[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 89.]
[Footnote 2: Othello, I. i. 91.]
[Footnote 3: II. ii. 113.]
"All shapes that man goes up and down in" seem indeed to have been at the devils' control. So entirely was this the case, that to Constance even the fair Blanche was none other than the devil tempting Louis "in likeness of a new uptrimmed bride;"[1] and perhaps not without a certain prophetic feeling of the fitness of things, as it may possibly seem to some of our more warlike politicians, evil spirits have been known to appear as Russians.[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."