namely, Marwood, who was a servant of Babington, the conspirator; Robert Maynie, a young gentleman; one manand three maid-servants of Mr. Edmund Peckham, son of Sir George Peckham, of Denton, in Buckinghamshire. There were not fewer than twelve priests engaged beside Edmunds the Jesuit, among whom was Cornelius, the priest to whom the ghost of Lord Stourton appeared at the altar. An account of the affair was drawn up by some of the priests. This fell into the hands of Harsnet, and from this and the confessions and examinations of some of the persons exorcised he compiled his exposure of the whole business. Not the least curious part of the transaction is that the possessed had given names to the devils who infested them, and the names themselves. The list is very remarkable, as connected with the popular superstitions of England. Here they are:— Pippin, Philpot, Maho, Modu, Soforce, Hilco, Smolken, Hillio, Hiaclito, Lusty Huffcap, Cliton, Bernon, Hilo, Motubizanto, Killico, Hob, Portiriccio, Frateretto, Flib- · berdigibet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, Lusty Jollie Jenkin, Delicat, Puff, Purr, Lusty Dick, Corner'dcap, Nurri, Malkin, Wilkin, Helemodion, Killicocam, Hoberdicut, Pudding of Thame, Pour-dieu, Bonions. Of these some were master devils, some subordinates. The masters were Pippin, Philpot, Maho, Modu, and Soforce. It is a curious point whence such fantastical words were derived. We see several which are plain English words or phrases. The most remarkable of these, Pudding of Thame. Sarah Williams, one of the possessed, states in her confession that she had often heard such a being spoken of jestingly when she was a child. Hoberdidance she referred to "a merry tale of Hoberdidance, that used his cunning to make a lady laugh," which her mistress used to tell when they were at work. Maho came into her mind because she had read a tale of Maho in a book; and as to many of the rest she accounts for them in a very natural way, thinking that she must have got them from a number of very strange names that were written "upon the walls in Sir George Peckham's house under the hangings, which they said were the names of spirits." The hangings were probably tapestry, in which scenes from old romances were wrought, and these the names of the heroes. Shakespeare fastens upon these names, and, by putting them into the mouth of Edgar when he was acting in his assumed character of a Bedlamite, he casts ridicule on the whole affair, and teaches the people who frequented his theatre to view the whole with the contempt it merited. The means were nearly the same as those which he employed in Twelfth Night to produce a similar result. "Peace, Smolken, peace thou fiend," could not but recall the Smolken of this story. 66 The prince of darkness is a gentleman : Modo he's called, and Mahu" would be a phrase common in the mouths of the people of London when this play was first exhibited, and "the foul fiend Flibbertigibet" would lose his veritable existence in the minds of even the most credulous, when it was seen how in a case of only assumed madness such names could be used. Hobberdidance and Fraterretto are spirits as well known to him as to Sarah Williams. It is to 1605, the year of the appearance of the second edition of Harsnet's work, that Mr. Malone refers the composition of this play, which was not printed before 1608. The names themselves would turn people's attention to the exorcisms in Mr. Peckham's family: but the hint would be given to look there for an event of the time to which there was some allusion in this play by the name Edmund, which is given to one of the characters, Mr. Peckham's name being Edmund, and the principal actor being Father Edmunds. Edmund, it will be observed, is a name originating in a different language and at a different period from Lear, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. I believe Dr. Warburton was the person who first noticed that the names of the spirits in King Lear corresponded with some of those in Harsnet's Declaration. Such discoveries are really substantial and valuable contributions to Shakespeare literature. There are two passages in the play not connected with Edgar's wild talk, in which we may trace the reading of the Poet in this book of Harsnet's. You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, ACT. iii. sc. 2. This very rare word occurs in Harsnet. He calls one of the Peckhams "the harbinger, the host, the steward, the vaunt-courier, the sacrist, and the pander" to the priests.Edit. 1605, p. 12. Again, O, how this mother swells up towards my heart! ACT. ii. sc. 4. Thus Harsnet:-"Master Maynie had a spice of the Hysterica Passio as seems from his youth: he himself terms it The Mother, as you may see in his confession, and saith that he was much troubled with it in France, and that it was one of the causes that moved him to leave his Holy Order whereinto he was initiated, and to return into England," p. 25. "Thy elements below" accords exactly with some notices of the peculiar nature of the disease by Harsnet in a later portion of the book. To perceive the propriety of representing Edgar assuming the disguise in which he appears in the greater part of the play, we should remember that such persons as he pretended to be were actually to be found roving about the country in the days of Shakespeare. Aubrey, in whose unpublished writings we find more information respecting the opinions and ways of the common people than in any other original source, in his Natural History of Wiltshire, says :-"Till the breaking out of the Civil Wars, Tom o' Bedlams did travel about the country. They had been once distracted men that had been put into Bedlam, where recovering to some soberness they were licentiated to go a begging. They had on their left arms an armilla of tin, about four inches long; they could not get it off. They wore about their necks a great horn of an ox in a string or bawdrick, which when they came to a house for alms they did wind; and they did put the drink given them into this horn, whereto they did put a stopple. Since the wars, I do not remember to have seen any of them." Edgar, we find, carries a horn. III. 4. EDGAR. Bless thy five WITS. Five wits were undoubtedly the five senses, Thus in Larke's Book of Wisdom, "And this knowledge descendeth and cometh of the five corporal senses and wits of the persons, as the eyes, understanding, and hearing of the ears, smell of the nose, taste of the mouth," and more plainly in King Henry the Eighth's Primer, 1546, "My five wits have I fondly misused and spent, in hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and also feeling, which thou hast given me to use unto thy honour and glory, and also to the edification and profit of my neighbours." III. 4. EDGAR. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibet; he begins at curfew and walks till the first cock. The peculiar force of this passage seems not to be observed by the commentators. Gloster's torch is seen in the distance, when the fool says, "Look, here comes walking fire;" when Edgar, speaking in the character he had assumed, says it is Flibbertigibet, which seems to be a name for the Will of the Wisp. Hence the propriety of "He begins at curfew and walks till the crowing of the cock," that is, is seen in all the dark of night. III. 6. EDGAR. Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, There is much in the notes on the kind of dog intended by "lym." Mr. Malone comes to the conclusion that a blood-hound is meant. But Sir John Harington, in the notes to the forty-first book of the Orlando, says :— "Olivero, whose device is the spaniel or lyam hound couching with the words Fin che vegna, doth with great modesty shew thereby that the spaniel or hound, that is at command, much waiteth till the fowls or deer be stricken, and then boldly leapeth into the water, or draweth after it by land, &c." Harington adopted this device for himself, and in the frontispiece to his translation of Ariosto a lime hound may be seen depicted. I would propose the following as a conjectural emendation of a passage which cannot be right as it now stands : I stumbled when I saw : Full oft 'tis seen |
