Elizabethan Demonology Part 3

41. Spenser has clothed with horror this conception of the appearance of a fiend, just as he has enshrined in beauty the belief in the guardian angel. It is worthy of remark that he describes the devil as dwelling beneath the altar of an idol in a heathen temple. Prince Arthur strikes the image thrice with his sword--

"And the third time, out of an hidden shade, There forth issewed from under th' altar's smoake A dreadfull feend with fowle deformed looke, That stretched itselfe as it had long lyen still; And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke, That all the temple did with terrour fill; Yet him nought terrifide that feared nothing ill.

"An huge great beast it was, when it in length Was stretched forth, that nigh filled all the place, And seemed to be of infinite great strength; Horrible, hideous, and of h.e.l.lish race, Borne of the brooding of Echidna base, Or other like infernall Furies kinde, For of a maide she had the outward face To hide the horrour which did lurke behinde The better to beguile whom she so fond did finde.

"Thereto the body of a dog she had, Full of fell ravin and fierce greedinesse; A lion's clawes, with power and rigour clad To rende and teare whatso she can oppresse; A dragon's taile, whose sting without redresse Full deadly wounds whereso it is empight, And eagle's wings for scope and speedinesse That nothing may escape her reaching might, Whereto she ever list to make her hardy flight."

42. The dramatists of the period make frequent references to this belief, but nearly always by way of ridicule. It is hardly to be expected that they would share in the grosser opinions held by the common people in those times--common, whether king or clown. In "The Virgin Martyr," Harpax is made to say--

"I'll tell you what now of the devil; He's no such horrid creature, cloven-footed, Black, saucer-eyed, his nostrils breathing fire, As these lying Christians make him."[1]

But his opinion was, perhaps, a prejudiced one. In Ben Jonson's "The Devil is an a.s.s," when Fitzdottrell, doubting Pug's statement as to his infernal character, says, "I looked on your feet afore; you cannot cozen me; your shoes are not cloven, sir, you are whole hoofed;" Pug, with great presence of mind, replies, "Sir, that's a popular error deceives many." So too Oth.e.l.lo, when he is questioning whether Iago is a devil or not, says--

"I look down to his feet, but that's a fable."[2]

And when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Gloucester that he has in reality cast himself over the cliff, he describes the being from whom he is supposed to have just parted, thus:--

"As I stood here below, methought his eyes Were two full moons: he had a thousand noses; Horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea: It was some fiend."[3]

It can hardly be but that the "thousand noses" are intended as a satirical hit at the enormity of the popular belief.

[Footnote 1: Act I. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. ii. l. 285.]

[Footnote 3: Lear, IV. vi. 69.]

43. In addition to this normal type, common to all these devils, each one seems to have had, like the greater devils, a favourite form in which he made his appearance when conjured; generally that of some animal, real or imagined. It was telling of

"the moldwarp and the ant, Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies; And of a dragon and a finless fish, A clipwinged griffin, and a moulten raven, A couching lion, and a ramping cat,"[1]

that annoyed Harry Hotspur so terribly; and neither in this allusion, which was suggested by a pa.s.sage in Holinshed,[2] nor in "Macbeth,"

where he makes the three witches conjure up their familiars in the shapes of an armed head, a b.l.o.o.d.y child, and a child crowned, has Shakspere gone beyond the fantastic conceptions of the time.

[Footnote 1: I Hen. IV. III. i. 148.]

[Footnote 2: p. 521, c. 2.]

44. (iii.) But the third proposed section, which deals with the powers and functions exercised by the evil spirits, is by far the most interesting and important; and the first branch of the series is one that suggests itself as a natural sequence upon what has just been said as to the ordinary shapes in which devils appeared, namely, the capacity to a.s.sume at will any form they chose.

45. In the early and middle ages it was universally believed that a devil could, of his own inherent power, call into existence any manner of body that it pleased his fancy to inhabit, or that would most conduce to the success of any contemplated evil. In consequence of this belief the devils became the rivals, indeed the successful rivals, of Jupiter himself in the art of physical tergiversation. There was, indeed, a tradition that a devil could not create any animal form of less size than a barley-corn, and that it was in consequence of this incapacity that the magicians of Egypt--those indubitable devil-wors.h.i.+ppers--failed to produce lice, as Moses did, although they had been so successful in the matter of the serpents and the frogs; "a verie gross absurditie," as Scot judiciously remarks.[1] This, however, would not be a serious limitation upon the practical usefulness of the power.

[Footnote 1: p. 314.]

46. The great Reformation movement wrought a change in this respect. Men began to accept argument and reason, though savouring of special pleading of the schools, in preference to tradition, though never so venerable and well authenticated; and the leaders of the revolution could not but recognize the absurdity of laying down as infallible dogma that G.o.d was the Creator of all things, and then insisting with equal vehemence, by way of postulate, that the devil was the originator of some. The thing was gross and palpable in its absurdity, and had to be done away with as quickly as might be. But how? On the other hand, it was clear as daylight that the devil _did_ appear in various forms to tempt and annoy the people of G.o.d--was at that very time doing so in the most open and unabashed manner. How were reasonable men to account for this manifest conflict between rigorous logic and more rigorous fact?

There was a prolonged and violent controversy upon the point--the Reformers not seeing their way to agree amongst themselves--and tedious as violent. Sermons were preached; books were written; and, when argument was exhausted, unpleasant epithets were bandied about, much as in the present day, in similar cases. The result was that two theories were evolved, both extremely interesting as ill.u.s.trations of the hair-splitting, chop-logic tendency which, amidst all their straightforwardness, was so strongly characteristic of the Elizabethans.

The first suggestion was, that although the devil could not, of his own inherent power, create a body, he might get hold of a dead carcase and temporarily restore animation, and so serve his turn. This belief was held, amongst others, by the erudite King James,[1] and is pleasantly satirized by st.u.r.dy old Ben Jonson in "The Devil is an a.s.s," where Satan (the greater devil, who only appears in the first scene just to set the storm a-brewing) says to Pug (Puck, the lesser devil, who does all the mischief; or would have done it, had not man, in those latter times, got to be rather beyond the devils in evil than otherwise), not without a touch of regret at the waning of his power--

"You must get a body ready-made, Pug, I can create you none;"

and consequently Pug is advised to a.s.sume the body of a handsome cutpurse that morning hung at Tyburn.

[Footnote 1: Daemonologie, p. 56.]

But the theory, though ingenious, was insufficient. The devil would occasionally appear in the likeness of a living person; and how could that be accounted for? Again, an evil spirit, with all his ingenuity, would find it hard to discover the dead body of a griffin, or a harpy, or of such eccentricity as was affected by the before-mentioned Balam; and these and other similar forms were commonly favoured by the inhabitants of the nether world.

47. The second theory, therefore, became the more popular amongst the learned, because it left no one point unexplained. The divines held that although the power of the Creator had in no wise been delegated to the devil, yet he was, in the course of providence, permitted to exercise a certain supernatural influence over the minds of men, whereby he could persuade them that they really saw a form that had no material objective existence.[1] Here was a position incontrovertible, not on account of the arguments by which it could be supported, but because it was impossible to reason against it; and it slowly, but surely, took hold upon the popular mind. Indeed, the elimination of the diabolic factor leaves the modern sceptical belief that such apparitions are nothing more than the result of disease, physical or mental.

[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 4th Dialogue.

Bullinger, p. 361. Parker Society.]

48. But the semi-sceptical state of thought was in Shakspere's time making its way only amongst the more educated portion of the nation. The ma.s.ses still clung to the old and venerated, if not venerable, belief that devils could at any moment a.s.sume what form soever they might please--not troubling themselves further to inquire into the method of the operation. They could appear in the likeness of an ordinary human being, as Harpax[1] and Mephistopheles[2] do, creating thereby the most embarra.s.sing complications in questions of ident.i.ty; and if this belief is borne in mind, the charge of being a devil, so freely made, in the times of which we write, and before alluded to, against persons who performed extraordinary feats of valour, or behaved in a manner discreditable and deserving of general reprobation, loses much of its barbarous grotesqueness. There was no doubt as to Coriola.n.u.s,[3] as has been said; nor Shylock.[4] Even "the outward sainted Angelo is yet a devil;"[5] and Prince Hal confesses that "there is a devil haunts him in the likeness of an old fat man ... an old white-bearded Satan."[6]

[Footnote 1: In The Virgin Martyr.]

[Footnote 2: In Dr. Faustus.]

[Footnote 3: Coriola.n.u.s, I. x. 16.]

[Footnote 4: Merchant of Venice, III. i. 22.]

[Footnote 5: Measure for Measure, III. i. 90.]

[Footnote 6: I Hen. IV., II. iv. 491-509.]

49. The devils had an inconvenient habit of appearing in the guise of an ecclesiastic[1]--at least, so the churchmen were careful to insist, especially when busying themselves about acts of temptation that would least become the holy robe they had a.s.sumed. This was the ecclesiastical method of accounting for certain stories, not very creditable to the priesthood, that had too inconvenient a basis of evidence to be dismissed as fabricatious. But the honest lay public seem to have thought, with downright old Chaucer, that there was more in the matter than the priests chose to admit. This feeling we, as usual, find reflected in the dramatic literature of our period. In "The Troublesome Raigne of King John," an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere constructed his own "King John," we find this question dealt with in some detail. In the elder play, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d does "the shaking of bags of h.o.a.rding abbots," _coram populo_, and thereby discloses a phase of monastic life judiciously suppressed by Shakspere. Philip sets at liberty much more than "imprisoned angels"--according to one account, and that a monk's, imprisoned beings of quite another sort. "Faire Alice, the nonne," having been discovered in the chest where the abbot's wealth was supposed to be concealed, proposes to purchase pardon for the offence by disclosing the secret h.o.a.rd of a sister nun. Her offer being accepted, a friar is ordered to force the box in which the treasure is supposed to be secreted. On being questioned as to its contents, he answers--

"Frier Laurence, my lord, now holy water help us!

Some witch or some divell is sent to delude us: _Haud credo Laurentius_ that thou shouldst be pen'd thus In the presse of a nun; we are all undone, And brought to discredence, if thou be Frier Laurence."[2]

Unfortunately it proves indubitably to be that good man; and he is ordered to execution, not, however, without some hope of redemption by money payment; for times are hard, and cash in hand not to be despised.

[Footnote 1: See the story about Bishop Sylva.n.u.s.--Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i. 79.]

[Footnote 2: Hazlitt, Shakspere Library, part ii. vol. i. p. 264.]

It is amusing to notice, too, that when a.s.suming the clerical garb, the devil carefully considered the religious creed of the person to whom he intended to make himself known. The Catholic accounts of him show him generally a.s.suming the form of a Protestant parson;[1] whilst to those of the reformed creed he invariably appeared in the habit of a Catholic priest. In the semblance of a friar the devil is reported (by a Protestant) to have preached, upon a time, "a verie Catholic sermon;"[2]

so good, indeed, that a priest who was a listener could find no fault with the doctrine--a stronger basis of fact than one would have imagined for Shakspere's saying, "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

[Footnote 1: Harsnet, p. 101.]

[Footnote 2: Scot, p. 481.]

50. It is not surprising that of human forms, that of a negro or Moor should be considered a favourite one with evil spirits.[1] Iago makes allusion to this when inciting Brabantio to search for his daughter.[2]

The power of coming in the likeness of humanity generally is referred to somewhat cynically in "Timon of Athens,"[3] thus--

"_Varro's Servant._ What is a wh.o.r.emaster, fool?