On the other hand, so diverse were the forms which devils were supposed to assume that they are said occasionally to appear in the fairest form, even in that of a girl (ii. 3):
“When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.”
So in “The Comedy of Errors” (iv. 3) we have the following dialogue:
“Ant. S. Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not!
Dro. S. Master, is this mistress Satan?
Ant. S. It is the devil.
Dro. S. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil’s dam; and here she comes in the habit of a light wench; and thereof comes that the wenches say, ‘God damn me;’ that’s as much as to say, ‘God make me a light wench.’ It is written, they appear to men like angels of light.”
(Cf. also “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” iv. 3.) In “King John” (iii. 1) even the fair Blanch seemed to Constance none other than the devil tempting Lewis “in likeness of a new untrimmed bride.”
Not only, too, were devils thought to assume any human shape they fancied, but, as Mr. Spalding remarks,[82] “the forms of the whole of the animal kingdom appear to have been at their disposal; and, not content with these, they seem to have sought for unlikely shapes to appear in”—the same characteristic belonging also to the fairy tribe.
Thus, when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Gloucester that he has in reality cast himself over the cliff, he describes the being from whom he is supposed to have just departed: