Elizabethan Demonology An Essay in Illustration of the Belief in the Existence of Devils, and the Powers Possessed By Them, as It Was Generally Held during the Period of the Reformation, and the Times Immediately Succeeding; with Special Reference to Shakspere and His Works

94. Every item of Banquo's description indicates that he is speaking of witches; nothing in it is incompatible with that supposition. Will it apply with equal force to Norns? It...

82. But the persecuted, far more than the persecutors, deserve our sympathy, although they rarely obtain it. It is frequently asserted that the absolute truth of a doctrine is t...

27. Upon the conversion of the inhabitants of Great Britain to Christianity, the native deities underwent the same inevitable fate, and sank into the rank of evil spirits. Perha...

69. Among the many devils' names mentioned by Harsnet in his "Declaration," and in the examinations of witnesses annexed to it, the following have undoubtedly been repeated in "...

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 r...

"And the third time, out of an hidden shade, There forth issewed from under th' altar's smoake A dreadfull feend with fowle deformèd looke, That stretched itselfe as it had long...

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...

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" auth...

113. The real distinction between these two classes of spirits depends on the condition of national thought upon the subject of supernaturalism in its largest sense. A belief wh...

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...

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 se...