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CHAPTER IV
DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE

The state of popular feeling in past centuries with regard to the active agency of devils has been well represented by Reginald Scot, who, in his work on Witchcraft, has shown how the superstitious belief in demonology was part of the great system of witchcraft. Many of the popular delusions of this terrible form of superstition have been in a masterly manner exposed by Shakespeare; and the scattered allusions which he has given, illustrative of it, are indeed sufficient to prove, if it were necessary, what a highly elaborate creed it was. Happily, Shakespeare, like the other dramatists of the period, has generally treated the subject with ridicule, showing that he had no sympathy with the grosser opinions shared by various classes in those times, whether held by king or clown. According to an old belief, still firmly credited in the poet’s day, it was supposed that devils could at any moment assume whatever form they pleased that would most conduce to the success of any contemplated enterprise they might have in hand; and hence the charge of being a devil, so commonly brought against innocent and harmless persons in former years, can easily be understood. Among the incidental allusions to this notion, given by Shakespeare, Prince Hal (“1 Henry IV.,” ii. 4) tells Falstaff “there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man;” “an old white-bearded Satan.” In the “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 1) Salanio, on the approach of Shylock, says: “Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.”

Indeed, “all shapes that man goes up and down in” seem to have been at the devil’s control, a belief referred to in “Timon of Athens” (ii. 2):

“Var. Serv. What is a whoremaster, fool?

Fool. A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. ’Tis a spirit: sometime ’t appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than’s artificial one: he is very often like a knight; and, generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in.”

A popular form assumed by evil spirits was that of a negro or Moor, to which Iago alludes when he incites Brabantio to search for his daughter, in “Othello” (i. 1):

 
“Zounds, sir, you are robb’d; for shame, put on your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.
Arise, I say.”
 

On the other hand, so diverse were the forms which devils were supposed to assume that they are said occasionally to appear in the fairest form, even in that of a girl (ii. 3):

 
“When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.”
 

So in “The Comedy of Errors” (iv. 3) we have the following dialogue:

“Ant. S. Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not!

Dro. S. Master, is this mistress Satan?

Ant. S. It is the devil.

Dro. S. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil’s dam; and here she comes in the habit of a light wench; and thereof comes that the wenches say, ‘God damn me;’ that’s as much as to say, ‘God make me a light wench.’ It is written, they appear to men like angels of light.”

(Cf. also “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” iv. 3.) In “King John” (iii. 1) even the fair Blanch seemed to Constance none other than the devil tempting Lewis “in likeness of a new untrimmed bride.”

Not only, too, were devils thought to assume any human shape they fancied, but, as Mr. Spalding remarks,⁸¹ “the forms of the whole of the animal kingdom appear to have been at their disposal; and, not content with these, they seem to have sought for unlikely shapes to appear in” – the same characteristic belonging also to the fairy tribe.

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

 
“As I stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,
Horns whelk’d and wav’d like the enridged sea:
It was some fiend.”
 

Again, Edgar says (“King Lear,” iii. 6): “The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale” – the allusion probably being to the following incident related by Friswood Williams: “There was also another strange thing happened at Denham about a bird. Mistris Peckham had a nightingale which she kept in a cage, wherein Maister Dibdale took great delight, and would often be playing with it. The nightingale was one night conveyed out of the cage, and being next morning diligently sought for, could not be heard of, till Maister Mainie’s devil, in one of his fits (as it was pretended), said that the wicked spirit which was in this examinate’s sister had taken the bird out of the cage and killed it in despite of Maister Dibdale.”⁸²

Even the shape of a fly was a favorite one with evil spirits, so much so, that the term “fly” was a popular synonym for a familiar. In “Titus Andronicus” (iii. 2) there is an allusion to this belief, where Marcus, being rebuked by Titus for having killed a fly, gives as his reason:

 
“It was a black ill-favour’d fly,
Like to the empress’ Moor: therefore I kill’d him.”
 

Mr. Spalding gives the following illustrations of the superstition: “At the execution of Urban Grandier, the famous magician of Loudun, in 1634, a large fly was seen buzzing about the stake; and a priest promptly seizing the opportunity of improving the occasion for the benefit of the onlookers, declared that Beelzebub had come in his own proper person to carry off Grandier’s soul to hell. In 1664 occurred the celebrated witch trials which took place before Sir Matthew Hale. The accused were charged with bewitching two children, and part of the evidence against them was that flies and bees were seen to carry into their victims’ mouths the nails and pins which they afterwards vomited.”

Once more, another form devils assumed was that of a dead friend. Thus “Hamlet” (i. 4), when he confronts the apparition, exclaims:

 
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn’d,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee” —
 

for, as Mr. Spalding remarks, “it cannot be imagined that Hamlet imagined that a ‘goblin damned’ could actually be the spirit of his dead father; and, therefore, the alternative in his mind must be that he saw a devil assuming his father’s likeness – a form which the Evil One knew would most incite Hamlet to intercourse.”

The same idea seems present in Horatio’s mind:

 
“What, if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff,
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness?”
 

Once more, in the next act (ii. 2), Hamlet again expresses his doubts:

 
“The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.”
 

In the Elizabethan times, too, no superstitious belief exerted a more pernicious and baneful influence on the credulous and ignorant than the notion that evil spirits from time to time entered into human beings, and so completely gained a despotic control over them as to render them perfectly helpless. Harsnet, in his “Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures” (1603), has exposed this gross superstition; and a comparison of the passages in “King Lear,” spoken by Edgar when feigning madness, with those given by Harsnet, will show that Shakespeare has accurately given the contemporary belief on the subject. Mr. Spalding also considers that nearly all the allusions in “King Lear” refer to a youth known as Richard Mainey, a minute account of whose supposed possession has been given by Harsnet.

Persons so possessed were often bound and shut up in a dark room, occasionally being forced to submit to flagellation – a treatment not unlike that described in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 2):

 
“Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipp’d and tormented.”
 

In the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 4) we have an amusing scene, further illustrative, probably, of the kind of treatment adopted in Shakespeare’s day:

 
“Courtesan. How say you now? is not your husband mad?
Adriana. His incivility confirms no less —
Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;
Establish him in his true sense again,
And I will please you what you will demand.
Luciana. Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!
Courtesan. Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy!
Pinch. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.
Ant. E. There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.
Pinch. I charge thee, Satan, hous’d within this man,
 

To yield possession to my holy prayers,

And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight:

I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.”

Pinch further says:

 
“They must be bound, and laid in some dark room.”
 

As Brand remarks,⁸³ there is no vulgar story of the devil’s having appeared anywhere without a cloven foot. In graphic representations he is seldom or never pictured without one. In the following passage, where Othello is questioning whether Iago is a devil or not, he says (v. 2):

 
“I look down towards his feet; – but that’s a fable. —
If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.”
 

Dr. Johnson gives this explanation: “I look towards his feet to see if, according to the common opinion, his feet be cloven.”

In Massinger’s “Virgin Martyr” (iii. 3), Harpax, an evil spirit, following Theophilus in the shape of a secretary, speaks thus of the superstitious Christian’s description of his infernal enemy:

 
“I’ll tell you what now of the devil:
He’s no such horrid creature; cloven-footed,
Black, saucer-ey’d, his nostrils breathing fire,
As these lying Christians make him.”
 

GOOD AND EVIL DEMONS

It was formerly commonly believed that not only kingdoms had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius or good angel, to protect and admonish him by dreams, visions, etc.⁸⁴ Hence, in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 3), the soothsayer, speaking of Cæsar, says:

 
“O Antony, stay not by his side:
Thy demon, – that’s thy spirit which keeps thee, – is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Cæsar’s is not; but, near him, thy angel
Becomes a fear, as being o’erpower’d.”
 

Thus Macbeth (iii. 1) speaks in a similar manner in reference to Banquo:

 
“There is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and, under him,
My Genius is rebuked; as, it is said,
Mark Antony’s was by Cæsar.”
 

So, too, in “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2), the Chief-justice says:

 
“You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.”
 

We may quote a further reference in “Julius Cæsar” (iii. 2), where Antony says:

 
“For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar’s angel.”
 

“In the Roman world,” says Mr. Tylor, in his “Primitive Culture” (1873, vol. ii. p. 202), “each man had his ‘genius natalis,’ associated with him from birth to death, influencing his action and his fate, standing represented by its proper image, as a lar among the household gods and at weddings and joyous times, and especially on the anniversary of the birthday when genius and man began their united career, worship was paid with song and dance to the divine image, adorned with garlands, and propitiated with incense and libations of wine. The demon or genius was, as it were, the man’s companion soul, a second spiritual Ego. The Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young Octavius, ‘For thy demon,’ said he, ‘is in fear of his.’”

The allusion by Lady Macbeth (i. 5), in the following passage, is to the spirits of Revenge:

 
“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!”
 

In Nash’s “Pierce Pennilesse” we find a description of these spirits and of their office. “The second kind of devils which he most employeth are those northern Martii, called the Spirits of Revenge, and the authors of massacres and seed-men of mischief; for they have commission to incense men to rapine, sacrilege, theft, murder, wrath, fury, and all manner of cruelties; and they command certain of the southern spirits to wait upon them, as also great Arioch, that is termed the Spirit of Revenge.” In another passage we are further told how “the spirits of the aire will mixe themselves with thunder and lightning, and so infect the clime where they raise any tempest, that suddenly great mortalitie shall ensue of the inhabitants.” “Aerial spirits or devils,” according to Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” “are such as keep quarter most part in the aire, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings, tear oakes, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts,” etc. Thus, in “King John” (iii. 2), the Bastard remarks:

 
“Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;
Some airy devil hovers in the sky,
And pours down mischief.”
 

It was anciently supposed that all mines of gold, etc., were guarded by evil spirits. Thus Falstaff, in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 3), speaks of learning as “a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil.” This superstition still prevails, and has been made the subject of many a legend. Thus, it is believed by the peasantry living near Largo-Law, Scotland, that a rich mine of gold is concealed in the mountain. “A spectre once appeared there, supposed to be the guardian of the mine, who, being accosted by a neighboring shepherd, promised to tell him at a certain time and on certain conditions, where ‘the gowd mine is in Largo-Law,’ especially enjoining that the horn sounded for the housing of the cows at the adjoining farm of Balmain should not blow. Every precaution having been taken, the ghost was true to his tryst; but, unhappily, when he was about to divulge the desired secret, Tammie Norrie, the cowherd of Balmain, blew a blast, whereupon the ghost vanished, with the denunciation:

 
‘Woe to the man that blew the horn,
For out of the spot he shall ne’er be borne.’
 

The unlucky horn-blower was struck dead, and, as it was found impossible to remove the body, a cairn of stones was raised over it.”⁸⁵

Steevens considers that when Macbeth (iii. 2) says:

 
“Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse,”
 

he refers to those demons who were supposed to remain in their several places of confinement all day, but at the close of it were released; such, indeed, as are mentioned in “The Tempest” (v. 1), as rejoicing “to hear the solemn curfew,” because it announced the hour of their freedom.

Among other superstitions we may quote one in the “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 1), where Salanio says: “Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer.”

Of the devils mentioned by Shakespeare may be noted the following:

Amaimon is one of the chief, whose dominion is on the north side of the infernal gulf. He might be bound or restrained from doing hurt from the third hour till noon, and from the ninth hour till evening. In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 2) Ford mentions this devil, and in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) Falstaff says: “That same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold.”⁸⁶

The north was always supposed to be the particular habitation of bad spirits. Milton, therefore, assembles the rebel angels in the north. In “1 Henry VI.” (v. 3), La Pucelle invokes the aid of the spirits:

 
“Under the lordly monarch of the north.”
 

Barbason. This demon would seem to be the same as “Marbas, alias Barbas,” who, as Scot⁸⁷ informs us, “is a great president, and appeareth in the forme of a mightie lion; but at the commandment of a conjurer cometh up in the likeness of man, and answereth fullie as touching anything which is hidden or secret.” In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 2) it is mentioned by Ford in connection with Lucifer, and again in “Henry V.” (ii. 1) Nym tells Pistol: “I am not Barbason; you cannot conjure me.”

The names of the several fiends in “King Lear,” Shakespeare is supposed to have derived from Harsnet’s “Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures” (1603).

Flibbertigibbet, one of the fiends that possessed poor Tom, is, we are told (iv. 1), the fiend “of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women.” And again (iii. 4), “he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin.”

Frateretto is referred to by Edgar (iii. 6): “Frateretto calls me; and tells me, Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.”

Hobbididance is noticed as “prince of dumbness” (iv. 1), and perhaps is the same as Hopdance (iii. 6), “who cries,” says Edgar, “in Tom’s belly for two white herring.”

Mahu, like Modo, would seem to be another name for “the prince of darkness” (iii. 4), and further on (iv. 1) he is spoken of as the fiend “of stealing;” whereas the latter is described as the fiend “of murder.” Harsnet thus speaks of them: “Maho was general dictator of hell; and yet, for good manners’ sake, he was contented of his good nature to make show, that himself was under the check of Modu, the graund devil in Ma(ister) Maynie.”

Obidicut, another name of the fiend known as Haberdicut (iv. 1).

Smulkin (iii. 4). This is spelled Smolkin by Harsnet.

Thus, in a masterly manner, Shakespeare has illustrated and embellished his plays with references to the demonology of the period; having been careful in every case – while enlivening his audience – to convince them of the utter absurdity of this degraded form of superstition.

CHAPTER V
NATURAL PHENOMENA

Many of the most beautiful and graphic passages in Shakespeare’s writings have pictured the sun in highly glowing language, and often invested it with that sweet pathos for which the poet was so signally famous. Expressions, for instance, such as the following, are ever frequent: “the glorious sun” (“Twelfth Night,” iv. 3); “heaven’s glorious sun” (“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” i. 1); “gorgeous as the sun at midsummer” (“1 Henry IV.,” iv. 1); “all the world is cheered by the sun” (“Richard III.,” i. 2); “the sacred radiance of the sun” (“King Lear,” i. 1); “sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise” (“Titus Andronicus,” iii. 1), etc. Then, again, how often we come across passages replete with pathos, such as “thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west” (“Richard II.,” ii. 4); “ere the weary sun set in the west” (“Comedy of Errors,” i. 2); “the weary sun hath made a golden set” (“Richard III.,” v. 3); “The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head” (“Romeo and Juliet,” v. 3), etc. Although, however, Shakespeare has made such constant mention of the sun, yet his allusions to the folk-lore connected with it are somewhat scanty.

According to the old philosophy the sun was accounted a planet,⁸⁸ and thought to be whirled round the earth by the motion of a solid sphere, in which it was fixed. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 13), Cleopatra exclaims:

 
“O sun,
Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in! darkling stand
The varying shore o’ the world.”
 

Supposing this sphere consumed, the sun must wander in endless space, and, as a natural consequence, the earth be involved in endless night.

In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the sun a “wandering knight,” and by this expression evidently alludes to some knight of romance. Mr. Douce⁸⁹ considered the allusion was to “The Voyage of the Wandering Knight,” by Jean de Cathenay, of which the translation, by W. Goodyeare, appeared about the year 1600. The words may be a portion of some forgotten ballad.

A pretty fancy is referred to in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Capulet says:

 
“When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
But for the sunset of my brother’s son
It rains downright.”
 

And so, too, in the “Rape of Lucrece:”

 
“But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set.”
 

“That Shakespeare thought it was the air,” says Singer,⁹⁰ “and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works. Thus, in ‘King John’ (ii. 1) he says: ‘Before the dew of evening fall.’” Steevens, alluding to the following passage in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), “and when she [i. e., the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower,” says that Shakespeare “means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew.”

By a popular fancy, the sun was formerly said to dance at its rising on Easter morning – to which there may be an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Romeo, addressing Juliet, says:

 
“look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”
 

We may also compare the expression in “Coriolanus” (v. 4):

 
“The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,
Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,
Make the sun dance.”
 

Mr. Knight remarks, there was “something exquisitely beautiful in the old custom of going forth into the fields before the sun had risen on Easter Day, to see him mounting over the hills with tremulous motion, as if it were an animate thing, bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of mankind.”⁹¹

A cloudy rising of the sun has generally been regarded as ominous – a superstition equally prevalent on the Continent as in this country. In “Richard III.” (v. 3), King Richard asks:

 
“Who saw the sun to-day?
 
 
Ratcliff. Not I, my lord.
 
 
K. Richard. Then he disdains to shine; for, by the book
He should have braved the east an hour ago:
A black day will it be to somebody.”
 

“The learned Moresin, in his ‘Papatus,’” says Brand,⁹² “reckons among omens the cloudy rising of the sun.” Vergil, too, in his first Georgic (441-449), considers it a sign of stormy weather:⁹³

 
“Ille ubi nascentem maculis variaverit ortum
Conditus in nubem, medioque refugerit orbe,
Suspecti tibi sint imbres; namque urget ab alto
Arboribusque satisque Notus pecorique sinister,
Aut ubi sub lucem densa inter nubila sese
Diversi rumpent radii, aut ubi pallida surget,
Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile,
Heu, male tum mitis defendet pampinus uvas:
Tam multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando.”
 

A red sunrise is also unpropitious, and, according to a well-known rhyme:

 
“If red the sun begins his race,
Be sure the rain will fall apace.”
 

This old piece of weather-wisdom is mentioned by our Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 2, 3: “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowring.” Shakespeare, in his “Venus and Adonis,” thus describes it:

 
“a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”
 

Mr. Swainson⁹⁴ shows that this notion is common on the Continent. Thus, at Milan the proverb runs, “If the morn be red, rain is at hand.”

Shakespeare, in “Richard II.” (ii. 4), alludes to another indication of rain:

 
“Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,
Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest.”
 

A “watery sunset” is still considered by many a forerunner of wet. A red sunset, on the other hand, beautifully described in “Richard III.” (v. 3) —

 
“The weary sun hath made a golden set.” —
 

is universally regarded as a prognostication of fine weather, and we find countless proverbs illustrative of this notion, one of the most popular being, “Sky red at night, is the sailor’s delight.”

From the earliest times an eclipse of the sun was looked upon as an omen of coming calamity; and was oftentimes the source of extraordinary alarm as well as the occasion of various superstitious ceremonies. In 1597, during an eclipse of the sun, it is stated that, at Edinburgh, men and women thought the day of judgment was come.⁹⁵ Many women swooned, much crying was heard in the streets, and in fear some ran to the kirk to pray. Mr. Napier says he remembers “an eclipse about 1818, when about three parts of the sun was covered. The alarm in the village was very great, indoor work was suspended for the time, and in several families prayers were offered for protection, believing that it portended some awful calamity; but when it passed off there was a general feeling of relief.” In “King Lear” (i. 2), Gloucester remarks: “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father.” Othello, too (v. 2), in his agony and despair, exclaims:

 
“O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.”
 

Francis Bernier⁹⁶ says that, in France, in 1654, at an eclipse of the sun, “some bought drugs against the eclipse, others kept themselves close in the dark in their caves and their well-closed chambers, others cast themselves in great multitudes into the churches; those apprehending some malign and dangerous influence, and these believing that they were come to the last day, and that the eclipse would shake the foundations of nature.”⁹⁷

In “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 1), Shakespeare refers to a curious circumstance in which, on a certain occasion, the sun is reported to have appeared like three suns. Edward says, “do I see three suns?” to which Richard replies:

 
“Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But sever’d in a pale clear-shining sky.
See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
As if they vow’d some league inviolable:
Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun,
In this the heaven figures some event.”⁹⁸
 

This fact is mentioned both by Hall and Holinshed; the latter says: “At which tyme the sun (as some write) appeared to the Earl of March like three sunnes, and sodainely joyned altogether in one, upon whiche sight hee tooke such courage, that he fiercely setting on his enemyes put them to flight.” We may note here that on Trinity Sunday three suns are supposed to be seen. In the “Mémoires de l’Académie Celtique” (iii. 447), it is stated that “Le jour de la fête de la Trinité, quelques personne vont de grand matin dans la campagne, pour y voir levre trois soleils à la fois.”

According to an old proverb, to quit a better for a worse situation was spoken of as to go “out of God’s blessing into the warm sun,” a reference to which we find in “King Lear” (ii. 2), where Kent says:

 
“Good king, that must approve the common saw,
Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’st
To the warm sun.”
 

Dr. Johnson thinks that Hamlet alludes to this saying (i. 2), for when the king says to him,

 
“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”
 

he replies,

 
“Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun,”
 

i. e., out of God’s blessing.

This expression, says Mr. Dyce,⁹⁹ is found in various authors from Heywood down to Swift. The former has:

 
“In your running from him to me, yee runne
Out of God’s blessing into the warme sunne;”
 

and the latter:

“Lord Sparkish. They say, marriages are made in heaven; but I doubt, when she was married, she had no friend there.

Neverout. Well, she’s got out of God’s blessing into the warm sun.”¹⁰⁰

There seems to have been a prejudice from time immemorial against sunshine in March; and, according to a German saying, it were “better to be bitten by a snake than to feel the sun in March.” Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iv. 1), Hotspur says:

 
“worse than the sun in March,
This praise doth nourish agues.”
 

Shakespeare employs the word “sunburned” in the sense of uncomely, ill-favored. In “Much Ado” (ii. 1), Beatrice says, “I am sunburnt;” and in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), Æneas remarks:

 
“The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth
The splinter of a lance.”
 

Moon. Apart from his sundry allusions to the “pale-faced,” “silver moon,” Shakespeare has referred to many of the superstitions associated with it, several of which still linger on in country nooks. A widespread legend of great antiquity informs us that the moon is inhabited by a man,¹⁰¹ with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is beyond the reach of death. This tradition, which has given rise to many superstitions, is still preserved under various forms in most countries; but it has not been decided who the culprit originally was, and how he came to be imprisoned in his lonely abode. Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer assigns his exile as a punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry, while Shakespeare also loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a dog for a companion. In “The Tempest” (ii. 2), Caliban asks Stephano whether he has “not dropped from heaven?” to which he answers, “Out o’ the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i’ the moon when time was.” Whereupon Caliban says: “I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee: my mistress show’d me thee, and thy dog and thy bush.” We may also compare the expression in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), where, in the directions for the performance of the play of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” Moonshine is represented “with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn.” And further on, in the same scene, describing himself, Moonshine says: “All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon;¹⁰² this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.”

Ordinarily,¹⁰³ however, his offence is stated to have been Sabbath-breaking – an idea derived from the Old Testament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers (xv. 32), he is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one German version places him with a woman, whose crime was churning butter on Sunday. The Jews have a legend that Jacob is the moon, and they believe that his face is visible. Mr. Baring-Gould¹⁰⁴ says that the “idea of locating animals in the two great luminaries of heaven is very ancient, and is a relic of a primeval superstition of the Aryan race.” The natives of Ceylon, instead of a man, have placed a hare in the moon; and the Chinese represent the moon by “a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar.”¹⁰⁵