we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile,Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthy prison of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeased,
Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth.”
In olden times, spirits were said to have different allotments of time, suitable to the variety and nature of their agency. Prospero, in the “Tempest” (i. 2), says to Caliban:
“Be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast77 of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee.”
According to a popular notion, the presence of unearthly beings was announced by an alteration in the tint of the lights which happened to be burning – a superstition alluded to in “Richard III.” (v. 3), where the tyrant exclaims, as he awakens:
“The lights burn blue. – It is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh —
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent.”
So in “Julius Cæsar” (iv. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of Cæsar, exclaims:
“How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here?”
It has been a widespread belief from the most remote period that ghosts cannot bear the light, and so disappear at the dawn of day; their signal being the cock-crow.78 The ghost of Hamlet’s father says (i. 5):
“But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be” —
and —
“Fare thee well at once.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.”
Again, in “King Lear” (iii. 4), Edgar says: “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock.”
The time of night, as the season wherein spirits wander abroad, is further noticed by Gardiner in “Henry VIII.” (v. 1):
“Affairs, that walk,
As they say spirits do, at midnight.”
It was a prevalent notion that a person who crossed the spot on which a spectre was seen became subject to its malignant influence. In “Hamlet” (i. 1), Horatio says, in reference to the ghost:
“But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me.”
Lodge, in his “Illustrations of British History” (iii. 48), tells us that among the reasons for supposing the death of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby (who died young, in 1594), to have been occasioned by witchcraft, was the following: “On Friday there appeared a tall man, who twice crossed him swiftly; and when the earl came to the place where he saw this man, he fell sick.”
Reginald Scot, in his “Discovery of Witchcraft” (1584), enumerates the different kinds of spirits, and particularly notices white, black, gray, and red spirits. So in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), “black spirits” are mentioned – the charm song referred to (like the one in act iv.) being found in Middleton’s “Witch” (v. 2):
“Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray;
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may.”
A well-known superstition which still prevails in this and foreign countries is that of the “spectre huntsman and his furious host.” As night-time approaches, it is supposed that this invisible personage rides through the air with his yelping hounds; their weird sound being thought to forbode misfortune of some kind. This popular piece of folk-lore exists in the north of England under a variety of forms among our peasantry, who tenaciously cling to the traditions which have been handed down to them.79 It has been suggested that Shakespeare had some of these superstitions in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth (i. 7), while contemplating the murder of Duncan, the following metaphors:
“And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind!”
Again, in “The Tempest” (iv. 1), Prospero and Ariel are represented as setting on spirits, in the shape of hounds, to hunt Stephano and Trinculo. This species of diabolical or spectral chase was formerly a popular article of belief. As Drake aptly remarks,80 “the hell-hounds of Shakespeare appear to be sufficiently formidable, for, not merely commissioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, likewise, as goblins,” to —
“grind their joints
With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews
With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them
Than pard or cat o’ mountain.
Ariel. Hark, they roar!
Prospero. Let them be hunted soundly.”
TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS
Shakespeare has several references to the old superstitious belief in the transmigration of souls, traces of which may still be found in the reverence paid to the robin, the wren, and other birds. Thus, in “The Merchant of Venice” (iv. 1), Gratiano says to Shylock:
“Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
To hold opinion with Pythagoras
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern’d a wolf, who, hang’d for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallow’d dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.”
Caliban, when remonstrating with the drunken Stephano and Trinculo, for delaying at the mouth of the cave of Prospero, instead of taking the magician’s life (“Tempest,” iv. 1), says:
“I will have none on’t: we shall lose our time,
And all be turn’d to barnacles, or to apes.”
In “Hamlet” (iv. 5), in the scene where Ophelia, in her mental aberration, quotes snatches of old ballads, she says: “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter! Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.”81
Again,
Vast,
“In the dead waste and middle of the night.”
See p. 104.
See Hardwick’s “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore,” 1872, pp. 153-176.
“Shakespeare and His Times,” vol. i. p. 378.
“Elizabethan Demonology,” p. 49.
