[2]
[Footnote 1: King John, III. i. 209.]
[Footnote 2: Harsnet, p. 139.]
51. But all the "shapes that man goes up and down in" did not suffice.
The forms of the whole of the animal kingdom seem to have been at the
devils' disposal; and, not content with these, they seem to have sought
further for unlikely shapes to assume.[1] Poor Caliban complains that
Prospero's spirits
"Lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark,"[2]
just as Ariel[3] and Puck[4] (Will-o'-th'-wisp) mislead their victims;
and that
"For every trifle are they set upon me:
Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I
All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues,
Do hiss me into madness."
And doubtless the scene which follows this soliloquy, in which Caliban,
Trinculo, and Stephano mistake one another in turn for evil spirits,
fully flavoured with fun as it still remains, had far more point for the
audiences at the Globe--to whom a stray devil or two was quite in the
natural order of things under such circumstances--than it can possibly
possess for us. In this play, Ariel, Prospero's familiar, besides
appearing in his natural shape, and dividing into flames, and behaving
in such a manner as to cause young Ferdinand to leap into the sea,
crying, "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!" assumes the forms
of a water-nymph,[5] a harpy,[6] and also the goddess Ceres;[7] while
the strange shapes, masquers, and even the hounds that hunt and worry
the would-be king and viceroys of the island, are Ariel's "meaner
fellows.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70