Gibson Marion - Shakespeares Demonology

Shakespeares Demonology

A Dictionary

ARDEN SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARIES

SERIES EDITOR

Sandra Clark (Birkbeck College, University of London)

Class and Society in Shakespeare Paul Innes

Music in Shakespeare Christopher R. Wilson and Michela Calore

Shakespeares Books Stuart Gillespie

Shakespeares Demonology Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra

Shakespeare and the Language of Food Joan Fitzpatrick

Shakespeares Legal Language B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol

Shakespeares Medical Language Sujata Iyengar

Shakespeares Military Language Charles Edelman

Shakespeares Non-Standard English N. F. Blake

Shakespeares Plants and Gardens Vivian Thomas and Nicki Faircloth

Shakespeares Political and Economic Language Vivian Thomas

Shakespeares Religious Language R. Chris Hassel, Jr

Shakespeares Theatre Hugh Macrae Richmond

FORTHCOMING TITLES:

Shakespeares Insults Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

Shakespeare and National Identity Christopher Ivic

Shakespeares Demonology

A Dictionary

Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra, 2014

Marion Gibson and Jo Ann Esra have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4725-0031-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solitions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents

Thanks to Sandra Clark, the Series Editor, for asking me to edit Shakespeares Demonology and to Jo Esra, without whose enthusiastic and thorough work as a co-researcher this project would never have been completed. Thanks also to its various editors during its long process of completion, Anna Fleming, Colleen Coalter and Margaret Bartley at Bloomsbury. The students on my annual Witchcraft and Magic in Literature module have always been a great source of inspiration and new questions, and the visiting students attending the University of Exeters international summer school in 2012 were also helpful in allowing me to try out some of this material in a class on Supernatural Shakespeare and responding with thoughtfulness and excitement. The journey towards this project began at Exeter with Gareth Roberts module on Renaissance Magic and matured during my MA studies at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, where Stanley Wells, Martin Wiggins and Susan Brock were particularly helpful in allowing me to begin exploring Shakespeares interest in witchcraft.

Jos Acknowledgements

For enabling me to work on Shakespeares Demonology , I would like to thank the editors at Bloomsbury and Marion Gibson, for inviting me to do so. In both her role as my PhD supervisor, and as co-researcher on this project, Marion has provided consistent encouragement, inspiration and support, and I am deeply indebted to her. My journey here began with Alex Goody, Catherine Spooner and Carolyn D. Williams, and to each I wish to offer my long-overdue gratitude. I would also like to thank my family for their remarkable levels of patience and tolerance, with a special thank-you to my daughter, Evie, for her very helpful and ever-growing enthusiasm for Shakespearean drama.

The Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries aim to provide the student of Shakespeare with a series of authoritative guides to the principal subject areas covered by the plays and poems. They are produced by scholars who are experts both on Shakespeare and on the topic of the individual dictionary, based on the most recent scholarship, succinctly written and accessibly presented. They offer readers a self-contained body of information on the topic under discussion, its occurrence and significance in Shakespeares works, and its contemporary meanings.

The topics are all vital ones for understanding the plays and poems; they have been selected for their importance in illuminating aspects of Shakespeares writings where an informed understanding of the range of Shakespeares usage, and of the contemporary literary, historical and cultural issues involved, will add to the readers appreciation of his work. Because of the diversity of the topics covered in the series, individual dictionaries may vary in emphasis and approach, but the aim and basic format of the entries remain the same from volume to volume.

Sandra Clark

Birkbeck College

University of London

A&C Antony and Cleopatra

AWW Alls Well That Ends Well

AYLI As You Like It

Cor. Coriolanus

Cym. Cymbeline

Err. The Comedy of Errors

Ham. Hamlet

1 HIV The First Part of Henry IV

2 HIV The Second Part of Henry IV

HV Henry V

1 HVI The First Part of Henry VI

2 HVI The Second Part of Henry VI

3 HVI The Third Part of Henry VI

HVIII King Henry VIII

JC Julius Caesar

KJ King John

KL King Lear

LC A Lovers Complaint

LLL Loves Labours Lost

Luc. The Rape of Lucrece

Mac. Macbeth

MAdo Much Ado About Nothing

MM Measure for Measure

MND A Midsummer Nights Dream

MerV The Merchant of Venice

MWW The Merry Wives of Windsor

Oth. Othello

Per. Pericles

PP The Passionate Pilgrim

PT The Phoenix and the Turtle

RII King Richard II

RIII King Richard III

R&J Romeo and Juliet

Shrew The Taming of the Shrew

Son. Sonnets

T&C Troilus and Cressida

Temp. The Tempest

TGV The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Tim. Timon of Athens

Tit. Titus Andronicus

TN Twelfth Night

TNK The Two Noble Kinsmen

V&A Venus and Adonis

WT The Winters Tale

Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters

Three and such branches of learning

( The Merchant of Venice 2.02.624)

A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!

We are simple men; we do not know whats brought to pass

under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by

charms, by spells, by th figure, and such daubry as this

is, beyond our element.

( The Merry Wives of Windsor 4.02.1728)

This dictionary of Shakespeares demonological language positions his works in a setting that was unfashionable for much of their afterlives and has only recently regained its position as a necessary scholarly context for reading them.

To begin with a definition, demonology is not just the study of demons, although its early modern practitioners (demonologists) were deeply interested in devils and their supposed operation in the world. But in deciding which kinds of event or phenomenon were actually demonic and which were natural or divine (and all three were overlapping categories) demonologists also had to discuss all sorts of creatures and powers that would be very unlikely to be described as demonic either today or even by a consensus of demonologists or non-demonologists in early modern societies. Surviving evidence suggests that few people of Shakespeares time would have been completely happy to dismiss (to pick some random examples) fairies, ghosts and mermaids as demonic although demonologists routinely discussed them. Many people would have contested the idea that the apparition of a dead relative, or a harmless sea-creature, could be the work of the devil. Of course, this depended on what one thought a ghost or a mermaid let alone a fairy to be. There were many factors to consider. Was it possible for a human spirit to revisit the living, leaving its body behind in the grave? Or did the body come too? And where did the spirit come from ? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Likewise, was a mermaid a flesh and blood hybrid human life-form, or a sea monster? Was it simply a poorly perceived seal or big fish glimpsed in the surf by frightened sailors? Was it an elemental nymph of some kind, or a devilish illusion leading the mariners to their doom? In summary, could such diverse phenomena as mermaids, ghosts and fairies really be simply pigeonholed as demonic illusions, created to trap human beings into a misunderstanding of Gods universe and lead them astray? Not all demonologists thought so, although some did, and certainly there would have been a wide array of differing understandings of such phenomena in Shakespeares auditorium at each performance and among the readership of his poems.