PART III. - ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.

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 Dionysius the Areopagite, which was subsequently imported into the creed of the Western Church, and popularized 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. 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 Massinger and Dekker, conclusively show.

[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 506.]

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.

(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.

[Footnote 1: Cf. I Hen. VI. V. iii. 10; 2 Hen. VI. I. ii. 77; Coriolanus, IV. v. 97.]

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 “Macbeth”—Paddock (toad), Graymalkin (cat), and Harpier (harpy, possibly). Is it surprising that, with resources of this nature at 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.[6]

[Footnote 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. III. ii. 64), the name is “Hecat,” a di-syllable.]

[Footnote 2: V. iii. 6.]

[Footnote 3: II. iv. 370.]

[Footnote 4: II. ii. 311.]

[Footnote 5: II. i. 57. Scot, p. 393.]

[Footnote 6: sec. 65.]

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 transmutation which they used, as will be seen, to the extreme perplexity and annoyance of mortals. As an illustration 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.

[Footnote 1: p. 361.]

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 conviction of the moral hideousness of the evil he was 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 ordinary 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 hornes, 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 hangman;[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!

[Footnote 1: p. 507. See also Hutchinson, Essay on Witchcraft, p. 13; and Harsnet, p. 71.]

[Footnote 2: Bayle, ix. 152.]

[Footnote 3: James I., Daemonologie. Edinburgh, 1597.]

41. Spenser has clothed with horror this conception 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 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 fill;
    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
      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 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.

[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, sec. 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.]

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 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 importance 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]

[Footnote 1: Julius Caesar, V. v. 17.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. IV. iii. 279.]

[Footnote 3: Macbeth, III. iv. 100.]

58. But it is in “Hamlet” that the undecided state of opinion upon this subject is most clearly reflected; 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 bearing 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 inclination 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, Horatio leans to the opinion that it is really the ghost of the late king that he sees, probably in consequence 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 interview 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.

[Footnote 1: I. i. 46.]

[Footnote 2: II. i.]

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 apparition 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 com'st in such a questionable shape,
    That I will speak to thee.”[2]

For it cannot be supposed that Hamlet imagined that 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.

[Footnote 1: I. ii. 244.]

[Footnote 2: I. iv. 39.]

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 companions; 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 of 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]

[Footnote 1: See ante, sec. 55.]

The subsequent scene with the ghost convinces 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]

[Footnote 1: I. v. 92.]

[Footnote 2: II. ii. 627.]

[Footnote 3: III. ii. 87.]

59. This question was, in Shakspere's time, quite a legitimate element of uncertainty in the complicated 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 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 insincere workmanship, and the greater the man, the less his excuse. Errors arising from want of information (and Shakspere commits these often) may be pardoned if the means for correcting them be unattainable; 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 alternative. The last words that he has uttered, which are also the last quoted here,[1] are those in which he 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 accentuate 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.

[Footnote 1: sec. 58, p. 59.]

60. 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 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 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 indicative of possession. The doctrine of obsession replaced that of possession; and, once adopted, was supported by a string of those quaint, conceited arguments so peculiar to the time.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 3rd Dialogue.]

61. 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 possession, 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 symptoms 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 otherwise 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 profitable employment. Priests, preachers, schoolmasters—Dr. Pinches and Sir Topazes—became so commonly 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 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 immediately change.

[Footnote 1: 72nd Canon.]

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 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 supernaturall 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 preternatural 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 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.

[Footnote 1: Ch. 10.]

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 tongues 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; 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.”

[Footnote 1: A True Relation of the Grievious Handling of William Sommers, etc. London: T. Harper, 1641 (? 1601). The Tryall of Maister Darrell, 1599.]

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 understanding 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 European States, with even the Netherlanders growing cold towards her on account of her ambiguous treatment 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 James 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 complaints 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 corresponding internal convulsion, the infatuated worshippers of the fair devil of Scotland, the men to cope for a moment with the intellects of Walsingham and Burleigh.

[Footnote 1: Froude, xii. p. 405.]

67. The events which Harsnet investigated and wrote upon with politico-theological animus formed 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 performances 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, 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.[2]

[Footnote 1: The Fall of Anthony Tyrell, by Persoun. See The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, by John Morris, p. 103.]

[Footnote 2: He was examined by the Government as to his connection with the Paris conspirators.—See State Papers, vol. clxxx. 16, 17.]

68. With the truth or falsehood of the statements and deductions made by Harsnet, we have little or no concern. Western 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 representation 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 Protestant and almost maniacal exorcist-hunter, as the 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 examinations of witnesses annexed to it, the following have undoubtedly been repeated in “King Lear”:—Fliberdigibet, spelt in the play Flibbertigibbet; Hoberdidance called Hopdance and Hobbididance; and Frateretto, who are called morris-dancers; Haberdicut, 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]

[Footnote 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 repetition 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.]

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 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 quotation 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.

[Footnote 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 examinate 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. ll. 82-101; note especially l. 84.]

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 foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge,” etc.[1]

[Footnote 1: l. 51, et seq.]

The events referred to took place at Denham. A halter and some knife-blades were found in a corridor of the house. “A great search was made in the house to know how the said halter and knife-blades came thither, but it could not in any wise be found out, as it was pretended, till Master Mainy in his next fit said, as it was reported, that the devil layd them in the gallery, that some of those that were possessed might either hang themselves with the halter, or kill themselves with the blades.”[1]

[Footnote 1: Harsnet, p. 218.]

72. But the bulk of the references relating to the possession of Mainy occur further on in the same scene:—

“Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

“Edgar. Take heed o' the foul fiend: obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse;[1] set not thy sweet heart on proud array: Tom's a-cold.

“Lear. What hast thou been?

“Edgar. A serving-man, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, wore my gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her;[2] 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: 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 rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to woman; keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets,[3] thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend.”[4]

[Footnote 1: Cf. sec. 70, and note.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. sec. 70, and note.]

[Footnote 3: Placket probably here means pockets; not, as usual, the slip in a petticoat. Tom was possessed by Mahu, the prince of stealing.]

[Footnote 4: l. 82, et seq.]

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 dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women.”[1]

[Footnote 1: Act IV. i. 61.]

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 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 not 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]

[Footnote 1: “A serving-man, proud of heart and mind, that curled my hair,” etc.—l. 87; cf. also l. 84. Curling the hair as a sign of Mainy's possession is mentioned again, Harsnet, p. 57.]

[Footnote 2: “That ... swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven.”—l. 90.]

[Footnote 3: “Keep ... thy pen out of lenders' books.”—l. 100.]

“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.[1]

[Footnote 1: “Wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in women out-paramoured the Turk.”—l. 93.]

“Envy was described by disdainful looks and contemptuous speeches; Wrath, by furious gestures, and talke as though he would have fought;[1] Gluttony, by vomiting;[2] and Sloth,[3] by gasping and snorting, as though he had been asleepe.”[4]

[Footnote 1: “Dog in madness, lion in prey.”—l. 96.]

[Footnote 2: “Wolf in greediness.”—Ibid.]

[Footnote 3: “Hog in sloth.”—l. 95.]

[Footnote 4: Harsnet, p. 278.]

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.”[1]

[Footnote 1: 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.]

There is in another part of “King Lear” a further reference to the incidents attendant upon these exorcisms Edgar says,[1] “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 playing 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[2] had taken the bird out of the cage, and killed it in despite of Maister Dibdale.”[3]

[Footnote 1: Act III. sc. vi. l. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Sara Williams.]

[Footnote 3: Harsnet, p. 225.]