Elizabethan Demonology Part 5

[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, vanis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sume my n.o.ble father's person, I'll speak to it, though h.e.l.l 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 d.a.m.ned, Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from h.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.ned"

could actually be the spirit of his dead father; and, therefore, the alternative in his mind must have been that he saw a devil a.s.suming 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 a.s.sume some other horrible form, Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason, And draw you into madness?"

The idea that the devil a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sages.[1]

[Footnote 1: See ante, -- 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 h.e.l.l?"[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 a.s.sume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits,) Abuses me to d.a.m.n 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-a.n.a.lyzing 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 workmans.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.suming 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 cert.i.tude 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: -- 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 pa.s.sage has in it a deeper meaning than the one attributed to it here, it well ill.u.s.trates 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-pract.i.tioners 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 subst.i.tute 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 princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 cla.s.s of cases, in which the diabolic agency is palpable to the layman as well as the doctor, Cotta ill.u.s.trates 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 quant.i.ties, figure, fas.h.i.+on, and proportion as could never possiblie pa.s.s 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 a.s.s." 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."