Scene 1. Page 285.
Claud. ... and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!——
It is difficult to decide whether Shakspeare is here alluding to the pains of hell or purgatory. May not the whole be a mere poetical rhapsody originating in the recollection of what he had read in books of Catholic divinity? for it is very certain that some of these were extremely familiar to him. Among them he might have seen a compilation on the pains of hell, entitled Examples howe mortall synne maketh the synners inobedyentes to have many paynes and dolours within the fyre of hell; black letter, no date, 12mo, and chiefly extracted from that once popular work, the Sermones discipuli, which contains at the end a promptuary of examples for the use of preachers. From this little volume it may be worth while to select the following passage, as according in some degree with the matter of Claudio's speech:—"he tolde that he sawe in hell a torment of an yzye ponde where the soules the whiche therin were tormented cryed so horryble that they were herde unto heven," sign. B. iij. "And the sayde beest was upon a ponde full of strong yse, the which beest devoured the soules within his wombe in suche maner that they became as unto nothynge by the tormentes that they suffred. Afterwarde he put them out of his wombe within the yse of the sayde ponde," sign. G. iij. "The caytyve was in syke wyse, for she myght not helpe herself, the whiche herde terryble cryes and howlynges of soules," sign. H. And again, "And the devyll was bounde by every joynture of all his membres with great chaynes of yron and of copre brennyng. And of great torment and vehement woodnes whereof he was full he turned hym from the one syde unto the other, and stretched out his handes in the multytude of the sayde soules, and toke them, and strayned them in lykewyse as men may do a clustre of grapes in theyr handes for to make the wyne come forth. And in such maner he strayned them that he eyther brake theyr heedes, or theyr fete, or handes, or some other membres. Afterward he syghed and blewe and dysperpeled the sayde soules into many of the tormentes of the fyre of hell," sign. H. iiij.
The following lines from the sixth book of Phaer's Virgil might have furnished some materials on the occasion:
"... some hie in ayer doth hang in pinnes
Some fleeting ben in floods, and deepe in gulfes themselves they tier
Till sinnes away be washt, or clensed cleer with purgin fire."
In the old legend of Saint Patrick's purgatory mention is made of a lake of ice and snow, into which persons were plunged up to their necks; and in the Shepherd's calendar, chap, xviii. there is a description of hell as "the rewarde of them that kepen the X comaundements of the Devyll," in in which these lines occur:
"... a great froste in a water rounes
And after a bytter wynde comes
Whiche gothe through the soules with yre;
Fendes with pokes pulle theyr flesshe ysondre,
They fyght and curse, and eche on other wonder."
Chaucer, in his Assemblie of foules, has given an abridgement of Cicero's dream of Scipio; and speaking of souls in hell, he says: