There was no doubt as to Coriolanus,[3] as has
been said; nor Shylock.[4] Even "the outward sainted Angelo is yet a
devil;"[5] and Prince Hal confesses that "there is a devil haunts him in
the likeness of an old fat man ... an old white-bearded Satan."[6]
[Footnote 1: In The Virgin Martyr.]
[Footnote 2: In Dr. Faustus.]
[Footnote 3: Coriolanus, I. x. 16.]
[Footnote 4: Merchant of Venice, III. i. 22.]
[Footnote 5: Measure for Measure, III. i. 90.]
[Footnote 6: I Hen. IV., II. iv. 491-509.]
49. The devils had an inconvenient habit of appearing in the guise of an
ecclesiastic[1]--at least, so the churchmen were careful to insist,
especially when busying themselves about acts of temptation that would
least become the holy robe they had assumed. This was the ecclesiastical
method of accounting for certain stories, not very creditable to the
priesthood, that had too inconvenient a basis of evidence to be
dismissed as fabricatious. But the honest lay public seem to have
thought, with downright old Chaucer, that there was more in the matter
than the priests chose to admit. This feeling we, as usual, find
reflected in the dramatic literature of our period. In "The Troublesome
Raigne of King John," an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere
constructed his own "King John," we find this question dealt with in
some detail. In the elder play, the Bastard does "the shaking of bags of
hoarding abbots," _coram populo_, and thereby discloses a phase of
monastic life judiciously suppressed by Shakspere.
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