Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/422

 394 The Folklore of Shakespeare.

tent on Bosworth field, after he had been visited by a whole army of ghosts of those enemies he had destroyed, noticed that "the lights burn blue" {Richard III. v. 3).

Shakespeare uses the words exorcism, exorciser, and exorcist. Respecting this use, Monck Mason remarks : " The word exorcise and its derivatives are used by Shake- speare in an uncommon sense. In all other writers it means to lay spirits, but in these plays it invariably means to raise them.

Ligarius says :

" Thou like an exorcist has conjured up My mortified spirit." Julius Caesar, ii. i.

In the funeral song in Cynibeline (iv. 2), which forms a dialogue between Guiderius and Arviragus after the supposed obsequies of Fidele (Imogen), we read :

" Gui. No exorciser harm thee !

Arv. Nor no witchcraft charm thee !

Gui. Ghost unlaid forbear thee !

Arv. Nothing ill come near thee ! "

In AU's Well that Ends Well (v. 3) the King uses the word exorcist in a strange sense :

" Is there no exorcist Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes? Is't real, that I see? "

Johnson notes : " This word is used, not very properly, for enchanter."

Monck Mason is not entirely correct in his statement, as in two instances Shakespeare's exorcist both raises and lays a spirit.

Roger Bolingbroke in 2 Henry VI. (i. 4) is styled in the Dramatis Personae a conjuror, who acts with two priests named Hume and Southwell. He asks if the Duchess of Gloster will " behold and hear our exorcisms.'* He calls on Asmath and threatens, " till thou speak,