Shakespeare’s Demonology: A Dictionary 9780826498342, 9781472500403, 9781780936185

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Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Series Editor’s Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
A – Z
Bibliography
Index

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Shakespeare’s Demonology A Dictionary

ARDEN SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARIES SERIES EDITOR Sandra Clark (Birkbeck College, University of London) Class and Society in Shakespeare Paul Innes Music in Shakespeare Christopher R. Wilson and Michela Calore Shakespeare’s Books Stuart Gillespie Shakespeare’s Demonology Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra Shakespeare and the Language of Food Joan Fitzpatrick Shakespeare’s Legal Language B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol Shakespeare’s Medical Language Sujata Iyengar Shakespeare’s Military Language Charles Edelman Shakespeare’s Non-Standard English N. F. Blake Shakespeare’s Plants and Gardens Vivian Thomas and Nicki Faircloth Shakespeare’s Political and Economic Language Vivian Thomas Shakespeare’s Religious Language R. Chris Hassel, Jr Shakespeare’s Theatre Hugh Macrae Richmond FORTHCOMING TITLES: Shakespeare’s Insults Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin Shakespeare and National Identity Christopher Ivic

Shakespeare’s Demonology A Dictionary

Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc © Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra, 2014 Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-7809-3618-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solitions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents

Acknowledgements vi Series Editor’s Preface

vii

Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 A – Z

7

Bibliography 208 Index 225

v

Marion’s Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sandra Clark, the Series Editor, for asking me to edit Shakespeare’s Demonology and to Jo Esra, without whose enthusiastic and thorough work as a co-researcher this project would never have been completed. Thanks also to its various editors during its long process of completion, Anna Fleming, Colleen Coalter and Margaret Bartley at Bloomsbury. The students on my annual ‘Witchcraft and Magic in Literature’ module have always been a great source of inspiration and new questions, and the visiting students attending the University of Exeter’s international summer school in 2012 were also helpful in allowing me to try out some of this material in a class on ‘Supernatural Shakespeare’ and responding with thoughtfulness and excitement. The journey towards this project began at Exeter with Gareth Roberts’ module on ‘Renaissance Magic’ and matured during my MA studies at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, where Stanley Wells, Martin Wiggins and Susan Brock were particularly helpful in allowing me to begin exploring Shakespeare’s interest in witchcraft.

Jo’s Acknowledgements

For enabling me to work on Shakespeare’s Demonology, I would like to thank the editors at Bloomsbury – and Marion Gibson, for inviting me to do so. In both her role as my PhD supervisor, and as co-researcher on this project, Marion has provided consistent encouragement, inspiration and support, and I am deeply indebted to her. My journey here began with Alex Goody, Catherine Spooner and Carolyn D. Williams, and to each I wish to offer my long-overdue gratitude. I would also like to thank my family for their remarkable levels of patience and tolerance, with a special thank-you to my daughter, Evie, for her very helpful and ever-growing enthusiasm for Shakespearean drama.

vi

Series Editor’s Preface

The Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries aim to provide the student of Shakespeare with a series of authoritative guides to the principal subject areas covered by the plays and poems. They are produced by scholars who are experts both on Shakespeare and on the topic of the individual dictionary, based on the most recent scholarship, succinctly written and accessibly presented. They offer readers a self-contained body of information on the topic under discussion, its occurrence and significance in Shakespeare’s works, and its contemporary meanings. The topics are all vital ones for understanding the plays and poems; they have been selected for their importance in illuminating aspects of Shakespeare’s writings where an informed understanding of the range of Shakespeare’s usage, and of the contemporary literary, historical and cultural issues involved, will add to the reader’s appreciation of his work. Because of the diversity of the topics covered in the series, individual dictionaries may vary in emphasis and approach, but the aim and basic format of the entries remain the same from volume to volume. Sandra Clark Birkbeck College University of London

vii

Abbreviations

A&C Antony and Cleopatra AWW All’s Well That Ends Well AYLI As You Like It Cor. Coriolanus Cym. Cymbeline Err. The Comedy of Errors Ham. Hamlet 1 HIV The First Part of Henry IV 2 HIV The Second Part of Henry IV HV Henry V 1 HVI The First Part of Henry VI 2 HVI The Second Part of Henry VI 3 HVI The Third Part of Henry VI HVIII King Henry VIII JC Julius Caesar KJ King John KL King Lear LC A Lover’s Complaint LLL Love’s Labours Lost Luc. The Rape of Lucrece Mac. Macbeth MAdo Much Ado About Nothing MM Measure for Measure MND A Midsummer Night’s Dream MerV The Merchant of Venice MWW The Merry Wives of Windsor Oth. Othello Per. Pericles PP The Passionate Pilgrim PT The Phoenix and the Turtle RII King Richard II RIII King Richard III R&J Romeo and Juliet Shrew The Taming of the Shrew Son. Sonnets T&C Troilus and Cressida viii

Abbreviations

Temp. TGV Tim. Tit. TN TNK V&A WT

The Tempest The Two Gentlemen of Verona Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Twelfth Night The Two Noble Kinsmen Venus and Adonis The Winter’s Tale

ix

Introduction

Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of learning (The Merchant of Venice 2.02.62–4) A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!... We are simple men; we do not know what’s brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by th’ figure, and such daub’ry as this is, beyond our element. (The Merry Wives of Windsor 4.02.172–8)

This dictionary of Shakespeare’s demonological language positions his works in a setting that was unfashionable for much of their afterlives and has only recently regained its position as a necessary scholarly context for reading them. To begin with a definition, ‘demonology’ is not just the study of demons, although its early modern practitioners (demonologists) were deeply interested in devils and their supposed operation in the world. But in deciding which kinds of event or phenomenon were actually demonic and which were natural or divine (and all three were overlapping categories) demonologists also had to discuss all sorts of creatures and powers that would be very unlikely to be described as ‘demonic’ either today or even by a consensus of demonologists or non-demonologists in early modern societies. Surviving evidence suggests that few people of Shakespeare’s time would have been completely happy to dismiss (to pick some random examples) fairies, ghosts and mermaids as demonic although demonologists routinely discussed them. Many people would have contested the idea that the apparition of a dead relative, or a harmless sea-creature, could be the work of the devil. Of course, this depended on what one thought a ghost or a mermaid – let alone a fairy – to be. There were many factors to consider. Was it possible for a human spirit to revisit the living, leaving its body behind in the grave? Or did the body come too? And where did the spirit come from? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Likewise, was a mermaid a flesh and blood hybrid human life-form, or a sea monster? Was it simply a poorly perceived seal or big fish glimpsed in the surf by frightened sailors? Was it an elemental nymph of some kind, or a devilish illusion leading the mariners to their doom? In summary, could such diverse phenomena as mermaids, ghosts and fairies really be simply pigeonholed as demonic illusions, created to trap human beings into a misunderstanding of God’s universe and lead them astray? Not all demonologists thought so, although some did, and certainly there would have been a wide array 1

Introduction

of differing understandings of such phenomena in Shakespeare’s auditorium at each performance and among the readership of his poems. As Stuart Clark showed in his definitive study, Thinking with Demons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), demonology was not just foolish speculation by religious lunatics, as nineteenth-century anti-clerical historians had tended angrily to assume. Nor was it, more ordinarily, just a natural-scientific affiliate of theology. Instead it was an entire genre in its own right, with its own politics and rules. It developed, as part of the organization of early modern thought through Christian humanism, as a way of structuring basic perceptions of the universe. Demonology helped to categorize a number of previously loosely connected phenomena and supposed entities as possible manifestations of demonic intervention in the world, defining them against good and ‘normal’ opposites and thus creating its own distinctive ideological stance. It was essentially a binary way of thinking in that it usually divided phenomena into two camps. Sometimes the two camps were 1) the naturally explicable and 2) the demonic; sometimes they were 1) divine versus 2) Satanic preternatural processes, particularly when demonologists were dealing with rival manifestations of the same thing, such as healing magic. When kings healed their subjects by touch, God must be at work; when witches appeared to do it, the devil must be behind them. Yet for all this underlying binary simplicity, some demonologists were deeply sceptical about being able to identify the demonic. Some ascribed a great deal of apparent magic to human trickery instead of to Satan. Each demonologist had his own approach, with his own pet theories and categories. Into demonological discourse, then, were herded many difficult problems of epistemology (knowing) and taxonomy (classifying). Demonology was a wide-ranging and ultimately unsatisfying attempt to pin down beings and processes that could not simply be assigned to categories such as ‘natural’ or ‘divine’, but needed to be investigated in order to determine their status. Depending on its definer, demonology could thus include witches and their powers, anything ascribed to magic, conjuring tricks, monsters, pagan deities, alchemical processes, certain kinds of medical practice, certain divinations and prophecies, some forms of exorcism and evil spirits or angels. Demonology was often part of discourses that we would now find easier to identify: scientific writing describing experiments, theological writing offering exegesis of biblical and patriarchal writings, cony-catching advice on how to spot tricksters. Its essence as a subject in its own right was, however, that it was contested: it would not fit simply into any of those genres because its subjects did not fit simply into readily available categories. If it came to be accepted, for instance, that fairies were certainly angelic or that magic was certainly impossible, demonology would eventually cease to be interested in those ideas. The first would become the province of theology, the second of cony-catching. But this achievement of uncontested taxonomic clarity never arrived; it was endlessly deferred, and aspects of it still remain today. Some parts of what used to be demonology have shifted into new genres, such as cryptozoology, speculations about alien abduction, earth mysteries, psychical research and paranormal activity. 2

Introduction

This dictionary is modelled on both demonologies and demonological thinking. It contains a wide range of the usual demonological subjects, but it has porous boundaries to which the reader’s attention is drawn as a matter for further thought. Within these it tries to remain faithful to demonologists’ core preoccupations, so that it steers away, for instance, from terms usually associated with providence or chance instead of foretelling. It also does not have individual entries for most of the magical props and ingredients used by witches and conjurors, since these were often ordinary items rendered uncanny by their context. Instead, where a witch sails in a sieve or dips someone else’s finger into her stew, that will be dealt with under the name of her character, to preserve the context intact. These distinctions are sometimes invidious, and occasionally worth brushing aside in the interests of wider discussion of common magical implements, so the reader will find an entry for cauldron and one for book. Shakespeare’s Demonology thus draws attention to the struggle to categorize, to put into words and interpret, so that its central principle is ambiguity – in a sense a demonological dictionary is an oxymoron, for demonology thrives on the undefinable. Nevertheless, our book attempts, firstly, to define its terms, and then to analyse the ways in which demonological thinking informed Shakespeare’s imagery, characterization and plotting. Sometimes – often – the answer must be that we cannot be sure: so much depends on context. So we explored that context, discussing the back history of each term, its usual demonological contexts in literature, theology or social practices of the period, and its appearance in various Shakespearean situations, to position Shakespeare’s use of a particular word – ‘elf’, say, or ‘spell’ – in wider discourse. This is as close as we can get to the discourse in which he would have written the word and in which hearers and readers would have encountered it. But it is just that: a discourse, a conversation, not the attribution of a fixed viewpoint or definite, limited meaning. It is, of course, not possible to say how the author or the audience might have felt about the word. But it is possible to reconstruct at least part of a conjectured context from surviving demonologies, witchcraft trial accounts, scientific treatises and theological controversies. We hope that the result is to leave the reader of the dictionary with an enhanced range of meanings and resonances for each word, and a bibliography of further reading with which to continue their own explorations. In addition to defining specific demonological terms, over 50 characters are discussed. These are those who are magical practitioners such as witches, prophets or exorcists, or are formally accused of witchcraft (although not those to whom the word ‘witch’ or ‘wizard’ is applied only as a passing insult), or appear as ghosts, fiends or fairies. Further, the dictionary does not deal at length with classical paganism, except to note where it is clearly being imagined as part of a Renaissance demonological discourse. Likewise monsters and mythical beasts are not discussed unless they are linked with notions of devils, witches or other demonological staples. Early modern understandings of Roman and Greek religions are, of course, repeatedly referred to in plays such as JC. But, as these plays suggest, they were usually seen as clearly differentiated from contemporary demonological concerns: pre-Christian and therefore not to be confused 3

Introduction

with damnable magics. Sometimes this distinction is less clear-cut, or an interesting double vision is present, especially in Err. and some of the late plays. In WT Act 3, Scene 1, Cleomenes and Dion compare the Delphic oracle to Jove’s thunder in what may be an uneasy attempt to include the Christian God in their world view under the stage-title ‘Jove’, whilst in Act 2, Scene 3 and Act 5, Scene 1 Paulina protests her innocence of witchcraft, without specifying whether this is the veneficial classical kind or anti-Christian. She does, however, refer to ‘wicked powers’, which suggests the latter. I do not want to risk confusing Classical paganism with witchcraft in ways that Shakespeare does not. Similarly, Moorish and Jewish characters’ religion will not be discussed unless it specifically intersects with Christian demonology, as in Oth., where Othello is accused of winning Desdemona’s love by magic. The demonology with which Shakespeare was familiar was Protestant, but informed by an older European Catholic counterpart. The key British demonologists for Shakespeare were probably Reginald Scot, author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), possibly George Gifford, author of A Dialogue of Witches and Witchcraftes (London, 1593), King James VI of Scotland and I of England, author of Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597) and Samuel Harsnett, author of A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603). It is likely that Shakespeare knew these works, and certain that Harsnett was an important source for KL. But of these only one – King James’s book – could be described as a fairly straightforward demonology, setting out the kinds of things that devils and witches were likely to do and discussing how to detect and stop them. All the other works expressed significant doubts about witch-hunting, the presence of devils in human affairs and particularly in the human body, and the utility and theological justification of key tests for witchcraft or demonic possession. Shakespeare thus encountered demonology through the lens of scepticism, like other Englishmen of his time, because English demonologists wrote sceptical treatises. However, he is also likely to have known shorter and less formal works on demonology, especially those in the news pamphlet genre such as Newes from Scotland (Edinburgh, 1591) or A True and Just Recorde (London, 1582). A good case can be made for his knowledge of at least the events described in the former, since it contains sieve-sailing Scottish witches and its central theme is the murderous relationship between kingship and witchcraft making it a close relation of Mac.. Pamphlets like the latter might have provided contextual reading material, but we cannot be quite sure. Beyond these, Shakespeare might have been aware of some of the works of European demonologists, or at least the import of their work, which was often that women were especially likely to fall into the temptations of practising magic and that words in particular offered an entry point for the devil into human affairs. Lies, prophecies, temptations were all the devil’s territory, and they were often poetic territory too in plays like JC or RIII where curses and soothsayings drive and embellish the plot. Unlike Jonson – for example – Shakespeare was not as fascinated by the nitty-gritty detail of demonology as he was by some other aspects of human life. Its oversimplifying 4

Introduction

binary structure may perhaps be seen as going against the grain of most of his works. Where Jonson used explicitly demonological, astrological or alchemical imagery to flatter Stuart pretensions to British absolutism or to satirise the commodification of human relationships, Shakespeare’s interest manifested itself much more quietly. Demonological phenomena occur repeatedly in his works from one of his earliest plays, 1 HVI (however much of it is his), but they are usually used as a foundation on which to build stories of more complex human emotion and incident. Good examples are MND and Temp.. Each play takes for granted the imaginative world of the supposedly supernatural that demonologists debated so hotly. Fairies, witches and spirits exist unquestioned and ill-defined in these plays. The viewer or reader may ask themselves about the nature of, say, magical spells or fairy rings or dismiss them as fancies, but there is no overt discussion of good and evil, matter and spirit in either text. Instead, the inherent ambiguity of such phenomena and entities is part of the mystery of each play – both in the sense of its craft, and its complex engagement with the human imagination. For Shakespeare, goblins and spirits, witches and fiends, magic and conjurors, seem to exist in a privileged space where demonological definition is less important than storytelling and its potential. An interesting exception is Ham. where the nature of the ghost is discussed at some length, but (as usual) no conclusion is reached. Clark’s conception of demonology as a linguistic creation intended to describe and delimit an actually indefinably complex world is thus a useful contemporary label under which to cluster Shakespeare’s bugs and sprites. It also offers a new way of approaching his writing. A new look at Shakespeare’s demonology allows the study of his works to move, along with the study of demonology in its own right, beyond exclamation against the injustice of witch hunts or questionable celebration of ‘the Bard’ as a repository of British folklore, into a territory where it can better engage with literary theory and especially historicist-materialist readings of other Shakespearean discourses. This dictionary can thus offer both a summation of previous work on Shakespeare and witchcraft, Shakespeare and the magus, Shakespeare and fairies and so on, and provide a fresh new reading that links his literary creativity to the underlying linguistic organization of the early modern world. The study of early modern demonology is exciting precisely because it crosses disciplinary boundaries and refuses to be confined intellectually, as it always did, and it is from these cross-currents of thought that we see new work on Shakespeare’s demonology emerging. To assist this, we have included references to older work, as far back as the 1880s, where it helps to illuminate a textual crux or shows the way in which the critical field has developed. We have not attempted to offer comment on Shakespeare’s ‘beliefs’ or the development of his thoughts about demonology during his career: neither is evident from the available material. We have included reference to scholarly work which does discuss these matters (for example, whether or not Shakespeare was a Catholic), where it is relevant to a particular demonological term. But the notion that it is possible to infer a fixed and well-defined belief system from a given writer’s works is problematic – indeed, it seems likely that early modern people approached preternatural 5

Introduction

phenomena in a similar spirit of enquiry, theorizing and confusion to that we see today. Some have left us an account of their conclusions, but we know from the example of King James VI and I himself that conclusions could change over the course of time. The King James who wrote Daemonologie in the 1590s appears to have rather different working assumptions from the King James who rejected the claims of apparent victims of possession in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Who is to say that Shakespeare did not experience similar shifts of opinion, or entertain recurrent doubts? We hope that you find Shakespeare’s Demonology both a useful reference point and a stimulus to further scholarly work on key terms and ideas. Textual note: This dictionary is based on Marvin Spevack’s Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1974), and thus on the Riverside Shakespeare’s Complete Works (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning; first edition 1974, wonderfully rich second edition 1997). It excludes plays tentatively and partly attributed to Shakespeare in modernity, such as Edward III and Sir Thomas More, but includes 1 Henry VI and Henry VIII (the latter perhaps written with John Fletcher) which were credited to him by his contemporaries, the editors of the First Folio, in 1623, Pericles which, although it is not in the Folio, appeared under his name in 1609, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, attributed to John Fletcher and Shakespeare as co-authors on its title-page in 1634 – thus, early enough for it to be likely that its wellconnected publisher was correctly informed. Most of the demonological material from Thomas Middleton’s The Witch (c. 1615; London, 1778) which ended up in what may be a post-Shakespearean revision of Macbeth is also excluded, although the insertions are discussed when they impact on uncontestedly Shakespearean scenes. In the text of the dictionary, plays and poems are referred to by abbreviated titles or the first letters of key words although in the bibliography journal titles are given in full, for convenience of consultation. Throughout, Cresswell (2010), Crystal and Crystal (2002), Hoad (1996), Knowles (2006), Onions (1996) and Opie and Tatem (1996) have been of great assistance. With longer entries, the first section (A) is an encyclopaedia-style entry, setting out basic information on the topic. The second section (B) is a guided tour of citations from the plays and poems in which the entry-word appears. The final section (C) consists of an annotated bibliography, indicating where particular aspects of the entry can be explored in more depth.

6

A Accursed See also: cursing, uncursing, witchcraft, Lady Anne, Joan La Pucelle, devil, fiend, Jane Shore, ban, damnation, forbid (A) The term ‘accursed’ is used to describe a person, object or time that is, variously, perceived to be unlucky, ill-fated or literally subject to a curse. In many usages, ‘accursed’ has thus almost freed itself from magical associations, but its frequency (it is used over 30 times in Shakespeare’s plays and poems) suggests the extent to which demonological thinking was embedded in the English language in Shakespeare’s time. A curse could be lifted by uncursing, but in literature curses tend to work themselves out unchallengeably and unbreakably – they thus embody the notion of poetic justice, often in a case where a victim of injustice gets their revenge on a powerful adversary through the power of words. (B) As examples of the ways in which ‘accursed’ had spread in its usage beyond its original demonological context, there are no immediately magical connotations in these references to the concept: ‘accurs’d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!’ (R&J 4.05.43), ‘accurs’d be he that seeks to make them foes’ (3 HVI 1.01.205), ‘in second husband let me be accurs’d’ (Ham. 3.02.179) and most famously Henry V’s optimistic prediction that gentlemen who miss the Battle of Agincourt will ‘think themselves accurs’d they were not here’ (HV 4.03.65). Yet there are still plenty of more literal, magical usages, and the term recurs in plays associated with witchcraft, such as Mac., RIII and 1 HVI: Macbeth’s is ‘a hand accurs’d’ (Mac. 3.06.49), whilst he himself rejects bad news with the malediction ‘accursed be that tongue that tells me so’ (5.08.17). Meanwhile, Richard of Gloucester is ‘accursed/For making me, so young, so old a widow’ (by Lady Anne; RIII 4.01.72–3) and is referred to as the child of an ‘accursed womb, the bed of death’ (4.01.53) Disorder in the microcosm of the play is expressed through curse metaphors, incantations and cognate words. The play’s tensions and the confusions of kinship thus could be said to originate from the ‘accursed womb’ of Richard’s mother, the Duchess of York. More literally, the witch Joan La Pucelle is called a ‘foul accursed minister of hell’ (1 HVI 5.04.93). In Tit. Aaron’s status as a ‘devil’ is also reflected in the language of cursing used to describe him and his child: ‘accurs’d the offspring of so foul a fiend’ (4.02.79) and ‘this accursed devil’ (5.03.5). The notion of accursedness is sometimes combined by Shakespeare with the opposing notion of being blessed, which is also applied freely and vaguely to a variety of situations: ‘how accurs’d/In being so blest’

7

Alchemy

(WT 2.01.38) helps to balance ‘most accurs’d am I’ in the same play (3.03.52) whilst the pairing occurs twice in Tim.: ‘blest to be most accurs’d’ (4.02.42) and ‘bless the accurs’d’ (4.03.35). (C) Focusing on the phrase ‘accursed womb’, Iizuka (2004) discusses the nature of the abuse levelled at Richard III, which emphasizes his ugly appearance, the intertwined evil aspects of his personality and the links with the Vice figure of morality plays. The Duchess of York’s rejection of her consequently accursed offspring operates as a form of prophecy of Richard’s downfall and death: the ‘accursed womb’ has produced a physically deformed Richard and an accursed family. This analysis of accursedness can be applied to other works. Steible (2003) examines Jane Shore and former Queens Elizabeth and Margaret as witches, emphasizing that their cursing is aimed against tyranny as well as Richard personally, and constitutes a political act: the state and throne as accursed as well as the individual. Alchemy See also: magic, demon/daemon, astronomy, angel, spirit, transformation, monster, occult, book (A) Alchemy is an Arabic word for a magical and scientific practice that is concerned with seeking enlightenment and making the philosopher’s stone (which was thought to transmute base metals into gold, heal disease, preserve health and prolong life). Alchemical texts recorded procedures, recipes and principles: thus alchemy was concerned with methodological rules and instructions, checklists, diagrams and formulae. Its study is a precursor to chemistry (a word descended from ‘alchemy’). Yet alchemy was also seen as a form of ‘natural magic’ or part of ‘natural philosophy’ and the hermetic tradition. To some it trespassed into demonic magic, although its practitioners denied this. They preferred to stress its potential for philosophical and public good: it sought pious truths, they argued, and it could be applied medicinally. Astrologer-magicians like Simon Forman and John Dee (see astronomy, angel) were both interested in alchemy, amongst other occult sciences. Forman saw alchemy as one component of the science of astronomy. Astrology and alchemy were also related through the correspondence between the seven planets and the seven alchemical metals: gold/silver with the sun/moon; and the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) with the five metals (mercury, copper, iron, tin and lead). A leading authority for alchemical work was Hermes Trismegistus, the fictional ancient Egyptian sage whose alleged writings prompted the doctrines and cosmology known as hermeticism. The alchemical texts attributed to him had been circulated since the thirteenth century. In the late fifteenth century further, more philosophical texts attributed to Hermes were discovered and brought to Florence to be translated from Greek to Latin by Marsilio Ficino, a humanist at work for Cosmo de’Medici. These were printed as the Corpus Hermeticum (1463), and prompted Ficino to situate man as an intermediary between the divine and the natural, the macrocosm and the microcosm. He posited a ‘spiritus

8

Almanac

mundi’, a world spirit that could be tapped into by magicians and alchemists. Thus by Shakespeare’s time alchemy had a strong spiritual dimension, allowing natural-magical transformation to occur. (B) It is in this transformative sense that Shakespeare uses the word, although the transformations are profoundly questionable. The sun is portrayed as ‘gilding pale streams with heavenly alcumy’ (Son. 33.4) and monsters are turned to cherubim by the poet’s eye since ‘your love taught it this alcumy’ (Son. 114.4). Both changes are either illusory or matters of perception, surface rather than depth: is the lover a monster still, as the sonnet seems to suggest? Is the stream really changed to gold, as alchemists aimed to do, or simply ‘gilded’ with a thin layer of gold to make it look flashy, a doubly superficial non-transformation? Similarly the sun ‘plays the alchymist’ in KJ (3.01.78) making earth appear golden. Casca says that Brutus’ approval ‘like richest alchymy’ will turn the conspirators’ planned murder of Julius Caesar to ‘virtue’ and ‘worthiness’; yet it will still be murder and the play explores whether that can be carried out honourably by honourable men or not. Will Brutus’s good intentions really transform the act? (JC 1.03.159). In Tim., the queasy association of alchemy with deceit is overtly related to poetry. A poet comes to seek Timon, flattering him and promising yet-unwritten work. Timon beats him, urging ironically: ‘you are an alcumist, make gold of that’ (5.01.114). Poetry is alchemy, which could be a beautiful and fulfilling image, but here it is non-existent poetry, framed by lies and the fraudulent exploitation of a potential patron. (C) Healy (2011) explores the alchemical imagery of Shakespeare’s Son. and other poems such as PT (which contains references to bird-names used to designate different stages of alchemical processes, and a quasi-mystical union of the kind imagined to occur between elements in a ‘chemical wedding’). She suggests that whilst Shakespeare was less interested in alchemy than some of his contemporaries, such as Jonson and Donne, he engages with alchemical imagery in more depth than has been previously discussed, including using it to signify genuine spiritual transformation. See also Muñoz Simonds (1998, 1999) for an alchemical reading of V&A and sonnets 19–20 and Gray (2006) on Neo-Platonism in the sonnets. Vickers (1984) discusses the potential of alchemy as a literary image. On Dee and Forman, see Harkness (1996, 1999) and Kassell (2005). On the wider alchemical context see Linden (2007), Merkel and Debus (1988), eds, Graubard (1953) and Eggert (2006). Almanac See also: book, astronomy, auspicious, star, planet, eclipse, prophecy, magic, Dromio of Ephesus, supernatural, nativity (A) The almanac, a word probably of Arabic origin, was a text closely related to astrology and astronomy. Almanacs were books and manuscripts containing charts and calendars that detailed celestial positions over the forthcoming year, such as auspicious astral positions (thus of both stars and planets), and gave details of eclipses, tide times,

9

Amaimon

weather patterns and other useful information. They were used as an aid to astrological medicine, and designed to be carried about for ready reference. The printed almanacs of Shakespeare’s time were thus small, cheap and portable and the almanac seller was a familiar figure on the streets of London and the provinces. Medieval manuscript almanacs tended to contain a ‘kalendar’ with ecclesiastical information regarding church festivals, whilst early fifteenth-century printed almanacs were also historical records, and contained predictions or prophecies. Yet the latter was dangerous territory, verging on or straying into the magical so that almanacs were often regarded as deluded or lying, and their sellers as tricksters or tempters. The debates expressing concerns about almanacs were similar to those regarding astrology generally, and the opposition to judicial astrology – prediction being viewed as undermining God and moral responsibility. The seventeenth century saw a growing number of almanacs which set out the basic rules of astrology in a clear and simple manner, and so astrological terms passed into common usage (lunatic, jovial, mercurial). This was seen by some to be leading ignorant readers into territory with which they were unfamiliar, making them foolish pseudo-experts. (B) Shakespeare follows a popular strain of comedy in mocking almanacs and those who regarded them as oracular. ‘Look in the almanac’ says Bottom in MND (3.01.53) when he wants to know if the moon will be shining brightly on the night of his theatrical performance. It is a reasonable scientific use of the calendar, but in its context is intended to be funny. Bottom’s almanac remains anonymous, though certain publications were sometimes named onstage for added comic effect. Similarly in the context of teasing, when Hal is covertly observing Falstaff in the tavern in 2 HIV he and Poins joke that when Falstaff and Doll are together Saturn and Venus must be in conjunction: ‘what says th’almanac to that?’ (2.04.264). Antipholus of Syracuse refers to his servant Dromio as ‘the almanac of my true date’ in Err. (1.02.41) but he is speaking to the wrong Dromio (Dromio of Ephesus), who accordingly brings him confusion not instructive clarity. Finally, the wisdom of the almanac is also surpassed in the phrase ‘they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report’, which refers humorously to Cleopatra’s unpredictable tears and tempers (A&C 1.02.149). (C) Camden (1933), Sondheim (1939), McIntosch (1969), Smith (1958) and Dean (1924) survey astrology in Shakespeare’s works. Capp (1979) suggests that the popularity of almanacs was explained by their supply of an (illusory) way of harnessing supernatural powers, a need often thought to be ignored by the post-Reformation Protestant church. Chapman (2007) explores the related but more literary notion that the rise in almanacs was related to a post-Reformation desire for new legibility in the world. Amaimon See also: devil, evil, spirit, conjurer, magic, Barbason, Lucifer, fiend, Owen Glendower ‘Amaimon’ is the name of a devil, an evil spirit whom conjurors believe can be

10

Angel

warded off by magic rings. Shakespeare is likely to have taken the name from Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), as he does with ‘Marbas, alias Barbas’ in the same passage, who became Shakespeare’s Barbason. The two names are mentioned together with Lucifer by Master Ford in MWW (2.02.297), when he notes that ‘Amaimon sounds well, Lucifer well, Barbason well’. His point is that these striking appellations are the names of fiends, yet ‘cuckold’ is a much worse word, for Ford himself. Amaimon and Lucifer are again mentioned together (and again with cuckolds) in Falstaff’s mockery of the supposed conjuror Owen Glendower in 1 HIV (2.04.336–7); ‘he of Wales [Glendower], that gave Amaimon the bastinado and made Lucifer cuckold’. Thus he features as a generic devil, but with a specific set of associations for audiences of these two plays, first 1 HIV (probably written in the mid-1590s) and then MWW (perhaps 1597 but more likely closer to the first Quarto publication of 1602, as a prequel to HV and last hurrah for Falstaff). Although Kegl’s (1994) article focuses on early modern ideas of slander, she includes analysis of Ford’s self-slander as he considers different names for himself, including comparators like Amaimon and Barbason. Angel See also: spirit, evil, magician, demon/daemon, Sathan, ass-head, Faustus, fiend, hell, Julius Caesar, ghost, vision, Edgar, Hoppedance, soothsayer, witch, fairy (A) The word ‘angel’ is related to the Greek word for messenger, so that angels were thought to be bringers of guidance and inspiration from the spirit world. Angels could be both evil and good; the evil ones were part of the troop of dangerous and deceptive creatures that populated demonologies, whilst the good ones belonged to theology or to Neo-Platonic thought as variously defined benign spirits. Yet all these definitions of ‘angel’ were part of a continuum of beings. In conventional theology, the evil angels of Judaeo-Christian tradition fell from their original goodness when they displeased God. Descending from Jewish notions of intermediaries between heaven and earth, angels could guard or minister to human beings at God’s behest. Their nature and bodily substance was disputed in the Middle Ages, and matters were opened up to further confusion when Protestantism arrived to question the concept of intermediary status between God and human beings in its entirety. In Protestant thought, angels were still accepted as part of Christian truth, for they are mentioned repeatedly in the Bible and Christ himself spoke of them, including their role as guardians. But they were troublingly hard to define and stood worryingly between God and man, potentially distracting the faithful from sole focus on the deity. Some Jewish traditions, such as those recorded in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, listed many angelic names as God’s messengers and agents bringing knowledge to mankind in Promethean style. This notion of angels as educators tempted Renaissance magicians such as John Dee to try to hold discussions with them, in Dee’s case from the 1580s onward. These experiments were supposedly secret, but in fact widely rumoured and deplored. Dee’s

11

Angel

speculations – and those of other Renaissance magicians – were also informed by Neo-Platonic notions of spirits hovering between human and divine, ‘daemons’ (see demon/daemon). Therefore in Elizabethan and Jacobean writing angels often occur in discourses of suspicion and doubt, particularly because of the idea of the evil angels’ rebellion against God and their fall, and fears about Neo-Platonic magic. These evil angels were thought to be able to manifest themselves to humans as demonic attendant spirits or genii. The Bible provided a warning of the difficulties of distinguishing between good and evil in the form of angels in 2 Corinthians 11:14 ‘Sat[h]an himself is transformed into an angel of light’. This was a favourite phrase among the puritan godly in labelling worldly beauties as temptations. (B) The original etymology of ‘angel’ as a messenger seems to have influenced Shakespeare directly when he wrote of them in R&J: ‘O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art/As glorious to this night being o’er my head,/As a winged messenger of heaven’ (2.02.26–8). Shakespeare also used the image of the good angel conventionally to suggest beauty and beneficence, as in ‘What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?’ (MND 3.01.122; ironically, this is Bottom disguised with an ass-head). But the notion of the evil or fallen angel as the binary opposite of the good angel haunts his texts too: ‘Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell’ (Mac. 4.03.22). Shakespeare may mock the godly usage of 2 Corinthians 11:14 in Err. when Syracusian Dromio urges his master Antipholus to flee from the beautiful courtesan, who has mistaken him for his brother, with the words ‘It is written they appear to men like angels of light’ (4.03.48–57), referring to her as ‘Mistress Sathan’. Like this biblical quotation in its comedic context of twinning, illusion and mistaking, Shakespeare’s usage of the phrase ‘evil angel’ alongside the concept of its good counterpart suggests a strong interest in the deception and doubling personified by the bad angel. He also draws on Medieval morality drama with its Good and Bad Angel figures and probably on Marlowe’s re-use of the Good and Bad Angels in Doctor Faustus as paired characters (or impulses) prompting Faustus to choose his dramatic direction. These ideas are repeated in the Son. and PP with phrases including ‘my female evil/ Tempteth my better angel ...’, ‘my better angel’ repeated, ‘my angel be turned fiend’, ‘one angel in another’s hell’ and ‘my bad angel fire my good one out’ in both PP (2.3, 2.5, 2.9, 2.12 and 2.14) and Son. (144). Here, there is an ugly mix of good and bad angelic beings with misogynistic images of women as devils, sexual puns and venereal disease. Such a cluster of imagery may be linked to the unpleasant notion that ‘there is no evil angel but love’ in LLL (1.02.173). But the conflation of good and bad angels is common across the Shakespeare canon: Julius Caesar’s ghost is ‘thy evil spirit, Brutus’ in JC (4.03.282), inverting the assertion that ‘Brutus ... was Caesar’s angel’ at 3.02.181. The phrase ‘evil spirit’ is a detail taken from Shakespeare’s source, the translation of Plutarch’s Lives by Thomas North (London, 1579) where rather than Caesar’s ghost only Brutus’ evil spirit appears (in Chapter 36 of the ‘Life of Marcus Brutus’). In Chapter 37 Cassius tells Brutus that such angelic visions are illusions produced by human imagination, a conclusion which Shakespeare’s portrayal of the 12

Antipholus of Ephesus

ghost onstage (where we can all see it) contradicts. In KL, Edgar refers to the fiend Hoppedance as a ‘black angel’ (KL 3.06.31). Both dead and living characters are imagined as the ‘daemon’ guardian spirits or tempters of one another, personifying aspects of each others’ character, morality or attitude in a fragmentation of self, as in the ‘worser genius’ of lust referred to by Ferdinand in The Tempest (4.01.27) as potentially corrupting the whole being. This angel or genius can be inner or outer: comically, we read that an arresting officer follows his prey ‘like an evil angel’ in Err. (4.03.20) whilst Falstaff is Hal’s ‘ill angel’ in 2 HIV (1.02.164). Contextually, ‘angel’ could also be used to refer to the whole internal spirit or genius of a person or their individual will, as in A&C when the Soothsayer tells Antony that ‘near him [Caesar] thy angel/Becomes afeard, as being o’erpowered’ (2.03.19–22), in a passage which also refers to the spirit as a ‘daemon’. More contradictory, Romeo is a ‘fiend angelical’ in R&J (3.02.75) whilst we are invited to ‘write “good angel”/On the devil’s horn’ in MM (2.04.16). ‘Angel’ was also often used punningly to suggest worth or influence, since ‘They have in England/A coin that bears the figure of an angel/ Stamp’t in gold’ (MerV 2.07. 55–7), which refers to an Elizabethan gold coin. Bearing the image of the archangel Michael and worth about 10 shillings, the coin was called an ‘angel’. MM’s character Angelo is of particular interest in a debate about worth and the deceits of angels of light. Most of Shakespeare’s ill angels, then, and some of his good ones, are of dubious morality and value. The worst is probably a synonym for ‘devil’: ‘and let the angel whom thou still hast served/Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d’ Mac. (5.08. 14–16). This ‘angel’ is associated with witches, murder and tyranny. (C) Steadman (1959) explores good and bad angels as Neo-Platonic references in the sonnets. On specific plays, see Caro (2000) on Macbeth’s ‘angel’ as an evil spirit, Fortin (1971) on Desdemona as an angel, and Kozubowska-Pulawska (2008) on MM’s Angelo. Briggs (1959, 1962, 1967) links Shakespeare’s angels to fairies in contemporary thought, whilst essays in Marshall and Walsham (2006), eds, explore theories and textual manifestations of angels in early modern culture. Keck (1998) and Chase (2002) give background on the theological tradition of angels. Baker (1959) discusses the angel coin in literature and its related demonological puns. Harkness (1996, 1999) details Dee’s angelic conversations and their cultural impact; see also Woolley (2001). Antipholus of Ephesus See also: Dromio of Ephesus, exorcism/exorcist, demon/daemon, possession, Doctor Pinch, Malvolio, Edgar In Err. Antipholus is a wealthy Ephesian gentleman who, with his servant Dromio of Ephesus, is imprisoned and subjected to an exorcism because he is believed to be demonically possessed. He attacks his would-be exorcist, Doctor Pinch, and proves that he is not possessed but simply a victim of mistaken identity (confusion with Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse). His ‘possession’, however, helps to bring

13

Apparition

about the reconciliations that end the play and could be said to be a cathartic and didactic experience, restoring him to his mother, father, brother and wife. Antipholus of Ephesus is like Malvolio and Edgar in that the audience is always aware that he is not possessed. Hamilton (1992) explores the role of Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus in the context of the post-Reformation conflict between Anglicans and non-conformists, suggesting that their demonization and reconciliation with the community offers a model for recovering Christian unity (Chapter 2). She also explores Shakespeare’s transference of his source story (the Roman dramatist Plautus’ play Menaechmi, of uncertain date but around 200 bc) from Epidamnum to Ephesus, a city associated with the goddess Diana, witchcraft and magic as well as the reform efforts of the apostle Paul. Apparition See also: ghosts, Julius Caesar, King Hamlet, Ariel, angel, hell ‘Apparition’ is a term that usually refers to ghosts, as in Thomas Nashe’s influential demonological study The Terrors of the Night or, A Discourse of Apparitions (London, 1594). Wheatley (1916) links the two in Shakespeare’s works in a section on ‘Ghosts and Apparitions’. It is certainly in this ghost-related way that the term occurs in JC, used of Julius Caesar’s ghost (‘this monstrous apparition’ 4.03.277) and Ham. of the ghost of the old King Hamlet (‘this apparition’ 1.01.28). Yet it can also refer more generally to portents – sometimes in the form of ghosts: V&A notes ‘how the world’s poor people are amazed/At apparitions, signs and prodigies’ (925–6) in a passage in which Venus, finding Adonis’ hounds injured, takes them as an indication of their master’s death. Ariel, appearing onstage as a water nymph, is characterized by Prospero as a ‘fine apparition!’ (Tem. 1.02.317) too, suggesting the illusory and hardto-read nature of the term. Apparition is also used figuratively: for example the Friar says that he has seen ‘a thousand blushing apparitions/To start in [Hero’s] face’ (MAdo 4.01.159–60) which, along with the ‘angel’ whiteness that beats them away, he regards as evidence of her guiltlessness. Here, angels appear in opposition to apparitions, though both are associated with innocence. Onions (1986) suggests that ‘apparitions’ are strange looks, although it seems more likely that the quick flitting of blood to and from the face is what suggested ghosts to Shakespeare. See also Purkiss (2006), Newton and Bath (2002), eds, on early modern ghost theory, Rist (2003) on revengeful ghosts, and, on Mac., Baldridge (1985). Herbert (1950) examines that ways in which Shakespeare prepares audiences to suspend their disbelief and accept the appearance of ghosts; West (1955) surveys the Ghost’s religious significance (Catholic? Pagan? From purgatory, Tartarus or hell?) and its status as either imaginary or ‘real’; Ackerman (2001) examines Ham.’s ghost in terms of absence and presence, visibility and invisibility, focusing on its staging since 1800.

14

Aroint/avaunt/avoid

Ariel See also: spirit, apparition, magician, Prospero, magic, witch, Sycorax, demon/ daemon, familiar Ariel is a spirit in Temp., who stages apparitions and masques and attacks the enemies of the magician Prospero. Living on a (probably) Mediterranean island which is full of spirits and magical occurrences, Ariel is at Prospero’s command since, by his own account, previous to Prospero’s arrival on the island the spirit was imprisoned in a tree there by the witch Sycorax. He had displeased her by refusing to obey her, and she and other agents imprisoned him as a punishment. He dislikes obeying Prospero too, but is forced to do so – including being forced to rehearse this story of his past. This may cause us to question its independence. Ariel is freed from his bondage at the end of the play, having both performed his assigned tasks and convinced Prospero that mercy and liberality to his enemies and servants is the way to assure all their futures. Thus Ariel displays a virtue and ‘humanity’ lacking in most of the play’s human characters. His exact nature as a spirit is discussed more fully in the entry for ‘spirits’. The classic position was Kermode’s, popularized through its inclusion in the Arden edition of 1954 (and including an Appendix on Ariel), which was not fully replaced until the 1999 Arden Third Series edition. Drawing on Curry (1937) and West (1939), Kermode saw Ariel as a neo-Platonic daemon, exactly modelled on the spirits described by Agrippa and others. Whilst a useful context, this reading oversimplified Ariel without fully considering divergences from the model. Johnson (1951) offers a revisiting of Kermode’s discussion, now also situating Ariel as a possible witch’s familiar, as well as being formed by both Biblical notions of spirits as binary, either good or evil, and Paracelsian theories of spirits as elemental and natural. He suggests a benign or neutral motivation for Ariel. However, he points out that Ariel is controlled as an elemental servant rather than having agency himself – thus he agrees broadly with Kermode. Brokaw (2008) highlights Ariel’s shapeshifting within the play into nymph, harpy, etc., and questions his ontological status and ‘his’ sex. She examines Ariel’s ‘ayrie’-ness, ‘delicacy’ and ‘tricksy’ nature, arguing that it is impossible to reconstruct original performance guidelines from such ambiguous terms. See also Mowat (1981, 2001) and Davidson (1978) on Ariel as a spirit commanded by Prospero’s magic. Nichols (2007) discusses Ariel as a harlequin. Aroint/avaunt/avoid See also: supernatural, witch, ghost, fiend, Edgar, Sathan, Banquo, Lady Anne, devil, hell, Asmath ‘Aroint’, with its near-synonyms ‘avoid’ and ‘avaunt’ is by no means used only against supernatural creatures, but most famously by Shakespeare as a term banishing witches, ghosts and fiends. It means ‘go away!’ or ‘begone!’ and derives via Middle English from the Old French avant, meaning ‘to go before’. ‘Aroint thee, witch!’ cries a sailor’s wife in an anecdote related by a witch in Mac. (1.03.6); ‘aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!’ exclaims Edgar as he pretends possession in KL (3.04.124); and 15

Art

‘avaunt, thou witch!’ cries Antipholus of Syracuse to the courtesan who he mistakes for ‘Mistress Sathan’ in Err. (4.03.79). Meanwhile, Macbeth tries to dismiss Banquo’s ghost with the phrase ‘avaunt and quit my sight’ (Mac. 3.04.92). Devils are addressed similarly: Lady Anne, calling Richard of Gloucester a devil in the previous line, tries to drive him away with the exclamation ‘avaunt thou dreadful minister of hell’ in RIII (1.02.46). Real rather than metaphorical devils such as Asmath are commanded with the term ‘avoid’: ‘false fiend, avoid’ (2 HVI 1.04.40). But so is the courtesan (again) in Err.: ‘Sathan avoid!’ (4.03.48) and ‘avoid then, fiend!’ (4.03.65). Since these words are also used against others than witches – ‘peasant, avaunt!’ (1 HVI 5.04.21), ‘traitors, avaunt!’ (Tit. 1.01.283) – they may be words of mundane rather than supernatural significance, but their archaic Anglo-Norman impressiveness makes them apt for commanding otherworldly creatures. Easting (1988) discusses Samuel Johnson’s annotation of the word ‘aroint’ in his edition of Mac.. Art See also: magic, Prospero, Owen Glendower, book, Setebos, devil, magician, conjuror, demon/daemon, spirit, foresee/foretell, sorcery, Joan La Pucelle, astronomy (A) ‘Art’ refers to the products of the creative and imaginative faculties and also in some uses to artfulness, a potentially deceitful cunning or skilfulness. It is one of the words that Shakespeare uses to mean magic, both magical learning and practice, and also the trickery and artifice associated with magical power. His usage of the word overlaps magic with other arts, including the literary, sculptural and painterly, as well as referring to other forms of cleverness or intuitive skill. (B) In this sense, ‘art’ is a particularly helpful term for understanding Shakespeare’s writings on magic, since it relates directly to his own literary creations and suggests the intangible qualities that he portrays as making both magic and poetry powerful in influencing, moving, commanding and entertaining. The uses discussed here are connected with the occult and magic in various ways, but explore related fields too. Prospero is the character most frequently associated with art, although Owen Glendower claims artfulness too. But Prospero makes the greater impression as Temp.’s internal dramatist and puppet-master. Temp.’s introduction of Prospero in 1.2 immediately labels his activities as ‘art’ as Miranda expresses concern about it: ‘If by your art … you have/ Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them’ (1.02.1–2). The first we hear of art, then, is a troubled request to undo its effects on nature, although reversal can only be achieved by resorting to further art. Prospero refers to his magic as art too, situating it in his robes and in a book. He can take off his ‘magic garment’ and separate himself from it: ‘lie there, my art’ (1.02.25). This usage moves art away from an understanding of it simply as learning or science, since this, once acquired, remains in the brain and cannot be set aside in the way that Prospero first disrobes himself of his art and later abjures it altogether. He speaks of ‘such provision in mine art’ as safeguards life (1.02.28), but

16

Asmath

art is clearly an irresistibly coercive power too. Caliban describes Prospero’s hold over him and others as an art of control: ‘his art is of such pow’r/It would control my dam’s god, Setebos,/And make a vassal of him’ (1.02.372–4). If Setebos is to be seen as a devil, then Prospero is a learned magician or conjuror who can compel even devils to obey him, as well as non-demonic spirits. The art consists of everything from straightforward coercion through pinches and cramps to Prospero’s impressive foreknowledge (‘my master through his art foresees the danger’ says Caliban (2.01.297)) and less exclusively magical staging of theatrical spectacle: ‘some vanity of mine art’ as Prospero dismisses it (4.01.41). More often, he trumpets the virtu of his magic using the term ‘my so potent art’ (5.01.50), situating it as explicitly magical when he bids it farewell, as ‘art to enchant’ (epilogue 14) (yet others refer to it as sorcery). The fictitious magician invented by Rosalind to allow her return from her male disguise in female form at the end of AYLI also links magic and art firmly: ‘a magician, most profound in his art’ (5.02.61), as does 1 HVI’s ‘art and baleful sorcery’ practised by Joan La Pucelle (2.01.15). Yet art is not always magical – Prospero is also celebrated ‘for the liberal arts without a parallel’, thus for learning in literary, philosophical, musical, mathematical and astronomical skills, of which only the last has any magical affinities (Temp. 1.02.73). In WT it is unclear to audience and characters whether art in the form of sculptural and painterly skill or art as magic has created the lifelike image of Hermione unveiled by Paulina. Paulina pretends concern that she will be judged to be using unlawful skills, and that she will delude her audience: ‘we are mock’d with art’, exclaim the confused viewers, but they also wish that whatever Paulina is doing should be ‘an art/lawful as eating’ (5.03.68, 110). Here, art turns out to be non-magical, but there is a long flirtation with the notion that it might be magic, practised moreover by a female artist-magician. (C) Hӧfele (2000), uses Prospero to examine the stage magician as a ‘portrait of the artist’. Warner (2004) examines metamorphosis in Temp., in which concepts of art, illusion, magic and theatre come together, on which see also Roberts (1999), who links the ‘art’ of Prospero and Paulina in WT. Egan (1972) surveys arts such as painting briefly before discussing the intention and outcome of Prospero’s art in ethical terms. Spiller (2009) looks at the scientific context of such magic. Asmath See also: fiend, conjuration, conjuror, spirit, Sathan, Margery Jourdain, Roger Bolingbroke, John Hume, John Southwell, circle, demon, familiar, Eleanor Cobham Asmath is a fiend or familiar raised by the conjuration of Margery Jourdain and her co-conjurors Roger Bolingbroke, John Hume and John Southwell in 2 HVI 1.4. It (no sex is obvious) is named at line 24 as it rises in response to a Latin ceremony, which is described in the stage direction only by its opening words ‘Conjuro te’ (I conjure you). There is thunder and lightning as Asmath rises and departs, suggesting danger and perhaps the displeasure of God or a disruption of natural forces. As a dangerous creature, the spirit

17

Ass-head

is kept within a ‘hallow’d verge’, or protective circle (1.04.22) and enforced to speak by the use of God’s name, apparently in a way which causes it pain. Asmath responds to its conjurors initially in Latin (‘adsum’ – I am here) and then English. Although the fiend (as Bolingbroke calls it) is referred to as Asmath in the original text, there is no known source for this name – no such demon is recorded – and editors have sometimes substituted variants such as ‘Asnath’ or ‘Asmodeus’. For instance, Cairncross (1957) prefers Asnath because the name can be seen as an anagram of Sathan, whilst Warren (2003) uses Asmodeus, a demonic name taken from the apocryphal Book of Tobit. Asmodeus is a demon associated with lust and the murder of husbands on their wedding night. There is no reason, however, why Shakespeare should not have invented the name Asmath, as a version of either Sathan or Asmodeus or as a harmless stage name. Greenblatt (1994) discusses Asmath briefly as a disappointing demon, unable to murder Eleanor’s opponents and in any case part of a plot to trap her into practising conjuration, since the ceremony is observed by spies including the double agent Hume and the conjurors are apprehended. See also Levine (1994, 1998) on his magical significance for Eleanor Cobham. Ass-head See also: transformation, goblin/hobgoblin, fairy, translation, witch, Circe, astronomy, magic In MND the weaver Nick Bottom is temporarily transformed by the mischievous goblin or fairy Puck into a monstrously hybrid creature, a man with the head of a donkey. He returns from offstage, so changed, to his companions in Act 3, Scene 1, and they fly from him crying ‘O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted ... O Bottom, thou art chang’d ... Thou art translated’ (3.01. 93–4, 104, 109). Bottom, not being able to see his own appearance and thinking that they are playing a trick on him, retorts ‘What do you see? You see an ass-head of your own, do you?’ (3.01.106), meaning that they see in him only a reflection of their own stupidity. In TN the term ‘ass head’ means – in Onions’ (1986) pungent words – ‘dolt, blockhead’ (5.01.206). The image on the human ass probably has its primary demonological source in the story of a witch transforming a passer-by into a beast of burden in Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584). Here, in a story that perhaps drew on the Roman poet Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Scot retold a story from the French demonologist Jean Bodin’s work Demonomanie of a young sailor who was turned into a donkey. When he tried to return to his ship, his crewmates drove him back, and he was forced back to his ‘owner’, the witch. Sidgwick (1908) discusses this story’s influence on the transformation of Bottom. Other analogues include the Ovidian story of King Midas, who was given ass’s ears (Forey [1998]) and Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’ crewmates into pigs in Homer’s The Odyssey. Rosenblum (1981) surveys a range of sources, adding a new one in the form of an emblem book representing ignorance. Lewis (2005) links Bottom’s transformation to representations of love. Sondheim (1939) discusses the image of the ass-head in an astrological (astronomical) context. In all its readings to date, then, the ass-head is a potent symbol of the frightening fragility of the human body and outward appearance when subjected to magic.

18

Astronomy

Astronomy See also: star, planet, occult, alchemy, prophecy, devil, nativity, empiric/empiricutic, fate, fortune, soothsayer, Philharmonus, foresee/foretell, almanac, auspicious, eclipse, augury (A) The study of the heavenly bodies (stars, planets and so on), astronomy was conceptualized as part of the occult sciences, so much so that it was seen by practitioners like Simon Forman as their ultimate form. He defined astronomy as the primary occult knowledge, with further subsections of the discipline being ‘astrology’ and ‘astromagic’, along with alchemy or alchemagic, and geomancy as related knowledges. Astronomy, as a subsection of the larger whole, measured the motions and properties of the stars and planets; astrology was the reading of the significance of the stars and planets; astromagic looked at the influential powers of the stars and planets. The terms were often conflated so that ‘astrology’, as we would now use the term, was thus often what was meant by ‘astronomy’ in the early modern period. In this sense, astronomy was strongly linked to prediction and prophecy and it was therefore politically and theologically controversial. As possessors of forbidden and dubiously acquired knowledge of the future, astronomer-astrologers were most usually viewed by the Elizabethan and Jacobean church as being in league with the devil: godly reformers such as William Perkins took particular pains to condemn them in his A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (London, 1608; in manuscript circulation before Perkins’ death in 1602). Even for more open minds, there were complex debates regarding free will, moral responsibility and whether the stars merely inclined a person to certain characteristics or actions, rather than causing them – God was conventionally positioned as the ultimate cause of all human action, but his operations were themselves mysterious and might include astrological direction. The primary debates about the morality of interpreting such matters involved the division of astrology into natural astrology (astrologia naturalis) and judicial astrology (astrologia judicialis). Natural astrology was concerned with the general planetary influences in areas such as agriculture and medicine, whereas judicial astrology was an attempt to interpret these influences in order to make predictions and give advice. The destiny of an individual, for example, could be predicted by drawing up the client’s ‘nativity’, a calculation of the condition of the heavens at the time of birth. Natural astrology was viewed as a science. Judicial astrology was more problematic, referring to the prophetic influence of the heavens on human destiny (see for instance Henry Howard’s A Defensative against the Poison of supposed Prophecies (London, 1583) and John Chamber’s Treatise against Judicial Astrologie (London, 1601)). Against the suspicion that their activities interfered with free will, some writers and practitioners explored ways of reconciling religion and astrology (see Christopher Heydon’s A Defence of Judiciall Astrologie, In Answer to a Treatise lately published by M. Iohn Chamber (London, 1603)). Indeed, some clergy also practised as astrologers. In wider society, astrology remained both popular and credible during Shakespeare’s lifetime, despite the

19

Astronomy

challenges of empirical science and Calvinist theology: it was probably only a vocal minority who regarded it as disreputable or incompatible with Christianity. Indeed, their complaints suggest a broad acceptance of it outside their own circles. (B) Shakespeare’s usage of astrological imagery is unexceptional. He does not use the word ‘astrology’ or its variants, but his ‘astronomy’ refers precisely to Forman’s subsectional notion of astrology. His discussions of the topic permit several interpretations of the real or unreal existence of celestial influence, and its limits if it does exist. In AWW, Helena says: ‘Our remedies oft in our selves do lie/Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky/Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull/Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull’ (1.01.202–5). Since the stars do have an inclining influence, says Warwick, it behoves us to work with them and not against them: ‘Your grace ... now may seem as wise as virtuous,/By spying and avoiding fortune’s malice,/For few men rightly temper with the stars; …’ (3 HVI, 4.06.26–9). In KL, as part of his self-assertion against the circumstance of his illegitimate birth, however, Edmund rails sceptically against the notion that heavenly bodies determine human characters and fates: ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune – often the surfeits of our own behaviour – we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence … Fut, I should have been that I am had the maidenl’est star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising’ (KL 1.02.118–33). In the same play, belief in astronomy is described as a ‘sectarian’ choice: ‘How long have you been a sectary astronomical?’ (i.e. a believer in astrology, with the implication that this is a peculiar belief – 1.02.150). Similar scepticism is expressed in Sonnet 14: ‘Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;/And yet methinks I have astronomy,/But not to tell of good or evil luck,/Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality’. Here the speaker appears to express disbelief in astronomical concepts as they slip into astrology. Other plays offer a more credulous understanding of astronomy, although it is tempered by concerns about human motivation and the accuracy of prediction. Iago (Oth. 2.03.182) informs Othello that Cassio and Montano had engaged in fighting each other ‘as if some planet had unwitted man’: in the same way Othello expresses a common place popular belief when he despairs: ‘It is the very error of the moon;/She comes more near the earth than she was wont,/And makes men mad’ (5.02.109–11). ‘There’s some ill planet reigns:/I must be patient till the heavens look/With an aspect more favourable …,’ says Hermione in WT when her husband turns against her (2.01.105–7). 2 HVI (4.05.34–5) is the only play where a horoscope is mentioned which ‘faithfully’ predicts an event; Suffolk remarks: ‘A cunning man did calculate my birth/ And told me that by water I should die’ – he is then immediately killed by a man called Walter. Even in this case, the coming true of the prediction appears to be a cynical joke, pointing to the tricky nature of prophecy; Suffolk even attempts to persuade the man to pronounce his name ‘Gualtier’ in order to stave off his death. Perhaps most designedly ironic is Imogen’s earnest statement that ‘learned indeed were that astronomer/That 20

Augury

knew the stars as his characters –/He’d lay the future open’ (Cym. 3.02.27–8). In a play troubled by inaccurate and strained soothsaying (see also Philharmonus) Imogen’s own imagination of what the future may contain is fatally flawed, for she does not foresee her own murder plotted by her husband. Would an astronomer do so? The audience may be permitted some doubt, despite Imogen’s yearning to know the truth in this way. (C) Sondheim (1939) divides the astrological references in Shakespeare’s plays into three types: ornamental, symbolic and direct comments on the credibility (or lack of it) of the art. Dean (1924), Camden (1933), Graubard (1953) and McIntosch (1969) explore in further detail and although their work often attempts to diagnose Shakespeare’s own views on astrology in a way that is limited in its usefulness, each is still valuable. Smith (1958) separates occult from scientific understandings of astrology; and Clark (1997) discusses astrology as a concern of demonology. Draper (1939) examines Romeo and Juliet as ‘star-cross’d’ lovers (see also the entry for star). Augury See also: soothsayer, fortune, divination, prophecy, foresee/foretell, destiny, astronomy, Julius Caesar, occult, auspicious (A) In the Classical world an augur or augurer was a soothsayer or fortune teller, who through divination and prophecy would foretell the future. Augurs often used the entrails of sacrificed animals and birds, or the flight of birds in the sky – i.e. natural phenomena – as the basis for their interpretation of patterns to foresee future events or the destiny of a particular client or public figure. Augury was linked by some practitioners to astrology or astronomy, the study of the influence of stars and planets. The word is derived from the Old French augurie or Latin augurium, the interpretation of omens. In Rome, the augurer was a public, religious official, whose word was taken to be authoritative. (B) In Shakespeare’s Roman plays he uses the terms augury and augurer precisely. Thus in Cor. Menenius tells the tribunes ‘the augurer tells me we shall have news to-night’ as part of his assertion of authority over them (2.01.1) and Dolabella calls Octavius Caesar ‘too sure an augurer’ when his prediction of Cleopatra’s suicide is fulfilled (A&C 5.02.334). Earlier, there seems to be a moment of doubt when Antony, before his defeat at the battle of Actium, complains ‘the augurers/Say they know not’ (4.12.4–5) but it transpires that this is an evasion on their part: ‘they cannot tell; look grimly/ And dare not speak their knowledge’ (5–6) that he will lose. The likewise doomed Pompey speaks of ‘my auguring hope’ (2.01.10), but in reality it is only hope and not prophecy that briefly sustains him. More typical is the certainty brutally demonstrated in JC, where Julius Caesar is temporarily stayed at home by ‘the persuasion of his augurers’ – which would have saved him from murder had he persevered in trusting them (JC 2.01.200). The reliability of augury is foregrounded to the extent that there is a formal report of their practice and its outcome, made to him by a servant: ‘what

21

Auspicious

say the augurers?’ asks Caesar (2.02.37). ‘They would not have you to stir forth today’ replies the servant, since ‘Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,/They could not find a heart within the beast’ (38–9). Stubbornly, Caesar prefers to argue that this is a signification of his heartless cowardice if he should remain at home, and so he goes to the Senate, only to be killed. In non-Roman plays too, augurers are credited with the skill to discover occult truths: Macbeth says that ‘augures’ (auguries) have discovered the most secret ‘man of blood’ (Mac. 3.04.123). The owl is probably the ‘shrieking harbinger’ and truthful ‘augur of the fever’s end’ (i.e. death) in PT (7). But there are more doubts about their role away from the destiny-driven world of Plutarch’s Histories on which Shakespeare based much of his Roman material. In a sonnet brooding on the unforeseeable fate of love and the beloved, ‘sad augurs mock their own presage’ (Son. 107.6) when it fails to come true or remain so. In Shakespeare’s sonnet, augury’s power is doubtful, then. Likewise, in a complex examination of lies and half-truths, the deceitful Proteus hopes that ‘my augury deceive me not’ as he reads ‘good bringing up, fortune and truth’ in the face of ‘Sebastian’, his servant (TGV 4.04.68). In a sense, he is right, but he has failed to perceive that ‘Sebastian’ is in fact his abandoned mistress Julia in disguise. Metaphorical augury is here thus partly correct and partly deceived, but perhaps the greater truth – Julia’s ‘truth’ to Proteus – is the point of the divinatory imagery. Certainly, the most famous and rousing rejection of the auguring spirit, Hamlet’s ‘we defy augury’ (Ham. 5.02.219), offers confirmation that it is best to take heed of a feeling of foreboding. Hamlet ignores a sense of ‘ill’ troubling his heart and Horatio’s warning to trust his mind’s dislike, deciding that he will accept the judgement of providential will. True to the endorsement of augury found in most of Shakespeare’s works, his refusal to obey his own ‘augury’ leads him to his death. (C) Stone (1953) explores a specific allusion in Sonnet 107 to ‘sad augurs’, suggesting that it is mocking the Prediction of Regiomontanus, part of which was taken to refer to the Armada. Regiomantanus (Johannes Müller von Königsberg) was a fifteenth-century astrologer who had spoken of 1588 as a year of wonders. Auspicious See also: divination, augury, astronomy, star, Prospero, fortune, Edgar, charm, conjuration Auspicious means lucky, or conducive to success. In Roman divinatory practice or augury, an auspex was the diviner who observed and interpreted the flight of birds as a sign guiding decisions referred to him. Auspicium thus referred to the reading of omens in birds’ flight – it derived from avis ‘bird’ and specere ‘to look’. By Shakespeare’s time the word ‘auspicious’ was related to the notion of ‘election’ within astrology (astronomy) – the prediction and/or identification of favourable times to undertake certain tasks, based on observing the stars rather than birds. It appears to be a late sixteenth-century coinage in this sense. King Claudius contrasts the forward-looking

22

Avaunt/avoid (see aroint)

and happy qualities of the word with tearfulness and backward-looking: he must, he says, move on from his brother’s death to rule Denmark with ‘an auspicious, and a dropping eye’ (i.e. one eye cheerful, the other weeping; Ham. 1.02.11). Other usages echo this hopefulness: Prospero refers to ‘a most auspicious star’ whose influence will restore his fortunes if he acts quickly (Temp. 1.02.182). At the play’s end he promises ‘auspicious gales’ to the departing guests who have indeed helped him back to power (5.01.315). The Duke of Florence wishes Fortune to be Bertram’s ‘auspicious mistress’ in AWW (3.03.8). Perdita similarly invokes Fortune as a goddess: ‘O lady Fortune/ Stand you auspicious’ in WT (4.04.52). Less positively, Edmund lies about his brother Edgar in KL saying that he has mumbled ‘wicked charms’, ‘conjuring the moon/ To stand’s auspicious mistress’ in a supposed plot to murder his father (2.01.39–40). Tarquin too inverts the usual happy meaning of the term when he tries to call upon divine powers to be ‘auspicious to the hour’ and aid him in his rape of Lucrece (Luc. 347). Indeed, the word seems to recall him jarringly to the wickedness of his proposed act: how can the ‘powers’ possibly offer him their support, he asks? So he turns instead to Love and Fortune, less ethically consistent ‘gods’ (349–51). Indeed, he is not blessed in his course of action: he carries out the rape, but is then driven from his kingdom by Lucrece’s revengers. In TNK Arcite and his men pray to Jupiter and hearing thunder and the clash of arms as an answer, ‘take thy signs auspiciously’ (5.01.67). They are right to do so in that Arcite wins the subsequent duel, but he is then killed in an accident. These latter uses of the word emphasize the instability of interpretations of signs and the temporary nature of luck, recalling the earliest meaning of the term. Dean (1924) discusses auspicious astronomical events. Camden (1933), Sondheim (1939), McIntosch (1969) and Smith (1958) discuss astrology in Shakespeare’s work. Avaunt/avoid (see aroint)

23

B Ban See also: cursing, accursed, witch, Hecate, Eleanor Cobham, Edgar, Caliban, First Witch, forbid ‘Banning’ relates to early theological concepts of the forbidden, being set apart – usually for holy use, or being protected from profanity. It can also mean a proclamation, thus the reading of ‘banns’ of marriage to announce a proposed wedding. But perhaps most relevantly it came to mean something prohibited, abject or exiled: the spoils of war (out of bounds), banishment (as in abandon or bandit), and anathematization or excommunication. Thus the term transferred to the demonological notion of cursing – exclaiming against and rejecting the person or object that was accursed. Shakespeare uses the word only in the latter sense: in Ham. we hear of banning associated with the witch-goddess Hecate: ‘with Hecat’s ban thrice blasted’ (3.02.258) whilst the cursing Queen Margaret is called ‘fell banning hag’ in 1 HVI (5.03.42), a usage that continues into 2 HVI when Eleanor Cobham, accused of witchcraft, says to her husband that she should ‘ban thine enemies’ (2.04.25), Suffolk suggests that if curses could kill his enemies ‘every joint should seem to curse and ban’ (3.02.319), and points out when Margaret objects that ‘you bade me ban’ (3.02.333). A woman who does not wish to be won may ‘ban and brawl’ in PP (18.32) and Edgar speaks of ‘lunatic bans’ with which beggars may force people to give them charity in KL (2.03.19). All these bans are curses, then, and even the peculiar abbreviation ‘‘ban, ‘ban, Ca-Caliban’ in Temp. (2.02.184) relates to the cursing son of a witch. Here Caliban seems to curse himself, unintentionally (‘ban Caliban’).The First Witch’s term for a cursed person, ‘a man forbid’, also refers to banning (Mac. 1.03.21). Banquo (ghost) See also: prophecy, witch, weird, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, ghost, vision, aroint/avaunt/avoid, King Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, spirit, supernatural Banquo is a lord who is murdered on the orders of his former friend Macbeth when the latter becomes king of Scotland in Mac.. Because of the prophetic words afforded to him earlier in the play by the witches or weird sisters (First Witch, Second Witch and Third Witch), Macbeth fears that Banquo’s descendants, rather than his own, will inherit the Scottish throne. Hence he must be eliminated along with his son Fleance. Fleance escapes, Banquo is killed. 24

Barbason

Banquo, however, returns as a ghost to haunt Macbeth at a celebratory feast thrown shortly after his death. The ghost sits in the empty seat of Macbeth whilst the King welcomes his guests, and although Macbeth pretends to know nothing of his where­abouts or death his guilty complicity is strongly suggested when he turns to see the ghost and exclaims: ‘thou can’st not say I did it’ (3.04.49). Further, only he can see the ghost (discussed in the entry on visions) although the Folio stage directions make it clear that it is also visible to the audience – i.e. the actor who played Banquo has returned to the stage as his ghost. He appears covered in blood and wounds, which are described by Macbeth to his guests in outbursts of exclamation: he has ‘gory locks’ and ‘twenty mortal murders’ (gashes) on his head (3.04.50, 80). Macbeth regards the ghost as a ‘horrible shadow’ and ‘unreal mockery’ (105–6) – i.e. not Banquo himself but a representation of him (see the entry on ghosts for discussion of their reality) – and attempts to banish it by crying ‘avaunt’ (92). Although Macbeth did not himself stab Banquo, the ghost serves to identify him as the murderer by design if not in fact, as with the ghost of King Hamlet who names his killer. Banquo does not speak, but the effect is the same. Lady Macbeth attempts to pretend that her husband is ill, but the feast has to be abandoned. Thus Banquo’s ghost disrupts both Macbeth’s mind and his courtly display, exposing the corruption beneath the political surface. In Act 4, Scene 1 he returns as part of the vision shown by the witches to Macbeth, although with demonological precision Macbeth is not sure if he now sees a ‘spirit’ or some other entity. ‘Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo’ he reacts (4.01.112), suggesting that the vision resembles a ghost, but is neither the ghost itself nor the man Banquo. Instead perhaps it is some even more illusory or evasive phenomenon. This visionary Banquo points approvingly to a procession of eight kings which cross the stage, although he does not speak, and Macbeth realizes from this dumb show that the prophecy of the weird sisters will come true: Banquo’s children will be kings. That the Banquo of the chronicles (in fact, an invented character) was regarded as the ancestor of King James VI and I added piquancy to his appearance as a supernatural agent of poetic justice. His silence on both occasions after his stage death may suggest some caution in portraying an ancestor of the royal demonologist, or perhaps a desire to contrast the living with the silenced dead or to add an impressive inscrutability to the ghostly character? Barbason See also: devil, Amaimon, Lucifer, fiend, conjuration ‘Barbason’ is the name of a devil, probably taken by Shakespeare from Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), where it appears in a list with Amaimon, although in the form ‘Marbas, alias Barbas’ rather than Barbason. Barbas is described as lion-like, but tractable to conjuration. Suggesting their common source, the two demonic names are mentioned together, and also with Lucifer by Master Ford in MWW (2.02.297), when he notes that ‘Amaimon sounds well, Lucifer well, Barbason well’. His point is that these striking appellations are the names of fiends, yet ‘cuckold’ is a

25

Belzebub

much worse word, for Ford. Barbason also appears in HV when Nym tells Pistol angrily that he will not give way to his threats of violence: ‘I am not Barbason, you cannot conjure me’ (HV 2.01.54), another clear echo of Scot. In his edition of HV, Walter (1954) argued that the longer version of the name Barbas as Barbason was suggested to Shakespeare by the French knight of that name who in Holinshed’s account of Henry V’s exploits fights with the king in single combat. He thought that Shakespeare may have confused his borrowings from Scot and Holinshed. But Craik (1995, 1998), who edited both plays in the 1990s, argues in his edition of MWW for a deliberate artistic choice in naming the devil. He suggests that Shakespeare might have chosen to lengthen the original name Barbas in this play to match his trisyllabic Amaimon and Lucifer in a satisfying way, drawing on the name Barbason from his reading of Holinshed and then using the longer name again in HV. Although Kegl’s (1994) article focuses on early modern ideas of slander, she includes analysis of Ford’s self-slander as he considers different names for himself, including comparators like Amaimon and Barbason. Belzebub See also: Lucifer, Sathan, demon/daemon, angel, hell, devil, Malvolio, possession Belzebub, or its alternate spelling Beelzebub, is related to Lucifer, Sathan and other demonic names as one of the supposedly fallen angels of Hebrew and Christian mythology. Belzebub’s name is likely to derive from the name of the Semitic god Baal, in his aspect as ‘Lord of the Flies’. By Shakespeare’s time, he had been relocated by Christian theologians as one of the rulers of hell, and his name was used generically to mean ‘devil’. For example, when it is pretended by Toby, Maria and their co-conspirators that the puritan Malvolio is possessed in TN, enquirers are told that he ‘holds Belzebub at the stave’s end’ (5.01.284), meaning that he is resisting the devil as if with a staff. ‘Lucifer and Belzebub’ appear as a pair in HV (4.07.138) in a reference that stresses their high status among devils and the name is used instead of ‘God’ in the phrase ‘who’s there, i’ th’ name of Belzebub?’ uttered by the Porter in Mac. 2.03.4, though he cannot remember further devils’ names. His conceit is that he is the porter of hell’s gate, and thus Belzebub is a potentate or authority there. Bewitched See also: spell, charm, witch, witchcraft, mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs, Joan La Pucelle, enchantment, Jane Shore, Queen Elizabeth, possession, conjuration, magic, weird, overlooking (A) The word ‘bewitch’ has both literal and a metaphorical uses, sometimes indistinguishable from one another. An actual bewitchment would be the use of a spell or charm against someone, usually not an opponent but rather a person whom a witch wished to recruit as an ally, seduce or control. Its metaphorical meaning comes out of this notion of attraction, as with the word ‘charm’, in that to be bewitched is to be delighted with someone, to fall under their influence. 26

Blasting

(B) Shakespeare frequently uses the word metaphorically in political contexts: for example, Cardinal Beaufort warns his fellow courtiers against the Duke of Gloucester: ‘Let not his smoothing words/Bewitch your hearts’ (2 HVI 1.01.156–7), whilst Marcus, trying to reunite the Romans, wonders ‘what Sinon hath bewitch’d our ears’ (Tit. 5.03.85, referring to the Greek spy Sinon who persuaded the Trojans to bring the wooden horse into their city). Coriolanus disdainfully offers to ‘counterfeit the bewitchment [the bewitching power] of some popular man’ to win political power (Cor. 2.03.101) and later (see witchcraft) it appears that he is already able to bewitch others with his strong, charismatic personality. Occasionally Shakespeare abbreviates ‘bewitch’ to ‘witch’, as in another Trojan allusion, ‘sit and/Witch me as Ascanius did’ (2 HVI 3.02.116, referring to Aeneas’ son and his storytelling to Dido). Another common context is sexual. Tarquin’s fear of the consequences of raping Lucrece is ‘bewitch’d with lust’s foul charm’ and thus incapacitated (Luc. 173) whilst lovers are ‘bewitched by the charm of looks’ (R&J 2 prologue 6) and Adonis accuses Venus of ‘bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s song’ by her speech (V&A 777). If not sex, then affection may bewitch: Falstaff says of Poins that ‘I am bewitch’d with the rogue’s company’, comically speculating that Poins has given him ‘medicines to make me love him’ (i.e. potions; 1 HIV 2.02.17–18) and the speaker of LC speaks of an entire community’s ‘consents bewitch’d’ by a popular young man (131). But there are also many references to literal bewitching. Burgundy wonders if Joan La Pucelle has ‘bewitch’d me with her words’(1 HVI 3.03.58; also described as ‘enchanting’ 40), Richard exclaims ‘look how I am bewitch’d’ as he accuses Jane Shore and the former Queen Elizabeth of witchcraft (RIII 3.04.68), Egeon tells Lysander that he has ‘bewitch’d the bosom of my child’ (MND 1.01.27) by causing her to fall in love with him and not her father’s choice Demetrius, and Maria pretends concern over the supposedly possessed Malvolio with ‘pray God he be not bewitch’d’ (TN 3.04.101). Like Lysander, both Othello (see charm, conjuration, enchantment and magic) and Pericles are accused of bewitching the daughters of powerful men: in Per., King Simonides tells the hero ‘thou hast bewitch’d my daughter’ as a test (2.05.49). Love magic is relevant to all of these cases: Medieval women such as Joan La Pucelle, Jane Shore and Queen Elizabeth were sometimes accused of love magic if they rose to prominence as (supposedly) the mistresses of powerful men, and the male characters here are simply inverting that old stereotype: Lysander, Malvolio, Othello and Pericles can all be seen as climbing socially through their (alleged) witchcraft seductions. (C) Truax (1989) suggests inventively that Macbeth may be bewitched during his encounter with the weird sisters, drawing a parallel with the madness of Hercules inspired by the Furies and well known in drama and pageant. Blasting See also: magic, supernatural, fairy, Herne, ghost, spirit, King Hamlet, hell, witch, Hecate, cursing, ban, Witch of Brainford, goblin/hobgoblin, taking 27

Bolingbroke, Roger

Blasting became a magical term when it referred not simply to winds or munitions but to the capacity thought to reside in some humans and supernatural beings to blight and destroy with words or looks. Occasionally the two senses seem intertwined in Shakespeare’s usages: the ‘blasted heath’ in Mac. may be magically afflicted or malevolent rather than simply stormy (1.03.77). McKillop (1998) further conflates storm and magic in what he argues is the ‘Celtic’ notion of the ‘fairy wind’, a sharp, localized ‘blast’ like a whirlwind, also known in English as a ‘flaw’, that could rip off a roof or flatten corn whilst adjacent areas remained untouched. D’Avanzo (1977) explores its reference to mildewing and the growth of fungus. Perhaps it is in this way that Herne is said to ‘blast the trees’ at Windsor (MWW 4.04.32). The word could also apply to ghosts. Approaching the spirit of the deceased King Hamlet in an attempt to restrain and interrogate it, Horatio announces: ‘I’ll cross it, though it blast me’ (Ham. 1.01.127). Later King Hamlet’s son Prince Hamlet, who has managed to speak with his father’s ghost, is described by Ophelia as ‘blasted with ecstasy’ – perhaps an effect of the ghost’s ‘blast’? (3.01.160). The play also mentions ‘blasts from hell’ as potentially accompanying its visitation (1.04.41). Witches, and their goddess Hecate, could also blast with curses or banning: a particularly deadly poison of the type which killed King Hamlet has been ‘with Hecat’s ban thrice blasted’ in Ham. (3.02.258). Blasting was thus another term for the malevolent ill-wishing associated with the dark side of the demonological world. Simpson and Roud (2000) suggest that Herne’s blasting is a magical power related to his place in the witchy and fairy world of the play, alongside the Witch of Brainford and assorted hobgoblins and other fairy beings. Kassell (2006) discusses blasting as a fairy power. Bolingbroke, Roger See also: Eleanor Cobham, Margery Jourdain, John Hume, John Southwell, conjuration, demon/daemon, familiar, spirit, Asmath, wizard, circle, spell, King Henry VI, astronomy, nativity, image magic, sorcery, invocation, fiend, Faustus, Joan La Pucelle, conjuror Roger Bolingbroke is a participant in 2 HVI, with Eleanor Cobham, Margery Jourdain, John Hume and John Southwell, in conjurations in Act 1, Scene 4 leading to the raising of the demon or familiar spirit Asmath (planned in Scene 2). Bolingbroke describes himself as a wizard, directs the drawing of a hallowed circle and according to the stage direction either he or Southwell reads a conjuring spell. Bolingbroke then assists in questioning Asmath about the futures of King Henry VI and several prominent courtiers, attempting to gain advantage for Eleanor’s husband the Duke of Gloucester. He is arrested with the other conspirators, and condemned to death for his activities at a trial in Act 2, Scene 3. His punishment is to be hanging. The historical Roger Bolingbroke, a churchman and Principal of St. Andrew’s Hall, Oxford, met a similar, though even more unpleasant, end for similar reasons in 1441. Like his fictional counterpart he was a learned practitioner of magical arts. But those

28

Book

arts are very imprecisely labelled. Bolingbroke is described by Edward Hall in his 1548 Chronicle as a ‘nycromancier’ or necromancer. Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (London, the fuller 1587 edition) repeat this description from Hall. Recent scholarship (such as Harriss’ [2004] ODNB entry for Eleanor Cobham), which is based on contemporary records and other chronicles, has further suggested that Bolingbroke was an astronomer (astrologer) and that he cast nativities, including (fatally) that of King Henry VI, predicting his illness and death and the Duke of Gloucester’s rise to power in his place. Shakespeare’s known sources Hall and Holinshed are both clear, however, about one specific offence that was alleged: the group were accused of making an image of wax in the likeness of the king and allowing it to consume away to cause his death. Jourdain, Bolingbroke, Southwell and Hume were all convicted of this, Hall and Holinshed state, each receiving a different punishment (see their entries for details). Whatever the exact details, the trial records suggest that a supposed conjunction of treason and sorcery led to Bolingbroke’s execution as a traitor by hanging, drawing and quartering, after a public recantation during which he was surrounded by magical paraphernalia. Shakespeare has not followed the description of the image magic or adhered to the label ‘necromancy’ (the invocation of the spirits of the dead) from his known chronicle sources, but instead has chosen the most theatrical and sensational manifestation of invocation possible: the conjuration of a fiend. This is mentioned in the original trial records and the Brut chronicle (see Brie [1908]), and in this version of events Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke appears as a Faustus-like figure, perhaps following or participating in the theatrical fashion of Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (probably performed around the same time, 1591–2, so either a competitor or influence or both). Faustus too is called a necromancer and raises devils, but he does also attempt to commune with the dead, the poet Homer and Helen of Troy (though these may be devils in disguise). Perhaps the group of conjurors from 2 HVI are also Shakespeare’s follow-up to Joan La Pucelle in 1 HVI, topping the appearance of silent fiends in that play with a speaking fiend, Asmath, in this one. Book See also: supernatural, magic, demon/daemon, spell, almanac, alchemy, evil, divination, Prospero, Caliban, spirit, occult, art (A) Books, of course, are not always associated with the supernatural, but could contain magical or demonic material. Books were also associated with history, recording and accounting: thus, generally, with truth and power. These associations transfer to usages of ‘book’ linked to magical learning, like grimoires. These spell books sat uneasily between the world of science and magic. They provided dissemination of practical knowledge of various skills and technical processes, along with the more lofty claims of natural magicians. They included Medieval compilations attributed to Aristotle and Albertus Magnus, discussions of the wonderful or unusual attributes of animals, magnetism, tides, venoms and poisons, and extraordinary weather conditions.

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Brainford, Witch of

Indeed, the variety of magical or pseudo-magical books available to the playwright’s imagination in the early modern period was vast. It could include almanacs and calendars, the Bible itself, works on alchemy and medicine as well as actual books of spells. Books full of unfamiliar symbols and languages, or of a remarkable physical appearance, could be used to give the impression of magical properties, whilst other books were used as protective talismans: the Bible, for example, was thought to contain divine powers, such as protection from evil, or to reinforce truth, as demonstrated by the swearing of oaths. Books could also be used in divination. (B) The word ‘book’ implied prescription and rule, as in R&J, when Romeo kisses ‘by the book’ (1.05.110), possibly because of its Biblical associations. Indeed in LLL (4.03.246) book means Bible by default: ‘O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?’ Prospero speaks both of ‘books’ (‘knowing I loved my books’, Temp. 1.02.166) and a single book, but Caliban locates the source of Prospero’s power in multiple volumes that he has brought to the island: ‘having first seiz’d his books’ (3.02.89) it will be possible to kill him, but it is essential ‘first to possess his books’ (92). ‘Burn but his books’, Caliban asserts, and Prospero becomes a ‘sot’ like himself (95), ‘nor hath not/ One spirit to command’. Yet at the end of the play Prospero speaks only of one magical text which he will hide or ‘kill’ – depending on how one reads the word ‘drown’ – in order to abjure his magic: ‘I’ll drown my book’ (Temp. 5.01.57). Presumably this is the book that he consulted in order to perform his magic, reading it offstage during Act 3: ‘I’ll to my book,/For yet ere suppertime must I perform/Much business’ (3.01.113–15). (C) The nature of Prospero’s books in particular has provoked speculation. Kearney (2002) observes how the material absence of Prospero’s book(s) offstage has enabled a variety of interpretations: are they Baconian scientific texts, Medieval grimoires, printed or manuscript, literal or metaphorical? Scott (2007, 2008) expands on this to argue that the absent book suggests its challenging and transformative powers, and in both 2007 and 2008 surveys Shakespeare’s use of books as props more generally. According to Mowat’s (2001) detailed analysis, the book Prospero possesses both is – and is not – a grimoire: it suggests his magic is necromantic, but also appears to be no more than a prop since he does not seem dependent upon it for ‘spells’. Bowen (1961) explores whether Prospero destroys his ‘book’. Davies (2009) maps the history of grimoires, whilst Cressy (1986) explores their power as talismanic objects in the period. Clark (1997) discusses the genre of ‘Books of Secrets’ or ‘Problem Books’, and see also West (1984) on magicians’ books. Brainford, Witch of See also: witch, fortune, charm, spell, figure, hag, conjuration, magic, witchcraft, First Witch, bewitched The Witch of Brainford, also known as the fat or old woman of Brainford and as Mother Prat, is the aunt of one of the maidservants in the household of Master and Mistress Ford in MWW. In the Quarto texts her name is given as Gillian. Brainford was

30

Buckingham, Duke of (ghost)

a common version of the name Brentford, a small town near Windsor: the old woman is said to visit and stay with her niece occasionally, being about 16 miles from home. In Act 4, Scene 2 Falstaff is forced to disguise himself in the old woman’s clothing, some of which she keeps at her niece’s home – a large dress, a fringed hat and a muffler – to escape the house when jealous Master Ford comes home unexpectedly to find Falstaff visiting his wife. Master Ford does not penetrate his disguise because he is so consumed with hatred for the old woman, whom he regards as a witch, a bawd and cozener. He itemizes her supposed skills: fortune-telling, charming, the making of spells and figure-casting. He feels that he is likely to be cheated by her, either out of money or perhaps by her pimping for his wife. Certainly some of his insults for her – quean, polecat, baggage – suggest a sexual element to her activities or to his imagination of them. Others – witch, hag, ‘I’ll conjure you’ – focus on her magical attributes, whilst ‘ronyon’ an obscure word unique to Shakespeare and perhaps meaning mangy or scabby, is unclear (4.02.172–86). As well as insulting the witch, Master Ford beats Falstaff in an episode that is comic because the audience knows that Falstaff deserves the punishment for his lechery and that he can take it. But what we also witness is a man thinking that he is cudgelling an old woman whom he suspects of witchcraft – a far less comfortable picture. The scene does not allow us to dwell on this, since the other characters who offer comments either know that the witch is Falstaff disguised or are suspicious of ‘her’. The curate, Sir Hugh Evans, concludes that the woman may indeed be a witch, for he glimpses a beard under her wrappings and thinks this may be a sign of witchcraft. This reference to bearded women is one of two foreshadowings of Mac. in the play, the other being the association of the word ‘ronyon’ with witches: in Mac. the (bearded) First Witch deploys it against a woman who has denied her charity. Sir Hugh, then, shares Master Ford’s suspicions of witchcraft but we are not told if either of them plans to take it further with the real Mother Prat. The episode is perhaps related to the story of Richard Galis of Windsor, who in 1579 attacked and beat several women in the town because he suspected them of bewitching him by causing him mental and physical discomfort. Like Master Ford, others regarded his complaints as unfounded, possibly delusional. Galis told his story in A Brief Treatise Conteyning the Most Strange and Horrible Crueltye of Elizabeth Stile … upon Richard Galis (London, 1579). Cotton (1987) suggests MWW has a masculine vision of any woman as a potential impotencecausing witch, which is only dispelled when a wife uses her female ‘craft’ to support her husband’s power. Buckingham, Duke of (ghost) See also: Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, ghost, Lord Hastings, Lady Anne, Prince Edward, King Henry VI, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Duke of Clarence, dream, cursing, angel, vision, Banquo, supernatural, devil, King Hamlet, hell, prophecy The Duke of Buckingham is first an ally and then an enemy of Richard, Duke of

31

Bug/bugbear

Gloucester, in his quest to become King in RIII. He promotes Richard’s claims, but wavers when Richard has the young sons of Edward IV, Prince Edward of York and Richard, Duke of York, killed so that he can usurp the throne. Buckingham switches his allegiance to Richard’s rival, Richmond, but Richard has him killed for his treachery. In Act 5, Scene 3 Buckingham (along with ten other ghosts including Lord Hastings, Lady Anne, Prince Edward, King Henry VI, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey and the Duke of Clarence) appears to both Richard and Richmond in their shared dreams on the eve of the decisive Battle of Bosworth. He reproaches Richard, claiming that ‘the first I was that help’d thee to the crown’ yet ‘the last was I that felt thy tyranny’. He curses the King, wishing that he may ‘think on Buckingham/And die in terror of thy guiltiness’. He then wishes Richmond well, adding that ‘God and good angels fight on Richmond’s side’ (5.03.169–76) – sentiments common to all the ghosts in the scene – before vanishing as Richard awakes in panic and despair. The scene combines dream and haunting, in the same way that Mac. combines vision and haunting (featuring Banquo), in a multilayered supernatural event. Unlike some of the other ghosts in Shakespeare’s plays, the ghosts of RIII seem very close in their manifestations to the living characters whose afterlife they represent. There is no speculation that Buckingham and the others may be devils, for instance, as with King Hamlet’s ghost in Ham., and no strange changes in their behaviour, such as Banquo’s ghost’s appearance in a dumb show that contrasts with his articulacy when alive. Instead, these ghosts retain the preoccupation with worldly affairs that characterized their lives – none mentions heaven, hell or reflects upon purgatory. They also bring blessings as well as curses and a desire for revenge, and their benevolent speeches to Richmond are prophetic of his success. Some are the ghosts of those who sinned in life, while others are surely innocents. But all appear together onstage in a united and drawn-out choric judgement of the still-living protagonists, and a prophecy of Tudor greatness in Richmond’s rule as Henry VII. The historical Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, played a similar role in Richard’s rise and was indeed executed by him in 1483 for changing sides. Bug/bugbear See also: ghost, goblin/hobgoblin, supernatural, witchcraft, hag, devil, fairy Bugs or bugbears are terrors, bogeys, usually creatures or ideas such as ghosts or goblins as in Ham.’s ‘bugs and goblins’ (5.02.22) but frequently in Shakespeare’s works a term applied to human beings too. For example, Posthumus in Cym. describes the Britons, newly puissant as ‘the mortal bugs o’ th’ field’ (Cym. 5.03.51). They are ‘mortal’ in that they are deadly but also ‘mortal’ in that they are not supernatural. This usage points up the fact that although bugs were usually illusory, sometimes the term could encompass quite rational fears. Hermione describes death as ‘the bug which you would fright me with’ in WT (3.02.92). Similarly, ‘Warwick was a bug that fear’d [frightened] us all’ comments King Edward as Warwick dies in 3 HVI (5.02.2). Yet

32

Bug/bugbear

there are also uses that seem more straightforwardly preternatural and stress the illusory aspect of the term: ‘a bugbear take him!’ Pandarus mocks Cressida in T&C when she appears to regret spending a sleepless night with Troilus (4.02.33). Meanwhile ‘fear [make afraid] boys with bugs’ brags Petruchio in Shrew (1.02.210), implying that no such bug could scare him. This last phrase comes close to one of the best-known usages of the term in its supernatural sense, in Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) to sum up a list of fearful, unreal creatures that was pillaged by many dramatists of the period, including Shakespeare. Scot rejects the conventional fear of witchcraft along with other things that ‘in our childhood … our mother’s maids have ... terrified us with’ including hags, devils, fairies ‘and such other bugs’ (see Briggs [1957, 1959, 1967] and Wall [2001] for discussion). These bugs who scare boys make us ‘afraid of our owne shadowes’, Scot warns. The word bug was common in this sense and was even part of the official lexicon to the extent that in several early Tudor translations of the Bible used it in Psalm 91:5: ‘thou shalt not be afraid for any bugs by night’. The King James Bible of 1611 preferred ‘terrors’.

33

C Cacodemon (see demon/daemon) Caesar, Julius (ghost) See also: star, soothsayer, foresee/foretell, dream, fate, astronomy, prophecy, ghost, King Hamlet, King Henry VI, apparition, evil, spirit, angel, augury Julius Caesar is a Roman general and political leader whose ambitions of becoming emperor lead to his murder in JC. Two of his murderers, Cassius and Brutus, debate their right (or duty) to topple a tyrannical leader, and whether or not the stars allot status and deny agency to subjects of such a ruler. Meanwhile, Caesar ignores the warnings of both a soothsayer and his wife Calpurnia, who has had a foretelling dream of his death, and – foolishly or fatedly – goes to the Senate to meet his end. The historical Caesar was indeed murdered in 43 bc by conspirators who wished to prevent the development of a dictatorship. In part, Shakespeare used this ancient conflict to dramatize political issues of his own time and their intersections with notions of divine kingship and providence, free will, individual agency and fate (including astronomy or astrology) and prophecy. Further, Caesar appears as a ghost at the play’s end before the conspirators are defeated in battle and his ghost has similarities with that of other murdered rulers – King Hamlet, King Henry VI – in desiring and achieving revenge and – maybe – closure (see also apparition). The ghost is described as the ‘evil spirit’ of Brutus, Caesar’s chief murderer, and also discussed in the entry for ‘angel’. Caliban See also: monster, devil, Prospero, cursing, Sycorax, witch, evil, hag, Setebos, demon/daemon, magic, charm Caliban is a part-human and apparently part-monstrous creature in Temp.. He lives on a (probably) Mediterranean island which before and during the play has been and is being visited and colonized by shipwrecked Italians. These people suggest that Caliban has human-like abilities such as speech and human emotions, but a body that may not be conventional in appearance and may be part-devil or part-fish. But there is no wholly trustworthy or consistent description of him; instead he is subjected to various insulting and quasi-scientific classifications by others. For example, he is described as a ‘moon-calf’ by two drunken and scheming characters, Trinculo and Stephano (2.02.111, 135–6). This was a term applied 34

Caliban

indiscriminately to mentally or physically disabled people in the early modern period. It was drawn from the notion that such people might have been born prematurely or subjected to deforming lunar influence in the womb, by analogy with the misshapen calves sometimes born to cattle. Trinculo and Stephano are also concerned that Caliban might be a ‘devil’ or ‘monster’, and describe him as smelling ‘fish-like’ though they note that he has human arms and legs (2.02.25–6, 30, 88, 98). How much of this is a misunderstanding of their initial encounter is unclear. The confusion is mutual, for Caliban mistakes Stephano for a god or the mythical Man in the Moon (2.02.139), a figure based on the shapes observed on the face of the moon and situated in folklore as a sinner banished to the moon for gathering wood on the Sabbath. Both sides, then, refer to lunar myths in trying to identify each other, and it may be that Caliban is not at all as Trinculo and Stephano perceive him to be. In additional confusion, metaphor blurs descriptions of Caliban’s physical appearance: thinking he is foolish to choose Stephano as his god, Trinculo calls him ‘puppy-headed’ (2.02.154). Presumably this simply means ‘foolish’ rather than being a literal reference to the monstrous Cynocephali, dog-headed people believed to live in the Orient. Still, their presence in the text even metaphorically helps to problematize descriptions of Caliban as monstrous simply because he is a new discovery to his island’s colonists. Prospero and Miranda, more permanent rulers of the island, also label Caliban unflatteringly. In Act 1, Scene 2 a major confrontation occurs. We gather from their mutual accusations that Prospero and Miranda came to the island to find Caliban already living there. Although initially Caliban made them welcome and they taught him language (see cursing), he admits attempting to rape Miranda, and so Prospero has enslaved him. This transgression does not seem to be the only cause of the newcomers’ dislike of Caliban, however, for his mother was Sycorax, a witch, whose power is contrasted with Prospero’s as being evil. Sycorax lived and died on the island before Prospero’s arrival, having been banished there from ‘Argier’, probably north Africa, already pregnant with her son. Caliban was born on the island and sees himself as Sycorax’s inheritor, claiming that the island is his. Prospero disputes this. Perhaps as a direct result of this power-struggle, he refers to Caliban as ‘a freckled whelp’, ‘hag-born’ and ‘not honoured with/A human shape’ (1.02.283–4). His descent from a witch causes Prospero to suspect that Caliban’s father may be a devil (1.02.319–20) since witches were thought by such demonologists as Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger to copulate and bear children with devils (Malleus Maleficarum (Speyer, 1487)). Caliban says that his mother had a ‘god’ called Setebos, who may be Prospero’s suspected devil (1.02.373). Yet Caliban appears woefully lacking in demonic power: he attempts to use magic himself when he curses ‘all the charms/Of Sycorax – toads, beetles, bats light on you!’ (1.02.339–40) but his words have no effect. Prospero’s magic is stronger and he threatens to torture Caliban with cramps and aches if he is not obedient (369–70). The witch’s son attempts to rebel but fails and is returned to his slavery, and his status as a ‘thing of darkness’ (in Prospero’s words), objectified and non-human in the last scene (1.05.275). 35

Cassandra

Cassandra See also: prophecy, soothsayer, fate, foresee/foretell, oracle, sibyl Cassandra is a princess, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, in T&C. She is a prophetess or soothsayer, predicting tragic events throughout the play and being proved right. However, her prophecies are ignored by those around her and she is forced to endure both their dismissal of her wisdom and subsequent bereavements and defeat as their fate does indeed play itself out as she had foretold. She is portrayed as mad and disorderly. Cassandra is taken from Homer’s The Iliad (perhaps around 850 bc) and related Greek mythic histories, in which her gift and its accompanying curse of disbelief was bestowed on her by Apollo (see also oracle, sibyl). She was so well-known as a literary character that the name became proverbial for a doom-laden but disrespected prophet. See Fly (1975) for an analysis of Cassandra’s prophetic language in the play. Cat See also: witch, familiar, spirit, Sathan, magic, Graymalkin, Purr Cats were often associated with witches and superstition in early modern plays, as they were in demonologies, accounts of popular beliefs and trial records. One of the earliest witchcraft pamphlets to be published in England featured a cat familiar spirit called ‘Sathan’, which was thought important enough to warrant a woodcut illustration of it in the book (The Examination of Certain Witches [London, 1566]). Cats’ colour and behaviour was thought to be magically significant – black cats might be lucky or unlucky, for instance. Edward Topsell in his History of Four-Footed Beasts (London, 1607) was among several writers who recorded superstitions about cats: such as that if in washing a cat lifted its foot above its head, rain would follow. In Mac., several witches’ familiars appear to be cats: Graymalkin (‘malkin’ meaning cat) and the brindled (or striped) cat mentioned in Act 4, Scene 1: ‘thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d’ (4.01.1). In this context, the cat is likely to be communicating with its witch. A singing cat-spirit occurs in the additions to Mac. by or associated with Thomas Middleton – it is borrowed from his play The Witch (c. 1615; London, 1778). Witches were also thought to be able to transform into cats, although also into other animals such as hares, and their cruelty was associated with cats’ ‘cruelty’ in ‘playing’ with their prey. Finally, cats were sometimes mentioned in the context of hatred, allergy as it was then understood, or loathsomeness, so that a cat is one of the creatures that Oberon would like Titania to fall in love with under the influence of magic ‘ounce, or cat, or bear,/Pard, or boar with bristled hair’ (MND 2.02.36–7). As Raber (2008) and Rogers (2001) explore, cats were not generally seen as cuddly (despite the ‘harmless necessary cat’ in MerV 4.01.55), but rather as night-roaming, eerily yowling and potentially hostile. They lurked, attacked without warning and were marginal to society in a way that suggested occult secrecy and treachery. Parts of their bodies might be used in magic: Topsell explained, for instance, how to burn a black cat’s head to powder supposedly in order to cure blindness or sore eyes. 36

Changeling

Cauldron See also: magic, witch, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, Hecate, charm, hell, vision A ‘cauldron’ is not an inherently magical item but it has come to be strongly associated with witches and thus with early modern demonology, primarily because of its sensational appearance in Mac.. The word may come from the Latin ‘caldarium’ or hot bath. At its simplest, a cauldron is a large metal vessel, perhaps used for wine or for cooking in antiquity and modernity. Some cauldrons – like the Gundestrup cauldron dug up in Denmark in the 1890s and thought to date to 200–300 bc – were decorated with apparently mythological symbols and stories, which has led modern scholars to associate them with magical, possibly sacrificial rites (e.g. McKillop (1998)). Something of this association may possibly be present in Shakespeare’s witches’ use of their cauldron. The First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch and Hecate sing and dance around it – ‘round about the cauldron go’, ‘about the cauldron sing’; refer to it as a ‘charmed pot’; urge it to give evidence of boiling over its fire (‘cauldron bubble’) and detail the ‘gruel’ they are concocting in it from ingredients such as snake fillet, newt eye and hemlock: ‘in the cauldron boil and bake’. They use human ingredients too – nose, lips, liver, finger of Jew, Turk, Tartar, unbaptized child – perhaps suggesting sacrificial magic through the medium of a cannibal stew (Mac. 4.01.4–38). But beyond this speculation, there is no firm evidence of any specifically ‘Celtic’ or other pagan religious associations with the cauldron in Mac.. Instead, it serves as a focal point for the witches’ attempts to bring about ‘trouble’ by making a ‘charm’ out of various poisonous, culturally taboo and abject items. Purkiss (1996) sees it as characteristic of Shakespeare’s throwing together of sensational elements from stories of witches throughout history with others of murderers, infanticidal mothers, non-Christians, cannibals and so on, which she finds offensive. This Shakespearean use of a cauldron as a site for mixing together sensational items and genres is augmented by another appearance of the word in TNK, written collaboratively with John Fletcher. In her madness, the Jailer’s Daughter imagines the fate of the mad and suicidal in hell: ‘we’ll be put in a cauldron of lead and usurers’ grease, among a whole million of cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon’ (4.03.36–8). Food, possibly Jewish usurers, sinners and criminals mingle together in this cauldron too, and witches also recur a few lines later. The prop cauldron used in the scene in Mac. may have been at the centre of the stage, and must have sat on a trap with a lift, since ‘why sinks that cauldron?’ enquires Macbeth later in the scene when he has asked to see a vision of the future kings of Scotland (106), perhaps thought to be emerging from it. Changeling See also: fairy, Puck, Titania, Oberon, magic, ouph (A) Changelings were most commonly thought to be children exchanged for fairy offspring, although the term could refer either to the human child taken by fairies, or its 37

Changeling

replacement creature, the fairy who was raised by humans. The theft of the human child was secret, rather than assented to by the parents. Wall (2001) argues that this concern about abduction was new in the sixteenth century: the belief that fairies abducted children was constructed then, whilst earlier fairies were said to ‘change’ babies in a different way, by causing them to lose their wits or looks. This latter notion continued into Shakespeare’s time: often the notion of a changeling child was used to explain unpalatable parental disappointment in their son or daughter. If a child was ugly, sickly or appeared to be unusually unintelligent or mentally ill, the supposed deficiency might be attributed to the fact that it was a fairy – ill at ease in the human world, pining for its true home and foisted on to humans by fairies out of ill will or callousness because it was in some way a problem. From this negative association arose the use of ‘changeling’ to mean an ugly or stupid person. Sometimes rites would be carried out in an attempt to return the supposed fairy and recover the human child – worse, a child or adult identified as a changeling might be abused or even killed in the hope that the fairy would voluntarily leave the human world, freeing its counterpart from fairyland. The human child taken by the fairies was often thought to be a particularly desirable one: beautiful, docile or noble. (B) The notion of disappointed comparison between an ideal and a changeling is manifested most strongly in TNK, where Emilia speaks to Arcite, comparing him with the favoured Palamon: ‘Lie there, Arcite,/Thou art a changeling to him, a mere gipsy’ (TNK 4.02.43–4). Emilia associates gipsies with the changeling, since an alternative explanation for the origin of the changeling was that it was a gipsy child – either a fairy brought by gipsies (travellers, dwellers in the woods and thus thought likely to be on intimate terms with fairies) or simply an unwanted gipsy child itself. Shakespeare also imagines changeling children as particularly favoured ones: thus Puck refers to an Indian king’s child living with the fairies in MND as ‘lovely’, ‘sweet’ and ‘loved’: indeed, Titania ‘never had so sweet a changeling’ (2.01.22–3, 26). The princely boy is referred to as being wanted as an attendant by both Oberon and Titania (e.g. 2.01.120 ‘I do but beg a little changeling boy’), and it is this rivalry over him that prompts Oberon to have Titania distracted by magic during the play. When she gives up the child, she is freed from her delusion. Thus the human child is a kind of currency among fairies, both servant and possession. He does not appear onstage or speak, having no agency at all. Yet he has been given to Titania by his mother, rather than stolen, greatly minimizing any harm associated with the idea of the changeling. It is significant that the children of kings are associated with changelings. Princess Perdita, brought up by shepherds in WT, is another royal changeling-related baby: ‘this is some changeling’ her discoverers opine, later advising ‘tell the king she’s a changeling’ (3.03.118, 4.04.688). See also the discussion of Prince Hal as a changeling in 1 HIV (1.01.87–8; entry for fairy). Changelings were not always thought of in fairy terms. Hamlet uses the word ‘changeling’ simply to mean substitution, in this case the swapping of one letter for another, ‘the changeling never known’ (Ham. 5.02.53). Meanwhile Aufidius, speaking of Coriolanus, describes ‘his nature/In that’s 38

Charm

no changeling’ (Cor. 4.07.11). In context, this refers to his trustworthiness and the unlikelihood of his changing sides. In both cases, however, issues of deception and truth to nature occur. ‘Fickle changelings’ in 1 HIV 5.01.76 are simply likely rebels and turncoats. (C) Some have read MND’s changeling child very positively: according to Frosch (2007), Puck’s epilogue evokes such a child’s transitional experience in a healing realm of play between dreams and reality. Slights’ (1988) reading associates changelings with borderlands. Wall (2001) points out that the account of Oberon and Titania’s struggle over the Indian boy is the only Renaissance description of a changeling from the fairies’ point of view: for her, the episode explores contemporary concerns about the class hybridity caused by wetnursing. Purkiss (2000, 2001) examines Shakespeare’s changelings as lost children in pastoral settings (further examples include Cym. 3.07.14, 2.02.10, 4.02.217, 5.04.133, and Per. 2.01.142). Lamb (2000) discusses links with illegitimacy, the possibility of children having disabilities, and the ‘socially accepted’ forms of infanticide which served as methods to determine if a child was a changeling (see also Swann [2000]). See Woodcock (2004), Green (1962) and Briggs (1957, 1959, 1967) on fairies in early modern culture and folklore. Charm See also: magic, periapt, star, astronomy, magician, divination, enchantment, witch, spell, elf, Prospero, spirit, Ariel, Caliban, First Witch, Titania, Oberon, siren, bewitched, evil, weird, cauldron, Hecate, foresee/foretell, Queen Elizabeth, Jane Shore, hell, Sycorax, Witch of Brainford, figure, art, invocation (A) ‘Charm’ is etymologically related to ‘chant’ (as in ‘enchanted’) and to song (the Latin ‘carmen’), and is therefore a form of verbal magic. Later use can also imply an amulet, periapt or object given magical powers, often through harnessing astral forces (see star, astronomy). Thus ‘charm’ can be a verb or noun. The term was associated with magicians (referred to as ‘charmers’ in this context), and charming was specifically prohibited in the Bible: ‘When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee ... there shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer ... For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord’ (Deuteronomy 18.10–12). But surviving recorded charms reveal their popular and commonplace nature; they could also easily be used by non-professionals, often for healing everyday injuries and diseases. Charms are recorded in English from Anglo-Saxon times onward. They might incorporate foreign languages, Biblical quotations and/or the names of pagan or Christian deities and saints. They were often in verse, using rhyme or alliteration to aid in memorizing the text: thus their power is related to poetry, like spells. Charms often referred back to an occasion on which the named person or deity, from Odin to St. George, had resisted or defeated evil, witches, elves, poison, infertility or

39

Charm

sickness. The heroic force of the named healer, it is implied, will be called into service by the use of the charm to help the present-day sufferer; thus there is an element of sympathetic magic in the process, whereby reference to one event brings about another similar event. Some charms were written down and the healing process required that the patient either carry about with them the folded piece of paper, leaf or communion wafer on which the charm was recorded, or eat it, thus consuming and internalizing the force of the charm. In this way, words were transformed into material things and even into the flesh of the body – a transubstantiative notion, helping to explain how the term ‘charm’ migrated so easily from verbal to physical objects and to people. The contemporary outcome of this migration can be seen in ‘lucky charms’ and charm bracelets. Simpson and Roud (2000) argue that all traditional spoken formulas to bring good luck or good health are charms, which covers any formulaic utterance not referring specifically to God (and as such becoming a prayer). Perhaps because of this wide application of the term, in the seventeenth century ‘charming’ came to mean a range of attractive and compelling qualities and skills, often associated with speech or, non-verbally, with beauty and its seductive power. (B) Charming has both literal and metaphorical meaning in Shakespeare’s works. His charms are often non-verbal, perhaps thought to be effected by actors’ gestures. Prospero and his spirits frequently combine or inter-relate music and magic, manipulating through the suggestion of sweetness and harmony. Their charms used to affect behaviour also work alongside natural factors like tiredness or remorse. For instance, Ariel uses ‘a charm join’d to their suff’red labour’ to induce sleep in the mariners after the storm, and later tells Prospero that ‘your charm so strongly works ’em’ (Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio, who appear mad) that he should pity them (Temp. 1.02.231, 5.01.17). This latter charm took effect through pre-existing guilt, Gonzalo suggests to us (3.03.104) as well as using the natural forces of the sound of waves and winds which ‘did sing’ of his crime to Alonso (3.03.96–7). Prospero requires heavenly music to work an ‘airy charm’ to restore their senses; the previous ‘charm dissolves apace’ as the music plays (5.01.54, 64). Music is charming in every sense, then, in this play and others. Ariel explains how music has ‘charm’d’ the ‘ears’ of Caliban and the conspirators (Temp. 4.01.178); the First Witch offers to ‘charm the air to give a sound’ for dancing to in Mac. (4.01.129); ‘music oft hath such a charm/To make bad good and good provoke to harm ...’ says the Duke in MM (4.01.14–15); whilst Titania calls for ‘music such as charmeth sleep’ (MND 4.01.83). A Welsh song is said to be soporific too, ‘charming your blood with pleasing heaviness’ in 1 HIV (3.01.215). As in Temp., music is also expected to work elsewhere as a good charm against bad ones, as when fairies sing a song to protect Titiania from ‘spell or charm’ (MND 2.02.17). This time, however, the musical counter-magic does not take effect and Oberon’s charm overrides the protection. Charms could affect the senses individually or collectively. Oberon fools Titania’s eyes with the juice of a flower squeezed into them: he will only ‘take this charm from off her sight’ when she has complied with his wishes (MND 2.01.183). The power of 40

Charm

speech appears to be especially vulnerable to charming: Lucentio will metaphorically ‘charm [Biondello] first to keep his tongue’, whilst later Tranio says that Petruchio will ‘charm [Katerina’s] chattering tongue’ (Shrew 1.01.209, 4.02.58). Iago instructs his wife ‘charm your tongue’, meaning to silence her (Oth. 5.02.183) and in 2 HVI Suffolk promises an enemy that he will ‘charm thy riotous tongue’ (4.01.64). Speech itself could charm: Imogen wishes to speak ‘two charming words’ either side of a kiss in Cym. (1.03.35) and the Chorus hopes his words will result in ‘charming the narrow seas’ towards France, calming them (HV 2 prologue 38). Women in particular could charm by both voice and appearance: Tamora is ‘the siren that will charm Rome’s Saturnine’ (Tit. 2.01.23), whilst Romeo is ‘bewitched by the charm of looks’ (R&J 2 prologue 6). Portia persuades her husband to tell her his secret with the phrase ‘I charm you, by my once-commended beauty’ (JC 2.01.271). Viola hopes ‘my outside hath not charm’d [Olivia]’ TN (2.02.18) – in this case, a sexual attraction complicated by disguise as a man. Indeed, in LC it is a man who has ‘charmed’ a woman and has ‘pow’r to charm a sacred nun’ (146, 260). ‘Lust’s foul charm’ leads Tarquin astray in desiring Lucrece, we are told in Luc. (173), pointing to a non-magical explanation for powerful allure in either sex. Antony twice refers to his lover Cleopatra as a charm herself, as in ‘when I am revenged upon my charm’ (A&C 4.12.16) and ‘This grave charm … hath at fast and loose/Beguiled me’ (4.07.16). In the latter sense, she appears as a spell to win a game (of ‘fast and loose’, a betting trick performed with knots that looked impossible to untie but in fact could be easily undone). Thus the ‘charm’ that is Cleopatra is associated with luck and trickery in winning, a frivolity offset by the adjective ‘grave’, which suggests a far more serious and deadly magic. Evil charms are a favourite magical form for the weird sisters of Mac.. As well as the musical charm above, they enact a ‘charm of pow’rful trouble’ and speak of a ‘charm [that] is firm and good’ after their cauldron ritual (‘the charmed pot’ Mac. 4.01.9). Hecate also describes herself to the weird sisters as the ‘mistress of your charms’. Because of their prophecy, Macbeth believes ‘I bear a charmed life’. No one has actually cast a protective spell upon him – instead, he seems to be associating foretelling with charmed security, mistakenly as it turns out. His nemesis Macduff tells him to ‘despair thy charm’ when it becomes clear that he is the exception to the protection from enemies that Macbeth enjoys (Mac., 4.01.18, 38; 3.05.6; 5.08.12–13). We are told that at Christmas each year ‘witch hath [no] power to charm’ (Ham. 1.01.163) and witches’ charms are also referred to in RIII, with Richard accusing the former Queen Elizabeth and Jane Shore of using ‘hellish charms’ (3.04.62) and Cym.: ‘no witchcraft charm thee!’ (4.02.277). Here too Posthumus comes to believe that his life is charmed, though unhappy: ‘in mine own woe charm’d’ (5.03.68). Caliban tries to call down on his enemies ‘all the charms of Sycorax’ but, as we saw above, Prospero’s magic is also charming: he speaks of ‘my high charms’ and at the end of the play explains that ‘now my charms are all o’erthrown’ (Temp. 1.02.339, 3.03.88, epilogue 1). Given Prospero’s association with high magic, it is perhaps surprising to see him as a charmer like Mac.’s witches. In real life, charmers tended to be village healers 41

Circe

who would recite traditional rhymes over warts or sprains. In MAdo two references to charms relate to this kind of magic: Benedict has ‘no charm for the toothache’ whilst Leonato also rejects the power of charms. Trying to assuage his grief is like trying to ‘charm ache with air, and agony with words’ (3.02.70, 5.01.26). In Oth. too, we hear of a traditional charmer. He speaks of an Egyptian woman who gave a magic handkerchief to his mother: ‘she was a charmer’ he explains, and could almost read thoughts. She gave the handkerchief to Othello’s mother as a love-charm that would keep her husband faithful (Oth. 3.04.57). Earlier in the play Othello has teasingly promised to tell ‘what drugs, what charms’ he himself used to win Desdemona’s love (1.03.91). The Witch of Brainford is a similar figure who ‘works by charms, by spells, by th’figure’ in MWW (4.02.176). These images of witch, healer and Egyptian/gipsy cunning woman do not fit Prospero’s conception of his art. But in Temp., charms are still magic: learned, subtle and holy, maybe, but part of the same spectrum. Even goddesses are charmers in the play: it is feared that Venus and Cupid may have planned ‘some wanton charm’ on Ferdinand and Miranda (4.01.95). Again in TNK the pagan deities are apostrophized as ‘heavenly charmers’ (5.04.131). Thus the term encompasses all kinds of magic. (C) Neill (2008) examines musical charms in Temp., and despite its Restoration focus, Plank’s (1990) article discusses sung charms in Mac.; Kranz (2003) explores Mac.’s verbal magic, including its rhyming charms as distinctive to the witches and their power. Circe See also: witch, Hecate, Medea, transformation, magic, Joan La Pucelle, Oberon, Puck, Titania Circe is a Greek demi-goddess and witch found in Homer’s The Odyssey (perhaps c. 850 bc) She was portrayed as daughter to either the sun and Perseis, or Oceanus, or Hecate. She was sister to Aeetes, king of Colchis (and thus the aunt of her fellow-witch Medea) and of Pasiphae, wife of Minos. Circe lived on an island in the Mediterranean, where she welcomed Odysseus’ companions during their voyage home from Troy but then turned them into animals. Odysseus managed to break Circe’s spell and became her lover, living with her for long enough to father several children. She is thus associated with sex, love and their transformative powers for both good and ill, as in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) which contains several reworkings of Circe. In English literature more generally she also encodes fascination with the exotic, foreign world of the Mediterranean, with its opportunities, traps, temptations and fantasies of pleasure and power. As such, it has been argued (Roberts [1996], Robinson [2007]) that Circe and her fellow classical witches inform Temp., Err. and Oth. among others of Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays, especially those set on islands or in cities like Ephesus that were associated with goddess worship. ‘I think you all have drunk of Circe’s cup’ (Err. 5.01.217) comments the Duke of Ephesus, as he tries to untangle the mistaken identities of the play. Various characters have

42

Clarence, Duke of (ghost)

been imprisoned, deluded, seduced and changed during the play, in a city repeatedly associated with magic. Eventually love and reconciliation will be the result. But Circe’s transformations could be less positive: Joan La Pucelle, the French witch of 1 HVI is linked with her in frowning on her captor when she is defeated and sentenced to death: ‘as if, with Circe, she would change my shape’ (5.03.35). The transformation of Bottom in MND seems to be associated with Circe: although Oberon and Puck, not Titania, perform the magic, it is she who becomes the man-beast’s lover. Likewise in AYLI, Duke Senior jokes that Jacques may have been transformed into a beast in 2.7. Thus Circe haunts Renaissance texts even where she is not explicitly named. Yarnall (1994) offers a complete history of Circe. Circle See also: magic, figure, astronomy, almanac, fairy, witch, spirit, conjuror, familiar, demon/daemon, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, fiend, Asmath, book, conjuration Circles are often associated with magic, either as protective enclosures or as a way of organizing people or magical creatures in a powerful figure. Circles can be magical symbols, such as appearing in astrological (astronomical) almanacs and grimoires, or the term might refer to the dance of fairies or witches in a ‘round’ (as in Mac. 4.01.42 or MWW 5.05.64–5 or as ‘ringlets’ in Temp. 5.01.37), or even the Great Wheel of Fortune. In AYLI, Jacques claims to know a ‘Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle’ (2.05.60). There are several sexual innuendos associated with circles and magic: HV ’s ‘if you would conjure in her, you must make a circle’ (5.02.293), a joke that Burgundy makes about Princess Katherine; and Mercutio’s jibe that he will ‘raise a spirit in [Romeo’s] mistress’ circle’ (R&J 2.01.24). In these cases, the circle is both vagina and a protective figure usually drawn in chalk or pre-painted around conjurors in the belief that familiars or demons would not cross the line. One is drawn in 2 HVI Act 1, Scene 4 by Roger Bolingbroke as he and Margery Jourdain raise the fiend Asmath. Butler (1949) offers a classic account of ritual magic of this type. Iizuka (2004) highlights metaphorical ideas of ‘circles’ in RIII; cyclical history and divine retribution in a play with plentiful magical imagery. Clarence, Duke of (ghost) See also: prophecy, Queen Elizabeth, Jane Shore, witchcraft, dream, hell, angel, fiend, ghost, cursing, King Hamlet, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, devil, vision, Prince Edward, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, King Henry VI, Lady Anne, Duke of Buckingham, Lord Hastings George, Duke of Clarence, is the brother of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who has him murdered in the course of his machinations aimed at becoming king in RIII. By Act 1, Scene 1 Richard has already persuaded their eldest brother, King Edward IV, to imprison the Duke of Clarence because a prophecy has suggested that someone whose 43

Cobham, Eleanor

initial is ‘G’ will kill the king’s sons and Clarence is called George. We see Clarence escorted to the Tower of London, and hear his (genuine) protestations of innocence. He wrongly blames Queen Elizabeth and Jane Shore for his plight – later they will be accused of witchcraft. In Act 1, Scene 4 he is murdered by Richard’s hired killers, after describing a dream in which he drowned and went to hell, imagining angels and fiends punishing him for his sins (murder, perjury). At least the first part of this dream does prove prophetic, for he is drowned in a butt of wine. But whether or not the second part is accurate is unclear, since Clarence returns as a ghost to haunt Richard in a further dream at the play’s end (Act 5, Scene 3). In this dream, shared by Richard and the Earl of Richmond, Clarence curses his brother and laments his wrongs. Has he come from hell? Or purgatory (see also King Hamlet’s ghost in Ham.)? Or are we to assume that his wrongs have cancelled out his sins? Surely such a guilty ghost cannot come from the same place as those of the innocent children Prince Edward of York and Richard, Duke of York? Clarence’s return thus raises uncomfortable questions about humans’ ability to predict whether they are damned or saved, as well as the location of the soul after death, and the relationship of ghosts with devils. All these issues are discussed in more detail in the entry for ‘ghost’, and see also ‘curse’ for Queen Margaret’s description of Richard’s haunting dream as a vision of devils. The other ghosts haunting Richard are Prince Edward, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, King Henry VI, Lady Anne, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Hastings. Cobham, Eleanor See also: conjuration, fiend, Asmath, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, John Southwell, John Hume, King Henry VI, fate, conjuror, magic, sorcery, divination, witchcraft, Joan La Pucelle Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, appears as the instigator of the conjuration of the fiend Asmath in 2 HVI Act 1, Scenes 2 and 4. Using the services of Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, John Southwell and John Hume, Eleanor presides over the conjuration from a distance, and hears Bolingbroke question Asmath about the fate of several prominent courtiers, as well as King Henry VI. Her purpose is to secure advantage for her husband, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. The conjurors are surprised and arrested, since Hume has been acting as a double agent to entrap the Duchess. Her accomplices are variously sentenced (see their entries) and Eleanor is given a public penance, walking through the London streets wearing a white sheet and carrying a taper (which we see in Act 2, Scene 4), after which she is to be perpetually imprisoned. She laments the shame this brings on her personally and as the Duke’s wife, blames his enemies (correctly) for intriguing against the couple, and there is a tender exchange between her and her husband before she is taken away to prison on the Isle of Man. The historical Eleanor Cobham was first the mistress and then wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and was tried for treasonable magical offences in 1441. The trial’s

44

Cobweb

history is confusing, as there was no precedent for trying a peeress for these offences in the same way as her commoner associates could be tried. It was unclear which court could be used. Eleanor was thus initially treated as an accessory to their crimes, some of which she admitted, but eventually sentenced by a panel of bishops. Therefore she was given the penalty of penance, the usual outcome of ecclesiastical court trials for sorcery, divination and so on, whilst two of them were condemned to death in the court of King’s Bench. Ecclesiastical courts focused on getting the accused to repent, and then reintegrating them into the church community by penance instead of punishing them harshly, unless they were convicted of very serious heresies. Eleanor’s appearance in Act 2 is thus accurately represented, and would have seemed a lenient outcome to audiences of the 1590s, by which time witchcraft and its related offences such as conjuration had been redefined as felonies to be tried by the criminal courts (and it had been established that peeresses could be tried in the same way as peers). Shakespeare did not follow his two known chronicle sources (Hall and Holinshed – see the entry for Roger Bolingbroke) in describing Eleanor’s magic (perhaps he used the Brut chronicle, which mentions the raising of fiends); and he also omitted her forcible divorce from Duke Humphrey, which is recorded in the trial documents and the Brut. This Eleanor is presented as a loved and loving wife, adding pathos to her separation from her husband. Despite her guilt (the audience saw the raising of the fiend, so there is no doubt) she is thus treated sympathetically, quite unlike Joan La Pucelle in 1 HVI. On Medieval witchcraft offences and gender, specifically the increasing likelihood of women being accused, see Jones and Zell (2005) and Breuer (2009); and see Kamerick (2008) on contemporary debates about the seriousness of magical offences, and church courts. On Eleanor Cobham in Shakespeare’s play see Levine (1994, 1998), who discusses conjuration and image magic as well as gender and political contexts of the accusation, and Howard and Rackin (1997) on the Duchess’ intrigue. Cox (1993, 2000) describes Eleanor Cobham as La Pucelle’s ‘successor’, examining the witches of 1 and 2 HVI; see also Manley (2003) on Eleanor’s contemporary political relevance for Shakespeare. Cobweb See also: fairy, Moth, Queen Mab, spell, Peaseblossmon, Mustardseed A fairy in MND. Cobweb’s name associates fairies with the beautiful, mysterious substances of the natural world such as spider’s web (see also Queen Mab) and also with insects (like Moth). Spiders were often called cobs or attercobs in early modern English, and they and their webs were used in spells, as for example by the fairyinspired cunning man John Walsh in The Examination of John Walsh (London, 1566) Reynolds and Sawyer (1959) discuss cobweb as a component in folk medicine, along with other ‘medicinal’ fairy names in the play.

45

Conjuration

Conjuration See also: exorcism/exorcist, spirit, familiar, devil, magic, apparition, conjuror, book, Doctor Pinch, possession, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, demon/ daemon, fiend, Eleanor Cobham, Asmath, prophecy, evil, magician, Lady Anne, witch, witchcraft, Julius Caesar, Barbason, Joan La Pucelle, circle, incubus/ succubus, star, auspicious, fairy, invocation (A) The Middle English word ‘conjure’ comes partly from Old French and partly from Latin as ‘conjurare’, to conspire by swearing a joint oath. ‘Conjuring’ in the demonological sense – the exorcizing or raising of spirits, familiars or devils – required binding in various ways reminiscent of oath-taking. For example, the binding of spirits into obedience was done by the use of a holy or magical name. Formal acts of conjuring were thus carried out when a religious or scholarly figure called on powerful names in an attempt to raise, expel or otherwise control a spirit. By the sixteenth century the word could also refer to the fraudulent appearance of such conjurations or other apparent magic, in the form of sleight of hand or entertaining trickery. The Witchcraft Act of 1563 explicitly prohibited conjuration. The idea that witches might raise the spirits of the dead (necromancy) recalls one of best known witches of the Bible, whom we might now consider a medium, the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28). This witch conjures the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel, an incident vigorously debated by early modern demonologists who argued that she had no power to do so and the apparition must have been an illusion of the devil and the trickery of the witch. (B) Conjuration is a very widely used image in Shakespeare’s works, so much so that it needs a separate discussion from the figure of the conjuror, a term used sparingly and more precisely. Whilst conjurors were usually male and often scholarly (or at least literate and possessing magical books), conjuration of a metaphorical kind is carried out by characters of both sexes and all classes. Some references are literally to formal conjuration: when Antipholus of Syracuse believes he has met a devil, he tries to find the right formula to exorcize it: ‘I conjure thee to leave me and be gone’ (Err. 4.03.67) and the ‘professional’ exorcist and conjuror Doctor Pinch repeats the move in the next scene when treating a supposedly possessed patient: ‘I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven’ (4.04.57). The ceremonies used by Roger Bolingbroke and Margery Jourdain to raise a demon or fiend for Eleanor Cobham in 2 HVI are called ‘conjurations’ and use the Latin ‘conjuro te’ (I conjure you) formula on the spirit Asmath (stage direction and 1.02.99). Jesus Christ is described as conjuring by Shylock as part of a reference to the Gadarene swine: ‘which your prophet the Nazarite conjur’d the devil into’ – Christ forced them out of a madman into the swine (MerV 1.03.34). Despite its literal correctness, this usage appears intended to be disrespectful, since it is spoken in the context of inter-religious strife. The more usual association of conjuring was indeed with evil characters such as the ‘black magician’ whom Lady Anne imagines ‘conjures up this fiend’ (Gloucester) in RIII (1.02.34); and when Othello is accused of using ‘conjuration and ... mighty magic’ it is for the wicked purpose of seducing Desdemona

46

Conjuration

(Oth. 1.03.92). Macbeth conjures the witches when he asks them to tell him his future ‘I conjure you by that which you profess’, presumably their evil ‘foul’ness or their witchcraft (Mac. 4.01.50). Conjuration also existed in the classical world: ‘I’ll learn to conjure and raise devils’ rages the ancient Greek Thersites as he seeks revenge on Ajax (T&C 2.03.6). Likewise, but in a more benign sense, when Marina calls on the gods in Per. the Bawd comments fearfully ‘she conjures, away with her’ (4.06.147). But actual conjuration shifts easily into metaphor. In JC the names of Roman leaders are compared by Cassio to the names of gods used in conjuration: ‘conjure with ’em. ‘Brutus’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘Caesar’’ (1.02.146). Julius Caesar’s name may be powerful but so is ‘Marcus Brutus’. Later, proving Cassio’s point, the sick Ligarius tells Brutus that ‘thou like an exorcist, hast conjur’d up my mortified spirit’ and he will join their conspiracy despite his illness (JC 2.01.323). Names are powerful in raising mobs and armies as well as spirits, Cassio thus suggests, as is good reputation. Money also attracts willing helpers: ‘see,/Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power/Hath conjur’d to attend!’ comments the poet when he sees how Timon’s reputed wealth causes craftspeople to flock to him (Tim. 1.01.5–7). Conjuring is associated by Shakespeare with the use of powerful words as well as names and attributes. When he is rejecting the power of Pistol’s bragging rhetoric to win fights, Nym retorts: ‘I am not Barbason [a devil], you cannot conjure me’ (HV 2.01.54). ‘Devil or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee’, Talbot tells Joan La Pucelle, whom he actually believes to be a witch rather than a devil but also known for her eloquence and leadership (1 HVI 1.05.5). Similarly, another strong woman, Beatrice, is subjected to jokes about her demonic talkativeness: ‘I would to God some scholar would conjure her’ says Benedick (MAdo 2.01.227). Similarly, ‘I cannot conjure’, Ulysses tells Troilus, when asked if Cressida was there – his implication is that she is a devil who could be summoned only by conjuring (T&C 5.02.125). The notion of raising spirits had an obvious sexual joke attached to it. Mercutio teases Romeo that he will raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle and not desist ‘till she had laid it and conjur’d it down’ (R&J 2.01.26). This reference occurs in a string of alternately silly and lewd jokes about summoning Romeo: ‘I’ll conjure too’, ‘the ape is dead, and I must conjure him’, ‘I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes’, ‘I conjure only but to raise up him’ (R&J 2.01.6, 16, 17, 29). Mercutio’s innuendo is repeated about Princess Katherine in HV: ‘conjure up the spirit of love in her’, ‘conjure in her’ etc. (5.02.288, 292–3). The same idea of summoning blood and stiffening flesh, but in a nobler context relating to martial courage, recurs again when Henry tells his soldiers to ‘conjure up the blood’ (HV 3.01.7). Conjuration was associated with sex partly because it was thought that female demons or spirits (see incubus/succubus) could be summoned for sexual purposes: when Dromio of Syracuse hears Dromio of Ephesus calling out the names of maidservants, he asks: ‘dost thou conjure for wenches ...?’ (Err. 3.01.34). Conjuration as binding was another important source of metaphor. ‘Under this conjuration speak’, King Henry tells his Archbishop of Canterbury, after warning him not to embroil England in an unjust war (HV 1.02.29). Emilia explains how Othello ‘conjur’d her [Desdemona] she should ever keep’ the handkerchief he gave her as a token (Oth. 47

Conjuror

3.03.294). ‘My way is to conjure you’, Rosalind tells the audience, rejecting begging as a way to induce them to like the play. She follows up with a series of ‘charges’, the classic technique for ordering a conjured spirit to obey. ‘I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men ...’, for example, uses the women’s love in the place of a powerful name, forcing them to obey (AYLI epilogue 11–18). In a tragic revisiting of this anxious usage, Polixenes pleads with Camillo to reveal to him the danger he is in from the tyrant Leontes: ‘I conjure thee, by all the parts of man/Which honour does acknowledge’ (WT 1.02.400–1). Other animate and inanimate forces and bodies as well as human beings could also be influenced and bound in this way: Clifford tells Warwick that he able to bear a storm far greater ‘than any thou canst conjure up’ (2 HVI 5.01.199); Laertes’ grief for Ophelia ‘conjures the wand’ring stars’, Hamlet scoffs (Ham. 5.01.256); and Edgar is accused of ‘conjuring the moon to stand auspicious’ in KL (2.01.39). (C) Although Sofer (2009) concentrates on Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the article explores the idea of inadvertent magic being done when conjurations were recited in the theatre, and the blurring of the distinction between theatre and magic. Conjuration, Sofer argues, was a literary act. Bain (2012) discusses the conjuration of fairy spirits for sex in the period. Inventively, Klaassen (2012) applies insights from anthropological work with modern pagans to Medieval conjuration spells in an effort to reimagine the performative experience. Mangan (2007) includes discussion of the unresolved tension in early entertainment-conjuring routines between ‘real’ magic and illusion. Conjuror See also: exorcism/exorcist, spirit, demon/daemon, familiar, conjuration, magician, magic, art, evil, supernatural, bug/bugbear, monster, Doctor Pinch, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, Joan La Pucelle, Prospero, fiend, Asmath, prophecy, Eleanor Cobham, wizard, empiric/empiricutic, possession, sorcery, witch, mountebank, fortune, astronomy (A) Conjuror has two distinct meanings: exorcist, and raiser of spirits. Yet these overlap in that both relate to the control and verbal constraining of demons, perhaps as familiars or perhaps as enemies. The Middle English term conjuror comes partly from Old French and partly from Latin via ‘conjurare’, to conspire by swearing a joint oath. By early modern times it was also associated with conjuring tricks in their modern sense: those performed by a magician in which what appeared to be magic was in reality sleight of hand or other deceptive art. Both these associations imply fraud rather than actual evil. Combining fears of genuinely wicked power and a suspicion of fraudulence, Reginald Scot, in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584) lists ‘conjurors’ among supernatural creatures inserted into tales to frighten children. The conjuror might be a real or an illusory threat, but he (or occasionally she) appears as part of a long list of bugs and monsters. (B) Shakespeare uses the word in both its senses as exorcist and spirit-raiser. ‘Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjuror’, says Adriana in Err. (4.04.47) and the schoolmaster

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Cursing

Pinch does not dissent from her description of him. But he is not shown raising spirits like ‘Roger Bolingbroke, the conjuror’ in 2 HVI (1.02.76), his female co-conjuror Margery Jourdain or Joan La Pucelle, one of several imagined ‘subtile-witted French conjurors’ in 1 HVI (1.01.26); instead Pinch’s claim is that he can drive demons out of the human body by exorcism. Onions (1986) explains that Pinch, as a schoolmaster, would be thought to have enough mastery of Latin to command the evil spirits in the language that they were believed to speak. Adriana hopes that he will be able to free her husband, thus curing Antipholus of his supposed madness. Conjuration, then, is in this sense a useful, indeed a pious and learned, art: it relates more closely to the activities of Prospero rather than those of the rogue priest Bolingbroke who is raising the fiend Asmath to utter prophecy for Eleanor Cobham. Pinch happily uses the word ‘conjure’ himself in adjuring Satan: he conjures the devil by all the saints in heaven, positioning himself in a Christian and likely a Catholic context. He hopes to command the demons by the use of holy names. Yet he is not a holy man but a ‘wizard’, according to Antipholus, meaning that he may be a quacksalver, empiric or cunning man who (mis)diagnoses demonic possession as the cause of disease. Village cunning men or magicians were sometimes called conjurors, and the term when so applied migrates down the social scale from the priests and scholars who were conjurors in Medieval times. Bolingbroke and La Pucelle are the Medieval kind of conjuror – appropriately, since the plays in which they feature are set in the fifteenth century – and there is a grandeur and power about their supposed traffic with demons and sorcery for all its seditious and hostile setting. Pinch is a more lowly schoolmaster, but Antipholus pushes him further down the magical hierarchy into the category of empiric or witch (as in TNK 3.05.84 where ‘conjuror’ is used as an equivalent word for a tinker). He and Dromio of Ephesus believe Pinch is conspiring with Adriana in a plot to discredit her husband. When they break free from the ropes with which Pinch has bound them as part of his cure, ‘they will kill the conjuror’ if no-one intervenes (5.01.177) since they believe him to be a hired charlatan. Pinch is thus described as a mountebank and juggler as well as a fortune-teller (see astronomy). This abuse and the calling into question of the reality of demonic possession is partly because of the violent controversy over the legitimacy of exorcism in the 1590s and early 1600s centring around groups of Catholic and puritan exorcists. (C) Gibson (2006) discusses the late Elizabethan controversy over exorcism as it relates to Err., KL and TN. Cartwright (2007) analyses Doctor Pinch and the language of magic. Knopp (2004) examines Shakespeare’s echo of Chaucer in Prospero’s conjuration, in the sense of magical trickery. Cursing See also: evil, invocation, devil, witch, witchcraft, magic, demon/daemon, spell, charm, ban, damnation, accursed, ghost, Prince Edward of York, Queen Elizabeth, Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings, dream, hell, elf, nativity, Caliban, Sycorax, magician, Prospero, art, Jane 49

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(A) To curse is to utter a malediction, ill-speaking or ill-wishing, against someone or something. The term is Old English, but has no definite origin. Although the curse can be simply the expression of a desire that evil befall the object of cursing, it also implies the invocation of a deity or other supernatural entity who is being asked to carry out that harm. This entity might be the devil or, more surprisingly, the Christian God, for cursing had an official as well as an unofficial role in early modern linguistic practice. Witches might curse, but so might priests. Ordinary Christian worshippers might also curse those who had done them a deeply-felt wrong, for example by kneeling in a public place and formally calling down God’s wrath on the miscreant. By the sixteenth century this practice was discouraged, however, and cursing was more readily associated with witches. It was an extremely common feature of witchcraft prosecutions, in which the accused was often described as mumbling or shouting curses against a victim who subsequently suffered harm. Curses could be general or specific: specific ones were harrowing, detailed imaginations of torments or losses, but general ones were more likely to be perceived as coming true whenever something bad occurred later on. Confusedly, curses were linked with the personal performance of magic (i.e. it was possible that they could operate mechanically, without demonic assistance), by the notion that the curser was uttering a maleficent spell or charm that would take effect by itself because of some power inherent in its words. They were also referred to as ‘banning’. (B) Cursing is very frequent in Shakespeare’s works and examined in some in great detail, suggesting a fascination with the power of words, especially those animated by hatred and pain. It was often perceived to be a feminine, lower-class activity, in which sense Hamlet uses it: fearing that in his rage against his uncle he will ‘fall a-cursing, like a very drab’ (a whore; Ham. 2.02.586). But Shakespeare also refers to its ecclesiastical use as in KJ (3.01.173, 223 ‘curs’d and excommunicate’, ‘excommunicate and curs’d’) and God’s curse: fratricide ‘hath the primal eldest curse upon’t’ (Ham. 3.03.37). Also Biblically, Emilia calls down ‘the serpent’s curse’ on anyone who has suggested to Othello that his wife is unfaithful (Oth. 4.02.16). This suggests the serpent’s condemnation to beastliness, envy and enmity with woman. It appears related to the idea of damnation. Some references to damnation have the force of curses in Shakespeare’s work: for instance, ‘the devil damn thee black’ (Mac. 5.03.11) and ‘O, damn her, damn her!’ (Oth. 3.03.476), but this latter, common, use seems to be calling on God to exercise final judgement after life rather than to afflict the cursed person immediately. A delayed curse is also imagined antisemitically, when Shylock speaks of the supposed accursedness of Jews because they had participated in the killing of Christ. ‘The curse never fell upon our nation till now’ he says when his daughter elopes with a Christian (MerV 3.01.85) although earlier he has referred to a national curse in a different way, bringing it down upon himself: ‘cursed be my tribe/If I forgive him’ (Antonio; MerV 1.03.51). Finally, the notion of original sin – the sin of Adam and Eve – is linked with God’s general ‘curse’ on nature and humanity: Cordelia’s goodness ‘redeems nature from the general curse’ (KL 4.06.206) whilst the Queen says that Richard II’s deposition will ‘make a second fall of cursed man’ (RII 3.04.76). 50

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Curses are often a political weapon in Shakespeare’s works. In RIII, the former queen, Margaret, utters a lengthy curse against Richard of Gloucester and he is cursed over and over again by the ghosts of those he has murdered, their bereaved relatives, and his own mother. Two examples of the length and formality of cursing in this play will suffice. Margaret’s curse against all her enemies begins the play’s sequence, although it self-consciously continues earlier curses in the HVI plays such as ‘so God’s curse light upon you all!’ (Jack Cade in 2 HVI 4.08.32), demonstrating the importance of the curse-fulfilled trope. Margaret begins by asking if curses are efficacious, a question repeated from 2 HVI 3.02.310 where Suffolk says that ‘would curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan …’ he would utter them (i.e. if curses could kill, though he thinks they cannot). By RIII his former lover Margaret seems to know that they can: Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses! If not by war, by surfeit die your king, As ours by murder, to make him a king! Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales, For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales, Die in his youth by like untimely violence! Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen, Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self! Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s loss; And see another, as I see thee now, Deck’d in thy rights, as thou art stall’d in mine! Long die thy happy days before thy death; And, after many lengthen’d hours of grief, Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen! Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by, And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son Was stabb’d with bloody daggers: God, I pray him, That none of you may live your natural age, But by some unlook’d accident cut off!

Margaret has cursed Edward IV, Prince Edward of York, Queen Elizabeth, Earl Rivers and the Marquess of Dorset and Lord Hastings. Richard of Gloucester intervenes and Margaret turns on him: If heaven have any grievous plague in store Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee, O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe, And then hurl down their indignation On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace!

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The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul! Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest, And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends! No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils! Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog! Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell! Thou slander of thy mother’s heavy womb! Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins! Thou rag of honour! thou detested—

At this point Gloucester interrupts again, trying to turn her curse against herself by interjecting her name instead of his. However, the play dramatizes the fulfilment of her curse against him, as well as against all of the others named except Dorset, suggesting that providential justice has triumphed over this cheap linguistic trick. The curse is not in fact a magical, mechanical form of words, but a genuine spur to God’s wrath (RIII 3.01.194–233). The incantative nature of the curse is important – with rhythmic patterning such as ‘cursed the heart that had the heart to do it!’ and ‘cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!’ (RIII 1.02.15–16) – but without poetic justice on its side, poetic cursing is nothing. Later, Margaret offers advice to her successor Queen Elizabeth (object of the first curse, now fulfilled) on how to curse the new King Richard for herself, suggesting that depth of suffering and emotion is key to its success. Indeed it should even be enhanced by a little self-deception: Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were fairer than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is: Bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse: Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. (4.04.118–23)

This self-conscious use of cursing as a dramatic device is uniquely intense in RIII, effectively a meditation on cursing; but it is echoed elsewhere, frequently. The notion of learning to curse is repeated in Temp. by Caliban. ‘You taught me language’, he tells Miranda, ‘and my profit on’t/Is, I know how to curse’. He proceeds to do so: ‘the red plague rid you’ (1.02.363–4). Caliban appears here both as the witch-child of Sycorax, but also the protege of a magician’s daughter. He also curses himself for showing the new arrivals the secrets of his island: ‘curs’d be I that did so’ (1.02.339). The second curse may – metaphorically at least – be effective, but the others are not. Caliban’s

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language is not magically potent against Prospero’s art. Does this suggest that his claims are unjust? Or simply that some kinds of power will always triumph over others? Witchcraft-related curses like Caliban’s recur elsewhere. Margaret is referred to as a witch by Richard (see witch). More ambiguously, the poison used by Claudius to kill his brother is described by the latter’s ghost as ‘juice of cursed hebona’ (Ham. 1.05.62). Witchcraft was often linked with poisoning (venefice [poisoning] and malefice [witchcraft] were discussed by demonologists as alternative explanations for the apparent killing power of curses) but it is not wholly clear whether the ghost thinks the poison magically cursed, or is simply denigrating it for its poisonous nature. The devil is explicitly linked with cursing in Tit.: ‘some devil whisper curses in my ear’ (5.03.11), but this is a play set in pagan Rome where such Christian devils did not yet exist, again suggesting the fluidity of the demonological world. Classical pagans were very familiar with the notion of cursing, however; Shakespeare chose ancient Greece as the setting for another exploration of mutual malediction, Tim., a play with a theme of misanthropy summed up in 4.03 with its procession of victims of Timon’s hate (‘hate all, curse all’ he decides at 4.03.530). It is, then, historically plausible that Lucrece could make her rapist Tarquin ‘curse this cursed crimeful night’ (Luc. 970). The repetitive expression of her desire, however, emphasizes the redundancy of language in the poem. Lucrece, and her supporters, will act politically against Tarquin, not simply curse him or the night or make him curse. Thus Shakespeare’s works circle around the argument about whether or not curses work, how they work and whether language, no matter how magically or ethically-charged, can ever replace action. (C) Simpson and Roud (2000) discuss formal cursing in Shakespeare’s society, whilst Stavreva (2000) examines the dramatic context of witchcraft curses in early modern drama. In a famous essay, Greenblatt (1990) debates the power of language in Temp., and the notion of ‘learning to curse’ in political and colonial linguistic contexts. More recently, Brown and Kushner (2001) offers an examination of cursing and malediction, which includes Temp. and RIII, highlighting the relationship with the performed voice, and Steible (2003) focuses on witches, especially Jane Shore, in RIII. Iizuka (2004) emphasizes the circularity of cursing in the history plays, looking at the level and detail of the cursing invective heaped on Gloucester. Lee (1994) examines the relationship between cursing and damnation, focusing on Margaret’s curses. Scott (1984) discusses Tim. which, although it does not operate in the Christian linguistic economy of cursing like RIII still provokes the audience to consider what he calls ‘self-cursing’ speech acts. Timon curses his former friends and neighbours and ultimately himself as well.

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D Daemon (see Demon/Daemon) Damnation See also: demon/daemon, conjuror, magician, hell, cursing, magic, art, Prospero, witch, Sycorax, Owen Glendower, Jane Shore, Queen Elizabeth, Joan La Pucelle, sorcery, enchantment, devil, Lucifer, weird, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, Lady Macbeth, fortune, ghost, King Hamlet, goblin/hobgoblin, Puck, spirit (A) Damnation is connected to demonology in two senses: firstly because the practising of demonic magic was thought to condemn the soul of the conjuror or magician to hell after death, and secondly because damning was linked with cursing. (B) Dealing with the first concern, that magic endangered the soul, Rosalind explains that her ‘magician’ uncle (an invented person) is ‘most profound in his art, and yet not damnable’ in AYLI (5.02.61). But he is on her side, and the adjective ‘damned’ is usually reserved for magical opponents. Hence Prospero’s opinion of ‘this damn’d witch Sycorax’ (Temp. 1.02.263), King Henry IV’s of ‘that great magician, damn’d Glendower’ (1 HIV 1.03.83), Gloucester’s accusation of Jane Shore and Queen Elizabeth with the words ‘damned witchcraft’ (RIII 3.04.61), or the English view of Joan La ‘Pucelle, that witch, that damned sorceress’ (1 HVI 3.02.38). Othello’s wife’s relations also deploy the word against him when he is accused of seducing Desdemona: ‘damn’d as thou art, thou hast enchanted her’ (Oth. 1.02.63). But whilst the first set of uses of the term offers judgement of the existing state of the opponent’s soul, the second attempts to bring about damnation, hyperbolically or actually, by invoking demonic aid. ‘The devil damn thee black’ curses Macbeth as he sees an unwelcome messenger (Mac. 5.03.11; the association of damnation with blackness of the soul is repeated in KJ: ‘thou’rt damn’d as black – nay, nothing is so black –/Thou art more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer’ 4.03.121–2). Mac. is full of the notion of damnation as if hell were gaping throughout the play and characters could at any time fall, or be pushed by well-deployed cursing, into it. ‘Damn’d [are] all those that trust’ the weird sisters (First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch), says Macbeth, including himself in the ‘deep damnation’ of Duncan’s murder (Mac. 4.01.139, 1.07.20), whilst Macduff cannot imagine ‘a devil more damn’d’ than him (4.03.56). Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth sees an imaginary ‘damn’d spot’ of blood on her hand (5.01.35). The play begins with a complaint that Fortune is smiling on the

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‘damned/Quarrel’ of the rebels (1.02.14) and Macbeth’s last words are a curse: ‘damn’d be him that first cries “hold, enough!’’(5.08.34). Damnation also recurs in Ham., this time linked not just to murder but to association with ghosts who prompt revenge. The Prince believes that the devil may have assumed the shape of his father King Hamlet’s ghost, and so ‘abuses me to damn me’ (Ham. 2.02.603). He fears ‘it is a damned ghost’ (3.02.82) or ‘goblin damn’d’ (1.04.40). Meanwhile, in parallel Laertes states that ‘I dare damnation’ in seeking revenge, though he has no ghost to prompt him (4.05.134). Puck describes such ghosts as ‘damned spirits all,/That in crossways and floods have burial’ but these are possibly suicides, since ‘they wilfully themselves exil’d from light’ (MND 3.02.382–6). Thus they link back to Ophelia. More cheerfully, but still ominously, the proverbial phrase ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ is evoked by Prince Hal’s joking with Poins about Falstaff, who is often imagined as destined for hell, in this case because he has allegedly sold his soul to the devil for wine and cold chicken. If he keeps his bargain, ‘then art thou damn’d for keeping thy word with the devil’, whilst if he reneges on it, he is ‘damn’d for cozening the devil’ (1 HIV 1.02.120–2). Thus Shakespeare sometimes explores the damning consequences of particular sins like breach of promise, or, as in MAdo, unchastity and dishonesty under oath: it is said of Hero that ‘she will not add to her damnation/A sin of perjury’ (4.01. 172–3). The usage discussed here relates primarily, however, to the ways in which contact with the preternatural and demonic could damn the soul. (C) Lee (1994) examines how Queen Margaret’s curse, predicting Richard’s damnation (1.03.214–24) reflects the imagery of damnation popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Myrick (1941) surveys damnation as a theme across Ham., Mac. and Oth.. Siegel (1953) discusses Othello’s damnation in contemporary theological context, concluding that he is damned, an argument continued in his 1956 ‘Addendum’ and by Hubler (1958) who sees this conclusion as too neat and literal. But the issue is rightly further complicated by Hunt (2011), who tries to unpick the play’s conflicted confessional politics: do protagonists have free will to choose damnation or salvation, or is their fate predestined (there is a strong thread of such Calvinistic imagery within the play)? Vitkus (1997) explores Oth.’s concern with Islam as, potentially, a damning misbelief to which the ‘Moor’ metaphorically converts. Colston (2010) attempts to recover a sense of the centrality of sin to early modern Catholic society, in which he (arguably) situates Shakespeare. Demon/Daemon See also: devil, spirit, evil, magician, angel, yoke-devil, fiend, monster, hell, soothsayer, Julius Caesar, ghost, Sathan (A) Demon has two meanings, depending on its spelling: a devil (a term with which it is interchangeable) or a non-devilish spirit. In the first usage, ‘demon’ is a substitute for the Christian notion of an evil spirit (and see devil for a full definition and discussion

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of cultural significance). In the second usage, ‘daemon’, it is however a term denoting an often benevolent or at least neutral spiritual being, usually associated with nature spirits in Greek myth and also spelt ‘daimon’. In early philosophy, the word was used semi-metaphorically: Plato deployed it to refer to abstract knowledges and emotions hovering between human and divine and thus animating or influencing behaviour – notions such as love or instinct. But he also implied that in Socrates’ thought, on which he and subsequent Platonists drew, a daemon was a spiritual being that watched over a human, perhaps as part of his character and peculiar connection to the divine, or perhaps as separate. This idea became popular with Neo-Platonic and Hermetic magicians and philosophers in the Renaissance, offering an intermediate and accessible layer between the magician and divine power. But to some Christian philosophers, ‘daemons’ were simply ‘demons’, devilish. Thus the contested notions of intermediate beings between God and humankind play out in the use of the word, as with angel. (B) ‘Demon’ is a word used surprisingly infrequently by Shakespeare (twice). It occurs on just one occasion in its straightforwardly devilish form, as part of Henry V’s denunciation of the traitors Scroop, Grey and Cambridge who have plotted to assassinate him. In a speech also containing references to devils, ‘yoke-devils’ and fiends, Henry imagines his lifelong friend Scroop as having been tempted by an especially cunning devil. ‘If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus’ he concludes ‘Should with his lion gait walk the whole world/He might return to vasty Tartar back,/And tell the legions ‘I can never win/A soul so easy as that Englishman’s’’ (HV 2.02.121–5). In common with Shakespeare’s fiends and devils, then, the demon is imagined as deceptive, tempting and monstrous, coming from a hellish multitude to prey on human weakness. Specifically, the reference to the devil walking the world as a lion comes from 1 Peter 5.8: ‘Be sober, be vigilant: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour’. Here, hell appears as Tartarus, the classical underworld. Yet Henry has imaginative sympathy not just for Scroop, the demon’s victim, but apparently also for the demon himself. In Henry’s narration, we see the demon reporting back on the results of his laborious travels. His dutiful peddling on behalf of his ‘legions’ of associates makes a sharp contrast with Scroop’s failure of a much easier duty to his King. The demon’s motive is explicable, but the human’s wickedness is not. Shakespeare’s other usage of the word demon is as ‘daemon’: ‘thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee’ in A&C (2.03.20). Here, the Egyptian soothsayer is speaking of Antony’s ‘spirit’ as ‘noble, courageous, high, unmatchable’, and warns him that it is incompatible with Octavius Caesar’s. Near him, Antony’s ‘angel/Becomes a feard, as being o’erpow’r’d’ (2.03.21–3). This explicitly Neo-Platonic usage makes a ‘daemon’ also an ‘angel’ and not at all demonic in the Judaeo-Christian sense. It refers to Antony’s character, and also relates to other uses of ‘angel’ in the Roman and history plays (notably here JC, where Julius Caesar’s ghost stands in relation to Brutus as Octavius Caesar stands here to Antony – see ‘angel’) where one human being is imagined as a spirit guarding or haunting another. Shakespeare’s quick definition of ‘daemon’ in A&C in the second clause is interesting: he makes sure that the audience 56

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understand its technical, Neo-Platonic usage, and do not mistake it for ‘demon’. In fact, he seems completely uninterested in demons as conventionally conceived of and feared. The Neo-Platonic overtones of the word ‘daemon’ are thrown into further relief by Shakespeare’s use of ‘thou cacodemon’ to describe Gloucester in RIII (1.03.143). This demonstrates careful discrimination between the ancient Greek concepts of good and bad ‘daemons’, since a kakodaemon was a specifically evil being, as opposed to an agatho- or eudaemon, both of which were good. Shakespeare, then, preferred the words ‘devil’ and ‘fiend’ to ‘demon’ when denoting an evil spirit, and he chose a specific prefix to emphasize malignity on one of the very few occasions when he used the word. ‘Devil’ is certainly less ambiguous than ‘demon’, commonly connoting adversarial and Sat(h)anic evil and without the ability to morph into a more generally spiritual term such as ‘daemon’. ‘Fiend’ is a sharp monosyllable suggesting cruelty and ingenuity. ‘Demon’, however, is a softer word and a far more ambiguous term: its classical, Platonic meaning as simply a non-material, spiritual being remains in Shakespeare’s usage despite its Judaeo-Christian interpretation as a definitely evil spirit. (C) On evil demons see Clark (1997) and Vickers (1984), and in Shakespeare see Wheatley (1916), Assmann (2003) and Cox (1993, 2000), each of whom explore Shakespeare’s few demons as part of a continuum of preternatural creatures. On the philosophy of the demonic, including as essay on Mac., see Fernie (2013). Destiny See also: fate, star, astronomy, prophecy, fortune, magic, auspicious, fairy, Cassandra, Hecate, witch, weird, nativity, foresee/foretell (A) ‘Destiny’ comes from Middle English and derives from the Latin destinare, to determine or secure. The ‘destinies’ refers to the three Fates of classical mythology, whilst ‘destiny’ in its singular form refers more vaguely to a ‘Fate’ or the individual ‘fate’ or predestined path of a person, city, nation, etc. This latter definition was a concept linked to providence by Christian writers. Neither the Destinies nor providence were strictly a concern of demonology, but where the notion of a fixed pattern of events shaded into a belief in the influence of the stars, and thus a debate about the trustworthiness of astrology (astronomy), or about methods of prophecy or fortune telling, or about human ability to manipulate life events, it became important contextually. In this way, the notion of fate became entangled with discussion of the interplay between God and the devil. (B) Shakespeare refers to lives shaped ‘as the destinies decrees’ in AYLI (1.02.105) and alternately or simultaneously makes light of the idea of destiny and gives it dramatic validity, sometimes in the same play. In Temp., for example, Gonzalo is comically convinced that the Boatswain was born to be hanged, so that he cannot possibly drown. He suggests that this destiny may also save the passengers on his ship, conflating the idea with Fate personified: ‘stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging; make the rope of his destiny our cable’ (1.01.30–1). The ship is indeed saved from sinking, although

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it is Prospero’s magic that saves it, as he explains to Miranda (1.02.25–32). Later in the play, Prospero judges his opponents as ‘men of sin, whom destiny,/That hath to instrument this lower world/And what is in’t, the never surfeited sea/Hath caus’d to belch you up ... ’ (3.03.53–6). He states explicitly that in the play’s cosmos, destiny rules everything under the level of heaven. Earlier, he has told us that ‘a most auspicious star’ (1.02.182) is influencing events, but also that he must act to maximize its effect. This astral influence – celestial, but not heavenly in the divine sense – appears to be the ‘destiny’ to which he refers. It seems, then, that star-led destiny has brought the ship towards Prospero’s island, where his magic has caused it to be wrecked in a way that actually preserves it and its crew from harm. Thus the complex relationships between notions of destiny, fate, starry influence and the possible magical responses to these cosmic forces are apparent. It was this that interested demonologists. In one of the most ambiguous references to destiny, fairies are referred to as ‘orphan heirs of fixed destiny’ in MWW (5.05.39). In a speech tasking them with their various ‘offices’, the Fairy Queen of the Garter masque seems to suggest that fairies are descended from the destinies or destiny, in that they have the power to influence human affairs; particularly to bring ‘good luck’ and bless the state and monarch (53–62). They are perhaps contrasted too, however, in that they may not be ‘fixed’ like destiny. Perhaps the death of the parent destiny represents the end of pagan notions of fate, and the beginning of Christian free will – but it is surprising to see fairies as destiny’s remaining children, influencing events in their family tradition. Elsewhere, destiny is also regarded as ‘fixed’: for instance, Hermia sees the customary crossing of true love (associated with the stars in R&J) as ‘an edict in destiny’ which must be borne with ‘patience’ as a ‘trial’ as if it were providential (MND 1.01.151), whilst Cor. and Oth. respectively refer to ‘shunless destiny’ (2.02.112) and ‘destiny unshunnable’ (3.03.275). ‘Hanging and wiving goes by destiny’ notes Nerissa, carefully explaining that this ancient notion is not ‘heresy’ (MerV 2.09.83) and the Clown sings that ‘marriage comes by destiny’ in AWW (1.03.62). Portia blames ‘the lott’ry of my destiny’ for her inability to choose a husband herself – this prohibition was her father’s, but it does lead to the ‘right’ choice (MerV 2.01.15). It is thus not so much a lottery choice by chance as an allotted fate. Thersites claims that to avoid being Menelaus ‘I would conspire against destiny’, but it is not clear how such an initiative might be taken and the play confirms the power of fate overall, particularly in the figure of Cassandra (T&C 5.01.64). Most demonologically, Hecate tells the witches prophetically that Macbeth ‘will come to know his destiny’ from them (Mac. 3.05.17) and this too appears fixed: their prediction comes true against all odds. That they are ‘weird’ sisters refers to their own status as Fates or Fate-like, since the word derives from ‘wyrd’, the Anglo-Saxon term for fate or destiny. In Old Norse the word is the name of the first Norn (for fuller discussion, see ‘weird’). The three witches are thus very like the ‘destinies’ themselves. (C) Thoms (1865) argued that ‘orphan’ may have been a misreading of ‘ouph’ in MWW, although this simply exchanges one opaque phrase for another. Heller (2002) discusses 58

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conceptions of destiny, fate and providence in the history and Roman plays, whilst Morris (2005) discusses destiny in the tragedies. Harp (2002) explores Per., Cym., Temp. and WT. Devil See also: evil, angel, demon/daemon, Sathan, Lucifer, Belzebub, hell, conjuration, familiar, spirit, conjuror, magician, masters, charm, transportation, transformation, fiend, Asmath, Amaimon, Barbason, possession, damnation, Dromio of Ephesus, Antipholus of Ephesus, Malvolio, fairy, Owen Glendower, Caliban, monster, Prospero, Sycorax, devil’s dam, cursing, Banquo, Setebos, yoke-devil (A) A devil is an evil spiritual being, usually thought in Judaeo-Christian theology to be a fallen angel and interchangeable with the word ‘demon’. In parallel with human hierarchies, devils were thought to be ruled over by a supreme spirit, ‘the devil’. He is usually referred to in the singular as Satan or Sathan but sometimes by other names such as Lucifer and Belzebub, who could also be separate characters (as they are treated here). The devils’ abode was in hell, to which God had exiled them, but they could travel between places and states of being. They could be summoned by conjuration and possibly even kept as familiar spirits by conjurors. Early modern people feared the devil and his fellows as beings who could literally walk among them. A favourite text, especially among the puritanically inclined, was the warning that ‘your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Pet. 5.8). Yet even here ‘the devil’ also stood metaphorically for sin, which was ubiquitous and might easily ensnare or ‘devour’ the unwary. The devil had, after all, tempted even Christ to sin (Mt. 4.1-11, Lk. 4.1-13, Mk. 1.12-13). As such, devils appeared metaphorically in idioms and proverbs connected with sin, danger and deception. ‘Vigilance’ and ‘sobriety’ could protect against them, as 1 Peter 5:8 further instructed, and the study of devilish phenomena (demonology) was part of constructing that defence. It studied the marvellous, the natural, illusion and reality and their complex interplay because devils were thought to be active in all these areas. They were skilful magicians, manipulating appearances for their own ends. In particular, devils were masters in the art of deceit. A favourite quotation to explain this was from Jn 8.44, where the devil was described as the ‘father of lies’. It was taken as given that devils had not lost their physical powers after their fall from heaven as rebel angels and that their airy quality and refined subtleness, combined with their outstanding speed, agility and strength, enabled them to achieve real effects beyond human ability as well as convincing illusions. Thus they were very threatening indeed. In order to snare human beings, devils could corrupt sensory perception and charm the internal faculties with ‘ecstasies’ or ‘frenzies’. They could displace one object with another so quickly that it seemed that transportation or transformation had occurred, or present illusory objects to the senses by having influence on the air or by covering real bodies with fantastic shapes. Thus they could delude and beguile the

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senses. The devil was strictly limited in what he could effect in reality (God and nature saw to that), but there was nothing that he could not appear to effect, and demonologists saw their mission as exposing these glaucomata or ‘lying wonders’, so as to reveal the ontological, epistemological and moral duplicity which was involved. This endeavour coloured Shakespeare’s portrayal of devils, as it also affected those of other poets and dramatists. In fictions, the devil often appears as demonologists saw him: concerned with trickery and prestidigitation; not able to create new forms, or change the essential character of existing forms, but possessing the ability to manipulate circumstance and outcome, or to simulate such changes; to create illusion and deceit; indeed to create fiction. Drama and poetry was associated with the devil explicitly by puritanical commentators such as Philip Stubbes: following St. Augustine’s City of God (begun in 413 ad), he argued in his Anatomy of Abuses (London, 1583) that plays were ‘ordained by the devil’ to celebrate and worship heathen deities and that even contemporary drama was thus ‘sucked out of the devil’s teats’. In this godly reading, the devil’s plays had sprung from ancient pagan rituals and subsequently been incorporated into (no less disturbing) Catholic rites in the form both of theatrical ceremonial and actual performance, as in passion and miracle dramas. Stubbes argued further that whatever plays’ lineage, their claims to authenticity were also plain lies – female characters were disguised men and exotic locations were not so, all being in fact still in London. Further, plays’ plots were usually dominated by sins like swearing, murder and adultery. Although it was the 1790s before William Blake described poets as being ‘of the devil’s party’ in his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the thought was already formulated by the mid-Elizabethan period and likely inflected dramatists’ portrayal of the devil and devils with irony. (B) Devils and the devil populate the works of Shakespeare densely, as with early modern culture more generally. They occur as metaphors and as undisputed actual presences – for example in 1 and 2 HVI (see fiend, Asmath). They are conventionally threatening and tricksy: one might easily fall into making a pact with one. Dromio of Syracuse opines: ‘some devils ask but the parings of one’s nail,/A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,/A nut, a cherry stone’ (Err. 4.03.71–3). Once given, the object implied the fall of the giver into the devil’s hands by a pseudo-legal, con-trick agreement. The ability of devils to play such tricks was crisply summed up in HVIII as ‘th’ devil’s illusions’ (1.02.178). Shakespeare uses a number of personal names for his devils, imagining them as both singular and plural. Macbeth’s drunken porter can remember Belzebub but not ‘th’other devil’s name’ (Mac. 2.03.8), whilst he himself is the ‘devil-porter’ of hell, or Glamis Castle in reality (2.03.17). Yet, as these examples suggest, Shakespeare’s devils are often deployed in comedy rather than taken to be the terrifying adversaries which many Christians would have imagined them to be. Many of his usages – the vast majority – associate the devil with comedic deception or outright joke. Certainly, the demonic gave an edge to early modern comedy generally: nervous, comforting or defiant laughter coming from genuine concern about Sathan’s wiles. MWW offers a 60

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good example of the comedic range of Shakespeare’s demonic references. ‘The devil himself hath not such a name’ as ‘cuckold’ notes Master Ford (2.02.299), who prefers the devils’ names ‘Amaimon’, ‘Lucifer’, ‘Barbason’ to this ‘abominable’ term. More seriously but still in a comic setting, Master Page upbraids Master Ford for believing his wife to be unfaithful: ‘what spirit, what devil suggests this imagination?’ (3.03.215), an idea that recurs as Falstaff tells the disguised Master Ford that Ford has ‘the finest mad devil of jealousy in him’ (5.01.18). Conversely, Ford believes Falstaff, the would-be cuckolder, has a ‘devil that guides him’ who might hide him in ‘impossible places’ in the Fords’ house (3.05.147). Each man thus projects the notion of demonic deception (in the metaphorical form of possession or pact) on to the other. We also hear metaphorically of ‘the Welsh devil/Hugh’ who is actually the parson (5.03.12) and the ‘three German devils’ who are really horse thieves (4.05.69). The play concludes equably that ‘no man means evil but the devil’ (5.02.13) and Mistress Page laughs at Falstaff’s belief that ‘ever the devil could have made you our delight’ (5.05.149) given the knight’s wickedness, age, girth and poverty, a rebuke that he takes remarkably well. The devil is not a real presence in the play, only ever a figure for deception, play, delusion and temptation, as in Err.. He means evil most seriously, but the characters elude it. Similarly light treatment of serious demonological and theological issues are found frequently, as witness Lafeu’s assertion that in asking for his help despite his previous enmity Parolles gives him ‘at once both the office of God and the devil’ because ‘one brings thee in grace, and the other brings thee out’ (AWW 5.02.49–51). Yet God’s grace made the difference between salvation and damnation, and the devil’s assault on the seeker was no small matter. The devil-pact too is referred to archly using the terms of legal land ownership in two plays: ‘if the devil have him [Falstaff] not in fee-simple’ (MWW 4.02.210) and ‘he [Dumaine] will sell the fee-simple of his salvation’ (AWW 4.03.278). In Err. we see Dromio of Ephesus instruct Antipholus of Ephesus how to affect demonic possession ‘be mad, good master,/Cry ‘the devil!’’ (4.04.128) and the extended gag of Olivia’s household pretending to believe that Malvolio is possessed makes the playwright seem wholly sceptical of the notion of demonic occupation of the human body. ‘What, man, defy the devil!’ twits Sir Toby, false-piously reminding Malvolio that the devil is the enemy of mankind (TN 3.04.98). Maria joins in when Malvolio objects, pretending shock: ‘La you, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart!’ (3.04.100). The deception and wilful misreading here recalls devilish manipulation of the truth, making the deceivers comically but uneasily demonic whilst their victim is ironically free from such taint. It also seems likely that in this episode Shakespeare revenges himself on those who thought theatre inherently devilish. He draws attention to this in Sir Toby and Maria’s exposure of Malvolio as a hypocrite: ‘the dev’l a puritan he is’ (TN 2.03.147), a phrase which can be read in a number of ways (like hell he’s a puritan; the devil is a puritan; both devils and puritans are deceitful, just as they allege dramatists to be ... and so on). The juxtaposition of ‘devil’ and ‘puritan’ is what is meant to rankle. The devil appears frequently in oaths – another of Stubbes’ objections to plays – such as ‘what a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day?’ (1 HIV 1.02.6), ‘diable’ 61

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used, for instance, in MWW (1.04.67) and ‘diablo’ in Oth. (2.03.161). Falstaff is often associated with the devil because he is also like the Vice figure in Medieval drama (the ‘roaring devil i’th’old play’ HV 4.04.71): ‘there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man’ Hal tells himself (2.04.447), leading eventually to a denunciation of Falstaff as an ‘old white-bearded Satan’. There is a similarly jokey yet uneasy reference to demonic bargain – ‘how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul?’ Falstaff is asked (1.02.114) – and perhaps one to magical treasure-hunting: Falstaff says that swordsmanship is nothing but ‘a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil’ until sack (alcohol) puts it to work (2 HIV 4.03.115). Fairies or dragons were more usually the guards of treasure, but conjurors could in theory compel demons to help them find it. Meantime, Hotspur twits Owen Glendower ‘shame the devil/By telling truth’ (3.01.57). Hotspur disbelieves totally in Glendower’s abilities as a conjuror, tiring of hearing him ‘reckoning up the several devil’s names/That were his lackeys’ (3.01.155–6) and finds fun in the idea that ‘the devil understands Welsh’ (3.01.229). Meanwhile Falstaff refers to both Hotspur (Percy) and Glendower in devilish terms: ‘that same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true liegeman’ (2.04.336–8) as well as ‘that spirit Percy and the devil Glendower’ (2.04.368–9). Here again the devil is only figuratively present, though his appearances in speech flag up the dangers of sin and self-delusion in the linked figures of the treacherous, pompous conjuror, the rash, bragging warlord and the leeching, self-indulgent drunk. Each has an element of the demonic – but how seriously we take their sin and how we respond to their punishment is left to us to judge. The play suggests a certain amount of sympathy for all three ‘devils’, as well as Falstaff’s alehouse cronies who have demonic associations too. Other characters are also referred to as devils. Caliban is ‘a devil, and no monster’ according to Stephano and Trinculo who are frightened by his odd appearance (Temp. 2.02.98), ‘a devil, a born devil’ according to Prospero (4.01.188) and ‘this demi-devil’ or half-devil (5.01.272) elsewhere Prospero says that the devil is Caliban’s father (see Sycorax, devil’s dam). Devils were thought by some demonologists to be able to breed with humans or at least impregnate women using stolen human semen (see Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum [Speyer, 1487]), although one of Shakespeare’s favourite demonological writers, Reginald Scot, savagely attacks this notion in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), making suspect Prospero’s claim that Caliban is a demonic hybrid. Caliban counters Prospero’s demonizing with ‘the devil speaks in him’ (‘him’ being Prospero; 5.01.129). Indeed, when he summons his spirits other characters conclude that ‘hell is empty,/And all the devils are here’ (1.02.215). We might add Caliban and maybe even Prospero’s spirits to the list of actual appearances of demons onstage in Shakespeare’s works, if we were sure of their being devils – which we are not. How far ‘devil’ is a slur and how far it is an accurate description is not clear. For instance, the fratricidal and treacherous Italians of Temp. ‘are worse than devils’ (3.03.36). The issue is further complicated when we see how non-Christian and non-white 62

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characters are demonized by characters in other plays: Shylock is called a devil and Launcelot Gobbo reiterates his labelling with ‘the Jew is the very devil incarnation’ (2.02.27). ‘The devil will make a grandsire of you’ suggests Iago to Desdemona’s father, referring to her black husband in Oth. (1.01.91) and in Tit. the moor Aaron’s dark-skinned baby is called ‘a devil’ by his nurse (4.02.64). It is difficult to imagine audiences being expected to sympathize with Launcelot, whose malapropism exposes his ignorance, or the racists who taunt Othello whilst he and Desdemona are still happily married, whilst the nurse’s suggestion that the child be stabbed is also repugnant. More problematic is Emilia, who after Othello has killed his wife renews his demonic description: ‘O the more angel she,/And you the blacker devil’ (Oth. 5.02.131–2) and ‘thou dost belie her and thou art a devil’ (5.02.135). But by this point in the play demonic nature has been separated from race in its usages; Othello wonders if Iago, who has deceived him and tempted him into the murder of his wife, is a devil or demi-devil: ‘if thou beest a devil, I cannot kill thee’ (5.02.287) and ‘that demi-devil’ (5.02.301). He also calls his white wife a devil when he believes she has betrayed him: Desdemona is ‘the fair devil’ (3.03.479) and her hand is referred to as ‘a young and sweating devil’ too (3.04.42). Similarly, the insult to Shylock is both confirmed and challenged by further use; Solanio calls Shylock ‘the devil ... in the likeness of a Jew’ (MerV 3.01.19–21) but his further abusive commentary becomes repetitive and confused when in the same scene Tubal enters and Solanio says: ‘here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be match’d, unless the devil himself turn Jew’ (3.01.78). Launcelot himself becomes a devil in Jessica’s eyes, whilst her father is demonic by association: ‘our house is hell’ she says, but Launcelot is ‘a merry devil’ who cheered her there (2.03.2). Bassanio repeats that Shylock is a ‘cruel devil’ (4.01.217) whilst Antonio offers his wife, life and all the world, to ‘sacrifice them all/Here to this devil’ (Shylock) to save his friend (4.01.287). We are left with uncertainty about Jewish or Moorish devilishness: are the insults endorsed or not? Either way, ‘devil’ was in its early modern context a convenient label for characters associated with sins and delusions such as jealousy, villainy and cruelty. Indeed, the personification of the seven deadly sins in demonic form was conventional, another usage drawn from Medieval drama where the sins were often presented onstage as seven devils. Shakespeare occasionally takes this idea at face value, such as ‘the devil luxury’ (lechery; T&C 5.02.55), ‘the devil drunkenness’ (gluttony was the more usual version) and ‘the devil wrath’ (Oth. 2.03.296–7). Equally symbolically ‘love is a devil’ (LLL 1.02.172). Hal remarks that ‘the devil rides upon a fiddlestick’ (1 HIV 2.04.487) which might suggest his association with music (or his miraculousseeming abilities?) whilst Troilus says that in singing, dancing and loquacity lurks ‘a still and dumb-discoursive devil’ (T&C 4.04.90) to trick the hearer into becoming a devil to themselves, tempting their frailty. Shakespeare often wheels out the demonic in proverbial or axiomatic form too: we must ‘have a long spoon that must eat with the devil’ (because hell is hot and the long handle protects the diner; Err. 4.03.64), ‘the devil can cite scripture for his purpose’ (MerV 1.03.98), ‘he must needs go that the devil 63

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drives’ (AWW 1.03.30), ‘mortal eyes cannot endure the devil’ (RIII 1.02.45), ‘give the devil his due’ (HV 3.07.116 as part of a proverbial exchange about the devil including the curse ‘a pox of the devil’ 3.07.120) and ‘what, can the devil speak true?’ (Mac. 1.03.107). The notion that the devil told the truth occasionally to further confuse and tempt his hearers is summed up by Banquo, and the inference is that by his truthful prophecy the devil has captured Macbeth, later ‘devilish Macbeth’ (4.03.117). Helena too comments on the devil’s vexed relationship with competing or contradictory truths: ‘when truth kills truth, o devilish-holy fray!’ (MND 3.02.129). The most interesting usages are those that depart from demonological or dramatic convention to imply uncomfortable questions or conclusions. Aaron, already associated with the demonic by his villainy and the racist attack on his child, offers a disruptive reflection: ‘if there be devils, would I were a devil’ (Tit. 5.01.147). Is his question about the very existence of devils prompted by his non-Christian origin, or his location in a pre-Christian, classical play-setting, or by a radical Sadducism, which denied the existence of spirits? Either way, it stands out boldly, as does his suggestion that we should ‘pray to the devils; the gods have given us over’ (Tit. 4.02.48). This is a version of a phrase from Virgil’s Aeneid (c. 19 bc) which translates roughly as ‘if I can’t move the gods, I’ll try the devils’. Equally striking is ‘the devil knew not what he did when he made man politic ...’ (Tim. 3.03.28). The devil’s influence on the creation and nature of mankind was hotly disputed, with the ancient Manichaean heresy asserting that the devil had a far greater input into mankind and the material world than God had intended. It was fair to say that the devil might have ‘disciples’, as Cromwell asserts in HVIII (5.02.147) – these were those who, like witches, had joined his side. But did he make ‘man’ generically in any way? Part of Shakespeare’s problem in representing a unified cosmological theory (assuming for a moment that he wanted to do so) is that he writes about multiple pagan and Christian worlds, considering Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Romanpagan, Egyptian-pagan, Greek-pagan and British-pagan characters – as well as the odd Patagonian deity (Setebos) or Algerian witch (Sycorax) – and thus achieving consistency and clarity is impossible. What are we to make of statements such as ‘these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in every ten that they make, the devils mar five’ (A&C 5.02.276–7)? This is an opinion delivered by a Clown and it might be just a joke. But the Clown has the air of a wise fool about him and once again he strays through Christianity into Manichaean territory, as well as the world of the Egyptian gods. These are incompatible theories of the otherworld and their forced synthesis here, as the Clown brings Cleopatra the asp that will kill her, must make us question what lies in wait for her beyond her death and what are the forces that have brought her to it. (C) Medieval and early modern demonology is most fully explored by Clark (1997), who examines Renaissance attempts to practice and distinguish between occult and scientific studies and knowledges, and their overlap in actuality. Saleski (1939) offers a fascinating early example of the analysis of word-use frequency focused on ‘supernatural agents’ such as devils and their names; Kegl (1994) discusses devils’ names in MWW. Cox (1993, 2000) discusses Shakespeare’s devils in the context of their debts to 64

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Medieval morality drama and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Paxson (2001) examines Shakespeare stage devils (fiends) in 1 HVI, whilst Haslem (2001) looks at the word as a racist metaphor for black characters used by their enemies. On the philosophy of the demonic, including as essay on Mac., see Fernie (2013). Devil’s Dam See also: evil, Sathan, incubus/succubus, Joan La Pucelle, witch, Sycorax, Caliban, Setebos, Prospero Literally, the devil’s dam is the devil’s mother, a figure unknown to theology but conveying a potent sense of intensified power and evil. As an obviously invented term of abuse it is mostly used comically by Shakespeare. Mistaking a courtesan for ‘Mistress Sathan’, Dromio of Syracuse and Antipholus of Syracuse vie for the most frightening description possible: ‘she is worse, she is the devil’s dam’ (Err. 4.03.51). The same pattern occurs in Shrew where the term tops the description of the ‘shrew’ Katherina as ‘a devil, a devil’ with ‘the devil’s dam’ (3.02.156). Female devils were frightening and tempting creatures in early modern demonology (see incubus/succubus): ‘Devil or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee’ Talbot tells Joan La Pucelle, whom he actually believes to be a witch rather than a devil but also knows for her eloquence and leadership (1 HVI 1.05.5). There is also the possibility of a human mother for a devil, at least metaphorically, in the figure of the witch Sycorax in Temp.. Her son Caliban is described as being ‘got by the devil himself/Upon thy wicked dam’ (Temp. 1.02.320), making Sycorax the devil’s lover, perhaps in the form of her ‘god’ Setebos. But since Caliban is also described as ‘a devil’ by Prospero (4.01.188) Sycorax is the devil’s dam incarnate. In KJ Constance also uses the term ‘devil’s dam’ metaphorically as she and Elinor argue over the imputed bastardy of their respective sons. Constance claims that her boy is as like his father ‘as rain to water, or the devil to his dam’ (2.01.128), embroiling herself in accusations of devilishness as she does so. Divination See also: magic, art, prophecy, soothsayer, augury, foresee/foretell, book, astronomy, fortune, enchantment, witch, Cassandra, Philharmonus, witchcraft, King Henry VI, auspicious, oracle (A) Divination was a magic art related to prophecy, soothsaying and augury. A diviner was a person who could foresee the future or make informed predictions and guesses about its course. The words come from the Latin divinatio, from divinare ‘to predict’. Divination could be carried out using prescribed forms of words, and/or objects that if used in a particular way or context were thought to foretell. Sometimes domestic items like sieves, shears, keys or books would be employed – the ‘answer’ to the question about the future asked by the diviner or a paying customer would be given by the way a sieve turned or the first words on the page at which a book was opened. Questions which could be answered either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ were to be preferred because 65

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they offered a simple choice. Divination was less skilled than astrology (astronomy) or fortune-telling, since it could be done by anyone who knew the right formula and objects. It was explicitly prohibited in Deuteronomy 18.10–12: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch’. (B) Hector speaks of ‘high strains/Of divination’ in his prophetess sister Cassandra (T&C 2.02.114) whilst Philharmonus hedges his best when he prophesies a Roman victory in battle with the Britons: ‘unless my sins abuse my divination’ (Cym. 4.02.351). Apparently they do, since Rome is defeated, unless one wants to adopt a charitable approach that sees both British and Roman characters as ‘victorious’ at the end of the play. The soothsayer is able to redeem himself somewhat in the last scene with a very strained interpretation of a prophecy given by Jupiter, although his use of the words ‘I divine’ is not strictly true: the play’s denouement has already happened and he is simply fitting the obscure words of the prophecy to already-known truths (Cym. 5.05.448). Philharmonus’ fears that sin would cloud his magical ability are plausible: emotions and states of soul were thought to be able to skew predictions. Venus’s heart therefore fears the worst for Adonis, since ‘fear doth teach it divination’ (V&A 670). She is right, however, for he has died. Northumberland likewise imagines the death of his son Hotspur, which has happened at the end of 1 HIV, and begins 2 HIV begging to be told ‘his divination lies’ (1.01.88). Another metaphorical divination which actually occurs after the event is that of the Gardener in RII. He is simply reporting news that the King has been captured, yet the Queen asks how he dare ‘divine his downfall’ (3.04.79). Cassio offers another wellinformed guess as a divination in Oth.; he knows that messengers have been arriving from Cyprus and counsellors have been summoned, so that when Othello is summoned to see the Duke, he suggests that the discussion will be about ‘something from Cyprus, as I may divine’ (1.02.39). Similarly, when Antony and Octavius Caesar are brought together apparently for eternity as brothers-in-law, Enobarbus sharply remarks that ‘if I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not prophesy so’ (A&C 2.06.116). Indeed, Antony soon leaves his wife and angers Caesar. In a play which also contains real soothsaying, Enobarbus’ prediction can be seen to be informed by age, experience and political wisdom rather than occult help. Finally, apparent prophetic ability can be explained by mistaken identity in Err.. Dromio of Syracuse is alarmed when Luce, the maid of a house in Ephesus, knows his name and various hidden moles and warts on his body, claiming that she is his wife. He calls her ‘this drudge or diviner’, not knowing how a kitchenmaid could come by such wisdom unless by witchcraft (3.02.140). But she is, in fact, married to his identical twin. More impressive is King Henry VI’s prophecy that the boy who is Earl of Richmond at the end of Henry’s reign will help to end the Wars of the Roses: ‘if secret powers/ Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts/This pretty lad will prove our country’s bliss’ (3 HVI 4.06.68–70). He apparently bases his view on Richmond’s kingly looks. The audience knows that he is right: this will be Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch (and thus 66

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Shakespeare is bound to endorse his succession with this revelation). He also flatters with his claim in the Son. that all the writers of the past who have praised beautiful people were simply prophesying about the subject of his own praise, a male patron, friend or lover: ‘they look’d but with divining eyes’ (Son. 106.11). Divination is a concept mostly metaphorical in Shakespeare’s works, deployed as joke, political necessity or self-mockery. (C) On Philharmonus’ divinations, see Maisano (2004), Rogers (1960) and Gibson (2013). Camden (1933), Sondheim (1939), McIntosch (1969), Dean (1924) and Smith (1958) discuss astral predictions across the plays and the historical context; Keegan (2011) examines prophecies – both formal and informal – and their successes and failures in HVIII. Dream See also: prophecy, vision, soothsayer, astronomy, foresee/foretell, devil, demon/ daemon, Puck, magic, fairy, Titania, spirit, Banquo, weird, superstitious, ghost, Julius Caesar, book, Queen Mab, cursing, conjuror, Owen Glendower, Prince Edward, King Henry VI, Duke of Clarence, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Lord Hastings, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Lady Anne, Duke of Buckingham, hell, transformation, Sicilius Leonatus (A) Dreams came within the purview of demonology when they seemed to offer a prophecy of future events or a revelation of some kind – in that way, they were often related to visions in discussion, but were distinguished from them in that dreams happened whilst the seer was asleep. Prophets, soothsayers and astrologers (astronomers) all made use of dreams in trying to foresee events – either their own dreams, or those of people who consulted them. But demonologists considered that dreams were untrustworthy predictors and guides. Although they could be sent by God, the devil was equally likely to be the source. As well as demons, melancholia or related madness could be involved in producing dreams that would lead the seer into sin. But in ancient Greek literature dreams were used as didactic devices, and were extremely likely to come true. Despite later Platonic claims that dreams were responses of the brain to recent events and desires, and despite the anxieties of contemporary theorists, early modern theatre often fell back on these classical notions of the dream as a trustworthy vision of hidden truths and an accurate predictor of the future. (B) Shakespeare’s most famous explorations of the power of dreaming come in two magical plays, MND and Temp.. In both cases dreams are linked to visions, the words used in conjunction with one another to describe the experience of characters and their philosophical implications. At the end of MND the audience are invited by Puck to think ‘that you have but slumb’red here/While these visions did appear’ (the actors and the play; 5.01.423–6). The play has previously suggested that the humans’ tribulations during it will seem ‘a dream and fruitless vision’ once magic juice has been applied to their eyes, correcting ‘error’ (3.02.368–71). Their ‘dream’ thus constitutes the main body of the play, erroneous and fruitless as it may be. But the other dreamer,

67

Dream

Bottom, does not seem to consider his dream in these terms – instead he greatly values it. Awaking from a magically induced sleep, he remarks that he has ‘had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream’ (4.01.205–8). He is so pleased with it that he suggests Peter Quince make a ballad of it called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, and indeed it is probable that he has become the lover and guest of the fairy queen Titania during it – a wholly delightful experience for a merely human weaver. Likewise visions in Temp., though built of ‘baseless fabric’ (4.01.151), prompt some of the play’s most stirring verse, culminating in the claim that ‘we are such stuff/As dreams are made on’ (156–7). Here human life is linked to theatre in its short-lived but moving performance. If dreams are insubstantial in Temp., in MWW Master Ford associates them even more forcefully with delusion. Told that he is imagining his wife’s infidelity at the suggestion of a ‘spirit’, ‘devil’ or ‘distemper’, he meets with Falstaff who offers to act as a pimp to procure Mistress Ford, commenting triumphantly afterwards: ‘is this a dream?’ (3.03.190–3, 3.05.139). Some dreams are therefore straightforwardly identified as deceptive, demonic or the product of humoral imbalance and madness, like those in Mac. where ‘wicked dreams abuse the curtain’d sleep’ (2.01.50) and the doomed Banquo ‘dreamt last night of the three weird sisters’ (2.01.20). Some are ambiguous. ‘Dreams are toys’ states Antigonus flatly in WT (3.03.39) after he has experienced a vision of the supposedly dead Hermione offering advice. But although he regards it as superstition to do so, he takes the advice. Later we discover Hermione is not dead, so the dream was not of her ghost: what was it? But other dreams are straightforwardly and self-evidently prophetic. In JC Calpurnia has a dream that her husband Julius Caesar’s statue ran with blood. Caesar rightly fears the worst to begin with but the conspirator Decius Brutus disingenuously tells him that it was ‘all amiss interpreted’ (JC 2.02.83) and that ‘by Calphurnia’s dream is signified’ Caesar’s nurture of Rome (2.02.90). Earlier Caesar had also dismissed the soothsayer who told him to beware the ides of March with the comment ‘he is a dreamer, let us leave him’ (1.02.24). The two dreamers are, however, correct in predicting his murder. In T&C, Andromache’s warning to her husband Hector that ‘my dreams will sure prove ominous to the day’ is also correct (5.03.6). The source of a dream was important to its veracity. In Per. the hero receives a dream direct from the goddess Diana, who instructs him to ‘awake and tell thy dream’ as a result of which he is reunited with his wife (5.01.249), whilst in Cym. a dream of Jupiter brings about the same result for Posthumus, even producing a prophetic book (5.04.29–133). As he awakes, Posthumus comes close to attributing his dream to fairies when he asks ‘what fairies haunt this ground?’ but a fairy dream would likely have been deceitful. In R&J, Mercutio expounds at length on fairies, especially Queen Mab, as the provoker of dreams. The sequence begins simply; Romeo says: ‘I dreamt a dream tonight’, to which Mercutio answers that ‘dreamers often lie’. Romeo defends the possibility of ‘dream[ing] things true’ and Mercutio embarks on his fantasy: ‘O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you’. Mab, drawn in a tiny chariot, drives across the bodies of sleepers. She visits lovers’ brains causing them to dream of love, courtiers’ 68

Dream

knees and noses causing them to dream of curtseys and suits, lawyers’ fingers causing them to dream of fees and ladies’ lips, provoking dreams of kisses, parsons’ noses making them dream of benefices, and soldiers’ necks who then dream of cutting throats and the frights of war (1.04.50–95). Over 40 lines later Romeo interrupts him, telling him that he talks of ‘nothing’ and Mercutio sums up: ‘true, I talk of dreams,/Which are the children of an idle brain,/Begot of nothing but vain fantasy ...’ (1.04.96–8). Later, Mercutio’s belief that dreams and/or dreamers are problematic is tragically borne out. Romeo awakes thinking that ‘my dreams presage some joyful news’ (he has dreamt of his own death and revival by Juliet’s kiss; 5.01.2–9) only to be told that Juliet is dead. The dream might be read as prefiguring her revival from supposed death, but Romeo does not know this will happen and so poisons himself. We then witness the dream’s scenario enacted as Juliet tries to revive Romeo and fails. Should Romeo have trusted his dream’s happy outcome; or was it so illegible that he could not be expected to interpret it correctly; or did it lie as Mercutio said it might? We are left in perplexity. However, in Shakespeare’s English history plays, as with visions, prophecies and curses, dreams are much more likely to come true or otherwise affect reality than not. Hotspur dismisses the conjuror Owen Glendower’s tales of ‘the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies’ (1 HIV 3.01.148) but despite doubts about Glendower the contemporary audience would likely have seen Merlin’s place in the Tudor mythology, as well as Hal’s much-vaunted Welshness, as proving Hotspur’s scepticism wrong. In RIII Gloucester plans to use ‘drunken prophecies, libels and dreams’ as propaganda weapons and succeeds, but ultimately he makes these come true by his actions (1.01.33). They had predicted that someone with the initial ‘G’ would kill Edward IV’s heirs, and Richard of Gloucester does so. By Act 5, he is terrified by his own dreams, in which he is visited and cursed by the ghosts of 11 victims of his tyranny on the night before the Battle of Bosworth (Prince Edward, King Henry VI, the Duke of Clarence, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Lord Hastings, Prince Edward of York, Richard, Duke of York, Lady Anne and the Duke of Buckingham). Although he comforts himself ‘I did but dream’, he examines his sins, predicts his defeat the next day and rightly concludes ‘I shall despair ... I fear, I fear’ (5.03.118–219). The audience must recall at this point Clarence’s dream in Act 1, Scene 4, in which Richard’s brother dreams of his own death and of going to hell, shortly before being murdered. Meanwhile Richard’s rival Richmond experiences the same shared dream as he does on the night before the battle, but because he is blessed by the ghosts and promised victory sees them as ‘the fairest-boding dreams/That ever ent’red in a drowsy head’ (5.03.227). These dreams are lengthy, repeated reminders of the traditional role of dreams from classical theatre onwards in ensuring poetic justice. Garber (1974) and Arthos (1977) both discuss Shakespeare’s recurrent use of dreams and its metaphysical implications, whilst Brown (1999) places literary dreams in a longer Medieval-to-early-modern context. Crosman (1997) argues that in MND the dream is one of human certainty, in a waking world where in fact questions and changes abound, whilst Nichols (2007) considers the negotiation between realism and 69

Dromio of Ephesus

immaterial dream-states in that play and Temp.. Waldron (2012) explores Bottom’s dream as a moving, transformative meeting between physical materiality (the human ‘mechanicals’) and the spirit world, which could be said to include the divine. Dromio of Ephesus See also: Antipholus of Ephesus, demon/daemon, possession, Malvolio, Edgar, exorcism/exorcist, Doctor Pinch Dromio is a slave in the household of Antipholus of Ephesus, and along with his master is believed to be demonically possessed because of a case of mistaken identity. Like Malvolio and Edgar, the audience always knows that he is not possessed, but he is imprisoned and subjected to an exorcism by the schoolmaster Doctor Pinch. Hamilton (1992) explores the role of Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus in the context of the post-Reformation conflict between Anglicans and non-conformists, suggesting that their demonization and reconciliation with the community offers a model for recovering Christian unity (Chapter 2). She also explores Shakespeare’s transference of his source story (the Roman dramatist Plautus’ play Menaechmi, of uncertain date but around 200 bc) from Epidamnum to Ephesus, a city associated with the goddess Diana, witchcraft and magic as well as the reform efforts of the apostle Paul. Ducdame See also: invocation, circle, foresee/foretell, fortune, charm, damnation In AYLI ‘ducdame, ducdame, ducdame!’ is a word repeated in a song (2.05.54). Unsurprisingly, its puzzled hearers ask: ‘What is that “ducdame”?’ (2.05.58). The humorous and somewhat malcontented Jacques answers that it is a ‘Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle’ (2.05.59), a line that is often accompanied by his beckoning fellow-actors into a circle around him to hear his supposedly wise exposition. Ducdame seems to be a nonsense word, although Onions (1986) suggested that it might be derived from the Romany phrase ‘dukra me’) meaning ‘I foretell, I tell fortunes’. Why Jacques would attribute it to Greeks rather than Egyptians (i.e. gipsies) is unclear. The syllable ‘duc’ may call into question the folly of the Duke whom Jacques serves. The song certainly comments on someone who has given up his comforts to please a stubborn will, and the Duke and his men are now living in the cold, dangerous forest in order to prove a point about the honesty of the natural world as against the flattery of the court. The word is thus claimed as a magical charm, but may be a satirical joke. Much depends on its pronunciation: does Jacques see the Duke as having ‘damned’ him (Duke damn me)? Duke of Buckingham (ghost) (see Buckingham) Duke of Clarence (ghost) (see Clarence) Duke of York (see Richard, Duke of York) 70

E Earl Rivers (ghost) (see Rivers) Eclipse See also: astronomy, star, planet, evil, weird, King Hamlet, Edgar An eclipse occurs when a heavenly body such as a star, planet or moon is temporarily hidden or its light partly obscured by another celestial body. The word orginates in the Greek ekleipsis. Eclipses were extremely significant for early modern astrologers (astronomers) as portents but also more generally: for instance, a 1580 order of prayer referred to eclipses, comets and certain weather conditions as evidence of God’s displeasure, a providential warning. Eclipses are associated with evil and horrific events in Shakespeare’s work. In Mac., the weird sisters use ‘slips of yew/Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse’ (4.01.28) in their charms; after the murder of Denmark’s King Hamlet, the ‘moist star’ (the moon) is described as ‘sick almost to doomsday with eclipse’ (Ham. 1.01.120); in KL, ‘these late eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good to us’ (as Gloucester believes; 1.02.103) and ‘these eclipses do portend these divisions’ (as his son Edmund parodies him; 1.02.136). Gloucester’s reading is coloured by disinformation about Edgar’s supposed plotting against him, yet he is right to predict division, treason and discord in the play – it is just Edmund and not Edgar whom he ought to fear. Yet KL also contains a denunciation of astrology by Edmund which answers this speech immediately after it is made. In Sonnet 35 we find other ugly images of eclipse: ‘clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun’ (Son. 35.3) and ‘crooked eclipses’ which fight against glory (60.7). Sondheim (1939) comments on the portentous nature of eclipses and comets in the plays; see also Dean (1924), Camden (1933), McIntosch (1969) and Smith (1958). Ecstasy See also: possession, demon/daemon, spirit, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, blasting, fairy, ghost, King Hamlet, devil In its demonological sense, an ‘ecstasy’ was a trance or frenzy in which the ecstatic person appeared to be insensible or possessed by a holy or demonic spirit which was not their own. The term comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning to stand outside oneself or more literally one’s rightful place. ‘Mark, how he trembles in his ecstasy!’ comment onlookers when they see Antipholus of Ephesus apparently possessed along with his servant Dromio of Ephesus (Err. 4.04.51). In fact he is simply trembling 71

Edgar

because he is angry and frightened, but they do not know this and tremulousness was thought to denote a fit of possession. The term ecstasy is also (and more frequently) used by Shakespeare in circumstances not implying devilish intervention: e.g. ‘this is the very ecstasy of love’ and ‘blasted with ecstasy’ (Ham. 2.01.99, 3.01.160), and ‘laid good ’scuses upon your ecstasy’ (Oth. 4.01.79). These examples refer to madness and fits of the epileptic ‘falling sickness’, but they show what a vague term ecstasy was, describing bodily effects but not specifying a cause of them. Blasting suggests a natural process of blighting, although it can also refer to the work of preternatural creatures such as fairies or ghosts. As Hamlet is the blasted victim here, has the ghost of King Hamlet caused his ‘ecstasy’? Clark (1997) and Vickers (1984) explore how demonologists thought that the devil was able to delude the senses, causing mis-perceptions, and take control of the bodily faculties with ‘ecstasies’ or ‘frenzies’ of convulsion, insensibility or raging activity. Finney (1947) discusses the early modern theory that music elevated the soul to a holy ecstasy, and thus the relationship between senses and spirit thought to be involved, whilst Beauregard (2011) examines the philosophy of passion more generally in Shakespeare’s works. Edgar See also: demon/daemon, possession, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, Malvolio, fiend, exorcism/exorcist, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Smulkin, Modo, Mahu, Purr, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Frateretto Edgar, son of the Duke of Gloucester, pretends to be a victim of demonic possession or obsession, and thus a madman, in KL. Like other possession victims in Shakespeare’s plays (Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, Malvolio), he is not actually possessed at all despite his constant references to fiends, named and unnamed. Demons afflicting him are called after those in Samuel Harsnett’s tract about the faking of possession and exorcism, A Declaration of Egregious Impostures (London, 1603): Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Smulkin, Modo, Mahu, Purr, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Frateretto. His motivation for the pretence appears in part to be simply disguise, and he invents the character of the mad beggar Poor Tom, to hide himself from his adversaries. But his supposed illness also focuses the play’s concerns with the origin of evil in the world, and the related sicknesses of sin and folly which infect the political world. Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester (see Cobham, Eleanor) Elf See also: fairy, cursing, Edgar, possession, Queen Mab, charm, spirit, goblin/ hobgoblin, Moth, ouph, weird, witch, supernatural, Prospero, invocation, Medea, mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs, masters (A) Elves are creatures like fairies, or interchangeable with them, part of a wider realm of northern European preternatural creatures. Briggs (1957, 1959, 1967) suggests 72

Elf

that ‘elf’ is simply an Anglo-Saxon or wider Germanic and Nordic name for ‘fairy’ and Thoms (1865) explores the origin of the word, perhaps in the ‘Teutonic’‘alf’. In Old English an aelf was a spirit, sometimes associated with a particular environment or element (e.g. water elves). Elves, if malign, might cause sickness in humans and animals and needed to be warded off with charms. Elfish illness or physical malformation was sometimes referred to as being ‘elf-shot’, since they were associated with harmful darts and arrows. Less seriously, elves were thought to interfere with human and animal hair, making it matted and tangled at night. (B) Shakespeare recalls the notion of being ‘elf-shot’ most clearly in the abuse heaped on Richard of Gloucester in RIII: ‘Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!’ RIII 1.03.227, curses Queen Margaret, referring to his antenatal deformation, hunched back and lameness. ‘Elf-locks’ are also referred to twice, with the word once used as a verb: Edgar says that in order to appear possessed and destitute, he will ‘elf all my hair in knots’ in KL (2.03.10) whilst Mercutio in his Queen Mab speech describes how Mab ‘bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs’ in R&J (1.04.90). Fairies are never substituted for elves in this context. The latter use of the word appears as ‘elklocks’ in the Folio but ‘elfelocks’ or ‘elflocks’ in the Quartos. Meanwhile in 1 HIV in the early Quartos Falstaff refers to Hal variously as an ‘elsskin’, later amended to ‘elfskin’ and ‘elke-skin’. This comes in a speech suggesting Hal’s slimness as opposed to Falstaff’s portliness, and has been further, plausibly, amended to ‘eel-skin’ by Thomas Hanmer in his 1744 edition (to match other uses of ‘eel-skin’ to mean thin, e.g. in KJ 1.01.141). But if Shakespeare did mean to coin the word ‘elfskin’ it would relate to the debate about the size of fairies – if used to mean thin it may also mean that elves are being thought of as small. In MND, bats’ wings are collected as clothing for such tiny creatures – ‘leathern wings to make my small elves coats’ (2.02.5). Certainly, for Shakespeare elves were decorative and comic entities; not the frightening forces of Anglo-Saxon charm literature, but mischievous and teasing creatures. Elsewhere, Shakespeare often conflates elves and fairies. ‘Every elf and fairy sprite [spirit], hop’, they are instructed in MND (5.01.393) and ‘the queen and all her elves come here anon’ (2.01.17). Elves and fairies both appear in MWW too. ‘Elves, list your names’ calls the hobgoblin leader of the masque troop (5.05.42) but Falstaff, looking on fearfully, remarks that: ‘they are fairies’. The names given to characters played by the masquers are ‘Cricket’ and ‘Pede’ (see Moth for an insect name given to a ‘real’ fairy) and these elves are dispatched to pinch lazy maids in their sleep (‘search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out’ 5.05.56) just as fairies would be. They end up pinching Falstaff instead. The MWW elves are also referred to as ‘ouphs’, bringing good luck. In one of the probable additions to Mac. the weird sisters are told to ‘sing, like elves and fairies in a ring’ (4.01.42) which also demonstrates the blurring between witches and other inhabitants of the supernatural world. Only in Temp. could Shakespeare be said to give grandeur back to elves – they appear as something like nature spirits in Prospero’s invocation: ‘ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves’ (5.01.33). Here might be a reminiscence of ‘water elves’, although since Prospero is borrowing 73

Empiric/empiricutic

much of his speech from Medea, there is also a Classical resonance with the spirits and deities of pools and woods (see also mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs). (C) For Anglo-Saxon elf charms see Griffiths (1996) and for dated but useful discussion of their migration into early modern literature, Briggs (1957, 1959, 1967); Purkiss’s (2000) book is a major study of fairies in culture with references to elves throughout; Nikolajeva (2006) discusses elves in folk tales. Thoms (1865) and Wheatley (1916) provide Victorian and early twentieth-century perspectives on Shakespeare’s work, linking elves with folklore and Germanic identity, whilst Johnston (2007) offers criticism of Shakespeare’s elves as reductive versions of mythic figures. Empiric/empiricutic See also: astronomy, magic, witch, witchcraft In the eyes of the early modern medical establishment, centred on the Royal College of Physicians, an ‘empiric’ was a quack doctor, a charlatan practising without training. As such the term was a byword for fraud and imposture, although its literal meaning relates to empiricism, the untheorized testing of practices by experience. Using the term ‘empiric’ included dismissing a diverse range of astrological (or astronomical) and magical diagnoses, counter-magic against witches and folk treatments including tried and tested herbal remedies and poultices. Empirical medical practice was a concern for demonologists because of the role that magic played in some empirics’ practice, and because witchcraft was often named by empirics as the cause of otherwise inexplicable diseases. Yet despite the fears of professional physicians, many so-called empirics appear to have practised in good faith, and some probably had as good a chance of saving a patient as did a physician. Shakespeare dramatizes the debate between physicians and other practitioners explicitly in AWW. The King of France appears to be dying and has been given over by his doctors. When he is offered a less orthodox remedy by Helena, he ventriloquizes their opinion on the matter: ‘we must not prostitute our past-cure malady/To empirics’. His judgement carries the force of an axiom. Yet Shakespeare was evidently aware of counter-arguments that the humoral medicine practised by trained doctors was mixed in its results. The King is wrong to doubt the remedy Helena offers him on the basis that ‘our most learned doctors leave us and/The congregated college have concluded ...’ that he is dying (2.01.114–22). Helena is able to cure the King where physicians have failed. Based on the teachings of the third-century Turkish physician Aelius or Claudius Galenus, the medicine practised by the trained physicians of the English College, on which Shakespeare bases his French one in the play, depended on the manipulation of four humours or fluids thought to exist within the body. The goal was to detect imbalances between them, which were thought to cause disease, and to bring them back into balance by the means of such practices as bleeding and purging. And in Cor., Shakespeare overtly questions the Galenic basis of the official medicine of his day: the wise elder Menenius states that ‘the most sovereign prescription in Galen

74

Enchantment

is but empiricutic’ (2.01.117). The word is a new coinage, appearing in the first Folio as ‘Emperickqutique’. Its use does not mean that Shakespeare was endorsing magical medicine, but he allows a doubt about the right medical approach to persist in two of his plays. Enchantment See also: magic, bewitched, charm, divination, witch, art, Prospero, spirit, Joan La Pucelle, mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs, witchcraft, devil, damnation, overlooking, vision, Medea, Hecate, cauldron, ban, hag, transformation, fiend (A) Enchantment is a type of magic or bewitchment carried out with words or singing (the word comes via the Old French chanter, to sing, from the Latin cantare, and is thus related to charm). It was specifically prohibited in the Bible: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that … useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch’ (Deuteronomy 18.10–12). (B) It is as an art of music or language that enchantment appears in Temp. when Prospero regrets that unlike on previous occasions he has neither ‘spirits to enforce, [or] art to enchant’ and cannot compel obedience or even make a masque to continue the play (epilogue 14). Music and words often go together in the process of enchantment, as if recalling the term’s origin in song. In LLL Armado is described as ‘one who the music of his own vain tongue/Doth ravish like enchanting harmony’ (1.01.166–7). But words predominate in Shakespeare’s usage. Joan La Pucelle is told ‘speak, Pucelle, and enchant him with thy words’ (1 HVI 3.03.40), Tamora says that she will ‘enchant the old Andronicus/With words’ (Tit. 4.04.89), Venus tells Adonis ‘bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear’ (V&A 145) and Antipholus of Syracuse comments on Luciana’s ‘enchanting presence and discourse’ (Err. 3.02.161), as well as likening her to a mermaid who may seduce him with song. The words or tunes themselves might be thought to enchant, but also narrative could be described as enchanting, as in Sinon’s ‘enchanting story’ in Luc. (1521) which persuaded the Trojans to bring the Greeks’ wooden horse into their city. The fact that it turned out to be full of Greek soldiers who, as the poem goes on to describe, killed King Priam and sacked the city, suggests the dangers of enchantment, which is pleasing but often leads to the downfall of the hearer. Enchantment was linked with witchcraft, so that Desdemona’s father can accuse Othello of bewitching her with his stories and assume that that makes him an agent of the devil: ‘damn’d as thou art, thou hast enchanted her’ (Oth. 1.02.63). Enchantment could also occur through the eyes, a process known as ‘fascination’ (see overlooking). In this way the young man of LC seduced its speaker: ‘each eye that saw him did enchant the mind’ (89). Boyet describes the King of Navarre’s encounter with the Princess of France in triply visual terms, when ‘all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes’ (LLL 2.01.247). In a variation on the theme of eyes bewitching eyes, Adonis’ dimples are called ‘enchanting pits’ when Venus sees them (V&A 247). False visions of people and objects could also be powerful, so that Alonso fears that

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the sight of his son, whom he had thought dead, may be ‘some enchanted trifle to abuse me’ (Temp. 5.01.112). Touch could bewitch, like Helen’s ‘white enchanting fingers’ in T&C (3.01.151). Sometimes a number of senses act together, to make a sexual enchantment such as that which supposedly causes ‘enchanted Tarquin’ to rape Lucrece (Luc. 83) or Antony to describe Cleopatra as an ‘enchanting queen’ (A&C 1.02.128). In this way the benignest uses of the word refer to the intangible processes of falling in love, such as Olivia’s description of Viola’s effect on her as an ‘enchantment you did’ (TN 3.01.112) or Polixenes’ personification of Perdita as ‘you, enchantment’ (WT 4.04.434). This last, a violent denunciation followed by a death threat, hints at the fear that enchantment caused: Polixenes is angry and fearful because his heir has fallen in love with a seeming shepherdess. Such kinds of love magic were thought to exist, and had disastrous consequences. They could be bought as potions or spells from witches, and on several occasions the enchantments in Shakespeare’s works are not metaphors for art or love but refer to actual magical objects or acts. In MerV Jessica likens the night to the one on which ‘Medea gathered the enchanted herbs/That did renew old Aeson’ (5.01.13), whilst Hecate describes Mac.’s witches as ‘enchanting all that you put in’ their cauldron (4.01.43). After her arrest and sentence to be burned at the stake, Joan La Pucelle is silenced with the insults ‘fell banning hag, enchantress, hold thy tongue!’ (1 HVI 5.03.42). She has conspired with fiends to influence the outcomes of battles. And with Imogen’s loving description of Posthumus as a ‘holy witch/That … enchants societies into him’ (Cym. 1.06.167) we return to the notion of magic in manners and speeches which have political influence. (C) Hare (1988) discusses the comic uses of enchantment in Shakespeare’s works as transformative episodes that disrupt but also bring joy and harmonic perfection. Olivares (1992) discusses Prospero as a good enchanter. Evil See also: supernatural, devil, witch, overlooking, cursing, foresee/foretell, astronomy, angel The study of the origin of evil – theodicy – was a key preoccupation of demonologists, as it is of a number of Shakespeare’s plays (such as Mac. and RIII). This discussion concerns itself only with the notion of evil as linked with the supernatural in Shakespeare’s works. Evil was associated with devils and their creatures, especially witches: there may be a suspicion of this association when Cymbeline’s Queen tells Imogen that she will not be like ‘most stepmothers,/Evil-ey’d unto you’ (Cym. 1.01.72). The eyes were thought to transmit emotions and influences – in witches, this could have deadly effects, as in overlooking. In MWW Falstaff is told he was ‘o’erlooked’ at his birth, i.e. cursed by a glance from a witch (5.05.81), which allows a magical reading of the Queen’s words, especially when it turns out that she is interested in poisonous potions. Venefice, poisoning, was linked to malefice, witchcraft, by its Biblical usage,

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and explored by writers such as Reginald Scot in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584). But the word ‘evil-ey’d’ could simply mean ill-disposed. Shakespeare certainly uses the word ‘evil’ in a range of commonplace ways: to mean sin, crime, misfortune, the King’s evil (scrofula) and simply to mean ‘bad’ as in ‘evil luck’ (Son. 14.3), in this context associated with the ability to foretell coming evil by astrology (astronomy). In Son. 144.5 and PP 2.5, the poet refers to his two loves, one good but the other a ‘female evil’, suggesting a good and an evil angel. Clark (1980, 1997) discusses early modern binary thinking and the definition of evil as the antithesis of good, mentioning Shakespeare’s usages. Bancock (1985) examines the portrayal of evil in RIII, whilst Pilkington (1988) demolishes the good/evil binary in Mac. arguing for a more complicated understanding of the preternatural and human characters there. Wells (1980) examines the representation of human evil, with attention to its causes and characteristics common to Shakespeare’s evil characters. Exorcism/Exorcist See also: demon/daemon, magic, possession, spirit, hell, familiar, devil, conjuror, conjuration, occult, fiend, Eleanor Cobham, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, John Southwell, John Hume, prophecy, Asmath, laying, Dromio of Ephesus, Antipholus of Ephesus (A) Today the word exorcist refers to a priest or other skilled person who casts out demons from the human body by religious or magical rite, thus ending a demonic possession. The word came into Middle English via ecclesiastical Latin from the ecclesiastical Greek ‘exorkismos’. There is a long Judaeo-Christian history of exorcism, in which Jesus Christ holds a pivotal position as an exorcist in the New Testament – e.g. Mt. 4.24 – and is shown to be passing on his exorcizing power to his disciples. Thus he was thought by extension to have endowed later Christian ministers with the same skill and semi-magical force (e.g. Mt. 7.22; Acts 19.11–16). But although this therapeutic context for the term ‘exorcist’ was current in Shakespeare’s time, it also referred to those who raised up spirits from the graves of the dead, from purgatory or hell, and might keep them as familiars. Thus it could be a term for a healing priest or a devilishly-inspired magical practitioner, sharing this ambiguity with the even more flexible word conjuror. (B) Shakespeare’s uses of the notion of ‘exorcism’ always have a negative aspect, unlike his more frequent and ambiguous engagements with ‘conjuror’ and ‘conjuration’. Particularly worrying is the phrase ‘no exerciser harm thee!’, the prayer uttered over the grave of the supposedly dead ‘Fidele’ in Cym. (4.02.276). This suggests that the exorcizer is as much an enemy of the resting spirit of the faithful deceased as any other supernatural terror – the spirit may be hauled up by a necromantic exorcist and questioned about occult knowledge at any time. The same is true for actual fiends: in 2 HVI, Eleanor Cobham is asked by her co-conspirators Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, John Southwell and John Hume ‘will her ladyship behold and hear our

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exorcisms?’ (1.04.4) when what she is to witness is the raising of the prophetic fiend Asmath. Asmath appears to be suffering during his interrogation: he trembles at holy names, wishes that his job was ‘done’ and finally exclaims ‘more I hardly can endure’ (1.04.29, 38) Likewise, though metaphorically, ‘thou, like an exorcist, hast conjur’d up/ My mortified spirit’ a sick man tells Brutus in JC. Brutus has not literally summoned his spirit out of his body, but the man has felt compelled to ignore his infirmity and join his cause nonetheless as if raised by an exorcist (JC 2.01.323). In each of these cases, exorcism consists of the forcible raising up and ruthless employment of spirits of various kinds instead of the expected ejection and dismissal. Onions (1986) suggests that both expelling and raising spirits might be described as ‘calling forth’, and it is this sense of movement and command that Shakespeare finds useful in the concept of exorcism. Both raising and ‘laying’ (banishing, pacifying, forcing down to hell) spirits thus come under the heading ‘exorcism’ and Shakespeare chooses the former. Yet, like others of his time, Shakespeare also associated exorcism and conjuring with trickery: ‘Is there no exorcist/Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?’ asks the King in AWW (5.03.304) when the supposedly dead Helena appears. Wheatley (1916) suggests that what is meant is ‘enchanter’, but the choice of word offers a more specifically demonological reading than that: the King’s fear is that he may be seeing Helena’s raised spirit, or perhaps a demonic illusion conjured by an exorcist to impersonate the real Helena. Shakespeare’s engagement with the late 1590s controversy surrounding the puritan exorcist John Darrell and with related accounts of the Catholic exorcists of the 1580s, through his reading of Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603) probably informed his sceptical reference to exorcism in AWW, which is usually dated to 1603–5. (C) On demons and possession more generally, see Clark (1997), Kallendorf (2003) and Sluhovsky (2007). Gibson (2006) explores Shakespeare’s engagement with the Darrell case in several plays as does van Dijkhuizen (2007), and see also Brayton (2003), Murphy (1984) and, famously, Greenblatt (1988) on KL. Mahood (1996) describes the cathartic aspect of some Shakespeare plays – e.g. MND – as exorcism, arguing that the working through of fears through the appearance and withdrawal of supernatural creatures can be regarded as an exorcistic pattern. In a somewhat strained but interesting exercise, Hampton (2011) examines Mac. as a national exorcism. Eye, Witch of (see Jourdain, Margery)

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F Fairy See also: elf, goblin/hobgoblin, ouph, urchin, familiar, witch, magic, superstitious, demon/daemon, spirit, devil, mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs, Ariel, weird, prophecy, Oberon, Titania, Puck, Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb, Mustardseed, evil, Queen Mab, dream, supernatural, transformation, ass-head, ghost, circle, changeling, fiend, Hecate, Prospero, Herne, blasting, taking, charm (A) Fairies are complex preternatural creatures who appear in poetry, trial documents, popular pamphlet stories and demonologies across northern Europe in the early modern period. Although they have been associated most frequently in modern culture with ‘Celtic’ beliefs and folklores, they also appear in Germanic, Nordic and Eastern European tales with equal frequency. Sometimes the word ‘fairies’ is used interchangeably with ‘elves’, whilst related types of creature (or possibly sub-species) include goblins and hobgoblins, ouphs, urchins and so on. Although by some, such as criminal prosecutors, these entities were regarded as the familiars of witches, by others they were seen as magical helpers in healing the sick and finding lost or stolen goods. Many accused witches describe contact with fairies and in England in the Middle Ages such beliefs were likely to be treated as near-harmless superstition by church courts. It was only after the passing of the 1563 Witchcraft Act that fairies were more likely than not to be treated as demonic. A key turning point can be seen in the trial pamphlet The Examination of John Walsh (London, 1566) in which Walsh’s fairy helpers are gradually reclassified as familiar spirits – and even this trial was held in a church court, suggesting a general movement towards such reclassification across the legal spectrum. Fairies share some of the characteristics of devils in contemporary stories: they can be cruel, deceitful and mischievous. More positively, they are often associated with rural and wild places and the natural world, in which way they appear like elemental spirits (nereids and nymphs, for instance, and see also mermaids, sea-maids/sea-nymphs and Ariel). Mac.’s weird sisters come from a source (Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles [London, 1577, 1587]) in which they are described as fairies, waiting in a wild place to offer prophecies to passers by. Fairies like these could appear in human-like form and interact with humans; there are many stories of fairy lovers and spouses, and also of fairies leading human beings astray into fairyland where they might imprison or delay them with wonders for years at a time. (B) Shakespeare refers frequently to the mythology of fairies throughout his plays, although the highest concentration of his interest in them is in MND. It takes place

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partly in the realm of the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, and includes fairy characters such as Puck, Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb and Mustardseed. Yet for all their fame and the clarity of name and spoken part, Shakespeare’s fairies are still elusive creatures: the primary generalizing statements that can be made about them are that they are capable of working both evil and benign magic, can be large or small but have human-like bodies and emotions, are connected obscurely with the wild and the operation of the natural world, and interact authoritatively with the human one, especially with children and lovers. They seem to be associated with Midsummer and May Day, both dates which are referred to in the play and its title (Theseus guesses that the play’s lovers may be in the woods to celebrate a May Day rite at 4.01.132–3). Yet it is not clear on which night the play is actually supposed to take place (spring or summer?), nor is it evident exactly how such dates relate to rural festivities and beliefs associated with fairies, in as far as we know what these were. The size of fairies has proved most controversial, with Shakespeare accused of miniaturizing them and thus robbing an ancient archetypal form of its grandeur. Yet Shakespeare’s fairy characters are often human-sized, likely to have been played by both adult and child actors, as well as being imagined as very tiny indeed. Whilst Oberon, Puck and Titania appear to be adults, a snakeskin is ‘weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in’ in MND (2.01.256) and in R&J, Mercutio’s fantasy of the fairy Queen Mab imagines her as no bigger than a figure on a finger-ring, whose chariot is a nutshell. Yet even Mab (probably created at the same time as MND in about 1595–6) is linked with dreams like the fairies of MND, with the fantasies of lovers but also of bloodthirsty soldiers and greedy and corrupt lawyers, clergymen and courtiers (1.04.58–100). Thus she is both cute and deadly. Critics who wish to see ancient deities in their fairies might look here for signs of cultural power. Shakespeare does not see his fairies as gods: ‘fairies and gods’ (my italics) are mentioned side by side in KL (4.06.29). But that they are aligned in this phrase suggests a superhuman, supernatural power, not twee frivolity. Conventionally enough, Shakespeare imagines fairies as capable of loving humans and being their sexual partners. Titania and Bottom in MND are the most obvious example (Bottom being also transformed by fairy magic into a man with an ass-head), but Theseus also has a past relationship with Titania (MND 2.01.77–80) and in Cym. we hear of the supposedly male and supposedly dead Fidele that ‘with female fairies will his tomb be haunted’ (4.02.217). Fairies thus inhabit the world of ghosts or may be ghostly themselves. ‘Have you a working pulse, and are no fairy-motion?’ Pericles asks Marina, whom he has thought dead (Per. 5.01.153). Fairies, then, can play-act, impersonating the dead like devils. Like ghosts, they are night-creatures, for the period between midnight and the rising of the morning star is referred to as ‘fairy time’ in MND (5.01.364), whilst it is the ‘hour of fairy revel’ in MWW (4.04.59). Shakespeare conventionally associates fairies with revelling: dance (‘fairies, skip hence’ in MND 2.01.61 and ‘trib, trib, fairies’ in MWW 5.04.1) and singing (Mac.’s witches – possibly in an interpolation – ‘sing/Like elves and fairies in a ring’ (4.01.42) and there is ‘a fairy 80

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song’ in MND (2.02.1)). Rings recall the popular belief that naturally occurring rings of dark green grass or fungus were circles where fairies had danced: Shakespeare’s fairies make ‘ringlets’ in MND (2.01.96) and spirits make them in Temp. (5.01.37). Thus they leave marks of their activity to be found in the morning affecting natural growth, even if they are not seen themselves. They are part of the material, observable world but yet not quite part of it either. Repeatedly but again conventionally Shakespeare imagines them in a separate nation or place governed royally. Given the association with natural imagery (as in the nutshells and squirrels of the Queen Mab speech) fairyland may be that amorphous space, the Shakespearean forest or countryside: there are ‘meadow-fairies’ in MWW (5.05.65; but that implies there may be other kinds) and they meet in ‘grove or green’ in MND (2.01.28). We read of the ‘fairy land’ (MND 2.01.65 and 122), and ‘fairy kingdom’ (2.01.144), ruled by the ‘fairy queen’ (2.02.12 and 3.01.78), ‘my fairy lord’ (3.02.378) and the ‘fairy king’ (4.01.93). Yet fairies could also be servants to humans when so instructed by their rulers: they may be given ‘fairies to attend on thee’ (MND 3.01.157). Fairyland appears to be an ordered human-like society with public officials like the ‘crier hobgoblin’ ordered to ‘make the fairy oyes’ in MWW (5.05.41) and officers like the ‘captain of our fairy band’ in MND 3.02.110 and Mab, ‘the fairies’ midwife’ (R&J 1.4.59). They live in luxury, with coaches and fine clothes and Shakespeare links them with riches, which turn out to be illusory, again conventionally: ‘it was told me I should be rich by the fairies’ (WT 3.03.118) in the form of ‘fairy gold’ (3.03.123). Fairies can also give gifts or advance their favourites by ‘fairy favours’ (MND 2.01.12). That the fairy gold in a bag in WT turns out to be an abandoned baby links them with changelings (human babies exchanged for fairy children), a suggestion made further explicit in 1 HIV when the king wishes ‘some night-tripping fairy had exchang’d/ In cradle clothes our children’ (1.01.87–8). Yet this is an exchange of human children, Percy for Plantagenet, not fairy for human. Mab’s midwifery may be important here too, but there is no obvious fearfulness about fairy abduction, which could have been treated far more seriously. See ‘changeling’ for discussion of MND, where Oberon and Titania are fighting over an Indian boy, who has been adopted rather than stolen. In addition to possible child-theft, fairies are associated repeatedly with pinching and other ill-defined meanness and threat: ‘let the supposed fairies pinch him sound’ say the plotters in MWW (4.04.62) and ‘pinch him, fairies’ (5.05.99), ‘about him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme’ (5.05.91). In Cym. (2.02.9) a prayer is intended to protect Imogen ‘from fairies and the tempters of the night’, whilst fairies are equated with devils in Err. (4.02.35): ‘a fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough’. They run from the daylight, ‘by the triple Hecate’s team’ in (MND 5.01.383–4) as part of a troubling account by Puck of fairies’ connections with screech-owls, death, ghosts and predatory wild animals. Temp. (4.01.196) implies that Prospero’s spirits might be fairies, and of dubious character: ‘your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy ...’. ‘Fairy’ might be used metaphorically, to mean for instance someone who held others in thrall. Cleopatra is referred to as a ‘great fairy’ in A&C (4.08.12) as if holding Antony by her magic, and also as a witch. 81

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Yet none of this is decisively evil. Shakespeare mentions differently coloured fairies (‘urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white’ in MWW [4.04.50] and ‘fairies, black, grey, green and white’ [5.05.37] exactly like John Walsh’s) and is likely to have known that fairies could be defined as having multiple natures – natural or demonic, mythical or real, benign or malevolent – according to genre and authorial ideology. His are deeply ambiguous. The ‘fairy queen’, on whom Shakespeare built his Titania, was a popular literary character – as can be seen from Edmund Spenser’s allegorical poem set in fairyland, The Faerie Queene (London, 1590, 1596), as well as Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (London, 1610) which features a character dressed as the fairy queen. Shakespeare was part of a trend in his wider depiction of fairies: other examples include Thomas Churchyard’s A Handeful of Gladsome Verses (Oxford, 1592) and Michael Drayton’s courtly poem Nimphidia: The Court of Fayrie (London, 1609). In each case except Spenser, fairies are associated with tales told by lower class, agrarian workers and women. Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584) states: in our childhood … our mothers maids have so terrified us with an ouglie divell having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breach … they have so fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves … fairies, … nymphs, changelings … Robin good-fellowe … and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes.

In this long list, many items relate to fairies. Part of the process of discrediting such a belief system involved linking it to lower-class forms of knowledge, which surely informs the representation of Bottom and his actors in MND. Yet noble characters also enter the fairy world of the play, and the fact that it is set in Greece suggests a conflation of English fairy tales with more learned and respected Ovidian stories of classical deities. In Err. the Greek city of Ephesus is mistaken for fairyland at 2.02.189 because it seems full of illusions, but perhaps also because it is associated with Diana and other deities, an association of fairies and goddesses also made by Spenser. The figure of Herne illustrates the problems of classification that surround supernatural creatures like fairies in Shakespeare’s work. He is associated with fairies in MWW but has fairy-like, ghost-like and witch-like characteristics combined. Herne is not simply a gamekeeper’s ghost, for he ‘blasts’ and ‘takes’. Fairies are associated with powers to ‘blast’, ‘take’ and injure living animals and plants, as are witches (at Christmas ‘nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm’ in Ham. 1.01.163). And the description of Herne begins with the dismissive notion of an ‘old tale’ – the speakers intend to dress as fairies and use it to fool and frighten Falstaff; none, they think, but ‘superstitious, idle-headed’ people would believe it (MWW 4.4). Thus Shakespeare’s fairies suggest much but when interrogated they retreat into ‘old tales’ and meta-theatre, as when Puck speaks the epilogue of MND. 82

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(C) Braddy (1956) discusses fairies as familiars and servants in Shakespeare’s potential Medieval sources; Wall (2001) looks at their politics of community, service and domesticity; Kassell (2006) and Lamb (2000) focus on their social significances in literature, with Lamb arguing that they are politically subversive agents. Conversely, Swann (2000) sees them as endorsing feudal pre-capitalist societal models, where exchange and riches are magical. Mandel (2007) differentiates Puck from Oberon and Titania by comparing their human qualities and ethics; Sagar (1995) examines the Christianization of potentially demonic fairies. Purkiss (2000, 2001) points out that Shakespeare was not a folklorist and sees him as choosing randomly from fairy lore: his fairies are all associated with joke, trick and disguise, she notes, so their keynote is comic ambiguity. Buccola (2007) reimagines AWW’s Helena through the trope of the fairy bride; (2003) examines sensitivities linking fairies to Catholic culture in all of Shakespeare’s plays except MWW, where Elizabeth I as the Fairy Queen may make them acceptable; and (2006) suggests that fairies often license Shakespeare’s women to behave unconventionally. Anachronistic classificatory systems were introduced into the staging and criticism of Shakespeare’s fairies by Celtic folklorists (e.g. Thoms (1865), Nutt (1900), Wheatley (1916), Latham (1930)), as pointed out by Woodcock (2004) in an examination of the role of fairies across early modern literature – this affects criticism such as Muir (1981), Briggs (1957, 1959, 1967), Vlasopolos (1978) and Green (1962), and in a particularly lively reversal of the usual detailed source study, Green argues that Shakespeare worked from the superstitions of his youth, not demonological texts. Burke (2007) attacks Shakespeare for miniaturizing fairies. Reynolds and Sawyer (1959) suggest that Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed and Moth in MND represent items used in folk medicine (see also Rohde [1935]). Macchiarola (2001) compares F and Q1 of MND, highlighting differences in fairy references. Familiar See also: demon/daemon, spirit, witch, conjuror, cat, toad, fairy, magic, damnation, devil, masters, witchcraft, Joan La Pucelle, fiend, Sathan, Lucifer, Asmath, Ariel, Faustus, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, John Hume, Prospero, evil, angel (A) A familiar is, in its demonological sense, a demonic spirit that attends on a witch or conjuror. The familiar spirit is often thought to be a personal servant to his or her human being, although familiars were also portrayed as shared or serving a wide range of people. The notion of familiarity points to a friendly, individualized and serviceable relationship between human and demon, since ‘familiar’ also meant servant, retainer or friend (a range of notions encompassing professional helpers, hangers-on and also intimate and chosen companions). Thus the familiar spirit seems to have been named in a more positive spirit than was subsequently discussed. Familiars sometimes took the forms of cats, toads, dogs, ferrets and other small creatures which could appear without much comment in the domestic setting, but they could also appear looking like people or as what were perceived to be fairies. In all these forms, they might be

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commanded by sufficiently skilled magical practitioners, perhaps using prayers or holy names. But demonologists feared that what was actually happening was different: instead of obediently submitting, they thought that familiar spirits would try to make a verbal or written pact with a witch or conjuror for his or her soul. The human being might believe that he or she was in control of the relationship, but in fact they would have submitted themselves to demonic power and would be damned. As a sign of this unnatural and binding servitude, the spirit might require a signed document or suck the blood of the witch or conjuror as a sign of contract. Familiars were thus associated with notions of both indenture and nurture: their sucking of female witches’ bodies caused a particular frisson, and it was suggested that witches might have special teats at which a cat or ferret could feed. Such animal demons were an English preoccupation, and are less common in other European accounts. The familiar’s level of choice was an important topic for demonologists. Surely God was omnipotent – but how, then, could such human-demon transfers of power be allowed to produce results? In his Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), King James VI (and later I) provided a clear answer: as an absolutist himself, he referred all power back to God via his superiority over his ape-like imitator and puppet, the devil. God was always in control of everything, so that the appearance of local empowerment and agency in familiars was just illusory. Familiar spirits, James thought, simply pretended to take orders from their ‘masters’ and ‘mistresses’ in order to damn them. James’ argument was a conventional, majority one shared by others like George Gifford in his Dialogue of Witches and Witchcraftes (London, 1593): the idea that ordinary people could command great power by raising and binding familiar demons to serve them was too dangerous to be indulged. The Bible prohibited the consultation of familiar spirits in a list of forbidden activities in Deuteronomy 18:10–12: ‘when thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee ... there shall not be found among you any ... consulter with familiar spirits’. The maintenance of spirits was also explicitly criminalized in the 1604 Witchcraft Act, although not in its 1563 precursor, suggesting a growing concern with the details of spirit-keeping such as feeding. In the 1604 Act this is specially mentioned as a capital offence. (B) Shakespeare does not use the word ‘familiar’ in its demonological sense often. Joan La Pucelle keeps human-shaped familiar spirits or fiends in 1 HVI. ‘I think her old familiar is asleep’ comments an opponent when things are not going her way (3.02.122) whilst La Pucelle herself conjures her spirits with: ‘now, ye familiar spirits’ (5.03.10). When familiars appeared in human form onstage, the question of their status and agency became especially pressing. Did they have human-like motivations? Were they named devils like Sathan, Lucifer or Asmath? Or spirits like Ariel? How independent were they, especially when supposedly subjected by the words and rites of a conjuror? On Shakespeare’s stage there was a very explicit dramatic precedent or competitor to negotiate. In Act 1 Scene 3 of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (probably first performed in the early 1590s; see Faustus) the human-like devil Mephistophilis reflects on his role as what is essentially a conjuror’s familiar spirit: 84

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Mephistophilis: I am a servant to great Lucifer, And may not follow thee without his leave: No more than he commands must we perform. Faustus: Did not he charge thee to appear to me? Mephistophilis: No, I came hither of mine own accord. Faustus: Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee? speak! Mephistophilis: That was the cause, but yet per accidens; For, when we hear one rack the name of God, Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ, We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul ...

Joan la Pucelle’s fiends may be imagined in about 1591 in a similar way, for they turn sulkily silent at the play’s end, the implication being that having trapped La Pucelle they now betray her to damnation. In 2 HVI, perhaps written in the same year, the fiend Asmath occupies similar territory, but he appears genuinely constrained by the conjurations of Roger Bolingbroke and Margery Jourdain, and they are betrayed by a human double agent, John Hume, and not the fiend himself. Another familiar spirit is imagined as unmistakeably helpful in the same play: ‘he has a familiar under his tongue’ Jack Cade comments, upon hearing Lord Say plead eloquently for his life (2 HVI 4.07.108). Later in his career, in 1610 or 1611, Shakespeare imagines Prospero as a magical practitioner able to enforce total obedience from spirits, although they are not self-evidently demonic. The word ‘familiar’ has disappeared by then too. Shakespeare moves further from Marlowe’s formulation of the conjuror-devil relationship with each iteration, although the two Henry plays seem interested in the familiar spirit and the level of its familiarity in a way that suggests a dialogue with Marlowe. Shakespeare’s choice of the word ‘familiar’ for his spirits is interesting, for accounts of witchcraft trials often referred to them as ‘imps’ – a word Shakespeare does not use in this sense. Usually by ‘imp’ he means child. He also uses ‘familiar’ in its demonic sense metaphorically: ‘love is a familiar’ as well as a devil and evil angel in LLL (1.02.172). (C) Johnson (1951) examines Ariel as a familiar to Prospero, although the word is not used by Shakespeare to describe him. Adler (1981) discusses toad familiars. Gibson (2008) explains the law on familiars. Familiar spirits and the wider politics of familiarity are explored by Dolan (1994) and Paster (1993). Fate See also: destiny, star, astronomy, prophecy, fortune, magic, devil, fiend, Asmath, supernatural, fairy, Puck, Ariel, spirit, magician, Prospero, auspicious, King Hamlet, book, Cassandra, masters, Julius Caesar, Malvolio, occult, witch, weird, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Hecate 85

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(A) Fate (from the Latin fata or ‘prediction’) was a notion closely linked to destiny, indeed often seen to be interchangeable with that word. It could be used to signify the destiny or predestined path of an individual person, a city, nation, etc., and thus became entangled in Christian times with notions of providence. The Fates, meanwhile, were figures from classical mythology, three sisters named Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos (Roman equivalents Nona, Decima and Morta), who were imagined as spinning the life events of human beings until the time came to cut the thread, at which time the human would die. The Fates were also referred to as parcae, which is what Pistol tries to call them in HV (5.01.20). Neither the Fates nor providence were strictly a concern of demonology, but where the notion of a fixed pattern of events shaded into a belief in the influence of the stars, and thus a debate about the trustworthiness of astrology (astronomy), or about methods of prophecy or fortune telling, or about human ability to manipulate life events by magic, it became important contextually. In this way, the notion of fate became entangled with discussion of the interplay between God and the devil. (B) The interchangeability of Fates and Destinies is summed up by Launcelot Gobbo when in MerV he attributes death to ‘Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters/Three and such branches of learning (2.02.62–4). Similarly ‘fate’ and ‘Fates’ appear without contradiction in the same plays. In 2 HVI the fiend Asmath is asked ‘What fates await the Duke of Suffolk’ (1.04.32) but the conversation is transcribed as ‘Tell me what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk’ (1.04.64). Fate intervenes in the affairs of even supernatural creatures: even fairies are subject to fate, according to Puck. Mistakenly leading astray the wrong man, he excuses himself ‘then fate o’errules’ (MND 3.02.92). And in the several dramas put on by the group of city workers in the play, the ‘Fates’ play a further comic role: Phoebus’ carriage is said to make and mar ‘the foolish Fates’ (whatever that may mean; 1.02.37–8), but more touchingly in the love tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. Flute, playing Thisbe, promises endless love ‘till the Fates me kill’ (5.01.197) and when she dies, Pyramus cries ‘O Fates, come, come/ Cut thread and thrum’ (5.01.285–6). This might be comic in its pat couplets, but could also be tragic depending on the mood of the production and audience. Humans, who have watched characters being manipulated, seduced and drugged by fairies in the play, may have cause to reflect on fate and its vagaries. Bottom’s reference to the severing of the human thread, and its setting among the generic conventions of Greek tragedy, emphasizes the cruelty attributed to the Fates and human inability to evade their decisions. This harshness is exclaimed against on several occasions: ‘Hard fate!’ (Tim. 3.05.74), ‘cursed fate’ (Oth. 3.03.426), the ‘strict fates’ (Per. 3.03.8) and ‘sharp fate’ (A&C 4.14.135). The speaker of Sonnet 29 describes how he can only ‘look upon myself and curse my fate’ (29.4). Jokingly, Rosaline proposes herself as cruel fate when she promises to torture her admirer Berowne, making him beg and fawn until ‘he should be my fool and I his fate’ (LLL 5.02.68). In Per., Dionyza adds a chilling comparison ‘nurses are not the fates’ (4.03.14) – i.e. no amount of care can protect from a fated death. 86

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Fate and the Fates are, on the whole, thus portrayed as irresistible. This can be a good thing. In Temp. Gonzalo prays ‘stand fast, good Fate’ because he believes the Boatswain was born to be hanged and thus their ship cannot sink (1.01.30). Later, punishing the wicked Alonso and his courtiers, Ariel, the spirit of the magician Prospero, declares that he and his fellow-spirits are ‘ministers of Fate’ (3.03.60–1). This could be disingenuous, since they are Prospero’s personal agents of vengeance, but the play repeatedly stresses that its action is urged on by auspicious stars and justice, so perhaps Ariel indeed represents benign fate as he claims. Fate can be helpful to some: in HVIII the Old Lady courtier speaking to Anne cries out ‘O Fate!’ as she contrasts her own inability to get preferment with Anne’s instant and fated success (2.03.85). But the benevolence of ‘Fate’ tends not to last, and personal ‘fates’ are often tragic as prescribed by precisely the Greek dramas described above. Oth. explains to Desdemona the actions he was told to take when ‘my fate would have me wiv’d’ (3.04.64), but later as he goes to murder her talks of ‘your unblest fate’ (5.01.34). The play has a strong providential narrative, although how much Iago’s deceptions and Othello’s associations with magic intervene in any divine plan is a matter for debate. Certainly at the play’s end when he punishes himself for his mistakes, Othello sums up: ‘Who can control his fate?’ (5.02.265). The sentiment recurs in TN in Olivia’s passive yet perhaps also prayerful summary: ‘Fate show thy force; ourselves we do not owe/What is decreed must be; and be this so’ (‘owe’ means ‘own’ – and yet does Olivia actively wish for the supposedly inevitable outcome in the last clause?; 1.05.31–11). In Ham. the ghost of King Hamlet is asked ‘if thou art privy to thy country’s fate’ (1.01.133) and later Hamlet embraces the duty of revenging his father’s murder with the imperative monosyllables ‘my fate cries out’ (1.04.81). In 2 HIV the King wishes ‘O God, that one might read the book of fate’ (3.01.45) to know the future with certainty. Yet his emphasis throughout the speech is on the reversals of fate – ‘chance’ and ‘changes’ as he puts it. Fate may be certain to the Fates, gods or God but it is inscrutable to humans and thus offers a contradictory meaning: absolute certainty yet absolute uncertainty and disempowerment too. Heroic and strong characters often strive against Fate or see themselves as controlling it. As the Player King notes, ‘our wills and fates do … contrary run’ (Ham. 3.02.211). Some characters thus wilfully resist Fate’s decrees. Although he has stated that Octavius Caesar will win their next battle, Antony states flatly that ‘I will oppose his fate’ (A&C 3.13.169). In T&C Troilus says that ‘not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars’ will keep him from battle (5.03.51–2), just as Hector says ‘mine honour keeps the weather of my fate’ (his honour stands on the weather/windward side of his fate, thus gaining advantage over it; 5.03.26) and arms himself regardless of Cassandra’s prophetic warnings. In Luc., Lucrece sees her suicide as a means of taking the initiative against her rapist Tarquin: ‘I am the mistress of my fate’ (1069). It is true that as a result, Tarquin is exiled by Brutus, Collatine and Lucrece’s other partisans. In a direct echo, Cassius tells a later Brutus when he is urging him to kill a later Roman ruler in JC ‘men at some time are masters of their fates’ (1.02.139). Brutus responds to this persuasion in a more laissez faire spirit, but with similar fatal imagery: ‘Fates, we will know 87

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your pleasures’ (3.01.98), and, trying to warn Julius Caesar, Artemidorus concludes that if he does not heed his letter, ‘the Fates with traitors do contrive’ (2.03.16). The relationship between humans and Fates can be imagined as reciprocal, then, the Fates helping those who help themselves. In TN, Malvolio is told ‘thy fates ope their hands, let thy blood and spirit embrace them … cast thy humble slough’ (2.05.146–7). Malvolio must alter his behaviour in order to grasp what his fates promise him. In HV the French fear ‘the native mightiness and fate of him’ (the King; 2.04.64), i.e. both his natural attributes – a lineage of warriors and his personal strength – and also what appears to be the supernatural favour shown to him. The blurring of fate into other occult forces occurs most frequently in Mac.. When Macbeth is told by the witches (three weird or wyrd sisters who are very much like Fates) that he will be king, Lady Macbeth feels that both ‘fate and metaphysical aid’ are urging him to the throne (1.05.29). After Macbeth murders the King, the prince Donalbain fears that ‘our fate’ (his and that of his brother heir; 2.03.121–2) may also ambush them if they stay in Scotland – in the form of murder, fate being here synonymous with death (and thus Atropos or Morta, the sister who cuts life’s thread). Macbeth does indeed fear them and Banquo’s heirs, but sees his own fate as likely to be triumphant. Rather than allow them to succeed to the throne, he says, ‘come fate into the list/And champion me’ (3.01.70–1). Here fate is a soldier or jousting champion for its human nominee. Fleance and other obstacles to Macbeth’s rise ‘must embrace the fate’ that Donalbain predicted, death (3.01.136). However, the witches take a different view. For them, Macbeth is now fighting against fate. The forces that raised him are questionable, but those that will bring him down are inevitable: fate is on the other side. In an addition possibly by Thomas Middleton, Hecate explains ‘[Macbeth] shall spurn fate, scorn death and bear/His hopes ’bove wisdom, grace and fear’ (3.05.30–1) but he will still fall. As she predicts, Macbeth continues in his arrogance but he seeks further security too: ‘I’ll … take a bond of fate’ he says metaphorically (4.01.84), meaning that he will get a written promise from fate of his immortality. In practice this will consist of killing his most implacable enemy Macduff, so that Macduff cannot kill him. But he fails to do so, and as the prophecy unravels he sees that although it has been fulfilled in every detail he had misunderstood its implications for his fate. Fate was not wrong, but Macbeth misread it. (C) Purkiss (2001) ‘Fairies’ suggests Fates, destinies and fairies are routinely conflated: for instance, in referring to Cleopatra as a ‘fairy’ (A&C 4.08.12) Shakespeare blurs the two categories together in a way that refers back to Holinshed’s imagination of the ‘weird sisters’ (who would become Mac.’s witches) as fatal or goddesses of destiny in his Chronicles (London, 1577, 1587). This description heavily influences the portrayal of their ambiguous nature, and helps us to see Fates in other supernatural creatures.

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Faustus See also: devil, magic, occult, fortune, magician, demon/daemon, conjuration, fiend, Belzebub, Lucifer, evil, angel, Eleanor Cobham (A) Doctor Faustus is Johann Faust, the tragic protagonist of a number of versions of the same story written in Germany and England in the second half of the sixteenth century. Most famously, he features in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, which was probably performed for the first time in the early 1590s and published in two versions in 1604 and 1616. The character was based on the German story of an aspiring scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for magical knowledge and power. Originally, Faust seems to have been a real occultist, fortune-teller and magician. But the demonizing notion that he obtained his power by devil-pact suited both the development of Protestant cautionary tales and the early modern theatre growing out of older morality plays. Marlowe daringly dramatizes the invocation of onstage devils and conjurations and his play was an enormous success: it was performed repeatedly, as theatre records show, was revised with additions in the mid-1590s, and spawned a great variety of legends, imitations and references in popular culture. It seems related to the scenes of conjuration in 1 HVI and 2 HVI, in which fiends appear. It would have been almost impossible to be unfamiliar with the play if one was a fellow-dramatist and equally hard not to be drawn into its pool of influences. (B) In MWW we have an overt reference in ‘three german devils, three doctor faustuses’ (4.05.70) when Bardolph describes how he has been cheated during a horse-deal, a specific reference to Faustus’ changing of a horse into a bundle of hay in Marlowe’s play. Here the play’s three main devils, Mephistopheles, Belzebub and Lucifer, are conflated with Faustus, perhaps to suggest Bardolph’s ignorance: he cannot even get a literary reference quite right. In LLL, there is a more fugitive echo of the Faust story in the Latin quotation ‘Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra/Ruminat ...’ (4.02.93) where the schoolmaster Holofernes demonstrates his learning by quoting the Mantuan poet Joannes Baptista Mantuanus’ first Eclogue (Onions’ (1986) translation: ‘Prithee, Faustus, while all our cattle chew the cud in the cool shade ...’). (C) Further echoes of Doctor Faustus have been detected in Son. 144’s good and evil angels by Cheney (2001). Cox (1993, 2000) argues that Shakespeare refers obliquely to it in 1 and 2 HVI in his portrayals of La Pucelle and the group of witches and magicians surrounding Eleanor Cobham. These plays might thus reflect a fashion for dramatizing conjuration, positioning the young Shakespeare as an imitator of Marlowe’s hit. The Faustus story seems likely to have coloured other tragic heroes who flirt with demonic or unknown powers – Sharpe (1997) sees it as inescapably part of the background to Mac. Davies (2009) and Sofer (2009) discuss the transmission of the Faust legend to early modern English dramatists.

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Fiend See also: devil, Joan La Pucelle, hag, witch, Lady Macbeth, hell, fairy, magician, Lady Anne, angel, prophecy, spirit, damnation, demon/daemon, Asmath, aroint/ avaunt/avoid, familiar, Edgar, possession, Smulkin, Malvolio, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, Duke of Clarence (A) ‘Fiend’ means devil, and is a word related to the German ‘feind’ or enemy; the devil was conceptualized as the enemy or adversary of mankind. (B) Shakespeare uses ‘fiend’ as a synonym for devil – ‘devil’s additions, the names of fiends’ (MWW 2.02.229) – but the sharp consonants of this single syllable seem to have appealed particularly when he was describing potent and vicious enemies or especially noxious threats. The word is often associated with women. Joan La Pucelle is called ‘foul fiend of France, and hag of all despite’ (1 HVI 3.02.52), and ‘vile fiend and shameless courtezan’ (HVI 3.02.45), insults linked with her status as a witch. Lady Macbeth is a ‘fiend-like queen’ (Mac. 5.09.35) whilst Cymbeline’s queen is a ‘most delicate fiend’ who causes her husband to remark: ‘Who is’t can read a woman?’ (Cym. 5.05.47–8). King Lear asserts that the area below women’s waists ‘is all the fiends’’ (KL 4.06.127) and elsewhere he imagines Ingratitude personified as a ‘marble-hearted fiend’ in a speech interspersed with railings against his daughter Goneril (KL 1.04.259). Albany agrees that the two are closely comparable: ‘proper deformity/Shows not in the fiend/So horrid as in woman ...’ he tells her (4.02.60). Othello calls women’s ability to deceive men into believing them chaste ‘the fiend’s arch-mock’ (Oth. 4.01.70). Katherina is ‘this fiend of hell’ to her disapproving neighbours in Shrew (1.01.88). In TN Viola/Cesario’s effect on Olivia (who falls in love with her believing her to be male) is such that she laments: ‘a fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell’ (3.04.217) – perhaps this term points to Viola’s actual biological sex. Yet ‘fiend’ is a term that can also be applied to male enemies, especially ones who cannot easily be resisted because they are attractive, forceful or cunning. Just as Katherina is described as a devil and fiend, so her husband Petruchio seems to Gremio ‘a devil, a devil, a very fiend’ (3.02.155) in his outrageously assertive methods of taming her. In Err. the arresting Officer is ‘a fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough’ (4.02.35), the lying Iachimo is an ‘Italian fiend’ in Cym. (5.05.210) and, faced with the prospect of rape by him, Marina in Per. tells the brothel door-keeper Boult that ‘the pained’st fiend/Of hell’ would not change reputation with him (4.06.163). ‘What black magician conjures up this fiend ...?’ enquires Lady Anne upon seeing Gloucester (RIII 1.02.34), yet later she will agree to marry him and apparently submit meekly to murder. In the estimation of his enemies, the equally Machiavellian Aaron has a ‘fiend-like face’ in Tit. (5.01.45), and his child is demonized as ‘the offspring of so foul a fiend’ (4.02.79). Particularly feared soldiers and tyrants earn the appellation too: ‘that fiend Douglas’ (1 HIV 2.04.368), ‘I think this Talbot be a fiend of hell’ (1 HVI 2.01.46) and ‘this fiend of Scotland’ – King Macbeth himself (Mac. 4.03.233).

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Young, beautiful men are associated with fallen fiends and their inverse, unfallen angels, so that the speaker wonders of his young male friend ‘whether that my angel be turn’d fiend’ in PP (2.9; repeated exactly in Son. 144.9). When Juliet hears that her beloved Romeo has killed her cousin Tybalt, she exclaims upon him as a ‘fiend angelical!’ (R&J 3.02.75). This duality refers to the transformation of rebel angels into devils but also perhaps to the deceitfulness and cunning of fiends: a ‘cunning fiend’ corrupted the traitors in HV (2.02.111), whilst Macbeth finds ‘th’equivocation of the fiend’ and ‘juggling fiends’ in the prophecy given to him by the witches’ spirits that he will not be defeated until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane (Mac. 5.05.42 and 5.08.19). This apparently impossible event occurs when his enemies cut branches from the wood to screen their advance on him at Dunsinane. Fiends are thus seen to be active seekers after human destruction and damnation: as Cardinal Beaufort dies in 2 HVI, his hallucinations cause the King to pray that God ‘beat away the busy meddling fiend’ that lays siege to his soul (3.03.21). Whilst there are many metaphorical uses of the word, actual demons such as Asmath, are addressed as fiends – ‘false–fiend, avoid!’ (2 HVI 1.04.40). Joan La Pucelle’s familiar spirits, raised in 1 HVI 5.03 are called Fiends in the stage directions, so that La Pucelle is metaphorically a fiend herself and works with other fiends as familiars. We are told that ‘the fiend hath prick’d down Bardolph irrecoverable’ for his sins, especially drunkenness (2 HIV 2.04.33). The devils that Edgar pretends are in possession of him in KL are almost all labelled as such: Edgar/Poor Tom says five ‘fiends’ have been in him (KL 4.01.58), that ‘the foul fiend follows me!’ (3.04.46), that ‘the foul fiend’ has led him through fire (3.04.52), ‘the foul fiend vexes’ (3.04.61), and in summary – as Gloucester notes, mistaking him for a devil himself – ‘often–’twould say,/‘The fiend, the fiend’’ (4.06.79). The sameness of the oft-repeated word becomes symbolic of Edgar’s supposedly fixed delusion: ‘defy the foul fiend’ (3.04.98), ‘peace, Smulkin, peace, thou fiend!’ (3.04.141), ‘prevent the fiend’ (3.04.159) and so on. Other episodes of apparent or pretended possession (Malvolio, Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus) prefigure the usage: ‘avoid then, fiend!’ (Err. 4.03.65) and ‘the fiend is strong within him’ (4.04.107); ‘how hollow the fiend speaks within him’ (TN 3.04.91), ‘the fiend is rough, and will not be roughly us’d’ (3.04.111) and ‘out, hyperbolical fiend!’(4.02.25). Although not possessed, but rather tempted, Launcelot Gobbo likewise overuses the term: ‘the fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me’ he begins (MerV 2.02.2), before explaining that the fiend seeks to cause him to run away from his master. ‘The most courageous fiend bids me pack’ he says (2.02.10), ‘‘‘rouse up a brave mind’, says the fiend, ‘and run’” (2.02.13). Gobbo adds various exotic synonyms (‘via!’, ‘bouge’) for further effect, perhaps suggesting the legendary ability of devils to speak many languages. Gobbo is inclined to listen – ‘“fiend”, say I, “you counsel well”’ (2.02.21) – since he regards Shylock, his Jewish employer, as even more demonic. Whilst ‘to run away from the Jew, I should be rul’d by the fiend’ (2.02.26) he decides that ‘the fiend gives the more friendly counsel’ (2.02.30). Shakespeare plays with the term: the enemy 91

Figure

is in fact the friend. Although Gobbo’s debate with himself over his duty is comic, it helps to attach notions of deceit, cruelty and other fiendish attributes to the Christian characters who abuse and entrap Shylock, as well as to the betrayal of his daughter Jessica whom Gobbo helps to elope with her father’s goods. As to their other imagined behaviour and attributes, fiends ‘howl’ in HV (2.01.93) and ‘roar’ in RIII (4.04.75) though they remain mute in 1 HVI; they are also ugly (KJ 4.03.123). Among the birds in PT, the shrieking ‘foul precurrer of the fiend’ is probably the owl (6), associated with demonic manifestations. In V&A, boars are ‘foul fiends’ as they endanger Adonis (638). ‘Under-fiends’ are described as particularly splenetic in Cor. (4.05.92) – are these lesser devils, striving to outdo the princes of hell in this most class-conscious play, or does ‘under’ refer to their subterranean domain? – and the politics of hell recur in the image of poison in KJ, which ‘is as a fiend confin’d to tyrannize’ (5.07.47). Thus fiends are at once imprisoned and ambitiously overbearing, making them ideal comparators for the defeated king himself. They are numerous and organized, like Biblical devils, for the Duke of Clarence dreams of ‘a legion of foul fiends’ in RIII (1.04.58) and see also HV 2.02.124. Fiends thus have all the associations one would expect of devils or demons, although the word can also mean something monstrous, cruel or wicked more generally. (C) On KL see Brayton (2003) and Greenblatt (1988). Briggs (2004) suggests that Edgar’s fiend is a barguest or barghest, a creature with flaming eyes and long claws as he conceptualizes it. On La Pucelle’s fiends, see Paxson (2001) and Boas (1951). Figure See also: astronomy, star, planet, fortune, nativity, foresee/foretell, alchemy, spell, magic, art, image magic, Witch of Brainford A ‘figure’ was the horoscope, or reading of the celestial bodies, ‘cast’ by astronomers (astrologers). Figures were based on the position of the stars and planets and were expressed as diagrams of interconnecting influences, which were then used to tell fortunes, draw up nativities and read stellar configurations to foretell events. Alchemists also drew up figures as part of their experiments. The word ‘figure’ thus became synonymous with magical diagrams, which might be thought to contain astrological predictions or actual spells, according to the desires and fears of the viewer. The word ‘figure’ was also used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to describe rhetorical devices, imitative likenesses and fanciful delusions – in each case it is associated with imagination and art. As a magical or astrological term it appears uncertainly in his plays, although the context is often suggestive of a demonological meaning. Master Ford alleges that the Witch of Brainford works ‘by spells, by the figure, and such daub’ry’ (MWW 4.02.177; ‘daubery’ meaning ‘trickery’, by allusion to deceptive painting). Crystal and Crystal (2002) suggest most plausibly that this refers to astrology, whilst Onions (1986) links the word to image magic, arguing that by ‘figure’ is meant the representation of a witch’s victim on which magic will be

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practised. Similarly ambiguously, in MM the First Gentleman remarks in annoyance to Lucio: ‘thou art always figuring diseases in me’ (1.02.53). The context is a conversation about venereal disease and the Gentleman may be suggesting simply that Lucio imagines the diseases (Onions prefers this interpretation) or that he is metaphorically casting his horoscope and diagnosing diseases which do not exist. The ‘figure’ is mistrusted, whichever reading is chosen: ‘thou art full of error’ the Gentleman add, ‘I am sound’ (54). Camden (1933) offered an early but helpful summary of the conflict over astrology, and see contextually Dean (1924), Sondheim (1939) and later Smith (1958) and McIntosch (1969). Uszkalo (2010) examines the figure-casting Witch of Brainford as a trickster, arguing that Shakespeare used contemporary cony-catching pamphlets as her source. First Witch See also: Hecate, witch, familiar, spirit, Graymalkin, cat, Second Witch, fairy, weird, destiny, forbid, ban, cursing, transformation, demon/daemon, prophecy, fate, cauldron, toad, Paddock, masters, Third Witch Mac.’s First Witch appears, until the arrival of Hecate later in the play, to be the leader of the group of three witches who open Act 1, Scene 1. She is described in the Folio stage directions as ‘1. Witch’. She proposes another meeting of the group, confirming time and place, before being summoned by her familiar spirit Graymalkin, probably a cat. In Act 1, Scene 3 she also leads the dialogue, asking the Second Witch where she has been. The First Witch then explains her own activities, setting the tone of the scene and establishing the ‘witches’ (whom Raphael Holinshed in his Chronicles [London, 1577, 1587] referred to as fairies and weird sisters, such as destinies) as definitely witches by her typically malevolent story of charity denied and revenge taken. In this case, she has been refused a gift of chestnuts by a sailor’s wife, and intends to revenge herself upon the woman’s husband, a ship’s master. She will sail to him in a sieve (a detail that Shakespeare borrowed from the anonymous pamphlet Newes from Scotland [London, 1591] about the trials of the North Berwick witches). To harm him she will use winds (two donated by her sister witches) and a severed ship’s pilot’s thumb to cause a tempest (also a skill attributed to the Scottish witches in Newes, where King James’ ship is represented as being attacked by them; these witches also used parts of dead bodies, a practice forbidden in some detail in the 1604 Witchcraft Act). The First Witch will also ‘drain’ her victim ‘dry as hay’ so that ‘sleep shall neither night nor day/Hang upon his penthouse lid’ (1.03.18–21). He will not, therefore, be able to close his eyes and rest; instead he will waste away, as ‘a man forbid’, banned or cursed. The First Witch implies that she will appear ‘like a rat without a tail’, perhaps indicating an actual transformation or shape-change, although her words may be metaphorical (1.03.9). A tailless rat might indicate that the creature was a demonic illusion, imperfect, unlike the real rats made by God. True to her role as organizer and chief agent, the First Witch then takes the lead in offering the weird sisters’ prophecy to

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Macbeth, emphasizing their Fate-like qualities. In Act 4, Scene 1 the First Witch again leads the chanting around the cauldron, throwing a toad into it (see also Paddock), and initiating Macbeth’s conversation with the witches’ oracular ‘masters’ by instructing her sisters to pour sow’s blood into the brew. In appearance, the First Witch is (like the Second and Third Witch) withered, wildly dressed and bearded (1.03.40–6), a woman but yet curiously masculine, human perhaps but yet capable of vanishing into air or earth or ‘hovering’ through the air (1.01.12, 1.03.80). Flibbertigibbet See also: fiend, Edgar, demon/daemon, possession, exorcism/exorcist, devil, blasting, Obidicut, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Mahu, Modu, Smulkin, Frateretto, Purr (A) An invented fiend associated with pulling faces and, more seriously, with disease and harm in humans and agricultural life. (B) The ‘fiend Flibbertigibbet’ (KL 3.04.115 and 4.01.61–3) is one of the fiends named by Edgar when he pretends to be afflicted by demons: Flibbertigibbet, fiend ‘of mopping and mowing [making faces; in the Quartos ‘mobing’ and ‘mohing’], who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting women’. The fiend causes eye disease such as cataract (known as ‘pin and web’), damages crops and hurts animals, according to Edgar. His name (as Fliberdigibbet) comes from Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603) which is an account of a case of supposed demonic possession, among precisely the kind of servants described by Edgar. Harsnett was chaplain to the Bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, during his campaign against unofficial exorcisms and their mostly puritan, occasionally Catholic, participants in the 1590s and early 1600s. On Bancroft’s behalf, he wrote derogatory accounts of exorcists and their ‘patients’, mostly children, young women and men. The group of ‘demoniacs’ which is the focus of the 1603 Declaration were led by young servants in a wealthy Catholic household at Denham in Buckinghamshire: they had been subjected to a range of exorcizing treatments during which devils were supposedly driven out. They named a wide range of demons afflicting them, including Flibbertigibbet, of which Shakespeare chose several for KL. Early versions of the play struggled with his name with the First Quarto trying both ‘fliberdegibek’, ‘Stiberdigebit’ and ‘Scriberdegibit’ for instance. But the name is clearly Harsnett’s and the demoniac Sara Williams, a housemaid, confessed (when questioned by Harsnett) that the names had been drawn from old stories, graffiti and invention and had been attributed to non-existent devils. Thus these Shakespearean devils are called after unreal fiends, creatures of the imagination – appropriately for Edgar, a man who is not really possessed. (C) Shakespeare’s source was recognized by eighteenth-century editors of KL, Lewis Theobald and his contemporaries, but has been discussed since the middle of the twentieth century in a number of influential essays and books focusing on the religious politics of the era, the theatricality of exorcism and on the gender, age and class politics of possession. The insistence of KL on the performance of demonic possession

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by an exile and beggar, on Edgar’s apparent bodily and mental suffering and on his empathy with the mad and lost Lear has led to discussions of both spirit-possession and theatre as ways of articulating usually repressed concerns about various forms of disempowerment. See Muir (1951) (who offers a detailed breakdown of Shakespeare’s indebtedness to Harsnett’s book), Wilson Knight (1930) on KL’s ‘universe’, Murphy (1984), Greenblatt (1988), van Dijkhuizen (2007) and Gibson (2006) on the literary politics of Edgar’s fiends, and Brownlow (1993) (the latter includes an edition of Harsnett’s Declaration). Thoms (1865) argues that Flibbertigibbet is associated with will-o-th’-wisp. D’Avanzo (1977) notes that Flibbertigibbet’s power of mildewing may relate to ergot fungus growing on grain and causing madness, thus to blasting. Forbid See also: First Witch, witchcraft, fortune, charm, accursed, cursing, witch, ban The First Witch in Mac. exclaims of a sailor whom she proposes to attack with witchcraft that ‘he shall live a man forbid’ (1.03.21). Uniquely among Shakespeare’s uses of this term (most of which occur in the conventionally pious phrase ‘God forbid’ (as in HV 1.02.14 where Henry instructs the Archbishop of Canterbury not to mislead him) or in reference to other powers and deities (‘Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her’ the disguised Viola exclaims in TN (2.02.18)) her words suggest that the forbidden are people accursed. Her curse on him means that he will unable to sleep and will waste away, as well as his ship being subjected to constant storms and contrary winds. Foresee/foretell (also includes: foreknow/foresay/forethink) See also: magic, prophecy, soothsayer, divination, Cassandra, Ariel, Prospero, art, occult, Peter of Pomfret, King Hamlet, astronomy, oracle, destiny, fortune Foresight can be spoken of as a non-magical attribute – simply the sensible prediction of future needs, for example, and provision for these. But it also has a magical aspect like prophecy, soothsaying or divination, of which it is a part. Foresight is summed up by the soothsayer in A&C: ‘I make not, but foresee’ (1.02.15). The soothsayer predicts, but does not determine, the future. Similarly the prophetess ‘Cassandra doth foresee’ in T&C (5.03.64) and Ariel carefully explains of Prospero that ‘my master through his art foresees the danger’ in Temp. (2.01.297). Foreseeing implies, but does not always specify, occult knowledge of coming events; and foreknowledge is a related formulation of the same ideas. In KJ, the prophet Peter of Pomfret speaks of ‘foreknowing that the truth will fall out so’ (4.02.154), and in Ham. Horatio questions the Ghost of King Hamlet about future events hoping that ‘foreknowing may avoid’ some harm (1.01.134). Meanwhile ‘foretelling’ suggests sharing that knowledge in a more public and official capacity. Thersites jokes that Diomedes promises a great deal but ‘when he performs’ (delivers 95

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on his promises) it is so rare and significant that ‘astronomers foretell it’ (T&C 5.01.92). Informed deathbed advice was thought to be especially inspired, and might be described as foretelling: John of Gaunt predicts the coming fall of Richard II ‘and thus expiring do foretell of him’ (RII 2.01.32). Shakespeare also links foretelling to well-known pagan oracles, so that in WT the speed with which Cleomenes and Dion return from consulting the oracle at Delphi, Leontes suggests ‘foretells/The great Apollo suddenly will have/The truth of this appear ...’ (2.03.199–201). His later rejection of Apollo’s judgement is doubly ironic, since he reads significance not only into that judgement but even the swift return of the messengers: it is this that foretells here and not Apollo directly. Gods, however, can have foreknowledge and can foretell: in Cym. (4.02.146) Arviragus tells Belarius and Guiderius ‘Let ordinance/Come as the gods foresay it’. Finally, Shakespeare adapts the notion of forethought, usually meaning non-magical good sense (as in foresight) to prophetic usage: Hal is told that his wild ways mean that ‘the soul of every man/ Prophetically do forethink thy fall’ (1 HIV 3.02.38) and in KJ (3.01.312) we are told of ‘the doom/Forethought by heaven!’, a reference to providence. Fortune See also: fate, destiny, magic, astronomy, evil, star, foresee/foretell, book, soothsayer, Witch of Brainford, hag, conjuration, exorcism/exorcist, Doctor Pinch, Philharmonus, augury, circle, auspicious, cursing, witch, prophecy, Malvolio, forbid, charm, bewitched, nativity (A) ‘Fortune’ is a multifaceted concept. It can refer simply to success or money (good fortune or a fortune in gold for instance), yet it refers also the chance distribution of these, or indeed any outcome or quality. Demonologists discussed it when it became entwined with notions of providence, fate or destiny, and thus the intense early modern debate about what determines the course of events. They also paid attention to fortunetelling, the prediction of a person’s life’s course by a paid interpreter of signs, which could be thought of as natural, magical or astronomical (astrological). Finally, fortune was a concept deified by the ancient world in the person of the goddess Fortuna. She entered the poetic lexicon of Christian writers as an uneasily personified metaphor, like ‘Venus’ for love or ‘Mars’ for war. Since her anglicized name was identical with the concept which she represented, however, it was possible to write, read and hear ‘fortune’ or ‘Fortune’ as desired. (B) Shakespeare uses the word very often – over 300 times –- in all of these senses: ‘I read your fortune in your eye’ Proteus tells Valentine when they meet the woman Valentine loves and his friend notes his expression (TGV 2.04.143). Here he seems to predict Valentine’s success in love, but also perhaps sees his entrapment in it, his surrender to ‘fortune’ as a force beyond his control. Proteus’ metaphor of reading fortune also makes us imagine him as a seer. Later Silvia tells another suitor that ‘heaven and fortune’ reward forced (‘unholy’) marriage with evil outcomes (4.03.31),

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linking the two as sacred forces but also differentiating them – Christian and pagan? Fortune was often linked with other powers in debate, perhaps because it was inherently multi-natured and very hard to describe. In KL, Edmund navigates his way through the minefield. He rejects the power of the stars, but still relies on the word ‘fortune’ to describe human vicissitude: ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars’ (1.02.118–21) Clearly he favours the notion that people are responsible for their own lives, but he cannot purge his vocabulary completely of preternatural implications. Some plays, such as MerV are particularly interested in the notion of fortune. Portia’s lack of choice of her husband appears to rest on it, since her suitor must choose ceremonially from three caskets, one of which entitles him to marry her. ‘Lead me to the caskets/To try my fortune’ says the Prince of Morocco (2.01.24) in a scene with repeated reference to ‘chance’, ‘lott’ry’, ‘destiny’ and ‘dice’. The Prince hopes that he, ‘blind Fortune leading me’, may succeed where, as he thinks, worthier men may fail (2.01.36). Here Fortune is personified, as again at 2.02.166: ‘if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench’ Launcelot Gobbo remarks in the next scene. Here he also consults his palm, a typical focus of fortune-telling, since its lines could supposedly foretell developments in various areas of life: if any man in Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book [i.e. a better-looking hand] – I shall have good fortune. Go to, here’s a simple line of life; here’s a small trifle of wives; alas, fifteen wives is nothing; a’leven widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man. And then to scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life with the edge of a feather-bed – here are simple scapes. (2.02.158–65)

Gobbo is feeling lucky because he has just been offered a new job: hence his overblown optimism about multiple marriages and exciting adventures, at which we are encouraged to laugh. In A&C too, palmistry is used by the soothsayer, this time to predict sadly and accurately the fates of Charmian and Iras. In a comic exchange recalling Gobbo the Queen’s attendants speculate about marriage and children, wishing to marry princes. Iras says primly that her palm will show that she is chaste, but Charmian retorts to the soothsayer: ‘tell her but a worky-day fortune’ (1.02.54). However, their fortunes are exactly alike, they are told and indeed they will die a few minutes apart later in the play. MWW is also occupied by fortune-telling. The Witch of Brainford is described by Master Ford as a cozener and hag, because she uses ‘the profession of fortune-telling’ (4.02.176). He also implies that she procures lovers for married women and beats her out of his house (although actually ‘she’ is Falstaff disguised), crying: ‘I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you’ (MWW 4.02.186). In Err. the exorcist schoolmaster Doctor Pinch

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fares no better: called ‘a threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller’ (5.01.240) he is also assaulted by those who doubt his ability and honesty. Most fortune-tellers, then, are met with disbelief and even violence. Those from the ancient world usually fare better, in that the plays endorse their wisdom: often they have respected public offices, as with soothsayers like Philharmonus who is employed by the Roman army, or augurs, whose advice is sought by senators and generals. Even they, however, are sometimes disbelieved or – as in A&C – treated as an entertainment, their palmistry a party trick. Fortune, meanwhile, is also mocked in her feminine, goddess persona. In AYLI, a witty debate about her powers reduces her in status to ‘the good huswife fortune’ (AYLI 1.02.32). Rosalind, who has recently experienced bad fortune, proposes that she be mocked ‘from her wheel’. The goddess was often portrayed in ancient statuary holding a wheel which revolves bringing good and bad fortune around to everyone (as in ‘the wheel is come full circle’ KL 5.03.175 and Fluellen’s description of Fortune in paintings in HV 3.06.30–8). But Rosalind’s description of the goddess as a housewife suggests a spinning wheel, making her a domestic version of the Fates, who spin the destinies of human beings. After this disrespectful beginning, Celia jokes that Fortune makes beautiful women unchaste and ugly ones chaste, but Rosalind answers that this is Nature’s doing: ‘Fortune reigns in the gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature’ (1.02.41). This teasing of Fortune continues elsewhere: in AWW the Steward explains that Helena had also railed against her lot: ‘Fortune, she said, was no goddess’ since she had separated Helena from her lover by a wide difference of rank (1.03.111). Yet some characters venerate Fortune, especially Perdita who exclaims ‘O lady Fortune, stand you auspicious!’, in a play with strong overtones of goddess-worship and Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary (WT 4.04.51). Other characters are often vicious in their criticism of the ‘strumpet fortune’ (Constance in KJ 3.01.61), a phrase repeated in Ham. where the Prince also discusses the ‘secret parts of Fortune’ with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who agree that they are her ‘privates’ (2.02.235–6). They mean that they know her secrets, are her intimates because they are spies, but the joke also suggests that they are the goddess’ sexual organs, generating their own fortune perhaps but in a way that leads to their downfall. Fortune is often portrayed as a hostile, angry deity: ‘frowning Fortune, cursed, fickle dame’ (PP 17.10), where cursed means surly but may also imply a preternatural ill-wishing. As a female, patriarchal discourse constructed Fortune as changeable and unfaithful, moving from man to man at will. There was, however, a contrary notion that Fortune was manipulable, or at least that her favours could be caught and extended up to a point by human action, so that an individual’s fortunes were partly controllable. For example, in Temp. Antonio urges Sebastian to kill his brother, otherwise ‘thou let’st thy fortune sleep – die, rather’ (2.01.216). His ‘fortune’ may be the wealth and power he could enjoy as king, but it also seems to refer to his personal destiny. Macbeth takes destiny into his own hands, and ‘disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel’ kills Macdonwald on whose cause Fortune had been ‘smiling …/Like a rebel’s whore’ (Mac. 1.02.17, 14–15). However, this disdain for Fortune may later be seen to lead him astray as he attempts to bring 98

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about the quick fulfilment of the rest of the witches’ prophecy instead of waiting on events. On several occasions, characters reflect that their entire lives are at the whim of fortune (‘all is but fortune’ says Trinculo in Temp. 5.01.257; ‘tis but fortune, all is fortune’ says Malvolio in TN 2.05.23) but in each case they also take steps to grasp any opportunity that comes along. ‘Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her’ the disguised Viola exclaims in TN (2.02.18) but her appearance has seduced Olivia – ‘charm’d’ even carries a hint of bewitchment – and although this leads to temporary problems in the end Fortune leads Olivia and Viola to happiness. In each case human agency works with the grain of Fortune’s will. The same conjunction can be seen operating in the history plays: Anne’s beauty and honour catch King Henry VIII, according to the Lord Chamberlain, but the Old Lady courtier has a simpler view: ‘I have been begging sixteen years in court …/Nor could/Come pat betwixt too early and too late …/And you, O fate!/A very fresh-fish here – fie, fie, fie upon this compell’d fortune!’ (HVIII 2.03.87). To her, Anne is just lucky, whereas the Old Lady was not. Winners in such political plays have both ‘fortune and his highness’ favours’ (HVIII 2.04.111) echoing ‘good fortune and the favour of the king’ (AWW 2.03.177), although once one or both are lost they fall into troubles. ‘Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune’, Menas opines when Pompey makes a treaty and feasts with his enemy instead of seizing his chance to win (A&C 2.06.105). Sometimes it appears that different conceptions of destiny conflict, when both good and bad befalls a character. When Bertram leaves her, having been forced to marry her much to her delight, Helena regrets that ‘my homely stars have fail’d/To equal my great fortune’ (AWW 2.05.76) – in other words the stars of her birth nativity point one way, her recent, lucky fortune another. Fortune is sometimes coupled with other goddesses who can also grant or withhold success: ‘Fortune and Victory sit on thy helm’, Richmond is told in RIII (5.03.79) and both apparently favour him. ‘Love and Fortune be my gods’, Tarquin decides (Luc. 351) – it might be argued that these conflict to betray him into sin and exile, or that neither favours him. Finally, the Fortune versus Nature debate of AYLI recurs in MWW when the goddesses are at odds. Falstaff tells Mistress Ford that instead of a middle-class wife in Windsor she should be a courtier: ‘I see what thou wert if Fortune thy foe were [not] Nature thy friend’ (3.03. 60–1). It is debated whether ‘not’ in the Folio is a mistaken insertion (the line works best without it). In either case, its meaning is fairly clear: Nature has favoured Mistress Ford with beauty, Falstaff suggests, but if Fortune were her friend instead of her foe she could be a fine lady. ‘Fortune my foe’ was one of the most popular contemporary ballad tunes, especially common in broadside ballads reporting death and disaster, and Falstaff tries to manipulate Mistress Ford with this old saw. But she does not want his help and does not see Fortune as her foe; the play proves her right. (C) Jorgenson (1975) explores the relationship between the Christian God, Fortune and war in the history plays, discussing how much of a victory or defeat was seen to be attributable to human ability and how much to Providence or Fortune’s intervention. Sondheim (1939) discusses Fortune as part of understanding astrological imagery in 99

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Shakespeare’s works, and see also Camden (1933), Dean (1924), McIntosch (1969) and Smith (1958) on judicial astrology. Kiefer (1982) examines the role of Fortune in in Elizabethan tragedy – he differentiates Fortune carefully from providence – and see also MacKenzie (2001) on Fortuna. Frateretto See also: fiend, Edgar, possession, damnation, hell, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Mahu, Modo, Purr, Smulkin Frateretto is another of the fiends mentioned by Edgar in KL when he is pretending to be possessed. In this case, at 3.06.6–7, Edgar says that ‘Frateretto calls me, and tells me that Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness’ – thus presumably that the emperor Nero (reigned 54–68 ad) has been damned for his sins (such as burning down the city of Rome and, more certainly, persecuting Christians) and has been seen by the fiend in hell. ‘Pray, innocent, and beware of the foul fiend’ (7–8), Edgar admonishes the Fool accordingly. Frateretto is another of the fiends’ names taken from Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603). See Flibbertigibbet for full discussion. He appears as ‘Fraterretto’ in the Folio and ‘Fretereto’ in the Quartos.

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G George, Duke of Clarence (ghost) (see Clarence) Ghost See also: spirit, demon/daemon, devil, damnation, hell, King Hamlet, goblin/ hobgoblins, image magic, apparition, fate, Julius Caesar, angel, Banquo, vision, familiar, conjuror, exorcism/exorcist, conjuration, unlaid, book, dream, Duke of Buckingham, Lady Anne, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Earl Rivers, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, King Henry VI, Duke of Clarence, Lord Hastings, laying, Sicilius Leonatus, Herne (A) ‘Ghost’ refers to the spirit of a dead person, with overtones of soulfulness and holiness on the one hand and fears of demonic imitation on the other. Demonologists such as Ludwig or Lewes Lavater (in Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght, published in English translation in London, 1572) aired fears that devils could imitate the forms of deceased people in order to lure the living into damnation. This would be a pertinent consideration if one had just been asked by a ghost to commit murder, as often happened in revenge tragedy, especially those imitating the work of the Roman playwright Seneca. As well as bringing temptations, Lavater argued that ghosts could be delusions: imagined as a result of melancholy and madness. Some spirits could be good ghosts, bringing advice or revealing truths. But even when he discussed more positive notions of haunting, Lavater still insisted that the ghost was not actually the dead person, only a representation of them. Perhaps this representation was made of spirit or air. Such a visitation could be either good or bad, depending upon the advice that the ghost might offer to the living. The sacramental, for example, was a matter of great concern in the post-Reformation world, and ghosts might be thought well placed to know the truth about certain religious forms – whether or not masses should be said for the dead, or whether saintly intercession worked. But devils, if that was what a particular ghost turned out to be, might give incorrect information to the living. They might perhaps mention ‘purgatory’, a location in which the souls of the recently dead were thought in Catholic doctrine to do penance for their sins, scouring them away painfully before entering heaven. But what if it did not exist, as Protestants argued, and the devil was trying to delude the bereaved into misbelief? Attempting to pull the souls of the dead out of purgatory because a ghost had asked for such prayers to be said could thus be misguided and dangerous. As a reformed Swiss theologian, Lavater explicitly

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rejected the notion of purgatory as a defunct Catholic concept and accordingly greatly problematized the appearance of ghosts, who could only be coming to visit the living from heaven or, more likely, hell. Ghosts were thus highly controversial, on the front line of sectarian demonological debate. The adjective ‘ghostly’ could also refer to Catholic priests. (B) ‘Ghostly father’ meaning priest occurs in MM (4.03.48) and R&J (2.03.45). But Shakespeare’s most debated Catholic-seeming ghost occurs in Ham., where a ghost claiming to be the spirit of old King Hamlet appears to the king’s son to reveal that Old Hamlet was murdered and ask for revenge to be taken on his behalf. Young Hamlet reasons with himself, the audience and Horatio about whether what he has seen is an ‘honest ghost’ or a ‘damned ghost’ (Ham. 1.05.138, 3.02.82), a healthy spirit or a goblin, as he further elaborates. His friend Horatio and the other witnesses who have seen the ghost repeatedly refer to it as ‘like’ the old king, as his ‘image’ or an ‘illusion’, rather than accepting that the ghost is the old king in any way (e.g. 1.01.58, 81, 110, 127, 1.02.199, 212, etc.). Hamlet’s assumption when he is told of the apparition is that it is something that will ‘assume my noble father’s person’ (1.02.243). Hamlet’s decision is to test the ghost’s veracity by stimulating a guilty response in the murderer, so that he will have independent evidence of Claudius’ guilt. All of the characters’ concerns about appearance and reality are informed by demonological and theological speculations about devilish trickery and the fate of the soul immediately after death. The ghost may have appeared in an earlier, lost, dramatization of the Hamlet story but Shakespeare’s version seems informed by some of his recent (c. 1599) work in JC on Julius Caesar’s ghost (see ‘angel’, ‘spirit’) and thus very much his own. Lavater-like, Horatio fears that the ghost may tempt Hamlet to suicide and Shakespeare also explores Lavater’s notion of melancholic delusion in the figure of Hamlet. Banquo’s ghost in Mac. Act 3, Scene 4 is even more self-consciously of Lavater’s model, possibly being (like Macbeth’s earlier vision of the dagger) an illusion created by his own mind since it cannot be seen by others. But finally Lavater also allowed that some ghosts might be angelic forms, trustworthy and well-meaning, offering comfort or asking that sacraments and prayers be offered for the dead. They might be few, but they could exist. With this in mind, Horatio hypothesizes that Hamlet’s father’s ghost brings news of some ‘good thing to be done’, or foreknowledge of coming political events, or even a tip about where treasure is buried – ‘for which they say your spirits oft walk in death’ (1.01.129–38) – which seems particularly unlikely for the spirit of a king. With these comments about theories on good ghostly activities (‘they say’), Horatio further reveals the influence of theorists like Lavater on Shakespeare’s text. His troubled, questioning influence and reluctance to believe on good ghosts extends to metaphor too: in Son., poetic inspiration appears as an ‘affable familiar ghost’ (86.9) although ominously it ‘gulls’ or deceives the writer. The loss of purgatory to the Protestant imagination should thus have ruled out one possible location from which ghosts could return to haunt the living, but in fact this matter of location is Hamlet’s second concern. Lavater did think that ghosts might 102

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escape briefly from hell, and there is a potential blurring in Ham. between hell and purgatory when King Hamlet’s ghost speaks of dwelling among tormenting flames (1.05.2–4) and also of the burning and purging away of his sins (10–14). But he has generally been thought to be referring to purgatory, situating the play in a Catholic context. The nature of ghosts was as sharply debated as their location. Phrases such as ‘gave up the ghost’ (3 HVI 2.03.22) or ‘to yield the ghost’ (RIII 1.04.37) suggest a parting of the body from the soul, but the notion that such dissevered souls continued to manifest themselves on earth disturbed platitudes about heaven and hell. When King Lear dies, onlookers are urged ‘vex not his ghost’ (KL 5.03.314) as if it were still present, or could be called upon easily by grieving survivors. Thoughts on this matter were various and emotive. The independent-minded German natural philosopher and magician Henry Cornelius Agrippa, whose shocking ideas were widely known to demonologists in early modern England, opined that after death, souls continued to love the body that they had inhabited when they were alive. Souls peacefully departed felt this love, but even more so souls that had been forced from their bodies by violent death or had not found proper burial. These souls might remain hanging about near their deceased bodies, sad and anxious over their fate. Hauntings, therefore, were for him bodies animated by their previous souls, in defiance of orthodox doctrines. Necromancers, conjurors or exorcists might try to contact these souls by conjuration and interrogate them about occult wisdom (De Occulta Philosophia Book 3, Chapter 42, Cologne, 1533). Hamlet and his fellows do not try this method, but they do attempt to constrain King Hamlet’s ghost and force it to answer them. Their force is physical and ineffective, but it is deployed. We hear in Shakespeare’s works that ghosts may have a physical, as opposed to a purely spiritual, presence. ‘Spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves’ we are told in the conjuration scene in 2 HVI (1.04.19), suggesting a physical (or near-physical?) force. This was another of the ambiguities that made ghosts alarming in Shakespeare’s world. One of the threats to which the supposedly dead Imogen may be exposed is repulsed by her mourners with the phrase: ‘ghost unlaid forbear thee’ (Cym. 4.02.278). This is curious, given that she is already (presumed) dead and ought to be in heaven. Yet apparently an unlaid ghost, an evil spirit not exorcized or set at rest by the proper rites, may attack her. Later in the play, Posthumus is visited in Act 5, Scene 4 by the rather solid ghosts of his parents and siblings who are present onstage as actors, like King Hamlet and Banquo. They even give him a tangible artefact, a book. There is also a vision of Jupiter, perhaps pushing the experience into the classical tradition and Posthumus perceives the visitation as a dream so that the issue of physical contact between ghost and living person is once again blurred. A dream provides the opportunity to sidestep difficult questions about revenants in RIII too. As was traditional in classical drama, Shakespeare’s ghosts cluster around the theme of revenge. Almost all are deposed leaders and murdered pawns and rivals in political power games. In RIII, 11 different ghosts appear to Richard in a dream in Act 5, Scene 3, prophesying his fall and revenging themselves on him verbally with curses. They 103

Ghost

also appear to Richmond, who will replace him as king, offering good wishes. They are: the Duke of Buckingham, Lady Anne, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Earl Rivers, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Richard Duke of York, King Henry VI, Duke of Clarence and Lord Hastings. In the history plays, ghosts are also called on by the living (‘Henry the fift, thy ghost I invocate’ 1 HVI 1.01.52 and ‘be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost’ RIII 1.02.8) whilst Richard II speaks of kings ‘haunted by the ghosts they have deposed’ (RII 3.02.158). Banquo’s bloodied ghost haunts the king who gave order for his murder in Mac. Act 3, Scene 4. All these ghosts are Christian deceased but Shakespeare also draws on classical stories of haunting: the ‘ghost of Caesar’, as Julius Caesar is called in JC (5.05.17), is described as having ‘ghosted’ Brutus in A&C (2.06.13), since Brutus murdered him (see also ‘angel’). Shakespeare extends the usage of ‘ghost’ into a verb, replacing the more usual ‘haunted’ but, even with this reiteration of the term Brutus debates the ghost’s nature, prefiguring Ham. (‘art thou some god, some angel, or some devil ...’). Caesar’s answer that he is ‘thy evil spirit, Brutus’ is not necessarily a conclusive description of his essence (4.03.277–80). Rather it opens up more questions about evil angels, and metaphorical as well as actual haunting (see also demon/daemon). In RIII 5.03 ‘the lights burn blue’ when the ghosts appear, supposedly a characteristic sign of their presence and possibly indicating evil. Ghosts belonged in a long dramatic and literary tradition. Their appearance and behaviour was stereotyped and Shakespeare includes paleness (‘how pale he glares’ Ham. 3.04.125, as well as the likening of the English to ‘pale ghosts’ and ‘horrid ghosts’ 1 HVI 1.02.7, HV 4 prologue 28), echoing speech (‘as hollow as a ghost’ KJ 3.04.84), grimness (though also an uncanny jocularity drawn from apparently grinning skulls and personifying death, ‘grim-grinning ghost’ V&A 933), aimless, lost perambulation (‘ghosts, wand’ring’ MND 3.02.381) and unnatural movement (‘gliding ghosts’ JC 1.03.63). Ghosts were also thought to moan or cry out: ‘shriek and squeal’ (JC 2.02.24) or ‘squeak and gibber’ (Ham. 1.01.116). In the second quotation, Hamlet is referring back to the first, the night before Caesar’s murder when ghosts were said to have thronged Rome’s streets along with other apparently providential portents: Shakespeare offers us a meta-dramatic moment of recollection, a multilevel haunting of each other by texts as well as human spirits. (C) Shakespeare’s interest in Lavater’s theories is explored in Dover Wilson and Yardley (1929), eds, an introduction to a modern edition of Of Ghostes and Spirits. Bertram (2004) wonders if Shakespeare’s references to purgatory in Ham. baffled audiences, who by the early seventeenth century had grown used to Protestant doctrines. Freeman (2003) suggests that reading Ham. via the recusant legacy provides a ‘middle ground’ between those who overemphasize Shakespeare’s possible Catholicism, and those who dismiss it. He posits that the ghost in Ham. is a political statement, speaking to a constituency of dispossessed people enduring an earthly purgatory for their recusancy. Hansford (2000) sees the ghost as provoking reflection on illusion and theatricality. On purgatory and the nature of Ham.’s ghost see the important study by Greenblatt 104

Glendower, Owen

(2001) of early modern afterlives, West (1955) on the ghost’s ambiguity, Anthonisen (1965), Atchley (2002), Cho (2005), Foakes (2005), Smidt (1996) and Joseph (1961) on aspects of the ghost’s manifestation. Contextually see Dolan (2007) on the confessional issues provoked by female ghosts. Newton and Bath (2002), eds, offers a series of essays on early modern ghosts, including McKeown’s on Ham.. Briggs (2004) examines avenging spectres in Elizabethan drama, arguing that Shakespeare mixed contemporary belief with the Senecan tradition of the revengeful ghost; see also Lucas (1922), Rist (2003) and Hallett (1977) on revengeful ghosts and Neill (1997) on mortality in Renaissance tragedy. For general discussion of Shakespeare’s ghosts see Purkiss (2006), Herbert (1950), Faber (1966) and Assmann (2003) as well as the early study by Moorman (1906). Glendower, Owen See also: magician, conjuror, nativity, devil, invocation, Prospero, art, spirit, magic, Amaimon, Lucifer, incubus/succubus, Sycorax, supernatural, fiend, Joan La Pucelle Owen Glendower (Owain Glyndŵr or Glyn Dŵr in Welsh) is a Welsh prince, described as a magician and a self-proclaimed conjuror in 1 HVI. He claims that ‘fiery shapes’ (perhaps comets?) and earthquakes heralded his birth and shaped his nativity (3.01.13–17) and angers Hotspur who dislikes his mystical, symbol-filled ramblings (‘skimble-skamble stuff’ about Merlin and subservient devils he can invoke) and Prospero-like claims to ‘the tedious ways of art’ (147–62, 47). ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep’ Glendower boasts, to be met with Hotspur’s annoying literalism: ‘Why so can I, or so can any man./But will they come when you do call for them?’ (3.01.52–4). Hotspur explicitly accuses Glendower of lying and further implies that to ‘speak …Welsh’ is to lie (49, 58), but must humour him because the Percy faction needs their military alliance. His opinion of the Welshman as a pompous fantasist is funny, and thus hard to dismiss, particularly as we never see Glendower perform any magic. It is part of a rhetoric of English superiority and rationality, though Hotspur too suffers from Glendower’s fault of boasting. Falstaff, another pot calling the kettle black, mocks Glendower’s pretensions in 1 HIV, and he insults Hotspur too: ‘that same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales [Glendower] that gave Amaimon the bastinado and made Lucifer cuckold’ (2.04.336–7) (2.05.339–40). Here Glendower is imagined as achieving such mastery over devils that he can beat and shame them, and also apparently as the sexual partner of a succubus (Lucifer’s wife) making him comically like Shakespeare’s other supposed demon-lover Sycorax. We have no evidence of these accusations being true, but Glendower seems content to enhance his reputation by appropriating supernatural skills. Fiends may help him in battle or political strategy, like those of Joan La Pucelle, for although his methods are not made wholly clear he claims that he has defeated the English several times, and makes this claim during his comments on magic. The historical Owain attempted to limit and beat back English

105

Gloucester, Duchess of (see Cobham, Eleanor)

rule in Wales at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century, with a particularly effective revolt commencing in 1400, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Baker (2010) draws attention to Shakespeare’s refusal to absorb from his source Holinshed any indication that Glendower actually was capable of magic (Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles [London, 1577, 1587]) and discusses the anti-Welsh context of Hotspur’s scepticism. In Merkel and Debus (1988), eds, Shumaker contrasts Prospero and Glendower, and see also Baker (2010) on the Welsh context. Gloucester, Duchess of (see Cobham, Eleanor) Goblin/Hobgoblin See also: fairy, elf, supernatural, Puck, magic, ghost, demon/daemon, damnation, spirit, Prospero, bug/bugbear, Hobbididance, fiend, hell (A) Goblins and hobgoblins are more troubling variants of fairies, related to the harmful aspect of elves. The term ‘goblin’ is a north-western European one, perhaps related to kobolds, spirits that haunt homes but also subterranean spaces such as caves and mines. ‘Goblin’ may also be linked to the Greek kobalos, a mischievous supernatural creature. The addition of the prefixing syllable ‘hob’ suggests a further blending of traditions, since ‘hob’ is detachable. A hob was a hairy, fairy creature that was associated with caves and holes in the ground and disrupted agricultural activities in the English countryside. The word was a version of the name ‘Robin’, and was also used to mean a country bumpkin. (B) (Hob)goblins appear with fairies (or at least, with characters dressed up as fairies) in MWW and are instructed ‘crier hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes’ (5.05.41). Usually where Shakespeare mentions them it is in terms that suggest they are mischievous at best, and at worst threatening and evil. Puck is also called Hobgoblin (MND 2.01.40) according to ‘those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck’ and he instructs himself ‘goblin, lead them up and down’ (3.02.399) when deciding how to torment the lovers lost in the wood. If the word ‘goblin’ is of Greek descent, it is appropriate that Puck should return to Greece in MND. Like most of the other magical creatures in early modern thought, goblins are conflated with related forms from ghosts to demons. Hamlet wonders if the ghost that he sees is a ‘goblin damn’d’ (Ham. 1.04.40) as against ‘a spirit of health’. Some of Prospero’s spirits are also goblins: the goblins ‘grind their [victims’] joints’ in Temp. (4.01.258). That they are fearful creatures is suggested by their association with night birds and spirits in Err.: ‘goblins, owls and sprites’ (2.02.190) and bugs in Ham. ‘bugs and goblins’ (5.02.22). A wicked conscience, says Troilus, ‘mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy’s thoughts’ (T&C 5.10.29) meaning that his enemies’ guilt at the ‘murder’ of Hector (which is what Troilus calls his death in battle) ensures that they will see him everywhere, revengeful and terrifying. Hob may refer to Robin Goodfellow, making ‘hobgoblin’ mean ‘Robin the goblin’; Shakespeare certainly uses it as a proper name for a rural labourer in Cor. Act 2, Scene 3, along with ‘Dick’.

106

Grey, Sir Richard (ghost)

Hobbididance’s name (a fiend from KL) is similar to Hobgoblin, and the name may have referred to its inventor’s belief that hobgoblins were demonic. (C) Briggs (1957, 1959, 1962, 1967) examines early modern religious associations of hobgoblins with hell; Allies (1846) associates them with will-o’-th’-wisp, or ignis fatuus, the marsh-gas light that led travellers astray in the way Puck proposes, on the grounds that it was known as ‘Hoberdy’s Lantern’. Simpson and Roud (2000) and Westwood and Simpson (2005) explore the usage of the prefix ‘hob’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the English North and Midlands, Shakespeare’s home country. Purkiss (2000) discusses fairies generally, whilst Kassell (2006) and Wall (2001) focus on Puck. Graymalkin See also: familiar, spirit, First Witch, weird, witch, Paddock, Harpier, charm, cat, Second Witch, toad ‘Graymalkin’ is the name given to a familiar spirit by the First Witch of the weird sisters in Mac.. The witch is summoned away by Graymalkin at 1.01.9. The audience does not appear to hear the call and the familiar does not appear onstage, but the witch replies ‘I come, Graymalkin’. Like the other spirits, Paddock and Harpier, Graymalkin appears to prompt the witches to carry out charms and keep time. Graymalkin is probably a cat, as ‘malkin’ was a pet name for cats, relating to the female name Moll; the name Malkin recurs in Act 3, Scene 5, possibly interpolated by Thomas Middleton, although here it is associated with the Second Witch. Along with toads, cats were thought likely to be a chosen form for familiar spirits. Raber (2008) and Rogers (2001) discuss cats in early modern culture and literature. Grey, Sir Richard (ghost) See also: Queen Elizabeth, Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, ghost, cursing, dream, Lord Hastings, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Duke of York, Prince Edward of York Sir Richard Grey is the son of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV, from her previous marriage and he is executed in RIII as part of the new king (Richard III’s) destruction of the former Queen’s faction. He returns with his uncle Earl Rivers and their ally Sir Thomas Vaughan as a ghost which haunts King Richard in a dream and curses him. Grey and Rivers were indeed executed together at Pontefract in 1483, probably along with Vaughan. The other ghosts haunting Richard are Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Richard Duke of York and Prince Edward of York

107

H Hag See also: supernatural, witch, evil, spirit, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, Banquo, fate, Sycorax, Caliban, charm, Witch of Brainford, Joan La Pucelle, enchantment, Queen Mab, fairy, night-mare, dream, witchcraft ‘Hag’ could mean simply an ugly, old woman; but it was often associated with the supernatural and particularly with witches, who were thought most likely to be ugly, old women. The term may originate in the German ‘hexe’, meaning ‘witch’, whilst others suggest that the earliest usage is found in ‘hegge’ or ‘heg’, which refers to an evil spirit in female form. The usual tone in representing hags is set when the witches in Mac. (First Witch, Second Witch and Third Witch), who are bearded and appear repulsive to Banquo and Macbeth, are called ‘secret, black and midnight hags’ and ‘filthy hags’ (Mac. 4.01.48, 115). The word might throw some light on the two soldiers’ perception of them as spirit-like, resembling furies or fates. Likewise the witch Sycorax is the ‘blue-ey’d hag’ in Temp. (1.02.269) and Caliban her son is thus labelled ‘hag-born’ (1.02.283) and ‘hag-seed’ (1.02.365). The Captain in 2 HVI (4.01.79) inventively curses Suffolk with marriage to ‘hags of hell’ for his conspiracy with Margaret. Leontes calls Paulina – an elderly character associated with magic and also called a witch – a ‘gross hag’ in WT (2.03.108) whilst in her old age Queen Margaret is told ‘have done thy charm, thou hateful with’red hag’ in RIII (1.03.214). In MWW the supposed Witch of Brainford (actually Falstaff disguised) is insulted ‘you witch, you hag you’ (4.02.179). But from this similarity between ordinary hags and witches as hags, based on ugly appearance, the term transferred itself also to young, beautiful witches. Joan La Pucelle is referred to as a ‘hag of all despite’ and ‘fell banning hag, enchantress ...’ in 1 HVI (3.02.52, 5.03.42) whilst Lear calls his daughters ‘unnatural hags’ when they evict him from their kingdom (KL 2.04.278). According to Mercutio, Queen Mab, a fairy, is ‘the hag’ who, like the nightmare, presses down on sleepers to give them bad dreams and terrors and gives rise to the term ‘hagridden’ (R&J 1.04.92). This phenomenon is now referred to as sleep paralysis but was once thought to be result of witchcraft. In this way, whilst Shakespeare prefers to use the term as a piece of invective directed against older women, it is transferable to younger ones and other supernatural creatures as well. Hamlet (ghost) (see King Hamlet)

108

Hastings, Lord (ghost)

Harpier See also: familiar, spirit, Third Witch, weird, cat, hedge-pig, witch, charm, Ariel, monster, Graymalkin, Paddock, toad ‘Harpier’ appears to be the name of a familiar spirit, heard crying ‘’tis time, ’tis time’ by the Third Witch of the weird sisters in Mac. (4.01.3), although it is apparently not heard by the audience. Here a cat and a hedge-pig also prompt the witches to perform a charm. Harpier may be intended to suggest a harpy (such as that imitated by Ariel in Temp. Act 3, Scene 3), a monstrous creature of classical mythology with a woman’s head and a bird’s body. Harpier does not appear onstage, like Graymalkin and Paddock, the witches’ other named familiars, although we can infer from their names that they are a cat and a toad. But we cannot be so confident about Harpier’s shape. A harpy would be an unusual familiar for a British witch, but there are accounts of witches who imagined that they commanded exotic creatures such as red lions in A True and Just Recorde (London, 1582). Hastings, Lord (ghost) See also: Duke of Buckingham, Jane Shore, witchcraft, Queen Elizabeth, witch, ghost, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Duke of Clarence, King Henry VI, Lady Anne, cursing, dream, supernatural, prophecy, Julius Caesar, hell, King Hamlet Lord Hastings is one of the noblemen in RIII who, like the Duke of Buckingham, believes himself to be in Richard’s favour. In Hastings’ case this belief lasts until the moment that he is arrested by Richard. His only offence is that his mistress, Jane Shore, has been accused of witchcraft against the King, in concert with Queen Elizabeth, widow of Edward IV. Hastings is trapped by Richard into unctuously endorsing the view that witches should be executed, before he hears against whom the accusations are to be made. He attempts to recover with the phrase ‘If they have done this deed, my noble lord …’ (3.04.73) but Richard does not let him finish, objects to the word ‘if’, accuses him of protecting Shore and orders his immediate execution. This shocking demonstration of the political utility of witchcraft accusation is broadly historically accurate: William, Lord Hastings was executed in similar circumstances in 1483. Once he was dead, the accusations made against his mistress did not come to trial, suggesting that they had served their purpose in bringing down both Hastings and the Queen. In the play, Hastings returns as a ghost along with Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Richard Duke of York, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, the Duke of Clarence, King Henry VI, Lady Anne and Buckingham, to curse Richard in a dream. He is also significant supernaturally in that before his fall he ignores a prophetic dream of Lord Stanley in which a boar, Richard’s emblem, attacks his own crest (thus he is like Julius Caesar in dismissing warning dreams). He also brushes aside other providential omens: a stumbling horse, and a priest and pursuivant who remind him of his own former imprisonment and lucky escape from death. He dies 109

Hecate

fearing that he is unshriven, and it is a moot point where his soul will reside after death, therefore, or from where his ghost returns (purgatory? Hell? see also King Hamlet). Hecate See also: witchcraft, sorcery, magic, evil, Circe, Medea, witch, weird, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, charm, Sathan, demon/daemon, masters, spirit, hag, Joan La Pucelle, ban, blasting (A) In early modern drama Hecate is regarded as the Greek and Roman goddess of witchcraft. Associated with night, the moon, liminal spaces, sorcery, crossroads, magic and the dead, she took a triple or many-faced form and once also had a more positive side as an agricultural goddess. But in Christian Europe in early modern times this aspect was overwhelmed by her perceived evil qualities. She was sometimes thought to be the mother of Circe, and grandmother of Medea. (B) She appears as a character in Mac. with the witches or weird sisters (Act 3, Scene 5 and Act 4, Scene 1) although her scenes are possibly additions to the play by Thomas Middleton. His c. 1615 play The Witch (published London, 1778) contains Hecate as a character and features the two songs whose first lines are given in Mac., to be sung by First Witch, Second Witch and Third Witch with Hecate (and in some editions with other witches too). Hecate is self-described in Mac. as the ‘mistress of your charms’ (3.05.6) who is angered by the witches’ failure to consult her about their traffic with Macbeth. She upbraids the sisters because she believes Macbeth is motivated by his own desires rather than love for the witches or, by extension perhaps, for her. Her nature as a deity is possibly evident here – Macbeth is a false worshipper, a pagan version of those Christians who were regarded as ungodly because they were not motivated by faith alone. Her dictum that ‘security/Is mortals’ chiefest enemy’ (3.05.32–3) also has a Protestant ring to it, appropriate to Middleton’s Calvinistic outlook: security was the false belief that one was guaranteed salvation. Here Hecate-as-goddess preaches to Christians as well as her own pagan devotees. But it is not clear whether Hecate, Sathan or other demonic ‘masters’ or ministers are in charge of the weird sisters’ powers. Indeed, Hecate may be just another witch rather than a goddess, for this is her role in Middleton’s play and it may have transferred to Shakespeare’s in that form. Mac.’s Hecate possesses a ‘little spirit’ just like the other ordinary witches (3.05.34) and she dances with the sisters in Act 4, Scene 1 in an un-goddess-like way. She is very much like the Dame Witch in Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Queenes (1609; published in Works [London, 1616]) who is in charge, but is not a deity. Hecate’s name came to mean ‘witch’ or ‘hag’ generally, in which sense it is applied to Joan La Pucelle in 1 HVI and she was also associated with tempering magical poisons, as in the potion in the Ham.’s play-within-a-play, which has been ‘with Hecat’s ban thrice blasted’ (Ham. 3.02.258). Yet even although as a character Hecate may possibly be a witch rather than a goddess, she is referred to as a deity in Mac. in the phrase ‘witchcraft celebrates/Pale Hecate’s offerings’ with sin and crime

110

Hell

(Mac. 2.01.50–6). Thus we have a dual-natured Hecate, woman and goddess in the only early text of the play to survive, the Folio. See Ioppolo (1991), Taylor and Lavagnino (2007) and Nosworthy (1948) for three of many viewpoints on the Mac. revisions, Hecate and Middleton’s involvement (all the play’s editors also have made individual choices about them); and Vickers (2004) on Shakespeare as a co-author with Middleton, e.g., he argues, of Tim., though not of Mac. Hedge-pig See also: witch, weird, familiar, spirit, charm, Second Witch, Harpier, cat, urchin, toad, evil, King Hamlet Mac.’s witches or weird sisters appear to be prompted by their familiar spirits to carry out their charms, and in 4.01.2 a ‘hedge-pig’ whines three times according to the Second Witch, telling the witches that it is time to go to work. They are also encouraged in this scene by Harpier and a cat. Hedgehogs were linked with familiar spirits by Shakespeare in Temp., too, where they are discussed as urchins. They were illustrated in contemporary witchcraft pamphlets (such as A Rehearsall Both Straung and True [London, 1579]) as likely shapes for familiars along with cats and toads. Their evil reputation appears to be based on nothing more than nocturnal rambling and uncomfortable spinyness. Edward Topsell, in his Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts (London, 1607) opined that the left side of a hedgehog fried in oil produced a sleepinducing liquor, but it only worked if dripped into the ear through a quill (like the poison used to kill King Hamlet). Topsell further alleged that the right eye, if fried with linseed oil, stored in a brass vessel and used as ointment would help the user to see in the dark. Hell See also: devil, demon/daemon, fiend, damnation, ghost, King Hamlet, Jane Shore, Queen Elizabeth, charm, Joan La Pucelle, wierd, cauldron Where there are devils, demons or fiends in Shakespeare’s works, there is also often the notion of hell, along with hellish artefacts and related demonic creatures. The Christian hell was conceived to be an underworld, like the classical underworld which was also an afterlife, but in this case flamingly hot and a site of torture for damned souls after death. Ghosts might return from hell to plague the living – several of Shakespeare’s, such as the ghost of King Hamlet, refer to tortures endured after death in either hell or purgatory. Shakespeare’s references to hell are many, so that only some of those with particularly noteworthy demonological aspects are discussed here. Some are amusing, though disturbing: ‘our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil’ says Jessica in MerV (2.03.2), linking her Jewish father as well as her Christian servant and herself with the devil. But most are deeply threatening. Hell-hounds, for example, were supernatural dog apparitions, often presaging death. Possibly related to Cerberus, the dog guardian of hell’s gates in classical mythology, they haunted churchyards, moors 111

Henry VI (ghost) (see King Henry VI)

and other lonely places. In RIII, Richard of Gloucester is ‘a hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death’ (4.04.48), whilst the rapists Chiron and Demetrius and their mother Tamora are ‘a pair of cursed hell-hounds and their dame’ in Tit. (5.02.144). Richard III is also ‘hell’s black intelligencer’ or spy (RIII 4.04.71), although he tries to deflect the accusation by associating others with hell. Jane Shore and Queen Elizabeth, he suggests, are witches who have used ‘hellish charms’ on him (3.04.62). Meanwhile the French King is described by the English as a coward and traitor against the English occupiers, ‘to join with witches and the help of hell’ in the shape of the witch Joan La Pucelle (1 HVI 2.01.18). Mac. dwells constantly on hell as a source of political and moral corruption; the King is called a ‘hell-hound’ like Gloucester (5.04.42) and a ‘hell-kite’ (4.03.217), and the witches or weird sisters make up a ‘hell-broth’ in their cauldron (4.01.19). The description of ‘a hell of ugly devils’ in RIII (1.03.226) suggests the stage version of hell, which was under the boards and accessible by trap doors. From these would emerge heavily costumed devils, masked and horned, who could sometimes bring fireworks with them (as in productions of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus). These drew on the depiction of devils in Medieval church plays, and may have used the same costumes. On one occasion, such was the convincing effect that an audience of Marlowe’s play panicked, thinking there was a real devil among the actors onstage. In Shakespeare’s theatre, then, hell, was seen as a place with many of the familiar attributes of earth – dogs, cooks, birds and so on – in a way that was contradictory and uncanny: oddly homely, spectacularly theatrical but also profoundly terrifying. Patrides (1964) discusses varying representations and views of Hell, including Catholic and Protestant traditions, and explores, for example, whether hell is seen to be a condition or a place. Pope (1950) discusses Shakespeare’s association of the Christian hell with the classical underworld, suggesting a scepticism about its knowableness or existence as conventionally imagined, but this applies only to MM. In a provocative polemic, Mallin (2007) expands the notion of an atheist Shakespeare further, devoting a third of his book to apparently unchristian invocations of hell in his works. For a sharply differing view of Shakespeare as a Catholic, see Waterfield (2009). Cox (1993, 2000) discusses stage devils and the under-stage ‘hell’. Henry VI (ghost) (see King Henry VI) Herne See also: blasting, taking, ghost, spirit, fairy, witch, demon/daemon In MWW Mistress Ford and Mistress Page decide to punish Falstaff for his attempts to seduce them by getting him to walk about at night in Windsor Park ‘disguised like Herne, with huge horns’ (4.04.43). It is explained that: an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, 112

Hobbididance

Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns’ And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle, And makes milch kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner (4.04.28–34)

The tree is referred to specifically as ‘the oak of Herne the hunter’ (5.05.76). As Simpson and Roud (2000) explain, Herne was thought to be the ghost of a park keeper and later hypothesis suggested that he had hanged himself on the oak tree. His unrestful spirit therefore haunted the spot. But clearly Herne was also associated with fairies and other indeterminate natural spirits. He ‘blasts’ and ‘takes’ like a ghost, witch or fairy, and it is thus that Shakespeare presents him; his horns may even be demonic. But they also allude to Falstaff’s attempts to cuckold Master Ford and Master Page, horns being the sign of a cuckold. The first Quarto of the play makes specific reference to Herne as a ghost. See Westwood and Simpson (2005) and Briggs (1962) for further discussion of the Herne folklore. Hobbididance See also: fiend, Edgar, Hoppedance, Obidicut, Mahu, Modu, Flibbertigibbet, Smulkin, Frateretto, Purr, devil, hell, demon/daemon One of the foul fiends named by Edgar in KL, along with Hoppedance, Obidicut, Mahu, Modu, Flibbertigibbet, Smulkin, Frateretto and Purr. Hobbididance seems to be associated with loss of speech. In describing Hobbididance (possibly the same as ‘Hoppedance’) as the ‘prince of dumbness’ (KL 4.01.60), Edgar may thus be pretending to be afflicted by a fiend that may strike him dumb, or make him unable to answer certain questions. Demoniacs often seemed to have their speech impeded by devils, especially when they tried to pray or explain the cause of their illness. In his source, Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603) Hoberdidance, changed by Shakespeare to Hobbididance, is associated with music and the morris; hence perhaps ‘hobby’ (as in the morris’s hobbyhorse) in the first and ‘dance’ in the last syllable of his name. This might associate him with merrymaking as sinful, an allusion which Shakespeare does not signpost overtly as Harsnett does, but which might have registered in the change from ‘hober’ to ‘hobbi’. Shakespeare’s Hobbididance is further assumed to be a hellish prince claiming rule over the earth, something demons often did in the minds of godly demoniacs. Hobbididance’s imagined claim is thus an important assertion of power in a play about disinherited sons and deposed kings; it echoes the interest in the relationships between kings and demonic powers explored in Mac.. (C) Wheatley (1916) suggests the resemblance of the name to Hobgoblin. Foakes’ (1997) edition amends ‘dumbness’ to ‘darkness’, thinking the Folio text to be in error, but this is not necessary if Shakespeare is thinking about speech here.

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Hobgoblin (see Goblin)

Hobgoblin (see Goblin) Hoppedance See also: fiend, possession, devil, Hobbididance, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Mahu, Modu, Smulkin, Frateretto, Purr, Edgar, angel One of the foul fiends named in KL along with Hobbididance, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Mahu, Modu, Smulkin, Frateretto and Purr. Hoppedance may be the same as Hobbididance, although he has a different attribute – not dumbness but speech, since ‘the foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale. Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly for two white herring’ (KL 3.06.29–30). Edgar (Tom) is pretending to be possessed, here, not just afflicted by a fiend outside his body. He thus imagines the fiend inside his belly, inhabiting his internal spaces after the manner of devils seen to invade and distort the human body. Supposed victims would sometimes arch their bellies into the air, endure what seemed to be preternatural swelling or vomit constantly. Sometimes onlookers would assert that they could see a devil moving under the victim’s skin (see for example Jesse Bee and others, The Most Wonderfull and True Storie, of a Certaine Witch [London, 1597] which chronicles the possession of Thomas Darling, another poor or poorly Tom). Perhaps, like the supposed beggar Tom whose ‘character’ Edgar chooses as his disguise, the fiend is hungry and its birdsong-like cry is a rumbling stomach: certainly Edgar tells it ‘croak not, black angel, I have no food for thee’ (31–2). Hume, John See also: fiend, Asmath, Eleanor Cobham, John Southwell, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, conjuror, conjuration, demon/daemon, nativity, image magic John Hume is one of the co-conspirators who raise the fiend Asmath for Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester (the others are John Southwell, Roger Bolingbroke and Margery Jourdain). But Hume is unlike the other conjurors in that he is actually an agent provocateur, employed to lure the Duchess into political trouble. We first meet him in 2 HVI Act 1, Scene 2 where in soliloquy he exclaims in delight at the gold which the Duchess has given him for arranging the conjuration, and at the gold he is also being given by Cardinal Beaufort and the Duke of Suffolk. These men are political enemies of the Duchess’ husband and, as Hume reveals, hope that if she is accused of trafficking with demons, the Duke will be damaged too. In Act 1, Scene 4 the fiend is raised and the conspirators arrested, so that Hume’s work pays off. But in Act 2, Scene 3 he is sentenced to hang along with Bolingbroke and Southwell. In reality, the historical John Hume or Home, Eleanor’s chaplain and a canon of Hereford Cathedral, was pardoned for his role in the casting of nativities and image magic that was alleged to have taken place in the Duchess’ household in 1440 and 1441. It may be this pardon that gave him a reputation as a spy or informer, since it was in stark contrast to the punishments handed down to his fellow accused: Bolingbroke was executed for treason and Southwell died in prison, whilst Jourdain was burned at the stake. 114

I Image Magic See also: demon/daemon, witch, devil, familiar, witchcraft Image magic was thought to occur when a witch made a ‘picture’, image or model of a person or object out of cloth, wax, mud or another easily destroyed substance, and then melted, buried or crumbled it. The image might first be subjected to pricking by pins or thorns, or otherwise ill-treated by witchcraft. It was thought by demonologists that each time harm came to the image, the person or object that it represented would suffer, and that ultimately they would die when the image was completely destroyed. Image magic was thought to work by demonic power: the devil or familiar spirit would transfer the harm from the image to the victim. But in less demonologically theorized versions of the belief, which was widespread and often featured in English witch trials, the ‘sympathy’ between the representation and the represented was enough to explain the effect. Shakespeare includes an extended simile of image magic in TGV. The unfaithful Proteus tells us that he no longer wants his former love Julia: ‘now my love is thaw’d;/Which like a waxen image ‘gainst a fire/Bears no impression of thing it was’ (2.04.200–2). The image of both ice and fire is characteristic of the play (it recalls the love poetry of Petrarch and his fellow-sonneteers, where passion and fearful sadness alternately burn and freeze the lover). But here it makes for a rather confusing synthesis of different types of melting, aptly for Proteus’ changeable, unstable character. Vickers (1984) discusses the magic potency of images. Incubus/Succubus See also: demon/daemon, devil, possession, evil, Caliban, Prospero, Sycorax, Setebos, monster, witch, Owen Glendower, Lucifer, conjuration Shakespeare does not refer directly to the ugly demonological notion of incubi and succubi – male and female demons who seduced human beings and had sex with them. But he does refer indirectly to two of its variants. The first is the idea that such demons used dead human bodies as their vehicles. These appear in TN as ‘empty trunks o’erflourish’d by the devil’ (3.04.370). The trunk is the body, or the body shape, and the devil ‘o’erflourishes’ it by possessing it. Antonio uses the metaphor to refer to ‘beauteous’ but ‘evil’ people when he believes that Sebastian has forgotten his debt to him and betrayed him to the authorities. A related reference is to the father of Caliban in Temp.: Prospero claims that his mother Sycorax copulated with a devil to beget him, 115

Invocation

perhaps her ‘god’ Setebos. Caliban was thus ‘got by the devil himself/Upon thy wicked dam’ (1.02.319–20). His ‘monstrosity’ (see monster) is a supposedly possible result of such a coupling between witch and incubus. The notion of human-demonic sexual intercourse was most fully and infamously explored in such Medieval demonologies as Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum (Speyer, 1487) which is discussed by Shakespeare’s possible source Reginald Scot in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584). Scot reports the speculations of the Malleus with distaste, as the filthy imaginations of perverted celibates, as he sees its Dominican authors. Shakespeare’s attribution of the idea of incubus to Prospero may thus inherit some of Scot’s angry disgust, perhaps warning us not to trust his account of Sycorax and Caliban? Owen Glendower, another magical practitioner constructed as the enemy of claims to rightful rule, is also momentarily cast in the role of a demon-lover in 1 HIV by Falstaff who says that Glendower made Lucifer cuckold (2.04.337). It is a joke about Glendower’s ludicrous claims to conjuring ability, but as a precursor to Prospero’s insulting of Sycorax, it is interesting. Hunt (2011) explores TN’s interlinked imagery of devils, possession and disguise; Briggs (1957, 1959, 1962, 1967) discusses the offspring of incubi; see also Vickers (1984) and Clark (1997). Invocation See also: spirit, demon/daemon, conjuration, witch, witchcraft, ghost, prophecy, devil, magic, circle, ducdame (A) An invocation is a formal address directed to a spiritual, divine or demonic being, entreating it to attend upon the speaker and offer assistance or share its wisdom and power. The word comes from the Latin invocatio meaning to call upon, and it has both a formal religious meaning drawn from pagan religious rituals and a more common informal meaning. The latter came to refer to an act like conjuring, the raising of spirits for any purpose, rather than a purely religious one. As with conjuration, the Witchcraft Act of 1563 prohibited the invocation of spirits (ghosts or demons) and contemporary debate over the Biblical story of the Witch of Endor provides a context. In 1 Samuel 28, a woman whom we might now call a medium raises the spirit of the prophet Samuel to offer a prophecy to King Saul. But early modern demonologists, instead of accepting the story at face value, could not believe that a witch-like female figure had been able to invoke the ghost of a holy man at the behest of a wicked king. Surely God would not have allowed this? Raising demons was bad enough, but invoking the spirits of deceased prophets was more threatening because it implied that the holy dead might not be safe from the power of the devil and his minions. Even the sceptical Reginald Scot (one of Shakespeare’s more evident sources for demonological material) was drawn into the furore. In his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584) he decided that the devil must have produced an illusion for the Witch of Endor, and not the spirit of Samuel at all. Thus invocation was fraught with conceptual difficulty.

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Invocation

(B) Shakespeare addresses directly concerns that ghosts could be invoked in later times, although he does so metaphorically. He uses the word about dead kings: ‘Henry the fift, thy ghost I invocate’ (1 HVI 1.01.52), ‘invoke his warlike spirit’ (of Edward III; HV 1.02.104) and ‘be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost’ (Anne, of Henry VI; RIII 1.02.8). In each case the courage or goodness of the dead king is called upon for political purposes: to strengthen the claims of and offer comfort to later generations. There is no intent actually to conjure a spirit; rather, the speaker wants to recall their attributes or commune with their memory. But Anne’s worry that invoking the ghost of Henry VI even in this metaphorical sense is not ‘lawful’ draws attention to the prohibitions and anxieties surrounding such activity in Shakespeare’s time. Less controversially and less demonologically, Shakespeare uses the term in its poetic sense: the invocation of the muses common in poetry, although even that was based on the invocation of pagan gods in drama, as puritan commentators like Stephen Gosson and Philip Stubbes untiringly pointed out (in Gosson’s The Schoole of Abuse [London, 1579]), and Playes Confuted in Five Actes (London, 1582 and Stubbes’ The Anatomie of Abuses [London, 1583]). In the Son. Shakespeare speaks of ‘those old nine which rhymers invocate’ (38.10). He invokes muses himself, as at the opening of HV. But he does also refer in his early poetry to Brutus’ intention to ‘rouse our Roman gods with invocations’ (Lucrece 1831), placing the word in its classical religious setting as he does elsewhere. Moving back to the demonological context, playing comically on the notion of ancient magic, Jacques tells his hearers that the word ‘ducdame’ is ‘Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle’ (AYLI 2.05.59), presumably teasingly because the other actors have formed a circle around him to hear him define it. Here the living are invoked as if they were the spirits of the dead. Similarly Romeo is conjured by Mercutio, who claims that ‘my invocation/Is fair and honest’ (R&J 2.01.27). It is a comic moment, yet the word casts a shadow over the play, and both friends will soon be dead in reality. The invocation of spirits, then, is a dangerous activity. (C) Butler (1949), Borchardt (1990) and Vickers (1984) survey the world of the scholarly magician, who might be expected to invoke spirits. But it is noteworthy that when Shakespeare uses the word demonologically, he does so in the context of troubled history and comedy not usually masque or tragedy. Contextually, Walsh (2004) looks at the discontinuities of history involved in invoking dead kings, and Maxwell (1950) discusses pagan invocation in a case study of KL.

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J Joan La Pucelle See also: witch, prophecy, foresee/foretell, fortune, demon/daemon, conjuration, fiend, sorcery, vision, Medea Joan La Pucelle is better known today as Joan of Arc. Pucelle means ‘maid’ in French, but is related to the old English slang word ‘puzzel’, which means ‘whore’. Thus Joan’s name is a double entendre and signifies her real corruption as a witch and fornicatress, which is discovered at the end of 1 HVI. Initially, however, La Pucelle presents herself, and is presented by others, as a prophet, inspired by God to foretell the fortunes of the French in battle. She becomes a war leader, armed and dressed like a man, as a result. But the English opponents of France always doubt her source of power, claiming that it is demonic. The French continue to defend her until, in Act 5, we are shown for the first time that the English were right: La Pucelle conjures fiends which have been secretly helping her throughout the play. They refuse to continue their aid and she is captured by her enemies and tried by a court of Englishmen in English-controlled France. La Pucelle is condemned to death by burning, despite revealing (or claiming) that she is pregnant, in a scene of cruel humiliation and savage retribution for the English war casualties. The historical Joan of Arc was indeed accused of sorcery, although her death by burning at the stake was for crimes of heresy, as defined by her English captors. She was a peasant, whose visions brought her to prominence and made her the inspiration for French victories in the Hundred Years War (c. 1337–1453). She died at the age of about 19 in 1431. She was not canonized as Saint Joan until 1920, but Shakespeare would have known that the Catholic Church had recognized her as a martyr in the mid-fifteenth century. This, and her French nationality, made a sympathetic portrayal unlikely to succeed on the English stage in the early 1590s. But audiences and readers today are often disappointed that instead of being exonerated, or at least her guilt left in doubt, La Pucelle is Shakespeare’s first witch (multiple authorship is possible, but not proven; her guilt is indisputable). Paxson (2001) offers a feminist discussion of La Pucelle; Rackin (1990) suggests that cross-dressing is part of her magic. Stapleton and Austin (1994) detail the classical allusions surrounding her, including to Medea; Blanpied (1975) examines her language. Marcus (1996) and Bernhard Jackson (1988) both focus on the disjunctions between Joan as witch and as heroine and suggest a parody of Elizabeth I lies behind the text. Tricomi (2001) sees the play as an inverted

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Jourdain, Margery

saint’s play, deeply Protestant in choosing to judge La Pucelle so harshly. Levine (1994, 1998) looks at her in the chivalric, Petrarchan tradition. Jourdain, Margery See also: Roger Bolingbroke, Eleanor Cobham, John Hume, John Southwell, Asmath, fiend, conjuration, conjuror, witch, prophecy, Joan La Pucelle, spirit, Faustus, sorcery, astronomy, supernatural, image magic, magic Margery Jourdain (also called Jordan or Jourdemayne in various editions) is the Witch of Eye (Ebury near Westminster) who in 2 HVI conjures the fiend Asmath with the clergymen conjurors Roger Bolingbroke, John Southwell and John Hume. The group are working for Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, who wishes to obtain a prophecy from Asmath about her husband’s political prospects. It is unusual for a woman to be portrayed as a conjuror in the way that Shakespeare portrays Jourdain. A related figure is Joan La Pucelle in 1 HVI, but her fiends are silent and she does not use a Latin conjuration in the company of scholars as Jourdain does. Whilst Jourdain allows someone else to read the Latin to Asmath, she takes a full part in questioning him after the conjuration. This puts her in a position of some cultural power, commanding a spiritual being in the name of God: Asmath, By the eternal God, whose name and power Thou tremblest at, answer what I shall ask; For till thou speak, thou shalt not pass from hence (1.04.24–7)

The fiend responds to her as if she were a learned male interrogator, a Faustus. The historical Margery Jourdain was the wife of William Jourdemayne, a yeoman, and as the play suggests she was associated with the sorcery and astrology (astronomy) said to surround Eleanor Cobham. She may also have been the supplier of potions and images which Eleanor confessed that she had bought or used to increase her fertility. Margery Jourdemayne was also accused of taking part in politically motivated sorcery ten years earlier, since a record exists linking her to such activities and their punishment in 1430–2. At a time of great concern over the protection of the king from supernatural threat, Jourdain was examined on charges of sorcery and freed with the injunction that she use no more witchcraft. But in 1441 after the trial of Eleanor and her accomplices Jourdain was burnt as a heretic and witch at Smithfield. Freeman (2004) examines the records of her life and the unusual gender politics of what is known of her magic.

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K King Hamlet (ghost) See also: ghost, demon, devil, apparition, spirit At the beginning of Ham., Hamlet the elder is introduced to us as the recently deceased king of Denmark, father of Prince Hamlet and husband of Queen Gertrude. We hear that Gertrude has remarried, after a very short period of mourning, choosing as a new husband her former husband’s brother Claudius. As well as this potentially incestuous relationship souring the play’s atmosphere, we learn that Claudius is now king, rather than the succession passing to young Hamlet as expected. Something is rotten, the play suggests, and Old Hamlet’s ghost then appears to his son to announce that Claudius murdered him. As a result, Prince Hamlet feels obliged to take revenge for his father’s death. There is, however, debate about the nature of the ghost. What does it want? Can it be trusted? Only Hamlet has heard its sensational claim of murder, but he and his friend Horatio are concerned that the ghost may be a demonic impersonation of the old king, a devil attempting dishonestly to draw the prince into sin or madness. Although Hamlet does succeed in proving Claudius’ guilt to himself and the audience, the tragic outcome of the play and the fact that some characters – like Gertrude – cannot see the ghost, means that doubts about its reality and motivation remain. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the ghost seems to owe a good deal to the ideas of Lewes or Ludwig Lavater, whose Of ghostes and spirites walking by nyght (London, published in English translation in 1572) argued that most ghosts were theologically suspect. These ideas are explored in the entries on ghosts, spirits and apparitions. King Henry VI (ghost) See also: Lady Anne, Duke of Clarence, Duke of Buckingham, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Lord Hastings, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir Richard Grey, Earl Rivers, Prince Edward, cursing, dream, ghost King Henry VI is the Lancastrian king whose struggle to retain, regain and once again hold on to his throne is the subject of 1, 2 and 3 HVI. Henry is seen by others as either too saintly or too weak to be king, and is depicted as henpecked by his assertive wife Queen Margaret of Anjou. Margaret and their son Prince Edward are seen to lead the king’s campaigns when he lacks the will to do so, and eventually Henry loses his throne to the Yorkist claimant Edward IV. After a later victory over Edward and another short 120

King Henry VI (ghost)

period of rule, Henry is murdered and so is his son Edward. Both return as ghosts to haunt the Yorkist King Richard III in a dream, cursing him along with Lady Anne, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Buckingham, Prince Edward of York, Richard Duke of York, Lord Hastings, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir Richard Grey and Earl Rivers. The historical Henry ruled from 1422–61 and again from 1470–1, the date of his death.

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L Lady Anne (ghost) See also: Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir Richard Grey, Duke of Clarence, Duke of Buckingham, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Lord Hastings, Prince Edward, King Henry VI, cursing, dream, ghost Lady Anne Neville is the daughter of the Earl of Warwick (the Kingmaker) who is married to Prince Edward the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, and after his death to one of his murderers, the Yorkist King Richard III. Instead of depicting this as the marriage of dynastic convenience which historians now judge it to be, Shakespeare portrays Anne as being cynically seduced by Richard in RIII and later implies that he might have had her killed, since she appears as one of eleven vengeful ghosts who haunt him in a dream and curse him. Her first husband, Prince Edward, and first father-in-law King Henry VI appear with her, as do their political enemies Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir Richard Grey, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Buckingham, Prince Edward of York, Richard Duke of York and Lord Hastings. Lady Macbeth See also: weird, witch, prophecy, invocation, evil, spirit, hell, familiar, magic, demon/daemon, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, devil, witchcraft, fiend, Medea Lady Macbeth is the wife of Macbeth, Thane of Glamis and later Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland. Told of her husband’s encounter with the weird sisters or witches by letter, she enthusiastically embraces their prophecy of her husband’s rise to the throne. Indeed, so strongly does she identify with the weird sisters that she becomes witch-like herself, particularly in her invocation of evil spirits – which is balanced between metaphor and actuality – in these lines, where she imagines the murder of the present king, Duncan: … Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

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Lady Macbeth

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry “Hold, hold!” (Mac. 1.05.40–54)

The spirits tend on ‘mortal’ – human but also deadly – thoughts, and they are murdering ministers, making them sound like witch’s familiars, who could be sent to maim and kill enemies by magic and demonic power. Lady Macbeth requests that she be unsexed by these creatures because she associates femininity with weakness and compassion, which are unsuitable for ambitious intriguers. The term ‘unsex’, however, also associates her with the First Witch, Second Witch and Third Witch, who are described as bearded and thus also unwomanly. She may also be requesting that her menstruation and related fertility be impeded, with her blood thickened and her breasts emptied of milk which is to be replaced with bitter gall. The spirits may be intended to suck her body (‘take my milk’) as witches’ familiars were thought to suck their blood from extra teats on their bodies. Finally, she calls up a hellish smoke to hide her actions from herself and heaven. In every respect, she appears to be turning to the devilish forces of the play, and using imagery that directly relates femininity and child-bearing to witchcraft. She is described as ‘fiend-like’ later in the play, as if she has become an embodiment of the demonic (5.09.35). Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do commit the murder, but Lady Macbeth becomes mad and dies, probably by suicide – as Malcolm speculates a few lines after he has called her fiend-like – as a result of her actions. Recent criticism of Lady Macbeth has focused on the intersection of gynaecology with demonology, because of the above speech and contradictory information on her as a mother: we are told both that she has nursed children and that the couple are childless; she also fantasizes about child murder. Several earlier twentieth-century critics treated this problem as a literary game, which helped to define a formalist focus for criticism (on imagery, as opposed to character motivation or historical accuracy). In this vein see Knights (1933) and Rosenberg (1974). But in the 1980s feminist criticism returned to both psychology and historical context. In a ground-breaking essay, Adelman (1987) focuses on the maternal and infanticidal imagery deployed by Lady Macbeth, effectively founding a school of readings of her as a witch/mother (see Chamberlain [2005], Willis [1995], Callaghan [1992] and Purkiss [1996]). Levin (2002) focuses on hysteria and the womb, whilst La Belle (1980) examines amenorrhea (interrupted menstruation). Ewbank (1966) discusses the relationship of Lady Macbeth to the classical infanticidal witch Medea. Clark (1980) discusses power relations between witches, kings and queens. Floyd-Wilson (2006) examines the play’s Scottish demonological context. 123

La Pucelle (see Joan La Pucelle)

La Pucelle (see Joan La Pucelle) Laying See also: devil, spirit, hell, ghost, conjuration, exorcism/exorcist, spell, circle To ‘lay’ is the opposite of raising when it is applied to devils and spirits; it refers to putting down the spirit and forcing it to return to hell. Laying also works on ghosts. Spirits are raised by being conjured, and laid by such processes as exorcism or further spellcasting, and in R&J the laying of spirits is the subject of a bawdy double entendre. Mercutio teases Romeo by saying that he will ‘raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle’ (i.e. vagina) and let it stand ‘till she had laid it and conjur’d it down’ (2.01.24–6). Thus laying spirits relates to the slang term for sex, getting laid. Simpson and Roud (2000) and Westwood and Simpson (2005) discuss popular notions of laying ghosts and spirits. Leonatus, Sicilius (ghost) See also: ghost, dream, King Hamlet, hell, prophecy, book, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Lord Hastings, Duke of Buckingham, Lady Anne, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, King Henry VI, Duke of Clarence, soothsayer Sicilius Leonatus appears with his unnamed wife and two of his sons (collectively referred to as the Leonati or Leonatus family) as ghosts in a dream dreamt by Sicilius’ son Posthumus Leonatus in Cym.. The ghosts remonstrate with the god Jupiter, holding him responsible for the trials that have afflicted Posthumus. Because of their intervention, Jupiter explains that he now means to restore Posthumus’ fortunes and offers him a prophecy in book form of the good things to come. The interaction of ghosts and a pagan deity and the ghosts’ bold attempt to interfere with providence makes this scene demonologically complex, yet there is no discussion of its theoretical context and is part of a possibly satirical commentary on soothsaying as bogus. Presumably its setting in pagan times makes the ghosts safer to contemplate than Christian ghosts would be: the Leonati are inhabitants of a classical underworld, not visitors from purgatory or hell. The representation of the dream as a masque with a deus ex machina also makes the scene unlike other more ‘realistic’ ghost appearances (King Hamlet, the ghosts in RIII of Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Richard, Duke of York, Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, Lady Anne, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, King Henry VI and the Duke of Clarence) and places it within the realm of symbolic, courtly fantasy. Yet the Leonati are rather like interceding saints, in a version made acceptable to Protestant times.

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Lucifer

Lucifer See also: devil, star, demon/daemon, angel, Sathan, Belzebub, hell, damnation, Amaimon, Barbason, fiend, conjuror, Owen Glendower ‘Lucifer’ is a Biblically named creature who was by Shakespeare’s time generally taken to be a devil. He may once have been a Canaanite god associated with the morning star (the planet Venus), and in the early modern period his name was synonymous with that star, associated with light and brightness. But in Hebrew and Christian demonology, Lucifer became demonic, a fallen angel often equated with, or imagined as an associate of, Sat[h]an and Belzebub, and like them a ruling underworld potentate just as he had been a highly-favoured angel in Heaven. ‘Lucifer and Belzebub’ occur together in HV (4.07.138), both imagined as princely gentlemen of hell. In KJ a childmurderer is described as ‘more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer’ (4.03.122) whilst Wolsey laments that a man dependent on royal favour ‘falls like Lucifer’ – i.e. a very long way, from heaven to hell (HVIII 3.02.371). The name ‘Lucifer’ was thus a generic one for ‘devil’, and it is thus that Pistol uses it in MWW: ‘Lucifer take all!’ (1.03.76). This follows a passage in which Falstaff imagines spending the ‘angels’ (coins) of Master Ford in a devilish manner (by making love to his purse-bearing wife). It is ironic, then, that Lucifer is also mentioned by Master Ford later in the play (2.02.297), when he notes that ‘Amaimon sounds well, Lucifer well, Barbason well’. His point is that these striking appellations are the names of fiends, yet ‘cuckold’ is a much worse word. Amaimon and Lucifer are again mentioned together in Falstaff’s mockery of the supposed conjuror Owen Glendower in 1 HIV (2.04.336–7) (2.05.339–40); ‘that same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales [Glendower], that gave Amaimon the bastinado and made Lucifer cuckold’, whilst Bardolph’s hellishly red ‘face is Lucifer’s privy-kitchen’ in 2 HIV (2.04.333).

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M Magic See also: magician, angel, book, demon/daemon, Faustus, spirit, Joan La Pucelle, occult, witch, Prospero, Owen Glendower, art, conjuration, sorcery, sibyl, Medea, supernatural (A) Magic is an ill-defined category of activity, implying the use of words and/or objects and/or the performance of actions by a practitioner in symbolic, ritualized combinations designed to affect the world. Effects occur in ways not explicable by ordinary mechanical forces. Yet magic can be thought to work mechanically, with results occurring as a scientific product of the materials or processes used. In this usage it is carried out by the magician himself or herself, operating directly on the external world. It may be seen as naturally occurring in some individuals or acquired by learning or training. In the first instance, it might be imagined as operating through some quality inherent in the magician – a power of attraction, or will. In the second, its power would reside in the books consulted or processes learned, and it would be accessible to anyone so trained. But – more problematically – magic can also be thought to work through the intervention of supernatural beings at the behest of, but not by the power of, the magician. A common division of the term was into ‘natural’ magic and unnatural, meaning demonic, magic. Practitioners of the former insisted that they simply harnessed natural forces in the universe, some obvious to all and some occult. Some forces were debatable in their operation, like magnetism. But the opponents of natural magicians labelled most of their activities as demonic, questioning both the origin of their knowledge and the nature and processes of the forces they claimed to manipulate. Natural magicians drew their ultimate inspiration from Plato’s philosophy, which posited a number of hierarchical realms of being and the possibility of accessing a higher plane of ideals, and Neo-Platonic traditions in the Corpus Hermetica, a collection of second- and thirdcentury texts that were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes was widely regarded as mythical by the early seventeenth century but was still highly influential as a model for magicians. A third influence on Renaissance magic was the ancient Jewish text known as the Kabbalah or Cabala. Hermetic and cabalistic magic offered seductive power to its practitioners. Such natural magic seemed to offer a means of investigating and trying to (re)produce the more sensational aspects of nature – as such, it could be seen as inherently theatrical. Notions of mimesis, or imitation, are in this reading related

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to ideas of ‘sympathetic’ magic in which a substance or practice was thought to work on another by its likeness to it. Spirits such as daemons or angels were also thought to be able to exercise power, especially when the prescribed task involved sympathetic substances. (B) Given in particular the work of his contemporary Christopher Marlowe (see Faustus), Shakespeare would have been aware of the complexities of representing magic and its practitioners in theatrical space. He both endorses and questions the operation of magic in his plays, offering us a ‘magus’ or magician as a central character in Prospero from Temp., and mocking one in Owen Glendower in 1 HIV (Prospero is not called a magician, Glendower is at 1.03.83) He also presents us with magical trickery, magic objects, places and words, and the notion of magic as either naturally explicable or a mistaken categorization of natural events. Yet he does not use the word ‘magic’ frequently (see also magician), preferring more ambiguous terms like art. The play which uses the word ‘magic’ most is Oth.. Here it is thought by her family that the white Venetian Desdemona may have been ‘bound’ to fall in love unwillingly with her black Moorish husband by ‘chains of magic’ (Oth. 1.02.65), and that he may have practised ‘conjuration and ... mighty magic’ on her (1.03.92), an accusation which he denies eloquently. As a result of his self-defence, magic is seen to be an unlikely explanation for Desdemona’s attraction. Likewise in A&C Cleopatra’s ‘magic’, which ruins her admirer Antony, can be explained as natural attractiveness (3.10.18). Antony too is credited with metaphorical magic, his name being a ‘magical word’ to soldiers (3.01.31). Yet magic retains its potential for real power: Othello states that a handkerchief of his was woven by a sibyl and has ‘magic in the web’ (3.04.69). This is a detail added by Shakespeare to his source story, Giovanni Battista Cinthio’s Hecatommithi (Mondovi, 1565) where the handkerchief is just an ordinary love-token. But in Oth. as a result of losing this magic piece of cloth, Desdemona loses Othello’s affection – just as the sibyl promised. How much of this we are to attribute to Iago’s intrigue against Othello and how much to supernatural causes is unclear, but certainly both European and African characters are seen to believe in such magical powers. Similarly hung between Africa and Italy, the magic of Prospero’s island in Temp. is the most debated by scholars: its reality is clear, but its source is vaguer. Prospero refers to his ‘magic garment’ (Temp. 1.02.24) and his ‘rough magic’ (5.01.50), the latter adjective perhaps meaning the crude coercion by occult means that we have seen in the play. Prospero’s magic is based closely on that of the frightening classical witch Medea, whose words he paraphrases. But it seems to depend on Renaissance learning, especially a single book. The magician also wears a magic robe when at work, suggesting his magic is acquired rather than innate. His commands are carried out by spirits of the isle and there is a sense that magic may have a real existence in exotic places. Magic is also practised in northern settings in the plays. Exeter suspects that French ‘conjurors and sorcerers’ have murdered Henry V, having ‘by magic verses 127

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... contriv’d his end’ (1 HVI 1.01.27). Later we meet Joan La Pucelle, who is indeed practising magic to influence the course of the Anglo-French war. Mac.’s witches concoct substances ‘distill’d by magic sleights’ (3.05.26). But other usages of the word cast doubt on its real power. In Ham. ‘natural magic’ (3.02.259) refers to the natural properties of a drug, whilst Paulina’s apparent bringing to life of a statue in WT also turns out to be naturally explicable. Other characters briefly contemplate its unlawfulness – ‘if this be magic, let it be an art/Lawful as eating’ (5.03.110) – before being assured of its mundanity. (C) Bailey (2006) explores the term in its widest Renaissance sense, as do Butler (1949) and Borchardt (1990); Clark (1997) differentiates natural and demonic magic. Among many detailed readings, Belton (1985), Sisson (1959) and Corfield (1985) discuss Temp. and magic as a metaphor, and Mowat (1981, 2001) explores the ambiguous type of magic attributed to Prospero, whilst Crawford (1977) sees his magic as broadly ‘white witchcraft’; and see also Woodman (1973). ‘White witchcraft’ is an anachronistic term for an early seventeenth-century play, but in his introduction to the Arden edition of the play, Kermode stated influentially in 1954 that Prospero’s is benign theurgic magic, an argument drawn partly from Curry (1937) and Still’s (1936) visions of Prospero as godlike. This view has been refined upon since by Hall (1999) and Reid (2007) (whose article contains an excellent bibliography), although in the face of nagging questions about imperialism, race and coercion this benign reading is rarer. Holm (1999) links Prospero’s magic to James VI and I’s Daemonologie; Davidson (1978) focuses on Ariel’s magical role. In Merkel and Debus (1988), eds, Shumaker (1988) contrasts Prospero and Glendower. Meanwhile, Haslem (2001) sees Oth.’s concern with magic as being a means to explore fears about racial mixing. Cerny (1993) examines Paulina’s not-quite magic in WT; Farrell (2008) sees her as an apostolic (Pauline) figure recuperating older pagan magics for use as Christian metaphor. Warner (2004) examines Mediterranean magic and theatricality in WT, MND and Temp.. Wicher (2003) focuses on Per., Cym., WT, Temp., TNK and HVIII and their relationships with tales of magic. Cartwright (2007) applies an historical understanding of magical practice to Err., although Shakespeare avoids the word itself in that play. Similarly, Kriegel (2010) sees fears about the hubris of ‘natural magic’ in R&J’s Friar Lawrence. Goltra (1984), Harris (1980) and Hare (1988) discuss Shakespeare’s place in the tradition of magus plays. Magician See also: conjuror, astronomy, magic, art, supernatural, damnation, occult, Owen Glendower, Prospero, conjuration, sorcery, wizard, devil, charm, fiend (A) A magician is a practitioner of magic. The term is defined by the activities it suggests rather than being a particular labelled profession – such as astrologer (astronomer). Instead, magicians might be learned scientists and occultists like Doctor John Dee, or village ‘cunning people’, who knew herbal remedies, spells and counter-magics. Magic encompassed a wide range of occult activities. 128

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(B) Curiously, the play that contains most references to magicians is one of Shakespeare’s most resolutely un-magical works, AYLI. Whilst the play is a romance and contains all manner of coincidence and improbability, it can be performed without any supernatural element at all – if its deus ex machina is seen as merely a performer in a masque and its magician is assumed to be an invention of the heroine’s imagination. The magician is associated with the deity, Hymen god of marriage, so that their reality or theatrical fiction may be linked too. Disguised as the boy Ganymede, Rosalind tells her father and suitor that she will be able to bring ‘Rosalind’ to them magically for her wedding. This is because ‘Ganymede’ has from the age of three ‘convers’d with a magician/Most profound in his art’ and learnt from him (AYLI 5.02.60). The magician’s and ‘Ganymede’s’ ‘art’ is ‘not damnable’ s/he assures them, and ‘Ganymede’ is careful of his life ‘though I say I am a magician’ (5.02.71). With these theological and legal fears dismissed so lightly, it may well appear to the viewer or reader that the magician is simply a convenient fiction like ‘Ganymede’ himself. In fact, Rosalind will stagemanage her own reappearance, and lays on the masque of Hymen to do it. At the end of the play, she will also step outside AYLI’s confines to deliver a further metatheatrical epilogue, so that we are left in no doubt about the play’s emphasis on willing suspension of disbelief rather than actual mystification. The ‘great magician’ thus exists only as a dramatic device, a magus ex machina (5.04.33). Equally odd to the modern reader is the fact that the Shakespearean character most often thought of as a magician is Prospero in Temp., yet he is never given this title in the play. He is perfectly fairly regarded as a magician by critical writers, but is never defined as such. He is accused of sorcery and refers to his own magic as ‘art’. One explanation might be that ‘magician’ was not a word that Shakespeare or his contemporaries used very often. ‘Conjuror’ and ‘wizard’ were more regularly used terms for male practitioners of magical feats – and Shakespeare often also preferred terms like ‘art’ and ‘charm’ instead of the less ambiguous ‘magic’. ‘Magician’ referred to conjuration, as we can see from its two further uses: ‘what black magician conjures up this fiend’ in RIII, which is simply an excuse for calling Richard a devil (1.02.34), and ‘the great magician’ Owen Glendower in 1 HIV (1.03.83). But neither of these magicians gives any evidence of being skilled in magic – indeed Hotspur mocks Glendower’s pretensions to conjuration repeatedly. For Shakespeare, then, the word ‘magician’ seems to be associated with trickery, stage magic and hyperbole, not real magic at all. This was not the case for all contemporary or certainly for later writers. (C) Butler (1949), Borchardt (1990), Westwood and Simpson (2005) and Vickers (1984) survey what it meant to be a ‘magician’ in one’s own estimation or by repute in the Medieval and early modern world. Goltra (1984) situates Shakespeare’s magicians in theatrical tradition; see also Hӧfele (2000), and Mowat (1981, 2001). See the bibliography for ‘magic’ for more suggestions of further reading, especially on Prospero.

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Mahu See also: Edgar, fiend, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Modo, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Modu, Smulkin, Frateretto, Purr, possession One of the foul fiends named by Edgar, along with Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Modo, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Modu, Smulkin, Frateretto and Purr: ‘Mahu/ Of stealing’ (KL 4.01.60) and ‘The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman: Modo he’s call’d, and Mahu’ (3.04.143). In the Quarto texts the name is split as ‘ma hu’. See Flibbertigibbet for full discussion of its source. Mahu represents a type of sinful behaviour, such as those acted out by the demoniac Thomas Darling in Jesse Bee’s small book The Most Wonderfull and True Storie (London, 1593). Here Darling shocked and entertained onlookers by miming sins, supposedly as a kind of dumb sermon against them. Earlier in Act 3, Scene 4 Edgar similarly warned hearers against disobeying parents, oathbreaking, swearing, adultery and so on (80–3). He implies that possession and madness have been his own reward for such sins. Malvolio See also: demon/daemon, possession, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, Edgar, exorcism/exorcist, Doctor Pinch Malvolio is a godly steward in the household of the Illyrian noblewoman Olivia in TN. Because he is puritanical and arrogant in his treatment of Olivia’s kinsmen, visitors and other servants, they conspire to have him imprisoned as a suspected madman, which they construe to be a victim of demonic possession. They also call a priest, the Catholic-sounding Sir Topas, to counsel and potentially to exorcize him; the priest turns out to be one of the conspirators in disguise. Like Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus and Edgar, the audience is aware that Malvolio is not possessed and is thus pushed towards questioning the very notion of demonic possession and the honesty of exorcists. The victim Malvolio ends the play swearing revenge on his tormentors: here is no innocent mistake, like that of Doctor Pinch, but a conspiracy in which, Olivia concludes, he has been both a ‘poor fool’ and ‘most notoriously abus’d’ (5.01.369, 379). Masters See also: magic, Prospero, art, Medea, Sycorax, familiar, spirit, First Witch, apparition, elf In a demonological context, ‘masters’ are magicians’ helpers, either the agents or instruments of magic. Prospero’s inclusion of the address ‘Weak masters though ye be’ during the farewell to his art (Temp. 5.01.33–50, 41), has provided a focus for discussion of the term. Lyne (2000) notes the vagueness of this particular phrase, which prevents a smooth assimilation of the Ovidian source material – ‘Weak masters though ye be’ not being part of Medea’s incantation which Prospero’s speech draws upon (Martindale

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[1988], Brown [1994] and Bender [2001]). Kermode (1954, 2000) and Flint and Dobson (1959) also highlight the problematic nature of the phrase, as ‘masters’ cannot mean ‘adepts’ in this instance. Flint and Dobson discuss the relationship between the words ‘masters’ and ‘ministers’, observing that the replacement of ‘weak masters’ with ‘weak ministers’ by some editors gives a reading of an instrument or tool used in a craft, made available through the obsolete mister. This, they argue, subsequently reinstates ‘master’, meaning ‘instrument’, through mister. It is in this context, Temp.1.02.163 is understood, which refers to Gonzalo as ‘Master of this design’, that is, instrument, and Temp. 1.02.275, ‘By help of her more potent ministers’, in Prospero’s account of Sycorax. Kermode (2000) argues more specifically for ‘helpers’, comparing ‘weak masters’ with Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 3, Canto 8, stanza 4: ‘Where she was wont her Sprights to entertaine/The maisters of her art’. Flint and Dobson concentrate on ‘instruments’, highlighting the ‘little masters or martinets’ or ‘familiar spirits’ of the witches in Jonson’s Masque of Queens. Flint and Dobson also compare with Mac. 4.01.63 – the First Witch referring to ‘our masters’, that is, the apparitions, or the powers that control them, arguing for the meaning of ‘masters’ as ‘instruments’, Kermode comments how Mac. 4.01.63 has been misinterpreted by editors as meaning ‘superiors’ rather than ‘helpers’. Early commentary by Steevens (1778) provides a dual interpretation, suggesting Prospero’s invoked spirits are thus situated as either inferior masters of supernatural powers (although they possess them, their powers operate on a low level), or meaning that the spirits are powerful in their role as auxiliaries to Prospero, but will be rendered weak once they are left to themselves. Walter (1983) states the spirits are ‘weak masters’ as they are subordinate to Prospero and his power over them. Bushnell (1932) and Brown (1994) discuss the passage with reference to the difference between Prospero’s claims to his magical powers, and his art as presented within the play: could Prospero himself be considered a ‘weak master’? Both the phrase ‘weak masters’, and Prospero’s rejection of magical mastery over the elements, can also be read in the context of scientific and intellectual shifts during the period, as discussed by Sokol (2003). Medea See also: Circe, enchantment, witch, witchcraft, magic, Prospero, magician, Sycorax, evil, Joan La Pucelle (A) Medea is a witch who appears in Greek and Roman literature. She is the daughter of Aeetes, king of Colchis, and as such helps her lover Jason, son of Aeson, to steal the golden fleece that Aeetes guards. Fleeing from her angry father, Medea slows down his pursuit by cutting her brother Absyrtus to pieces and scattering his body over the sea, so that her father will have to stop and find every piece (in order to reassemble his son for burial). Medea’s betrayal of her family is poetically requited when Jason leaves her for Creusa, the daughter of the king of Corinth, Creon. In revenge, Medea kills the children she has had with Jason, as well as Creon and Creusa: thus she

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signifies terrifying and unpredictable vindictiveness, infanticide, as well as love and betrayal. Together with her aunt, Circe, Medea exemplifies the two sides of classical witchcraft, comic and tragic. She was chosen as a tragic heroine by both Greek and Roman writers, most notably Euripedes (Medea 431 bc) and Seneca (Medea, probably between 49 and 65 ad). (B) Medea appears twice in Shakespeare’s plays. In MerV Shylock’s daughter Jessica compares the night on which she elopes with her lover Lorenzo to the night on which ‘Medea gathered the enchanted herbs/That did renew old Aeson’ (5.01.13). Jessica refers to an episode where Medea renews the youth of Jason’s father by magic. She cuts his throat and boils him in a pot full of magic herbs, from which he emerges as a younger man. But this moment of nurture (which is in itself disturbing) is surrounded by a episodes of murder and treachery, as we have seen. Thus in what should be a romantic fancy Jessica ominously figures herself as Medea and Lorenzo as Jason – a few lines later she questions his fidelity and whilst we do not see the outcome of their relationship it is thus suggested that it may not be a happy one. Jessica’s abandonment of her father for Lorenzo recalls not just Medea’s betrayal of Aeetes but also her refusal to repeat her trick of renewing Aeson for his enemy Pelias. Having persuaded Pelias to let her cut his throat, she declines to revive him. Thus Medea stands here for both the treacherous daughter and potentially for the betrayed lover. There is also a cultural element to each woman’s faith in her lover and breach of faith with her family: Medea, the Colchian from Georgia, leaves her home for a foreigner from Thessaly in Greece, whilst the Jewish Jessica is to marry a Christian. Medea’s killing of her brother Absyrtus is also referred to in an ominous way in 2 HVI. The English civil war is evoked by her fratricide, as Young Clifford promises to cut to ‘gobbets’ any infant of the house of York that he meets ‘as wild Medea young Absyrtus did’ (5.02.59). This is in revenge for the killing of his own father, so that once again Medea is associated with butchery through the portrayal of family loyalty and disloyalty. Her brother’s youth is stressed to make her actions the more dreadful. Medea also appears indirectly when in Temp. Prospero paraphrases part of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (in the 1567 English translation of Arthur Golding) to describe his own magic and make a claim as a great magician: the part spoken by Golding’s Medea. Ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods alone, Of standing lakes, and of the night, approach ye everychone Through help of whom (the crooked banks much wondering at the thing), I have compelled streams to run clean backward to the spring. By charms I make the calm seas rough, and make ye rough seas plain

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And cover all the sky with clouds, and chase them thence again. By charms I raise and lay the winds, and burst the viper’s jaw, And from the bowels of earth both stones and trees do draw. Whole woods and forests I remove; I make the mountains shake, And even the earth itself to groan and fearfully to quake. I call up dead men from their graves: and thee, o lightsome moon, I darken oft ... (Book 7, lines 265–76)

Compare Prospero: Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ... By whose aid ... I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war ... The strong-bas’d promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck’d up The pine and cedar. Graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth ... (Temp. 5.01.33–49)

The echo of Medea makes Prospero sound like a witch, like Sycorax, and as he prepares to abjure his magic the recollection of her alleged crimes reminds us of its potential for great evil. (C) Roberts (1996) discusses the influence if classical witchcraft on Renaissance texts. Mowat (1981, 2001) examines Prospero’s particular debt to Medea, whilst Stapleton and Austin (1994) looks at Lady Macbeth as Medean. Cox (1993, 2000) suggests that in 1 HVI, Joan la Pucelle gains some of her sanguinary energy from Medea too. Mermaids/Sea-maids/Sea-nymphs See also: siren, spirit, supernatural, fairy, demon/daemon, bewitched, witch, Ariel, incubus/succubus, monster (A) Mermaids are female sea-creatures, usually portrayed as half beautiful, naked woman, half fish. The word comes from Middle English ‘mere’, meaning sea, from 133

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the German ‘meer’. Mermaids might sing to sailors, tempting them to join them in or, fatally, under the sea, and they might become the lovers of mortal men and be tempted to leave the sea themselves. Thus, like fairies, they could be extremely dangerous but also friendly and delightful. Behind some of the stories of human-mermaid love affairs may lie the belief recorded by the sixteenth-century alchemist Paracelsus that waterspirits needed human husbands to give them souls. Mermaids were often portrayed in bestiaries and on church bench-ends and misericords in England in the Middle Ages, usually with mirrors and often combing their hair. They thus connote vanity and its sinfulness, as well as monstrosity, and temptation. Their nakedness and sinuous beauty associates them with seductive Edenic serpents and female demons (succubi), as well as with depictions of the goddess Venus rising from the sea. Their portrayal in churches meant that they had a definite and easily recognizable form, unlike many supernatural creatures. The vagueness and metamorphic capacities that characterize fairies are thus limited in mermaids, whose wooden and painted representations give them a stronger sense of corporeal reality. However, they are still of dubious status and origin. This multiplicity of meaning is reflected in other terms associated with them in Shakespeare’s work: they are probably also referred to by the labels sea-nymph and sea-maid. A nymph is a divine spirit, and it is not clear how much Shakespeare linked pagan deities and spirits with his mermaids – the terms may be interchangeable, or carefully chosen to suggest different associations. ‘Sea-nymphs’ suggests nereids (the daughters of the Titan Nereus) who tended towards benevolence as patrons of seafarers. In his English translation of Pliny’s Natural History (London, 1601) Philemon Holland glossed nereids as mermaids, so that the identification of the two types of creature was a common one. Mermaids were also linked with sirens, creatures of classical myth who feature in Homer’s The Odyssey (c. 850 bc) and are known for their alluring singing, which tempts mariners towards their island and its rocks: they are straightforwardly deadly. (B) Ophelia, floating briefly in a river before drowning, is called ‘mermaid-like’ in Ham. (4.07.175), a sinister and sexualized term for the mad and suicidal virgin that she is supposed to be. Ironically, it is her voluminous clothes that make her buoyant, contrasting with the naturally unclothed mermaids. But despite this unlikeness, Ophelia sings ‘mermaid-like’ as well as floating ‘like a creature native and indued/Unto that element’ before sinking to her death. Her song links with earlier bawdy songs that she had sung during her ‘mad scene’, leaving us wondering about even the most innocent young woman as – in Hamlet’s abusive terms – ‘frail’. Similarly focusing on song, Err. links Antipholus of Syracuse’s fascination with Luciana to her voice: ‘train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note’ (3.02.45) and the belief that the hearer must ‘stop my ears against the mermaid’s song’ (3.02.164) as Odysseus’ crewmen do. Antipholus also calls Luciana a siren, therefore. Further allusions to allurement occur in Luc. (‘as if some mermaid did their ears entice’ in line 1411) and V&A (Adonis’ ‘mermaid’s voice’ that seduces Venus and does her ‘double wrong’ at line 429, where mermaids are also linked to witches with ‘bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s song’ in line 777). Here 134

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the mermaid is, unusually, male and it is ironic that Venus, the goddess who rose from the sea, is his victim. This reversal strengthens the poem’s concern with inverted gender roles and power relations, as well as the pleasures and perils of wantonness. Mermaids as more positive symbols sometimes occurred in heraldry or ceremonial. They were monstrous, but also metamorphic and powerful creatures, representing powerful families. A triton in the form of a mermaid greeted Queen Elizabeth during a pageant at Kenilworth in 1575 and this may have inspired the passage in MND: … thou remembrest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music (2.01.148–54)

This mermaid or sea-maid is associated with music like a siren, but is welcoming and benevolent. She calms the sea and is associated with sweetness and harmony (Ariel in Temp. may be such a water nymph, perhaps being instructed to calm the sea when he appears in that form in 1.02.317). There is a similar pageant-like moment in A&C when ‘a seeming mermaid steers’ the royal barge (2.02.209). Here Shakespeare might have been referring obliquely to Samuel Daniel’s ‘Letter from Octavia’ (Certaine Small Poems [London, 1605]) in which Cleopatra is imagined as a wanton mermaid, disloyal in love and in Egypt’s political allegiance. Equally royal but more selfconsciously deadly is the predatory mermaid imagined by Richard of Gloucester in 3 HVI (3.02.186) among a host of other supernatural creatures to which he likens himself (witches, basilisks, etc.): ‘I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall’. His vision of mermaids is an ugly, evil one, foreshadowing his villainous political activities. Mermaids slip easily into evil imagery. ‘Sea-maids’ are said to be able to bear (presumably half-human) children in MM: ‘some report a sea-maid spawn’d him’ Lucio remarks acidly of the puritanical Angelo, who is being described as a cold fish (3.02.108). The name Nerissa in MerV points towards her nereid-like helpfulness to the merchants as Portia’s assistant. Ariel’s song similarly imagines sympathetic sea-nymphs as bell-ringers regretfully memoralizing the supposedly dead king Alonso: ‘sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell’ (Temp. 1.02.403). Thus Shakespeare’s usage of the imagery of mermaids highlights their confusing nature: they can be classed as demonic or nature spirits, classical monsters or natural creatures. (C) Critical opinion has tended to link Shakespeare’s mermaids with sirens rather than the nereids (Phipson [1883], De Rachewiltz [1987], although Wheatley [1916] prefers nereids). In their Shakespeare glossaries Crystal and Crystal (2002) and Onions (1986) define ‘mermaid’ primarily as ‘siren’ (although Onions also defines ‘siren’ as ‘sea-nymph’). Briggs (1959, 1967) classifies mermaids as fairies, but concedes this 135

Modo

is problematic as mermaids have not always been considered ‘supernatural’. Cohen (2006) argues that when Ophelia is compared to a mermaid, it is her thwarted love that is the focus of the comparison (Ham. 4.07.175; see also Fike [1999]). Edgecombe (1999) suggests that MND’s extended description may refer specifically to a sea-maid or nereid rather than a fish-tailed creature and that the allusion is therefore a compliment to Elizabeth I, whilst Noonan (2001) sees her as Mary, Queen of Scots. Belsey (1996) discusses Cleopatra. Modo See also: fiend, Edgar, Flibbertigibbet, Hoppedance, Hobbididance, Obidicut, Mahu, Smulkin, Frateretto, Purr One of the foul fiends named by Edgar along with Flibbertigibbet, Hoppedance, Hobbididance, Obidicut, Mahu, Smulkin, Frateretto and Purr: ‘Modo, of murder’ (KL 4.01.61), and ‘the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman: Modo he’s call’d, and Mahu’ (3.04.143). ‘Modo’ is a slippery Latin term meaning ‘only’, ‘just now’ or ‘provided that’. Its legalistic aspect might have attracted Shakespeare to it – the devil being in the detail? Modo’s association with murder and royalty fits the cruel world of the court in the play and refers to another sinful type of behaviour, as with Mahu. See Flibbertigibbet for full discussion. Monster See also: sorcery, demon/daemon, foresee/foretell, magic, devil, witch, incubus/ succubus, book, Caliban, Prospero, Sycorax, damnation, fairy, Puck, Queen Elizabeth, Jane Shore, Edgar (A) ‘Monster’ was a multifaceted word in its early modern usage, related to the Greek word for monster, ‘teras’, which also meant portent, phantasm, sorcerer and abnormality. ‘Monster’ did not simply mean a frightening and/or unnatural creature, but sometimes also/instead a marvel or prodigy, something wonderfully or extraordinarily noteworthy. Demonologists and natural philosophers asked if ‘monsters’ such as strange births and hybrid creatures were evidence of divine or demonic intervention. Did they foretell anything to come, or were they simply aberrations or corruptions? Monsters strayed into demonology as it attempted to categorize what was natural and what was magical. Sometimes they were associated with devils, thought to be the offspring of witches or incubus or to have been deformed through magical intervention. Yet monsters could affirm the wonder and diversity of nature as well as suggest God’s horror of sin and transgression, depending on their form and context and, crucially, how they were read. Renaissance culture was fascinated by them, with a vast array of books, pamphlets and woodcuts on the subject of teratology. Monstrosity is thus a comparative term depending on a definition of normality and naturalness for its existence: other cultures, races, religions and newly discovered animals could all be seen as monsters and in addition to this labelling, travellers’ tales often described 136

Monster

improbably hybrid animals and human beings with unnatural physical attributes. These included the African and American anthropophagi, whose heads were said to grow beneath their shoulders. (B) Shakespeare found this slipperiness of definition useful, focusing as he often did on doubts about meaning, being, knowing and naming. A good example is Coriolanus’ refusal to be bragged about, with ‘my nothings monster’d’ (Cor. 2.02.77). Here the term implies celebration and magnification, but may also suggest Coriolanus’ potential for corruption and unnatural betrayal. More specifically, the anthropophagi are mentioned in Oth. (1.03.144), evoking a world of exotics and tall tales. Should Desdemona believe his stories of them, in a play whose focus is very much on trust? Is Othello also to be seen as a dangerous African monster, or are we to trust to his civility and humanity? Caliban in Temp. is often discussed in such ugly colonial terms; indeed, his name seems meant to suggest ‘cannibal’ and to link him with newly encountered races. One of Prospero’s explanations for his existence is that his mother, Sycorax, a ‘damned witch’ (1.02.263) copulated with a demon, so that Caliban was ‘got by the devil himself/Upon [his] wicked dam’ (1.02.319–20). Caliban is thereby himself identified as a ‘devil, a born devil’ (4.01.188) in the tradition of European demonology. Such monsters (however created) were linked with exhibition – they were meant to be shown, to be a spectacle, and to provoke comment and debate, often theological. This is the destiny that Stephano and Trinculo propose for Caliban if they can get him back to England. He is the character most associated with monstrosity in Shakespeare’s work. Caliban is immediately termed a ‘monster’ by Stephano and Trinculo and thereafter referred to by that name, as they decide upon his classification and begin thinking of him as a slave or other commodity. ‘There [England] would this monster make a man’ (2.02.30), they comment, referring to his financial value as an exhibit which would ‘make’ them rich. The relationship between monster and man problematizes his status at once, and theirs. After that Caliban is successively ‘most delicate monster’ (delightful; 2.02.90), ‘very shallow monster’ (2.02.145), ‘poor credulous monster’ (2.02.146), ‘perfidious and drunken monster’ (2.02.151), ‘puppy-headed monster’ (2.02.155) and ‘O brave monster!’ (2.02.188), to give just some of the examples. By Act 3 he has acquired the word as a name: ‘Monsieur monster’ (3.02.18). His nature is, however, a puzzle to his discoverers: he seems to them to be ‘half a fish and half a monster’ (3.02.29) or possibly ‘a devil, and no monster’ (2.02.98). It is not clear how he would have appeared onstage but he smells of fish and a half-man, half-fish image recurs in an unflattering description of the Greek hero Ajax whom Thersites says is ‘grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster’ in T&C (3.03.263). Shakespeare often, conventionally enough, associates monsters with the sea: ‘monsters of the deep’ (KL 4.02.50) and ‘the imperious seas breeds monsters’ (Cym. 4.02.35). But Caliban is also referred to as ‘moon-calf’ (e.g. 2.02.106), a term taken from malformed or abortive calves thought to have been affected by the lunar cycle but also applied to those described as ‘idiots’ during the early modern period. Thus the word ‘monster’ dehumanizes and demeans Caliban in Stephano and Trinculo’s usage, although it need not do so. In the context 137

Monster

of the play it could suggest that he is indefinable by conventional terms, by limited characters some of whom are themselves subject to monstrous vices and urges. Shakespeare often evokes sympathy for ‘monsters’. Bottom is described as a ‘monster’ in MND (3.02.377) yet we see much of the play from his viewpoint as a human in fairyland and it is ironic that the fairy Puck regards him as monstrous there. Viola’s description of herself as a ‘poor monster’ (TN 2.02.34) is also typical – she too is not really monstrous but, trapped in male disguise, loves a(nother) man and thus feels herself to be so. MND’s Helena pines because Demetrius flees from her ‘as a monster’ (2.02.97) and Bertram is said to have evaded his Helena as if ‘wives are monsters’ in AWW (5.03.155). Misplaced or unwanted sexuality or love is thus associated with monstrosity. Emotion or the lack of the correct emotion is monstrous too: ‘monster of ingratitudes’ in T&C (3.03.147) is echoed in ‘monster ingratitude’ in KL (1.05.39). We read of ‘monster envy’ in Per. (4. Ch. 12) whilst jealousy is the ‘green-ey’d monster’ in Oth. (3.03.166) in several guises: ‘some monster in thy thought’ (3.03.107), a ‘monster/ Begot upon itself’ (3.04.161) and ‘keep the monster from Othello’s mind’ (3.04.163). Yet Othello himself feels self-pityingly that ‘a horned [cuckolded] man’s a monster and a beast’ (4.01.62), a ‘civil monster’ (4.01.64), recalling Hamlet’s words to Ophelia that men ‘know well enough what monsters you make of them’ (Ham. 3.01.138). These self-made monsters are not pitied, however, for in fact no wrong has been done to them. Some characters misidentify themselves as monsters, then, whilst others misidentify others. Master Ford thinks his wife is unfaithful, urging his friends to come to his house where ‘I will show you a monster’ (MWW 3.02.81). But he is wrong. So is Richard III when he portrays his sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth and her supposed accomplice Jane Shore as a ‘monstrous witch’ (RIII 3.04.70) and, for different reasons, Gloucester when he is deluded into considering his son Edgar ‘a monster’ (KL 1.02.94). Monsters are often not monstrous at all. Further, we see that monsters may be made and not born, with the threat of ‘turning monster’ expressed in AYLI (‘let me turn monster’ as an oathbreaker at 1.02.22) and KL (‘women will all turn monsters’, 3.07.102). Treachery turns former friends of Henry V to ‘English monsters’ too, when they plot to murder their king (HV 2.02.85). Constance will become a ‘carrion monster’ like death himself in KJ (3.04.33) which parallels Posthumus’ description of death as an ‘ugly monster’ in Cym. (5.03.70). Crowds and custom are also monstrous: the ‘blunt monster with uncounted heads’ (2 HIV, prologue, 18) and ‘the monster custom’ (Ham. 3.04.161). Sometimes monsters are used as examples of unfeeling or unshakeable creatures that would, nevertheless, respond to emotions that fail to affect the human characters: Henry fails to feel ‘a pity [that] would move a monster’ in HVIII (2.03.11), whilst Antonio and Sebastian pretend that they have heard ‘a din to fright a monster’s ear’ in Temp. (2.01.314) to cover up their own monstrously murderous intent. Autolycus tells of tortures devised that would ‘break the back of man, the heart of monster’ in WT (4.04.770). The monster is always the other creature in such formulations, but frequently kinder or softer than the supposedly natural human characters. 138

Mountebank

(C) Smith (2002) surveys classical and Christian attitudes to physical monstrosity and their influence on Renaissance thought. G. Brown (2008) focuses on Oth. and Mac. (the witches) and identifies a Renaissance ‘monster industry’ negotiating new knowledges; see also Black (1982). Thornton Burnett (2002) draws on RIII, Oth. and Temp. to illustrate the centrality of the monster in the early modern imagination; he also discusses theatricality and spectacle. Shakespeare routinely problematized the notion of monstrosity, he concludes. Pask (2003) approaches Caliban through the notion of anti-masque, a display of characters intended to be defeated and normalized by those in the masque itself. Garber (1980) suggests that the end of Temp. is a choice between two ‘wonders’: Miranda, the ‘wondered at’ and Caliban the ‘monster’. Moulton (1996) situates RIII in discourse about hyper-masculinity (see also Tiffany [1995] on monsters and sexuality); Hook (1987) traces the history of the cockatrice, the monster to which Richard’s mother compares him (RIII, 4.1.54). E. C. Brown (1998) examines centaur imagery in Oth.. Wheatley (1916) discusses a range of specific Shakespearean monsters, such as sagittary, gorgon and harpy. Moon-calf (see Caliban) Moth See also: fairy, Ariel, Mustardseed, Cobweb Moth is a fairy in MND. The association, through Moth’s name, of fairies with insects may suggest their small size (as with his fellow fairy’s name Mustardseed), or their ability to make themselves small if they choose. Ariel in Temp. similarly compares himself to a bee. Moth might also suggest a winged costume or even an actor lowered on a harness to mimic flight. Mountebank See also: empiric/empiricutic, conjuration, magic, exorcism/exorcist, witch, astronomy, Doctor Pinch, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, magic, charm, spell, demon/daemon, fortune A mountebank is usually a charlatan or liar, often a salesperson who cheats customers by selling them worthless medicines and supposedly magical charms. Of course, magical efficacy is very much in the eye of the beholder, so that mountebanks might be valued sellers of prized potions to some of their customers. Laertes buys poison from one in Ham. which does indeed prove effective: ‘I bought an unction of a mountebank’ he explains (4.07.141). More magically, Brabantio accuses Othello of using ‘spells and medicines bought of mountebanks’ to seduce his daughter (Oth. 1.03.61), as well as engaging in conjuration and magic more generally. Perhaps most interestingly, Antipholus of Syracuse believes the inhabitants of Ephesus to include ‘disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks’ (1.02.101) and one is found in the form of the exorcist Doctor Pinch, a schoolmaster who, apparently earnestly, attempts to cast out demons 139

Mummy

from Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus. A respectable and reasonably learned schoolmaster would not normally fall into the category of being ‘a mountebank’ as Antipholus of Ephesus describes him (Err. 5.01.239) but then he does not believe in Pinch’s skills. He also calls him a ‘juggler’ or trickster and ‘a fortune-teller’ (240). In this way the term ‘mountebank’ intersects with the role of the empiric, or quack doctor, the astronomer or astrologer and the witch. It is an insult when applied to Pinch, blurring his social and scholarly status, and removing him from the pious context of the Christian exorcist (to which he aspires) into a world of dodgy magic. The word ‘mountebank’ comes from the Italian montambanco, referring to the trader’s habit of climbing on to a bench or box to shout about his wares. Cartwright (2007) discusses Pinch’s uneasy status, whilst Pettigrew (2007) surveys empirics as well as physicians in Shakespeare’s works. Tabor (1970) discusses what kinds of drugs mountebanks made, including the one sold to Laertes. Mummy See also: magic, alchemy, witch ‘Mummy’ is dead flesh, and the word derives from the Egyptian ceremonial practice of preserving bodies after death, as in Falstaff’s remark that had he drowned in the river and been washed up with his body swelled ‘I should have been a mountain of mummy’ (MWW 3.05.18). But it is associated with magic and witches through the phrase ‘witch’s mummy’ in Mac. (4.01.23), as an ingredient in magical recipes, and with the magic handkerchief that Othello gives Desdemona, which he says was ‘dy’d in mummy which the skilful/Conserv’d of maidens’ hearts’ Oth. (3.04.74–5). This appears to be part of his belief that ‘there’s magic in the web of it’ (3.04.69). Noble (2004) examines the use of mummy as a medicinal substance, for example for the treatment of epilepsy, but looks at mummy primarily via the trope of cannibalism. As in Oth., mummy from a dead female virgin’s body was most esteemed due to the cultural obsession with chastity: the dead virgin is the only stable version of virginity, argues Noble. Hence mummy’s magical significance in a play obsessed with women’s bodies and their sexual status – and also a connection to the witches’ fascination with severed body parts in Mac.. Moss (2004) looks at mummy’s use in alchemy and reads it is a substance associated with mystical renewal, whilst Wilson (2005) associates its magical meaning with the relics of Catholic saints. See also Dawson (1927) and Schwyzer (2005) on the history of mummy and its value in magic and medicine. Mustardseed See also: fairy, Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb Mustardseed is a fairy in MND. The name may suggest a small size, like Moth, along with an association with nature (especially plants), growth and fertility (as with Peaseblossom). Reynolds and Sawyer (1959) discuss mustardseed as a component in folk medicine, along with other ‘medicinal’ fairy names in the play like Cobweb. 140

N Naiad (see Spirit) Nativity See also: astronomy, star, figure, destiny, hell Like his use of the term ‘figure’, Shakespeare seems to imply the astrological (astronomical) meaning of the word ‘nativity’ in some instances of his wider usage of it, although only occasionally does he make it absolutely clear that he is using it in the technical sense. Used commonly, it is a Latin-derived word simply meaning birth or birth date, but astrologically the term referred to the conjunction of stars at the time of a person’s birth, which could be identified at the time or subsequently and interpreted to reveal their destiny. In KL Edmund forcefully rejects the validity of nativities: ‘An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!.. My nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenl’est star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising’ (Ursa Major is the constellation of the Great Bear; 1.02.126–33). In 3 HVI (4.06.33–4) Clarence tells Warwick, accepting him as Protector of the realm, ‘the heavens in thy nativity/Adjudged an olive branch and laurel crown’ (peace and honour). Later, however, he changes his mind. Queen Margaret claims that Richard of Gloucester’s wickedness came about because ‘thou wast seal’d in thy nativity/The slave of nature and the son of hell’ (RIII 1.03.229–30). The word ‘seal’d’ suggests a fixed destiny, linked to his disability, although Richard’s own commentary on his deeds often suggests a deliberate choice as well as original disposition. There are other instances where an astrological meaning seems likely, although it is less explicit, as when, for example, in AYLI (4.01.31) Rosalind tells Jacques that as a traveller he should be ‘out of love with your nativity’. She probably means his native country, but perhaps also the celestial destiny that made him French (or English, if we are in Arden not Ardennes). Chapman (2007) explores the astrological casting of nativities, pointing out that it offered a clearly legible way to explain why even twins are different in their personalities and life events, and thus to map human uniqueness, and see Capp (1979) and Kassell (2005) on astrology and nativities as practised by Simon Forman and others. Camden (1933), Sondheim (1939) and Smith (1958) discuss early modern astrology in general, and see also McIntosch (1969) and Dean (1924). Parr (1946) and Rusche (1969) debate the exact meaning of Edmund’s nativity under Ursa Major, with ambiguous results. 141

Nereid (see Mermaid)

Nereid (see Mermaid) Night-mare See also: incubus/succubus, demon/daemon, spirit, dream, fairy, Queen Mab, hag, Edgar, possession, aroint/avaunt/avoid, witch, charm, fiend, Flibbertigibbet The night-mare is an incubus- or succubus-like demon or spirit thought to afflict sleepers by sitting on their chests and causing bad dreams, sleep paralysis and breathing difficulties. The dreamer then awakes in a state of terror. Although the word ‘mare’ means a female horse, the night-mare was said to ‘ride’ human beings rather than the other way round, and also to ride horses, which would then appear sweating and exhausted the next day. She also plaited their manes, a trick ascribed to fairies by Mercutio in R&J’s Queen Mab fantasy (1.04.58–100) where Mab is also pictured as galloping, linking her further to the night-mare. The demon was also referred to as a hag, and imagined as female. In one of Edgar’s more obscure imaginings when he pretends madness and possession in KL he sings a song referring to Swithold or Swithald, perhaps an Anglo-Saxon saint: Swithold footed thrice the ‘old [wold, downs], He met the night-mare and her nine-fold; Bid her alight, And her troth plight, And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee! (3.04.120–4).

Swithold appears to require the night-mare to alight, or dismount, from her victim’s body, give him her word that she will not re-offend, and then banish her or perhaps the witch who sent her. As such, he sounds like a saint thought to offer help against such phenomena, being called upon in a charm. As Edgar has just finished itemizing the diseases caused by the fiend Flibbertigibbet, this context might have suggested Swithold as a protector of the body. Simpson and Roud (2000) discuss the demonological aspect of night-mares, and Davies (2003) provides a history of the concept; Wheatley (1916) was among the first to declare honestly his inability to decrypt the Swithold story satisfactorily, or find another helpful reference to the saint. But very old charms are often thought to be efficacious because they make only magical, not logical, sense. Nymph (see Mermaid/Sea-Maids/Sea-Nymphs)

142

O Oberon See also: fairy, Titania, Puck, changeling, charm, monster, spell, ass-head, elf, goblin/hobgoblin, evil The king of the fairies in MND, Oberon is the consort of the fairy queen Titania. During the course of the play he resolves a quarrel that he is having with her over a changeling child – both monarchs want the boy to attend upon them. Oberon has Puck charm the eyes of Titania so that she falls in love with a human being, one moreover upon whose head Puck has superimposed an ass-head, so that Titania loves a monstrous creature. In her infatuation, she forgets her interest in the boy, letting Oberon have him, and is then released from the spell. There is little indication that she is upset by her husband’s cruel trick, and he is unrepentant. Oberon is a commanding and ruthless presence in the play, a dangerous fairy more like an elf or goblin. This perhaps reflects the character’s suggested origin in Medieval Germanic legend as the evil dwarf Alberich – Oberon is his French name in this reading. In his first French appearance in Les Prouesses et Faitz du Noble Huon de Bordeaux (early thirteenth century) the newly named Oberon has metamorphosed into a more fairy-like woodland creature which assists the knightly hero after Huon of Bordeaux treats him politely instead of attacking him. In some versions of the story, Huon is a fairy king, suggesting the mutability of the legend. The romance was translated into English in about 1540 by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, and there was even a play based on it, suggesting that Shakespeare could have known the story well and simply lifted Oberon from it into a new context (in the play, a wood near Athens). Green (1962) explores sources for Oberon and the other fairies, and see also Braddy (1956). Obidicut See also: fiend, demon/deamon, Edgar, Flibbertigibbet, Modo, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Mahu, Smulkin, Frateretto, Purr One of the foul fiends named by Edgar, along with Flibbertigibbet, Modo, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Mahu, Smulkin, Frateretto and Purr. He describes several of the demons with reference to their associated sins or crimes, such as Modo and Mahu (murder, stealing): another one is ‘of lust, as Obidicut’ (KL 4.01.59). ‘Cut’ might refer to the vagina, given the association with lustfulness, and the first part of the name seems to echo Hobbididance. See Flibbertigibbet for full discussion. 143

Occult

Occult See also: astronomy, magic, demon/daemon, supernatural, King Hamlet, ghost, nativity Although ‘occult’ has come to mean something akin to ‘magical’ in modern parlance, it actually means simply ‘hidden’. It occurs only once in Shakespeare’s works, in just this way. Hamlet refers to Claudius’ ‘occulted’ guilt in concealing the murder of his brother (Ham. 3.02.80). This sense of the word comes in part from astrology and astronomy. When one celestial body conceals another during its orbit, it is said to be ‘occulted’; this would affect horoscopes (nativities) and could be a portent of an event – especially something as major as the murder of a king – in its own right. Thus it carries with it the sense of a significance beyond the ordinary. The magical sense of occultedness may be further present here too: natural magic presented itself as the study of occult causes (rather than demonic or supernatural ones, for example) and the fact that Claudius’ guilt is revealed to Hamlet by the ghost of his father King Hamlet suggests the preternatural associations of the occult and its discovery. A ghost can reveal what is here occulted when mundane means cannot. See Vickers (1984) and Reed (1965) on the history of the term and its theatrical applicability. Old Hamlet (ghost) (see King Hamlet) Oracle See also: soothsayer, Philharmonus, prophecy, magic, witch, sibyl, divination, supernatural, Duke of Buckingham, Banquo, Cassandra (A) The word ‘oracle’ comes from the Latin oraculum, from orare ‘to speak’. In the ancient world, an oracle was a priestess or priest who served a deity, giving answers to those who consulted her or him for spiritual and practical advice (female oracles were sometimes also called ‘sibyls’). The oracle would usually go into a trance to deliver a prophecy or judgement, also known as an ‘oracle’ in that it was an oracular statement. The most famous ancient oracle was that at Delphi, in Greece, a sibylline woman known as the Pythoness or Pythia who interpreted the will of Apollo. The Delphic temple was built at a spring on Mount Parnassus, and the oracle, sitting on a tripod seat, would deliver her judgements whilst gazing into a dish of spring water. Her ecstatic trance was said to be so deep that afterwards she would be exhausted, or even in danger of death, and it was related to poetic creativity since the springs of Parnassus were said to inspire poetry. Some Delphic prophecies were thus delivered in verse, and the relationship between oracles and poets was an important theme for literary theorists of Shakespeare’s age (for example Philip Sidney, whose c. 1579 Apology for Poetry referred to poets as ‘vates’ or prophets [published London, 1595]). (B) In WT Shakespeare has the emissaries Cleomenes and Dion consult Apollo’s oracle at Delphi on behalf of Leontes, King of Sicilia, who suspects his queen Hermione of adultery. We hear from Dion of the ‘ceremonious, solemn and unearthly’ sacrifice (animals were sacrificed at the temple in order to determine whether consultation of 144

Oracle

the oracle could go ahead), the vestments of the temple officials, and their ‘reverence’ (3.01.3–8). Cleomenes reports ‘the burst/And the ear-deaf’ning voice o’ the oracle’ which he likens to ‘Jove’s thunder’ (3.01.8–10). Yet the two do not hear the judgement itself. Instead they bring back an ‘oracle’, the written decision of the priestess, sealed by ‘Apollo’s great divine’, a ‘priest’ (3.01.18–19, 3.02.126) so that they cannot read it. The oracle is then opened and read in court as the judgement of Hermione. But Leontes will not accept the judgement: ‘there is no truth at all i’the oracle’ he announces (3.02.140). For ‘my great profaneness ‘gainst thine oracle’, as he later repentingly calls it, his son is struck down within two lines – apparently by angry Apollo (3.02.154). At the play’s end, the prediction that the king will live without an heir until his outcast daughter is found comes true, and ‘the oracle is fulfill’d’ (5.02.22). We are given no room to doubt its truth. In Temp., too, oracular metaphors are used to suggest a standard of truth and wisdom against which other claims may be judged: ‘I do believe it/Against an oracle’ asserts Ferdinand of Miranda’s worthiness (4.01.12) and later Alonso, unable to explain the magical events of the play, says that ‘some oracle/Must rectify our knowledge’ (5.01.244). In LLL Berowne promises to listen with attentiveness ‘as we would hear an oracle’ (1.01.216). Richard of Gloucester refers to the wily Duke of Buckingham as ‘my oracle, my prophet’ in RIII (2.02.152) whilst in HVIII Norfolk jealously calls his religious rival Cranmer the King’s favourite and ‘his oracle’ (3.02.104). Achilles offers opinions ‘bold as an oracle’ in T&C (1.03.192) Yet oracles can be mocked and doubted as well as treated like revealed truth. In TNK we are told at the play’s end that ‘our master Mars/Hath vouch’d his oracle’ giving Arcite victory in the concluding duel (5.04.107 – the consultation, in the form of a prayer for a sign offered at Mars’ altar, occurs in Act 5, Scene 1). Arcite wins the duel, but is subsequently killed in an accident. This means that Mars’ oracle was true, but that Arcite’s trust in a completely happy ending was ironically overconfident. In Cym. also an opaque prophecy delivered by Jupiter comes true, ‘answering the letter of the oracle’ (5.05.450), but only if it is tortuously interpreted by a soothsayer, Philharmonus, whom we have previously seen making a mistaken prophecy. Human desire to believe in oracles is pushed almost to breaking point here. In Mac., Banquo soliloquizes about the witches’ prophecy of kingship for Macbeth, who is indeed now King of Scotland: ‘may they not be my oracles as well/And set me up in hope?’ he asks (3.01.9–10). The witches said that his children would be kings, which is true in that Shakespeare’s own monarch James VI and I claimed descent from him, but Banquo has no cause to hope for himself and will shortly be murdered. Timon of Athens may thus be right to counsel the most cautious interpretation of oracular utterances: ‘Spare not the babe …/Think it a bastard whom the oracle/Hath doubtfully pronounc’d thy throat shall cut,/And mince it sans remorse’ Tim. (4.03.120–3). It is sensible to examine the ‘doubtful’, or ambiguous, nature of oracles – they may well come true but the difficulty is often in the detail of interpretation. A final laugh at the expense of oracular human beings comes in MerV when Gratiano jokes that there are some reputedly wise men whose bearing suggests ‘I am Sir Oracle/And when I ope my lips let no dog bark’ (1.01.93–4). 145

Ouph

(C) Strain (2011) notes the use of the term ‘oracle’ to denote respected legal officials, and explores WT’s politics of jurisprudence and challenge to royal authority (under cover of a supernatural divination) accordingly. More conventionally, Hunt (2011) examines recourse to pagan deities such as Apollo in the romances, a discussion partly continued from Field Holland’s (1970) reflections on Apollo and the ‘mercurial’ Autolycus as anti-tyrannical ‘gods’, and Bergeron (1995). Ouph See also: fairy, elf, goblin/hobgoblin, destiny, urchin, changeling An ‘ouph’ is another word for an elf or goblin, and occurs twice as part of a variety of picturesque fairy names and manifestations in MWW: ‘we’ll dress/Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies’ announce the participants in a masque-like show at the play’s end, which is put on to frighten Falstaff and cure him of his lustfulness. Yet the ouphs seem, like the other fairies, beneficent: ‘strew good luck, ouphes’, they are instructed (4.04.50, 5.05.57). They will only punish Falstaff because he has observed them, which is forbidden to humans. Thoms (1865) and Briggs (1957, 1959, 1962) discuss ouphs as elves, and see Purkiss (2000) for their fairy context. Thoms linked ouphs to oafs, or persons thought to be fairy changelings because of their mental incapacity. He also suggested that ‘orphan’ may have been a misreading of an adjective based on ‘ouph’ in MWW (see destiny) and also that ‘owls’ may have been substituted for ‘ouphs’ (2.02.190), stressing the cryptic and unfamiliar nature of the word. Overlooking See also: witch, Puck, witchcraft, fairy, cursing, Witch of Brainford, bewitched To overlook, in the demonological sense, meant to use witchcraft by the power of one’s eyes: it was related to the notion of bewitching by the ‘evil eye’ which dated back at least to Roman times and was technically described as ‘fascination’. Witches were thought to be able to summon powerful, possibly humoral, forces from their body and direct them through their eyes to harm anyone whom they could see. A number of Shakespeare’s usages of the term suggest that demonological meaning in addition to the more obvious one. In MerV (3.02.14–16) Portia tells Bassanio, ‘Beshrew your eyes,/ They have o’erlooked me and divided me/One half of me is yours’, thus explaining her sudden falling in love with him. The notion of bewitching with the eyes was commonly used in poetic evocations of the beauty of the poet’s mistress’ eyes – to apply it to Bassanio positions him as a male witch. Identifying this, Portia in effect curses him back – ‘beshrew’ being a mild form of cursing – drawing attention to the magic involved in her use of ‘overlooked’ to describe his power over her. In MWW, too, the character dressed as ‘Puck’ finds Falstaff spying on the ‘fairies’ and abuses him: ‘vile worm, thou wast o’erlooked even in thy birth’ (5.05.83). Falstaff is thus a marked or cursed man. Since he had earlier dressed himself as a wise woman, the Witch of Brainford, the idea that he has himself been bewitched is especially ironic. Degen (2012) gives a history of fascination, including the evil eye. 146

P Paddock See also: Graymalkin, Harpier, familiar, spirit, witch, toad, cat, Second Witch, magic ‘Paddock’ is the name of one of the witches’ familiars in Mac.. It calls out, according to the Second Witch, to summon her away at the end of Act 1, Scene 1, along with another spirit called Graymalkin and a third anonymous spirit who may be Harpier (mentioned later in the play; 1.01.9; 4.01.3). A paddock is a toad, and Shakespeare uses the word in the zoological sense in Ham. (3.04.190) Along with a cat, a toad was thought likely to be a shape chosen by familiar spirits. Paddock does not appear onstage. Adler (1981) offers a study of frogs and toads in Elizabethan literature, including their magical aspects. Peaseblossom See also: fairy, Mustardseed, Cobweb, Moth Peaseblossom is a fairy in MND. The name suggests the flowers of the pea plant, and thus (like Mustardseed) an association with plant life, growth and fertility. Reynolds and Sawyer (1959) discuss peaseblossom as a component in folk medicine, along with other ‘medicinal’ fairy names in the play like Cobweb. Periapt See also: star, evil, astronomy, planet, Joan La Pucelle, witch, conjuration, image magic, magic, charm, occult, auspicious, spell A periapt is a talisman, amulet or charm; an object thought to offer magically protective powers. Linked to image magic and the occult sciences, amulets could harness the powers of the stars, including medicinally – particularly if made at a certain time when the stars were deemed to be auspicious and favourable. The word ‘periapt’ is derived from the Greek, meaning to fasten around: thus a periapt would be carried about, worn on the body to bring luck and power and ward off evil. As Capp (1979) notes, a periapt might be marked with a ‘sigil’, a charm which fused magic with astrology (astronomy). The sigil was thought to preserve favourable planetary influences, enabling them to be permanently at the disposal of the wearer (see also Kassell [2005] and Vickers [1984] for historical usage of periapts). Periapts are called upon by

147

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Joan La Pucelle as part of her conjuring activities as a witch in 1 HVI: ‘now help, ye charming spells and periapts’ (5.03.2). Peter of Pomfret See also: prophecy, soothsayer In KJ the ‘prophet’ Peter of Pomfret (Pontefract in Yorkshire) foretells the king’s downfall to hundreds of people in the streets, according to the Bastard. In Act 4, Scene 2 the Bastard brings Peter to the king, telling John that he has found him walking about with hundreds of followers, singing prophecies about the king’s giving up of his crown before noon on the next Ascension Day. The king appears even-handed, sentencing Peter to death at noon on Ascension Day – by which time it will be clear if he is a soothsayer on a mission from God or a lying traitor – unless his prophecy comes true. In fact it does in a literal way: John hands over his crown briefly for a re-coronation. But we must presume that Peter is executed, for despite the truth of his words the interpretation read into them, that the king would be deposed or killed, is proven incorrect and it is likely that John has his revenge. Philharmonus See also: soothsayer, occult, dream, book, prophecy Philharmonus is a soothsayer employed by the Roman army in Britain in Cym.. During the play he interprets a dream and a written prophecy from a book. On the first occasion in Act 4, Scene 2, Philharmonus seems to offer a falsely hopeful reading of the signs in his dream (an eagle flying into the sun), prophesying a Roman victory over the British when in fact they are immediately defeated. Later in the play (Act 5, Scene 5), he offers an interpretation of a cryptic text handed to Posthumus by the god Jupiter, but is helped in his reading by the fact that the play’s denouement has already occurred: he is telling everyone what they already know about long-lost sons and wives thought dead. His interpretation also seems strained, based on soundalike words and opaque metaphors. Yet Philharmonus takes this opportunity to justify his earlier dream reading too: although it appeared incorrect, he says, it is now clear that a Roman victory has been achieved overall, since harmony has been restored along with the missing relatives and the Britons have agreed to resume paying tribute to Rome. Philharmonus’ name echoes this harmonious end to the play, since it means ‘lover of harmony’. His soothsaying appears to be politically useful in such matters, though of dubious provenance in revealing occult truths. On Philharmonus’ divinations, see Maisano (2004), Rogers (1960) and Gibson (2013). Pinch, Doctor See also: Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, exorcism/exorcist, conjuration, conjuror, spirit, devil, demon/daemon, possession, mountebank, fortune, evil, Malvolio

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A conjuror and schoolmaster in Err., Doctor Pinch is called in by Adriana to carry out an exorcism on her husband Antipholus of Ephesus and servant Dromio of Ephesus. They are thought to be demonically possessed and Pinch is asked to conjure the spirits or devils out of their bodies. Onions (1986) explains that Pinch, as a schoolmaster, would be thought to have enough mastery of Latin to command the evil spirits in the language that they were believed to speak. However, his patients are not possessed, only victims of mistaken identity, and they untie themselves from his restraints and attack him physically, calling him a mountebank, fortune-teller and ‘juggler’ or trickster. Pinch’s life is threatened in Act 5, Scene 1 because of his over-confident diagnosis of demonic possession, and he is exposed as a fool at best, if not actually a charlatan. Antipholus and Dromio believe that he has conspired with Adriana against them, although the audience knows that this is not the case. Nevertheless, Pinch offers another example of an exorcist who mistreats his patients – as with Malvolio in TN – and his intelligence and skill is strenuously questioned. Is his name Pinch because he is dishonest (‘to pinch’ meaning ‘to steal’) or poverty-stricken (his clothes are said to be threadbare, making magical activity a valuable source of income) or cruel (pinching his unfortunate victims) or because his intellect is pinched (narrow, limited)? Gibson (2006) discusses the late Elizabethan controversy over exorcism as it relates to Err., KL and TN. Cartwright (2007) analyses Doctor Pinch and the language of magic. Planet See also: astronomy, star, fairy, witch, evil Planets were thought to be able to affect human health, behaviour and affairs, sometimes through a harmful process known as ‘striking’. Their influence in general, and that of the stars, was the province of astronomers, but striking was a particularly acute form of attack linked to the powers of evil. Shakespeare mentions planetary influence on a number of occasions, and links it to preternatural evil in Ham.: during the Christmas season, Marcellus tells us, fairies and witches are prevented from doing harm and also ‘no planet strikes’ (1.01.162). Camden (1933), Dean (1924), Sondheim (1939), McIntosch (1969) and Smith (1958) discuss the astrological context in which the theory of planets operated. In contrast, Maisano (2004) examines Shakespeare’s acquaintance with Galileo’s scientific ideas on planetary bodies. Poor Tom (see Edgar) Possession See also: witch, witchcraft, devil, familiar, spirit, exorcism/exorcist, demon/ daemon, conjuror, Doctor Pinch, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, mountebank, Malvolio (A) Possession in the demonological sense is the taking over of the human body by a devil or devils. It could cause unusual behaviour and inexplicable illness, and was 149

Possession

sometimes thought to be associated with witchcraft, in that a witch might send her or his familiar spirit into the body of an enemy to possess them. The spirit might gain access through an opening such as the mouth, riding in on something eaten or being inhaled or even, alarmingly, running in in the shape of a mouse or insect. Once inside, it would take over bodily spaces and functions, causing – for example – a distended belly, vomiting or unnatural limb movements, and even taking control of the victim’s voice. It was this spoken element of possession that constituted much of its cultural power, because the victim might be imagined as speaking in the devil’s voice, blaspheming, sinning and attacking authority figures from church and state just as a devil might be expected to do. Of course, this verbal transgression could be very satisfying for the victim, who was often a relatively disempowered person – a woman, young person or servant. Often possessed people would become a centre of attention visited by hundreds of onlookers and would-be helpers; a possession was an extremely theatrical event, offering all manner of shock and spectacle. The exorcism that followed it – an attempt to cast out the devil – was also theatrical, and was often repeated as the demon and exorcist fought for possession and repossession of the victim’s body. Demonic possession was thus a violently subversive phenomenon that usually ended in the restatement of key theological doctrines and cultural norms, and many societies still believe that it exists, using it as a means to set the limits of acceptable religious belief and social behaviour. Shakespeare was familiar with the notion of demonic possession and its bitterly controversial politics because he had read Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603). The book was published in an attempt to put an end to a series of well-publicized exorcisms by puritan and Catholic exorcists in England from the mid-1590s onward, and it heaped abuse on supposed demoniacs and celebrity exorcists such as the minister John Darrell as attention-seeking frauds. (B) Given this literary context it is perhaps not surprising that whilst a number of characters are thought to be possessed or pretend to be possessed in Shakespeare’s plays, the word is seldom used about them: instead Shakespeare prefers a number of variants which are less explicit about the bodily relationship between human and demon. Indeed, the notion of possession is never endorsed. Instead it is a state which others claim may exist, but somehow never does. For example, Lord Say tells the rebel Jack Cade that unless he is ‘possess’d with devilish spirits’ he will show him mercy (2 HVI 4.07.75), Cade does not relent, instead counter-claiming that Say’s eloquent pleading is explained by his having a familiar under his tongue. Yet he tells the audience in an aside that he does feel compassion for Say; however, for political reasons he cannot show it. He may be a rebel, then, but he is not possessed. Similarly the schoolmaster conjuror or exorcist Doctor Pinch and the Abbess both encounter the suggestion that Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus might be under demonic control in Err., the Abbess asking the classic leading question ‘How long hath this possession held the man?’ (5.01.44) when she is called in to help them. But she quickly decides that they are not possessed. Pinch is not so lucky. He embraces the idea only to be overpowered by his patients and assaulted. The play suggests 150

Prince Edward of York (ghost)

little sympathy for him. Antipholus accuses him of ‘outfacing’ him and calls him a ‘villain … mountebank … pernicious slave’ and so on. His description implies that Pinch was too easily convinced of demonic involvement, is ignorant and possibly even fraudulent: after a few inconclusive tests such as looking at Antipholus’ eyes and pulse, he ‘cries out I was possessed’, the patient complains (5.01.236–46). The puritan steward Malvolio too is the victim of a false claim of possession when other servants conspire to humiliate him. Maria tells Olivia that ‘he is sure possessed’ (3.04.9). Sir Toby announced pseudo-helpfully that ‘if all the devils of hell be drawn in little and Legion himself possessed him, yet I’ll speak with him’ (84–6) but he too is part of the conspiracy. This fake possession of a godly yet foolish man seems likely to be related to the puritan exorcisms carried out by John Darrell and his associates. (C) Gibson (2006), Sands (2004) and van Dijkhuizen (2007) discuss this possible link, and Err. episode, on which see also Cartwright (2007). Greenblatt (1988) examines the politics of Shakespeare’s use of Harsnett, first noted by Lewis Theobald in his eighteenth-century edition of Shakespeare’s Works and revisited in modernity and with the benefit of Leavisite close-reading by Muir (1951). Brayton (2003) discusses possession in KL although this is an example where the exact word is not used. Clark (1997) has chapters on ‘Understanding Possession’ and ‘Possession, Exorcism and History’ and on the wider context see also Walker (1981), Sluhovsky (2007) and Kallendorf (2003). Prince Edward (ghost) See also: King Henry VI, Duke of Clarence, Lord Hastings, cursing, ghost, Lady Anne, Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir Richard Grey, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Duke of Buckingham Edward is the son of King Henry VI and Queen Margaret, and thus the Lancastrian Prince of Wales due to succeed his father if Henry can retain the throne during the Wars of the Roses. However his father fails to do so, and in 3 HVI Edward is coldbloodedly murdered by George, Duke of Clarence, Lord Hastings and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in the presence of the Yorkist claimant who later becomes Edward IV (the title that would have been Prince Edward’s had he lived). This version of history comes from a number of chronicles including that of Edward Hall (The Union of the Two Noble and Illustr[ious] Families of Lancastre and Yorke [London, 1542]). Certainly Edward was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, and his father died shortly afterwards. In RIII both of them return as ghosts to haunt Richard III (formerly Richard, Duke of Gloucester) and curse him. Ironically, Clarence and Hastings also appear as vengeful ghosts alongside their victim and his father Henry VI, Lady Anne (Edward’s former wife) and the Yorkist dead Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Richard Grey, Prince Edward of York and Richard, Duke of York. Prince Edward of York (ghost)

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See also: Queen Elizabeth, ghost, cursing, dream, Duke of York, witchcraft, Lord Hastings, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan The eldest son of Edward IV, who is murdered in the tower on the orders of his uncle, Richard III, in the play of that name. Edward’s sons are first declared illegitimate on the grounds that their mother Queen Elizabeth was not legally married to Edward (and practised witchcraft to gain his love) and then they are eliminated more permanently from the line of succession by death, making Richard the undisputed king. Edward and his brother Richard, Duke of York are known to history as the Princes in the Tower, and the details of their murder or escape are hotly debated. Edward would have become Edward V – Queen Margaret draws attention to his status as the Prince of Wales when she curses him. In RIII the Princes in the Tower return with other ghosts (Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Earl Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan) to haunt and curse the king in a dream. Prophecy See also: astronomy, occult, demon/daemon, figure, soothsayer, damnation, Joan La Pucelle, cursing, nativity, witch, weird, Banquo, Duke of Clarence, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, foresee/foretell, supernatural, ghost, King Henry VI, Julius Caesar, magic, Cassandra, King Hamlet, dream, devil, Philharmonus, fate, destiny, fortune, augury, divination (A) A prophecy is a prediction of future events. In early modern England the same debates surrounded prophecy as those which problematized astrology (astronomy): was it the result of natural scientific observation, God-given ability or demonic intervention? Prophecies were often drawn from the casting of astrological nativities or figures. For dramatic and poetic purposes a prophecy delivered early in a play or poem and fulfilled during its action was a well-established plot driver: such prophecies are inherently likely to come true, often bringing about, literally, poetic justice. Further, literary criticism from Plato’s Ion (fourth century bc) to Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesie (written c. 1579, published London, 1595) had described poets themselves as ‘vates’ or prophets, divinely inspired seers who brought truth and wisdom to human beings through their writing. Thus prophecy in literature had a different status to that in the wider national life, where in 1563 Elizabeth’s parliament had passed an act against the dissemination of false prophecies. The suppression of false prophets had biblical warrant from the Gospels – for example, Mt. 7.15-23 and 24.11, where they are described as wolves in sheep’s clothing and trees bearing bad fruit. In the latter metaphor, they are to be sawn down and burnt. In Mk 13.22, Christ spoke of an increase in false prophets in the last days of the world – even ‘false Christs’ – who would seduce and lead the people astray. Lying prophecy, then, was blamed for introducing ‘damnable heresies’ (2 Peter 2:1) and undermining true religious authority. Of course, whether a prophecy was seen to 152

Prophecy

be false or true, seditious or patriotic, depended on the hearer: a prophecy could be seen as both accurate and treasonable. Elizabethan governors were particularly anxious about prophecies foretelling the death of the queen and her replacement by a Catholic monarch, a prediction that at times seemed very likely to come true. (B) Prophecy and prophet are terms used both formally and informally in Shakespeare’s works: formally to refer to those believed to be gifted with knowledge of the future by occult means (some of whom are professional soothsayers or witches) and informally when it refers to what may be a lucky guess or a rational prediction based on the current state of affairs. Although there are some notable exceptions, Shakespeare’s references to prophecy are biased toward the notion that it is a common and workable form of attempting to influence or gain knowledge of the future. His characters’ prophecies are often detailed and accurate ones. In KJ the ‘prophet’ Peter of Pomfret foretells John’s downfall to audiences of hundreds, according to the Bastard: here’s a prophet that I brought with me From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found With many hundreds treading on his heels; To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes, That, ere the next Ascension day at noon, Your highness should deliver up your crown (4.02.147–52)

This was exactly the seditious scenario most feared by monarchs. Peter is presumably hanged, as John ordered, since although his prophecy is accurate it refers to John’s re-coronation, not his deposition as had been thought. In the tense Elizabethan-Jacobean context, it is not surprising that Shakespeare saw prophecy primarily in political terms in his history plays. We are told that Joan La Pucelle has ‘the spirit of deep prophecy’ in 1 HVI (1.02.55), that ‘no prophet will I trust if she prove false’ (1.02.150) and that she is ‘a holy prophetess’ (1.04.102, although actually her inspiration is demonic) and there is further discussion of ‘fatal prophecy’ both there (3.01.194) and in RIII where Richard instructs that George, Duke of ‘Clarence closely be ‘mew’d up/About a prophecy’ which suggests that someone whose initial is G will murder Edward IV’s heirs (1.01.39). This response to the prophecy is a deceitful one – Richard wants to get George out of his way – but the prophecy itself is truthful: Richard, whose dukedom is that of Gloucester, is himself the G who will kill Edward’s sons Prince Edward of York and Richard, Duke of York later in the play. The history plays are full of characters prophesying and sometimes simultaneously cursing one another, suggesting the malign nature of prophecy in political life: to foretell, even to discuss, the death of the monarch was seen as synonymous with plotting to kill them, and the same suspicion extends to other characters too. Reviewing one such cursing episode in RIII, the former queen Margaret tells those whom Richard will soon murder or bereave of their sons that they will say in the future that ‘poor Margaret was a prophetess’ (RIII 1.03.300). Her prediction is delivered from

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knowledge of Richard’s past but there is a chilling air of the supernatural about its detailed enunciation and neat fulfilment by the end of Act 5. Similar accuracy belongs to the prophecies in related plays: ‘Henry’s late presaging prophecy’ of Richmond’s (Henry VII’s) accession to the throne in 3 HVI (4.06.92), which is redelivered by King Henry VI’s ghost to Richmond in a dream before his victory at Bosworth (‘Harry, that prophesied thou should’st be king’ RIII 5.03.129); Gloucester’s ‘I prophesied France will be lost ere long’ in 2 HVI (1.01.146); the recollection that ‘no man but prophesied revenge’ for the murder of the Duke of Rutland, a revenge that has now fallen on the Lancastrians in RIII (1.03.185). There is a moment of doubt in the phrase ‘if York can prophesy’ (2 HVI 2.02.76) but although this Duke dies before some of his predictions can come true, they are fulfilled by his successors. As far back in the sequence as RII, ‘lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change’ and they are right (2.04.11). Thus the turmoil of civil war is given a providential and magical framework of order by repeated truthful prophesying. The same is true of the Roman plays where Julius Caesar’s murder is framed by public soothsaying before and more private prophecy after it. Later, left alone, Antony too speaks to Caesar’s body saying ‘over thy wounds, now do I prophesy .../A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;/Domestic fury and fierce civil strife/Shall cumber all the parts of Italy’ (JC 3.01.259–66) whilst Cleopatra ‘had a prophesying fear’ that defeated Antony would kill her, suspecting treachery (A&C 4.14.120). He does contemplate doing so, but actually only kills her in a metaphorical sense. In each case it may be wondered how much the prophecy is fulfilled by the will of the speaker, by mistake or chance: Antony himself plunges the Roman empire into civil war after Caesar’s death and he and Cleopatra both die because she deceives him about her supposed suicide. Likewise Ulysses utters a ‘prophecy’ about the course of the Trojan war, but is presented as a wise and wily commentator, not divinely inspired like the prophecies of Cassandra (T&C 4.05.218). Regan comments acidly that ‘jesters do oft prove prophets’ (i.e. jokes sometimes come true, because jesters are acute observers; KL 5.03.71) and Lear’s Fool does indeed prophesy a time of confusion for Albion, adding dizzyingly ‘this prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time’ (KL 3.02.95–6). Here he situates himself in the timeline of Shakespeare’s source, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain, where Lear’s story does indeed precede Merlin’s. However, the Fool’s expectation of confusion is based on his accurate estimate of the country’s current state as much as on either literary joke or vatic gift. Similarly human agency and rational prediction may force the hand of prophecy in Ham.: ‘I do prophesy the election lights/On Fortinbras’ says Hamlet (5.02.355) but it is clear that Fortinbras intends to claim the crown anyway. Hamlet also speaks of ‘my prophetic soul’, apparently referring to his belief that his uncle Claudius is the murderer of his father King Hamlet before it is confirmed by his ghost – but since Claudius is both the new king and has married the wife of the deceased, this was perhaps not hard to deduce without supernatural help (Ham. 1.05.40). The phrase is 154

Prophecy

echoed in ‘the prophetic soul/Of the wide world ...’ which dreams on things to come but has no certain knowledge of the future (Son. 107.1). The sharpest scrutiny of the relationship between occult foreknowledge, reasonable inference and willed action is in Mac.: would Macbeth have murdered King Duncan if the weird sisters had not suggested in their ‘prophetic greeting’ (Mac. 1.03.78) that he would become king? Seeming to guess Macbeth’s ambition, Banquo speculates that their words might ‘enkindle’ Macbeth ‘to the crown’, adding ‘oftentimes to win us to our harm,/The instruments of darkness tell us truths,/Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s/In deepest consequence’ (1.03.123–6). His warning is proven prophetic in itself, though it can also been seen simply as standard advice about the deceits of the devil. There is more evidently supernatural prophetic speech in the play elsewhere: Lennox hears voices on the wind ‘prophesying, with accents terrible’ the confusion to come (a few lines before the discovery of the king’s murder at 2.03.57, making the prophecy seem as acute as possible) and in contrast to the perhaps demonic prophecy of the ‘instruments of darkness’ the English king Edward, Macduff tells us, ‘hath a heavenly gift of prophecy’ (Mac. 4.03.157). Not all prophecies are accurate, however; some are misread, whilst some deliberately incite or lead astray. In HVIII (perhaps provocatively subtitled ‘All is True’) we are told specifically about ‘a vain prophecy of Nicholas Henton’ (1.02.147), ‘a Chartreux friar’ and confessor to the Duke of Buckingham of Henry VIII’s day. This monk ‘fed’ him with ‘words of sovereignty’, leading Buckingham to treasonable thoughts about what would happen if the king died childless (149–51). ‘Henton’ is the historical Nicholas Hopkins of Hinton, referred to again at 2.01.21–2 as ‘that devil-monk,/Hopkins’: his ‘prophecy’ is seen as demonically pernicious. It brings down Buckingham and begins a play fraught with tension about the future and the relationship of prophecy to speculation about the succession. Here is a prophecy that misleads, just as in AWW Bertram claims that Parolles has ‘deceiv’d me like a double-meaning prophesier’ (4.03.100). His accusation echoes that of the Countess, who tells the Clown he is ‘a calumnious knave’ only to have him respond: ‘a prophet I, madam, and I speak the truth’ (1.03.58). Pandulph says he will ‘speak with a prophetic spirit’ as he discusses Lewis’ claim to the English throne if (i.e. when) John has the rightful claimant Arthur killed (KJ 3.04.126) – but the sequence of events is not as he predicted. Other prophecies – such as those interpreted by the soothsayer Philharmonus in Cym. – are equally problematic. There are two references to the prophets of the Bible to further complicate Shakespeare’s picture of the accuracy and utility of prophecy. According to his scoffing wife, Henry VI’s ‘champions are the prophets and apostles’ (2 HVI 1.03.57) indicating his holiness but also his unworldliness. Such prophets are righteous but of little use in modern politics, the Queen implies. And Shylock refers to ‘your prophet the Nazarite’ when he mentions the story of the Gadarene swine to the Christian Bassanio (MerV 1.03.34). Here Christ is a prophet, but not for everyone. (C) Camden (1933), Dean (1924), McIntosch (1969), Sondheim (1939) and Smith (1958) discuss astral predictions across the plays and the historical context; Iizuka 155

Prospero

(2004) focuses on RIII; Rogers (1960) discusses Cym.; Keegan (2011) examines prophecies – both formal and informal – and their successes and failures in HVIII. Prospero See also: magician, sorcery, magic, auspicious, star, art, spirit, Ariel, book, spell, Caliban, Sycorax, witch, devil, evil, demon/daemon, Faustus, angel Prospero is the exiled Duke of Milan and a magician in Temp., although he is never referred to by this latter name. He lives on an island in the Mediterranean, on which he was cast away by those who deposed him. Prospero is accused of sorcery by his enemies but regarded as a benign theurgic and neo-Platonic magical practitioner by others, including probably himself. Certainly he sees his cause – recovering his dukedom and punishing those who exiled him – as a good and just one, and tells us that he has been led to it by what may be a providential sign, an auspicious star. He refers to his magic as ‘art’. Prospero works his art by commanding an apparently largely benevolent spirit of indeterminate origin, Ariel, and by the use of an apparently magical book located somewhere offstage. He also wears a magic garment to perform some spells. Ariel is enforced to obey Prospero, although he repeatedly asks for his liberty, and Prospero also forces a half-human creature called Caliban to work for him by threatening him with attack by other spirits. Using these spirits to play the parts of classical goddesses and dancers, Prospero stages a masque in Act 4, Scene 1. The masque seems to be intended to represent fruitful harmony – it demonstrates Prospero’s blessing of the marriage of his daughter Miranda with his enemy Alonso’s son. But despite this conciliatory intent, the masque is interrupted by Prospero’s alarmed recollection of Caliban’s plotting against him, suggesting a breakdown of control and balance of the sort fatal to neo-Platonic notions of human perfectability. Prospero’s art, then, is subject to human imperfection and perhaps to corruption by less than ideal emotions such as fear, anger or hatred. The questions about whether Prospero’s art is benign and allowable or not is illuminated by contrast with another magical practitioner who preceded Prospero on his island, Sycorax. Although Sycorax is long dead, Caliban is her son, and Ariel was her servant before he became Prospero’s. Prospero keenly contrasts himself with Sycorax, whom he calls a witch and accuses of all manner of wickedness, including sex with a devil. He perceives Sycorax’s magic as evil, whilst thinking his own benign, and he has claimed rulership over the island in place of Caliban, so he demonizes Sycorax accordingly. But, like Sycorax, he is an exile who makes use forcibly of the services of Ariel and performs a number of unpleasant acts including causing a shipwreck, inflicting torture and creating terrifying illusions that drive others to distraction. Many viewers and readers have thus questioned his version of events, as a picture elicited by interrogation from Ariel and Caliban and shaped by his own colonialist desires. They have pointed instead to his similarity to Sycorax.

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Prospero

At the play’s end, however, Prospero seems to undergo a change of heart. Ariel suggests to him that he should behave mercifully to his enemies, and he does so, freeing them from the spells he has cast to torment them. He extends a pardon to Caliban and frees Ariel. In an epilogue, Prospero abjures his magic and presents himself as reduced to merely human capability. He pleads for forgiveness and approval from the audience, prayer and applause, endowing them with the magic power (of spell) that he had previously enjoyed: Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint: now, ‘tis true, I must be here confined by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands: Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, And my ending is despair, Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free. (Epilogue 120)

Prospero seems to acknowledge ‘crimes’ and recognize his need for ‘indulgence’ and ‘pardon’, although the play leaves his exact referents unclear. He may be acknowledging that his magic has had an unlawful aspect to it, presuming to appropriate power from God’s providence, or that although lawful it was tainted by human sin. His abjuration shows magic as an art that can be learned and manipulated but also is best repudiated at last in order to attain humility and perhaps salvation. In this regard Prospero recalls, but contrasts with, Christopher Marlowe’s character Doctor Faustus, in the play of that name from the late 1580s or early 1590s. Faustus resorted to devil worship to gain the same kind of power as Prospero and disastrously failed to repent. The creation of Prospero may also draw on public perceptions of famous natural or angelic magicians of the period such John Dee. Harkness (1996, 1999) and Woolley (2001) discuss Dee. Kermode (1954), Sisson (1959), Mowat (1981, 2001) and 157

Puck

Davidson (1978) debate Prospero’s magic – its benignity and technicalities – whilst those who are more interested in Sycorax investigate or reverse the binary opposition forced upon her by the play (see Orgel [1984], Marcus [1996] and Sachdev [2000]). The most recent readings tend to cast Prospero as a villain rather than seeing him as a holy magus as Kermode did. Puck See also: goblin/hobgoblin, Oberon, magic, familiar, weird, witch, conjuration, spirit, demon/daemon, fairy, devil, supernatural, transformation, damnation, fiend, Asmath, Ariel, spell, ass-head (A) Puck is both a noun and a name in MND; both referring to a mischievous fairy, spirit or goblin. In Medieval times, ‘Pouk’ was a name for the devil: William Langland’s Piers Plowman (fourteenth century) speaks of ‘Pouk’s pinfold’, meaning hell, so that Puck’s forerunners were not harmless mischief-makers, but more like demons. Reginald Scot in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584) includes a ‘puckle’ and ‘Robin Goodfellow’ in his list of supernatural creatures belonging to nursery tales and now outmoded by Reformation enlightenment. Robin Goodfellow is another name for Shakespeare’s Puck. (B) In MND Puck is subject to Oberon, king of the fairies, and does his bidding throughout the play. The puck travels very fast, performs love magic with the aid of natural substances, and assists in bodily transformations and ventriloquism as well as an assortment of errands. He describes himself as ‘an honest puck’ (5.01.431) and also apparently refers to himself as a goblin. Folio and Quarto versions of the play (1600, 1623) refer to him in stage directions and speech prefixes as ‘Robin Goodfellow’ as well as ‘Puck’, so that his very name is subject to change and instability. His creation of illusion links him with the tricks of devils: however, Shakespeare’s representation of the puck is as a creature motivated both by malign and benign impulses, a trickster and jester rather than a damning deceiver. He seems less benign than the spirit Ariel in Temp., but is a less threatening and more comedic type of creature than the conjured fiend Asmath in 2 HVI or the familiar spirits of the weird sisters or witches in Mac.. Puck joins in with the activities of other fairies – pinching lazy housemaids, doing chores like sweeping – but often gives them an erotic or menacing edge. He disrupts the love relationships of the play’s human characters, puts an ass-head on a weaver who has strayed into his domain and at the end of the play one of the lovers (Demetrius) apparently remains under his spell. He is thus uncontained, and speaks the play’s epilogue as if to demonstrate his independence and retain his indefinable edginess. (C) Mandel (2007) reads Puck primarily as malign, held in check by Oberon’s mastery. Braddy (1956) situates him partly within the tradition of fairies appearing as conjured spirits, but in this case helpful familiars rather than demons. McConnell (2003) adds an Italian tradition to Puck’s heritage, suggesting that he is a kind of harlequin. Lewis (2005) equates Puck with Cupid, and Purkiss (2001), in ‘Fairies’, suggests a strong

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Purr

resemblance to Ovidian deities. Lamb (2000) considers the transformation of the hairy Robin Goodfellow of ballad tradition into the more courtly Puck, arguing that he brings subversive potential to the otherwise conventional romantic comedy. Kassell (2006) considers Scot’s assertion that Robin Goodfellow had recently ceased to cause fear amongst the English; relatedly, Wall (2001) notes that whilst the creatures of Scot’s list were represented as illusory, obsolete or in the domain of domestic storytelling, this also made them potent and persistent. Wall discusses other representations of Robin Goodfellow/Puck in verse, prose and drama, as does Schleiner (1985). Purr See also: witch, familiar, demon/daemon, Flibbertigibbet, Modo, Mahu, Obidicut, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Smulkin, Frateretto, Edgar, cat ‘Purr the cat is grey’ (KL 3.06.45) is a phrase that may be demonological: ‘Purr’ may or may not be a demon, since a demon named ‘Purre’ appears in Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603) along with others named by Edgar such as Flibbertigibbet, Modo, Mahu, Obidicut, Frateretto, Hobbididance, Hoppedance and Smulkin (see Flibbertigibbet for fuller discussion). Spalding (1880) suggests that the word was demonic rather than simply a description of a cat’s noise, or the name of a cat. Purr might thus be both a demon and a cat – a witches’ familiar – although since we are dealing with a word used by a character pretending to be a demoniac who is seeing and hearing imaginary creatures, this identification can only be a suggestion. Raber (2008) discusses purring as a new word in the seventeenth century, according to OED, but believes the word is far older. Spalding provides a detailed discussion of the Quarto texts’ ‘Pur’, pointing out that the exclamation mark usually inserted after ‘Pur’ was an interpolation, suggesting Edgar is making a purring noise himself or calling a name (‘Purr!’), before adding that ‘the cat is grey’. This choice is reversed in the Riverside edition used here.

159

Q Queen Elizabeth (wife of Edward IV) See also: Prince Edward of York, Duke of York, Jane Shore, Lord Hastings, witchcraft, cursing, Eleanor Cobham, conjuration, enchantment, magic, sorcery, monster, Joan La Pucelle Usually referred to by historians as Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Elizabeth is the mother of Prince Edward of York and Richard, Duke of York and appears in the history plays dealing with the Wars of the Roses. In RIII she is offhandedly accused of ‘monstrous’ witchcraft by Richard, who wishes to invalidate her marriage and disinherit her children so that he can take the throne himself. Elizabeth is jointly accused with Jane Shore, the mistress of Lord Hastings and also of her own husband Edward IV. The matter is not brought to trial, but Elizabeth suffers the fate predicted for her in another former Queen, Margaret’s, curses – multiple bereavements and the loss of her throne. The historical Elizabeth was accused of witchcraft and sorcery, in the parliamentary Act that established Richard’s claim to the throne, Titulus Regius: not against Richard’s deformed body, as he claims in the play, but as a seductive tool to win the former king to an unlawful marriage with her – thus not harmful maleficium but implicitly a love magic such as enchantment or fascination. Her mother Jacquetta was also accused with her. There is no record of any further proceeding against them. Queen Elizabeth and Jane Shore appear in the play as innocents accused of witchcraft as part of political machination, unlike the analogous figures Eleanor Cobham and Joan La Pucelle, who are shown actually practising the conjurations of which they are accused in 1 and 2 HVI. Queen Mab See also: dream, fairy, Titania, hag, elf, Puck, supernatural, incubus/succubus, night-mare Queen Mab appears to be another name for the fairy queen (although she is nothing like Titania) as conceived of by Mercutio in R&J. He indulges in an extraordinary and lengthy fantasy about her in Act 1, Scene 4 when Romeo innocently remarks that he has had a dream: O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

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Queen Mab

On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep; Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs, The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, The traces of the smallest spider’s web, The collars of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams, Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash o’ film; Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazelnut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight, O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees, O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plaits the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes: This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage: This is she — (1.04.53–94) 161

Queen Mab

He is interrupted at this point, so that we never hear the rest of his account, but its status as a stand-alone poetic creation within the play should be evident. Queen Mab is thus the subject of a virtuoso performance of verbal dexterity and imagination, drawing on fairy lore but elaborating it into great detail. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnographers and folklorists like Keightley (1833) and Reeves (1902) began to think through the folkloric origin and significance of Queen Mab and suggested that she came from Irish legends which feature Queen Medb or Maeve. If this were so, ‘Mab’ might be an ancient Celtic goddess in disguised form, since these stories were thought to refer to a Celtic pantheon. Medb appears as a queen of Connacht in the Ulster mythological cycle who might be historical, divine or both. She is not much like Mab, being primarily occupied with inter-tribal feuding, but the stories do feature supernatural events and powers. Briggs (1957, 1959, 1962) explores Mab’s fairy nature: she is linked with elves and hags, making her a figure of night-mare who oppresses sleepers yet simultaneously grants them fantasy fulfilment. The sexual element of her presence suggests a succubus. Mab also attacks the bodies of dreamers, blistering lips and tangling hair, reminding us of the mischievous household activities of fairies and Puck. Here she functions like an AngloSaxon elf, an explanation for disease and discomfort, some of which is also located in providential punishment for laziness and sin.

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R Richard, Duke of York (ghost) See also: Queen Elizabeth, Prince Edward of York, witchcraft, dream, cursing, ghost, Lord Hastings, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir Richard Grey Richard is the second son of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth, and is murdered on the orders of his uncle Richard III in the play of that name. Edward’s sons are first declared illegitimate on the grounds that their mother was not legally married to him (and practised witchcraft to gain his love) and then they are eliminated more permanently from the line of succession by death, making Richard III the undisputed king. Young Richard of York and his brother Prince Edward of York are collectively known to history as the Princes in the Tower. Pretenders such as Perkin Warbeck, claiming to be Richard and that he had escaped from the Tower of London, appeared throughout subsequent years and their fate remains in dispute. In the play, Richard, Duke of York appears to his uncle as a ghost in a dream, cursing him, along with his brother and Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Earl Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan and Sir Richard Grey. Rivers, Earl (ghost) See also: Queen Elizabeth, Sir Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, ghost, cursing, dream, Lord Hastings, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Duke of York, Prince Edward of York Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, is the brother of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV, and is executed by the new king, Richard, in RIII as part of his destruction of the former Queen’s faction. He returns with Sir Richard Grey, his nephew, and their ally Sir Thomas Vaughan, as a ghost that haunts King Richard and curses him in a dream; the other ghosts are Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Richard, Duke of York and Prince Edward of York. Earl Rivers was indeed executed in 1483, at Pontefract, along with Grey and probably Vaughan. Robin Goodfellow (see Puck)

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S Sathan See also: devil, angel, hell, demon/daemon, Lucifer, Belzebub, aroint/avaunt/avoid, Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, possession, exorcism/exorcist, Doctor Pinch, spirit, Malvolio Satan or Sathan is another name for the devil, one of the angels fallen from heaven into hell and become demons. Sathan was often differentiated from other devils like Lucifer and Belzebub by the notion that he was their ruler. This status made Sathan the chief adversary of God and man, and his name means the accuser, adversary or opponent in Hebrew. It is Sathan who tempts Job in the Book of Job, perhaps his most notorious named appearance, although here he is seen as controlled by God and instructed to try the faith of his followers. Sathan is thus a tempter, skilled in argument and entrapment. Elsewhere, the devil is called a liar, hence ‘as slanderous as Sathan’ (MWW 5.05.155) and ‘fie, thou dishonest Sathan’ (TN 4.02.31). Falstaff is referred to by Hal as ‘that old, white-bearded Sathan’ because he is seen to have tempted the prince and led him astray (1 HIV 2.04.463). When Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse meet a courtesan on the supposedly devil-haunted streets of Ephesus, they assume she is Sathan and cry: ‘Sathan, avoid! I charge thee tempt me not’ (Err. 4.03.48) also calling her ‘Mistress Sathan’ (4.03.49). When Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus are later thought to be possessed, their exorcist makes the same assumption about which devil he is dealing with: ‘I charge thee, Sathan, hous’d within this man …’ Doctor Pinch addresses the possessing spirit (4.04.54). Thus Shakespeare conforms to the usual demonological portrayal of Sathan as wily and easily able to ensnare the souls of humans: it was dangerous even to engage with him, or ‘play at cherrypit with Sathan’ as Sir Toby puts it in TN (3.04.116) when he is pretending to think Malvolio possessed because he has taken the devil’s threat insufficiently seriously. Finally, Parolles describes the madness of love in AWW by suggesting that a lover, as if possessed, might talk ‘of Sathan and of limbo and of furies’ (5.03.260). Sathan is the most oft-used name for a devil in Shakespeare’s work. Kegl (1994) discusses the names of devils in MWW. Clark (1997) shows the vital importance of Sathan and his supposed followers and temptations to early modern thought, whilst Cox (1993, 2000) discusses Shakespeare’s devils and their reliance on the Sathan-figure of Medieval drama. Sea-maid/Sea-nymph (see mermaid)

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Setebos

Second Witch See also: weird, witch, First Witch, Third Witch, Hecate, familiar, spirit, Paddock, prophecy, cauldron, magic, toad Mac.’s Second Witch appears subservient to her fellow member of the ‘weird sisters’, the First Witch, and later to Hecate, but is no less malevolent. From her appearance at the play’s opening (described in the Folio stage directions as ‘2. Witch’), she offers suggestions of ways to bring out the witches’ ends. Asked for a time of next meeting, she proposes ‘when the hurly-burly’s done,/When the battle’s lost and won’ (1.01.3–4) establishing the play’s central theme of losing and winning, and as a place she suggests ‘the heath’ (1.01.6), a place beyond the usual human haunts. Her familiar spirit is Paddock, a toad. In Act 1, Scene 3, she reports that she has whiled away the time elapsed since the first scene in killing swine and joins her sisters in offering their prophecy to Macbeth. In Act 4, Scene 1, however, she has more to contribute, in a long list of ingredients for the witches’ cauldron: Fillet of a fenny snake In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog; Adder’s form and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing (4.01.12–17)

Later she adds a baboon’s blood (37). These ingredients suggest the butchery of a wide variety of creatures regarded as ugly, dirty, poisonous or ill-boding. The witches’ dependence on physical materials for their magic is emphasized. The Second Witch also tells us that her thumbs prick to announce the arrival of ‘something wicked’, just before the entrance of Macbeth to the scene (4.01.44–5). This judgement of his character marks how far he has fallen since his first encounter with the witches. In appearance, the Second Witch is (like the First and Third Witch) withered, wildly dressed and bearded (1.03.40–6), a woman but yet curiously masculine, human perhaps but yet capable of vanishing into air or earth or ‘hovering’ through the air (1.01.12, 1.03.79–80). Setebos See also: Hecate, prophecy, divination, witch, witchcraft, magic, Caliban, Prospero, Sycorax, demon/daemon, Sathan, supernatural Setebos is the ‘god’ of the witch Sycorax, referred to as such by her son Caliban, who tells us that Prospero’s magic is so strong that ‘it would control my dam’s god, Setebos’ (Temp. 1.02.373). Shakespeare frequently mentions non-Christian deities, such as Cupid, Isis or Apollo, in his works. But these are usually classical and their paganism is part of a wider picture of archaic Roman, Greek or Egyptian society, as

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Shore, Jane

conceived by many early modern people from poets to humanist scholars. It includes prophecy, divination, the answering of prayers and other potentially magical or miraculous activities, but is not strictly demonological in its outlook. Only on a few occasions does Shakespeare more firmly link a pagan deity directly with witchcraft or magic in the manner of a Christian demonologist: as an object of worship among magical practitioners, perhaps Sathanically inclined, certainly not safely confined to literary convention as an echo from Ovid or Plutarch or a deus ex machina. Setebos and Hecate are the two outstanding examples of deities that are actively worshipped by witches in the plays. More generally, Smidt (1996) and Sagar (1995) examine the ill-defined relationship of pagan deities with supernatural beings that had survived into, or developed in, the Christian world view. Shore, Jane See also: Lord Hastings, Queen Elizabeth, witchcraft, Eleanor Cobham, witch, cursing Jane Shore is the mistress of Lord Hastings in RIII, and she is accused with Queen Elizabeth of witchcraft against King Richard. This is a transparent move designed to disempower both the former Queen and Hastings simultaneously. Indeed, when Hastings tries to defend Jane, questioning her guilt, he is summarily executed. The association of witchcraft with mistresses is important, for Jane was previously the mistress of Edward IV, as the play makes clear, and Queen Elizabeth is also inferred to have entrapped the former king by sexually charged witchcraft, an accusation made against her in historical fact. Unlike the Queen, Jane Shore does not appear onstage, but her accusation as a witch is a pivotal moment as Richard turns abruptly on a former ally (Hastings) with a false-looking accusation directed at someone else not present, on a charge notoriously hard to disprove, and uses it to oil the wheels of his tyranny. The play’s subversive reading of this witchcraft accusation seems to derive from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (London, 1577, 1587) where Jane Shore is portrayed sympathetically (particularly in the first edition), as discussed by Patterson (1994) and Helgerson (1999). The reading of her life as a journey from power and happiness to injustice and misery (essentially rags to riches and back again) was a popular one in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in poetry and plays. The historical Jane Shore, whose given name was actually Elizabeth, was a London merchant’s daughter. She rose by her wit and beauty to become a prominent courtier with several powerful lovers. She was accused of conspiring against Richard, as the play dramatizes, and like Eleanor Cobham was forced to do penance for her supposed sins. Scott (2005) offers a biography with further discussion of her representation in fiction, whilst Steible (2003) examines her role in the play, especially in the context of cursing.

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Sibyl See also: Hecate, oracle, prophecy, foresee/foretell, soothsayer, magic, charm, witch, fiend, Joan La Pucelle, weird, Banquo, Cassandra (A) A sibyl was, in the ancient world, an oracle or seer whose answers and prophecies, given to seekers at the shrine of the deity she served, were thought to come from the gods and be delivered to her in a trance (the Delphic oracle, discussed in the entry for ‘oracle’, was a sibyl). The word is of obscure Greek origin. Sibyls were always female and were noted for frenzied speech and for great age, often appearing in literature as withered, smelly and unattractive old women. Ovid’s version of the sibyl character in Metamorphoses (8 ad), for instance, was a thousand years old. Sibylline prophecies were greatly valued by the Romans, who kept records in the temples of Jupiter and Apollo in Rome of the utterances of the nine or ten sibyls that they knew at different times in their expanding empire. The most famous sibyl in their works (for example, Virgil’s Aeneid [19 bc] and Petronius’ Satyricon [first century ad]) was the Cumaean one who lived near Naples, Italy. She served Apollo and Hecate and wrote her judgements and soothsayings on oak leaves. These were liable to be windblown into confusion, with the result that her prophecies might be lost or misread: a metaphor for lost or scrambled wisdom and the cussedness of missed opportunity. (B) Shakespeare refers several times to sibyls as synonymous with old age: ‘as old as Sibyl’ (Shrew 1.02.70) and ‘as old as Sibylla’ (MerV 1.02.106). Othello tells Desdemona that his magic handkerchief was sewn by ‘a sibyl that had numb’red in the world/The sun to course two hundred compasses’. It was made, moreover, in her ‘prophetic fury’ lending it great power which is endorsed by the play’s plot: when Desdemona loses the handkerchief, she loses Othello’s love, as predicted (Oth. 3.04.70–2). The North African sibyl recognized by the Romans was known as the Libyan sibyl: perhaps Shakespeare wishes to suggest that Othello’s handkerchief, given to his mother by an Egyptian ‘charmer’, comes from one of her successors. Shakespeare alludes specifically to the Cumaean sibyl with the mention of the ‘sibyl’s leaves’ as being scattered (Tit. 4.01.105). ‘Where’s our lesson, then?’ asks Titus (106). Less convincingly, Joan La Pucelle, the witch, is said to have a prophetic ability ‘exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome’ (1 HVI 1.02.56). Her powers turn out to come from fiends. Virgil’s sibyl was a priestess of Hecate, and so sibyls could be linked with witchcraft once placed in a Christian context. However, it was more usual to celebrate them as foretellers of the coming of Christ, which the Bastard may here be trying to do. One of Shakespeare’s sources for Mac. may have been a Latin entertainment put on for King James at Oxford in 1605, entitled Tres Sibyllae, which refers to the prophecy made to Banquo. In this short pageant by Matthew Gwinne, the three sibyls appeared as actors ‘hail’ing the king. But for all the similarities with Mac, Shakespeare chooses not to call his weird sisters ‘sibyls’. (C) Truax (1989) explores Mac.’s witches in classical context as furies or sibyls. Mafe (2004) speculates on Shakespeare’s African sibyl in the context of Yoruba myth

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and divination, wondering how detailed or not his knowledge of specific African cultures may have been. Starry West (1982) discusses Tit.’s sibyl among other classical allusions. Bernhard Jackson (1988) examines La Pucelle’s sibylline claim. Siren See also: mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs, supernatural, enchantment, magic (A) Sirens are creatures from classical mythology known for their alluring singing, which tempts mariners towards their island and its rocks: they are beautiful in their musical abilities but deadly. There are usually three of them, Parthenope, Ligeia and Leucosia, imagined as the daughters of the muse Calliope so that their parentage associates them with the seductive power of poetry. The sirens were portrayed in art both as women and as winged birds with women’s heads; they are thought to appear as fish-women for the first time in early bestiaries, and by the late twelfth century this was the norm in Western art. Sirens were known in English literature from the Middle Ages onward as symbols of seduction and danger. They appear in Homer’s Odyssey (c. 850 bc), in stories of the Argonauts and in Plato’s Republic (c. 380 bc). (B) Sirens are associated by Shakespeare with mermaids and sea-nymphs – indeed, Onions (1986) defines siren as ‘sea-nymph’. In Err. Antipholus of Syracuse calls Luciana both siren and mermaid: ‘sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote’ (Err. 3.02.47) but also ‘train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note’ (3.02.45). The two images of siren and mermaid meet in the belief that the hearer must ‘stop my ears against the mermaid’s song’ (3.02.164) as Homer’s crewmen do against the sirens in The Odyssey. Here, Odysseus cleverly devises a way to hear the sirens’ song and survive: whilst the crewmen fill their ears with wax, he orders that he be bound to the ship’s mast and not released or his commands to stop the ship obeyed, no matter how much he begs, until the sirens’ island is passed. The Mediterranean setting for Err. and its focus on maritime venturing is thus appropriate to Antipholus’ fear that he has come to a city populated by sirens as well as other supernatural creatures. Sirens were supposed to kill sailors in a number of ways. One was by causing them to sail their ships on to the rocks of the sirens’ island, as in Aaron’s description of Tamora as ‘this siren that will charm Rome’s Saturnine/And see his shipwrack’ (Tit. 2.01.23; he also calls her a ‘nymph’ and ‘goddess’, suggesting nereids). But sirens could also so distract mariners from their work that they stopped rowing or tending their sails and starved to death blissfully, enchanted by the sirens’ song. Thus sirens induced a pining like the inertia of lovesickness. Shakespeare goes further, imagining their tears as a deadly love-potion in Son. 119: ‘what potions have I drunk of siren tears’, asks the poet, that cause him to hope and fear like the classic Petrarchan lover, paradoxically losing what he thought he was winning? (Son. 119.1) These siren tears are a distillation, like a poison, which cause a ‘madding fever’ (8), suggesting that they infect or intoxicate the body when consumed. The sonnet’s sirens also allure through the eye, which is ‘fitted’ out of its true sphere, as if the sufferer from the fever were

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experiencing convulsive fits. Shakespeare usually steers away from conventionally associating the siren/lover with music, voice or verse. This is surprising. As well as their own music sirens are associated with the poetic archetype Orpheus, who saves the crew of the Argo by playing on his lyre more beautifully than the Sirens sing. In the Myth of Er at the end of Plato’s Republic the sirens even make the music of the spheres. ‘What song the Sirens sang’ is said by Suetonius to be one of the impossible questions with which the emperor Tiberius used to tease the scholars at his court. Thus Shakespeare rejected a conventional image of seductive singing in Son. 119, choosing instead an image of a poisonous, perhaps magical ‘potion’. (C) De Rachewiltz (1987) and Vredeveld (2001) examine the sirens in literature. Smulkin See also: fiend, devil, Edgar, demon/daemon, Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Mahu, Modo, Purr, Frateretto, possession, witch, cat, Graymalkin, familiar, spirit, First Witch Smulkin is an imaginary devil whom Edgar pretends is possessing him in KL; in the Quarto texts he appears as ‘snulbug’. ‘Peace, Smulkin; peace, thou fiend!’ Edgar instructs the demon whom he may in the previous sentence describe as ‘my follower’ (KL 3.04.140–1). He urges his father the Duke of Gloucester to beware of this ‘follower’ and thus it may be that although he is pretending to be possessed, he imagines Smulkin as an external fiend, thus technically speaking obsessing rather than possessing him. Smulkin is another of Edgar’s fiends whose name (as ‘Smolkin’) is taken from Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603) along with Flibbertigibbet, Obidicut, Hobbididance, Hoppedance, Mahu, Modo, Purr and Frateretto. It recalls the name often bestowed on cats, Malkin, perhaps (along with Purr) suggesting that like the First Witch’s familiar spirit Graymalkin in Mac. Smulkin is imagined in feline form. Soothsayer See also: prophecy, divination, fortune, foresee/foretell, Julius Caesar, dream, witch, augury, magic, occult, vision, book, Philharmonus, astronomy, Cassandra (A) To say sooth is to speak the truth – sooth, as in ‘forsooth’, meaning ‘truthfully, for sure’ in Old English. There is nothing inherently magical about the word ‘soothsayer’, therefore, but soothsaying came to mean speaking the truth about the future, or accessing other occult knowledge. Soothsayers are thus another type of seer, like diviners and fortune-tellers, dealing primarily in prophecy. (B) Three characters are called Soothsayer in Shakespeare’s plays: a character also referred to as Philharmonus in Cym., and unnamed soothsayers in A&C and JC. For all the English derivation of the term, Shakespeare associates soothsayers only with the classical world. His soothsayers are all attached to Romanized cultures and Rome’s colonies. They operate in a variety of ways, speaking prophetically to public figures 169

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unsolicited, being called for a formal prediction, reading palms (like Launcelot Gobbo – see fortune) and interpreting the written predictions of others. Most famously, Julius Caesar is approached by one in a public place in JC: as Brutus sums up, when Caesar asks him what was said, ‘a soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March’ (1.02.19). Caesar dismisses the man as a ‘dreamer’, but his warning is amply borne out by subsequent events. Also correct in his predictions is the soothsayer in A&C. Called in to tell the fortune of the handmaid Charmian, as ‘the soothsayer that you [Alexas] prais’d so to th’ Queen’ (1.02.3) this man is regarded by the courtiers as an palmreading entertainer. But his prophecy is evasive and foreboding ill – whilst he says that Charmian will live longer than Cleopatra, this turns out to be time measured only in minutes, and her enquiries about marriage and children are met with stonewalling, for she will die unwed and childless. The soothsayer will only say that she has seen the best of her fortune, and Charmian dismisses his prophecy by saying that she forgives him for a witch – i.e. that she believes he has no magical skill. He turns his attention to her colleague Iras, but says that her fortune is the same. The women’s bawdy jokes with each other and Iras’s taunt to Charmian that ‘you cannot soothsay’ (1.02.51) are touching banter, for most readers and viewers will know that they are doomed and that the soothsayer’s foreknowledge is indeed the truth (see foresee/foretell). Soothsaying prophecies almost always come true in the plays, since prophecy offers a good narrative signpost and its fulfilment is dramatically satisfying. One of the most curious episodes of prophecy in Shakespeare’s plays counterpoints his usual tendency towards endorsing the operation of prophecy, however. It is introduced with the line: ‘Good my lord of Rome,/Call forth your soothsayer’, in Act 5 of Cym. (5.05.426–7). The addressee is the Roman general Lucius, and his soothsayer Philharmonus is asked to offer a reading of a prophetic book handed to the Briton Posthumus during a dream/vision of the god Jupiter. It is a cryptic text and Philharmonus works hard to make its riddles fit the play’s denouement very well – his advantage being that the surprise ending (the return of the apparently dead, return of lost heirs, etc.) has already been played out. When as a lion’s whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty. (To Posthumus) Thou, Leonatus, art the lion’s whelp; The fit and apt construction of thy name, Being Leonatus, doth import so much. 170

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(To Cymbeline) The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter, Which we call ‘mollis aer;’ and ‘mollis aer’ We term it ‘mulier:’ which ‘mulier’ I divine Is this most constant wife; who, even now, Answering the letter of the oracle, Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp’d about With this most tender air …. The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, Personates thee: and thy lopp’d branches point Thy two sons forth; who, by Belarius stol’n, For many years thought dead, are now revived, To the majestic cedar join’d, whose issue Promises Britain peace and plenty (5.05.435–58)

The context is a pagan one, and this may encourage Shakespeare in his decision to make the soothsayer a figure of fun – his exegesis is only true because his interpretation comes after the fact. The soothsayer’s reading is thus controversial, as is another prophecy of his own in Act 4, Scene 2 that he interprets incorrectly. He tells Lucius that: Last night the very gods show’d me a vision – I fast and pray’d for their intelligence – thus: I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d From the spongy south to this part of the west, There vanish’d in the sunbeams; which portends, Unless my sins abuse my divination, Success to th’Roman host. (4.02.346–52)

He is quite wrong: the Roman forces are defeated. It might be argued that in the longer term context of the play, there is a kind of Roman victory in that Romans and Britons are reconciled and King Cymbeline resumes paying tribute to Rome – indeed Philharmonus suggests this in the last scene. But this hasty reinterpretation stretches out interpretative skills in much the same way that Philharmonus’ are stretched by Posthumus’ book, i.e. beyond credibility. Philharmonus’ description of a soothsayer’s preparation to receive a vision is interesting, linking with the practices of early modern Christians who also fasted and prayed whilst awaiting divine interventions. But overall, soothsaying in Cym. appears to be mocked as unreliable. It is politically useful at the play’s end, but it is a fraud. (C) Examining Cym.’s soothsayer’s reading of Posthumus’ prophecy in the light of contemporary religious debate, Maisano (2004) points out that his interpretation is based solely on the text, not on the accompanying vision. He links this separation of visual-verbal to Catholic-Protestant theological divisions, emphasis and doctrine. Philharmonus’ interpretations are also discussed in Rogers (1960) and Gibson (2013), 171

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the latter in its pagan context. See also Smith (1958) and Nordstrom (2007) on judicial astrologers (astronomers) and the wisdom of fools, among whom Philharmonus might possibly be numbered. Sorcery See also: witchcraft, Joan La Pucelle, Sycorax, Caliban, Ariel, spirit, art, magician, wizard, witch, conjuror, fiend, prophecy, damnation Sorcery is witchcraft, the word deriving from the French for a witch or wizard, sorcière or sorcier. True to its etymology, Shakespeare speaks of ‘French conjurors and sorcerers’ in 1 HVI (1.01.26) and ‘that damned sorceress’ Joan La Pucelle, who practices ‘art and baleful sorcery’. Eventually she becomes ‘that sorceress condemn’d to burn’ (3.02.38, 2.01.15, 5.04.1), though it is for heresy rather than witchcraft that the historical Joan was executed. Her sorcery seems to consist of a pact with fiends, which allows her to manipulate the course of the war with the English and prophecy accordingly. But its exact operation is unclear. It was a catch-all term employed in Medieval indictments and it remains so in 1 HVI. In Temp., sorcery is equally opaque. Although Prospero also refers to his magic as art and is widely regarded as a magician, he is described by his slave Caliban as ‘a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath/Cheated me of the island’ (Temp. 3.02.43). ‘By sorcery he got this isle’ he repeats (3.02.52). Meanwhile Prospero accuses his dead rival, the witch Sycorax, of ‘sorceries terrible’ (1.02.264). The accusation against her sticks because no one refutes it, but Prospero’s spirit Ariel tells Caliban he is lying about Prospero’s sorcery. Since Sycorax is already gone and Prospero is defended from the accusation, Temp.’s sorcery retreats from our view at every turn. It is the same in Err.: Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse fear that Ephesus is full of ‘dark-working sorcerers that change the mind’ (1.02.99) and also that, paradoxically, ‘Lapland sorcerers inhabit here’ (4.03.11). Lapland is a long way geographically from Greece, but its witches were thought to be especially potent. So when Antipholus and Dromio meet a courtesan who appears to have extraordinary knowledge of their affairs, she is accused: ‘thou art, as you are all, a sorceress’ (4.03.66). But the sorcery that they imagine is simply mistaken identity and coincidence. Sorcery is a label used to define others, then, and often it cannot be more clearly imagined than that. Olivares (1992), like Ariel, defends Prospero from the name ‘sorcerer’ (although Shakespeare has never clearly defined that term). Blanpied (1975) explores La Pucelle’s sorcery, whilst Maus (2000) offers a sophisticated theoretical overview of sorcery and subjectivity in the period. Southwell, John See also: Eleanor Cobham, fiend, Asmath, Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain, John Hume, image magic, astronomy, conjuration, prophecy John Southwell is one of the co-conspirators in 2 HVI who help the Duchess of Gloucester, Eleanor Cobham, to conjure the fiend Asmath for the purposes of 172

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political prophecy. Southwell, along with Roger Bolingbroke, Margery Jourdain and John Hume, is arrested for his activities. Along with Bolingbroke and Hume, Southwell is sentenced to hang. Shakespeare has changed Southwell’s Christian name from that of the historical Thomas Southwell, physician to Eleanor Cobham, who was arrested as described in the play for conspiring to obtain astrological (astronomical) predictions and practice image magic with her. Southwell died in prison before he could be executed. Spell See also: charm, book, magic, Joan La Pucelle, Prospero, Witch of Brainford, witch, fairy, Titania, evil, Hecate, mountebank, witchcraft (A) A ‘spell’ in its magical sense is a set of words, gestures and/or actions used to produce a desired effect, as a charm. The spell was often of fixed form, taught by rote or read from a spell book or grimoire, whether silently, whispered or declaimed. Spell is a word from Old English, spel, which originally meant a story, speech or narration, and it is of Germanic origin. Its later evolution into a magical term suggests the power of story to change perceptions and influence events, as if by magic. (B) The words ‘spell’ and ‘charm’ are often used together or interchangeably by Shakespeare, as in Joan La Pucelle’s ‘spelling charms’ (1 HVI 5.03.31), ‘she works by charms, by spells’ (of the Witch of Brainford; MWW 4.02.177) and other examples. ‘Spell’ is used sparingly across his canon, with a rich variety of near-synonyms describing spell-casting processes. Most copiously, Prospero uses ‘spells’ in Temp. – although we do not hear them as words. They are thoughts or gestures or music rather than speeches, and whilst they may have been learnt from his book we do not see him reading them. Some have particular conditions of operation, he suggests, like silence: ‘hush and be mute/Or else our spell is marr’d’ (Temp. 4.01.126–7). At the end of the play he must, ‘untie the spell’ he has performed on his enemies (5.01.253) who are ‘spell-stopp’d’ (5.01.6), and by the epilogue he attributes the power of spell-casting to the audience as he abjures his own magic. If they do not set him free, he will be confined, ‘by your spell’ he tells them (epilogue 8). This implies that their ‘spell’ would be silence or catcalls instead of applause. Also seeking approval, Paulina in WT is concerned to state that ‘my spell is lawful’ (5.03.105) – this one also consists of music, this time with spoken instructions to a statue to awake and move. In fact the statue is a living person, so no magic is involved, but the audience do not know this, as Paulina speaks what appear to be magical words to a magical tune. Other spells might mean reciting words backwards. Witches were sometimes said to do this with prayers. Hero says (of Beatrice) in MAdo that she never saw a man but Beatrice ‘would spell him backward’ (3.01.61). This is a metaphor, since Beatrice is not an actual witch, and implies back-chat, running verbal rings around the unfortunate male. Spells could also be portrayed as dangerous. The fairy queen must be protected from them in MND: neither ‘spell nor charm’ shall come near Titania, although this

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would-be protective statement, a kind of counter-spell, does not work (2.02.17). Mac.’s witches practice evil spells which apparently only they know and can operate, part of their particular kit: ‘your vessels and your spells provide’ instructs Hecate (in what may be an interpolated scene; Mac. 3.05.18). Othello is accused of using ‘spells and medicines bought of mountebanks’ to seduce Desdemona (Oth. 1.03.61). This suggests that these spells were imagined as written items; certainly later cunning folk sold these, and contemporary plays like Thomas Heywood’s The Wisewoman of Hogsdon (c. 1604; London, 1638) show the kind of business they operated. In HVIII ‘the spells of France’ are fashions and foreign manners, which the Lord Chamberlain imagines effeminize the English court (1.03.1) and later the threat associated with the word deepens, for Wolsey is described as having ‘a witchcraft/Over the King in’s tongue’, although ‘his spell in that is out’ and he is about to fall from favour (3.02.18–20). Also in a political sense, Menenius’ name is described as ‘a spell, you see, of much power’ by the Watchmen in Cor. (5.02.96). Antony, who believes Cleopatra has betrayed him in battle, also refers to her as ‘thou spell!’ (A&C 4.12.30) although her political power over him is exercized by love as much as by words. (C) Cartwright (2007) argues that words and thoughts in Err. unexpectedly obtain magical agency, becoming spells, although the words preferred are others such as ‘conjure’. Uszkalo (2010) examines the Witch of Brainford as a trickster whose spells are likely to be fake. Mowat (1981) usefully surveys scholarship on Prospero’s spells, whilst Sarkar (1998) discusses magic in the sonnets. Muñoz Simonds (1995) discusses musical spells. Spirit See also: demon/daemon, devil, witch, magic, familiar, evil, conjuration, possession, damnation, conjuror, exorcism/exorcist, ghost, angel, fairy, witchcraft, Ariel, Prospero, Sycorax, mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs, Setebos, Caliban, urchin, Edgar, fiend, masters, Lady Macbeth, invocation, weird, Hecate, Joan La Pucelle, Eleanor Cobham, Asmath, Owen Glendower, goblin/hobgoblin, King Hamlet, hell, Banquo, Antipholus of Ephesus, Julius Caesar, Puck, Oberon, circle (A) ‘Spirit’ was a difficult-to-define term in the early modern period, as it is now. According to the theory of humours, it could mean a kind of vapour or fluid in the body (natural spirits, vital spirits and animal spirits) which connected the body with the soul, and thus it came also to mean ‘temperament’, ‘sentiment’ or ‘disposition’, which was thought to be determined by humoral balance. Such notions of spirit moving within the body linked the word with animation, so that people who were angry, alert, brave or particularly active might be described as ‘spirited’. Conversely, if the spirits were inhibited in some way, the senses might be dull or damaged. The ‘spirit’ could also refer to the soul, imagined as the animating force in the body that departed as a person died. In each case the spirit hung confusingly between material and immaterial, embodied and disembodied. It was not clear whether spirits were made of air or ether

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or a substance that had no substance, no matter. Likewise it was warmly debated whether or not they could enter and move living or dead bodies or assume shapes made of matter or air in order to travel about in the world. Further, could they communicate with humans – and if so, how? Demonologically this was important, for the word ‘spirit’ often referred not to inner or soulful spirits but to demons or devils. These spirits might take up with witches in order to bring about harmful magic, perhaps inhabiting the form of a familiar, a demonic or animal spirit companion. Equally, spirits could be ambient evil creatures wreaking havoc independently in the world, possibly able to be summoned by conjuration. The affinity in substance (or lack of it) between souls, vital fluids and demons was profoundly troubling, and fed into anxieties about demonic possession and the ability of witches to cause bodily sickness and death. They might change the body from without or send spirits into its cavities and organs to destroy it from within and possibly even damn the soul belonging to the body. If this happened, a conjuror or exorcist might have to be called in to expel the alien spirit. Ghosts too could be regarded as spirits and these were also dangerously liminal. A final category of spirits was the angelic, but even angels could be imagined as good and godly or evil and demonic. Those who believed that they could hold conversations with spirits usually claimed to be communicating with angels, although a variant claim was that the spirits were fairies. The complexity of these overlapping, intersecting categories and the horrific consequences of confusion (damnation, witchcraft) made the notion of spirit central to early modern demonology and the word ‘spirit’ a term fizzing with dangerous, anxious energy. (B) Temp. harnesses this energy most obviously among Shakespeare’s works. One of its central characters, ‘delicate Ariel’ (Temp. 1.02.442, 4.01.49) is a spirit, and other actors also perform the roles of spirits, dancing and playing in a masque. Ariel’s epithet ‘delicate’ establishes his delightfulness (the contemporary meaning of the word) although it also suggests a fine, immaterial nature in the modern usage of the word. Prospero tells him, speaking of the witch Sycorax, that ‘thou wast a spirit too delicate/ To act her earthy and abhorred commands’ (1.02.272–3), so that the word carries associations of ethical discrimination, a rightly-finicky goodness. Ariel is the elemental antithesis of earthiness and evil, then, literally aerial and listed as an ‘ayrie spirit’ in the Folio’s dramatis personae, yet somewhat confusingly he also appears as a water nymph (see mermaids/sea-maids/sea-nymphs), a flame and a harpy in the play. He has also been a witch’s familiar, although as we have seen he was apparently neither evil nor obedient. Because he defied her, we are told, Sycorax imprisoned him in a tree trunk with the help of ‘her more potent ministers’ (275; other spirits? Her ‘god’ Setebos?), and Prospero freed him – but only to enforce his obedience in carrying out new magical work, a bondage against which Ariel strains throughout the play. In his emergence from the tree, he seems like a dryad or hamadryad, female tree spirits of Greek mythology. Naiads, related water spirits, are also mentioned in Prospero’s masque in Act 4, Scene 1. But there are no answers about Ariel’s ultimate origin. He seems to wander through the elements and the natural world, and delights in the freedom this offers him. 175

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Ariel is addressed as Prospero’s ‘spirit’ throughout – ‘my brave spirit’ ‘that’s my spirit!’ (1.02.206, 215) – suggesting that in some ways he could be seen as an avatar or component of Prospero, but despite this possessive language it is clear that he is an independent being. Nevertheless, the audience is encouraged to focus on the spirit as a part of each human being, a cohabitant of/with the body. Miranda initially mistakes the shipwrecked Ferdinand for a spirit and later comments on his beauty ‘if the ill spirit have so fair a house/Good things will strive to dwell with’t’ (1.02.459–60). In the next scene Antonio describes the counsellor Gonzalo as ‘a spirit of persuasion’ (2.01.235) which also hints at the potentially metaphorical nature of the spirit characters. It is Gonzalo too who, observing the guilt and resultant madness of his wicked companions, comments ‘now ’gins to bite the spirits’ (3.03.106) which is true in the sense that guilt was thought to corrupt the body and its spirits, but also in that the conspirators have just had their senses assaulted by the external spirit Ariel’s appearance as a harpy. This theatrical moment is important in defining spirits in the play (or attempting to do so) since the nearest the play comes to explaining where such spirits which are not part of the human body come from is Prospero’s vague statement that the actors in his masque are ‘spirits, which by mine art/I have from their confines call’d to enact/My present fancies’ (4.01.120–2). What these confines are is not clear, though it is apparent that the spirits have lived within something else, possibly a brook, tree or natural element – some are referred to as ‘naiades’ (4.01.128). They are described as creatures who run with ‘printless foot’ on the beach (insubstantial, then?) create mushrooms overnight or make the ring-like marks in turf which were often thought to be made by fairies (5.01.34–9). Above all, however, they are actors, who can play and embody other roles at will, changeably. They vanish offstage from the masque when Prospero’s mind is disturbed by his recollection of the conspiracy against him. For all the uncategorized, wild beauty of Prospero’s spirits, however, they also have a disturbing side. Although Ariel pities the shipwrecked humans on the island, he and his fellows do not seem to mind tormenting Caliban, Prospero’s slave. When Caliban cries ‘the spirit torments me. O!’ (2.02.64) he is referring to more shipwrecked human beings whom he has encountered and he makes the same mistake as Miranda in thinking they are spirits. But the fact that he expects spirits to hurt him (and later offers descriptions of their taking the shape of urchins to prick him and so on) makes him sound like a victim of demonic possession. He speaks most like Edgar in KL who, disguised as the possessed beggar Poor Tom, constantly complains of the torments of fiends inside and outside his body. And if Caliban sounds like a possession victim here, Ariel now sounds more like a witch’s evil familiar than before. Part of Prospero’s abjuration of his magic at the end of the play consists of an admission that he now has no ‘spirits to enforce’ (epilogue 14), so that here we see his spirits as a thuggish mob rather than ‘delicate’ creatures. Prospero, angry when Ariel demands his freedom, also refers to him as ‘malignant’ (1.02.257) and he is identified as a devil by the frightened shipwrecked travellers (215), giving us cause for concern about his nature. The spirits are described as ‘demi-puppets’ (5.01.36) and ‘weak masters’ (‘ministers’ 176

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or ‘controllers’, presumably of the elements, given the context; 5.01.41) terms that beg as many questions as they answer, suggesting a status only partly servile and partly free. As we have seen, another analogy for the spirits is actors – after the masque that they perform, Prospero tells us that ‘our actors …/Were all spirits’ (4.01.148–9) – and although this passage is in one sense a harmless designation (and even a profound meditation on the nature of life and theatre, as it is often read) it is important to remember that in the period acting was a suspect profession often regarded as involving deceit and sin. When Prospero praises Ariel’s ability to create illusion with the words ‘tricksy spirit!’ (5.01.226) there is a further hint of the problematic nature of the spirits: is their illusion at all demonic, given the strong association between trickery and the devil (explored in entries on devils and demon/daemon)? To keep fears about the demonic at bay, the play has to keep insisting that the spirits are (in a variant term) ‘sweet sprites’ (1.02.380) and that Ariel will, ‘do my spriting gently’ (1.02.298). But if the spirits were clearly identified as safely benign, it would lose much of its tension. Elsewhere in the plays and poems some spirits are imagined as definitively evil. Lady Macbeth wishes for her husband to come home so that she can ‘pour my spirits in thine ear’ and incite him to murder the King (Mac. 1.05.26). This might refer simply to her courage or fortitude. But then, witch-like, she calls on ‘spirits that tend on mortal thoughts’ to aid her, ‘unsex’ her, thicken her blood, replace her milk with gall, and fill her with ‘direst cruelty’. These are ‘murd’ring ministers’ who ‘in your sightless substances/… Wait on nature’s mischief’ (1.05.35–46). Her short but detailed and potent invocation imagines the spirits as invisible beings external to the human body, hovering in an unspecified place and state awaiting evil thoughts. Later, Macbeth is shown a vision by the weird sisters that he describes as ‘the spirits that know/All mortal consequences’ (5.03.4), perhaps the same creatures (Hecate calls them ‘artificial sprites’ 3.05.27). If they are the same, then they may invade the body, or be invited in, and corrupt its natural substances such as milk and blood – in which sense they enter among and transform humoral spirits. In 1 HVI another witch, Joan La Pucelle, also raises ‘familiar spirits’ (also referred to as ‘fiends’; 5.03.10) although she denies it: ‘I never had to do with wicked spirits’ (5.04.42). In 2 HVI, the rebel Jack Cade is told if he kills Lord Say he must be ‘possess’d with devilish spirits’ (4.07.75) and Eleanor Cobham and her confederates conjure the fiend Asmath and ‘wicked spirits from under ground’ (2.01.170). The idea that independent spirits might not respond to human conjuration forms a joke against Owen Glendower in 1 HIV. ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep’ he boasts, to be met with Hotspur’s mockery: ‘Why so can I, or so can any man./But will they come when you do call for them?’ (3.01.52–4). More metaphorically, ‘we talk with goblins, owls and sprites’ fear the Syracusian visitors to Ephesus in Err. (2.02.190). They refer to the apparently magical people that they are meeting, but they certainly equate spirits with more usually harmful and ill-boding creatures. ‘What spirit, what devil suggests this imagination’ asks Master Page, speaking about Master Ford’s delusions (MWW 3.03.215). Again, this could be a humoral spirit, if it were not for the suggestion of the demonic that follows it. The 177

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rapist Tarquin is compared to ‘some ghastly sprite’ in Luc. (451), perhaps a ghost or a devil but certainly terrifying and malicious. The shrew Katherina is described as having ‘a most impatient devilish spirit’ and being a ‘hilding [servant, contemptible person] of a devilish spirit’ (Shrew 2.01.151, 26). In 1 HIV ‘spirit’ appears as a near-equivalent of both fiend and devil: ‘that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower’ (2.04.369), whilst in R&J Juliet accuses her cousin’s murderer, Romeo, that ‘thou dids’t bower the spirit of a fiend’ (3.02.81). Spirits can also mean ‘ghosts’, unrestful human spirits that continue to walk the earth after their bodies’ death. Calling on the Scottish lords to get out of bed after Duncan’s murder, Macduff says that they should ‘as from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites’ (2.03.79) – their lives, he implies, have ended with the horror of Duncan’s killing and only their ghosts remain. But sometimes the ghostly meaning shades into other readings. In Ham. King Hamlet’s ghost is described as a spirit, but Prince Hamlet reasons that ‘the spirit that I have seen may be a/dev’l’ instead (2.02.598). Horatio, speculating on the nature of ghosts, says he has heard that at cockcrow ‘th’extravagant and erring spirit’ must return ‘to his confine’ (presumably, though not certainly, unlike the ‘confines’ of Prospero’s spirits; 1.01.154–5), and at Christmas ‘no spirit dare stir abroad’ (1.01.161). Here spirits may be deceased persons, but they are also sinful and on the verge of purgatory or hell. Is the ghost of the old king a ‘spirit of health’ (1.04.40)? We do not know. Macbeth offers us a quibble on the notion that a ghost is not the deceased person but only an imitation of them, when he cries to Banquo’s ghost ‘thou art too like the spirit of Banquo’ (4.01.112). Is this an evasion due to his guilt, or a demonological discrimination between Banquo himself, his essence, and this manifestation? In Err. it is further implied that living human beings can also acquire a spirit-double. When the twin Antipholuses (Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse) are seen together for the first time, the Duke comments that ‘one of these men is genius to the other … Which is the natural man,/And which the spirit?’ (5.01.334–5). A ‘genius’ was the guardian or guiding spirit, or personal deity, of a person in Roman religion: ‘thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee’ as it is put in A&C (2.03.20). In Err. it briefly appears that both the real and the daemonic persons are present, alarmingly side by side instead of properly nested like Russian dolls. Likewise in TGV Valentine, gloomy because he has been banished, denies that he is himself, prompting Proteus to ask ‘who then? His spirit?’ (3.01.195). This might mean a ghost, yet Proteus has not died and it might therefore be a reference to a daemon. An echo of the spirit-as-deity probably lies behind Antigonus’ prayer for Perdita that ‘some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens/To be thy nurses’ too (WT 2.03.186). The notion of genius may occur again at the end of JC. JC is a particularly haunted play, with the word ‘spirit’ signifying several different things. Cassius tells Brutus that his name ‘will start a spirit as soon as “Caesar’’’ (i.e. that it is as powerful a name; 1.02.147), the conspirators agree that ‘we all stand up against the spirit of Caesar’ (thus, his ‘ambition’ or ‘wilfulness’; 2.01.167), a sick man tells Brutus that ‘thou has conjur’d up/My mortified spirit’ (i.e. restored him 178

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to health; 2.01.324) and as the play moves toward punishment of the murderers we hear of ‘Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge’ (a vengeful ghost, so that perhaps Shakespeare had King Hamlet on his mind as he prepared to write Ham. in 1599–1600; 3.01.270). Finally, when he appears as a ghost, Julius Caesar says he is ‘thy evil spirit, Brutus’ (4.03.282), a claim that Brutus accepts, addressing him as ‘ill spirit’ (4.03.288; see also ‘angel’). Caesar is like Brutus’ genius, this time not a guardian but rather an enemy, an evil genius bringing bad luck and ultimately death. MND’s fairies are often called ‘spirits’: Puck asks the Fairy ‘how now, spirit, whither wander you?’ (2.01.1) and is told that, Ariel-like, the spirit wanders freely over hill and dale, through bush and briar, seeking dewdrops and serving in this case the Fairy Queen. In turn the Fairy calls Puck ‘thou lob of spirits’, lob being a term perhaps related to lubber and/or a fairy name like ‘hob’ (see goblin/hobgoblin; 2.01.16). The Fairy Queen Titania calls herself ‘a spirit of no common rate’ (3.01.154) and promises her human lover Bottom that ‘thou shalt like an aery spirit go’ (3.01.161), with foreshadowings of Ariel. There are more dangerous spirits in the play, according to Puck, ‘ghosts’ who are ‘damned spirits all,/That in crossways and floods have burial’ (3.02.382) although replying Oberon is explicit that ‘we are spirits of another sort’ (388). Even so, Puck is called a ‘shrewd and knavish sprite’ although his knavery consists only of frustrating household tasks, frightening maids and leading travellers astray (2.01.33). The conjuration of spirits appears as sexual metaphor in HV (‘conjure up the spirit of love in her’ 5.02.289) and R&J (‘raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle’ 2.01.24). It is also associated with sex, and is gendered, in the Son. where the poet imagines ‘Two loves I have of comfort and despair,/Whom like two spirits do suggest me still,/The better spirit is a man right fair,/The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill’ (Son. 144 and repeated in PP 2.4). Likewise, Coriolanus calls to ‘possess me/Some harlot’s spirit’ when he is forced to speak persuasively to the populace (Cor. 3.02.112). The spirit as an evil angel, combating good suggestions with wicked temptations, recurs in KL: ‘let not my worser spirit tempt me’ (4.06.218). Here too, the supposedly mad Edgar, disguised as a possessed beggar, is mistaken for a spirit: ‘here’s a spirit .../A spirit, a spirit! He says his name’s Poor Tom’ (KL 3.04.39–42). Certainly an appearance of possession (or obsession, when the attacking evil spirit remains outside the human body) is the effect that Edgar is trying to create, although he does not mean to be taken for a spirit himself. Later he does masquerade as a ‘fiend’ to cure his father of suicidal thoughts (4.06.72). Harassing spirits appear elsewhere too. Cressida pants ‘as if she were fray’d with [frightened by] a spirit’ (T&C 3.02.32). ‘Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light’ Berowne reminds us in LLL (4.03.253, playing on 2 Corinthians 11:14 where it is stated that Sathan himself can appear as an angel of light). What appears to be a good spirit may actually be a bad one, waiting to claim a soul. The notion of haunting or possession also informs Imogen’s claim that when she cannot get rid of Cloten, ‘I am sprited with a fool’ (Cym. 2.03.139). Some possessing spirits are, of course, unproblematically holy. The King tells Helena that ‘in thee some blessed spirit doth speak’ (AWW 179

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2.01.175), although Joan La Pucelle’s supposedly Christian ‘spirit of deep prophecy’ (1 HVI 1.02.55) turns out to be demonic. (C) Ariel has received the most attention as a spirit in the plays. Johnson (1951) discusses his nature as being formed by both Biblical notions of spirits as binary, either good or evil, and Paracelsian theories of spirits as elemental and natural. He explores Biblical names (like many angelic names, Ariel ends in ‘el’) and suggests a benign or neutral motivation for him. However, he points out that Ariel is controlled as an elemental servant rather than having agency himself – thus Paracelsian. Brokaw (2008) highlights Ariel’s constant shapeshifting within the play, questioning his ontological status and ‘his’ sex. She examines Ariel’s ‘ayrie’-ness, ‘delicacy’ and ‘tricksy’ nature, arguing that it is impossible to reconstruct original performance guidelines from such ambiguous terms. Moore (2006) examines matter and spirit in Temp., and see also Mowat (1981) and Davidson (1978) on Ariel as a spirit commanded by Prospero’s magic. Nichols (2007) discusses Puck and Ariel as harlequins. Assmann (2003) looks at spirits across Shakespeare’s plays and see also Smidt (1996). Joseph (1961) and Maguin (1972) discuss Ham.’s ghost in the light of contemporary theory on spirits. Caro (2000) discusses evil spirits in Mac. as genii in human and spiritual form. Sluhovsky (2007) discusses spirit-possession and exorcism in the period, whilst Paster (2004) provides an overview of humoral spirits. Star See also: astronomy, planet, fate, possession, destiny, blasting, fortune, nativity, Malvolio, auspicious, Prospero, magic, Edgar, eclipse (A) The word ‘stars’ was used imprecisely, and referred not just to the fiery heavenly bodies but also to the planets, comets and other astronomical phenomena. Because astrologers (see astronomy) believed that these influenced human life and terrestrial events, particularly the pattern of ‘stars’ present in the sky when a person was born (see nativity), the term also came to be a synonym for fate, destiny or fortune, and for a person’s social rank or temperament. (B) In Temp. we are told that ‘a most auspicious star’ is currently affecting Prospero’s destiny and this prompts him to take magical action, precipitating all the events of the play (1.02.182). Similarly, a number of characters trace their temperaments or status explicitly to starry influence: ‘there was a star danc’d, and under that I was born’ is how Beatrice explains her wit in MAdo (2.01.335), whilst Helena tells Parolles ‘you were born under a charitable star’ (AWW 1.01.191) although he, the would-be hero, prefers to think that it was Mars. Posthumus’s birth under the influence of the planet Jupiter is commented upon by the god Jupiter in Cym.: ‘our jovial star reigned at his birth’ (5.04.105). Romeo and Juliet are ‘star-cross’d lovers’ (i.e. the stars opposed their love from the moment of their births; R&J prologue 6). Stars could also turn malign during life: Edgar, pretending to be a possessed man, prays for Lear ‘bless thee from … star-blasting’ in KL (3.04.59). ‘In my stars I am above thee’ Olivia supposedly tells

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Malvolio in a letter that he thinks is from her (TN 2.05.144). He is delighted that his employer seems to be in love with him: ‘Jove and my stars be prais’d!’ (2.05.172), he says, referring to the Christian God as well as the heavens (Malvolio is a puritan). The stars are often portrayed as potent, therefore, but their influence is elsewhere incisively questioned. Cassius is aphoristically explicit with Brutus in inciting him to rebellion: ‘the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in our selves, that we are underlings’ (JC 1.02.140–1). In KL, the villainous but intelligent Edmund offers a full refutation of the stars’ power: ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune – often the surfeits of our own behaviour – we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars’ and so on (1.02.118–21). Yet those who pretend to believe in the stars’ power but in fact do not are also shown to be corrupt. In V&A ‘the star-gazers’ (509; i.e. ‘astrologers’), are portrayed as claiming credit for good events when they have predicted only bad ones. In the Son. Shakespeare actively encourages ambiguity about whether or not the stars do influence behaviour and events: in Son. 14 the speaker commences ‘not from the stars do I my judgement pluck’ (Son. 14.1) whilst in 15 ‘the stars in secret influence comment’ (Son. 15.4).The latter phrase is deliciously vague. (C) On astronomy in general see Camden (1933), who explores arguments for and against judicial astrology, Sondheim (1939), Dean (1924), McIntosch (1969) and Smith (1958). Maisano (2004) discusses the vision of Jupiter in Cym. as an astronomical one in both occult and scientific senses, on which see also Usher (2003). J. C. Smith (1982) examines the stars’ influence in R&J. Supernatural See also: superstition, witch, weird, prophecy, Banquo, ghost, witchcraft, soothsayer, fairy, devil, exorcism/exorcist, possession, foresee/foretell, alchemy (A) The ‘supernatural’ – literally, above or beyond the natural – covered a wide range of happenings and appearances which could be attributed to a force or forces beyond ordinary understanding. Such matters as ghosts, the operation of witchcraft, soothsaying or the existence of fairies and related creatures could not be explained scientifically, or at least not easily and authoritatively. They did not seem to conform to the laws of nature, as defined in natural philosophy. It was not clear how either God or devils were involved in creating or controlling them. Thus they became the province of theologians, demonologists and those early modern natural philosophers who were dissatisfied with existing discussions of supernatural phenomena and wished to re-examine and often reclassify them. In contrast with early writers on Shakespeare and the ‘supernatural’ like Lucy (1905), scholars today often prefer the word ‘preternatural’ to describe such phenomena, since this suggests an event outside the usual course of nature, but not wholly beyond it. This accurately reflects early modern demonologists’ insistence that even the devil was not able to operate outside the laws of nature. Anything truly supernatural was a miracle (even that definition was contested), and these could only be worked by God.

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But miracles did not fit into the Protestant world of early modern England. The cessation of miracles was a Protestant commonplace, suggesting that modern people should not expect extraordinary feats, prophecies, possessions and exorcisms, and resurrections to occur in their communities. To expect these miracles was superstition, and incompatible with a reasonable, literate faith. In this view, miracles had happened in Biblical times to help establish the Christian religion, but they were no longer needed, had ceased and anything claiming to be miraculous should be treated as fraudulent where it appeared. Powerful churchmen like Samuel Harsnett and Richard Bancroft used the argument of the cessation of miracles to crush sectarian opponents – puritan and Catholic exorcists, would-be prophets – who challenged their doctrine or, more perniciously, attempted to instigate large-scale witch trials. Thus the notion of the supernatural was theologically and scientifically complex; nevertheless, Shakespeare uses the term infrequently but boldly. (B) Shakespeare uses the word ‘supernatural’ to describe the prophetic activity of the witches or weird sisters, whose ‘supernatural soliciting’ of Macbeth and Banquo consists of an apparent foreseeing of their futures (Mac. 1.03.130). He also discusses at surprising length the attempts to demystify or disenchant the early modern world when Lafeu opens an early scene in AWW with a statement: They say that miracles are past: and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear (2.03.1–7)

The context is Helena’s unexpected and apparently ‘heavenly’ cure of the sick King, when physicians had determined that according to scientific understanding he would die (2.03.23). However well-meant, then, the reductive, scientific and Protestant rejection of past beliefs in preternatural and miraculous events is questioned by Lafeu’s incisive comments. Modernity, for him, has diminished wonder, without enhancing rational knowledge. The supernatural and causeless should not be rendered familiar. Even fear is to be prized when it recalls human beings to the unknowableness of the universe. Claims to certain knowledge about supernatural phenomena are only ‘seeming’, deceptive or self-deceptive. It is these which are fraudulent, and it is hard to avoid seeing Lafeu’s comments as a direct retort to Protestant churchmen like Harsnett, from whose A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603) Shakespeare took his devils’ names for KL. If this is the case, he may have been reading Harsnett in 1604–5 when AWW is thought to have been written. (C) Walker (1988) discusses the boundaries of the supernatural and miraculous in early modern thought, as do Cameron, (2010), McShane and Walker, (2010), eds, Davidson (2012), and more broadly Coudert (2011); see also the chapters in Vickers (1984), ed.,

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for discussions in the contexts of alchemy, demonology, etc. Enright (1995) provides examples of supernatural events, including in Shakespeare. Mincoff (1992) discusses the sense of wonder, and its importance to Shakespeare in his late romances, on which see also Lim (2001). Yonglin (1991) examines modes of address to supernatural beings in Shakespeare’s works; Banerjee (1999) focuses on Mac.; Chaudhuri (1990) attempts to distinguish differing levels of certainty in the form and designation of supernatural creatures, whilst Ferguson (1966) posits more continuity between plays and Hughes (1980) examines the interplay between received wisdom on the topic and Shakespearean invention. Rozett (1988) reads supernatural phenomena as mental projections in Ham. and Mac. especially, on which see also Wisniewska (2002). Hibbs and Hibbs (2001) explore the influence of Aquinas’ thought on the supernatural in Mac. whilst Kranz (2003) studies the witches’ linguistic patterns as enhancing the sense that they are not human or natural. Lemercier (2001) argues that the supernatural helps audiences to negotiate changing early modern ideas of divine magistracy and justice in several plays. Superstitious See also: supernatural, Herne, Julius Caesar, vision, dream, prophecy, bewitched, magic, witchcraft, witch, Cassandra, oracle (A) ‘Superstition’ was a label given to beliefs regarded as irrational, excessive or foolish. The term was often applied by Protestant theologians to Catholic beliefs and practises, such as crossing oneself or genuflecting to the altar – such customs, they argued, had no rational cause or Biblical sanction, and they were therefore empty distractions from true piety. The word could also be applied to beliefs about magic or witchcraft, for example that drawing blood from a witch by scratching him or her would cure a bewitched person. This had no scientific merit or religious significance, opponents argued, and thus fell into the same category as genuflection. The term ‘superstition’ thus always referred to someone else’s beliefs or mistaken beliefs from which the speaker had moved on, which were being attacked as old-fashioned, Catholic or stupid. Reginald Scot, in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584) was particularly outspoken in his denunciation of superstition. The use of the word continued in Shakespeare criticism of early folklorists such as Thiselton Dyer (1884), but is not now used because of its perjorative overtones. (B) Given his spirited dramatization – through Lafeu in AWW – of a defence of miracles and the supernatural in general, it is interesting to find Shakespeare circling the related word ‘superstition’ with a mixture of indulgence and contempt. Uses of the word focus on it as a contested term. ‘Do not say ‘tis superstition’ says Perdita in WT (5.03.43), before asking for a blessing from a statue of her mother Hermione (an image evocative of Catholic attitudes to figures of the Virgin Mary, dismissed by Protestants as Mariolatry). Earlier Antigonus, reluctant to accept a vision or dream of the same supposedly dead Hermione as offering advice, resolves against his better judgement,

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‘for this once, yea, superstitiously’ to accept it (3.03.40). He is right to do so since his actions will help Perdita to find her way home sixteen years later as prophesied by an oracle, although he gets no good of his decision himself, being eaten by a bear. In another suggestively Catholic context, in HVIII Queen Katherine blames herself for her dutifulness to the King – born ‘out of fondness, superstitious to him’ (HVIII 3.01.131) – but is regarded as an admirable character for it. The word is surely linked here to her historical status as an opponent of reformist religion, her Spanish Catholicism swept aside in favour of the Protestant faction at Henry’s court. Usages like these – that stress the fondness or foolishness of superstition, yet contradictorily its utility and rightness as a guide – abound in other contexts too. Cassius notes that Julius Caesar, formerly impatient with such ideas, ‘is superstitious grown’, but Caesar is right to attend to signs of his coming murder (JC 2.01.195). The Trojan Cassandra too is dismissed as a ‘foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl’ for her entirely correct prophecies (T&C 5.03.79). In TNK we are told of Arcite’s fall to his death from an all-black horse, thought to be unlucky ‘which superstition/Here finds allowance’ as Pirithous concludes (5.04.53). But in MWW ‘the superstitious idle-headed eld’ (4.04.36) are mocked for retelling an old tale of Herne the hunter as a truth. ‘That’s your superstition’ says Pericles dismissively, when told that a dead body must be removed from a ship before a storm will abate (Per. 3.01.50). Later in the same play Cleon is ridiculed by Dionyza as ‘like one that superstitiously/Doth swear to the gods that winter kills the flies’ (i.e. mistaking a natural event for one with supernatural significance; 4.03.49). Superstition, then, is often endorsed in several plays which require prophetically envisioned events to play out poetic justice, but not universally so. (C) Bertram (2004) discusses Shakespeare’s awareness of the rejection of beliefs in magic and witchcraft as superstitious; for example, in his reading of Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft which sweepingly and often insultingly grouped all undesirable beliefs under that heading. Mason (1997) discusses Margaret’s prophecies and curses in RIII, documenting the tension between scepticism and superstition in the play. Vanita (2000) explores nostalgia for Catholicism in WT with its emphasis on feminine power, here attacked by patriarchal kingship after the Reformation manner. This is a context also discussed by Jensen (2004), Laroque (1982) and Gash (1998) with reference to magic, folklore and calendar customs. On superstition on the stage see McCarthy and Theile, (2013) eds. Sycorax See also: witch, Ariel, spirit, Caliban, Prospero, magician, evil, hag, magic, demon/ daemon, devil, Setebos, Medea, devil’s dam A witch born in ‘Argier’ (probably Algiers in North Africa) and deported from there for presumably magical crimes, some time before the beginning of Temp.. Sycorax is not executed for her crimes because she is pregnant and once she is landed on an uninhabited island she gives birth to her son Caliban. She also finds spirits present

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on the island, including Ariel, whom she enslaves and tries to force into helping her with evil tasks. Ariel refuses and she traps him inside a tree as a punishment. Sycorax, once a young, blue-eyed and fertile woman, grows into an old and bent hag, then dies, leaving Ariel trapped and Caliban the inheritor of ‘her’ island. Yet all of these pieces of information about her are recalled for the audience by Ariel and Caliban, and they are framed through coerced repetition of the story to Prospero, a successor magician exiled from his Italian dukedom by rebels and washed up on the island long after Sycorax’s death. He perceives Sycorax’s magic as evil, whilst thinking his own benign, and he has claimed rulership over the island in place of Caliban, so he demonizes Sycorax accordingly. But, like Sycorax, he is an exile who makes use forcibly of the services of Ariel and performs a number of unpleasant acts including causing a shipwreck, inflicting torture and creating terrifying illusions that drive others to distraction. Many viewers and readers have thus questioned his version of events, as a picture elicited by interrogation from Ariel and Caliban and shaped by his own colonialist desires. They have pointed instead to his similarity to Sycorax. Sycorax is an entirely absent and elusive character, never present onstage, but spoken of frequently. Her name is of opaque origin, perhaps referring to the Greek name for a raven (corax). She is critically frustrating, therefore, particularly since she is accused of various sensational, unnatural crimes including sex with devils, a fantasy associated with writers such as Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger in their Malleus Maleficarum (Speyer, 1487) and she cannot respond to these charges. Her son Caliban tells us that she worshipped a god named Setebos, who might be that ‘devil’. But he adds that Setebos’ and his mother’s magics were both inferior to Prospero’s and Setebos is not present in the play either. Responding to this lack, Orgel (1984) discusses Sycorax in the context of absent and defamed women in the play, whilst Marcus (1996) goes further, proposing a beautiful and potent Sycorax who even after her death constitutes a threat to the patriarchal magic of words and deeds. She suggests that Sycorax is modelled on the classical witch Medea (whose lines from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses [Book 7; 8 AD] Prospero paraphrases in Act 5, Scene 1, giving him another link with Sycorax if she is Medea). Sachdev (2000) examines the exotic and subversive significance of Sycorax’s African origin on which see also Busia (1989), whilst Purkiss (1996) analyses her among other early modern witches in drama, focusing on racial discourses. Frey (1979) discusses Sycorax and Setebos. These readings of Sycorax are based on textual quibbles, alternative interpretations of the limited information we are given or gaps into which, it is suggested, critics might write back to Prospero’s version of events. Until fairly recently, the standard reading was that of Kermode (1954) – that Prospero’s description of Sycorax is accurately damning, an interpretation which should not be overlooked.

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T Taking See also: evil, magic, star, fairy, witch, ghost, Herne, blasting, Edgar, demon/ daemon To ‘take’, in this sense, means to exert an evil magical power over a person or animal. Taking was an ambiguous term which could be applied to stars, fairies, witches or ghosts, though it also had non-demonological significance – such hazards as bad air could also ‘take’, or cause illness. In MWW, Herne (who could be a ghost or other kind of spirit) ‘blasts the tree [the oak with which he is associated] and takes the cattle’ (4.02.32), according to local stories. In A&C (4.02.37) Antony apologizes to Enobarbus for upsetting him with the phrase ‘the witch take me if I meant it thus!’ In KL Edgar (disguised as the demonically afflicted Poor Tom) offers Lear a benediction: ‘Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking!’ (3.04.59–60). But such magical harm was prevented from operation during the Christmas season, as Marcellus notes in Ham.: then, ‘no fairy takes’ (1.01.163). Third Witch See also: First Witch, Second Witch, fate, weird, witch, Banquo, destiny, prophecy, Harpier, familiar, spirit, supernatural, cauldron, mummy, eclipse Mac.’s Third Witch appears, as ‘3. Witch’ in the Folio stage directions, with the First Witch and Second Witch and she is the first to show the audience that the weird sisters’ appearance is linked to Macbeth’s fate. Once a time and place of next meeting are arranged, she notes that they are to meet with Macbeth there (1.01.7). She does not mention Banquo, although he too is to receive a prophecy from the witches. It is Macbeth’s destiny that is her theme. She is called away by her familiar spirit, here unnamed but whom we later assume to be Harpier. In Act 1, Scene 3 the Third Witch checks up on what the First Witch has been doing in their absence and is the first to notice the sound of a (presumably supernatural) drum, announcing the entry of Macbeth. She joins her sisters in the prophetic greeting of the two men. Most interestingly, in Act 4, Scene 1 the Third Witch is given the longest list of ingredients for the cauldron, and her ingredients are the most exotic: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf, Of the ravined salt-sea shark;

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Root of hemlock, digged i’th’dark; Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Slivered in the moon’s eclipse; Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips; Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-delivered by a drab … Add thereto a tiger’s chawdron (4.01.22–33)

These body-parts of creatures and people from far-flung places, some of which seem likely to be symbols of aggression, blasphemy, cruelty and infidelity, decrease the realism of the witches’ activities (where in Scotland would they find tiger entrails and where on earth dragons’ scales?) whilst emphasizing their supernatural mobility and power. In appearance, the Third Witch is (like the First and Second Witch) withered, wildly dressed and bearded (1.03.40–6), a woman but yet curiously masculine, human perhaps but yet capable of vanishing into air or earth or ‘hovering’ through the air (1.01.12, 1.03.80). Titania See also: Oberon, Puck, ass-head, fairy, spell, monster, enchantment, changeling, Circe, fortune Titania is the queen of the fairies in MND. Despite her powerful status, however, she is subjected to an unpleasant trick by her husband, the fairy king Oberon, who has his servant Puck cast a spell on Titania that makes her fall inappropriately in love. The object of her passion is a human weaver on to whose head Puck has added an ass-head to make him even more monstrous and presumably even more obviously beneath Titania’s usual notice. Titania receives her new love with delight and entertains him royally; probably we are meant to assume that she also has sex with the ass-headed man. Oberon, however, is not jealous. He is more interested in politics than sex and his motivation is to distract his wife from her determined assertion of her custody of a changeling child. When she has ceded the boy to him he orders Puck to lift the enchantment. Titania does not seem noticeably upset by the revelation, and the pair finish the play by blessing human married couples at a wedding feast. Shakespeare seems to have taken the name Titania from the titans of Greek and Roman mythology, suggesting her semi-divine standing and giving a name to the usually nameless fairy queen. His contemporary Edmund Spenser’s choice had been Gloriana (in his The Faerie Queene [London, 1590, 1596]), but that name was associated with the virgin Queen Elizabeth I and could not be used in such a risqué plot as Shakespeare’s. It is unusual to find the fairy queen the victim of a practical joke or deceit, since early modern con artists often used her name to lure gullible clients into parting with both their dignity and cash in order to get an audience with the fairy queen

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or some of her fairy gold. In a news pamphlet titled The Brideling, Sadling and Ryding of a Rich Churl (London, 1595) readers could see how Judith Phillips, a fortune-teller from Hampshire, persuaded a rich man that the fairy queen would help her find treasure if she was allowed to ride around on his back. Phillips then pretended she would consult with the fairy queen whilst he waited outside, and she stole the silver plate from his house. There were other similar stories, since cunning people often stated (and may have believed) that their magical abilities came from privileged access to fairy wisdom. Titania, then, is especially unfortunate: an anti-Circe, forced to fall in love with a beast. Purkiss (2000) and Bain (2012) examine the sexual politics of fairies, and on tricksters see Rosen (1991) and Willard (2012). Toad See also: cat, Paddock, devil, familiar, witch, magic, evil Toads were thought to be unusually magical animals, and a likely shape for devils to take if they became witches’ familiars. They were believed to be venomous, spitting or urinating deadly jets at those who attacked them, as described in Edmund Topsell’s Historie of Serpents (London, 1608), under which name toads were classed by early natural philosophers. Aristotle, Pliny and others all commented on toads as poisonous. But they were also said to carry a stone in their head known as the toadstone, which contrasted with their supposedly ugly appearance and poisonous propensities. Shakespeare alludes to this magic stone in AYLI when Duke Senior compares the ‘sweet’ uses of adversity to the ‘precious jewel’ of the toadstone hidden in an ‘ugly and venomous’ creature (2.01.12–14). The toadstone was thought to be an antidote to poison so that the toad carried the remedy for its own ‘evil’ within it, which was a paradox exploited extensively in providential literatures emphasizing God’s provision for humankind. Demonologist-scientists like Giovanni Battista della Porta, the sixteenth-century author of Natural Magic (Naples, 1558), sometimes experimented with toads to try to discover their magical properties, but usually failed to find anything that they could describe as a toadstone or any evidence of demonic habitation. In Mac., one of the witches’ familiars, Paddock, is a toad – the word ‘paddock’ meant toad. The idea was a common one: in A Rehearsall Both Straung and True (London, 1579) are woodcut images of several toads as witches’ familiars. Adler (1981) offers a study of frogs and toads in Elizabethan literature including their magical aspects. Transformation (includes transmutation, transposition, trans-shape) See also: devil, witch, magician, Witch of Brainford, fairy, translation, sorcery, magic, ass-head, Circe, alchemy, transportation (A) The fear of being transformed, particularly into an animal, haunted accounts of witches and magicians throughout the early modern period, and self-transformation was also a skill attributed to these magical practitioners. Just as devils could morph into 188

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different forms, so, it was thought, could those who associated with them. Witchcraft trial accounts of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period spoke, rarely but earnestly, of witches who could change themselves into such creatures as horses and apes (e.g. A Rehearsall Both Straung and True [London, 1579]) whilst a lively account of a witch transforming a passer-by into a beast of burden was available to Shakespeare, along with many other magical details, in Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584). Here, in a story that perhaps drew on the Roman poet Apuleius’ The Golden Ass (second century ad) Scot retold a story from the French demonologist Jean Bodin’s works of a young sailor who was turned into a donkey. When he tried to return to his ship, his crewmates drove him back, and he was forced to return to his ‘owner’ (eventually being freed). It was this kind of transformation that created most anxiety – and its obverse, humour – in the works of demonologists. It harked back to Circe’s transformation of the companions of Odysseus into pigs in Homer’s The Odyssey (c. 850 bc). (B) Scot’s story is very likely to have had an influence on the ‘transformation’ of Bottom in MND, which is, however, not described using this word – rather, when Bottom appears with an ass-head on his body, Snout exclaims ‘O Bottom, thou art chang’d!’ and Quince prefers ‘thou art translated’ (3.01.104, 109). Previously they had feared him transported, but this is evidently worse. Other transformations into animals in Shakespeare appear solely as threatened or feared rather than actual magical feats. Falstaff exclaims against ‘how I have been transform’d’ (MWW 4.05.95) when, in disguise as the Witch of Brainford, he has been ‘recognized’ as her and beaten by her enemies. Later, in a play full of changes of heart, mind and appearance and speaking of supposed fairies, he shuns a Welsh one in particular, ‘lest he transform me to a piece of cheese’ (5.05.82). In 2 HIV 2.2.72 he is credited with magical powers himself, when the Prince notes that in corrupting the boy servant he had ‘given’ to Falstaff ‘the fat villain’ has ‘transform’d him ape’. Similarly, fearing Ephesian witches, Dromio of Syracuse claims that if it had not been for his faith and courage a suspected sorceress ‘had transform’d me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i’th’wheel’ (Err. 3.02.146). This reference to a human being made to serve a witch as a domestic animal is the closest Shakespeare comes to repeating Scot’s story in full. Dromio’s fear is a recurrent one: ‘I am transformed, master, am not I?’ (2.02.195) he queries elsewhere. Finally, in AYLI, courtiers exiled to the forest joke about the missing Jacques: ‘I think he be transform’d into a beast’ (2.07.1), suggesting the magical dangers perceived to lurk in wild places which were associated with werewolves among other threats. More seriously, but also more metaphorically, Othello’s Lieutenant Cassio berates his propensity to drunkenness, whereby ‘we ... transform ourselves into beasts’ (Oth. 2.03.292). Shakespeare, then, considers magical transformations as part of a continuum of self-wrought changes, which tend toward beastliness – then associated with a lack of reason and soul, lust, abasement and loss of dignity. Transformations can also be more positive, of course, but they are then sometimes less overtly magical. Variants on the theme of transformation are: transmutation as in Shrew (Induction.2.19) where Christopher Sly explains a change of status: ‘Am not I … 189

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by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd?’; transposition, as in Mac. (4.03.21) when Malcolm tells Macduff ‘That which you are my thoughts cannot transpose’ (see also MND 1.01.233); and the even more unusual usage ‘trans-shape’ as in MAdo (5.01.164) in which Don Pedro tells Benedick, of Beatrice, that ‘Thus did she … trans-shape thy particular virtues’. The first two usages are perhaps linked more to alchemical/chemical and linguistic transformation than outright magic – the latter sounds more witch-like in its emphasis on distortion and its gender politics. (C) Sidgwick (1908) connected Apuleius and Bodin with Bottom and see also Hare (1988); Cartwright (2007) discusses the magic of Err.; Wiseman (2004) explores forest dangers in the light of werewolf myths; Cheatham (1985) explores positive transformation in Shrew; Farrell (2008) discusses a positive but magical transformation in WT, associating Leontes and Hermione’s renewal with Paulina’s magic, as does Warner (2004). Translation See also: magic, Circe, Puck, transformation, ass-head, transportation Translation usually refers to the interpreting of foreign languages, but it had a related magical sense: it meant to change or transform. Bottom, emerging from the forest with an ass-head in place of his own, is told by his horrified friends ‘thou art translated’ (MND 3.01.119). The word is repeated by Puck, who describes Bottom’s change by using the name of the character he is playing in the drama they are staging: to Puck he is ‘sweet Pyramus translated’ (3.02.32). His friends had also feared that he had been transported. Warner (2004) discusses Bottom’s transformation in the context of classical and traditional tales of metamorphosis, such as those by Circe in Homer’s The Odyssey (c. 850 bc). Transportation See also: magic, book, ass-head, prophecy, witch, invocation, spirit, fairy, Lady Macbeth, translation, art, witchcraft, enchantment, transformation The notion of transportation is a vague one, but in some of its contexts it has what appears to be a magical aspect. The word can be used to suggest captivation in the imaginative sense, as for instance Paulina’s comment about Leontes as he views Hermione’s statue: ‘my lord’s almost so far transported that/He’ll think anon it lives’ (WT 5.03.69–70). But it shades into demonological meaning in the audience’s belief that Paulina might be exercizing some witchcraft or magical art. It also appears demonologically significant in contexts like Prospero’s magical books, in reading which he was ‘transported/And rapt in secret studies’ (Temp. 1.02.76), which recalls the effect of enchantment. The idea of reading as transporting recurs in Lady Macbeth’s claim that her husband’s letters about his meeting with the prophetic witches ‘have transported me beyond/The ignorant present and I feel now/The future in the instant’ (Mac. 1.05.56–8), a momentary impression of time travel linked to her transformation into a 190

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witch-like figure with her invocation of spirits. The most obviously magical usage is Starveling’s opinion of what has happened to Bottom in the fairy wood: ‘out of doubt he is transported’ (MND 4.02.4). Bottom is also described as being ‘translated’ and ‘transformed’ (3.01.119, 3.02.32), since what has actually happened is that his human head has been replaced with an ass-head. He is in the process of being seduced by the fairy queen, showing that whichever ‘trans-‘ prefix is preferred, each word relates to travel across or beyond a boundary. Shakespeare dictionaries differ in their reading of Bottom’s transportation: Crystal and Crystal (2002) choose to associate it with carrying away whilst Onions (1986) suggests transfiguration. Warner (2004) discusses Bottom’s metamorphosis and its implications.

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U Uncursing See also: cursing, damnation, accursed Logically, this term refers to the lifting of a curse. In RII King Richard heaps abuse and calls down damnation on three of his agents whom he supposes to have defected to his opponent. But he is told that they were instead killed trying to serve Richard: ‘uncurse their souls’ requests Scroop (3.02.137). Richard has no answer and no formula for uncursing results. His inability to correct his mistake suggests the frightening power of words in the play. Its curses are explored by Iizuka (2004). Unlaid See also: laying, devil, spirit, hell, Asmath, ghost To ‘lay’ is the opposite of raising when it is applied to devils and spirits; it refers to the putting down of the spirit, often seen as forcing it to return to hell (as with Asmath in 2 HVI). Laying also works on ghosts. But when it was not done, the spirit remained ‘unlaid’, as in the ‘ghost unlaid’ which threatens Imogen’s grave in Cym. (4.02.278). Wheatley (1916) discusses the unlaid ghost, which might walk and menace her, whilst Greenblatt reflects on the location of early modern ghosts (with particular reference to Ham.) and see the essays in Newton and Bath (2002), eds, for further contexts. This is an especially fugitive reference to a ghost: it is present only as an imagined threat, in a funeral song for a woman dressed as a man who is not even dead. Sofer’s (2012) complex notions of ‘spectral reading’, which he applies, for example, to theatrical artefacts which are potent but not physically onstage, might be applied to this flitting absent/present ghost described entirely in negative terms. Urchin See also: hedge-pig, spirit, witch, familiar, fairy, ouph, Prospero, Caliban, ghost, evil, hell, magic ‘Urchin’ meant hedgehog or hedge-pig (as in the ‘urchin-snouted boar’ in V&A 1105, which is being compared to a snuffling hedgehog), but also a spirit inferred to have taken or be able to take the form of a hedgehog. These were thought to be popular as witches’ familiars. Sometimes when Shakespeare uses the term in its demonological mode, he does not seem to be referring to hedgehog-shaped but to human-shaped spirits

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like fairies. Thus in MWW Mistress Page proposes that in order to frighten Falstaff her children should ‘dress/Like urchins, ouphs and fairies’ (4.04.50). Children dressed in rags were occasionally referred to as urchins by the mid-sixteenth century and this sense may be present here, although the main significance is the fairy one. The same kind of creature might be referred to in Temp. when Prospero threatens Caliban that ‘urchins/ Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,/All exercise on thee’ (1.02.326). The context is punishment, with cramps and pinches as other threatened pains, typical fairy assaults but ones that need fingers to carry them out. Caliban defies Prospero’s spirits, claiming that they cannot ‘fright me with urchin-shows’ (2.02.5), a speech in which he separately mentions ‘hedgehogs which/Lie tumbling in my barefoot way’ (2.02.10–11). Other tormentors here include apes and adders. The urchins of 1.02.326, then, because of their limited night-time operation – which recalls ghosts – and their hands – which suggest human shape – seem to be spirits in human-like form, not real animals. Since they can only work at night it might also be inferred that they are evil, being recalled to hell at dawn, although this would significantly demonize Prospero’s magic.

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V Vaughan, Sir Thomas (ghost) See also: Queen Elizabeth, Sir Richard Grey, Earl Rivers, ghost, cursing, dream, Lord Hastings, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York, Duke of York Sir Thomas Vaughan is a courtier allied to the political faction of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV. He is executed in RIII by the new king, Richard, as part of his destruction of the former Queen’s party on his accession. He reappears as a ghost, who curses King Richard. Vaughan was indeed executed in 1483, probably at Pontefract, where Earl Rivers and Sir Richard Grey, whose ghosts accompany him in King Richard’s dream, were also killed. The other ghosts haunting Richard are Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Clarence, Lady Anne, King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York and Richard, Duke of York. Vision See also: prophecy, dream, devil, demon/daemon, Banquo, ghost, King Hamlet, apparition, Joan La Pucelle, fiend, spirit, Puck, fairy, magic, soothsayer, Julius Caesar, Philharmonus, foresee/foretell, enchantment (A) Visions, from the Latin videre ‘to see’, are imaginary or preternatural sights, usually interpreted by the person who sees them as revelatory. They have been experienced as signs from the gods in both pagan and Christian contexts, and can be prophetic or inspiring, leading to great events. They are often related to dreams in discussion, but were distinguished from them in that visions happened whilst the seer was awake. But in the early modern period a major theme of demonological writing was that visions were untrustworthy. Although they could be sent by God, the devil was skilled in deluding the eyes as well as the other senses, so that ocular proof was not enough to determine the source and import of a vision. As well as demons, melancholia could be involved in producing visions that would lead the seer into sin. (B) It is in exactly this context in which Macbeth asks ‘is this a dagger which I see before me’ (Mac. 2.01.33) when a vision beckons him towards murdering King Duncan. He cannot grasp the dagger, so he continues to try to determine its nature: ‘art thou not, fatal vision, sensible/To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but/A dagger of the mind, a false creation/Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?’ (2.01.36–9). His vision of Banquo’s ghost later in the play revisits these questions, since no one else 194

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can see it. King Hamlet’s ghost is also referred to as ‘this vision’ (Ham. 1.05.137), in the context of questioning whether it is a devil or a truth-telling apparition. In 1 HVI (1.02.52) is a similar conflict: the Bastard claims that Joan La Pucelle is inspired by ‘a vision sent to her from heaven’, which turns out to be the work of fiends. In MWW Master Ford associates visions with this kind of delusion. Told that he is imagining his wife’s infidelity at the suggestion of a ‘spirit’, ‘devil’ or ‘distemper’, he meets with Falstaff who offers to act as a pimp to procure Mistress Ford, commenting triumphantly afterwards ‘is this a vision? Is this a dream?’ (3.03.190–3, 3.05.139). Some visions are therefore straightforwardly identified as deceptive, demonic or the product of humoral imbalance/madness. But nevertheless Shakespeare often links theatricality to beautiful and liberating visions and dreams, most obviously in the instructively titled MND at the end of which the audience are invited by Puck to think ‘that you have but slumb’red here/While these visions did appear’ (the actors and the play; 5.01.423–6). This would explain away the fairies or excuse a bad play, depending on what Puck means when he suggests that thinking of the play as a dream might ‘mend’ any way in which ‘we shadows have offended’. The play has previously suggested that the humans’ tribulations during it will seem ‘a dream and fruitless vision’ once magic juice has been applied to their eyes, correcting ‘error’ (3.02.368–71), but Bottom does not seem to consider his dream fruitless or erroneous. Awaking from a magically induced sleep, he remarks that he has ‘had a most rare vision’ (4.01.205) which he also calls a dream. He is so pleased with it that he suggests Peter Quince make a ballad of it, and indeed it is probable that he has become the lover and guest of the fairy queen during it – a wholly delightful experience for a merely human weaver. Likewise visions in Temp., though built of ‘baseless fabric’ (4.01.151) are ‘most majestic vision[s]’ (4.01.118) and prompt some of the play’s most stirring verse. Alonso voices both the delight and the fear of the visionary when, reunited with his son whom he thought dead, he doubtfully responds ‘if this prove/A vision of the island, one dear son/Shall I lose twice’ (5.01.175–7). Visions could be hard to interpret, like soothsaying and prophecy more generally. In JC Calpurnia has a dream that her husband’s statue ran with blood. Julius Caesar rightly fears the worst but the conspirator Decius Brutus disingenuously tells him that it was ‘a vision fair and fortunate’ symbolizing his sustenance of Rome (2.02.84). In Cym. too the soothsayer Philharmonus tells Lucius that ‘the very gods show’d me a vision’ which he interprets, wrongly, as foreseeing a Roman victory (4.02.346). (C) Arthos (1977) discusses visions and dreams in general whilst Clark (1997, 2007) explores visions as melancholic fantasies and demonic illusions in early modern demonology, including references to Mac., on which see also Huston (1983). Huston (1973) discusses Bottom’s stage movements as he wakes, which he argues dramatize the importance and seriousness of his vision by placing him centre stage, alone. Sofer (2012) proposes ‘spectral readings’ of present but absent artefacts like Macbeth’s visionary dagger.

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W Weird See also: destiny, fate, fairy, Banquo, supernatural, devil, foresee/foretell, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, sibyl Shakespeare uses the word ‘weird’ only in Mac. and only to describe the witches, also referred to as First Witch, Second Witch and Third Witch (or 1, 2 and 3 Witch) in the Folio stage directions. They are ‘weird sisters’ on a number of occasions (Mac. 1.03.32, 1.05.8, 2.01.20, 3.04.132, 4.01.136) and ‘weird women’ once (3.01.2). Yet in fact, he may not have meant ‘weird’ at all, for the Folio text reads ‘weyward’ and ‘weyard’, a very different-looking pair of words. Should we be discussing ‘wayward sisters’ instead of ‘weird’ ones, as Onions (1986) suggests? For him, ‘wayward’ is the appropriate term, for the sisters are ‘perverting’ the course of events. But because Shakespeare drew the characters from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1577, 1587) where Holinshed does use the phrase ‘weird sisters’, it has been reasonably imagined by editors from the eighteenth century (Lewis Theobald, 1733) onwards that Shakespeare intended to echo him. Holinshed was himself echoing both Andrew of Wyntoun’s The Orgynale Cronykil of Scotland (c. 1424) and John Bellenden’s English translation of Hector Boece’s Latin Scotorum Historiae as The Hystory and Croniklis of Scotland (c. 1540). Thus the word came to him via Scots dialect. Holinshed’s contextual discussion shows that he thought of the weird sisters who appear to Macbeth and Banquo in his version of the story as possibly fairies or three goddesses of destiny or fate, i.e. probably the norns of Scandinavian myth. There were three principal norns, Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld, who determined the fate or wyrd of individuals and uttered prophecies. Wyrd is the Anglo-Saxon term for fate or destiny but in Old Norse the word is the name of the first norn, Urðr. Thus these three norns were associated with past, present and future, and imagined as having power to affect events as well as simply foresee them (as Soanes and Stevenson (2005) debate). But there were also other norns which were more like Holinshed’s alternative suggestion for the nature of his weird sisters, that they were fairies. Purkiss (2000) points out that he conflates fairies with fates, and that Shakespeare may do the same in A&C 4.08.12 (see fate). This suggests further complex possibilities for the ‘weird sisters’, who are also, of course, witches (in which capacity they are discussed by Willis [1995] and Harris [1980] under the heading ‘weird sisters’). Another source for the play interpreted

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them as sibyls. Simon Forman, who saw Mac. in 1610 or 1611, thought them fairies or nymphs. Wheatley suggests that the weird sisters in Mac. are uncanny (he was writing in 1916 so that was then a new term), belonging to the supernatural and linked with the Scandinavian norns, whereas ordinary witches were human creatures in league with the devil. Muir (1981), Pilkington (1988) and Banerjee (1999) explore the ambiguities of the figures, whilst perhaps still the best summation of their refusal to be categorized is Dover Wilson’s (from his 1947 edition of the play): for him they are too much like witches to be norns, too much like norns to be witches. Thus the meaning of ‘weird’ is extremely unclear, as is the question of whether Shakespeare actually meant to use the word or not. Weird Sisters (see First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch) Witch See also: witchcraft, enchantment, Witch of Brainford, prophecy, devil, art, familiar, spirit, Joan La Pucelle, damnation, foresee/foretell, magic, evil, weird, John Southwell, John Hume, Margery Jourdain, Roger Bolingbroke, Eleanor Cobham, hell, bewitched, Banquo, Sycorax, aroint/avaunt/avoid, spell, Lady Macbeth, fairy, charm, fate, destiny, fortune, figure, cursing, First Witch, Second Witch, Third Witch, sibyl, demon/daemon, masters, Hecate, apparition, Circe, transformation, fiend, Medea, Asmath, Queen Elizabeth, Jane Shore, Lord Hastings, sorcery, Prospero, Sycorax, Caliban, toad, Setebos, angel, taking, soothsayer, conjuror, astronomy, cat, ban, cauldron (A) ‘A witch is one that worketh by the Devil or by some devilish or curious art, either hurting or healing, revealing things secret, or foretelling things to come which the Devil hath devised to entangle and snare men’s souls withal unto damnation’ – thus a pamphleteer writing of Northamptonshire witches in the early seventeenth century paraphrased the Essex minister George Gifford’s definition of the term ‘witch’ (The Witches of Northamptonshire [London, 1612] and Gifford, A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes [London, 1593]). But whilst there was thus a measure of agreement about what ‘witch’ meant, early modern writers were sharply divided about their nature and power. Of particular concern was how much the witch was in control of the magic that he or she believed to be his or her tool. Surely a wicked person would not be allowed by God to wield such force, especially if she were female (as were around 90 per cent of the witches whose indictments survive in early modern English legal records). The devil must surely be the creator of magical illusions that seduced witches into doing evil and then damned them; and he must be working by God’s licence, testing the good who were afflicted by witchcraft, and punishing the bad. Whatever their differences, this conclusion united almost all lateand post-Medieval demonologists, both Protestant and Catholic, and including King James VI and I in his Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597). Reduced to their simplest reading, then, witches were ideological constructions which explored the boundaries between God and the devil, power and impotence, mastery and submission.

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(B) Shakespeare’s portrayals reflect the divisions among demonologists accurately. Some of his witches – such as Joan La Pucelle in 1 HVI – fit broadly within Gifford’s definition. La Pucelle works by the devil or devils (or at least ‘familiar spirits’, which appear to be the same thing) and her art is thus devilish. It is also curious, since its operation is unclear, and it perplexes others: it may include prophecy, or the power to influence events such as battles or individual combats. La Pucelle’s own soul is brought into danger of damnation, and her accusers unhesitatingly believe her to be destined for hell. Although the seventeenth-century summary refers to ‘men’s’ souls, this is a cover-all term and women were thought to constitute the majority of practising witches, so that La Pucelle is quite neatly described by the classic definition. There is, indeed, something rather formulaic about her unmasking as a witch, as we shall see below. But others among Shakespeare’s witches range well beyond Gifford’s definition (Mac.’s weird sisters, for example) or lack some of its central ideological props (Temp.’s Sycorax). Witches (be)witch others across Shakespeare’s works (witch is both a noun and a verb in early modern usage): they are seen disporting themselves with familiars and performing magical acts whose reality and vileness are unquestionable. But the witches’ nature – their ontological status – is extremely confusing and questions about the origin of their power as well as possible mistake, disguise and illusion surround them. For all their complexity, Shakespeare’s three ‘weird sisters’ in Mac. are his most famous ‘witches’ (see First Witch, Second Witch and Third Witch for individual discussions). According to their own report, they are referred to as witches for the first time by the sailor’s wife who refuses to give one of them her chestnuts, crying instead: ‘Aroint thee, witch’ (1.03.8). This establishes them as operating at least partly within the usual demonological discourse of witchcraft accusation, in which charity denied prompts the witch to attack. Shakespeare knew Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), which argued that such formulaic stories often accused innocent people, but here he reproduces the typical episode non-ironically. There is no sympathy for the beggar: although the sailor’s wife has been uncharitable, her identification of the ‘witch’ is correct. The stage directions confirm the word ‘witch’ as a label. We are left in no doubt that the First Witch now means the woman’s husband to sicken and plans a spell or charm to effect that. She wants his ship to be caught in a storm, though she cannot sink it. The last detail limits the witches’ power (in Ham. too we hear that witches’ powers are circumscribed by God, in this case at Christmas time when no ‘witch hath power to charm’ [Ham. 1.01.163]). But it may also refer to another source for the play, King James’ Daemonologie, which focused on God’s supremacy in protecting his own. Despite this limitation, Mac.’s witches establish themselves as powerful presences, brandishing a severed thumb, talking of sailing in sieves, familiars, killing swine and flying through the air and setting themselves apart from other characters with their insistently rhythmic speech. They are described by Banquo as people who should be women but are bearded, look unlike earthly people, and are withered and wildly dressed. This liminality prepares us for their prophecy, which 198

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comes true during the play. But it leaves questions, since they are defined primarily negatively or as undefinable. It has been asked whether Mac.’s ‘witches’ are witches or not. They draw elements of their being from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (London, 1577, 1587) where they are described as fairies and also appear like the Scandinavian norns (see fate, destiny and weird). The scenes involving them also descend to us in a revised version. There are masque-like interpolations possibly taken from Thomas Middleton’s play The Witch (perhaps added a decade after the first production of Mac., according to Taylor and Lavagnino [2007] who have made the biggest claims for Middleton’s revision; The Witch survived in manuscript and was not published until 1778). Further, the witches may not be the only witches in the play. Lady Macbeth too is witch-like. She calls on ‘spirits’ to change her body and mind, unsexing her like the bearded sisters and promising to pour those spirits into her husband’s ear to inspire him to kill the king. In Act 3, Scene 5 we see the witches meeting Hecate, the Greek and Roman goddess of witchcraft. They may be responsible to her or to characters to whom the witches refer as their ‘masters’. The masters are apparitions of an armed head, a bloody child and a child crowned. These are perhaps demons, yet no clear explanation is given of their nature. As ‘witches’, the weird sisters can be read in relation to two related texts: a pamphlet account of the trials of the witches of North Berwick in (Newes from Scotland [Edinburgh, 1591]), and the Daemonologie written by King James partly as a response to the trials. James attended them because he was seen to be one of the witches’ targets. A ship carrying him from Denmark had experienced a storm blamed on their sievesailing magic – hence Mac.’s insistence that witches raise storms yet cannot sink ships, and that they sail in sieves. The king’s treatise was reprinted on his accession to the English throne (1603), and in 1604 his parliament brought into force a Witchcraft Act which redefined the crime. Thus Mac.’s witches are closely related to historical witches and to royal involvement in their prosecution. Despite drawing on the sceptical Scot and weaving further sensational fantasy around them, Shakespeare presents them as connected to recent news events and demonological commonplaces – as, in certain ways, realistic, documentary or real. Shakespeare had portrayed witches before in a way that sharply limited the opportunity for questions about their real existence. In 1 HVI in the early 1590s he brought a witch’s meeting with her familiars onto the stage. We first encounter Joan La Pucelle fighting the English hero Talbot, who greets her: ‘blood will I draw on thee – thou art a witch’ (1 HVI 1.05.6). Scratching a witch was thought to cure a bewitched person: has La Pucelle put a spell on Talbot to allow her to defeat him in battle? He asserts obliquely that Joan is a creature of the devil, promising to send her soul to ‘him thou serv’st’, but also refers to her as ‘devil or devil’s dam’ in the same scene, suggesting that confusion mingled with insult is his only response to such an effective threat. Once beaten, Talbot calls La Pucelle ‘a witch’, winning ‘by fear, not force’ (1.05.21) and she is referred to as ‘sorceress’ and ‘Hecate’ too (3.02.38, 64). In Act 5, Scene 3 we see her with the sources of her power, ‘familiar spirits’ that she has fed with her blood. 199

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They appear as mute actors, ‘fiends’, refusing to help despite offers of, first, a limb and, second, La Pucelle’s body and soul. When the spirits leave, she is immediately defeated. ‘See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows’ (5.03.34) jeers York, likening her to Circe as a transformer of men’s shapes. La Pucelle is to be burned at the stake and in a final humiliation is forced to alter her claims of virginity to a plea to be spared because she is pregnant, one that is rejected. Her last words are a curse on England that may be intended to refer to (and perhaps to cause) the civil wars to come. Certainly her words are powerful and, like the other witches, can be imagined as keeping us on her side throughout the action, but here, at the denouement, she is wholly exposed and defeated. It is not clear why Shakespeare left the revelation of La Pucelle’s fiends until Act 5. It is not a spectacular scene on the page, although the fiends were probably strikingly costumed and may have had interesting onstage activity. But they are silent. Until this scene, however, it had been possible to believe that the insults directed at La Pucelle were just that: that she was, for instance, simply a sibyl, to whom she is likened by the Bastard (1.02.56). Neither the play nor its sources help us decide how to receive the clarification that she is indeed a witch and a fornicatress. Holinshed’s Chronicles (the 1587 edition has the fullest account on which Shakespeare drew) depict La Pucelle as a virgin but a faithless witch and shameful cross-dresser; English translations of Seneca’s Medea are further sources. These echoes of the classical witch are ones that make La Pucelle more grandly magical, and give her the ruthless dedication to suggest lopping off a limb to retain her power, just as Medea butchered her brother. But there is a sense that the play falls rather disappointingly into line with patriotic demonization of the French heroine. In 2 HVI, another witchcraft scene is inserted, perhaps to recall La Pucelle. Here, a fiend (Asmath) is summoned by three male conjurors (John Southwell, John Hume and Roger Bolingbroke) and a female witch (Margery Jourdain, ‘the cunning witch of Eye’ [1.02.75]) on the orders of Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. Eleanor seeks knowledge of the future to help her husband’s career. She is ambitious and forward, recalling the mannish Pucelle. But although ‘Dame Eleanor gives gold to bring the witch’ (1.02.91), she is not one herself, in that she does not have a familiar (although she is described ominously, punningly, as ‘a woman of an invincible spirit’ [1.04.7]), or participate in magical rites. She simply looks on as the fiend is conjured. Margery Jourdain, however, is executed: ‘the witch in Smithfield shall be burnt’ (2.03.7) as a heretic, as well as a witch. The characters involved in this witchcraft episode are based on historical figures and, like the Macbeths, they draw attention to prophetic activities among the nobility in the Medieval period, which were demonized as witchcraft and sorcery by political opponents. Whilst the poor were often thought to use witchcraft for material gain, the rich sought knowledge and power. La Pucelle belongs to this latter category too despite her origin as a shepherd’s daughter, but at least she does her witchcraft herself. Eleanor Cobham employs others to do her dirty work. Both, however, are women who are seen to aspire beyond the allowed limit of 200

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their sex, and thus to fall below its ideal, tying them to Lady Macbeth and making her more witch-like by her affinities to both. All are punished. Witchcraft accusation appears as a political weapon in several plays, including 2 HVI. We learn in Act 1, Scene 2 that Eleanor has been set up by a double-agent (Hume) working to procure conjurors for her and report on her crime to her opponents. Her accusation as a witch is designed to harm her husband, as the play makes clear. Similarly witchcraft accusation is used to destroy competitors in RIII. Richard calls the former Queen Margaret ‘foul wrinkled witch’ (1.03.163), and his other female rival, the former Queen Elizabeth ‘Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch’ (3.04.70). The second accusation goes further than insult, for Richard pretends that his arm has been withered by Elizabeth and her accomplice Jane Shore, and has Lord Hastings executed when he expresses doubt about their guilt. The accusation of Margaret is ironic for in 2 HVI she had felt herself to be metaphorically bewitched by the Duke of Suffolk into marrying her unloving husband, comparing herself to Dido, fooled by stories into loving Aeneas: ‘sit and/witch me as Ascanius did ...’, ‘am I not witch’d ...’ (2 HVI 3.02.116, 119). Although her husband has been killed by the time of RIII, she is still a threat and is now accused of witchcraft herself. Similarly expedient, Leontes in WT, who has put his Queen on trial for adultery, calls her defender Paulina ‘a mankind witch’ (2.03.68) as part of his tyranny. Those named witch by Richard and Leontes are all innocent and these plays show that ‘witch’ is a libellous word easily but wrongly deployed against powerful women, as it is against Cleopatra by Antony who thinks she has betrayed him: ‘the witch shall die’ (4.12.47). These examples should make us question Prospero’s labelling of Sycorax as a witch in Temp. – she is, after all, the mother of the rival claimant to his island. Yet her son Caliban does not dissent from this definition, and occasionally celebrates it. For Prospero Sycorax is a ‘foul witch’, ‘damn’d witch’ (Temp. 1.02.258, 263). He suggests that her son was the child of the devil, evoking the standard European demonological notion that witches copulated with devils (1.02.319–20). Caliban too portrays Sycorax as using charms associated with the dew from unwholesome fens, toads, beetles and bats (which he tries to call down on his enemies without result in 1.02) and he also tells us that she worshipped a non-Christian god, Setebos (1.02.373). Should we read the Mac.-like charms as evidence that Prospero’s simple Christian definition is correct (unpromising, given the demonological confusion of that play), or accept Caliban’s view that whilst Sycorax had magical powers these came from a god not a devil? Setebos was a Patagonian supernatural entity named in Shakespeare’s source as a ‘devil’: Shakespeare chose to call him a ‘god’, perhaps indicating empathy with Caliban’s perspective. Caliban too is a failed witch, taught language and thus how to curse by his captors, but unable to use his witchcraft because Prospero’s magic is stronger. Does this make Prospero a witch too? It seems not, for the word is never used to label him, even by those who usurped his throne and banished him. It seems to be reserved in Shakespeare’s works for politically inconvenient women, some of whom actually are witches. 201

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In the comedies, witches are just as complex. In Err. the people of Ephesus are thought to be witches by their enemies the Syracusians, two of whom (Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse) are caught up in the bewilderment of mistaken identity. They have been told that ‘soul-killing witches that deform the body’ may live in Ephesus (1.02.100) – although usually a victim’s soul was only in danger if he or she collaborated with other witches in seeking a cure for bodily affliction (as Gifford’s definition, with its notion of ‘healing’ witches, shows). The phrase ‘soul-killing’ here implies a confused double threat. But when Luce seems to know everything about her new acquaintance Dromio (in reality because she knows his twin) he runs from her ‘as a witch’ (3.02.144). The visitors are glad to see that ‘these witches are afraid of swords’ (4.04.147), although, offered welcome and gold for reasons they cannot understand, they are tempted ‘to stay here still, and turn witch’ (4.04.156). Witchcraft here becomes a way of explaining the limits of human understanding and reason. ‘Turning witch’ echoes the notion of ‘turning Turk’, converting to another faith and way of life, and suggests the attractions of giving in to bewitchment and enchantment in their most positive senses. Shakespeare evokes these elsewhere: Prince Henry will ‘witch the world with noble horsemanship’ in 1 HIV (4.01.110) whilst Richard of Gloucester wishes to ‘witch sweet ladies with my words and looks’ in 3 HVI (3.02.150). ‘Beauty is a witch’ says Claudio in MAdo (2.01.179) whilst Imogen calls the popular Posthumus ‘a holy witch’ in Cym. (1.06.166). In each case there is an undercurrent of deceit or anxiety – the words ‘angel’ and ‘holy’ are carefully set close to 1 HIV’s and Cym.’s ‘witch’ usages, whilst Imogen, Richard and Claudio are all lying or deluded in their perceptions. Witchcraft is a way of describing a fatal attraction or a dubious desire. Falstaff disguises himself as a witch to follow such a desire in MWW. Escaping from his supposed lover Mistress Ford’s house, he dresses as Mistress Ford’s maid’s aunt, ‘the fat Witch of Brainford’ in Act 4, Scene 2, only to encounter her husband Master Ford who hates witches. Yet Master Ford does not regard them as magical threats: rather, the witch is ‘an old cozening quean’ who tells fortunes, uses charms, spells, casts astrological (astronomical) figures, ‘and such daub’ry as this is, beyond our element’ (4.02.177). His objection is that the witch pretends to knowledges which are in themselves lies (‘daub’ry’ as in painting, covering the truth), for the purposes of cheating (cozening) her customers. His fear is of deceit not bewitchment; by his wife, by the ‘witch’ with her cross-dressing reversing La Pucelle’s. He beats the supposed woman, shouting ‘hang her, witch!’ (4.02.191) and Falstaff narrowly escapes being set in ‘the common stocks, for a witch’ (4.05.120). This is edgy comedy, for Mistress Ford sees no harm in the Witch of Brainford, whilst her husband (already established as a jealous man with poor judgement) both physically attacks ‘her’ and threatens hanging. The actual witch never appears, but the play provokes questions about her status, even as a woman or a man (a point made when Falstaff’s beard is noticed). Thus we return comically to the sexual confusion surrounding Mac.’s witches. Casual but ominous references to witches are also scattered throughout Shakespeare’s plays, though not his poems. HV’s Chorus says the night before battle limps slowly 202

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‘like a foul and ugly witch’ (4 prologue 21), a ‘leprous witch’ is mentioned as an undesirable wife in TNK (4.03.47), ‘thou stool for a witch’ is an insult in T&C (2.01.42) and night is cursed with the phrase ‘beshrew the witch!’ (4.02.12). Ham. too refers to the ‘witching time of night’ (3.02.388) in a passage fraught with menace. Charmian teases a soothsayer whom she does not believe with ‘out, fool, I forgive thee for a witch’ in A&C (1.02.40) meaning that she does not believe the soothsayer has any knowledge of the future. The ‘witch’ has, however, accurately predicted her unhappy end. Antony apologizes for upsetting Enobarbus with the phrase ‘the witch take me, if I meant it thus’ (4.02.37), which presages the bad fortune that does overtake him. Like Cressida, Cleopatra will be blamed as the witch that brings the hero to destruction (above). Shakespeare’s language, then, is rich in the imagery of witches and their deeds: he evades definiteness, preferring suggestion, but his usage of the word suggests that it carries a very real threat of deception, seduction and actual bodily and spiritual harm. It gives bite to comedy and horror to tragedy, evoking a superstitious shudder even with its most innocent-looking appearance. (C) On Mac., King James’ interests in witchcraft and its early modern status, see Clark (1980) (a key account of witches’ relationship with kings in culture), Tonge (1932), Roberts and Normand (2000) on Daemonologie and Sokol (1995). The kings-witches linkage was revisited as part of new historicist explorations of the play in the mid-1990s, by Normand (1997), Kolb (2007), Maxwell-Stuart (2007) and Floyd-Wilson (2006). Purkiss (1996) attacks the idea that the witch scenes can be seen uncomplicatedly as flattery of James, situating them in his later sceptical period, but sees them as a ragbag of exploitative tropes; Greenblatt [1993] too sees a failure to endorse James’ published views. Button’s (2001) statement about Mac.’s witches that Shakespeare did not believe in witches’ existence is too strong (see Orgel [1999] for the ‘reality’ of witchcraft even to ‘disbelievers’). On Middleton’s revision of Mac., which Taylor and Lavagnino’s edition claims made the play more magical, see Taylor and a detailed refutation by Dahl, Tarlinskaya and Vickers (2010). Scholars remain divided over Middleton’s exact contributions. Willis (1995), Chamberlain (2005), Adelman (1987, 1992) and Callaghan (1992) examine the witches and Lady Macbeth as malevolent mothers, equivocally nurturing, whilst Levin (2002) focuses on hysteria. The witches have been read as Catholics or a commentary on representations of Catholicism as secretive, treasonable and magical by Wills (1995), Jones (1998) and Wilson (2004). Kranz (2003) analyses their language. Paxson (2001) offers a feminist discussion of La Pucelle; Rackin (1990) suggests that cross-dressing is part of her magic. Stapleton and Austin (1994) detail the classical allusions surrounding her; Blanpied (1975) examines her language. Bernhard Jackson (1988) focuses on the disjunctions between Joan as witch and as heroine and suggests a parody of Elizabeth I lies behind the text. Cox (1993, 2000) describes Eleanor Cobham as La Pucelle’s ‘successor’, examining the witches of 1 and 2 HVI; see also Manley (2003) on Eleanor’s contemporary political relevance for Shakespeare. Mason (1997) discusses Margaret as a witch in RIII. Cotton (1987) suggests MWW has a masculine vision of any woman as a potential impotence-causing witch, which is 203

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only dispelled when a wife uses her female ‘craft’ to support her husband’s power. Frey (1979) discusses Sycorax and Setebos; Orgel (1984) and Marcus (1996) situate Sycorax as a female magical presence in the play counterpointing Prospero. Schalkwyk (1992) examines Paulina as a witch in WT and see also Sokol (1994); Haslem (2001) examines witch imagery and race in Tit. and Oth.. Schuler (2004) surveys Shakespeare’s use of demonological imagery with regard to female characters. Witchcraft See also: witch, magic, demon/daemon, bewitched, damnation, Jane Shore, Queen Elizabeth, angel, sorcery, devil, familiar, spirit, apparition, King Hamlet, Hecate, charm, conjuration (A) Witchcraft is the special knowledge and practice attributed to witches. It is a ‘craft’ in the sense that is imagined to be a skill or artisanal mystery (mastery), and it is also ‘crafty’ or cunning, deceitful or secret. Witchcraft could also be considered magic or sorcery – its exact definition depended on how it was thought to take effect and who was using it. ‘Witchcraft’ was often the label for other people’s magical or scientific activity, not one’s own, which might instead be regarded as natural or angelic magic. Whilst witchcraft was forbidden under the Witchcraft Acts of 1563 and 1604, and in Deuteronomy 18:10–12, communities continued to rely on those whom they considered to be ‘good’ witches for help in fending off evil witchcraft (unwitching responding to bewitchment), in finding lost goods and treasure, gaining love or power, and in curing disease. Early modern demonologists (such as George Gifford, A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes [London, 1593]) often regarded both types of witchcraft as equally demonic and felonious. In general, despite the obvious implications of the word ‘craft’, demonologists argued that the witch was not personally in control of her or his witchcraft; rather, the devil was being allowed by God to delude the witch into thinking that the harming or healing attributed to the craft was being carried out by their own skill. In fact, the devil would bring about the desired outcome himself, sometimes in the form of a familiar spirit. This linked witchcraft with heresy, idolatry, blasphemy and other theological crimes. (B) The notion that witchcraft represents ungodly religion does occur in Shakespeare’s work: King John describes the Catholic practice of selling pardons as ‘juggling witchcraft’ (KJ 3.01.169). But Shakespeare most regularly uses the term in contexts which are connected with the power of infatuation, attraction or love: ‘a witchcraft drew me hither’ complains Antonio in TN (5.01.76) when he believes that he has been betrayed by his friend Sebastian. Aufidius’s Lieutenant wonders ‘what witchcraft’s in him’ when he contemplates the charismatic leadership of Coriolanus (Cor. 4.07.2), and Cardinal Wolsey is described as exercising ‘a witchcraft/Over the king’ in HVIII (3.02.18). Polixenes attacks Perdita, whom he believes has seduced his son, as a ‘fresh piece/Of excellent witchcraft’ (WT 4.04.423) and ‘what a hell of witchcraft lies/In the small orb of one particular tear’ laments the speaker of LC, who surrendered her chastity to the

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tearful pleas of her lover (288). Kissing her, Henry V tells Princess Katherine that she has ‘witchcraft in your lips’ (HV 5.02.275), Cleopatra is accused of bewitching Antony with ‘witchcraft’ as well as beauty and lust (A&C 2.01.22) and Othello is accused of practising ‘witchcraft’ (Oth. 1.03.64) to win his wife Desdemona. He explains that she fell in love with his travellers’ tales and conversation: ‘this only is the witchcraft I have us’d’ (1.03.169). Later, plotting against Othello, Iago returns to the theme: ‘we work by wit, and not by witchcraft’ he tells Roderigo (2.03.372), and then turns the accusation of deceitful ‘seeming’ against Desdemona, defaming her to Othello as one so cunning in fooling her father about her feelings for her suitor that, ‘he though ‘twas witchcraft’ (3.03.211). The play resolutely refuses to accept that real magic has been practised: instead, witchcraft here represents the unpredictable influence of intangible attractions and hatreds to create love or poison trust. Similarly, King Hamlet blames Gertrude’s desire for her husband’s brother on ‘witchcraft of his wits’ (Ham. 1.05.43). The word recurs in the description of a skilful Norman horseman, Lamond: ‘this gallant/Had witchcraft in’t’ (4.07.85) again associating it with inexplicable power and skill. There are also several literal accusations of ‘damned witchcraft’, for example by Richard III against Jane Shore and Queen Elizabeth (RIII 3.04.61, 72) and in Mac. ‘witchcraft celebrates/Pale Hecat’s off’rings’ (2.01.51). A protective charm is woven by song around the supposedly dead Imogen in Cym.: ‘no witchcraft charm thee’ (4.02.277). The idea that witches might raise the spirits of the dead suggests an oblique reference to one of the best-known witches of the Bible, whom we might now consider a medium, the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28). This witch conjures the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel, an incident vigorously debated by early modern demonologists who argued that she had no power to do so and the apparition must have been an illusion of the devil. (C) R. Briggs (2004) discusses the role of witchcraft in the early modern imagination; Clark (1980) examines the demonological discussion of what constituted witchcraft and how it worked both physically and in culture; and see also Vickers (1984). Thomas (1973) and Sharpe (1996) offer histories of witchcraft prosecution and practice in early modern England, whilst Willis (1995, 2013) looks at its association with female power and sexuality and also with family. She argues that witch families, as opposed to single witches, became more important as a stereotype in the early seventeenth century: pertinent to Temp. and perhaps WT, on which see also Schalkwyk (1992). An early attempt to discuss Shakespeare’s work in the context of witchcraft trials and beliefs was K. M. Briggs (1962), and see also Muir (1981) and Harris (1980). Cotton (1987) explores the interplay between female wit (cleverness, craft) and witchcraft, especially in MWW. Crawford (1977) and Farrell (2008) both explore positive, regenerative images of witchcraft in Shakespeare’s works, whilst Grinnell (1997) discusses its relationship with political intrigue. Haslem (2001) discusses witchcraft and fears about miscegenation in Oth. and Tit.. Pilkington (1988) notes the ambiguity of the term, which could be both ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

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Wizard See also: witch, conjuror, occult, magic, divination, enchantment, charm, familiar, spirit, prophecy, Doctor Pinch, exorcism/exorcist, demon/daemon, possession, Roger Bolingbroke, Asmath, Duke of Clarence, Owen Glendower (A) In Shakespeare’s time, wizards were variously male witches, conjurors or wise men. The word ‘wizard’ was evolving its meaning: it comes from Middle English and incorporates the word ‘wise’, suggesting a figure more like a magus than a witch. It only came to mean a person learned in occult sciences in the sixteenth century. Simpson and Roud (2000) point out the association with Merlin which pre-dates the later pejorative meaning. By the 1611 King James Bible, wizards were listed alongside other magical practitioners in a prohibition in Deuteronomy 18:10–12: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer’. Like the other practitioners on this list, wizards were now classed as an ‘abomination’. (B) Shakespeare uses the word to mean a learned man who may practice conjuration or prophecy. In the case of Doctor Pinch in Err., who is referred to as a ‘doting wizard’ (4.04.58), that man is a schoolmaster who is prevailed upon to try to exorcize demons from the supposedly possessed Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus. Here the word suggests self-delusion and mockery of the exorcist: his ‘patients’ are not possessed, and he is taken captive by them instead. More seriously, Roger Bolingbroke and his fellow witches and conjurors are associated with the term in 2 HVI 5.02.69. Earlier in the play, in 1.04, a spirit raised by this group had prophesied that the Duke of Somerset should ‘shun castles’ (see Asmath). By dying under an inn sign featuring a castle in Act 5, Somerset ‘made the wizard famous in his death’, fulfilling ‘his’ prophecy. Bolingbroke described himself as a wizard in 1.04.15, using the term to claim authority, denoting learning and expertise: ‘Patience, good lady; wizards know their times’. Wizards are also associated with political intrigue in RIII, where the Duke of Clarence has been told by his brother, Edward IV, that ‘a wizard told him that by G/His issue disinherited should be’ (1.01.56–7). That the king is seen to be swayed by his prediction suggests how seriously wizards could be taken. They could also be mocked, however. The ninth earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, was referred to as ‘the wizard earl’ for his supposedly magical abilities – ironically, since Shakespeare makes his ancestor Hotspur ridicule the pretensions of the conjuror Owen Glendower in 1 HIV. Prospero is not referred to as a wizard, adding to the list of terms by which this character in Temp. is carefully not defined. (C) Batho (1956) discusses the ‘wizard earl’ and see also Shirley (1949). Mowat (1981, 2001) and Olivares (1992) debate Prospero’s classification, with the latter arguing for wizard attributes.

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Y Yoke-devil See also: fiend, devil, hell Treason and murder are described as ‘two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose’ in HV (2.02.106), with the notion that devils might be yoked together echoing contemporary pairings of horses or oxen in ploughing or drawing carriages and carts. Onions (1986) suggests the term means ‘companions’ or a ‘married couple’, as well as the more obvious interpretation of the phrase as signifying co-workers. The notion that the devils are ‘sworn’ to each others’ ‘purpose’ certainly allows the idea of marriage, as well as conspiracy, into the metaphor. The devils are part of a sequence of passages examining the motivation of the three traitors who have conspired to murder King Henry V, and they are seen as having been tempted by a particularly persuasive fiend, who returns to Tartarus (part of the classical hell) to boast of his easy conquest. The temptation, then, is imagined both literally and metaphorically, with the yoke-devils representing the dependency of treason on the king’s necessary murder.

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Waterfield, John, The Heart of his Mystery: Shakespeare and the Catholic Faith in England under Elizabeth and James (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009) Wells, Stanley, ‘Shakespeare and Human Evil’, in Manuel Ángel Conejero, ed., En torno a Shakespeare, vol. 1 (Valencia: Instituto Shakespeare, Universidad de Valencia, 1980), 67–91 West, Robert H., The Invisible World: A Study of Pneumatology in Elizabethan Drama (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1939) —‘King Hamlet’s Ambiguous Ghost’, PMLA, 70:5 (1955), 1107–17 —Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings on Witchcraft (Boston: Twayne Press, 1984) Westwood, Jennifer and Jacqueline Simpson, The Lore of the Land. A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring-Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys (London: Penguin Books, 2005) Wheatley, Henry B., ‘The Folklore of Shakespeare’, Folklore, 27:4 (Dec. 31 1916), 378–407 Wicher, Andrzej, Shakespeare’s Parting Wondertales: A Study of the Elements of the Tale of Magic in William Shakespeare’s Late Plays (Lodz, Poland: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego, 2003) Willard, Thomas, ‘Pimping for the Fairy Queen: Some Cozeners in Shakespeare’s England’, in Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, eds, Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Mental-Historical Investigations on Basic Human Problems and Social Responses (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 491–508 Willis, Deborah, Malevolent Nurture. Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995) —‘The Witch Family in Elizabethan and Jacobean Print Culture’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 13:1 (2013), 4–31 Wills, Garry, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) Wilson Knight, George, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Routledge, 2001 [1930]) Wilson, Richard, Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) —‘Dyed in Mummy: Othello and the Mulberries’, in Susanne Rupp and Tobias Dӧring, eds, Performances of the Sacred in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi B.V., 2005), 135–53 Wiseman, S. J., ‘Hairy on the inside: metamorphosis and civility in English werewolf texts’, in Erica Fudge, ed., Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals and Humans and Other Wonderful Creatures (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 50–69 Wisniewska, Dorota J., ‘Supernatural Agents of the Unconscious Mind: The Gothic Mode in Hamlet and Macbeth’, Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia Litteraria Anglica, 5 (2002), 183–91 Woodcock, Matthew, Fairy in The Faerie Queene: Renaissance Elf-Fashioning and Elizabethan Myth-Making (Hants: Ashgate, 2004) Woodman, David, White Magic and English Renaissance Drama (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973) Woolley, Benjamin, The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001) Yarnall, Judith, Transformation of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1994) Yonglin, Yang, ‘How to talk to the supernatural in Shakespeare’, Language in Society, 20:2 (1991), 247–61

224

Index

A Lover’s Complaint 27, 41, 75, 204–5 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 10, 12, 18, 27, 36, 37–9, 40, 43, 45, 55, 58, 64, 67, 69, 73, 78, 79–82, 83, 86, 104, 106, 128, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 143, 147, 158, 173–4, 179, 187, 189, 190, 191, 195 A Rehearsall Both Straung and True (1579) 111, 188, 189 Aaron (Tit.) 7, 63, 64, 90, 168 Absyrtus (myth.) 131, 132 accursed 7–8, 24, 50, 95, 192 see also cursing, uncursing Adriana (Err.) 48–9, 149 Aeetes, king of Colchis (myth) 42, 131, 132 Aeneas (myth.) 27, 201 Aeson (myth.) 76, 131, 132 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius 15, 103 Ajax (T&C) 137, 47 Albany (KL) 90 alchemy 8–9, 19, 30, 92, 134, 140, 183, 190 All’s Well That Ends Well 20, 23, 58, 61, 63–4, 74, 78, 83, 98, 99, 138, 155, 164, 179–80, 182, 183 almanac 9–10, 30, 43 Alonso (Temp.) 40, 75–6, 87, 135, 145, 156, 195 Amaimon 10–11, 25–6, 61, 62, 105, 125 see also devil amulet 39, 147 see also charm, periapt Andrew of Wyntoun The Orgynale Cronykil of Scotland (c. 1424) 196 Andromache (T&C) 68 angel 8, 11–13, 14, 26, 32, 34, 44, 56, 59, 63, 77, 85, 89, 91, 102, 104, 114, 125, 127, 157, 164, 175, 179, 180, 202, 204 Angelo (MM) 13, 135 animals 21, 29, 36, 42, 73, 81, 82, 84, 94, 136–7, 144–5, 150, 175, 186, 188, 189, 193 adder 165, 193 ape 47, 189, 193 baboon 165 bat 35, 73, 165, 201

bear 36, 184, 190 beast 3, 18, 22, 43, 138, 188, 189 bee 139 beetles 35, 201 birds 9, 21, 22, 92, 106, 109, 112, 114, 168, 171 blind-worm 165 boar 36, 92, 109, 192 cattle 35, 89, 113, 137, 186 cricket 161 dogs 14, 35, 83, 111, 112, 137, 145, 165, 189 donkey 18, 189 eagle 148, 171 eel 73 fish 34, 35–6, 99, 114, 133, 135, 136, 137, 168 ferret 83, 84 frog 147, 165, 188 gnat 161 goat 187 grasshopper 161 hare 36 hedgehogs 109, 111, 192–3 hog 52, 73 horse 89, 109, 142, 161, 184, 189, 202, 207 lion 25, 56, 59, 109, 170 lizard 165 mouse 150 newt 37, 165 ounce 36 owl 22, 81, 92, 106, 146, 165, 177 oxen 207 pard 36 pigs 18, 161, 189, 198 rat 93 snake 37, 50, 80, 134, 165, 188, 193 spider 45, 161 squirrel 81, 161 tiger 187 viper 133 worm 161 see also ass-head, cat, familiar, hedge-pig, toad Anne (HVIII) 87, 99 Antigonus (WT) 68, 178, 183

225

Index

Antony and Cleopatra 10, 13, 21, 41, 56, 64, 66, 76, 81, 87, 88, 95, 97, 98, 99, 104, 127, 135, 154, 169, 170, 174, 178, 186, 196, 201, 203, 205 Antipholus of Ephesus (Err.) 13–14, 49, 61, 70, 71, 72, 91, 130, 140, 149, 150–1, 164, 178, 206 Antipholus of Syracuse (Err.) 10, 12, 13, 16, 46, 65, 75, 134, 139, 164, 168, 172, 178, 202 Antonio (MerV) 50, 63 Antonio (Temp.) 40, 98, 138, 176 Antonio (TN) 115, 204 Apollo (god) 36, 96, 144, 145, 146, 165, 167 apparition 14, 15, 34, 46, 102, 111, 120, 131, 195, 199, 205 see also ghost, vision Apuleius (Roman poet) 18, 189, 190 The Golden Ass [The Metamorphosis of Apuleius] 18, 189 Archbishop of Canterbury (HV) 47, 95 Arcite (TNK) 23, 38, 145, 184 Ariel (Temp.) 14, 15, 40, 79, 84, 85, 87, 95, 109, 128, 135, 139, 156, 157, 158, 172, 175–7, 179, 180, 184–5 Aristotle 29, 188 Armado (LLL) 75 aroint, avaunt, avoid 15–16, 25, 91, 142, 164, 198 art 16–17, 19, 21, 28–9, 42, 48, 49, 53, 54, 59, 65, 75, 92, 95, 105, 127, 128, 129, 130–1, 156–8, 172, 176, 190, 197, 198 Artemidorus (JC) 88 Arthur (KJ) 155 Arviragus (Cym.) 96 As You Like It 17, 43, 48, 54, 57, 70, 98, 99, 117, 129, 138, 141, 188, 189 Ascanius (myth.) 27, 201 Asmath 16, 17–18, 28–9, 43, 44, 46, 49, 60, 77–8, 84, 85, 86, 91, 114, 119, 158, 172, 177, 192, 200, 206 see also familiar, fiend Asmodeus, Asnath see Asmath ass-head 12, 18, 80, 143, 158, 187, 189, 190, 191 astrology 8, 9, 10, 18, 19–21, 22, 23, 29, 34, 43, 57, 66, 67, 71, 74, 77, 86, 92–3, 96, 99–100, 119, 128, 140, 141, 144, 147, 149, 152, 172, 173, 180, 181, 202 see also astronomy astromagic 19 see also astronomy

226

astronomy 8, 9, 17, 18, 19–21, 22, 23, 29, 34, 39, 43, 49, 57, 66, 67, 71, 74, 77, 86, 92–3, 96, 119, 128, 140, 141, 144, 147, 149, 152, 172, 173, 180, 181, 202 see also astrology, nativity, planet, star augury 21–2, 65, 98 auspicious 9–10, 22–3, 48, 58, 87, 98, 147, 156, 180 Autolycus (WT) 138, 146 Baal 26 ban, banning 24, 28, 50, 76, 93, 95, 108, 110 Bancroft, Richard 94, 182 see also Harsnett, Samuel banish 25, 35, 78, 142, 201 see also ban, laying Banquo (Mac.) 16, 24–5, 32, 64, 68, 88, 102, 103, 104, 108, 145, 155, 167, 178, 182, 186, 194, 196, 198 see also ghost Barbas 11, 25–6 Barbason 11, 25–6, 47, 61, 125 see also devil Bardolph (2 HIV, MWW) 89, 91, 125 Bassanio (MerV) 63, 146, 155 Bastard (1 HVI) 167, 195, 200 Bastard [Philip Faulconbridge] (KJ) 148, 153 Bawd (Per.) 47 Beatrice (MAdo) 47, 173, 180, 190 Bee, Jesse: The Most Wonderfull and True Storie, of a Certaine Witch (1593) 114, 130 Belarius (Cym.) 96, 171 Bellenden, John: The Hystory and Croniklis of Scotland (c. 1540) 196 Belzebub, Beelzebub 26, 59, 60, 89, 125, 164 see also devil Benedick (MAdo) 47, 190 Berowne (LLL) 86, 145, 179 Bertram (AWW) 23, 99, 138, 155 bewitched, bewitch 26–7, 31, 41, 75–6, 99 134, 146, 183, 199, 201, 202, 204, 205 Biondello (Shrew) 41 Blake, William: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790) 60 blasting 24, 27–8, 72, 82, 95, 110, 113, 180, 186 blessed, blessing 7–8, 23, 32, 58, 69, 156, 179, 180, 183, 186, 187 Boatswain (Temp.) 57, 87 Bodin, Jean 18, 189, 190 Demonomanie (1580) 18 Boece, Hector: Scotorum Historiae (1527) 196

Index

Bolingbroke, Roger (2 HVI) 17–18, 28–9, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 77, 85, 114, 119, 173, 200, 206 book 9, 16, 29–30, 46, 65, 68, 87, 103, 124, 126, 127, 136, 148, 156, 170, 171, 173, 190 Book of Tobit 18 Bottom, Nick (MND) 10, 12, 18, 43, 67–8, 70, 80, 82, 86, 138, 179, 189, 190, 191, 195 see also ass-head Boult (Per.) 90 Bourchier, John (Lord Berners) 143 Boyet (LLL) 75 Brabantio (Oth.) 139 Brainford, Witch of (MWW) 28, 30–1, 42, 92–3, 97, 108, 146, 173, 174, 189, 202 Brutus, Decius (JC) 68, 195 Brutus, Marcus (JC) 9, 12, 34, 47, 56, 78, 104, 170, 178–9, 181 Brutus (A&C) 104 Brutus (Luc.) 87, 117 Buckingham, Duke of (RIII) 31–2, 44, 69, 104, 107, 109, 121, 122, 124, 145, 151, 152, 155, 163, 194 see also ghost bug, bugbear 32–3, 48, 82, 106, 169 Burgundy (1 HVI) 27, 43 Cacodemon see daemon, demon Caesar, Julius 9, 12, 13, 14, 21–2, 34, 47, 56, 66, 68, 88, 102, 104, 109, 154, 170, 178–9, 184, 195 see also ghost Caesar, Octavius (A&C, JC) 21, 56, 66, 87 calendars see almanac Caliban (Temp.) 17, 24, 30, 34–5, 40, 41, 52–3, 62, 65, 108, 115–16, 137–8, 156–7, 165, 172, 176, 184–5, 193, 201 Calpurnia (JC) 34, 68, 195 Camillo (WT) 48 Captain (2 HVI) 108 Cardinal Beaufort (2 HVI) 27, 91, 114 Cardinal Wolsey (HVIII) 125, 174, 204 Casca (JC) 9 Cassandra (T&C) 36, 58, 66, 87, 95, 154, 184 see also oracle, sibyl, soothsayer Cassio (Oth.) 20, 47, 66, 189 Cassius (JC) 34, 87, 178, 181 cat 36, 83–4, 93, 107, 109, 111, 147, 159, 169 see also Graymalkin, Purr cauldron 37, 41, 76, 94, 112, 165, 186 Celia (AYLI) 98

centaur 139 Chamber, John: Treatise against Judicial Astrologie (1601) 19 changeling 37–9, 81, 82, 143, 146, 187 charm 23, 26, 27, 31, 35, 37, 39–42, 50, 59, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 82, 95, 99, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 129, 132–3, 139, 142, 143, 147–8, 157, 167, 168, 173–4, 198, 201, 202, 205, 206 Charmian (A&C) 97, 170, 203 Chiron (Tit.) 112 Christopher Sly (Shrew) 189–90 Churchyard, Thomas A Handeful of Gladsome Verses (1592) 82 Cinthio, Giovanni Battista: Hecatommithi (1565) 127 Circe (goddess) 18, 42–3, 110, 132, 188, 189, 190, 200 circle 18, 28, 43, 47, 70, 81, 98, 117, 124, 179 Clarence, Duke of (RIII) 32, 43–4, 69, 92, 104, 107, 109, 121, 122, 124, 141, 151, 152, 153, 163, 194, 206 see also ghost Claudio (MAdo) 202 Cleomenes (WT) 96, 114, 145 Cleon (Per.) 184 Cloten (Cym.) 179 Clown (A&C) 64 Clown (AWW) 58, 155 Cobham, Eleanor (2 HVI) 18, 24, 28–9, 44–5, 46, 49, 77, 89, 114, 119, 160, 166, 172–3, 177, 200–1, 203 Cobweb (MND) 45, 80, 83, 139, 140, 147 see also fairy cockatrice 139 conjuration 17–18, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 43, 44, 45, 46–8, 49, 59, 65, 77, 78, 84, 85, 89, 90, 97, 103, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 124, 127, 129, 139, 149, 158, 160, 172, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 200, 205, 206 see also conjuror conjuror 10–11, 17–18, 28–9, 43, 44, 46, 48–9, 54, 62, 69, 77, 83, 84, 85, 103, 105, 114, 119, 125, 127, 129, 149, 150, 172, 175, 200, 201, 206 see also conjuration Constance (KJ) 65, 98, 138 Cordelia (KL) 50 Coriolanus 21, 27, 38–9, 58, 74–5, 92, 106, 137, 174, 179, 204 cosmology 8

227

Index

Countess (AWW) 155 courtesan (Err.) 12, 16, 65, 164, 172 cozener see deceit Cranmer, Thomas (HVIII) 145 Creon, king of Corinth (myth.) 131–2 Creusa (myth.) 131–2 Cromwell (HVIII) 64 cuckold 11, 25–6, 61, 62, 105, 113, 116, 125, 138 cunning see conjuror, deceit, empiric, magician Cupid (god) 42, 158, 165 cursing 7–8, 24, 28, 32, 35, 36, 44, 49–53, 54–5, 64, 69, 73, 76, 86, 93, 95, 98, 103, 107, 108, 109, 112, 121, 122, 146, 151, 152, 153, 154, 160, 163, 166, 184, 192, 194, 200, 201, 203 see also accursed, uncursing Cymbeline 20–1, 32, 39, 41, 76, 77, 80, 81, 90, 96, 103, 124, 128, 137, 138, 145, 148, 155, 156, 169, 170–2, 179, 180, 181, 192, 195, 202, 205 damnation 19, 44, 50, 53, 54–5, 61, 70, 75, 84, 85, 91, 100, 101, 102, 106, 111, 125, 129, 137, 152–3, 158, 172, 175, 179, 185, 192, 197, 198, 201, 205 dancing see music Daniel, Samuel: Certaine Small Poems (1605) 135 Darling, Thomas (demoniac) 114, 130 Darrell, John (exorcist) 78, 150, 151 deceit 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31, 36, 38–9, 40, 41, 43, 46, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 68, 72, 75–6, 78, 79, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105, 113, 114, 116, 117, 127, 129, 130, 132, 138, 139–40, 142, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 163, 164, 169, 172, 174, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 186, 187, 188, 195, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205 Dee, John 8–9, 11–13, 128, 157 deformed see malformation della Porta, Giovanni Battista: Natural Magic (1558) 188 Demetrius (MND) 27, 138, 158 Demetrius (Tit.) 112 demon, daemon 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 25,

228

26, 28, 29, 35, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55–7, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 77, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 101, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139–40, 142, 143, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 164, 169, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 185, 186, 188, 193, 194, 195, 199, 200, 204, 206 demoniac see demon demonology 11, 13, 14, 18, 21, 24, 25, 28, 35, 36, 37, 46, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 71, 72, 74, 76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 86, 92, 96, 101, 102, 103, 111, 115, 116, 117, 123, 124, 125, 130, 136, 137, 142, 146, 149, 159, 164, 166, 175, 178, 181, 183, 186, 188, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 201, 203, 204, 205 Desdemona (Oth.) 13, 42, 46–7, 54, 63, 75, 87, 127, 137, 140, 167, 174, 205 destiny 19, 21, 22, 55, 57–9, 85, 86, 88, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 137, 141, 146, 180, 186, 196, 198, 199, see also fate, fortune devil 7, 10–11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 25–6, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 59–65, 67, 68, 72, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 101, 102, 104, 105, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115–16, 120, 123, 124, 125, 129, 136, 137, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 156, 157, 158, 164, 169, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 185, 188, 192, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 201, 204, 205, 207 devil’s dam 47, 62, 65, 199 Diana (goddess) 14, 70, 82 Dido (myth.) 27, 201 Diomedes (T&C) 95–6 Dion (WT) 96, 144–5 Dionyza (Per.) 86, 184 disguise see deceit divination 21, 22, 30, 39, 45, 65–7, 75, 95, 146, 148, 166, 167–8, 171, 206 Dolabella (A&C) 21 Doll Tearsheet (2 HIV) 10 Don Pedro (MAdo) 190 Donalbain (Mac.) 88 Donne, John 9

Index

Drayton, Michael: Nimphidia: The Court of Fayrie (1609) 82 Dromio of Ephesus (Err.) 10, 13–14, 47, 49, 61, 70, 71–2, 91, 30, 139–40, 148, 149, 150, 164, 172, 206 Dromio of Syracuse (Err.) 10, 12, 13, 47, 60, 65, 66, 164, 172, 189, 202 dream 32, 34, 39, 44, 52, 67–70, 80, 92, 103, 107, 108, 109, 121, 122, 124, 142, 148, 152, 154, 155, 160, 161, 162, 163, 170, 183, 184, 194, 195 see also prophecy, vision dryad, hamadryade 175 ducdame 70, 117 Duchess of York (mother of Richard III) 7, 8 Duke of Florence (AWW) 23 Duke of Somerset (2 HVI) 206 Duke of Suffolk (2 HVI) 86, 114, 201 Duke Senior (AYLI) 43, 188 Dumaine (AWW) 61 Earl of Cambridge (HV) 56 Earl of Warwick (2 HVI, 3 HVI) 20, 32, 122, 141 eclipse 9, 71, 187 ecstasy 28, 59, 71–2 Edgar (KL) 13, 14, 15, 23, 24, 48, 70, 71, 72, 73, 91, 92, 94–5, 100, 113, 114, 130, 136, 138, 142, 143, 159, 169, 176, 179, 180, 186 Edmund (KL) 20, 23, 71, 97, 141, 181 Egeon (MND) 27 elf 39, 72–4, 79, 80, 82, 106, 132, 133, 143, 146, 161, 162 Emilia (Oth.) 47–8, 50, 63 Emilia (TNK) 38 empiric, empiricutic 20, 49, 74–5, 140 enchantment 17, 27, 39, 54, 66, 75–6, 78, 108, 132, 157, 160, 168, 187, 190, 202, 206 Enobarbus (A&C) 66, 186, 203 Euripedes: Medea (431 bc) 132 Evans, Sir Hugh (MWW) 31 evil 8, 10, 11–13, 15, 20, 30, 34, 35, 39, 41, 46–7, 48, 49, 50, 55, 57, 59, 61, 71, 72, 76–7, 80, 82, 85, 89, 96, 103, 104, 106, 108, 110, 111, 115, 122, 133, 135, 143, 146, 147, 149, 156, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 185, 186, 188, 193, 197, 204 excommunication 24, 50

exorcism, exorcist 13, 46, 47, 48–9, 70, 72, 77–8, 94, 97–8, 103, 124, 130, 139–40, 148, 149, 150, 151, 164, 175, 180, 182, 206 fairy 13, 18, 28, 33, 37–9, 40, 43, 45, 48, 58, 62, 63, 68, 72–4, 79–83, 86, 88, 90, 93, 106, 107, 108, 113, 134, 135–6, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149, 158–9, 160–2, 173, 175, 176, 179, 181, 186, 187–8, 189, 191, 193, 195, 196–7, 199 Falstaff (1 HIV, 2 HIV, MWW) 10, 11, 13, 27, 31, 55, 61, 62, 73, 76, 82, 97, 99, 105, 108, 112–13, 116, 125, 140, 146, 164, 189, 193, 195, 202, familiar 15, 17–18, 28, 36, 43, 46, 48, 53, 59, 77, 79, 83–5, 91, 93, 102, 107, 109, 111, 112, 115, 123, 131, 147, 150, 158, 159, 165, 169, 175, 176, 177, 182, 186, 188, 192, 198, 199, 200, 204, 206, fate 7, 20, 22, 34, 36, 37, 44, 55, 57, 58, 59, 85–8, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 108, 180, 186, 196, 199, see also destiny Faustus 12, 29, 48, 65, 84, 85, 89, 112, 119, 127, 157, Ferdinand (Temp.) 13, 42, 145, 176 Ficino, Marsilio: Corpus Hermeticum (1483) 8–9 Fidele (Cym.) 77, 80 fiend 7, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17–18, 25, 29, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 56, 57, 60, 65, 72, 76, 77–8, 81, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90–2, 94, 95, 100, 105, 107, 111, 113, 114, 118, 119, 123, 125, 129, 130, 136, 142, 143, 158, 167, 169, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 195, 200, 207 figure, figure-casting 31, 42, 43, 92–3, 141, 152, 202 First Witch (Mac.) 24, 31, 37, 40, 54, 93–4, 95, 107, 108, 110, 123, 131, 165, 169, 186, 196, 198 Fleance (Mac.) 24, 88 Fletcher, John: The Two Noble Kinsmen 37 Flibbertigibbet 72, 94–5, 100, 113, 114, 130, 136, 142, 143, 159, 169 Fluellen (HV) 98 Fool (KL) 100, 154 forbid 19, 24, 84, 93, 95, 99, 146 foresee, foretell 17, 21, 22, 34, 36, 41, 65, 67, 70, 77, 92, 95–6, 97, 118, 136, 148, 153,

229

Index

167, 170, 182, 195, 196, 197 see also prophecy Forman, Simon 8, 9, 19, 20, 141, 197 Fortuna, Fortune (goddess) 23, 54–5, 95, 96–100, fortune 20, 21, 22, 23, 31, 43, 49, 57, 66, 70, 86, 89, 92, 96–100, 118, 124, 140, 149, 161, 169, 170, 180, 181, 188, 195, 202, 203 Frateretto 72, 100, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169, furies 27, 108, 164, 167 Galenus, Claudius 74–5 Galis, Richard: A Brief Treatise Conteyning the Most Strange and Horrible Crueltye of Elizabeth Stile…upon Richard Galis (1579) 31 Geoffrey of Monmouth: History of the Kings of Britain 154 geomancy 19 ghost 12–13, 14, 15, 16, 24–5, 28, 31–2, 34, 43–4, 51, 53, 55, 56, 68, 69, 72, 80, 81, 82, 87, 95, 101–5, 106, 107, 109–10, 111, 113, 116, 117, 120–1, 122, 124, 144, 151, 152, 154, 163, 175, 178–9, 180, 181, 186, 192, 193, 194, 195 see also apparition, spirit Gifford, George: A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes (1593) 84, 197, 198, 202, 204 Glendower, Owen (1 HIV) 11, 16, 54, 62, 69, 105–6, 116, 125, 127, 128, 129, 177, 178, 206 goblin, hobgoblin 18, 28, 32, 55, 73, 79, 81, 102, 106–7, 113, 143, 146, 158, 177, 179 Golding, Arthur see Ovid Goneril (KL) 90 Gonzalo (Temp.) 40, 57, 87, 131, 176 gorgon 139 Gosson, Stephen: The Schoole of Abuse (1579) 117 Playes Confuted in Five Actes (1582) 117 Gratiano (MerV) 145 Graymalkin (Mac.) 36, 93, 107, 109, 147, 169 Gremio (Shrew) 90 Grey (HV) 56 Grey, Sir Richard (RIII) 32, 44, 69, 104, 107, 109, 121, 122, 124, 151, 152, 163, 194 see also ghost

230

grimoires 29, 30, 43, 173 see also book Guildenstern (Ham.) 98 Guiderius (Cym.) 96 Gwinne, Matthew, Tres Sibyllae (1605) 167 hag 24, 31, 33, 35, 76, 90, 97, 108, 110, 142, 161, 162, 185 Hall, Edward: Chronicle (1548) 29, 45 The Union of the Two Noble and Illustr[ious] Families of Lancastre and Yorke (1542) 151 Hamlet 7, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 34, 38, 41, 44, 48, 50, 53, 55, 71, 72, 82, 87, 95, 98, 102–3, 104, 105, 106, 110, 111, 120, 124, 128, 134, 136, 138, 139, 144, 147, 149, 154, 178, 179, 180, 183, 186, 192, 195, 198, 203, 205 harlequin 15, 158, 180 harm 38, 40, 50, 64, 73, 77, 93, 94, 106, 115, 146, 149, 155, 158, 175, 177, 186, 201, 203, 204 see also ill-wishing, medicine, overlooking Harpier 107, 109, 111, 147, 186 harpy 15, 109, 139, 175, 176 Harsnett, Samuel: A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603) 72, 78, 94–5, 100, 113, 150, 151, 159, 169, 182 Hastings, Lord 32, 44, 51, 69, 109–10, 121, 122, 124, 151, 152, 160, 163, 166, 194, 201, see also ghost haunt 12, 18, 25, 32, 43, 44, 56, 62, 68, 80, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 111, 113, 114, 121, 122, 151, 152, 163, 164, 178, 179, 188, 194 see also ghost Hecate (witch-goddess) 24, 28, 37, 41, 42, 58, 76, 81, 88, 93, 110–11, 165, 166, 167, 174, 177, 199–200 Hector (T&C) 66, 68, 87, 106 hedge-pig 109, 111, 192–3 Helen (T&C) 76 Helen of Troy 29 Helena (AWW) 20, 74, 78, 83, 98, 99, 138, 179, 180, 182 Helena (MND) 64, 138 hell 7, 12, 14, 16, 26, 28, 32, 37, 41, 44, 52, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 69, 77, 78, 90, 92, 100, 102, 103, 107, 108, 110, 111–12, 113, 123, 124, 125, 141, 151, 158, 164, 178, 192, 193, 198, 204–5, 207

Index

Henry V 7, 11, 25, 26, 41, 47, 56, 104, 117, 125, 138, 179, 202–3, 205, 207 Hercules, madness of 27 Hermes Trismegistus 8, 126 hermetic tradition 8 Hermia (MND) 58 Hermione (WT) 17, 20, 30, 68, 144, 145, 183–4, 190 Herne (MWW) 28, 82, 112–13, 184, 186 Hero (MAdo) 14, 55, 173 Heydon, Christopher: A Defence of Judiciall Astrologie, In Answer to a Treatise lately published by M. Iohn Chamber (1603) 19 Heywood, Thomas: The Wisewoman of Hogsdon (1634) 174 Hobbididance 72, 106–7, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 Holinshed, Raphael: Chronicles (1577, 1587) 26, 29, 45, 79, 88, 93, 106, 166, 196, 199, 200 Holland, Philemon: The Historie of the World, commonly called the Naturall Historie [Pliny] (1601) 134 Holofernes (LLL) 89 Homer 18, 29, 36, 42 The Odyssey 18, 42–3, 134, 168, 189, 190 The Iliad 36 Hoppedance 13, 72, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 Horatio (Ham.) 22, 28, 95, 102, 120, 178 horoscope 20, 92, 93, 144 see also astronomy, nativity Hotspur (Harry Percy) (1 HIV) 62, 66, 81, 105, 106, 125, 129, 177, 178, 206 Howard, Henry: A Defensative against the Poison of supposed Prophecies (1583) 19 Hume, John (2 HVI) 17–18, 28–9, 44, 77–8, 85, 114, 119, 172–3, 200, 201 Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (2 HVI) 27, 28, 29, 44–5 Hymen (god) 129 Iachimo (Cym.) 90 Iago (Oth.) 20, 41, 63, 87, 127, 205 ill-wishing 28, 38, 49, 50, 74, 94, 98, 142, 198 see also cursing, overlooking illness see madness, medicine illusion 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 25, 32–3, 46, 48, 59, 60, 78, 81, 82, 84, 93, 102, 104, 116,

156, 158, 159, 177, 185, 195, 197, 198, 205 see also deceit, vision image magic 29, 45, 92–3, 102, 114, 115, 119, 147, 173 Imogen (Cym.) 20–1, 41, 76, 81, 179, 192, 202, 205 incubus, succubus 47, 65, 115–16, 136, 142 insects see animals invocation 23, 29, 43, 50, 54, 70, 73, 89, 104, 105, 112, 116–17, 122, 131, 177, 191 Iras (A&C) 97, 170 Isis (goddess) 165 Jack Cade (2 HVI) 51, 85, 150, 177 Jacques (AYLI) 43, 70, 117, 141, 189 Jailer’s Daughter (TNK) 37 Jason (myth.) 131, 132 Jessica (MerV) 63, 76, 92, 111, 132 Joan La Pucelle (1 HVI) 7, 17, 27, 29, 43, 45, 47, 49, 54, 65, 75, 76, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, 92, 105, 108, 110, 112, 118–19, 128, 133, 148, 153, 160, 167, 168, 172, 173, 177, 180, 195, 198, 199–200, 202, 203 John of Gaunt (RII) 96 Johnson, Samuel 16 Jonson, Ben 9 The Alchemist (1610) 82 Masque of Queens (1609) 110, 131 Jourdain, Margery (2 HVI) 17–18, 28–9, 43, 44, 46, 49, 77–8, 85, 114, 119, 173, 200 judicial astrology 10, 19, 100, 172, 181 see also astronomy Julia (TGV) 22, 115 Julius Caesar 9, 12, 13, 14, 21–2, 34, 34, 41, 47, 56, 68, 78, 87–8, 102, 104, 109, 154, 169, 170, 178–9, 181, 184, 195 Jupiter (god) 23, 66, 68, 103, 124, 145, 148, 167, 170, 180, 181 Kat[h]erina (Shrew) 41, 65, 90, 178 King Claudius (Ham.) 22–3, 53, 102, 120, 144, 154 King Duncan (Mac.) 54, 122, 155, 178, 194 King Edward IV (RIII, 3 HVI) 32, 43, 51, 69, 107, 109, 120, 151, 152, 153, 160, 163, 166, 194, 206 King Hamlet 14, 25, 28, 32, 34, 55, 71, 72, 87, 95, 102, 103, 110, 111, 120, 124, 144, 154, 178, 179, 195, 205 see also ghost

231

Index

King Henry VI 28–9, 32, 34, 44, 66, 69, 104, 107, 109, 117, 120–1, 122, 124, 151, 152, 154, 155, 163, 194 see also ghost King Henry VIII 60, 64, 67, 87, 99, 125, 128, 138, 145, 155, 156, 174, 184, 204 King James VI and I 25, 84, 93, 128, 145, 167 Daemonologie (1597) 84, 128, 197, 198, 199, 203 King John 9, 50, 54, 65, 73, 92, 95, 96, 98, 104, 125, 138, 148, 153, 155, 204 King Lear 13, 15, 20, 23, 24, 48, 49, 50, 71, 72, 73, 78, 80, 90, 91, 92, 94–5, 97, 98, 100, 103, 106–7, 108, 113, 114, 117, 130, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 149, 151, 154, 159, 169, 176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 186 King of Navarre (LLL) 75 King Priam of Troy (T&C) 36, 75 King Richard II 50, 66, 96, 104, 154, 192 King Richard III 7, 8, 16, 27, 31–2, 41, 43–4, 46, 51–2, 53, 54, 55, 57, 64, 69, 73, 76, 77, 90, 92, 99, 103–4, 107, 108, 109, 112, 117, 121, 122, 124, 129, 138, 139, 141, 145, 151, 152, 153–4, 156, 160, 163, 166, 184, 194, 201, 203, 205, 206 King Simonides (Per.) 27 Kramer, Heinrich (with Jacob Sprenger): Malleus Maleficarum (1487) 35, 62, 116, 185 Lady Anne (RIII) 7, 16, 32, 69, 90, 104, 107, 109, 117, 121, 122, 124, 151, 152, 163, 194 see also ghost Lady Macbeth 25, 54, 88, 90, 122–3, 133, 177, 190–1, 199, 200–1, 203 Laertes (Ham.) 48, 55, 139, 140 Langland, William: Piers Plowman (14th century) 158 Launcelot Gobbo (MerV) 63, 86, 91, 92, 97, 170 Lavater, Ludwig or Lewes: Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght (1572) 101–2, 104, 120 laying 47, 78, 103, 124, 192 see also ghost, unlaid Lennox (Mac.) 155 Leonato (MAdo) 42 Leonatus, Sicilius (Cym.) 124, 170 see also ghost Leontes (WT) 96, 108, 144, 145, 190, 201

232

Les Prouesses et Faitz du Noble Huon de Bordeaux (early 13th century) see Bourchier, John Lewis (KJ) 155 Lord Chamberlain (HVIII) 99, 174 Lord Stanley ( RIII) 109 Lorenzo (MerV) 132 Love’s Labours Lost 12, 30, 63, 75, 85, 86, 89, 145, 179 love magic 18, 26–7, 36, 42, 47, 76, 127, 146, 152, 158, 160, 163, 167, 168, 179, 187, 188, 204, 205 Luce (Err.) 66, 202 Lucentio (Shrew) 41 Luciana (Err.) 75, 134, 168 Lucifer 11, 25, 26, 54, 59, 61, 62, 84–5, 89, 105, 116, 125, 164 see also devil Lucio (MM) 93, 135 Lucius (Cym.) 170, 171, 195 lunar see moon Lysander (MND) 27 Macbeth 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 50, 54–5, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 68, 71, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93–4, 95, 98–9, 102, 104, 107, 108, 109, 110–11, 112, 113, 122–3, 128, 131, 133, 139, 140, 145, 147, 155, 158, 165, 167, 169, 174, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186, 188, 190, 194–5, 196–7, 198–9, 200–1, 202, 203, 205 Macdonwald (Mac.) 98 Macduff (Mac.) 13, 41, 54, 88, 155, 178, 190 madness 20, 24, 27, 36, 37, 38, 40, 46, 49, 61, 62, 67, 68, 72, 95, 101, 105, 120, 123, 125, 130, 134, 142, 164, 168, 176, 179, 195 magic 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39–43, 89, 92, 95, 96, 105, 106, 108, 110, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 123, 126–8, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 154, 156, 157, 158, 160, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206 see also magician

Index

magical knowledge and learning see art, book magician 8, 9, 11–12, 15, 17, 29, 30, 39, 46, 48, 49, 52, 54, 56, 59, 87, 89, 90, 103, 105, 117, 126, 127, 128–9, 130, 132, 156, 157, 172, 185, 188 magnetism 29, 126 Magnus, Albertus 29 Mahu 72, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 Malcolm (Mac.) 123, 190 malformation 8, 35, 73, 90, 136, 137, 160, 202 Malvolio (TN) 14, 26, 27, 61, 70, 72, 88, 91, 99, 130, 149, 151, 164, 180–1 Marcus Andronicus (Tit.) 27 Maria (TN) 26, 27, 61, 151 Marina (Per.) 47, 80, 90 Marlowe, Christopher: The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus 12, 29, 48, 65, 84, 85, 89, 112, 127, 157 Marquess of Dorset (RIII) 51, 52 Mars (god) 87, 96, 145 Master Page (MWW) 61, 113, 177 masters 59, 84, 87, 94, 110, 130–1, 176–7, 199 Master Ford (MWW) 11, 25, 26, 30–1, 61, 68, 92, 97, 99, 113, 125, 138, 177, 195, 202 Measure for Measure 13, 40, 93, 102, 112, 135 Medea 42, 74, 76, 110, 118, 123, 127, 130, 131–3, 185, 200 medicine 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 27, 30, 38, 39–40, 41–2, 45, 47, 49, 67, 68, 72, 73, 74–5, 77, 78, 79, 83, 93, 94, 106, 139, 140, 142, 147, 149, 162, 168, 174, 175, 177, 178–9, 182, 194, 195, 197, 198, 202, 204 Medieval morality plays 8, 12, 62, 63, 64–5, 83, 89, 112, 164 Menas (A&C) 99 Menelaus (T&C) 58 Menenius (Cor.) 21, 74–5, 174 Mephistophilis, Mephistopheles 84–5, 89 Mercutio (R&J) 43, 47, 68–9, 73, 80, 108, 117, 124, 142, 160 Merlin 69, 105, 154, 206 mermaids 14, 27, 75, 79, 133–6, 168 see also siren metamorphosis 17, 18, 190, 191 Middleton, Thomas 88, 107, 110, 111, 203 The Witch (c. 1615) 36, 110, 199 ministers 7, 16, 87, 110, 123, 131, 175, 176–7 see also masters

Miranda (Temp.) 16, 35, 42, 52, 57–8, 139, 145, 156, 176 Mistress Ford (MWW) 30–1, 68, 99, 112, 138, 195, 202 Modo 72, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 monster 9, 14, 18, 34–5, 48, 56, 62, 92, 109, 116, 135, 136–9, 143, 160, 187, 201 Montano (Oth.) 20 moon 8, 10, 20, 23, 35, 48, 71, 97, 110, 133, 137, 161, 181, 187 see also astronomy, eclipse Man in the Moon 35 moon-calf see Caliban Moth (MND) 45, 73, 80, 83, 139, 140 see also fairy Mother Prat see Brainford, Witch of mountebank 49, 139–40, 149, 151, 174 Much Ado About Nothing 14, 42, 47, 55, 173, 180, 190, 202 mummy 140, 186 music 27, 36, 37, 39, 40–2, 43, 58, 63, 70, 72, 73, 75, 80–1, 110, 113, 134, 135, 142, 156, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175, 186, 192, 205 Mustardseed (MND) 80, 83, 139, 140, 147 see also fairy Naiad see spirit Nashe, Thomas: The Terrors of the Night or, A Discourse of Apparitions (1594) 14 nativity 19, 29, 52, 92, 99, 105, 114, 141, 144, 152, 180 natural astrology (astrologia naturalis) 19 natural philosophy 8, 103, 136, 181, 188 necromancer, necromancy 29, 30, 46, 77, 103, 206 Neo-Platonism 9, 11–12, 13, 15, 56, 57, 126, 156 Nereid see mermaid Nerissa (MerV) 58, 135 Newes from Scotland (1591) 93, 199 Nicolas Hopkins of Hinton 155 night-mare 108, 142, 162 Norfolk (HVIII) 145 North, Thomas: Plutarch’s Lives (1579) 12 Nym (MWW, HV) 26, 47 nymph 14, 15, 79, 82, 133–6, 168, 175, 197 Oberon (MND) 36, 38, 39, 40, 43, 79–81, 83, 143, 158, 179, 187

233

Index

Obidicut (KL) 72, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 occult 8, 16, 19, 21, 22, 36, 64, 66, 77, 88, 89, 95, 103, 126, 127, 128, 144, 147, 148, 153, 155, 169, 181, 206 Oceanus (myth.) 42 Odysseus (myth.) see Homer Old Lady (HVIII) 87, 99 Olivia (TN) 41, 61, 76, 87, 90, 99, 130, 151, 180–1 Ophelia (Ham.) 28, 48, 55, 134, 136, 138 oracle 96, 144–6, 167, 171, 184 Othello 13, 20, 27, 41, 42, 46–7, 50, 54, 55, 63, 66, 75, 86, 87, 90, 127, 128, 137, 138, 139, 140, 167, 174, 189, 204, 205 Ouph 58, 73, 79, 82, 146, 193 overlooking 27, 28, 41, 75, 76, 146 Ovid 18, 82, 130, 158–9, 166 Metamorphoses 167, 185 Metamorphoses transl. Arthur Golding (1567) 132–3 Paddock 107, 109, 147, 165, 188 see also toad paganism 14, 37, 39, 42, 48, 53, 58, 60, 64, 96, 97, 110, 116, 117, 124, 128, 134, 146, 165–6, 171–2, 194 Palamon (TNK) 38 Pandarus (T&C) 33 Pandulph (KJ) 155 Paracelsian theory 15, 134, 180 Parolles (AWW) 61, 155, 164, 180 Pasiphae (myth.) 42 Paulina (WT) 17, 108, 128, 173, 190, 201, 204 Peaseblossom (MND) 80, 83, 140, 147 see also fairy Perdita (WT) 23, 38, 76, 98, 128, 138, 178, 183–4, 204 performance see theatre periapt 39 see also charm Pericles 27, 39, 80, 86, 90, 184 Perkins, William: A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (1608) 19 Perseis (myth.) 42 Peter of Pomfret (KJ) 95, 148, 153 Peter Quince (MND) 68, 189, 195 Petronius: Satyricon 167 Petruchio (Shrew) 33, 41, 90 Philharmonus (Cym.) 21, 66, 67, 98, 145, 148, 155, 169–72, 195 Phillips, Judith (fortune-teller) 188

234

Pinch, Doctor (Err.) 13–14, 46, 48–9, 70, 97–8, 130, 139–40, 148–9, 150–1, 164, 206 Pistol (HV, 2 HIV, MWW) 26, 47, 86, 125 planet 8, 9, 19–21, 71, 92, 125, 147, 149, 180–1 see also astronomy, star Plautus (Roman playwright): Menaechmi (c. 200 bc) 14, 70 Player King (Ham.) 87 Pliny see Holland, Philemon Plutarch 12, 22, 166 poetic justice 7, 25, 52, 69, 152, 184 poetics 53, 60, 82, 96, 102, 104, 115, 117, 123, 144, 146, 152, 162, 166, 168, 169 relationship with alchemy 9, cursing 52, dreams 69, prophecy 144, magic 16, 39, 47 Poins, Ned (1 HIV, 2 HIV) 10, 27, 55 poison, poisonous 28, 29, 37, 39, 53, 69, 76–7, 92, 110, 111, 139, 165, 168, 169, 188 Polixenes (WT) 48, 76, 204–5 Pompey (A&C) 21, 99 Porter (Mac.) 26, 60 Portia (JC) 41 Portia (MerV) 58, 97, 135, 146 possession 13–14, 15–16, 26, 27, 46, 49, 61, 70, 71–2, 73, 77–8, 91, 94–5, 100, 110, 114, 115, 116, 130, 131, 142, 148, 149–51, 164, 169, 175, 176, 177, 179–80, 182, 206 Posthumus (Cym.) 32, 41, 68, 76, 103, 124, 138, 148, 170–1, 180, 202 potion 27, 40, 76, 110, 119, 139, 168, 169 prediction 7, 10, 19, 20, 21, 22, 58, 65, 66, 67, 86, 92, 95, 96, 145, 152–6, 169–70, 173, 206 see also prophecy Prince Edward 32, 151, 152, 163, 194 see also ghost Prince Edward of York 32, 151, 152, 153, 160, 163, 194 see also ghost Prince Harry (Hal) (1 HIV, 2 HIV) 10, 13, 38, 55, 62, 63, 69, 73, 96, 164 Princess Katherine (HV) 43, 47, 205 Princess of France (LLL) 75 profanity 24, 145 see also cursing prophecy 10, 19, 20, 21, 24, 32, 34, 36, 41, 116, 119, 122, 124, 144–5, 148, 152–6, 165, 166, 167, 169–71, 172, 173, 180, 186, 195, 198, 206 Prospero (Temp.) 14, 15, 16–17, 23, 30, 35, 40,

Index

41, 42, 49, 53, 54, 57–8, 62, 65, 73–4, 75, 76, 81, 85, 87, 95, 105, 106, 115–16, 127, 128, 129, 130–1, 132–3, 137, 156–8, 165, 172, 173, 174, 175–7, 178, 180, 185, 190, 193, 201, 204, 206 Proteus (TGV) 22, 96, 115, 178 Puck (MND) 18, 38, 39, 43, 55, 67, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 106–7, 138, 143, 146, 158–9, 162, 179, 180, 187, 190, 195 purgatory 14, 32, 44, 77, 101–2, 103, 104, 105, 111, 124, 178 see also hell Purr 72, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 see also cat Pyramus (myth.) 86, 190 Queen Elizabeth (wife of Edward IV) (RIII) 27, 41, 44, 51–2, 54, 107, 109, 112, 138, 152, 160, 163, 166, 194, 201, 205 Queen Elizabeth I 135, 187 Queen Gertrude (Ham.) 120, 205 Queen Katherine (HVIII) 184 Queen Mab (MND) 45, 68, 73, 80–1, 108, 142, 160–2 Queen Margaret (RIII, 1 HVI) 8, 24, 44, 51–3, 55, 73, 108, 120, 141, 151, 152, 153–4, 160, 184, 201, 203 Regan (KL) 154 Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller von Kӧnigsberg) 22 religion 10, 11–13, 14, 15, 17–18, 19–20, 21, 24, 26, 30, 33, 37, 39, 40, 42, 46, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55–7, 58, 59, 60, 62–3, 64, 70, 77, 78, 83, 86, 91–2, 94, 96–7, 98, 99, 100, 101–3, 104, 107, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 118, 124, 125, 126, 128, 130, 139, 140, 146, 150, 153, 155, 165, 166, 167, 171–2, 179–80, 181, 182, 183, 184, 194, 197, 201, 203, 204 Richard, Duke of Gloucester 7, 16, 31–2, 43, 50, 51–2, 53, 55, 69, 73, 112, 135, 141, 145, 151, 152, 202 see also King Richard III Richard, Duke of York 32, 44, 69, 104, 107, 109, 121, 122, 124, 151, 152, 153, 160, 163, 194 see also ghost Richmond, Earl of (RIII) 32, 44, 66–7, 69, 99, 104, 154 Rivers, Earl 32 see also ghost Robin Goodfellow see goblin, Puck

Robin Starveling (MND) 191 Roderigo (Oth.) 205 Romeo and Juliet 7, 12, 13, 21, 27, 30, 41, 43, 47, 58, 68–9, 91, 117, 124, 160–1, 178, 179, 180, 181 Rosalind (AYLI) 17, 48, 54, 98, 129, 141 Rosaline (LLL) 86 sagittary 139 Sathan 12, 16, 18, 26, 36, 49, 59, 60, 62, 65, 84, 110, 125, 164, 166, 179 see also devil science 8–9, 15, 16–17, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 147, 206 Scot, Reginald: The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) 11, 18, 25–6, 33, 48, 62, 77, 82, 116, 158, 159, 183, 184, 189, 198 Scroop (HV) 56 Scroop (RII) 192 sea-maids see mermaids sea-nymphs see mermaids Sebastian (Temp.) 40, 98, 115, 138 Sebastian (TN) 204 Second Witch (Mac.) 24, 37, 54, 93, 107, 108, 110, 111, 123, 147, 165, 186, 187, 196, 198 Seneca: Medea (49–65 ad) 200 Setebos (Temp.) 17, 35, 64, 65, 115–16, 165–6, 175, 185, 201, 204 shapeshifting 15, 36, 43, 55, 59, 84, 93, 147, 150, 175, 176, 180, 188, 190, 192–3, 200 see also metamorphosis, transformation Shore, Jane (RIII) 8, 27, 41, 44, 53, 54, 109, 112, 138, 160, 166, 201, 205 Shylock (MerV) 46, 50, 63, 91, 92, 132, 155 sibyl 36, 127, 144, 167–8, 197, 200 Sidney, Philip: Apology for Poetry/Defence of Poesie (c. 1579, 1595) 144, 152 Silvia (TGV) 96 Sinon (Luc.) 75 Sinon (Tit.) 27 Sir Toby (TN) 26, 61, 151, 164 siren 41, 134–6, 168–9 see also mermaids Smulkin 72, 91, 113, 114, 130, 136, 143, 159, 169 Snout (MND) 189 Solanio (MerV) 63 Solinus, Duke of Ephesus (Err.) 42 song see music, verbal magic

235

Index

Sonnets 9, 12, 13, 20, 22, 67, 71, 77, 86, 89, 91, 102, 117, 155, 168–9, 174, 179, 181 Soothsayer, soothsaying 13, 21, 22, 34, 36, 124, 145, 148, 153, 154, 155, 167, 169–72, 181, 195, 203 sorcery 17, 29, 45, 49, 54, 110, 118, 119, 127–8, 129, 136, 156, 160, 172, 189, 199, 200, 204 Southwell, John (2 HVI) 17–18, 28–9, 44, 77–8, 114, 119, 172–3, 200 spell 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 48, 50, 76, 92, 124, 128, 139, 143, 148, 156, 157, 158, 173–4, 187, 198, 199, 202 Spenser, Edmund: The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) 42, 82, 131, 187 spirit 8–9, 10–13, 15, 17, 18, 25, 28, 29, 30, 36, 40, 62, 64, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91, 93, 95, 101–4, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 127, 131, 134, 135, 142, 144, 147, 149, 150, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 164, 165, 169, 172, 174–80, 184–5, 186, 191, 192, 193, 195, 198, 199–200, 204, 205, 206 Sprenger, Jacob (with Heinrich Kramer): Malleus Maleficarum (1487) 35, 62, 116, 185 staging see theatre star 9, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 34, 39, 48, 57, 58, 71, 80, 86, 87, 92, 97, 99, 105, 125, 135, 141, 147, 149, 156, 180–1, 186 see also astronomy, planet Stephano (Temp.) 34–5, 62, 137 Stubbes, Philip: The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) 60, 61, 117 Suffolk (2 HVI) 20, 24, 41, 51, 86, 108, 114, 201 supernatural 10, 15, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 82, 86, 88, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 119, 126, 127, 129, 131, 134, 135, 136, 144, 146, 154, 155, 158, 162, 166, 168, 181–3, 184, 186, 187, 197, 201 superstitious 82, 183–4, 203 Sycorax (Temp.) 15, 35, 41, 52, 54, 62, 64, 65, 105, 108, 115, 116, 131, 133, 137, 156, 158, 165, 172, 175, 184–5, 198, 201, 204 see also witch sympathetic magic 40, 126–7

236

taking 33, 37–8, 82, 113, 125, 149–50, 176, 186, 192, 203 Talbot (1 HVI) 47, 65, 90, 199 talisman, talismatic 30, 147 see also charm, periapt Tamora (Tit.) 41, 75, 112, 168 Tartarus 14, 56, 207 Tarquin (Luc.) 23, 27, 41, 53, 76, 87, 99, 177–8 The Brideling, Sadling and Ryding of a Rich Churl (1595) 188 The Comedy of Errors 10, 12, 13, 15–16, 42–3, 46, 47, 48–9, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 71–2, 75, 81, 82, 90, 91, 97–8, 106, 128, 134, 139–40, 149, 150–1, 164, 168, 172, 174, 177, 178, 189, 190, 202, 206 The Examination of Certain Witches (1566) 36 The Examination of John Walsh (1566) 45, 79 The First Part of Henry IV 11, 16, 27, 38, 39, 40, 54, 55, 61, 63, 66, 69, 73, 81, 90, 96, 105, 116, 125, 127, 129, 164, 177, 178, 202, 206 The First Part of Henry VI 7, 16, 17, 24, 27, 29, 43, 45, 47, 49, 54, 65, 75, 76, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92, 104, 105, 108, 110, 112, 117, 118, 119, 127–8, 133, 147–8, 153, 167, 172, 173, 177, 180, 195, 198, 199 The Merchant of Venice 13, 36, 46, 50, 58, 63, 76, 86, 91, 97, 111, 132, 135, 145, 146, 155, 167 The Merry Wives of Windsor 11, 25, 26, 28, 30–1, 42, 43, 58, 60–1, 62, 64–5, 68, 73, 76, 89, 81, 82, 83, 89, 90, 92, 97, 99, 106, 108, 112–13, 138, 140, 146, 164, 173, 177, 184, 186, 189193, 195, 202, 203–4, 205 The Passionate Pilgrim 12, 24, 77, 91, 98, 179 The Phoenix and the Turtle 9, 22, 92 The Rape of Lucrece 23, 27, 41, 53, 54, 75, 76, 87, 99, 117, 134, 177–8 The Second Part of Henry IV 10, 13, 62, 66, 87, 91, 125, 138, 189 The Second Part of Henry VI 16, 17–18, 20, 24, 27, 28, 41 The Taming of the Shrew 33, 41, 65, 90, 167, 178, 189–90 The Tempest 13, 14, 15, 16–17, 23, 24, 30, 34–5, 40, 41, 42, 43, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 62, 65, 67, 68, 70, 73, 75, 76, 81, 87, 95, 98, 99, 106, 108, 109, 111, 115–16, 127,

Index

128, 129, 130, 131, 132–3, 135, 137, 138, 139, 145, 156, 158, 165, 172, 173, 175, 180, 184–5, 190, 193, 195, 198, 201, 205, 206 The Third Part of Henry VI 7, 20, 32, 66–7, 103, 120, 135, 141, 151, 154, 202 The Two Gentlemen of Verona 22, 96, 115, 178 The Two Noble Kinsmen 23, 37, 38, 42, 49, 128, 145, 184, 203 The Winter’s Tale 7–8, 17, 20, 23, 32, 38, 48, 59, 68, 76, 81, 96, 98, 108, 128, 138, 144, 146, 173, 178, 183, 184, 190, 201, 204, 205 The Witches of Northamptonshire (1612) 197 theatre, theatricality 8, 10, 12–13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 25, 28, 29, 30, 32, 37, 38, 40, 46, 48, 53, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 80, 82, 83, 84, 89, 91, 93, 94–5, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112, 117, 118, 124, 126–7, 128, 129, 131, 137, 139, 144, 146, 147, 150, 156, 158, 162, 165, 166, 167, 175, 176, 177, 180, 184, 185, 186, 190, 192, 195, 196, 198, 199, 200 theology see religion Thersites (T&C) 47, 58, 95–6, 137 Theseus (MND) 80 Third Witch (Mac.) 24, 37, 54, 94, 108, 109, 110, 123, 165, 186–7, 196, 198 Thisbe (myth.) 86 tides 9, 29, 133 see also weather Timon of Athens 8, 9, 47, 53, 64, 86, 111, 145 Titania (MND) 36, 38, 39, 40, 43, 68, 79–80, 81, 82, 83, 143, 160, 173, 179, 187–8 Titus Andronicus 7, 16, 27, 41, 53, 63, 64, 75, 90, 112, 167, 168, 204, 205 toad 35, 83, 85, 94, 107, 109, 111, 147, 165, 188, 201 see also familiar, Paddock toadstone 188 Topsell, Edward: History of Four-Footed Beasts (1607) 36, 111 Historie of Serpents (1608) 188 Tranio (Shrew) 41 transformation 9, 12, 18, 30, 36, 40, 42, 43, 59, 70, 76, 80, 91, 93, 158, 159, 188–90, 191, 199, 200 translation 18, 189, 190, 191 transportation 59, 189, 190–1 trickery see deceit Trinculo (Temp.) 34–5, 62, 99, 137

Troilus and Cressida 33, 36, 47, 58, 63, 66, 68, 76, 87, 95–6, 106, 137, 138, 145, 154, 179, 184, 203 Tubal (MerV) 63 Tullus Aufidius (Cor.) 38–9, 204 Twelfth Night 18, 26, 27, 41, 49, 61, 76, 87, 88, 90, 91, 95, 99, 115, 116, 130, 138, 149, 164, 181, 204 Tybalt (R&J) 91 uncursing 7, 192 see also accursed, cursing unlaid 103, 192 see also ghost, laying urchin 79, 82, 111, 146, 176, 192–3 Valentine (TGV) 96, 178 Vaughan, Sir Thomas 32, 44, 69, 104, 107, 109, 121, 122, 124, 151, 152, 163, 194 see also ghost venom, venomous 29, 188 Venus (goddess) 42, 96, 134 Venus and Adonis 9, 14, 27, 66, 75, 92, 104, 134–5, 181, 192 verbal magic 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 47, 48, 50, 65, 75, 84, 103, 173, 174, 205 see also charm, enchantment, spell Vice (figure) 8, 62 see also Medieval morality plays Viola (TN) 41, 76, 90, 95, 99, 138 Virgil: Aeneid 64, 167 vision 12, 25, 32, 37, 44, 67–9, 75–6, 102, 103, 118, 135, 170, 171, 177, 181, 183, 194–5 see also dream, foresee, foretell, prophecy Warwick (2, HVI, 3 HVI) 20, 32, 48, 122, 141 weather 10, 23, 28, 29, 36, 40, 48, 71, 87, 93, 95, 132–3, 155, 167, 184, 186, 198, 199 weird 24, 25, 27, 41, 54, 58, 68, 71, 73, 79, 88, 93, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 122, 155, 158, 165, 167, 177, 182, 186, 196–7, 198, 199 werewolves 189, 190 Williams, Sara (demoniac) 94 witch 7, 8, 13, 15–16, 18, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30–1, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42–3, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 58, 64, 65, 66, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 99, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114,

237

Index

115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 123, 127, 128, 131–3, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 156, 158, 159, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 182, 183, 184–5, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 196–204, 205, 206 see also witchcraft Witch of Endor 46, 116, 205 witchcraft 7, 11, 14, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 62, 66, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 82,

238

84, 85, 93, 95, 108, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 119, 123, 128, 132, 133, 146, 150, 153, 158, 160, 163, 166, 167, 172, 174, 175, 181, 183, 184, 189, 190, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204–5 see also witch Witchcraft Act (1563) 46, 79, 84, 116, 204 Witchcraft Act (1604) 93, 199, 204 wizard 28, 49, 129, 172, 206 yoke-devil 56, 207 Young Clifford (2 HVI) 48, 132