Elizabethan Demonology Part 4

"_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: Oth.e.l.lo, 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 a.s.sume.[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 p.r.i.c.ks 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 circ.u.mstances--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, "h.e.l.l is empty, and all the devils are here!" a.s.sumes the forms of a water-nymph,[5] a harpy,[6] and also the G.o.ddess 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 pa.s.sage, it is worthy of note that in the year 1584, strange news came out of Somersets.h.i.+re, ent.i.tled "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, a.s.sumed 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 h.e.l.l. 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 "t.i.tus 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.d called the angels into being, says, by way of peroration, "Let us lead a holy and angel-like life in the sight of G.o.d'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: Oth.e.l.lo, 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumed 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 ma.s.ses 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 G.o.d, 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]