Part 4
"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 lyen still; And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke, That all the temple did with terrour fill; Yet him nought terrifide that fearèd nothing ill.
"An huge great beast it was, when it in length Was stretchèd 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 Full 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."
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--
"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]
But his opinion was, perhaps, a prejudiced one. In Ben Jonson's "The Devil is an Ass," when Fitzdottrell, 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 wavèd like the enridgèd 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.
[Footnote 1: Act I. sc. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. ii. l. 285.]
[Footnote 3: Lear, IV. vi. 69.]
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 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.
[Footnote 1: I Hen. IV. III. i. 148.]
[Footnote 2: p. 521, c. 2.]
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 important; 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 universally believed that a devil could, of his own inherent 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 himself 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-worshippers--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 absurditie," as Scot judiciously remarks.[1] This, however, would not be a serious limitation upon the practical usefulness of the power.
[Footnote 1: p. 314.]
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 postulate, 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 daylight 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 controversy upon the point--the Reformers not seeing 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 interesting as illustrations of the hair-splitting, chop-logic tendency which, amidst all their straightforwardness, 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.
[Footnote 1: Daemonologie, p. 56.]
But the theory, though ingenious, was insufficient. The devil would occasionally appear in the likeness 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 supernatural influence over the minds of men, whereby he could persuade them that they really saw a form that had no material objective existence.[1] Here was a position incontrovertible, not on account of the arguments 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. Indeed, 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.
[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 4th Dialogue. Bullinger, p. 361. Parker Society.]
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, belief that devils could at any moment assume what form soever they might please--not troubling themselves further to inquire into the method of the operation. They could appear in the likeness of an ordinary human being, as Harpax[1] and Mephistopheles[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]
[Footnote 1: In The Virgin Martyr.]
[Footnote 2: In Dr. Faustus.]
[Footnote 3: Coriolanus, I. x. 16.]
[Footnote 4: Merchant of Venice, III. i. 22.]
[Footnote 5: Measure for Measure, III. i. 90.]
[Footnote 6: I Hen. IV., II. iv. 491-509.]
49. The devils had an inconvenient habit of appearing in the guise of an ecclesiastic[1]--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 honest lay public seem to have thought, with downright 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 question 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 Shakspere. Philip sets at liberty much more than "imprisoned 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: _Haud credo Laurentius_ 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."[2]
Unfortunately it proves indubitably to be that good man; and he is ordered to execution, not, however, without some hope of redemption by money payment; for times are hard, and cash in hand not to be despised.
[Footnote 1: See the story about Bishop Sylvanus.--Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i. 79.]
[Footnote 2: Hazlitt, Shakspere Library, part ii. vol. i. p. 264.]
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, "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
[Footnote 1: Harsnet, p. 101.]
[Footnote 2: Scot, p. 481.]
50. It is not surprising that of human forms, that of a negro or Moor should be considered a favourite one with evil spirits.[1] Iago makes allusion to this when inciting Brabantio to search for his daughter.[2] The power of coming in the likeness of humanity generally is referred to somewhat cynically in "Timon of Athens,"[3] 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 philosopher with two stones more than 's artificial one: he is very often like a knight; and, generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in, from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in."
[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 89.]
[Footnote 2: Othello, I. i. 91.]
[Footnote 3: II. ii. 113.]
"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]
[Footnote 1: King John, III. i. 209.]
[Footnote 2: Harsnet, p. 139.]
51. 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.[1] Poor Caliban complains that Prospero's spirits
"Lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark,"[2]
just as Ariel[3] and Puck[4] (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."
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 appearing 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,[5] a harpy,[6] and also the goddess Ceres;[7] 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."
[Footnote 1: For instance, an eye without a head.--Ibid.]
[Footnote 2: The Tempest, II. ii. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid. I. ii. 198.]
[Footnote 4: A Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 39; III. i. 111.]
[Footnote 5: I. ii. 301-318.]
[Footnote 6: III. iii. 53.]
[Footnote 7: IV. i. 166.]
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[1] mistaketh me; Then slip I from her, and down topples she."
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."[2]
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."[3]
[Footnote 1: 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.--Pitcairn, iii. 617.]
[Footnote 2: III. i. 111.]
[Footnote 3: Hutchinson, p. 40.]
53. In Heywood and Brome's "Witch of Edmonton," 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 remembered 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 1612.[1] 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.[2] 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 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.[3] There is an allusion to this belief in the fly-killing scene in "Titus Andronicus."[4]
[Footnote 1: Potts, Discoveries. Edit. Cheetham Society.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. B. Jonson's Alchemist.]
[Footnote 3: A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts relating to Witchcraft, 1838.]
[Footnote 4: III. ii. 51, et seq.]
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."[1] They even went so far, according to Cranmer,[2] as to appear in the likeness 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."[3]
[Footnote 1: Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon. Parker Society.]
[Footnote 2: Cranmer, Confutation, p. 42. Parker Society.]
[Footnote 3: Othello, II. iii. 357. Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii. 257; Comedy of Errors, IV. iii. 56.]
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. The reforming divines distinctly denied the possibility of such a revisitation, and accounted for the undoubted phenomena, as usual, by attributing them to the devil.[1] 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."[2] 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 or possesses them. The other thing that he preases to obtain is the tinsell of their soule."[3]
[Footnote 1: See Hooper's Declaration of the Ten Commandments. Parker Society. Hooper, 326.]
[Footnote 2: Daemonologie, p. 60.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Hamlet, I. iv. 60-80; and post, § 58.]
56. But the belief in the appearance of ghosts was too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be extirpated, 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, complains 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."[1] Here is a little glimpse at the practical troubles of a well-intentioned bishop of the sixteenth century that is surely worth preserving.
[Footnote 1: Parker Correspondence, 222. Parker Society.]