Part 4 (1/2)
”_Fool._ A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. 'Tis a spirit: sometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer; sometime like a philosopher with two stones more than 's artificial one: he is very often like a knight; and, generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in, from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in.”
[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 89.]
[Footnote 2: Oth.e.l.lo, I. i. 91.]
[Footnote 3: II. ii. 113.]
”All shapes that man goes up and down in” seem indeed to have been at the devils' control. So entirely was this the case, that to Constance even the fair Blanche was none other than the devil tempting Louis ”in likeness of a new uptrimmed bride;”[1] and perhaps not without a certain prophetic feeling of the fitness of things, as it may possibly seem to some of our more warlike politicians, evil spirits have been known to appear as Russians.[2]
[Footnote 1: King John, III. i. 209.]
[Footnote 2: Harsnet, p. 139.]
51. But all the ”shapes that man goes up and down in” did not suffice.
The forms of the whole of the animal kingdom seem to have been at the devils' disposal; and, not content with these, they seem to have sought further for unlikely shapes to a.s.sume.[1] Poor Caliban complains that Prospero's spirits
”Lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark,”[2]
just as Ariel[3] and Puck[4] (Will-o'-th'-wisp) mislead their victims; and that
”For every trifle are they set upon me: Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their p.r.i.c.ks at my footfall. Sometime am I All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues, Do hiss me into madness.”
And doubtless the scene which follows this soliloquy, in which Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano mistake one another in turn for evil spirits, fully flavoured with fun as it still remains, had far more point for the audiences at the Globe--to whom a stray devil or two was quite in the natural order of things under such circ.u.mstances--than it can possibly possess for us. In this play, Ariel, Prospero's familiar, besides appearing in his natural shape, and dividing into flames, and behaving in such a manner as to cause young Ferdinand to leap into the sea, crying, ”h.e.l.l is empty, and all the devils are here!” a.s.sumes the forms of a water-nymph,[5] a harpy,[6] and also the G.o.ddess Ceres;[7] while the strange shapes, masquers, and even the hounds that hunt and worry the would-be king and viceroys of the island, are Ariel's ”meaner fellows.”
[Footnote 1: For instance, an eye without a head.--Ibid.]
[Footnote 2: The Tempest, II. ii. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid. I. ii. 198.]
[Footnote 4: A Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 39; III. i. 111.]
[Footnote 5: I. ii. 301-318.]
[Footnote 6: III. iii. 53.]
[Footnote 7: IV. i. 166.]
52. Puck's favourite forms seem to have been more outlandish than Ariel's, as might have been expected of that malicious little spirit. He beguiles ”the fat and bean-fed horse” by
”Neighing in likeness of a filly foal: And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab; And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool[1] mistaketh me; Then slip I from her, and down topples she.”
And again:
”Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.”[2]
With regard to this last pa.s.sage, it is worthy of note that in the year 1584, strange news came out of Somersets.h.i.+re, ent.i.tled ”A Dreadful Discourse of the Dispossessing of one Margaret Cowper, at Ditchet, from a Devil in the Likeness of a Headless Bear.”[3]
[Footnote 1: A Scotch witch, when leaving her bed to go to a sabbath, used to put a three-foot stool in the vacant place; which, after charms duly mumbled, a.s.sumed the appearance of a woman until her return.--Pitcairn, iii. 617.]