Thou art never the better,
And I—am never the worse."
Scot was one of the few men of that age who dared to assail the general belief in witchcraft and magic; and James I. ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. That monarch also wrote his Demonology, as he tells us, "chiefly against the damnable opinions of Wierus and Scot; the latter of whom is not ashamed in public print to deny there can be such a thing as witchcraft." Eminent divines and scientific writers joined in the attempt to refute this bold attack upon the ignorance and superstition of the time.
We infer, from certain passages in the plays, that Shakespeare had read Scot's book; and we have good reason to believe that, like Scot, he was far enough in advance of his age to see the absurdity of the popular faith in magic and witchcraft. In his boyhood we may suppose that he believed in them, as his parents and everybody in Stratford doubtless did; but when he became a man he appears to have regarded them only as curious old folk-lore from which he could now and then draw material for use in his plays and poems.
The illustrations here given of the vulgar superstitions of Shakespeare's time are merely a few out of thousands equally interesting to be found in books on the subject, or scattered through the dramatic and other literature of the period.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A reredos was a kind of open hearth or brazier. Pose, just below, means a cold in the head, and quack a hoarseness or croaking caused by a cold in the throat.
[2] In the original each of these lines is divided into two, thus:
"First in the mornynge
when thou dost awake