Those who practise nocturnal sorcery are styled, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 2), “venomous wights.”
Merlin’s Prophecies. In Shakespeare’s day there was an extensive belief in strange and absurd prophecies, which were eagerly caught up and repeated by one person to another. This form of superstition is alluded to in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1), where, after Owen Glendower has been descanting on the “omens and portents dire” which heralded his nativity, and Hotspur’s unbelieving and taunting replies to the chieftain’s assertions, the poet makes Hotspur, on Mortimer’s saying,
“Fie, cousin Percy! how you cross my father!”
thus reply:
“I cannot choose: sometime he angers me,
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies;
And of a dragon and a finless fish.”
In “King Lear” (iii. 2) the Fool says
“I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more in word than matter;
When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;
No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors;
When every case in law is right;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues.
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;
When usurers tell their gold i’ the field;
And bawds and whores do churches build;—
Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion:
Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,
That going shall be us’d with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.”
This witty satire was probably against the prophecies attributed to Merlin, which were then prevalent among the people.[955]
Formerly, too, prophecies of apparent impossibilities were common in Scotland; such as the removal of one place to another. So in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), the apparition says:
“Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be, until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.”