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“grease that’s sweaten
From the murderer’s gibbet.”
 

We may compare a similar notion given by Apuleius, who, in describing the process used by the witch, Milo’s wife, for transforming herself into a bird, says: “That she cut the lumps of flesh of such as were hanged.”⁶⁶

Another way by which witches exercise their power was by looking into futurity, as in “Macbeth” (i. 3), where Banquo says to them:

 
“If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me.”
 

Charles Knight, in his biography of Shakespeare, quotes a witch trial, which aptly illustrates the passage above; the case being that of Johnnet Wischert, who was “indicted for passing to the green-growing corn in May, twenty-two years since, or thereby, sitting thereupon tymous in the morning before the sun-rising; and being there found and demanded what she was doing, thus answered, I shall tell thee; I have been piling the blades of the corn. I find it will be a dear year; the blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to the course of the sun], and when it grows sonegatis about [with the course of the sun], it will be a good, cheap year.”

According to a common notion firmly believed in days gone by, witches were supposed to make waxen figures of those they intended to harm, which they stuck through with pins, or melted before a slow fire. Then, as the figure wasted, so the person it represented was said to waste away also. Thus, in “Macbeth” (i. 3), the first witch says:

 
“Weary sev’n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.”
 

Referring to the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore, who were accused of practising this mode of witchcraft, Shakespeare, in “2 Henry VI.” (i. 2), makes the former address Hume thus:

 
“What say’st thou, man? hast them as yet conferr’d
With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch,
With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer?
And will they undertake to do me good?”
 

She was afterwards, however, accused of consulting witches concerning the mode of compassing the death of her husband’s nephew, Henry VI. It was asserted that “there was found in the possession of herself and accomplices a waxen image of the king, which they melted in a magical manner before a slow fire, with the intention of making Henry’s force and vigor waste away by like insensible degrees.”

A similar charge was brought against Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV., by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Thus, in “King Richard III.” (iii. 4), Gloucester asks Hastings:

 
“I pray you all, tell me what they deserve
That do conspire my death with devilish plots
Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail’d
Upon my body with their hellish charms?”
 

And he then further adds:

 
“Look how I am bewitch’d; behold mine arm
Is, like a blasted sapling, wither’d up:
And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch,
Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.”
 

This superstition is further alluded to in “King John” (v. 4) by Melun, who, wounded, says:

 
“Have I not hideous death within my view,
Retaining but a quantity of life,
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax
Resolveth from his figure ’gainst the fire?”
 

And, again, in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 4), Proteus says:

 
“for now my love is thaw’d;
Which, like a waxen image ’gainst a fire,
Bears no impression of the thing it was.”⁶⁷
 

Images were frequently formed of other materials, and maltreated in some form or other, to produce similar results – a piece of superstition which still prevails to a great extent in the East. Dubois, in his “People of India” (1825), speaks of magicians who make small images in mud or clay, and then write the names of their animosity on the breasts thereof; these are otherwise pierced with thorns or mutilated, “so as to communicate a corresponding injury to the person represented.” They were also said to extract moisture from the body, as in “Macbeth” (i. 3):

 
“I will drain him dry as hay.”
 

Referring to the other mischievous acts of witches, Steevens quotes the following from “A Detection of Damnable Driftes Practised by Three Witches, etc., arraigned at Chelmisforde, in Essex, 1579:” “Item – Also she came on a tyme to the house of one Robert Lathburie, who, dislyking her dealyng, sent her home emptie; but presently after her departure his hogges fell sicke and died, to the number of twentie.” Hence in “Macbeth” (i. 3) in reply to the inquiry of the first witch:

 
“Where hast thou been, sister?”
 

the second replies:

 
“Killing swine.”
 

It appears to have been their practice to destroy the cattle of their neighbors, and the farmers have to this day many ceremonies to secure their cows and other cattle from witchcraft; but they seem to have been most suspected of malice against swine. Harsnet observes how, formerly, “A sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but some old woman was charged with witchcraft.”⁶⁸

Mr. Henderson, in his “Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties” (1879, p. 182), relates how a few years ago a witch died in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devonshire. She was accused of “overlooking” her neighbors’ pigs, so that her son, if ever betrayed into a quarrel with her, used always to say, before they parted, “Mother, mother, spare my pigs.”

Multiples of three and nine were specially employed by witches, ancient and modern. Thus, in “Macbeth” (i. 3), the witches take hold of hands and dance round in a ring nine times – three rounds for each witch, as a charm for the furtherance of her purposes:⁶⁹

 
“Thrice to thine and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm’s wound up.”
 

The love of witches for odd numbers is further illustrated (iv. 1), where one of them tells how this being the witches’ way of saying four times.

 
“Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,”
 

In Fairfax’s “Tasso” (book xiii. stanza 6) it is said that

 
“Witchcraft loveth numbers odd.”
 

This notion is very old, and we may compare the following quotations from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (xiv. 58):

 
“Ter novies carmen magico demurmurat ore.”
 

And, again (vii. 189-191):

 
“Ter se convertit; ter sumtis flumine crinem
Irroravit aquis; ternis ululatibus ora
Solvit.”
 

Vergil, too, in his “Eclogues” (viii. 75), says:

 
“Numero deus impare gaudet.”
 

The belief in the luck of odd numbers is noticed by Falstaff in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 1):

“They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death!”

In “King Lear” (iv. 2) when the Duke of Albany tells Goneril,

 
“She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use” —
 

he alludes to the use that witches and enchanters were commonly supposed to make of withered branches in their charms.⁷⁰

Among other items of witch-lore mentioned by Shakespeare may be noticed the common belief in the intercourse between demons and witches, to which Prospero alludes in the “Tempest” (i. 2):

 
“Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!”
 

This notion is seriously refuted by Scot in his “Discovery of Witchcraft” (book iv.), where he shows it to be “flat knavery.”

The offspring of a witch was termed “Hag-seed,” and as such is spoken of by Prospero in the “Tempest” (i. 2).

Witches were also in the habit of saying their prayers backwards: a practice to which Hero refers in “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), where, speaking of Beatrice, she says:

 
“I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,
But she would spell him backward.”
 

Familiar spirits⁷¹ attending on magicians and witches were always impatient of confinement.⁷² So in the “Tempest” (i. 2) we find an illustration of this notion in the following dialogue:

 
“Prospero. What is’t thou canst demand?
Ariel. My liberty.
Prospero. Before the time be out? No more.”
 

Lastly, the term “Aroint thee” (“Macbeth,” i. 3), used by the first witch, occurs again in “King Lear” (iii. 4), “Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.” That aroint is equivalent to “away,” “begone,” seems to be agreed, though its etymology is uncertain.⁷³ “Rynt thee” is used by milkmaids in Cheshire to a cow, when she has been milked, to bid her get out of the way. Ray, in his “Collection of North Country Words” (1768, p. 52), gives “Rynt ye, by your leave, stand handsomely, as rynt you witch, quoth Bessie Locket to her mother. Proverb, Chesh.” Some connect it with the adverb “aroume,” meaning “abroad,” found in Chaucer’s “House of Fame” (book ii. stanza 32):

 
“That I a-roume was in the field.”
 

Other derivations are from the Latin averrunco: the Italian rogna, a cutaneous disease, etc.

How thoroughly Shakespeare was acquainted with the system of witchcraft is evident from the preceding pages, in which we have noticed his allusions to most of the prominent forms of this species of superstition. Many other items of witch-lore, however, are referred to by him, mention of which is made in succeeding chapters.⁷⁴

CHAPTER III
GHOSTS

Few subjects have, from time immemorial, possessed a wider interest than ghosts, and the superstitions associated with them in this and other countries form an extensive collection in folk-lore literature. In Shakespeare’s day, it would seem that the belief in ghosts was specially prevalent, and ghost tales were told by the firelight in nearly every household. The young, as Mr. Goadby, in his “England of Shakespeare,” says (1881, p. 196), “were thus touched by the prevailing superstitions in their most impressionable years. They looked for the incorporeal creatures of whom they had heard, and they were quick to invest any trick of moonbeam shadow with the attributes of the supernatural.” A description of one of these tale-tellings is given in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1):

 
“Her. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now
I am for you again: pray you, sit by us,
And tell’s a tale.
Mam. Merry or sad shall’t be?
Her. As merry as you will.
Mam. A sad tale’s best for winter:
I have one of sprites and goblins.
Her. Let’s have that, good sir.
Come on, sit down: Come on, and do your best
To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.
Mam. There was a man, —
Her. Nay, come, sit down; then on.
Mam. Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Her. Come on, then,
And give’t me in mine ear.”
 

The important part which Shakespeare has assigned to the ghost in “Hamlet” has a special value, inasmuch as it illustrates many of the old beliefs current in his day respecting their history and habits. Thus, according to a popular notion, ghosts are generally supposed to assume the exact appearance by which they were usually known when in the material state, even to the smallest detail of their dress. So Horatio tells Hamlet how, when Marcellus and Bernardo were on their watch (i. 2),

 
“A figure like your father,
Arm’d at point, exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them.”
 

Further on, when the ghost appears again, Hamlet addresses it thus:

 
“What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous.”
 

In the graphic description of Banquo’s ghost in “Macbeth” (iii. 4), we have a further allusion to the same belief; one, indeed, which is retained at the present day with as much faith as in days of old.

Shakespeare has several allusions to the notion which prevailed in days gone by, of certain persons being able to exorcise or raise spirits. Thus, in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), Guiderius says over Fidele’s grave:

 
“No exorciser harm thee.”
 

In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1), Ligarius says:

 
“Soul of Rome!
Brave son, derived from honourable loins!
Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up
My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them.”
 

In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (v. 3) the king says:

 
“Is there no exorcist
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is’t real that I see?”
 

This superstition, it may be added, has of late years gained additional notoriety since the so-called spiritualism has attracted the attention and support of the credulous. As learning was considered necessary for an exorcist, the schoolmaster was often employed. Thus, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 4), the schoolmaster Pinch is introduced in this capacity.

Within, indeed, the last fifty years the pedagogue was still a reputed conjurer. In “Hamlet” (i. 1), Marcellus, alluding to the ghost, says:

 
“Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.”
 

And in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Benedick says:

 
“I would to God some scholar would conjure her.”
 

For the same reason exorcisms were usually practised by the clergy in Latin; and so Toby, in the “Night Walker” of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii. 1), says:

 
“Let’s call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,
And that will daunt the devil.”
 

It was also necessary that spirits, when evoked, should be questioned quickly, as they were supposed to be impatient of being interrogated. Hence in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the apparition says:

 
“Dismiss me. Enough!”
 

The spirit, likewise, in “2 Henry VI.” (i. 4) utters these words:

 
“Ask what thou wilt. That I had said and done!”
 

Spirits were supposed to maintain an obdurate silence till interrogated by the persons to whom they made their special appearance.⁷⁵ Thus Hamlet, alluding to the appearance of the ghost, asks Horatio (i. 2):

 
“Did you not speak to it?”
 

Whereupon he replies:

 
“My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once, methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak.”
 

The walking of spirits seems also to have been enjoined by way of penance. The ghost of Hamlet’s father (i. 5) says:

 
“I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.”
 

And further on (iii. 2) Hamlet exclaims:

 
“It is a damned ghost that we have seen.”
 

This superstition is referred to by Spenser in his “Fairy Queen” (book i. canto 2):

 
“What voice of damned ghost from Limbo lake
Or guileful spright wand’ring in empty ayre,
Sends to my doubtful eares these speeches rare?”
 

According to a universal belief prevalent from the earliest times, it was supposed that ghosts had some particular reason for quitting the mansions of the dead, “such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites of sepulture, that a murderer might be brought to due punishment,” etc.⁷⁶ On this account Horatio (“Hamlet,” i. 1) invokes the ghost:

 
“If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.”
 

And in a later scene (i. 4) Hamlet says:

 
“Say, why is this? wherefore? What should we do?”
 

The Greeks believed that such as had not received funeral rites would be excluded from Elysium; and thus the wandering shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his funeral. The younger Pliny tells a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a ghost played all kinds of pranks, owing to his funeral rites having been neglected. A further reference to the superstition occurs in “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1), where Lucius, speaking of the unburied sons of Titus, says:

 
“Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
That 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, in “Twelfth Night” (iv. 2), there is another reference in the amusing passage where the clown, under the pretence of his being “Sir Topas, the curate,” questions Malvolio, when confined in a dark room, as a presumed lunatic:

“Mal. I am no more mad than you are: make the trial of it in any constant question.

Clo. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?

Mal. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

Clo. What thinkest thou of his opinion?

Mal. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.

Clo. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam.”

Although this primitive superstition is almost effete among civilized nations, yet it still retains an important place in the religious beliefs of savage and uncivilized communities.