III. vi. 47, is incorrect ; that Pur is not an interjection, but the repeti-

tion 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.
MAI NY AND HIS DEVILS. 71
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 quo- tation below will prove ; ^ 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.
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
^ " 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 hi^ 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, liarsnet, p. 190. Compare King Lear, Act iii. sc. iv. 11. 82-101 ; note especially 1. 84.
72 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire ; that hath laid knives tinder his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his por- ridge," etc.^
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 jn the gallery, that some of those that were possessed might either hang themselves with the halter, or kill themselves with the blades." ^
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;^ 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
* 1. 51, et seq. ' Harsnet, p. 218.
• Cf. § 70, and note.
FIVE FIENDS IN POOR TOM. 73
the act of darkness with her ; ^ 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, hon 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,^ thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend." 8
This must be read in conjunction with what Edgar says of himself subsequently : — J
" Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once ; of / lust, as Obidicut ; Hobbididance, prince of dumb- ness ; Mahu, of stealing ; Modo, of murder ; Flib- bertigibbet, of mopping and mowing ; who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women." *
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
* Cf. § 70, and note.
' Placket probably here means pockets ; not, as usual, the slip in a petticoat. Tom was possessed by Mahu, the prince of stealing.
* 1. 82, et seq. * Act iv. i. 61.
74 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
was Pride.^ 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.' ^ . . . 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. . . ?
" 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.*
" Envy was described by disdainful looks and con- temptuous speeches ; Wrath, by furious gestures, and talke as though he would have fought ; ^ Gluttony, by
^ *' A serving-man, proud of heart and mind, that curled my hair," etc. — 1. 87 ; cf. also 1. 84. Curling the hair as a sign of Mainy's pos- session is mentioned again, Harsnet, p. 57.
* ** That . . . swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven." — 1. 90.
* **Keep . . . thy pen out of lenders' books. " — 1. 100.
* "Wine loved I deeply ; dice dearly ; and in women out-paramoured the Turk.— 1. 93.
* "Dog in madness, lion in prey." — 1. 96.
CONVERSATIONAL DEVILS. 75
vomiting ; ^ and Sloth,^ by gasping and snorting, as though he had been asleepe." ^
A sort of prayer-meeting was then held for the rehef 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." *
There is in another part of " King Lear " a further reference to the incidents attendant upon these exor- cisms. Edgar says,^ " 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 play- ing 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 ^ had taken the bird out of the cage, and killed it in despite of Maister Dibdale." '^
7'^. The treatment to which, in consequence of
» " Wolf in greediness."— Ibid. ^ " Hog in sloth."— 1. 95.
3 Harsnet, p. 278.
* 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.
* Act III. sc. vi. 1. 31. ^ Sara Williams. ^ Harsnet, p. 225.
76 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
his belief in possession, unfortunate persons like Mainy and Sommers, who were probably only suffer- ing from some harmless form of mental disease, were subjected, was hardly calculated ' to effect a cure. The most ignorant quack was considered perfectly competent to deal with cases which, in reality, require the most delicate and judicious management, com- bined with the profoundest physiological, as well as psychological, knowledge. The ordinary method of dealing with these lunatics was as simple as it was irritating. Bonds and confinement in a darkened room were the specifics ; and the monotony of this treatment was relieved by occasional visits from the sage who had charge of the case, to mumble a prayer or mutter an exorcism. Another popular but un- pleasant cure was by flagellation ; so that Romeo's
" Not mad, but bound more than a madman is, Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipped and tormented," ^
if an exaggerated description of his own mental con- dition, is in itself no inflated metaphor.
74. Shakspere, in " The Comedy of Errors," and indirectly also in " Twelfth Night," has given us intentionally ridiculous illustrations of scenes which he had not improbably witnessed, in the country at any rate, and which bring vividly before us the absurdity of the methods of diagnosis and treatment usually adopted : —
" Courtesan. How say you now } is not your husband mad t Adriaiia. His incivility confirms no less.
DOCTOR PINCH, CONJURER. 77
Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;
Establish him in his true sense again,
And I will please you what you will demand.
Lticiana. Alas ! how fiery and how sharp he looks !
Courtesan. Mai-k how he trembles in his extasy !
Pi7ich. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.^
Afit. E. There is my hand, and let it feel }'Our ear.
Pmch. I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man, To yield possession to my holy prayers. And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight ; I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.
A7it. E. Peace, doting wizard, peace ; I am not mad.
Pinch. O that thou wert not, poor distressed soul ! " 2
After some further business, Pinch pronounces his opinion :
" Mistress, both man and master are possessed ; I know it by their pale and deadly looks : They must be bound, and laid in some dark room." ^
But " good doctor Pinch " seems to have been mild even to feebleness in his conjuration ; many of his brethren in art had much more effective formulae. It seems that devils were peculiarly sensitive to any opprobrious epithets that chanced to be bestowed upon them. The skilful exorcist took advantage of this weakness, and, if he could only manage to keep up a flow of uncomplimentary remarks sufficiently long and offensive, the unfortunate spirit became embarrassed, restless, agitated, and finally took to flight. Here is a specimen of the " nicknames " which had so potent an effect, if Harsnet is to be credited: — " Heare therefore, thou senceless false lewd spirit,
* The cessation of the pulse was one of the symptoms of possession. See the case of Sommers, Tryal of Maister Darrell, 1599. 2 IV. iv. 48 62. ' Ibid. 95.
78 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
maister of devils, miserable creature, tempter of men, deceaver of bad angels, captaine of heretiques, father of lyes, fatuous bestial ninnie, drunkard, infernal theefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger- bitten impure sow, seely beast, truculent beast, cruel beast, bloody beast, beast of all beasts, the most bestiall acherontall spirit, smoakie spirit, Tartareus spirit ! " ^ Whether this objurgation terminates from loss of breath on the part of the conjurer, or the precipitate departure of the spirit addressed, it is impossible to say ; it is difficult to imagine any logical reason for its conclusion.
75. Occasionally other, and sometimes more elabo- rate, methods of exorcism than those mentioned by Romeo were adopted, especially when the opera- tion was conducted for the purpose of bringing into prominence some great religious truth. The more evangelical of the operators adopted the plan of lying on the top of their patients, " after the manner of Elias and Pawle." ^ But the Catholic exorcists invented and carried to perfection the greatest refine- ment in the art. The patient, seated in a "holy chair," specially sanctified for the occasion, was com- pelled to drink about a pint of a compound of sack and salad oil ; after which refreshment a pan of burning brimstone was held under his nose, until his face was blackened by the smoke.^ All this while the officiating priest kept up his invocation of the fiends in the manner illustrated above ; and, under
* Harsnet, p. 113.
* The Tryall of Maister Darrell, 1599, p. 2. "* Harsnet, p. 53.
EXORCISMS INFALLIBLE. j()
such circumstances, it is extremely doubtful whether the most determined character would not be pre- pared to see somewhat unusual phenomena for the sake of a short respite.
y6. Another remarkable method of exorcism was a process termed " firing out " the fiend.^ The holy flame of piety resident in the priest was so terrible to the evil spirit, that the mere contact of the holy hand with that part of the body of the afflicted person in which he was resident was enough to make him shrink away into some more distant portion ; so, by a judicious application of the hand, the exorcist could drive the devil into some limb, from which escape into the body was impossible, and the evil spirit, driven to the extremity, was obliged to depart, defeated and disgraced.^ This influence could be exerted, however, without actual corporal contact, as the following quaint extract from Harsnet's book will show : —
" Some punie rash devil doth stay till the holy priest be come somewhat neare, as into the chamber where the demoniacke doth abide, purposing, as it seemes, to try a pluck with the priest ; and then his hart sodainly failing him (as Demas, when he saw his friend Chinias approach), cries out that he is tor- mented with the presence of the priest, and so is fierd out of his hold." «
* This expression occurs in Sonnet cxliv., and evidently with the meaning here explained ; only the bad angel is supposed to fire out the good one.
^ Harsnet, pp. 77, 96, 97. ^ Ibid. p. 65.
So ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
y/. The more violent or uncommon of the bodily diseases were, as the quotation from Cotta's book shows/ attributed to the same diabolic source. In an era when the most profound ignorance prevailed with regard to the simplest laws of health ; when the commoner diseases were considered as God's punish- ment for sin, and not attributable to natural causes ; when so eminent a divine as Bishop Hooper could declare that " the air, the water, and the earth had no poison in themselves to hurt their lord and master man,"^ unless man first poisoned himself with sin; and when, in consequence of this ignorance and this false philosophy, and the inevitable neglect attendant upon them, those fearful plagues known as ''the Black Death " could, almost without notice, sweep down upon a country, and decimate its inhabitants — it is not wonderful that these terrible scourges were at- tributed to the malevolence of the Evil One.
78. But it is curious to notice that, although possessing such terrible powers over the bodies and minds of mortals, devils were not believed to be potent enough to destroy the lives of the persons they persecuted unless they could persuade their victims to renounce God. This theory probably sprang out of the limitation imposed by the Almighty upon the power of Satan during his temptation of Job, and the advice given to the sufferer by his wife, " Curse God, and die." Hence, when evil spirits began their assaults upon a man, one of their first endeavours was to induce him to do some act that
* See §§ 63, 64. ' I Hooper, p. 308. Parker Society.
DEVILS BOAST: DON'T KILL. 8i
would be equivalent to such a renunciation. Some- times this was a bond assigning the victim's soul to the Evil One in consideration of certain worldly ad- vantages ; sometimes a formal denial of his baptism ; sometimes a deed that drives away the guardian angel from his side, and leaves the devil's influence uncounteracted. In " The Witch of Edmonton," ^ the first act that Mother Sawyer demands her familiar to perform after she has struck her bargain, is to kill her enemy Banks ; and the fiend has reluctantly to declare that he cannot do so unless by good fortune he could happen to catch him cursing. Both Harpax ^ and Mephistophiles ^ suggest to their victims that they have power to destroy their enemies, but neither of them is able to exercise it. Faust can torment, but not kill, his would-be murderers ; and Springius and Hircius are powerless to take Dorothea's life. In the latter case it is distinctly the protection of the guardian angel that limits the diabolic power ; so it is not unnatural that Gratiano should think the cursing of his better angel from his side the "most desperate turn " that poor old Brabantio could have done himself, had he been living to hear of his daughter's cruel death.* It is next to impossible for people in the present day to have any idea what a consolation this belief in a good attendant spirit, specially appointed to guard weak mortals through life, to ward off evils, and guide to eternal safety, must have been in a time when, according to the current belief, any person, however blameless, how-
^ Act II. sc. i. 2 The Virgin Martyr, Act ill. sc. iii.
2 Dr. Faustus, Act i. sc. iii.. •• Othello, Act v. sc. ii. 204.
G
82 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
ever holy, was liable at any moment to be possessed by a devil, or harried and tortured by a witch.
79. This leads by a natural sequence to the con- sideration of another and more insidious form of attack upon mankind adopted by the evil spirits. Possession and obsession were methods of assault adopted against the will of the afflicted person, and hardly to be avoided by him without the supernatural intervention of the Church. The practice of witch- craft and magic involved the absolute and voluntary barter of body and soul to the Evil One, for the purpose of obtaining a few short years of superhuman, power, to be employed for the gratification of the culprit's avarice, ambition, or desire for revenge.
80. In the strange history of that most inexplic- able mental disease, the witchcraft epidemic, as it has been justly called by a high authority on such matters,^ we moderns are, by the nature of our educa- tion and prejudices, completely incapacitated for sympathizing with either the persecutors or their victims. We are at a loss to understand how clear- sighted and upright men, like Sir Matthew Hale, could consent to become parties to a relentless perse- cution to the death of poor helpless beings whose chief crime, in most cases, was, that they had suffered starvation both in body and in mind. We cannot understand it, because none of us believe in the existence of evil spirits. None; for although there are still a few persons who nominally hold to the
^ See Dr. Carpenter in Frazer for November, 1877.
SATAN MORIBUND. Zt,
ancient faith, as they do to many other respectable but effete traditions, yet they would be at a loss for a reason for the faith that is in them, should they chance to be asked for one ; and not one of them would be prepared to make the smallest material sacrifice for the sake of it. It is true that the exist- ence of evil spirits recently received a tardy and somewhat hesitating recognition in our ecclesiastical courts,^ which at first authoritatively declared that a denial of the existence of the personality of the devil constituted a man a notorious evil liver, and depraver of the Book of Common Prayer ; '^ but this was promptly reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, under the auspices of two Low Church law lords and two archbishops, with the very vague proviso that " they do not mean to decide that those doctrines are otherwise than inconsistent with the formularities of the Church of England ; " ^ yet the very contempt with which these portentous declara- tions of Church law have been received shows how great has been the fall of the once almost omnipotent minister of evil. The ancient Satan does indeed exist in some few formularies, but in such a washed- out and flimsy condition as to be the reverse of con- spicuous. All that remains of him and of his subordinate legions is the ineffectual ghost of a departed creed, for the resuscitation of which no man will move a finger.
^ See Jenkins v. Cooke, Law Reports, Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Cases, vol. iv. p. 463, et seq.
• Ibid. p. 499, Sir R. Phillimore.
^ Law Reports, i Probate Division, p. 102.
84 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
8 1. It is perfectly impossible for us, therefore, to comprehend, although by an effort we may perhaps bring ourselves to imagine, the horror and loathing with which good men, entirely believing in the exist- ence and omnipresence of countless legions of evil spirits, able and anxious to perpetrate the mischiefs that it has been the object of these pages in some part to describe, would regard those who, for their own selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered their hopes of eternal happiness in exchange for an alliance with the devils, which would render these ten times more capable than before of Avorking their wicked wills. To men believing this, no punishment could seem too sudden or too terrible for such offenders against religion and society, and no means of possible detection too slight or far-fetched to be neglected ; indeed, it might reasonably appear to them better that many innocent persons should perish, with the assurance of future reward for their undeserved suffer- ings, than that a single guilty one should escape undetected, and become the medium by which the devil might destroy more souls.
82. But the persecuted, far more than the perse- cutors, deserve our sympathy, although they rarely obtain it. It is frequently asserted that the absolute truth of a doctrine is the only support that will enable its adherents successfully to weather the storms of persecution. Those who assent to this proposition must be prepared to find a large amount of truth in the beliefs known to us under the name of witchcraft, if the position is to be successfully maintained ; for
BUT WAS ONCE BELIEVED IN. 85
never was any sect persecuted more systematically, or with more relentlessness, than these little-offending heretics. Protestants and Catholics, Anglicans and Calvinists, so ready at all times to commit one another to the flames and to the headsman, found in this matter common ground, upon which all could heartily unite for the grand purpose of extirpating error. When, out of the quiet of our own times, we look back upon the terrors of the Tower, and the smoke and glare of Smithfield, we think with mingled pity and admiration of those brave men and women who, in the sixteenth century, enriched with their blood and ashes the soil from whence was to spring our political and religious freedom. But no whit of admiration, hardly a glimmer of pity, is even casually evinced for those poor creatures who, neglected, despised, and abhorred, were, at the same time, dying the same agonizing death, and passing through the torment of the flames to that " something after death — the undis- covered country," without the sweet assurance which sustained their better-remembered fellow-sufferers, that beyond the martyr's cross was waiting the martyr's crown. No such hope supported those who were condemned to die for the crime of witchcraft ; their anticipations of the future were as dreary as their memories of the past, and no friendly voice was raised, or hand stretched out, to encourage or console them during that last sad journey. Their hope of mercy from man was small — strangulation before the application of the fire, instead of the more lingering and painful death at most ; — their hope of mercy from Heaven, nothing ; yet, under these circumstances, the
86 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
most auspicious perhaps that could be imagined for the extirpation of a heretical belief, persecution failed . to effect its object. The more the Government burnt the witches, the more the crime of witchcraft spread ; and it was not until an attitude of contemptuous toleration was adopted towards the culprits that the belief died down, gradually but surely, not on account of the conclusiveness of the arguments directed against it, but from its own inherent lack of vitality.^
83. The history and phenomena of witchcraft have been so admirably treated by more than one modern investigator, as to render it unnecessary to deal ex- haustively with a subject which presents such' a vast amount of material for arrangement and comment. The scope of the following remarks will therefore be limited to a consideration of such features of the subject as appear to throw light upon the super- naturalism in " Macbeth." This consideration will be carried out with some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological learning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into the interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who play such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scan- dinavian paganism. It will be the object of the following pages to illustrate the contemporary belief concerning witches and their powers, by showing that
^ See Mr. Lecky's elaborate and interesting description of the lemise of the belief in the first chapter of his History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe.
MACBETH WITCHES, NORMS? 87
nearly every characteristic point attributed to the sisters has its counterpart in contemporary witch- lore ; that some of the allusions, indeed, bear so strong a resemblance to certain events that had transpired not many years before "Macbeth" was written, that it is not improbable that Shakspere was alluding to them in much the same off-hand, cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when writing " King Lear."
84. The first critic whose comments upon this_ > subject call for notice is the eminent Gervinus. In evident ignorance of the history of witchcraft, he says, ". In the witches Shakspere has made use of the popular belief in evil geniuses and in adverse perse- cutors of mankind, and has produced a similar but darker race of beings, just as he made use of the belief in fairies in the ' Midsummer Night's Dream/ This creation is less attractive and complete, but not less masterly. The poet, in the text of the play itself, calls these beings witches only derogatorily ; they call themselves weird sisters ; the Fates bore this denomination, and the sisters remind us indeed of the Northern Fates or Valkyries. They appear wild and weather-beaten in exterior and attire, common in speech, ignoble, half-human"creatures, ugly as the Evil One, and in like manner^ old, and of neither sex. They are guided by more powerful masters, their work entirely springs from delight in evil, and they are wholly devoid of human sympathies. . . . They are simply the embodiment of inward temptation ; they come in storm and vanish in air, like corporeal
88 ELIZABETHAN DRMONOLOGY.
impulses, which, originating in the blood, cast up bubbles of sin and ambition in the soul ; they are weird sisters only in the sense in which men carry their own fates within their bosoms." ^ This criticism is so entirely subjective and unsupported by evidence that it is difficult to deal satisfactorily with it. It will be shown hereafter that this description does not apply in the least to the Scandinavian Norns, while, so far as it is true to Shakspere's text, it does not clash with contemporary records of the appearance and actions of witches.
85. The next writer to bring forward a view of this character was the Rev. F. G. Fleay, the well- known Shakspere critic, whose ingenious efforts in iconoclasm cause a curious alternation of feeling between admiration and amazement. His argument is unfortunately mixed up with a question of textual criticism ; for he rejects certain scenes in the play as the work of the inferior dramatist Middleton.^ The question relating to the text will only be noticed so far as it is inextricably involved with the argument respecting the nature of the weird sisters. Mr. /Fleay's position is, shortly, this. He thinks that Shakspere's play commenced with the entrance of Macbeth and Banquo in the third scene of the first , act, and that the weird sisters who subsequently take \ part in that scene are Norns, not witches ; and that I in the first scene of the fourth act, Shakspere dis-
^ Shakspere Commentaries, translated by F. E. Bunnett, p. 591. ' Of the witch scenes Mr. Fleay rejects Act I. sc. i., and sc. iii. down to 1. 37, and Act lli. sc. v.
EVIDENCE FOR NORMS. 89
carded the Norns, and introduced three entirely new characters, who were intended to be genuine witches.
Z6. The evidence which can be produced in sup- port of this theory, apart from question of style and probability, is threefold. The first proof is derived from a manuscript entitled " The Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof, for Common Pollicie," written by a somewhat famous magician-doctor, Simon Forman, who was implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. He says, " In ' Macbeth,' at the Globe, 1 610, the 20th April, Saturday, there was to be observed first how Macbeth and Banquo, two noble- men of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them three women fairies, or nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, ' Hail, Macbeth, King of Codor, for thou shalt be a king, but thou shalt beget no kings,' " etc.^ This, if For- man's account held together decently in other respects, would be strong, although not conclusive, evidence in favour of the theory ; but the whole note is so full of inconsistencies and misstatements, that it is not unfair to conclude, either that the writer was not paying marvellous attention to the entertainment he professed to describe, or that the player's copy differed in many essential points from the present text. Not the least conspicuous of these inconsistencies is the account of the sisters' greeting of Macbeth just quoted. Subsequently Forman narrates that Dun- can created Macbeth Prince of Cumberland ; and that "when Macbeth had murdered the king, the
^ See Furness, Variorum, p. 384.
90 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
blood on his hands could not be washed off by any means, nor from his wife's hands, which handled the bloody daggers in hiding them, by which means they became both much amazed and affronted." Such a loose narration cannot be relied upon if the text in question contains any evidence at all rebutting the conclusion that the sisters are intended to be " women fairies, or nymphs."
%J. The second piece of evidence is the story of Macbeth as it is narrated by Holinshed, from which Shakspere derived his material. In that account we read that " It fortuned as Makbeth and Banquho journied toward Fores, where the king then laie, they went sporting by the waie togither without other companie, saue onlie themselues, passing thorough the woods and fields, when suddenlie in the middest of a laund there met them three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world, whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering much at the sight, the first of them spake and said ; ' All haile, Makbeth, thane of Glammis ' (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father Sinell). The second of them said ; ' Haile, Makbeth, thane of Cawder.' But the third said ; ' All haile, Makbeth, that heereafter shall be King of Scot- land.' . . .^Afterwards the common opinion was that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of pro- phesie by their necromanticall science, because everie- thing came to passe as they had spoken." ^ This is
^ Holinshed, Scotland, p. 170, c. 2, 1. 55.
"GODDESSES OF DESTINIE?'' 91
all that is heard of these "goddesses of Destinie" in Hohnshed's narrative. Macbeth is warned to "beware Macduff"^ by " certeine wizzards, in whose words he put great confidence ; " and the false promises were made to him by " a certeine witch, whome he had in great trust, (who) had told him that he should neuer be slaine with man borne of anie woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Bernane came to the castell of Dunsinane." ^
'^Z. In this account we find that the supernatural communications adopted by Shakspere were derived from three sources ; and the contention is that he has retained two of them — the "goddesses of Destinie" and the witches ; and the evidence of this retention is the third proof relied on, namely, that the stage direction in the first folio, Act IV. sc. i., is, " Enter Hecate and the ^///^r three witches," when three characters supposed to be witches are already upon the scene. Holinshed's narrative makes it clear that the idea of the "goddesses of Destinie" was distinctly suggested to Shakspere's mind, as well as that of the witches, as the mediums of supernatural influence. The question is, did he retain both, or did he reject one and retain the other ? It can scarcely be doubted that one such influence running through the play would conduce to harmony and unity of idea ; and as Shakspere, not a servile follower of his source in any case, has interwoven in "Macbeth" the totally distinct narrative of the murder of King Dufife,^ it is hardly to be supposed
* Macbeth, iv. i. 71. Holinshed, p. 174, c. 2, 1. 10. - Ibid. 1. 13. ^ Ibid. p. 149. " A sort of witches dwelling in a towne of Murrey - land called Fores" (c. 2, 1. 30) were prominent in this account.
92 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
that he would scruple to blend these two different sets of characters if any advantage were to be gained by so doing. As to the stage direction in the first folio, it is difficult to see what it would prove, even sup- posing that the folio were the most scrupulous piece of editorial work that had ever been effected. It pre- supposes that the " weird sisters " are on the stage as well as the witches. But it is perfectly clear that the witches continue the dialogue ; so the other more powerful beings must be supposed to be standing silent in the background — a suggestion so mon- strous that it is hardly necessary to refer to the slovenliness of the folio stage directions to show how unsatisfactory an argument based upon one of them must be.
89. The evidence of Forman and Holinshed has been stated fully, in order that the reader may be in possession of all the materials that may be necessary for forming an accurate judgment upon the point in question ; but it seems to be less relied upon than the supposition that the appearance and powers of the beings in the admittedly genuine part of the third scene of the first act are not those formerly attributed to witches, and that Shakspere, having once decided to represent Norns, would never have degraded them '' to three old women, who are called by Paddock and Graymalkin, sail in sieves, kill swine, serve Hecate, and deal in all the common charms, illusions, and incantations of vulgar witches. The three who ' look "not like the inhabitants o* th' earth, and yet are on't ; ' they who can ' look into the seeds of time, and say
OR MIXED WITCHES AND xWORNS ? 93,
which grain will grow ; ' they who seem corporal, but melt into the air, like bubbles of the earth ; the weyward sisters, who make themselves air, and have in them more than mortal knowledge, are not beings of this stamp." ^ __
90. Now, there is a great mass of contemporary evidence to show that these supposed characteristics of the Norns are, in fact, some of the chief attributes of the witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If this be so — if it can be proved that the supposed "goddesses of Destinie" of the play in reality
/ possess no higher powers than could be acquired by
/ ordinary communication with evil spirits, then no
/ weight must be attached to the vague stage direction
( in the folio, occurring as it does in a volume notorious
\ for the extreme carelessness with which it was pro-
\ duced ; and it must be admitted that the "goddesses
V ofDestinie " of Holinshed were sacrificed for the sake
of the witches. If, in addition to this, it can be shown
that there was a very satisfactory reason why the
jwitches should have been chosen as the representa-
ives of the evil influence instead of the Norns, the
largument will be as complete as it is possible to
make it.
91. But before proceeding to examine the con- temporary evidence, it is necessary, in order to obtain a complete conception of the mythological view of the weird sisters, to notice a piece of criticism that is at
* New Shakspere Society Transactions, vol. i. p. 342 ; Fleay's Shakspere Manual, p. 248.
7
I
94 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
once an expansion of, and a variation upon, the theory ^Just stated.^ It is suggested that the sisters of / *' Macbeth " are but three in number, but that Shak- spere drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a portion of the material he used in constructing these characters, and that he derived the rest from the traditions of contemporary witchcraft ; in fact, that the " sisters " are hybrids between Norns and witches. The supposed proof of this is that each sister exercises me special function of one of the NornsX~ " The third is the special prophetess, whilst the first taices cog- nizance of the past, and the second of the present, in ^ffairs connected with humanityJ These are the tasks (pf Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda. The first begins by asking, ' When shall we three meet again ? ' The second decides the time : * When the battle's lost or won/ The third, the future prophesies : ' That will be ere set of sun.' The first again asks, ' Where ? ' The second decides : ' Upon the heath.' The third, the future prophesies : ^ There to meet with Macbeth.' " But their role is most clearly brought out in the famous " Hails " : —
" 1st. Urdu. [Past.] All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis !
2itd. Verda7idi. [Present.] All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor !
yd. Skulda. All hail, Macbeth ! thou shalt be king here- after." 2
^ In a letter to The Academy, 8th February, 1879, signed " Charlotte Carmichael."
^ I have taken the liberty of printing this quotation as it stands in the text: The writer in The Academy has effected a rearrangement of the dialogue by importing what might be Macbeth's replies to the three
MODERN HYPERCRITICISM. 95
This sequence is supposed to be retained in other of the sisters' speeches ; but a perusal of these will soon show that it is only in the second of the above quotations that it is recognizable with any definiteness ; and this, it must be remembered, is an almost verbal transcript from Holinshed, and not an original con- ception of Shakspere's, who might feel himself quite just'fied in changing the characters of the speakers, while retaining their iitterances. In addition to this, the natural sequence is in many cases utterly and unnecessarily violated; as, for instance, in Act I. sc. iii., where U *-da, who should be solely occupied with past matters, predicts, with extreme minuteness, the results that are to follow from her projected voyage to Aleppo, and that without any expression of resent- ment, but rather with promise of assistance, from Skulda, whose province she is thus invading.
92. But this latter piece of criticism seems open
sisters from his speech beginning at 1. 70, and alternating them with the different "Hails," which, in addition, are not correctly quoted — for what purpose it is difficult to see. It may be added here that in a subsequent number of The Academy, a long letter upon the same subject appeared from Mr. Karl Blind, which seems to prove little except the author's erudition. He assumes the Teutonic origin of the sisters throughout, and, consequently, adduces little evidence in favour of the theory. One of his points is the derivation of the word "weird" or "wayward," which, as will be shown subsequently, was applied to witches. Another point is, that the witch scenes savour strongly of the staff"-rime of old German poetry. It is interesting to find two upholders of the Norn-theory relying mainly for proof of their position upon a scene (Act I. sc. i.) which Mr. Fleay says that the very statement of this theory (p. 249) must brand as spurious. The question of the sisters' beards too, regarding which Mr. Blind brings somewhat far-fetched evidence, is, I think, more satisfactorily settled by the quotations in the text.
96 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
to one grave objection to which the former is not liable. Mr. Fleay separates the portions of the play which are undoubtedly to be assigned to witches from the parts he gives to his Norns, and attri- butes them to different characters ; the other mixes up the witch and Norn elements in one confused mass. The earlier critic saw the absurdity of such a supposition when he wrote : " Shakspere may have raised the wizard and witches of the latter parts of Holinshed to the weird sisters of the former parts, but the converse process is impossible." ^ Is it con- ceivable that Shakspere, who, as most people admit, was a man of some poetic feeling, being in /{)ossession of the beautiful Norn-legend — the silenc Fate-god- desses, sitting at the foot of Igdrasil, the mysterious tree of human existence, and watering its roots with water from the sacred spring — could, ruthlessly and without cause, mar the charm of the legend by the gratuitous introduction of the gross and primarily unpoetical details incident to the practice of witch- craft t No man with a glimmer of poetry in his soul will imagine it for a moment. The separation of characters is more credible than this ; but if that theory can be shown to be unfounded, there is no improbability in supposing that Shakspere, finding that the question of witchcraft was, in consequence of events that had taken place not long before the time of the production of " Macbeth," absorbing the atten- tion of all men, from king to peasant, should set himself to deal with such a popular subject, and, by the magic of his art, so raise it out of its degradation * Shakspere Manual, p. 249.
WITCH DIFFERS FROM NORN. 97
into the region of poetry, that men should wonder and say, " Can this be witchcraft indeed ? "
93. In comparing the evidence to be deduced from the contemporary records of witchcraft with the sayings and doings of the sisters in " Macbeth," those parts of the play will first be dealt with upon which no doubt as to their genuineness has ever been cast, and which are asserted to be solely applicable to Norns. If it can be shown that these describe witches rather than Norns, the position that Shak- spere intentionally substituted witches for the ** god- desses of Destinie" mentioned in his authority is prac- tically unassailable. First, then, it is asserted that the description of the appearance of the sisters given by Banquo applies to Norns rather than witches —
" They look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth, /
And yet are on't." _ -^- — """*
This question of applicability, however, must not be decided by the consideration of a single sentence, but of the whole passage from which it is extracted ; and, whilst considering it, it should be carefully borne in mind that it occurs immediately before those lines which are chiefly relied upon as proving the identity of the sisters with Urda, Ver- dandi, and Skulda.
Banquo, on seeing the sisters, says — ■
" What are these, So withered and so wild in their attire. That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth. And yet are on't ? Live you, or are you aught That man may question ? You seem to understand me,
H
^
98 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
By each at once her chappy finger laying Upon her skinny hps : you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so."
; It is in the first moment of surprise that the sisters,
/ appearing so suddenly, seem to Banquo unlike the
inhabitants of this earth. When he recovers from the
jshock and is capable of deliberate criticism, he sees
I chappy fingers, skinny lips — in fact, nothing to dis-
j tinguish them from poverty-stricken, ugly old women
mut their beards. A more accurate poetical counter-
/ part to the prose descriptions given by contemporary
writers of the appearance of the poor creatures who
were charged with the crime of witchcraft could
ardly have been penned. Scot, for instance, says,
'TThey are women which commonly be old, lame,
bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles. . . . They
; ire leane and deformed, showing melancholie in their
Cces ; " ^ and Harsnet describes a witch as " an old eather-beaten ' crone, having her chin and knees Sleeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a taff, hollow-eyed, untoothed, furrowed, having her li|ps trembling with palsy, going mumbling in the streets ; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, yet riath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab."^ It /must be remembered that these accounts are by two sceptics, who saw nothing in the witches but poor, degraded old women. In a description which assumes tneir supernatural power such minute details would ot be possible ; yet there is quite enough in Ban- qbo's description to suggest neglect, squalor, and
\
* Discoverie, book i. ch. 3, p. 7. "^ Harsnet, Declaration, p. 136.
WITCHES' APPEARANCE. 99 .
misery. But if this were not so, there is one feature in the description of the sisters that would settle the question once and for ever. The beard was in Elizabethan times the recognized characteristic of the witch. In one old play it is said, " The women i that come to us for disguises must wear beards, and , that's to say a token of a witch ; " ^ and in anothery' / " Some women have beards ; marry, they are half \ witches ; " ^ and Sir Hugh Evans gives decisive testi- mony to the fact when he says of the disguised | Falstaff, " By yea and no, I think, the 'oman is a ' witch indeed : I like not when a 'oman has a great peard ; I spy a great peard under her muffler." ^
94. Every item of Banquo's description indicates \ that he is speaking of witches ; nothing in it is incom- patible with that supposition. Will it apply with equal force to Norns } It can hardly be that these mysterious mythical beings, who exercise an incom- , prehensible yet powerful influence over human destiny, could be described with any propriety in terms so revolting. A veil of wild, weird grandeur J might be thrown around them ; but can it be sup- posed that Shakspere would degrade them by repre- senting them with chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards } It is particularly to be noticed, too, that I although in this passage he is making an almost verbal transcript from Holinshed, these details ard | interpolated without the authority of the chronicle. J
^ Honest Man's Fortune, ii. i. Furness, Variorum, p. 30. 2 Dekker's Honest Whore, sc. x. 1. 126. ' Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv. sc. ii.
loo ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
Let it be supposed, for an instant, that the text ran thus —
" Banquo What are these
So withered and so wild in their attire,^ That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth, And yet are on't ? ^ Live you, or are you ought That man may question ? ^
Macbeth. Speak if you can, what are you ?
\st Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of Glamis ! *
7.nd Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor ! ^
yrd Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! thou shalt be king hereafter."^
This is so accurate a dramatization of the parallel passage in Holinshed, and so entire in itself, that there is some temptation to ask whether it was not so written at first, and the interpolated lines subsequently- inserted by the author. Whether this be so or not, the question must be put — Why, in such a passage, did Shakspere insert three lines of most striking de- scription of the appearance of witches ? Can any other reason be suggested than that he had made up his mind to replace the " goddesses of Destinie " by the witches, and had determined that there should be no possibility of any doubt arising about it ?
95. The next objection is, that the sisters exer- cise powers that witches did not possess. They can
* "Three women in strange and wild apparell, 'resembling crea- tures of elder world, ' whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering much at the sight, the first of them spake and said ; * * All haile, Mak- beth, thane of Glammis ' (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father Sinell). * The second of them said ; ' Haile, Makbeth, thane of Cawder.' « But the third said ; ' All haile, Makbeth, that heereafter shalt be king of Scotland."
WITCHES CAN PROPHESY. lor
" look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow, and which will not." In other words, they foretell future events, which witches could not do. But this is not the fact. The recorded witch trials teem with charges of having prophesied what things were about to happen ; no charge is more common. The following, quoted by Charles Knight in his biography of Shakspere, might almost have suggested the simile in the last-mentioned lines. Johnnet Wischert is " indicted for passing to the green growing corn in May, twenty-two years since or thereby, sitting thereupon tymous in the morning before the sun-rising, and being there found and demanded what she was doing, thou ^ answered, I shall tell thee ; I have been peeling the blades of the corn. I find it will be a dear year, the blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to the course of the sun], and when it grows sonegatis about [with the course of the sun] it will be good cheap year." ^ The following is another apt illustration of the power, which has been translated from the unwieldy Lowland Scotch account of the trial of Bessie Roy in 1590. The Dittay charged her thus : " You are indicted and accused that whereas, when you were dwelling with William King in Barra, about twelve years ago, or thereabouts, and having gone into the field to pluck lint with other women, in their presence made a compass in the earth, and a hole in the midst thereof ; and afterwards, by thy conjura- tions, thou causedst a great worm to come up first out of the said hole, and creep over the compass ; and next a little worm came forth, which crept over also ;
^ Sic. 2 p. 438.
I02 ELIZABETHAN D3M0N0L0GY.
and last [thou] causedst a great worm to come forth, which could not pass over the compass, but fell down and died. Which enchantment and witchcraft thou interpretedst in this form : that the first great worm that crept over the compass was the goodman William King, who should live ; and the little worm was a child in the goodwife's womb, who was unknown to any one to be with child, and that the child should live ; and, thirdly, the last great worm thou interpretedst to be the goodwife, who should die : which came to pass after thy speakingr'^ Surely there could hardly be plainer instances of looking " into the seeds of time, and saying which grain will grow, and wjjich will not," than these.
96. Perhaps this is the most convenient place for pointing out the full meaning of the first scene of "Macbeth," and its necessary connection with the rest of the play. It is, in fact, the fag-end of a witches' sabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the com- mencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious and unmeaning at the commencement of the play. The audience is therefore left to assume that the witches have met, performed their conjurations, obtained from the evil spirits the information concerning Macbeth's career that they desired to obtain, and perhaps have been commanded by the fiends to perform the mission they subsequently carry through. All that is needed
* Pitcaim, i. ii. 207. Cf. also Ibid. pp. 212, 213, and 231, where the crime is described as *' foreknowledge."
WITCHES CAN VANISH. 103
\ for the dramatic effect is a slight hint of probable
diabolical interference, and that Macbeth is to be the
special object of it ; and this is done in as artistic a
manner as is perhaps imaginable. In the first scene
they obtain their information ; in the second they utter
their prediction. Every minute detail of these scenes y
is based upon the Sroadj, recognized facts of witch /
97. It is also suggested that the power of vanish- ing from the sight possessed by the sisters — the power to make themselves air — was not characteristic of witches. But this is another assertion that would not have been made, had the authorities upon the subject been investigated with only slight attention. No feature of the crime of witchcraft is better attested than this ; and the modern witch of story-books is still represented as riding on a broomstick — a relic of the enchanted rod with which the devil used to provide his worshippers, upon which to come to his sabbaths.^ One of the charges in the indictment against the notorious Dr. Fian ran thus : " Fylit for suffering himself to be careit to North Berwik kirk, as if he had bene souchand athoirt [whizzing above] the eird." ^ Most effectual ointments were prepared for effecting this method of locomotion, which have been recorded, and are given below ^ as an illustration
^ Scot, book iii. ch. iii. p. 43.
• Pitcairn, i. ii. 210. Cf. also Ibid. p. 211. Scot, book iii. ch. vii. P- 51.
' *' Sundrie receipts and ointments made and used for the transpor- tation of witches, and other miraculous effects.
** Rx. The fat of yoong children, & seeth it with water in a brazen vessell, reseruing the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the bottome, which they laie up & keep untill occasion serveth to use it.
I04 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY,
of the wild kind of recipes which Shakspere rendered more grim in his caldron scene. The efficacy of these ointments is well illustrated by a story narrated by Reginald Scot, which unfortunately, on account of certain incidents, cannot be given in his own terse words. The hero of it happened to be staying temporarily with a friend, and on one occasion found her rubbing her limbs with a certain preparation, and mumbling the while. After a time she vanished out of his sight ; and he, being curious to investigate the affair, rubbed himself with the remaining ointment, and almost immediately he found himself transported a long distance through the air, and deposited right in the very midst of a witches' sabbath. Naturally alarmed, he cried out, " ' In the name of God, what make I heere 1 * and upon those words the whole assemblie vanished awaie." ^
98. The only vestige of a difficulty, therefore, that remains is the use of the term " weird sisters " in describing the witches. It is perfectly clear that Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym for the " goddesses of Destinie ; " but with such a mass / of evidence as has been produced to show that Shak- spere elected to introduce witches in the place of the Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose that he might retain this term as a poetical and not
They put hereinto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas, & Soote. " This is given almost verbatim in Middleton's Witch.
" Rx. Sium, Acarum Vulgare, Pentaphyllon, the bloud of a Flitter- mouse, Solanum Somniferum, & oleum."
It would seem that fern seed had the same virtue. — i Hen. IV. 11. i. 98. * Scot, book iii. ch. vi. p. 46.
« WA YWARD WOMEN," SISTERS. 105
unsuitable description of the characters to whom it was applied. And this is the less improbable as it can be shown that both words were at times applied to witches. As the quotation given subsequently ^ proves, the Scotch witches were in the habit of speaking of the frequenters of a particular sabbath as " the sisters ; " and in Heywood's " Witches of Lanca- shire," one of the characters says about a certain act of supposed witchcraft, '' I remember that some three months since I crossed a wayward woman ; one that I now suspect." ^
99. Here, then, in the very stronghold of the sup- posed proof of the Norn-theory, it is possible to extract convincing evidence that the sisters are in- tended to be merely witches. It is not surprising that other portions of the play in which the sisters are mentioned should confirm this view. Banquo, upan hearing the fulfilment of the prophecy of the second witch, clearly expresses his opinion of the origin of the " foreknowledge " he has received, in the exclamation, " What, can the devil speak true .? " For the devil most emphatically spoke through the witches ; but how could he in any sense be said to speak through Norns } Again, Macbeth informs his wife that on his arrival at Forres, he made inquiry into the amount of reliance that could be placed in the utterances of the witches, " and learned by the perfectest report that they had more in them than mortal knowledge." ^ This would be possible enough " witches were the subjects of the investigation, for
io6 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
their chief title to authority would rest upon the general opinion current in the neighbourhood in which they dwelt ; but how could such an inquiry be carried out successfully in the case of Norns ? It is noticeable, too, that Macbeth knows exactly where to find the sisters when he wants them ; and when he says —
" More shall they speak ; for now I am bent to know, By the worst means, the worst," ^
he makes another clear allusion to the traffic of the witches with the devil. After the events recorded in Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of the prophecies upon which he relies as " the equivocation of the fiend," ^ and the prophets as " these juggling fiends ; " ^ and with reason — for he has seen and heard the very devils themselves, the masters of the witches and sources of all their evil power. Every point in the play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show that Shakspere intentionally replaced the " goddesses of Destinie " by witches ; and that the supposed Norn origin of these characters is the result of a somewhat too great eagerness to unfold a novel and startling theory.
100. Assuming, therefore, that the witch-nature of the sisters is conclusively proved, it now becomes necessary to support the assertion previously made,
^ Mr. Fleay avoids the difficulty created by this passage, which alludes to the witches as " the weird sisters," by supposing that these lines were interpolated by Middleton — a method of criticism that hare" needs comment. Act in. sc. iv. 1. 134. ;
"^ Act V. sc. V. 1. 43. * Ibid. sc. viii. \. 19.
UNTYING THE WINDS. 107
that good reason can be shown why Shakspere should have elected to represent witches rather than Norns.
It is impossible to read " Macbeth " without noticing the prominence given to the belief that witches had the power of creating storms and other atmospheric disturbances, and that they delighted in so doing. The sisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or rain. To them "fair is foul, and foul is fair," as they " hover through the fog and filthy air." The whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind the winds,^ cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate wrecked bodies.^ They describe themselves as "posters of the sea and land ; " ^ the heath they meet upon is blasted ; * and they vanish " as breath into the wind." ^ Macbeth conjures them to answer his questions thus : —
" Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches ; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up ; Though bladed corn be lodged, and trees blown down ; Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure Of nature's germens tumble all together. Even till destruction sicken."^
lOi. Now, this command over the elements does not form at all a prominent feature in the English records of witchcraft. A few isolated charges of the
* I. iii. II, 12. ' Act I. sc. iii. 1. 28.
« Ibid. 1. 32. * Ibid. 1. 77. 5 Ibid. 11. 81, 82.
® Act IV. sc. i. II. 52-60.
io8 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
kind may be found. In 1565, for instance, a witch was burnt who confessed that she had caused all the tempests that had taken place in that year. Scot, too, has a few short sentences upon this subject, but does not give it the slightest prominence.-^ Nor in the earlier Scotch trials recorded by Pitcairn does this charge appear amongst the accusations against the witches. It is exceedingly curious to notice the utter harmless nature of the charges brought against the earlier culprits ; and how, as time went on and the panic increased, they gradually deepened in colour, until no act was too gross, too repulsive, or too ridiculously impossible to be excluded from the in- dictment. The following quotations from one of the earliest reported trials are given because they illus- trate most forcibly the condition of the poor women who were supposed to be witches, and the real basis of fact upon which the belief in the crime subse- quently built itself.
102. Bessie Dunlop was tried for witchcraft in 1576. One of the principal accusations against her was that she held intercourse with a devil who ap- peared to her in the shape of a neighbour of hers, one Thom Reed, who had recently died. Being asked how and where she met Thom Reed, she said, " As she was gangand betwixt her own house and the yard of Monkcastell, dryvand her ky to the pasture, and makand heavy sair dule with herself, gretand^ very fast for her cow that was dead, her husband and
^ Book iii. ch. 13, p. 60.
^ Weeping. I have only half translated this passage, for I feared to spoil the sad simplicity of it.
BESSIE DUNLOP—HER CRIMES. 109
child that wer lyand sick in the land ill, and she new risen out of gissane,^ the aforesaid Thorn met her by the way, healsit ^ her, and said, ' Gude day, Bessie,' and she said, * God speed you, guidman.' * Sancta Marie,' said he, ' Bessie, why makes thow sa great dule and sair greting for ony wardlie thing ? ' She an- swered, ' Alas ! have I not great cause to make great dule, for our gear is trakit,^ and my husband is on the point of deid, and one babie of my own will not live, and myself at ane weak point ; have I not gude cause then to have ane sair hart ? ' But Thom said, ^ Bessie, thou hast crabit * 'God, and askit some thing you suld not have done ; and tharefore I counsell thee to mend to Him, for I tell thee thy barne sail die and the seik cow, or you come hame ; and thy twa sheep shall die too ; but thy husband shall mend, and shall be as hale and fair .as ever he was.' And then I was something blyther, for he tauld me that my guidman would mend. Then Thom Reed went away fra me in through" the yard of Monkcastell, and I thought that he gait in at ane narrower hole of the dyke nor anie erdlie man culd have gone throw, and swa I was something fleit." ^
This was the first time that Thom appeared to her. On the third occasion he asked her " if she would not trow^ in him." She said "she would trow in ony bodye did her gude." Then Thom pro- mised her much wealth if she would deny her Christendom. She answered that " if she should be riven at horsis taillis, she suld never do that, but
* Child-bed. ' Saluted. ' Dwindled away.
* Displeased. * Frightened. ® Trust.
no ELIZABETHAN DE%[ONOLOGY.
promised to be leal and trew to him in ony thing she could do," whereat he was angry.
On the fourth occasion, the poor woman fell further into sin, and accompanied Thom to a fairy meeting. Thom asked her to join the party ; but she said "she saw na proffeit to gang thai kind of gaittis, unless she kend wherefor." Thom offered the old inducement, wealth ; but she replied that " she dwelt with her awin husband and bairnis," and could not leave them. And so Thom began to be very crabit with her, and said, " if so she thought, she would get lytill gude of him."
She was then demanded if she had ever asked any favour of Thom for herself or any other person. She answered that " when sundrie persons came to her to seek help for their beast, their cow, or ewe, or for any barne that was tane away with ane evill blast of wind, or elf grippit, she gait and speirit ^ at Thom what myght help them ; and Thom would pull ane herb and gif her out of his awin hand, and bade her scheir ^ the same with ony other kind of herbis, and oppin the beistes mouth, and put thame in, and the beist wald mend." ^
It seems hardly possible to believe that a story like this, which is half marred by the attempt to partially modernize its simple pathetic language, and which would probably bring a tear to the eye, if not a shilling from the pocket, of the most unsympathetic being of the present day, should be considered suffi- cient, three hundred years ago, to convict the narrator of a crime worthy of death ; yet so it was. This sad
^ Inquired. ^ Chop. * Pitcairn, i. ii. $1, et seq.
STRUGGLE AGAINST BEGGARY. in
picture of the breakdown of a poor woman's intellect in the unequal struggle against poverty and sickness is only made visible to us by the light of the flames that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie Dunlop away for ever from the sick husband, and weakly children, and the " ky," and the humble hovel where they all dwelt together, and from the daily, heart-rending, almost hopeless struggle to obtain enough food to keep life in the bodies of this miser- able family. The historian — who makes it his chief anxiety to record, to the minutest and most irrelevant details, the deeds, noble or ignoble, of those who have managed to stamp their names upon the muster- roll of Fame — turns carelessly or scornfully the page which contains such insignificant matter as this ; but those who believe
" That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain,"
will hardly feel that poor Bessie's life and death were entirely without their meaning.
103. As the trials for witchcraft increase, however, the details grow more and more revolting ; and in the year 1590 we find a most extraordinary batch of cases — extraordinary for the monstrosity of the charges contained in them, and also for the fact that this feature, so insisted upon in Macbeth, the raising of winds and storms, stands out in extremely bold relief The explanation of this is as follows. In the year 1589, King James VI. brought his bride, Anne
112 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
of Denmark, home to Scotland. During the voyage an unusually violent storm raged, which scattered the vessels composing the royal escort, and, it would appear, caused the destruction of one of them. By a marvellous chance, the king's ship was driven by a wind which blew directly contrary to that which filled the sails of the other vessels ; ^ and the king and queen were both placed in extreme jeopardy. James, who seems to have been as perfectly convinced of the reality of witchcraft as he was of his own infallibility, at once came to the conclusion that the storm had been raised by the aid of evil spirits, for the express purpose of getting rid of so powerful an enemy of the ?rince of Darkness as the righteous king. The result was that a rigorous investigation was made into the whole affair ; a great number of persons were tried for attempting the king's life by witchcraft ; and that prince, undeterred by the apparent impropriety of being judge in what was, in reality, his own cause, presided at many of the trials, condescended to superintend the tortures applied to the accused in order to extort a confession, and even went so far in one case as to write a letter to the judges command- ing a condemnation.
104. Under these circumstances, considering who the prosecutor was, and who the judge, and the effectual methods at the service of the court for ex- torting confessions,^ it is not surprising that the king's surmises were fully justified by the statements of the
* Pitcaim, i. ii. 218.
* The account of the tortures inflicted upon Fian are too horrible for quotation.
JAMES'S VOYAGE TO SCOTLAND. 113
accused. It is impossible to read these without having parts of the witch-scenes in " Macbeth " ring- ing in the ears Hke an echo. John Fian, a young schoolmaster, and leader of the gang, or " coven " as it was called, was charged with having caused the leak in the king's ship, and with having raised the wind and created a mist for the purpose of hindering his voyage.^ On another occasion he and several other witches entered into a ship, and caused it to perish.^ He was also able by witchcraft to open locks.^ He visited churchyards at night, and dis- membered bodies for his charms ; the bodies of un- baptized infants being preferred.^
Agnes Sampsoune confessed to the king that to compass his death she took a black toad and hung it by the hind legs for three days, and collected the venom that fell from it. She said that if she could have obtained a piece of linen that the king had
* Pitcairn, i. ii. 211.
' Ibid. 212. He confessed that Satan commanded him to chase cats * ' purposlie to be cassin into the sea to raise windis for destructioune of schippis." Macbeth, i. iii. 15-25.
^ "Fylit for opening of ane loke be his sorcerie in David Seytounis moderis, be blawing in ane woman's hand, himself sittand att the fyre- syde." — See also the case of Bessie Roy, i. ii. 208. The English method of opening locks was more complicated than the Scotch, as will appear from the following quotation from Scot, book xii. ch, xiv. p. 246 : —
"A charme to open locks. Take a peece of wax crossed in bap- tisme, and doo but print certeine floures therein, and tie them in the hinder skirt of your shirt ; and when you would undoo the locke, blow thrice therein, saieing, * Arato hoc partico hoc maratarykin ; I open this doore in thy name that I am forced to breake, as thou brakest hell gates. In nomine patris etc Amen.'" Macbeth, iv. i. 46. * " Finger of birth-strangled babe. Ditch-delivered by a drab. "
Macbeth, iv. i. 30.
I
114 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
worn, she could have destroyed his Hfe with this venom ; " causing him such extraordinarie paines as if he had beene lying upon sharpe thornes or endis of needles." ^ She went out to sea to a vessel called The Grace of God, and when she came away the devil raised a wind, and the vessel was wrecked.^ She delivered a letter from Fian' to another witch, which was to this effect : " Ye sail warne the rest of the sisteris to raise the winde this day at ellewin houris to stay the queenis cuming in Scotland." ^
This is her confession as to the methods adopted for raising the storm. '* At the time when his Majestic was in Denmarke, shee being accompanied by the parties before speciallie named, took a cat and christened it, and afterwards bounde to each part of that cat the cheefest parts of a dead man, and the severall joyntes of his bodie ; and that in the night following the said cat was conveyed into the middest of the sea by all these witches, sayling in their riddles or cives,* as is afore said, and so left the said cat right before the town of Leith in Scotland. This done, there did arise such a tempest in the sea as a greater hath not been scene, which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a vessell coming over from the town of Brunt Ilande to the town of Leith. . . . Againe, it is confessed that the said christened cat was the cause that the kinges Majesties shippe at his coming
1 Pitcaim, i. ii. 218.
" Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one , Sweltered venom sleeping got."
Macbeth, iv. i. 6.
2 Ibid. 235. 3 Ibid. 236. « IMacbeth, i. iii. £'.
STORMS BY WITCHCRAFT. 115
forth of Denmarke had a contrarie wind to the rest of his shippes. . . ." ^
105. It is worth a note that this art of going to sea in sieves, which Shakspere has referred to in his drama, seems to Jiave been pecuHar to this set of witches. EngHsh Vitches had the reputation of being able to go upon the water in egg-shells and cockle- shells, but seem never to have detected any peculiar advantages in the sieve. Not so these Scotch witches. Agnes told the king that she, " with a great many other witches, to the number of two hundreth, all together went to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and went into the same very substantially, with flaggons of wine, making merrie, and drinking by the Avay in the same riddles or cives, to the kirke of North Barrick in Lowthian, and that after they landed they tooke hands on the lande and daunced a reill or short daunce." They then opened the graves and took the fingers, toes, and knees of the bodies to make charms.^
It can be easily understood that these trials created an intense excitement in Scotland. The result was that a tract was printed, containing a full account of all the principal incidents ; and the fact that this pamphlet was reprinted once, if not twice,'^
* Pitcairn, Reprint of Newes from Scotland, i. ii. 218. See also Trial of Ewsame McCalgane, I. ii. 254.
"^ Pitcairn, i. ii. 217.
' One copy of this reprint bears the name of W. Wright, another that of Thomas Nelson. The full title is —
"Newes from Scotland, " Declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, wlio was burned at Edenborough in Januarie last, 1591 ; which Doctor was
ii6 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
in London, shows that interest in the affair spread south of the Border ; and this is confirmed by the pubHsher's prefatorial apology, in which he states that the pamphlet was printed to prevent the public from being imposed upon by unauthorized and extravagant statements of what had taken place.^ Under ordi- nary circumstances, events of this nature would form a nine days' wonder, and then die a natural death ; but in this particular case the public interest con- tinued for an abnormal time ; for eight years sub- sequent to the date of the trials, James published his *' Daemonologie " — a work founded to a great extent upon his experiences at the trials of 1590. This was a sign to both England and Scotland that the subject of witchcraft was still of engrossing interest to him ; and as he was then the fully recognized heir-apparent to the English crown, the publication of such a work would not fail to induce a great amount of attention to the subject dealt with. In 1603 he ascended the English throne. His first parliament met on the 19th of March, 1604, and on the 27th of the same month a bill was brought into the House of Lords dealing with the question of witchcraft. It was re- Register to the Deuill, that sundrie times preached at North Barricke kirke to a number of notorious witches ; with the true examinations of the said D*)ctor and witches as they uttered them in the presence of the Scottish king : Discouering how they pretended to bewitch and drowne his Majestic in the sea, comming from Denmarke, with such other wonderfull matters, as the like hath not bin heard at anie time. " Published according to the Scottish copie.
" Printed for William Wright." ^ * These events are referred to in an existing letter by the notorious Thos. Phelippes to Thos. Barnes, Cal. State Papers (May 21, I59i)» 1 59 1-4, p. 38.
JAMES'S ''DyEMONOLOGIEy 117
ferred to a committee of which twelve bishops were members ; and this committee, after much debating, came to the conclusion that the bill was imperfect. In consequence of this a fresh one was drawn, and by the 9th of June a statute had passed both Houses of Parliament, which enacted, among other things, that "if any person shall practise or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or shall consult with, entertain, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit,^ or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave ... or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft,^ ... or shall , . . practise . . . any witchcraft . . . whereby any person shall be killed, wasted, pined, or lamed in his or her body or any part thereof,^ such offender shall suffer the pains of death as felons, with- out benefit of clergy or sanctuary." Hutchinson, in his "Essay on Witchcraft," published in 1720, declares that this statute was framicd expressly to meet the offences exposed by the trials of 1 590-1 ; but, although this cannot be conclusively proved, yet it is not at all improbable that the hurry with which the statute was passed into law immediately upon the accession of James, would recall to the public
^ Such as Paddock, Graymalkin, and Harpier. - " Liver of blaspheming Jew," etc. — Macbeth, iv. i. 26. ^ " I will drain him dry as hay ; Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid ; He shall live a man forbid : Weary se'nnights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine."
Macbeth, i. iii. 18-23.
ii8 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY,
mind the interest he had taken in those trials in particular and the subject in general, and that Shak- spere, producing, as nearly all the critics agree, his tragedy at about this date, should draw upon his memory for the half-forgotten details of those trials, and thus embody in " Macbeth " the allusions to them that have been pointed out — much less accurately than he did in the case of the Babington affair, because the facts had been far less carefully recorded, and the time at which his attention had been called to them far more remote.^
io6. There is one other mode of temptation which was adopted by the evil spirits, implicated to a great extent with the traditions of witchcraft, but neverthe- less more suitably handled as a separate subject, which is of so gross and revolting a nature that it should willingly be passed over in silence, were it not for the fact that the belief in it was, as Scot says, " so stronglie and universallie received " in the times of Elizabeth and James.
From the very earliest period of the Christian era the affection of one sex for the other was con- sidered to be under the special control of the devil. Marriage was to be tolerated ; but celibacy was the state most conducive to the near intercourse with heaven that was so dearly sought after. This opinion was doubtless generated by the tendency of the early Christian leaders to hold up the events of the life rather than the teachings of the sacred Founder of
^ The excitement about the details of the witch-trials would culmi- nate in 1592. Harsnet's book would be read by Shakspere in 1603.
INCUBUS—SUCCUBUS. 1 19
the sect as the one rule of conduct to be received by His followers. To have been the recipients of the stigmata was a far greater evidence of holiness and favour with Heaven than the quiet and unnoted daily practice of those virtues upon which Christ pro- nounced His blessing ; and in less improbable matters they did not scruple, in their enthusiasm, to attempt to establish a rule of life in direct contradiction to the laws of that universe of which they professed to believe Him to be the Creator. The futile attempt to imitate His immaculate purity blinded their eyes to the fact that He never taught or encouraged celibacy among His followers, and this gradually led them to the strange conclusion that the passion which, sublimed and brought under control, is the source of man's noblest and holiest feelings, was a prompt- ing proceeding from the author of all evil. Imbued with this idea, religious enthusiasts of both sexes immured themselves in convents ; took oaths of per- petual celibacy ; and even, in certain isolated cases, sought to compromise with Heaven, and baffle the tempter, by rendering a fall impossible — forgetting that the victory over sin does not consist in immunity from temptation, but, being tempted, not to fall. But no convent walls are so strong as to shut great nature out ; and even within these sacred precincts the ascetics found that they were not free from the temptations of their arch-enemy. In consequence of this, a belief sprang up, and spread from its original source into the outer world, in a class of devils called incubi and succubi, who roamed the earth with no other object than to tempt people to abandon their
I20 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
purity of life. The cases of assault by incubi were much more frequent than those by succubi, just as women were much more affected by the dancing manias in the fifteenth century than men ;^ — the reason, perhaps, being that they are much less capable of resisting physical privation ; — but, according to the belief of the Middle Ages, there was no generic difference between the incubus and succubus. Here was a belief that, when the witch fury sprang up, attached itself as a matter of course as the phase of the crime ; and it was an almost universal charge against the accused that they offended in this manner with their familiars, and hundreds of poor creatures suffered death upon such an indictment. More details will be found in the authorities upon this unpleasant subject.^
107. This intercourse did not, as a rule, result in offspring ; but this was not universally the case. All badly deformed or monstrous children were suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage, and there was a great tendency to believe that they ought to be destroyed. Luther was a decided advocate of this course, deeming the destruction of a life far pre- ferable to the chance of having a devil in the family. In Drayton's poem, ''The Mooncalf," one of the gossips present at the birth of the calf suggests that it ought to be buried alive as a monster.^ Caliban is a mooncalf,* and his origin is distinctly traced to a
^ Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 136.
2 Hutchinson, p. 52. The Witch of Edmonton, Act v. Scot, Discoverie, book iv.
3 Ed. 1748, p. 171. * Tempest, 11. ii. iii, 115.
CALIBAN THE MOONCALF. 121
source of this description. It is perfectly clear what was the one thing that the foul witch Sycorax did which prevented her life from being- taken ; and it would appear from this that the inhabitants of Argier were far more merciful in this respect than their European neighbours. Such a charge would have sent any woman to the stake in Scotland, without the slightest hope of mercy, and the usual plea for respite would only have been an additional reason for hasten- ing the execution of the sentence.^
108. In the preceding pages an endeavour has been made to delineate the most prominent features of a belief which the great Reformation was destined first to foster into unnatural proportions and vitality, and in the end to destroy. Up to the period of the Reformation, the creed of the nation had been prac- tically uniform, and one set of dogmas was unhesi- tatingly accepted by the people as infallible, and therefore hardly demanding critical consideration. The great upheaval of the sixteenth century rent this quiescent uniformity into shreds ; doctrines until then considered as indisputable were brought within the pale of discussion, and hence there was a great diversity of opinion, not only between the supporters of the old and of the new faith, but between the Reformers themselves. This was conspicuously the case with regard to the belief in the devils and their works. The more timid of the Reformers clung in a great measure to the Catholic opinions ; a small band, under the influence possibly of that knight-errant
^ Cf. Othello, I. i. 91. Titus Andronicus, iv. ii.
122 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
of freedom of thought, Giordano Bruno, who exer- cised some considerable influence during his visit to England by means of his Oxford lectures and dis- putations, entirely denied the existence of evil spirits ; but the great majority gave in their adherence to a creed that was the mean between the doctrines of the old faith and the new scepticism. Their strong common sense compelled them to reject the puerilities advanced as serious evidence by the Catholic Church ; but they cast aside with equal vehemence and more horror the doctrines of the Bruno school. " That there are devils," says Bullinger, reduced apparently from argument to invective, " the Sadducees in times past denied, and at this day also some scarce re- ligious, nay, rather Epicures, deny the same ; who, unless they repent, shall one day feel, to their exceed- ing great pain and smart, both that there are devils, and that they are the tormentors and executioners of all wicked men and Epicures." ^
109. It must be remembered, too, that the emanci- pation from medisevalism was a very gradual process, not, as we are too prone to think it, a revolution suddenly and completely effected. It was an evolu- tion, not an explosion. There is found, in conse- quence, a great divergence of opinion, not only between the earliest and the later Reformers, but between the statements of the same man at different periods of his career. Tyndale, for instance, seems to have believed in the actual possession of the
^ Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon, p. 348. Parker Society.
GRADUAL CHANGE OF BELIEF. 123
human body by devils ; ^ and this appears to have been the opinion of the majority at the beginning of the Reformation, for the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. contained the CathoHc form of exorcism for driving devils out of children, which Avas expunged upon revision, the doctrine of obsession having in the mean time triumphed over the older belief. It is necessary to bear these facts in mind whilst considering any attempt to depict the general bearings of a belief such as that in evil spirits; for many irreconcilable statements are to be found among the authorities ; and it is the duty of the writer to sift out and describe those views which predominated, and these must not be supposed to be proved inaccurate because a chance quotation can be produced in contradiction.
no. There is great danger, in the attempt to bring under analysis any phase of religious belief, that the method of treatment may appear unsympa- thetic, if not irreverent. The greatest effort has been made in these pages to avoid this fault as far as possible ; for, without doubt, any form of religious dogma, however barbarous, however seemingly ridi- culous, if it has once been sincerely believed and trusted by any portion of mankind, is entitled to reverent treatment. No body of great and good men can at any time credit and take comfort from a lie pure and simple ; and if an extinct creed appears to lack that foundation of truth which makes creeds tolerable, it is safer to assume that it had a meaning and a truthfulness, to those who held it, that lapse of
^ I Tyndale, p. 82. Parker Society.
124 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
time has tended to destroy, together with the creed itself, than to condemn men wholesale as knaves and hypocrites. But the particular subject which has here been dealt with will surely be considered to be specially entitled to respect, when it is remembered that it was once an integral portion of the belief of most of our best and bravest ancestors — of men and women who dared to witness to their own sincerity amidst the fires of persecution and in the solitude of exile. It has nearly all disappeared now. The terrific hierarchy of fiends, which was so real, so full of horror three hundred years ago,-^ has gradually vanished away before the advent of fuller knowledge and purer faith, and is now hardly thought of, unless as a dead mediaeval myth. But let us deal tenderly with it, remembering that the day may come when the beliefs that are nearest to our hearts may be treated as open to contempt or ridicule, and the dogmas to which we most passionately cling will, ""like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind."
* Perhaps the following prayer, contained in Thomas Becon's *' Pomander," shows more clearly than the comments of any critic the reality of the terror : —
" An infinite number of wicked angels there are, O Lord Christ, which without ceasing seek my destruction. Against this exceeding great multitude of evil spirits send Thou me Thy blessed and heavenly angels, which may deliver me from their tyranny. Thou, O Lord, hast devoured hell, and overcome the prince of darkness and all his ministers ; yea, and that not for Thyself, but for those that believe in Thee. Suffer me not, therefore, to be overcome of Satan and of his servants, but rather let me triumph over them, that I, through strong faith and help of the blessed angels, having the victory of the hellish araiy, may with a joyful heart say. Death, where is thy sting ? Hell, where is thy victory? — and so for ever and ever magnify Thy Holy Name. Amen. " Parker Society, p. 84.
111. Little attempt has hitherto been made, in the way of direct proof, to show that fairies are really- only a class of devils who exercise their powers in a manner less terrible and revolting than that de- picted by theologians ; and for this reason chiefly — that the proposition is already more than half established when it has been shown that the attri- butes and functions possessed by both fairy and devil are similar in kind, although differing in degree. This has already been done to a great extent in the preceding pages, where the various actions of Puck and Ariel have been shown to differ in no essential respect from those of the devils of the time ; but before commencing to study this phase of super- naturalism in Shakspere's works as a whole, and as indicative, to a certain extent, of the development of his thought upon the relation of man to the invisible world about and above him, it is necessary that this identity should be admitted without a shadow of a doubt.
112. It has been shown that fairies were probably the descendants of the lesser local deities, as devils were of the more important of the heathen gods
126 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
that were overturned by the advancing wave of Christianity, although in the course of time this dis- tinction was entirely obliterated and forgotten. It has also been shown, as before mentioned, that many of the powers exercised by fairies were in their essence similar to those exercised by devils, espe- cially that of appearing in divers shapes. These parallels could be carried out to an almost unlimited extent ; but a few proofs only need be cited to show this identity. In the mediaeval romance of " King Orfeo " fairyland has been substituted for the classical Hades.^ King James, in his " Dsemonologie," adopts a fourfold classification of devils, one of which he names " Phairie," and co-ordinates with the incubus.^ The name of the devil supposed to preside at the witches' sabbaths is sometimes given as Hecat, Diana, Sybilla ; sometimes Queen of Elfame,^ or Fairie.* Indeed, Shakspere's line in " The Comedy of Errors," had it not been unnecessarily tampered with by the critics —
" A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough," ^
would have conclusively proved this identity of cha- racter.
113. The real distinction between these two classes of spirits depends on the condition of national
^ Fairy Mythology of Shakspei-e, Hazlitt, p. 83.
^ Dtemonologie, p. 69. An instance of a fairy incubus is given in the "Life of Robin Goodfellow," Hazlitt's Fairy Mythology, p. 176.
^ Pitcairn, iii. p. 162.
* Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places.
^ Fairy has been altered to "fury," but compare Peele, Battle of Alcazar : "Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel."
NATIONAL FAIRYDOM. 127
thought upon the subject of supernaturalism in its largest sense. A belief which has little or no found- ation upon indisputable phenomena must be con- tinually passing through varying phases, and these phases will be regulated by the nature of the subjects upon which the attention of the mass of the people is most firmly concentrated. Hence, when a nation has but one religious creed, and one that has for centuries been accepted by them almost without ques- tion or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the mind assumes an attitude of passive receptivity, un- disturbed by doubts or questionings. Under such conditions, a belief in evil spirits ever ready and watching to tempt a man into heresy of belief or sinful act, and thus to destroy both body and soul, although it may exist as a theoretic portion of the accepted creed, cannot possibly become a vital doc- trine to be believed by the general public. It may exist as a subject for learned dispute to while away the leisure hours of divines, but cannot by any possi- bility obtain an influence over the thoughts and lives of their charges. Mental disturbance on questions of doctrinal importance being, for these reasons, out of the question, the attention of the people is almost entirely riveted upon questions of material ease and advantage. The little lets and hindrances of every- day life in agricultural and domestic matters are the tribulations that appeal most incessantly to the ineradicable sense of an invisible power adverse to the interests of mankind, and consequently the class of evil spirits believed in at such a time will be fairies rather than devils — malicious little spirits, Avho blight
128 ELIZABETHAN D^MONOLOGY.
the growing corn ; stop the butter from forming in the churn ; pinch the sluttish housemaid black and blue ; and whose worst act is the exchange of the baby from its cot for a fairy changeling ; — beings of a nature most exasperating to thrifty housewife and hard-handed farmer, but nevertheless not irrevocably prejudiced against humanity, and easily to be pacified and reduced into a state of fawning friend- ship by such little attentions as could be rendered without difficulty by the poorest cotter. The whole fairy mythology is perfumed with an honest, healthy, careless joy in life, and a freedom from mental doubt. " I love true lovers, honest men, good fellowes, good huswives, good meate, good drinke, and all things that good is, but nothing that is ill," declares Robin Goodfellow ; ^ and this jovial materialism only reflects the state of mind of the folk who were not unwilling to believe that this lively little spirit might be seen of nights busying himself in their houses by the dying embers of the deserted fire.
114. Such seems to have been the condition of England immediately before the period of the great Reformation. But with the progress of that revolu- tion of thought the condition changes. The one true and eternal creed, as it had been deemed, is shattered for ever. Men who have hitherto accepted their religious convictions in much the same way as they had succeeded to their patrimonies are compelled by this tide of opposition to think and study for themselves. Each man finds himself left face to face
1 Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology, p. 182.
NATIONAL DEVILDOM. 129
with the great hereafter, and his relation to it. Ter- rible doctrines are formulated, and press themselves with remorseless vigour upon his understanding — original sin, justification by faith, eternal damnation for even honest error of belief, — doctrines that throw an atmosphere of solemnity, if not gloom, about national thought, in which no fairy mythology can flourish. It is no longer questions of material ease and gain that are of the chief concern ; and con- sequently the fairies and their doings, from their own triviality, fall far into the background, and their place is occupied by a countless horde of remorseless schemers, who are never ceasing in their efforts to drag both body and soul to perdition.
115. But it is in the towns, the centres of inter- change of thought, of learning, and of controversy, that this revolution first gathers power ; the sparsely populated country-sides are far more impervious to the new ideas, and the country people cling far longer and more tenaciously to the dying religion and its attendant beliefs. The rural districts were but little affected by the Reformation for years after it had triumphed in the towns, and consequently the beliefs of the inhabitants were hardly touched by the struggle that was going on within so short a distance. We find a Reginald Scot, indeed, complaining, half in joke, half in sarcasm, that Robin Goodfellow has long disappeared from the land ; -^ but it is only from the towns that he has fled — towns in which the spirit of the Cartwrights and the Latimers, the Barnhams
^ Scot, Introduction.
K
ISO ELIZABETHAN D^MONOLOGY.
and the Delabers, is abroad. In the same Cambridge where Scot had been educated, a young student had Jianged himself because the shadow of the doctrine of predestination was too terrible for him to live under ; ^ and such a place was surely no home for Puck and his merry band. But in the country places, remote from the growl and trembling of this mental earthquake, he still loved to lurk ; and even at the very moment when Scot was penning the denial of his existence, he was nestling amongst the woods and flowers of Avonside, and, invisible, whispering in the ear of a certain fair-haired youth there thoughts of no inconsiderable moment. And long time after that — after the youth had become a man, and had coined those thoughts into words that glitter still ; after his monument had been erected in the quiet Stratford churchyard — Puck; revelled, harmless and undisturbed, along many a country- side ; nay, even to the present day, in some old-world nooks, a faint whispering rumour of him may still be heard.
1 16. Now, perhaps one of the most distinctive marks of literary genius is a certain receptivity of mind ; a capability of receiving impressions from all surrounding circumstance — of extracting from all sources, whether from nature or man, consciously or unconsciously, the material upon which it shall work. For this process to be perfectly accomplished, an entire and enthusiastic sympathy with man and the * Foxe, iv. p. 694.
SHAKSPERE'S MENTAL TRAINING. 131
current ideas of the time is absolutely essential, and in proportion as this sympathy is contracted and partial, so will the work produced be stunted and untrue ; and, on the other hand, the more universal and entire it is, the more perfect and vital will be the art. Bearing this in mind, and also the facts that Shakspere's early training was effected in a little country village ; that upon the verge of manhood, he came to London, where he spent his prime in contact with the bustle and friction of busy town life ; and that the later years of his life were passed in the quiet retirement of the home of his boyhood — there would be good ground for an argument, a priori, even were there none of a more conclusive nature, that his earlier works would be found impregnated with the country fairy-myths with which his youth would come in contact ; that the result of the labours of his middle life would show that these earlier remi- niscenses had been gradually obliterated by the gloomier influence of ideas that were the result of the struggle of opposed theories that had not then ceased to rage in the towns, and that the diabolic element and questions relating thereto would pre- dominate ; and that, finally, his later works, written under the calmer influence of Stratford life, would show a certain return to the fairy-lore of his earlier years,
117. But fortunately we are not left to rely upon any such hypothetical evidence in this matter, how- ever probable it may appear. Although the general reading public cannot be asked to accept as infallible
132 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
any chronological order of Shakspere's plays that dogmatically asserts a particular sequence, or to in- vestigate the somewhat dry and specialist arguments upon which the conclusions are founded, yet there are certain groupings into periods which are agreed upon as accurate by nearly all critics, and which, without the slightest danger of error, may be asserted to be correct. For instance, it is indisputable that " Love's Labour's Lost," " The Comedy of Errors," " Romeo and Juliet," and " A Midsummer Night's Dream " are amongst Shakspere's earliest works ; that the tragedies of "Julius Caesar," ''Hamlet," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "Lear" are the produc- tions of his middle life, between 1600 and 1606 ; and that "A Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" are amongst the latest plays which he wrote.^ Here we have everything that is required to prove the question in hand. At the commencement and at the end of his writings — when a youth fresh from the influence of his country nurture and education, and when a mature man, settling down into the old life again after a long and victorious struggle with the world, with his accumulated store of experience — we find plays which are perfectly saturated with fairy-lore : " The Dream " and " The Tempest." These are the poles of Shakspere's thought in this respect; and in the centre, imbedded as it were between two layers of material that do not bear any distinctive stamp of their own, but appear rather as a medium for uniting
* For an elaborate and masterly investigation of the question of the chronological order of the plays, which must be assumed here, see Mr. Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere.
AND GROWTH OF THOUGHT. 133
the diverse strata, lie the great tragedies, producea while he was in the very rush and swirl of town life, and reflecting accurately, as we have seen, many of the doubts and speculations that were agitating the minds of men who were ardently searching out truth. It is worth noting too, in passing, that directly Shak- spere steps out of his beaten path to depict, in " The Merry Wives of Windsor," the happy country life and manners of his day, he at the same time returns to. fairyland again, and brings out the Windsor children trooping to pinch and plague the town-bred, tainted Falstaff.
118. But this is not by any means all that this subject reveals to us about Shakspere ; if it were, the less said about it the better. To look upon "The Tempest" as in its essence merely a return to " The Dream " — the end as the beginning ; to believe that his thoughts worked in a weary, unending circle — that the Valley of the Shadow of Death only leads back to the foot of the Hill Difficulty — is in- tolerable, and not more intolerable than false. Al- though based upon similar material, the ideas and tendencies of "The Tempest" upon supernaturalism are no more identical with those of "A Midsummer Night's Dream " than the thoughts of Berowne upon things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet's those of Prospero. But before it is possible to point out the nature of this difference, and to show that the change is a natural growth of thought, not a mere retrogression, a few explanatory remarks are neces- sary.
134 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
There is no more insufficient and misleading view of Shakspere and his work than that which until recently obtained almost universal credence, and is even at the present time somewhat loudly asserted in some quarters ; namely, that he was a man of considerable genius, who wrote and got acted some thirty plays more or less, simply for commercial purposes and nothing more ; made money thereby, and died leaving a will ; and that, beyond this, he and his works are, and must remain, an inexplicable mystery. The critic who holds this view, and finds it equally advantageous to commence a study of Shakspere's work by taking " The Tempest " or " Love's Labour's Lost" as his text, is about as judicious as the botanist who would enlarge upon the structure of the seed-pod without first explaining the preliminary stages of plant growth, or the architect who would dilate upon the most convenient arrangement of chimney- pots before he had discussed the laws of foundation. The plays may be studied separately, and studied so are found beautiful ; but taken in an approximate chronological order, like a string of brilliant jewels, each one gains lustre from those that precede and follow it.
1 19. For no man ever wrote sincerely and earnestly, or indeed ever did any one thing in such a spirit, without leaving some impress upon his w^ork of his mental condition whilst he was doing it ; and no such man ever continued his literary labours from the period of youth right through his manhood, without leaving behind him, in more or less legible character,
SHAKSPERE IN HIS WORKS. 135
a record of the ripening of his thought upon matters of eternal importance, although they may not be of necessity directly connected with the ostensible subject in hand. Insincere men may ape sentiments they do not really believe in ; but in the end they will either be exposed and held up to ridicule, or their work will sink into obscurity. Sincerity in the expression of genuine thought and feeling alone can stand the test of time. And this is in reality no contradiction to what has just been said as to the necessity of a receptive condition of mind in the production of works of true genius. This capacity of receiving the most delicate objective impressions is, indeed, one essential ; but without the cognate power to assimilate this food, and evolve the result that these influences have produced subjectively, it is, worse than useless. The two must co-exist and act and react upon one another. Nor must we be induced to surrender these principles, in the present particular case, on account of the usual fine but vague talk about Shakspere's absolute self-annihilation in favour of the characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere so identifies himself with each person in his dramas, that it is impossible to detect the great master and his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen. If this means that Shakespere has always a perfect comprehension of his characters, is competent to measure out to each absolute and unerring justice, and is capable of sympathy with even the most repulsive, it will not be disputed for an instant. It is so true, that it is, dangerous to take a sentence out of the mouth of any one of his characteis and say
^ 136 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
for certain, " This Shakspere thought," although there are many characters with whom every one must feel that Shakspere identified himself for the time being rather than others. But if it is intended to assert that Shakspere has so eliminated himself from his writings as to make it impossible to trace anywhere the tendencies of his own thought at the time when he was writing, it must be most emphatically denied for the reasons just stated. Freedom from prejudice must be carefully dissociated from lack of interest in the motive that underlies the construction of each play. There is a tone or key-note in each drama that indicates the author's mental condition at the time when it was produced ; and if several plays, following each other in brisk succession, all have the same predominant tone, it seems to be past question that Shakspere is incidentally and indirectly uttering his own personal thought and experience.
120. If it be granted, then, that it is possible to follow thus the growth of Shakspere's thought through the medium of his successive works, there is only one small point to be glanced at before attempting to trace this growth in the matter of supernaturalism.
The natural history of the evolution of opinion upon matters which, for want of a more embracing and satisfactory word, we must be content to call " religious," follows a uniform course in the minds of all men, except those " duller than the fat weed that roots itself at ease on Lethe's wharf," who never get beyond the primary stage. This course is
MENTAL STRUGGLES. 137
separable into three periods. The first is that in which a man accepts unhesitatingly the doctrines which he has received from his spiritual teachers — customary, not intellectual, belief. This sits lightly on him ; entails no troublesome doubts and question- ings ; possesses, or appears to possess, formulae to meet all possible emergencies, and consequently brings with it a happiness that is genuine, though superficial. But this customary belief rarely satisfies for long. Contact with the world brings to light other and opposed theories : introspection and inde- pendent investigation of the bases of the hereditary faith are commenced ; many doctrines that have been hitherto accepted as eternally and indisputably true are found to rest upon but slight foundation, apart from their title to respect on account of age ; doubts follow as to the claim to acceptance of the whole system that has been so easily and unhesi- tatingly swallowed ; and the period of scepticism, or no-belief, with its attendant misery, commences — for although Dagon has been but little honoured in the time of his strength, in his downfall he is much regretted. Then comes that long, weary groping after some firm, reliable basis of belief : but heaven and earth appear for the time to conspire against the seeker ; an intellectual flood has drowned out the old order of things ; not even a mountain peak appears in the wide waste of desolation as assurance of ultimate rest ; and in the dark, overhanging firma- ment no arc of promise is to be seen. But this is a state of mind which, from its very nature, cannot continue for ever : no man could endure it. While
138 ELIZABETHAN DEl'MONOLOGY,
it lasts the struggle must be continuous, but some- where through the cloud lies the sunshine and the land of peace — the final period of intellectual belief Out of the chaos comes order ; ideas that but recently ap- peared confused, incoherent, and meaningless assume their true perspective. It is found that all the strands of the old conventional faith have not been snapped in the turmoil ; and these, re-knit and strengthened with the new and full knowledge of experience and investigation, form the cable that secures that strange holy confidence of belief that can only be gained by a preliminary warfare with doubt — a peace that truly passes all understanding to those who have never battled for it, — as to its foundation, diverse to a miracle in diverse minds, but still, a peace.
121. If this be a true history of the course of deve- / lopment of every mind that is capable of independent I thought upon and investigation of such high matters, ' it follows that Shakspere's soul must have experienced ; a similar struggle — for he was a man of like passions
,' with ourselves ; indeed, to so acute and sensitive a \ mind the struggle would be, probably, more prolonged and more agonizing than to many ; and it is these three mental conditions — first, of unthinking accept- ance of generally received teaching ; second, of profound and agitating scepticism ; and, thirdly, of belief founded upon reason and experience — that may \ be naturally expected to be found impressed upon 5 his early, middle, and later works.
122. It is impossible here to do more than indicate
THOUGHT OF THE "DREAM:' 139
some of the evidence that this supposition is correct, for to attempt to investigate the question exhaustively would involve the minute consideration of a majority of the plays. The period of Shakspere's customary or conventional belief is illustrated in "A Midsum-"^' mer Night's Dream," and to a certain extent also in ;' the " Comedy of Errors." In the former play wej find him loyally accepting certain phases of the here-\ ditary Stratford belief in supernaturalism, throwing rj them into poetical form, and making them beautiful. J' It has often before been observed, and it is well i worthy of observation, that of the three groups of/ \ characters in the play, the country folk — a class whose; manner and appearance had most vividly reflected' themselves upon the camera of Shakspere's mind — are by far the most lifelike and distinct ; the fairies, who had been the companions of his childhood and youth in countless talks in the ingle and ballads in the lanes, come second in prominence and finish ; '[ whilst the ostensible heroes and heroines of the piece, ' the aristocrats of Athens, are colourless and unin- teresting as a dumb-show — the real shadows of the play. This is exactly the ratio of impressionability that the three classes would have for the mind of the youthful dramatist. The first is a creation from life, '1 the second from traditionary belief, the third from > hearsay. And when it has been said that the fairies \ are a creation from traditionary belief, a full and ] accurate description of them has been afibrded. They are an embodiment of a popular superstition, and nothing more. They do not conceal any thought of the poet who has created them, nor are they used
I40 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY,
for any deeper purpose with regard to the other persons of the drama than temporary and objectless annoyance. Throughout the whole play runs a healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost riotous hap- piness ; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt being perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully awakened ; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous merely, and of only transitory influence, and " the summer still doth tend upon their state," brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and flowers. Man has absolutely no / jT power to govern these supernatural powers, and they \, have but unimportant influence over him. They can 'affect his comfort, but they cannot control his fate. But all this is merely an adapting and elaborating of ideas which had been handed down from father to son for many generations. Shakspere's Puck is only the Puck of a hundred ballads reproduced by the hand of a true poet ; no original thought upon the connection of the visible with the invisible world is imported into the creation. All these facts tend to show that when Shakspere wrote " A Midsummer Night's Dream," that is, at the beginning of his career as a dramatic author, he had not broken away from the trammels of the beliefs in which he had been brought up, but accepted them unhesitatingly and joyously.
123. But there is a gradual toning down of this spirit of unbroken content as time wears on. Putting aside the historical plays, in which Shakspere was much more bound down by his subject-matter than
THE THOUGHT OF " HAMLET:' 141
in any other species of drama, we find the comedies, in which his room for expression of individual feeHng was practically unlimited, gradually losing their un- alloyed hilarity, and deepening down into a sadness of thought and expression that sometimes leaves a doubt whether the plays should be classed as come- dies at all. Shakspere has been more and more in contact with the disputes and doubts of the educated men of his time, and seeds have been silently sowing themselves in his heart, which are soon to bring forth a plenteous harvest in the great tragedies of which these semi-comedies, such as " All's Well that Ends Well " and " Measure' for Measure," are but the first- fruits.
124. Thus, when next we find Shakspere dealing with questions relating to supernaturalism, the tone is quite different from that taken in his earlier work. , He has reached the second period of his thought' upon the subject, and this has cast its attendant gloom upon his writings. That he was actually battling with questions current in his time is demon- strated by the way in which, in three consecutive plays, derived from utterly diverse sources, the same question of ghost or devil is agitated, as has before been pointed out. But it is not merely a point of theological dogma which stamps these plays as the product of Shakspere's period of scepticism, but a theory of the influence of supernatural beings upon the whole course of human life. Man is still in- capable of influencing these unseen forces, or bending| them to his will ; but they are now no longer harm
142 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
less, or incapable of anything but temporary or trivial evil. Puck might lead night wanderers into mis- chance, and laugh mischievously at the bodily harm that he had caused them ; but Puck has now dis- appeared, and in his stead is found a malignant spirit, who seeks to laugh his fiendish laughter over the soul he has deceived into destruction. Questions arise thick and fast that are easier put than answered. Can it be that evil influences have the upper hand in this world } that, be a man never so honest, never so pure, he may nevertheless become the sport of blind chance or ruthless wickedness } May a Hamlet, patiently struggling after truth and duty, be put upon and abused by the darker powers .'* May Macbeth, 1 who would fain do right, were not evil so ever present with him, be juggled with and led to destruction by fiends } May an undistinguishing fate sweep away at once the good with the evil — Hamlet with Laertes ; Desdemona with lago ; Cordelia with Edmund .? \ And above the turmoil of this reign of terror, is there ^no word uttered of a Supreme Good guiding and |!Contr6Tting the unloosed ill — no word of encourage- j ment, none of hope } If this be so indeed, that man I is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this I life. It is not worth the living ; for what power has man against the fiends } But at this point arises a further question to demand solution : what shall be hereafter 1 If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in that undiscovered country, — that life to come ? The dreams that may come give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and incapable
DE PROFUNDIS. 143
of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. In either case his life becomes like to a tale
" Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying — nothing ! "
125. It is strange to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism upon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds force to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world around. " Hamlet," " Macbeth," and " Othello " give place to " Lear," " Troilus and Cres- sida," " Antony and Cleopatra," and " Timon." So true is it that '' unfaith in aught is want of faith in all," that in these later plays it would seem that honour, honesty, and justice were virtues not pos- sessed by man or woman ; or, if possessed, were only a curse to bring down disgrace and destruction upon the possessor. Contrast the women of these plays with those of the comedies immediately preceding the Hamlet period. In the latter plays we find the heroines, by their sweet womanly guidance and gentle but firm control, triumphantly bringing good out of evil in spite of adverse circumstance. Beatrice, Rosa- lind, Viola, Helena, and Isabella are all, not with- out a tinge of knight-errantry that does not do the least violence to the conception of tender, delicate womanhood, the good geniuses of the little worlds in which their influence is made to be felt. Events must inevitably have gone tragically but for their intervention. But with the advent of the second period all this changes. At first the women, like Brutus' Portia, Ophelia, Desdemona, however noble
144 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
or sweet in character and well meaning in motive, are incapable of grasping the guiding threads of the events around them and controlling them for good. They have to give way to characters of another kind, who bear the form without the nature of women. Commencing with Lady Macbeth, the conception falls lower and lower, through Goneril and Regan, Cressida, Cleopatra, until in the climax of this utter despair, " Timon," there is no character that it would not be a profanity to call by the name of woman.
126. And just as womanly purity and innocence quail before unwomanly self-assertion and voluptuous- ness, so manly loyalty and unselfishness give way before unmanly treachery and self-seeking. It is true that the bad men do not finally triumph, but they triumph over the good with whom they happen to come in contact. In " King Lear," what man shows any virtue who does not receive punishment for the same t Not Gloucester, whose loyal devotion to his king obtains for him a punishment that is only merciful in that it prevents him from further suffering the sight of his beloved master's misery ; not Kent, who, faithful in his self-denying service through all manner of obloquy, is left at last with a prayer that he may be allowed to follow Lear to the grave ; and beyond these two there is little good to be found. But " Lear " is not by any means the climax. ^5"^^ utter despair of good in man or woman rises higher in " Troilus and Cressida," and reaches its culminating point in " Timon," a fragment only of which is Shak- spere's. The pen fell from the tired hand ; the worn
RUSKIN ON SHAKSPERE. 145
and distracted brain refused to fulfil the task of depicting the depth to which the poet's estimate of mankind had fallen ; and we hardly know whether to rejoice or to regret that the clumsy hand of an inferior writer has screened from our knowledge the full disclosure of the utter and contemptuous cynicism and want of faith with which, for the time being, Shakspere was infected.
127. Before passing on to consider the plays of the third period as evidence of Shakspere's final thought, it will be well to pause and re-read with attention a summing-up of Shakspere's teaching as it has been presented to us by one of the greatest and most earnest teachers of morality of the present day. Every word that Mr. Ruskin writes is so evi- dently from the depth of his own good heart, and every doctrine that he enunciates so pure in theory and so true in practice, that a difference with him upon the final teaching of Shakspere's work cannot be too cautiously expressed. But the estimate of this which he has given in the third Lecture of " Sesame and Lilies " ^ is so painful, if regarded as Shakspere's latest and most mature opinion, that everybody, even Mr. Ruskin himself, would be glad to modify its gloom with a few rays of hope, if it were possible to do so. "What then," says Mr. Ruskin, "is the message to us of our own poet and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over the graves of men } Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's (Homer) ?
* 3rd edition, §115.
L
-^
146 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading of fate more happy ? Ah no ! He differs from the heathen poet chiefly in this, that he recognizes for dehverance no gods nigh at hand, and that, by petty chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by fool's tyranny, or traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope. He, indeed, as part of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with visions of angels ; and the great soldier-king, standing by his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the hand that can save alike by many or by few. But observe that from those who with deepest spirit meditate, and with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words as these ; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the great Christian poet the consciousness of a moral law, through which *the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us ; ' and of the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into pre- cision of doom what we feebly and blindly began ; and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots do pall, to the confession that
/ 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew
1 them how we will.* " ^
1 Mr. Ruskin has analyzed " The Tempest," in " Munera Pulveris,' § 124, et seqq.)i but from another point of view.
SHAKSPERE'S FINAL THOUGHT. 147
128. Now, it is perfectly clear that this criticism was written with two or three plays, all belonging to one period, very conspicuously before the mind. Of the illustrative exceptions that are made to the general rule, one is derived from a play which Shakspere wrote at a very early date, and the other from a scene which he almost certainly never wrote at all ; the whole of the rest of the passage quoted is founded upon " Hamlet," " Macbeth," " Othello," and " Lear " — that is, upon the earlier productions of what we must call Shakspere's sceptical period. But these plays represent an essentially transient state of thought. Shakspere was to learn and to teach that those who most deeply meditate and most passionately mourn are not the men of noblest or most influential character — that such may command our sympathy, but hardly our respect or admiration. Still less did Shakspere finally assert, although for a time he believed, that a blind destiny concludes into precision what we feebly and blindly begin. Far otherwise and nobler was his conception of man and his mission, and the unseen powers and their influences, in the third and final stage of his thought.
129. Had Shakspere lived longer, he would doubtless have left us a series of plays filled with the bright and reassuring tenderness and confidence of this third period, as long and as brilliant in execution as those of the second period. But as it is we are in possession of quite enough material to enable us to form accurate conclusions upon the state of his final thought. It is upon "The Tempest" that
148 ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
we must in the main rely for an exposition of this ; for though the other plays and fragments fully exhibit the restoration of his faith in man and woman, which was a necessary concurrence with his return from scepticism, yet it is in "The Tempest" that he brings himself as nearly face to face as dramatic pos- sibilities would allow him with circumstances that admit of the indirect expression of such thought. It is fortunate, too, for the purpose of comparing Shakspere's earliest and latest opinions, that the characters of " The Tempest " are divisible into the same groups as those of "The Dream." The gross canaille are represented, but now no longer the most accurate in colour and most absorbing in interest of the characters of the play, or unessential to the evolution of the plot. They have a distinct im- portance in the movement of the piece, and represent the unintelligent, material resistance to the work of regeneration that Prospero seeks to carry out, and w;hich must be controlled by him, just as Sebastian and Antonio form the intelligent, designing resist- ance. The spirit world is there too, but they, like the ffbrmer class, have no independent plot of their own, and no independent operation against mankind ; they only represent the invisible forces over which Prospero must assert control if he would insure success for his Vgchemes. Ariel is, perhaps, one of the most extra- ordinary of all Shakspere's creations. He is, indeed, formed upon a basis half fairy, half devil, because it was only through the current notions upon demono- logy that Shakspere could speak his ideas. But he certainly is not a fairy in the sense that Puck is a
REVELATION IN ACTION. 149
fairy ; and he is very far indeed from bearing even a slight resemblance to the familiars whom the magicians of the time professed to call from the vasty deep. He is indeed but air, as Brospero says — the embodiment of an idea, the representative of those invisible forces which operate as factors in the shaping of events which, ignored, may prove re- sistant or fatal, but, properly controlled and guided, work for good.^ Lastly, there are the heroes and heroine of the play, now no longer shadows, but the centres of interest and admiration, and assuming their due position and prominence.
130. It is probable, therefore, that it is not merely a student's fancy that in Prospero's storm-girt, spirit- haunted island can be seen Shakspere's final and matured image of the mighty world. If this be so, how far more bright and hopeful it is than the verdict which Mr. Ruskin finds Shakspere to have returned. Man is no longer " a pipe for fortune's fingers to sound what stop she please." The evil '^ elements still exist in the world, and are numerous / and formidable; but man, by nobleness of life and/ word, by patience and self-mastery, can master them, I bring them into subjection, and make them tend to/ eventual good.: Caliban, the gross, sensual, earthly element— thcru^h somewhat raised— would run riot, and is therefore compelled to menial service. The brute force of Stephano and Trinculo is vanquished
^ It is difficult to accept Mr. Ruskin's view of Ariel as "the spirit of generous and free-hearted service " (Mun. Pul .§ 124) ; he is throughout the play the more-than-half-unwilling agent of Prospero.
ISO ELIZABETHAN DEMONOLOGY.
by mental superiority. Even the supermundane spirits, now no longer thirsting for the destruction of body and soul, are bound down to the work of carrying out the decrees of truth and justice. Man is no longer the plaything, but the master of his fate ; and he, seeing now the possible triumph of good over evil, and his duty to do his best in aid of this triumph, has no more fear of the dreams — the some- rthing after death. Our little life is still rounded by a sleep, but the thought which terrifies Hamlet has no power to affright Prospero. The hereafter is still a mystery, it is true ; he has tried to see into it,^ ( and has found it impenetrable^/But revelation has ^-^'come like an angel, with" "peace upon its wings, in another and an unexpected way. Duty lies here, in and around him in this world. Here he can right wrong, succour the weak, abase the proud, do some- thing to make the world better than he found it ; and in the performance of this he finds a holier calm than the vain strivings after the unknowable could ever afford. Let him work while it is day, for "the night cometh, when no man can work."
131. It is not a piece of pure sentimentality that sees in Prospero a type of Shakspere in his final stage of thought. It is a type altogether as it should be ; and it is pleasing to think of him, in the full maturity of his manhood, wrapping his seer's cloak about him, and, while waiting calmly the unfolding of the mystery which he has sought in vain to solve, watching with noble benevolence the gradual work- ing out of truth, order, and justice. It is pleasing to
THE FINAL PEACE. 151
think of him as speaking to the world the great Christian doctrine so universally overlooked by Chris- tians, that the only remedy for sin demanded by eternal justice " is nothing but heart's sorrow, and a clear life ensuing" — a speech which, though uttered by Ariel, is spoken by Prospero, who himself beauti- fully iterates part of the doctrine when he says —
" The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further." ^
It is pleasant to dwell upon his sympathy with Ferdinand and Miranda — for the love of man and woman is pure and holy in this regenerate world: no more of Troilus and Cressida — upon his patient waiting for the evolution of his schemes ; upon his faith in their ultimate success ; and, above all, upon the majestic and unaffected reverence that appears indirectly in every line — " reverence," to adapt the words of the great teacher whose opinion about Shakspere has been perhaps too rashly questioned, " for what is pure and bright in youth ; for what is true and tried in age ; for all that is gracious among the living, great among the dead, and marvellous in the Powers that cannot die."
* V. i. 27.
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