 
 123 
 
 human body by devils ; 1 and this appears to have 
 been the opinion of the majority at the beginning 
 of the Reformation, for the first Prayer-book of 
 Edward VI. contained the Catholic form of exorcism 
 for driving devils out of children, which was expunged 
 upon revision, the doctrine of obsession having in the 
 mean time triumphed over the older belief. It is 
 necessary to bear these facts in mind whilst considering 
 any attempt to depict the general bearings of a belief 
 such as that in evil spirits ; for many irreconcilable 
 statements are to be found among the authorities ; 
 and it is the duty of the writer to sift out and describe 
 those views which predominated, and these must not 
 be supposed to be proved inaccurate because a chance 
 quotation can be produced in contradiction. 
 
 1 10. There is great danger, in the attempt to 
 bring under analysis any phase of religious belief, 
 that the method of treatment may appear unsympa- 
 thetic, if not irreverent. The greatest effort has been 
 made in these pages to avoid this fault as far as 
 possible ; for, without doubt, any form of religious 
 dogma, however barbarous, however seemingly ridi- 
 culous, if it has once been sincerely believed and 
 trusted by any portion of mankind, is entitled to 
 reverent treatment. No body of great and good 
 men can at any time credit and take comfort from 
 a lie pure and simple ; and if an extinct creed appears 
 to lack that foundation of truth which makes creeds 
 tolerable, it is safer to assume that it had a meaning 
 and a truthfulness, to those who held it, that lapse of 
 
 1 1 Tyndale, p. 82. Parker Society. 
 
124 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 time has tended to destroy, together with the creed 
 itself, than to condemn men wholesale as knaves and 
 hypocrites. But the particular subject which has 
 here been dealt with will surely be considered to be 
 specially entitled to respect, when it is remembered 
 that it was once an integral portion of the belief of 
 most of our best and bravest ancestors — of men and 
 women who dared to witness to their own sincerity 
 amidst the fires of persecution and in the solitude 
 of exile. It has nearly all disappeared now. The 
 terrific hierarchy of fiends, which was so real, so 
 full of horror three hundred years ago , 1 has gradually 
 vanished away before the advent of fuller knowledge 
 and purer faith, and is now hardly thought of, unless 
 as a dead mediaeval myth. But let us deal tenderly 
 with it, remembering that the day may come when 
 the beliefs that are nearest to our hearts may be 
 treated as open to contempt or ridicule, and the 
 dogmas to which we most passionately cling will, 
 “ like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a 
 wrack behind.” 
 
 1 Perhaps the following prayer, contained in Thomas Becon’s 
 “ Pomander,” shows more clearly than the comments of any critic the 
 reality of the terror : — 
 
 “An infinite number of wicked angels there are, O Lord Christ, 
 which without ceasing seek my destruction. Against this exceeding 
 great multitude of evil spirits send Thou me Thy blessed and heavenly 
 angels, which may deliver me from their tyranny. Thou, O Lord, 
 hast devoured hell, and overcome the prince of darkness and all his 
 ministers ; yea, and that not for Thyself, but for those that believe in 
 Thee. Suffer me not, therefore, to be overcome of Satan and of his 
 servants, but rather let me triumph over them, that I, through strong 
 faith and help of the blessed angels, having the victory of the hellish 
 army, may with a joyful heart say, Death, where is thy sting ? Hell, 
 where is thy victory?— and so for ever and ever magnify Thy Holy 
 Name. Amen.” Parker Society, p. 84. 
 
nr. Little attempt has hitherto been made, in the 
 way of direct proof, to show that fairies are really 
 only a class of devils who exercise their powers in 
 a manner less terrible and revolting than that de- 
 picted by theologians ; and for this reason chiefly — 
 that the proposition is already more than half 
 established when it has been shown that the attri- 
 butes and functions possessed by both fairy and devil 
 are similar in kind, although differing in degree. 
 This has already been done to a great extent in the 
 preceding pages, where the various actions of Puck 
 and Ariel have been shown to differ in no essential 
 respect from those of the devils of the time ; but 
 before commencing to study this phase of super- 
 naturalism in Shakspere’s works as a whole, and as 
 indicative, to a certain extent, of the development 
 of his thought upon the relation of man to the 
 invisible world about and above him, it is necessary 
 that this identity should be admitted without a 
 shadow of a doubt. 
 
 1 1 2. It has been shown that fairies were probably 
 the descendants of the lesser local deities, as devils 
 were of the more important of the heathen gods 
 
 J 
 
126 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 that were overturned by the advancing wave of 
 Christianity, although in the course of time this dis- 
 tinction was entirely obliterated and forgotten. It 
 has also been shown, as before mentioned, that many 
 of the powers exercised by fairies were in their 
 essence similar to those exercised by devils, espe- 
 cially that of appearing in divers shapes. These 
 parallels could be carried out to an almost unlimited 
 extent ; but a few proofs only need be cited to show 
 this identity. In the mediaeval romance of “ King 
 Orfeo ” fairyland has been substituted for the classical 
 Hades. 1 King James, in his “ Daemonologie,” adopts 
 a fourfold classification of devils, one of which he 
 names “ Phairie,” and co-ordinates with the incubus. 2 
 The name of the devil supposed to preside at the 
 witches’ sabbaths is sometimes given as Hecat, Diana, 
 Sybilla ; sometimes Queen of Elfame, 3 or Fairie. 4 
 Indeed, Shakspere’s line in “ The Comedy of Errors,” 
 had it not been unnecessarily tampered with by the 
 critics — 
 
 “ A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough,” 5 
 would have conclusively proved this identity of cha- 
 racter. 
 
 1 13. The real distinction between these two 
 classes of spirits depends on the condition of national 
 
 1 Fairy Mythology of Shakspere, Hazlitt, p. 83. 
 
 - Daemonologie, p. 69. An instance of a fairy incubus is given in 
 the “Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Hazlitt’s Fairy Mythology, p. 170. 
 
 3 Pitcairn, iii. p. 162. 
 
 4 Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places. 
 
 5 Fairy has been altered to “ fury,” but compare Peele, Battle of 
 Alcazar : “Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel.” 
 
NATIONAL FAIR YDOM. 
 
 12 7 
 
 thought upon the subject of supernaturalism in its 
 largest sense. A belief which has little or no found- 
 ation upon indisputable phenomena must be con- 
 tinually passing through varying phases, and these 
 phases will be regulated by the nature of the subjects 
 upon which the attention of the mass of the people 
 is most firmly concentrated. Hence, when a nation 
 has but one religious creed, and one that has for 
 centuries been accepted by them almost without ques- 
 tion or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the 
 mind assumes an attitude of passive receptivity, un- 
 disturbed by doubts or questionings. Under such 
 conditions, a belief in evil spirits ever ready and 
 watching to tempt a man into heresy of belief or 
 sinful act, and thus to destroy both body and soul, 
 although it may exist as a theoretic portion of the 
 accepted creed, cannot possibly become a vital doc- 
 trine to be believed by the general public. It may 
 exist as a subject for learned dispute to while away 
 the leisure hours of divines, but cannot by any possi- 
 bility obtain an influence over the thoughts and lives 
 of their charges. Mental disturbance on questions of 
 doctrinal importance being, for these reasons, out 
 of the question, the attention of the people is almost 
 entirely riveted upon questions of material ease and 
 advantage. The little lets and hindrances of every- 
 day life in agricultural and domestic matters are 
 the tribulations that appeal most incessantly to the 
 ineradicable sense of an invisible power adverse to 
 the interests of mankind, and consequently the class 
 of evil spirits believed in at such a time will be fairies 
 rather than devils — malicious little spirits, who blight 
 
123 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 the growing corn ; stop the butter from forming in 
 the churn ; pinch the sluttish housemaid black and 
 blue ; and whose worst act is the exchange of the 
 baby from its cot for a fairy changeling ; — beings of a 
 nature most exasperating to thrifty housewife and 
 hard-handed farmer, but nevertheless not irrevocably 
 prejudiced against humanity, and easily to be 
 pacified and reduced into a state of fawning friend- 
 ship by such little attentions as could be rendered 
 without difficulty by the poorest cotter. The whole 
 fairy mythology is perfumed with an honest, health)-, 
 careless joy in life, and a freedom from mental doubt. 
 “ I love true lovers, honest men, good fellowes, good 
 huswives, good meate, good drinke, and all things 
 that good is, but nothing that is ill,” declares Robin 
 Goodfellow ; 1 and this jovial materialism only reflects 
 the state of mind of the folk who were not unwilling 
 to believe that this lively little spirit might be seen 
 of nights busying himself in their houses by the 
 dying embers of the deserted fire. 
 
 1 14. Such seems to have been the condition of 
 England immediately before the period of the great 
 Reformation. But with the progress of that revolu- 
 tion of thought the condition changes. The one true 
 and eternal creed, as it had been deemed, is shattered 
 for ever. Men who have hitherto accepted their 
 religious convictions in much the same way as they 
 had succeeded to their patrimonies are compelled 
 by this tide of opposition to think and study for 
 themselves. Each man finds himself left face to face 
 
 1 Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology, p. 182. 
 
NATIONAL DEVILDOM. 
 
 129 
 
 with the great hereafter, and his relation to it. Ter- 
 rible doctrines are formulated, and press themselves 
 with remorseless vigour upon his understanding — 
 original sin, justification by faith, eternal damnation 
 for even honest error of belief, — doctrines that throw 
 an atmosphere of solemnity, if not gloom, about 
 national thought, in which no fairy mythology can 
 flourish. 1^ is no longer ouestians-.of inatcrial ease 
 and gain that are of , the- chief -concern ; ..and con- 
 sequently the fairies, and their doings, from their own 
 triviality, fall far into the background, and their place 
 is occupied by a countless horde of remorseless 
 schemers, who are never ceasing in their efforts to 
 drag both body and soul to perdition. 
 
 1 1 5. But it is in the towns, the centres of inter- 
 change of thought, of learning, and of controversy, 
 that this revolution first gathers power; the sparsely 
 populated country-sides are far more impervious to 
 the new ideas, and the country people cling far longer 
 and more tenaciously to the dying religion and its 
 attendant beliefs. The rural districts were but little 
 affected by the Reformation for years after it had 
 triumphed in the towns, and consequently the beliefs 
 of the inhabitants were hardly touched by the 
 struggle that was going on within so short a distance. 
 We find a Reginald Scot, indeed, complaining, half 
 in joke, half in sarcasm, that Robin Goodfellow has 
 long disappeared from the land j 1 but it is only from 
 the towns that he has fled — towns in which the spirit 
 of the Cartwrights and the Latimers, the Barnhams 
 
 1 Scot, Introduction. 
 
 K 
 
* 3 ° 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 and the Delabers, is abroad. In the same Cambridge 
 where Scot had been educated, a young student had 
 hanged himself because the shadow of the doctrine 
 of predestination was too terrible for him to live 
 under ; 1 and such a place was surely no home for 
 Puck and his merry band. But in the country 
 places, remote from the growl and trembling of this 
 mental earthquake, he still loved to lurk ; and even 
 at the very moment when Scot was penning the 
 denial of his existence, he was nestling amongst 
 the woods and flowers of Avonside, and, invisible, 
 whispering in the ear of a certain fair-haired youth 
 there thoughts of no inconsiderable moment. And 
 long time after that — after the youth had become 
 a man, and had coined those thoughts into words that 
 glitter still ; after his monument had been erected 
 in the quiet Stratford churchyard — Puck revelled, 
 harmless and undisturbed, along many a country- 
 side ; nay, even to the present day, in some old-world 
 nooks, a faint whispering rumour of him may still be 
 heard. 
 
 116. Now, perhaps one of the most distinctive 
 marks of literary genius is a certain receptivity of 
 mind ; a capability of receiving impressions from all 
 surrounding circumstance — of extracting from all 
 sources, whether from nature or man, consciously or 
 unconsciously, the material upon which it shall work. 
 For this process to be perfectly accomplished, an 
 entire and enthusiastic sympathy with man and the 
 1 Foxe, iv. p. 694. 
 
SHAKSPERE’S MENTAL TRAINING. 131 
 
 current ideas of the time is absolutely essential, 
 and in proportion as this sympathy is contracted and 
 partial, so will the work produced be stunted and 
 untrue ; and, on the other hand, the more universal 
 and entire it is, the more perfect and vital will be the 
 art. Bearing this in mind, and also the facts that 
 Shakspere’s early training was effected in a little 
 country village ; that upon the verge of manhood, he 
 came to London, where he spent his prime in contact 
 with the bustle and friction of busy town life ; and 
 that the later years of his life were passed in the 
 quiet retirement of the home of his boyhood — there 
 would be good ground for an argument, a priori , even 
 were there none of a more conclusive nature, that his 
 earlier works would be found impregnated with the 
 country fairy-myths with which his youth would 
 come in contact ; that the result of the labours of 
 his middle life would show that these earlier remi- 
 niscenses had been gradually obliterated by the 
 gloomier influence of ideas that were the result of 
 the struggle of opposed theories that had not then 
 ceased to rage in the towns, and that the diabolic 
 element and questions relating thereto would pre- 
 dominate ; and that, finally, his later works, written 
 uuder the calmer influence of Stratford life, would 
 show a certain return to the fairy-lore of his earlier 
 years. 
 
 1 17. But fortunately we are not left to rely upon 
 any such hypothetical evidence in this matter, how- 
 ever probable it may appear. Although the general 
 reading public cannot be asked to accept as infallible 
 
132 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 any chronological order of Shakspere’s plays that 
 dogmatically asserts a particular sequence, or to in- 
 vestigate the somewhat dry and specialist arguments 
 upon which the conclusions are founded, yet there 
 are certain groupings into periods which are agreed 
 upon as accurate by nearly all critics, and which, 
 without the slightest danger of error, may be asserted 
 to be correct. For instance, it is indisputable that 
 “ Love’s Labour’s Lost,” “ The Comedy of Errors,” 
 “Romeo and Juliet,” and “A Midsummer Night’s 
 Dream ” are amongst Shakspere’s earliest works ; 
 that the tragedies of “Julius Caesar,” “Hamlet,” 
 “Othello,” “Macbeth,” and “Lear” are the produc- 
 tions of his middle life, between 1600 and 1606 ; and 
 that “A Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest” are 
 amongst the latest plays which he wrote. 1 Here we 
 have everything that is required to prove the question 
 in hand. At the commencement and at the end of 
 his writings — when a youth fresh from the influence 
 of his country nurture and education, and when a 
 mature man, settling down into the old life again 
 after a long and victorious struggle with the world, 
 with his accumulated store of experience — we find 
 plays which are perfectly saturated with fairy-lore : 
 “The Dream” and “The Tempest.” These are the 
 poles of Shakspere’s thought in this respect; and in 
 the centre, imbedded as it were between two layers of 
 material that do not bear any distinctive stamp of 
 their own, but appear rather as a medium for uniting 
 
 1 For an elaborate and masterly investigation of the question of the 
 chronological order of the plays, which must be assumed here, see Mr. 
 Furnivall’s Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere. 
 
AND GROWTH OF THOUGHT. 
 
 133 
 
 the diverse strata, lie the great tragedies, produced 
 while he was in the very rush and swirl of town life, 
 and reflecting accurately, as we have seen, many of 
 the doubts and speculations that were agitating the 
 minds of men who were ardently searching out truth. 
 It is worth noting too, in passing, that directly Shak- 
 spere steps out of his beaten path to depict, in “ The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor,” the happy country life 
 and manners of his day, he at the same time returns 
 to fairyland again, and brings out the Windsor 
 children trooping to pinch and plague the town-bred, 
 tainted Falstaff. 
 
 1 1 8. But this is not by any means all that this 
 subject reveals to us about Shakspere ; if it were, 
 the less said about it the better. To look upon 
 “The Tempest” as in its essence merely a return 
 to “ The Dream ” — the end as the beginning ; to 
 believe that his thoughts worked in a weary, unending 
 circle — that the Valley of the Shadow of Death only 
 leads back to the foot of the Hill Difficulty — is in- 
 tolerable, and not more intolerable than false. Al- 
 though based upon similar material, the ideas and 
 tendencies of “The Tempest” upon supernaturalism 
 are no more identical with those of “A Midsummer 
 Night’s Dream” than the thoughts of Berowne upon 
 things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet’s 
 those of Prospero. But before it is possible to point 
 out the nature of this difference, and to show that 
 the change is a natural growth of thought, not a mere 
 retrogression, a few explanatory remarks are neces- 
 sary. 
 
*34 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 There is no more insufficient and misleading 
 view of Shakspere and his work than that which 
 until recently obtained almost universal credence, 
 and is even at the present time somewhat loudly 
 asserted in some quarters ; namely, that he was a 
 man of considerable genius, who wrote and got acted 
 some thirty plays more or less, simply for commercial 
 purposes and nothing more; made money thereby, and 
 died leaving a will ; and that, beyond this, he and his 
 works are, and must remain, an inexplicable mystery. 
 The critic who holds this view, and finds it equally 
 advantageous to commence a study of Shakspere’s 
 work by taking “The Tempest ” or “ Love’s Labour’s 
 Lost’’ as his text, is about as judicious as the botanist 
 who would enlarge upon the structure of the seed-pod 
 without first explaining the preliminary stages of 
 plant growth, or the architect who would dilate 
 upon the most convenient arrangement of chimney- 
 pots before he had discussed the laws of foundation. 
 The plays may be studied separately, and studied so 
 are found beautiful ; but taken in an approximate 
 chronological order, like a string of brilliant jewels, 
 each one gains lustre from those that precede and 
 follow it. 
 
 1 19. For no man ever wrote sincerely and earnestly, 
 or indeed ever did any one thing in such a spirit, 
 without leaving some impress upon his work of his 
 mental condition whilst he was doing it ; and no such 
 man ever continued his literary labours from the 
 period of youth right through his manhood, without 
 leaving behind him, in more or less legible character, 
 
SHAKSPERE IN HIS WORKS. 
 
 135 
 
 a record of the ripening of his thought upon matters 
 of eternal importance, although they may not be of 
 necessity directly connected with the ostensible 
 subject in hand. Insincere men may ape sentiments 
 they do not really believe in ; but in the end they 
 will either be exposed and held up to ridicule, or 
 their work will sink into obscurity. Sincerity in the 
 expression of genuine thought and feeling alone can 
 stand the test of time. And this is in reality no 
 contradiction to what has just been said as to the 
 necessity of a receptive condition of mind in the 
 production of works of true genius. This capacity of 
 receiving the most delicate objective impressions is, 
 indeed, one essential ; but without the cognate power 
 to assimilate this food, and evolve the result that 
 these influences have produced subjectively, it is, 
 worse than useless. The two must co-exist and act 
 and react upon one another. Nor must we be induced 
 to surrender these principles, in the present particular 
 case, on account of the usual fine but vague talk about 
 Shakspere’s absolute self-annihilation in favour of the 
 characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere 
 so identifies himself with each person in his dramas, 
 that it is impossible to detect the great master and 
 his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen. 
 If this means that Shakespere has always a perfect 
 comprehension of his characters, is competent to 
 measure out to each absolute and unerring justice, 
 and is capable of sympathy with even the most 
 repulsive, it will not be disputed for an instant. It 
 is so true, that it is dangerous to take a sentence out 
 of the mouth cf any one of his characters and say 
 
736 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 for certain, “ This Shakspere thought,” although there 
 are many characters with Avhom every one must feel 
 that Shakspere identified himself for the time being 
 rather than others. But if it is intended to assert 
 that Shakspere has so eliminated himself from his 
 writings as to make it impossible to trace anywhere 
 the tendencies of his own thought at the time when 
 he was writing, it must be most emphatically denied 
 for the reasons just stated. Freedom from prejudice 
 must be carefully dissociated from lack of interest 
 in the motive that underlies the construction of each 
 play. There is a tone or key-note in each drama 
 that indicates the author’s mental condition at the 
 time when it was produced ; and if several plays, 
 following each other in brisk succession, all have the 
 same predominant tone, it seems to be past question 
 that Shakspere is incidentally and indirectly uttering 
 his own personal thought and experience. 
 
 120. If it be granted, then, that it is possible to 
 follow thus the growth of Shakspere’s thought 
 through the medium of his successive works, there 
 is only one small point to be glanced at before 
 attempting to trace this growth in the matter of 
 supernaturalism. 
 
 The natural history of the evolution of opinion 
 upon matters which, for want of a more embracing 
 and satisfactory word, we must be content to call 
 “ religious,” follows a uniform course in the minds 
 of all men, except those “duller than the fat weed 
 that roots itself at ease on Lethe’s wharf,” who never 
 get beyond the primary stage. This course is 
 
MENTAL STRUGGLES. 
 
 1 37 
 
 separable into three periods. The first is that in 
 which a man accepts unhesitatingly the doctrines 
 which he has received from his spiritual teachers — 
 customary, not intellectual, belief. This sits lightly 
 on him ; entails no troublesome doubts and question- 
 ings ; possesses, 6r appears to possess, formulae to 
 meet all possible emergencies, and consequently 
 brings with it a happiness that is genuine, though 
 superficial. But this customary belief rarely satisfies 
 for long. Contact with the world brings to light 
 other and opposed theories : introspection and inde- 
 pendent investigation of the bases of the hereditary 
 faith are commenced ; many doctrines that have 
 been hitherto accepted as eternally and indisputably 
 true are found to rest upon but slight foundation, 
 apart from their title to respect on account of age ; 
 doubts follow as to the claim to acceptance of the 
 whole system that has been so easily and unhesi- 
 tatingly swallowed ; and the period of scepticism, or 
 no-belief, with its attendant misery, commences — for 
 although Dagon has been but little honoured in the 
 time of his strength, in his downfall he is much 
 regretted. Then comes that long, weary groping 
 after some firm, reliable basis of belief : but heaven 
 and earth appear for the time to conspire against 
 the seeker ; an intellectual flood has drowned out 
 the old order of things ; not even a mountain peak 
 appears in the wide waste of desolation as assurance 
 of ultimate rest ; and in the dark, overhanging firma- 
 ment no arc of promise is to be seen. But this is 
 a state of mind which, from its very nature, cannot 
 continue for ever : no man could endure it. While 
 
133 
 
 ELIZA BE THA N DEMO NO L OGY. 
 
 it lasts the struggle must be continuous, but some- 
 where through the cloud lies the sunshine and the land 
 of peace — the final period of intellectual belief. Out 
 of the chaos comes order ; ideas that but recently ap- 
 peared confused, incoherent, and meaningless assume 
 their true perspective. It is found that all the strands 
 of the old conventional faith have not been snapped 
 in the turmoil ; and these, re-knit and strengthened 
 with the new and full knowledge of experience and 
 investigation, form the cable that secures that strange 
 holy confidence of belief that can only be gained by 
 a preliminary warfare with doubt — a peace that truly 
 passes all understanding to those who have never 
 battled for it, — as to its foundation, diverse to a 
 miracle in diverse minds, but still, a peace. 
 
 1 21. If this be a true history of the course of deve- 
 lopment of every mind that is capable of independent 
 thought upon and investigation of such high matters, 
 it follows that Shakspere’s soul must have experienced 
 a similar struggle — for he was a man of like passions 
 with ourselves ; indeed, to so acute and sensitive a 
 mind the struggle would be, probably, more prolonged 
 and more agonizing than to many ; and it is these 
 three mental conditions — first, of unthinking accept- 
 ance of generally received teaching ; second, of 
 profound and agitating scepticism ; and, thirdly, of 
 belief founded upon reason and experience — that may 
 be naturally expected to be found impressed upon 
 his early, middle, and later works. 
 
 122 . It is impossible here to do more than indicate 
 
THOUGHT OF THE “ DREAM: 
 
 139 
 
 some of the evidence that this supposition is correct, 
 for to attempt to investigate the question exhaustively 
 would involve the minute consideration of a majority 
 of the plays. The period of Shakspere’s customary 
 or conventional belief is illustrated in “ A Midsum- 
 mer Night’s Dream,” and to a certain extent also in 
 the “ Comedy of Errors.” In the former play we 
 find him loyally accepting certain phases of the here- 
 ditary Stratford belief in supernaturalism, throwing 
 them into poetical form, and making them beautiful. 
 It has often before been observed, and it is well 
 worthy of observation, that of the three groups of 
 characters in the play, the country folk — a class whose 
 manner and appearance had most vividly reflected 
 themselves upon the camera of Shakspere’s mind — 
 are by far the most lifelike and distinct ; the fairies, 
 who had been the companions of his childhood and 
 youth in countless talks in the ingle and ballads in 
 the lanes, come second in prominence and finish ; 
 whilst the ostensible heroes and heroines of the piece, 
 the aristocrats of Athens, are colourless and unin- 
 teresting as a dumb-show— the real shadows of the 
 play. This is exactly the ratio of impressionability 
 that the three classes would have for the mind of the 
 youthful dramatist. The first is a creation from life, 
 the second from traditionary belief, the third from 
 hearsay. And when it has been said that the fairies 
 are a creation from traditionary belief, a full and 
 accurate description of them has been afforded. 
 They are an embodiment of a popular superstition, 
 and nothing more. They do not conceal any thought 
 of the poet who has created them, nor are they used 
 
140 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 for any deeper purpose with regard to the other 
 persons of the drama than temporary and objectless 
 annoyance. \ Th roughout the whole play runs a 
 healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost riotous hap- 
 piness ; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming 
 doubt being perceptibly The pert and nimble spirit 
 of mirth is fully awakened ; the worst tricks of the 
 intermeddling spirits are mischievous merely, and of 
 only transitory influence, and “ the summer still doth 
 tend upon their state,” brightening this fairyland with 
 its sunshine and flowers. Man has absolutely no 
 power to govern these supernatural powers, and they 
 have but unimportant influence over him. They can 
 affect his comfort, but they cannot control his fate. 
 But all this is merely an adapting and elaborating of 
 ideas which had been handed down from father to 
 son for many generations. Shakspere’s Puck is only 
 the Puck of a hundred ballads reproduced by the 
 hand of a true poet ; no original thought upon the 
 connection of the visible with the invisible world is 
 imported into the creation. jAll these facts tend to 
 show that when Shakspere wrote “A Midsummer 
 Night’s Dream,” that is, at the beginning of his career 
 as a dramatic author, he had not broken away from 
 the trammels of the beliefs in which he had been 
 brought up, but accepted them unhesitatingly and 
 joyously 
 
 123. But there is a gradual toning down of this 
 spirit of unbroken content as time wears on. Putting 
 aside the historical plays, in which Shakspere was 
 much more bound down by his subject-matter than 
 
THE THOUGHT OF “ HAMLET: 
 
 in any other species of drama, we find the comedies, 
 in which his room for expression of individual feeling 
 was practically unlimited, gradually losing their un- 
 alloyed hilarity, and deepening down into a sadness 
 of thought and expression that sometimes leaves a 
 doubt whether the plays should be classed as come- 
 dies at all. Shakspere has been more and more in 
 contact with the disputes and doubts of the educated 
 men of his time, and seeds have been silently sowing 
 themselves in his heart, which are soon to bring forth 
 a plenteous harvest in the great tragedies of which 
 these semi-comedies; such as “ All’s Well that Ends 
 Well ” and “ Measure for Measure,” are but the first- 
 fruits. 
 
 124. Thus, when next we find Shakspere dealing 
 with questions relating to supernaturalism, the tone 
 is quite different from that taken in his earlier work. 
 He has reached the second period of his thought 
 upon the subject, and this has cast its attendant 
 gloom upon his writings. That he was actually 
 battling with questions current in his time is demon- 
 strated by the way in /Which, in three consecutive 
 plays, derived from utterly diverse sources, the same 
 question of ghost or devil is agitated, as has before 
 been pointed out. But it is not merely a point of 
 theological dogma which stamps these plays as the 
 product of Shakspere’s period of scepticism, but a 
 theory of the influence of supernatural beings upon 
 the whole course of human life. Man is still in- 
 capable of influencing these unseen forces, or bending 
 \them to his will ; but they are now no longer harm- 
 
142 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 less, or incapable of anything but temporary or trivial 
 evil. Puck might lead night wanderers into mis- 
 chance, and laugh mischievously at the bodily harm 
 that he had caused them ; but Puck has now dis- 
 appeared, and in his stead is found a malignant spirit, 
 who seeks to laugh his fiendish laughter over the soul 
 he has deceived into destruction. Questions arise 
 thick and fast that are easier put than answered. 
 Can it be that evil influences have the upper hand 
 in this world ? that, be a man never so honest, never 
 so pure, he may nevertheless become the sport of 
 blind chance or ruthless wickedness ? May a Hamlet, 
 patiently struggling after truth and duty, be put upon 
 and abused by the darker powers ? May Macbeth, 
 who would fain do right, were not evil so ever present 
 with him, be juggled with and led to destruction by 
 fiends ? May an undistinguishing fate sweep away at 
 once the good with the evil — Hamlet with Laertes ; 
 Desdemona with Iago ; Cordelia with Edmund ? 
 And above the turmoil of this reign of terror, is there 
 7 no word uttered of a Supreme Good guiding and 
 controlling the unloosed ill — no word of encourage- 
 ment, none of hope ? If this be so indeed, that man 
 is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this 
 life. It is not worth the living ; for what power has 
 man against the fiends ? But at this point arises a 
 further question to demand solution : what shall be 
 hereafter ? If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so 
 in that undiscovered country, — that life to come ? 
 The dreams that may come give him pause, and he 
 either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and incapable 
 
DE PROFUNDIS. 
 
 143 
 
 of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. 
 In either case his life becomes like to a tale 
 
 “ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 
 Signifying — nothing ! ” 
 
 125. It is strange to note, too, how the ebb of this 
 wave of scepticism upon questions relating to the 
 immaterial world is only recoil that adds force to 
 a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the 
 physical world around. “ Hamlet,” “ Macbeth,” and 
 “Othello” give place to “Lear,” “Troilus and Cres- 
 sida,” “ Antony and Cleopatra,” and “ Timon.” So 
 true is it that “ unfaith in aught is want of faith in 
 all,” that in these later plays it would seem that 
 honour, honesty, and justice were virtues not pos- 
 sessed by man or woman ; or, if possessed, were only 
 a curse to bring down disgrace and destruction upon 
 the possessor. Contrast the women of these plays 
 with those of the comedies immediately preceding 
 the Hamlet period. In the latter plays we find the 
 heroines, by their sweet womanly guidance and gentle 
 but firm control, triumphantly bringing good out of 
 evil in spite of adverse circumstance. Beatrice, Rosa- 
 lind, Viola, Helena, and Isabella are all, not with- 
 out a tinge of knight-errantry that does not do the 
 least violence to the conception of tender, delicate 
 womanhood, the good geniuses of the little worlds 
 in which their influence is made to be felt. Events 
 must inevitably have gone tragically but for their 
 intervention. But with the advent of the second 
 period all this changes. At first the women, like 
 Brutus’ Portia, Ophelia, Desdemona, however noble 
 
144 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 or sweet in character and well meaning in motive, 
 are incapable of grasping the guiding threads of the 
 events around them and controlling them for good. 
 They have to give way to characters of another kind, 
 who bear the form without the nature of women. 
 Commencing with Lady Macbeth, the conception falls 
 lower and lower, through Goneril and Regan, Cressida, 
 Cleopatra, until in the climax of this utter despair, 
 “ Timon,” there is no character that it would not be 
 a profanity to call by the name of woman. 
 
 126. And just as womanly purity and innocence 
 quail before unwomanly self-assertion and voluptuous- 
 ness, so manly loyalty and unselfishness give way 
 before unmanly treachery and self-seeking. It is 
 true that the bad men do not finally triumph, but 
 they triumph over the good with whom they happen 
 to come in contact. In “ King Lear,” what man shows 
 any virtue who does not receive punishment for the 
 same? Not Gloucester, whose loyal devotion to his 
 king obtains for him a punishment that is only 
 merciful in that it prevents him from further suffering 
 the sight of his beloved master’s misery ; not Kent, 
 who, faithful in his self-denying service through all 
 manner of obloquy, is left at last with a prayer that 
 he may be allowed to follow Lear to the grave ; and 
 beyond these two there is little good to be found. 
 But “ Lear ” is not by any means the climax. The 
 utter despair of good in man or woman rises higher 
 in “ Troilus and Cressida,” and reaches its culminating 
 point in “ Timon,” a fragment only of which is Shak- 
 spere’s. The pen fell from the tired hand ; the worn 
 
RUSK IN ON SHAKSPE'RE. 
 
 1 45 
 
 and distracted brain refused to fulfil the task of 
 depicting the depth to which the poet’s estimate 
 of mankind had fallen ; and we hardly know whether 
 to rejoice or to regret that the clumsy hand of an 
 inferior writer has screened from our knowledge the 
 full disclosure of the utter and contemptuous cynicism 
 and want of faith with which, for the time being, 
 Shakspere was infected. 
 
 127. Before passing on to consider the plays of 
 the third period as evidence of Shakspere’s final 
 thought, it will be well to pause and re-read with 
 attention a summing-up of Shakspere’s teaching as 
 it has been presented to us by one of the greatest 
 and most earnest teachers of morality of the present 
 day. Every word that Mr. Ruskin writes is so evi- 
 dently from the depth of his own good heart, and every 
 doctrine that he enunciates so pure in theory and 
 so true in practice, that a difference with him upon 
 the final teaching of Shakspere’s work cannot be too 
 cautiously expressed. But the estimate of this which 
 he has given in the third Lecture of “ Sesame and 
 Lilies ” 1 is so painful, if regarded as Shakspere’s 
 latest and most mature opinion, that everybody, 
 even Mr. Ruskin himself, would be glad to modify 
 its gloom with a few rays of hope, if it were possible 
 to do so. “ What then,” says Mr. Ruskin, “ is the 
 message to us of our own poet and searcher of 
 hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith 
 have been numbered over the graves of men ? Are 
 his words more cheerful than the heathen’s (Homer) ? 
 
 1 3rd edition, § 1 15. 
 
 L 
 
146 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading 
 of fate more happy ? Ah no ! He differs from the 
 heathen poet chiefly in this, that he recognizes for 
 deliverance no gods nigh at hand, and that, by petty 
 chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by 
 fool’s tyranny, or traitor’s snare, the strongest and 
 most righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish 
 without word of hope. He, indeed, as part of his 
 rendering of character, ascribes the power and 
 modesty of habitual devotion to the gentle and the 
 just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with 
 visions of angels ; and the great soldier-king, standing 
 by his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the 
 hand that can save alike by many or by few. But 
 observe that from those who with deepest spirit 
 meditate, and with deepest passion mourn, there 
 are no such words as these ; nor in their hearts are 
 any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual 
 sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, 
 through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic 
 strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the 
 shadow of death, we find only in the great Christian 
 poet the consciousness of a moral law, through which 
 ‘ the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make 
 instruments to scourge us ; ’ and of the resolved 
 arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into pre- 
 cision of doom what we feebly and blindly began ; 
 and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and 
 our deepest plots do pall, to the confession that 
 ‘there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew 
 them how we will.’ ” 1 
 
 1 Mr. Ruskin has analyzed “ The Tempest,” in “ Munera Pnlveris,” 
 § 124, et setjq.), but from another point of view. 
 
SHAKSPERES FINAL THOUGHT. 
 
 147 
 
 128. Now, it is perfectly clear that this criticism 
 was written with two or three plays, all belonging to 
 one period, very conspicuously before the mind. Of 
 the illustrative exceptions that are made to the 
 general rule, one is derived from a play which 
 Shakspere wrote at a very early date, and the other 
 from a scene which he almost certainly never wrote 
 at all ; the whole of the rest of the passage quoted 
 is founded upon “ Hamlet,” “ Macbeth,” “ Othello,” and 
 “ Lear ” — that is, upon the earlier productions of what 
 we must call Shakspere’s sceptical period. But these 
 plays represent an essentially transient state of thought. 
 Shakspere was to learn and to teach that those who 
 most deeply meditate and most passionately mourn 
 are not the men of noblest or most influential 
 character — that such may command our sympathy, 
 but hardly our respect or admiration. Still less did 
 Shakspere finally assert, although for a time he 
 believed, that a blind destiny concludes into precision 
 what we feebly and blindly begin. Far otherwise 
 and nobler was his conception of man and his mission, 
 and the unseen powers and their influences, in the 
 third and final stage of his thought. 
 
 ' 129. Had Shakspere lived longer, he would 
 doubtless have left us a series of plays filled with 
 the bright a.nd reassuring tenderness and confidence 
 of this third period, as long and as brilliant in 
 execution as those of the second period. But as it 
 is we are in possession of quite enough material to 
 enable us to form accurate conclusions upon the state 
 of his final thought. It is upon “The Tempest” that 
 
148 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 we must in the main rely for an exposition of this ; 
 for though the other plays and fragments fully exhibit 
 the restoration of his faith in man and woman, which 
 was a necessary concurrence with his return from 
 scepticism, yet it is in “The Tempest” that he 
 brings himself as nearly face to face as dramatic pos- 
 sibilities would allow him with circumstances that 
 admit of the indirect expression of such thought. 
 It is fortunate, too, for the purpose of comparing 
 Shakspere’s earliest and latest opinions, that the 
 characters of “ The Tempest ” are divisible into the 
 same groups as those of “ The Dream.” The gross 
 canaille are represented, but now no longer the most 
 accurate in colour and most absorbing in interest of 
 the characters of the play, or unessential to the 
 evolution of the plot. They have a distinct im- 
 portance in the movement of the piece, and represent 
 the unintelligent, material resistance to the work of 
 regeneration that Prospero seeks to carry out, and 
 which must be controlled by him, just as Sebastian 
 and Antonio form the intelligent, designing resist- 
 ance. The spirit world is there too, but they, like the 
 former class, have no independent plot of their own, 
 and no independent operation against mankind ; they 
 only represent the invisible forces over which Prospero 
 must assert control if he would insure success for his 
 schemes. Ariel is, perhaps, one of the most extra- 
 ordinary of all Shakspere’s creations. He is, indeed, 
 formed upon a basis half fairy, half devil, because it 
 was only through the current notions upon demono- 
 logy that Shakspere could speak his ideas. But he 
 certainly is not a fairy in the sense that Puck is a 
 
REVELATION IN ACTION. 149 
 
 fairy ; and he is very far indeed from bearing even 
 a slight resemblance to the familiars whom the 
 magicians of the time professed to call from the 
 vasty deep. He is indeed but air, as Prospero says — 
 the embodiment of an idea, the representative of 
 those invisible forces which operate as factors in the 
 shaping of events which, ignored, may prove re- 
 sistant or fatal, but, properly controlled and guided, 
 work for good. 1 Lastly, there are the heroes and 
 heroine of the play, now no longer shadows, but the 
 centres of interest and admiration, and assuming 
 their due position and prominence. 
 
 130. It is probable, therefore, that it is not merely 
 a student’s fancy that in Prospero’s storm-girt, spirit- 
 haunted island can be seen Shakspere’s final and 
 matured image of the mighty world. If this be so, 
 how far more bright and hopeful it is than the 
 verdict which Mr. Ruskin finds Shakspere to have 
 returned. Man is no longer “ a pipe for fortune’s 
 fingers to sound what stop she please.” The evil 
 elements still exist in the world, and are numerous 
 and formidable ; but man, by nobleness of life and 
 word, by patience and self-mastery, can master them, 
 bring them into subjection, and make them tend to 
 eventual good. Caliban, the gross, sensual, earthly 
 element — though somewhat raised— would run riot, 
 and is therefore compelled to menial service. The 
 brute force of Stephano and Trinculo is vanquished 
 
 1 It is difficult to accept Mr. Ruskin’s view of Ariel as “ the spirit of 
 generous and free-hearted service” (Mun. Pul.§ 124) ; he is throughout 
 the play the more-than-half-unwilling agent of Prospero. 
 
i5o 
 
 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 by mental superiority. Even the supermundane 
 spirits, now no longer thirsting for the destruction 
 of body and soul, are bound down to the work of 
 carrying out the decrees of truth and justice. Man 
 is no longer the plaything, but the master of his fate ; 
 and he, seeing now the possible triumph of good over 
 evil, and his duty to do his best in aid of this 
 triumph, has no more fear of the dreams — the some- 
 thing after death. Our little life is still rounded by 
 a sleep, but the thought which terrifies Hamlet has 
 no power to affright Prospero. The hereafter is 
 still a mystery, it is true ; he has tried to see into it, 
 and has found it impenetrable. But revelation has 
 come like an angel, with peace upon its wings, in 
 another and an unexpected way. Duty lies here, 
 in and around him in this world. Here he can right 
 wrong, succour the weak, abase the proud, do some- 
 thing to make the world better than he found it ; 
 and in the performance of this he finds a holier calm 
 than the vain strivings after the unknowable could 
 ever afford. Let him work while it is day, for “the 
 night cometh, when no man can work.” 
 
 1 3 1. It is not a piece of pure sentimentality that 
 sees in Prospero a type of Shakspere in his final 
 stage of thought. It is a type altogether as it should 
 be ; and it is pleasing to think of him, in the full 
 maturity of his manhood, wrapping his seer’s cloak 
 about him, and, while waiting calmly the unfolding 
 of the mystery which he has sought in vain to solve, 
 watching with noble benevolence the gradual work- 
 ing out of truth, order, and justice. It is pleasing to 
 
THE FINAL PEACE. 
 
 I 5 1 
 
 think of him as speaking to the world the great 
 Christian doctrine so universally overlooked by Chris- 
 tians, that the only remedy for sin demanded by 
 eternal justice “ is nothing but heart’s sorrow, and 
 a clear life ensuing” — a speech which, though uttered 
 by Ariel, is spoken by Prospero, who himself beauti- 
 fully iterates part of the doctrine when he says — 
 
 “ The rarer action is 
 
 In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent, 
 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 Not a frown further.” 1 
 
 It is pleasant to dwell upon his sympathy with 
 Ferdinand and Miranda — for the love of man and 
 woman is pure and holy in this regenerate world: 
 no more of Troilus and Cressida — upon his patient 
 waiting for the evolution of his schemes ; upon his 
 faith in their ultimate success ; and, above all, upon 
 the majestic and unaffected reverence that appears 
 indirectly in every line — “ reverence,” to adapt the 
 words of the great teacher whose opinion about 
 Shakspere has been perhaps too rashly questioned, 
 “ for what is pure and bright in youth ; for what is 
 true and tried in age ; for all that is gracious among 
 the living, great among the dead, and marvellous in 
 the , Powers that cannot die.” 
 
 1 v. i. 27. 
 
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