great worship, wisdom, and good experience, and the maid herself, too young to feign, and the fashion itself too strange for any man to feign. Finally, the virgin herself was so moved in mind by the miracle" that for aught her father could do, "she forsook the world, and professed religion in a very good and noble company of the Minoresses, where she hath lived well and virtuously ever since." 1 Now we think Shakespeare's view of preternatural manifestation was like that of More. He knows how to condemn and expose the false conjuring of Pinch, or the pretended sorceries of Southwell and Bolingbroke. He may complain with Hotspur that such "skimble skamble" credulity as Glendower's "puts him from the faith," or is a scandal to religion, or through the mouth of Mrs. Page he may expose the old wives' tales how "The superstitious idle-headed elf Received, and did deliver to our age, This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth." —Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4. He can embody, in the comic, good-natured satire of Midsummer-Night's Dream," the popular belief in beneficent elves and fairies, or weave into the woof of his tragedy the superstitions prevalent on witchcraft. Yet he can speak with unfeigned respect of the remedial exorcisms of the Abbess, and make the whole action of his mightiest drama hinge on 1 Works, 137. the apparition of a blessed spirit. He can recount as an attested fact the numberless cures worked by St. Edward and the cure of the king by Helena's aid. Nor are these merely chance poetic expressions. Shakespeare's belief in the spiritual world is attested by the fact that the functions he assigns to the angels are in strict accordance with Catholic theology. Their songs are the harmony of Heaven, and "they tune the music of the spheres" ("Merchant of Venice," v. 1). They are invoked as "blessed ministers from above" ("Measure for Measure," v. 1), as "ministers of grace" ("Hamlet," i. 4), as "heavenly guards" ("Hamlet,” iii. 4); though in constant conflict with evil, they remain unstained. Their love for men, pure, disinterested, divine, furnishes the type of Catherine's conjugal fidelity. "He counsels a divorce: a loss of her That like a jewel has hung twenty years They shed tears on the crimes and disorders of man, "But man, proud man! Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep." -Measure for Measure, ii. 2 ; and they rejoice over his repentance. "Then there is mirth in heaven, When earthly things made even Atone together."—As You Like It, v. 4. They inspire the soul with the spirit of prayer, and though the heart be hard as strings of steel, they make it soft as new-born babe's ("Hamlet," iii. 3). Lastly, they watch by man in his agony, and sing him to rest ("Hamlet,” v. 2). Nor is Shakespeare less accurate with regard to the nature and functions of the evil spirits. As Henry V. has a good angel ever about him, so Falstaff follows him like his evil angel " up and down" ("2 Henry IV.," i. 2). Similarly Antony, as a heathen, has his demon, and the witches in Macbeth pander to man's curiosity, and serve him solely with malicious intent, that he may " dwindle, peak, and pine" ("Macbeth," 1. 3). The devils can assume all shapes that man goes up and down in, from "fourscore to thirteen" ("Timnon of Athens," ii. 2). They can present themselves in pleasing forms, and they suggest the worst temptations under some appearance of holiness. "When devils will their blackest sins put on, Thus, too, they put man off his guard and suggest a motive for sin, by quoting Scripture, applying some accepted truth in a false sense, or luring him by honest trifles they "betray us in deepest conse BELIEFS IN PORTENTS 333 quence" ("Macbeth," i. 3). If Shakespeare thus seriously attributes all the power to evil spirits accorded to them by Catholic doctrine, we see no reason why his allusion in Edgar's speech to the "possessed" at Sir G. Peckham's should be regarded as a caricature of the Church's belief. The evidence of such men as Fathers Weston and Cornelius, the latter a martyr for the Faith, was surely as unimpeachable as that which satisfied Sir T. More. Another phase of belief in the preternatural current in Shakespeare's time, was the significance attached to natural portents, as signs of the divine displeasure at the changes being wrought in Church and State. The sudden rise of the Thames and Trent, and the consequent floods on the day of Blessed Campion's death, were then regarded as nature's protest against the murderous deed. Thus Poundes wrote: "The scowling skies did stream and puff apace, The moistened clouds shed brinish tears for thought, The river Thames awhile astonished stood To count the drops of Campion's sacred blood. Began to blush and thought she did not well." "All which accidents," says Parsons, speaking of the " 1 same occurrence, "though some will compute to other causes, yet happening when so open and unnatural injustice was done, they cannot but be interpreted as tokens of God's indignation.' Now Shakespeare is continually calling attention to such occurrences as omens of the king's death or of the kingdom's overthrow: "The seasons change their manner as the year Had found some months asleep, and leaped them over, Say it did so, a little time before That our great grandsire, Edward, sick'd and died." "The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd, ii. 4. And in the same play, Act ii. 2, the presentiments of the queen and the presages of Bagot show a "Epistles of Comfort to Priests," c. 15. 1882. |