And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong bas'd promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves, at my command,
Have wak'd their sleepers; oped, and let them forth
By my so potent art."[526:B]
This is a passage, in which, with its immediately preceding context, Shakspeare has been indebted, as Dr. Farmer observes, to Gelding's translation of the Medea of Ovid; having evidently, in many parts, adopted the very language of that version. But it is also strictly conformable to the powers with which the magicians of his own day were invested. "These," says Scot, "deale with no inferiour causes: these fetch divels out of hell, and angels out of heaven; these raise up what bodies they list, though they were dead, buried, and rotten long before; and fetch soules out of heaven or hell.—These, I saie, take upon them also the raising of tempests, and earthquakes, and to doo as much as God himselfe can doo. These are no small fooles, they go not to worke with a baggage tode, or a
cat, as witches doo; but with a kind of majestie, and with authoritie they call up by name, and have at their commandement—divells, who have under them, as their ministers, a great multitude of legions of petty divels."[527:A]