Part 11 (1/2)
Caliban is a mooncalf,[2] and his origin is distinctly traced to a 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 hastening the execution of the sentence.[3]
[Footnote 1: Ed. 1748, p. 171.]
[Footnote 2: Tempest, II. ii. 111, 115.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Oth.e.l.lo, I. i. 91. t.i.tus Andronicus, IV. ii.]
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 practically uniform, and one set of dogmas was unhesitatingly 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 of freedom of thought, Giordano Bruno, who exercised some considerable influence during his visit to England by means of his Oxford lectures and disputations, 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 religious, nay, rather Epicures, deny the same; who, unless they repent, shall one day feel, to their exceeding great pain and smart, both that there are devils, and that they are the tormentors and executioners of all wicked men and Epicures.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon, p. 348, Parker Society.]
109. It must be remembered, too, that the emanc.i.p.ation from medievalism was a very gradual process, not, as we are too p.r.o.ne to think it, a revolution suddenly and completely effected. It was an evolution, not an explosion. There is found, in consequence, 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 human body by devils;[1] 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 Catholic form of exorcism for driving devils out of children, which was 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.
[Footnote 1: I Tyndale, p. 82. Parker Society.]
110. There is great danger, in the attempt to bring under a.n.a.lysis any phase of religious belief, that the method of treatment may appear unsympathetic 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 ridiculous, if it has once been sincerely believed and trusted by any portion of mankind, is ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sume that it had a meaning and a truthfulness, to those who held it, that lapse of 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 ent.i.tled 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[1], 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 pa.s.sionately cling will, ”like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind.”
[Footnote 1: 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 mult.i.tude of evil spirits send Thou me Thy blessed and heavenly angels, which may deliver me from then tyranny. Thou, O Lord, hast devoured h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.lish army, may with a joyful heart say, Death, where is thy sting? h.e.l.l, where is thy victory?--and so for ever and ever magnify Thy Holy Name. Amen.” Parker Society, p. 84.]
111. Little attempt has. .h.i.therto been made, in the way of direct proof, to show that fairies are really only a cla.s.s of devils who exercise their powers in a manner less terrible and revolting than that depicted by theologians; and for this reason chiefly--that the proposition is already more than half established when it has been shown that the attributes 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 supernaturalism 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 ident.i.ty 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 G.o.ds that were overturned by the advancing wave of Christianity, although in the course of time this distinction 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, especially 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 ident.i.ty. In the mediaeval romance of ”King Orfeo” fairyland has been subst.i.tuted for the cla.s.sical Hades.[1] King James, in his ”Daemonologie,” adopts a fourfold cla.s.sification of devils, one of which he names ”Phairie,” and co-ordinates with the incubus.[2] The name of the devil supposed to preside at the witches' sabbaths is sometimes given as Hecat, Diana, Sybilla; sometimes Queen of Elfame,[3] or Fairie.[4] 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,”[5]
would have conclusively proved this ident.i.ty of character.
[Footnote 1: Fairy Mythology of Shakspere, Hazlitt, p. 83.]
[Footnote 2: Daemonologie, p. 69. An instance of a fairy incubus is given in the ”Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Hazlitt's Fairy Mythology, p.
176.]
[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, iii. p. 162.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places.]
[Footnote 5: Fairy has been altered to ”fury,” but compare Peele, Battle of Alcazar: ”Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel.”]
113. The real distinction between these two cla.s.ses of spirits depends on the condition of national thought upon the subject of supernaturalism in its largest sense. A belief which has little or no foundation upon indisputable phenomena must be continually pa.s.sing through varying phases, and these phases will be regulated by the nature of the subjects upon which the attention of the ma.s.s 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 question or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the mind a.s.sumes an att.i.tude of pa.s.sive receptivity, undisturbed 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 doctrine 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 possibility 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 cla.s.s of evil spirits believed in at such a time will be fairies rather than devils--malicious little spirits, who blight the growing corn; stop the b.u.t.ter from forming in the churn; pinch the s.l.u.ttish 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 friends.h.i.+p 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;[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology, p. 182.]
114. Such seems to have been the condition of England immediately before the period of the great Reformation. But with the progress of that revolution 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 with the great hereafter, and his relation to it.
Terrible doctrines are formulated, and press themselves with remorseless vigour upon his understanding--original sin, justification by faith, eternal d.a.m.nation 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 consequently 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 interchange of thought, of learning, and of controversy, that this revolution first gathers power; the spa.r.s.ely 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;[1] but it is only from the towns that he has fled--towns in which the spirit of the Cartwrights and the Latimers, the Barnhams and the Delabers, is abroad. In the same Cambridge where Scot had been educated, a young student had hanged himself because the shadow of the doctrine of predestination was too terrible for him to live under;[2] 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.
[Footnote 1: Scot, Introduction.]