Vulgar words in Elizabethan Demonology (Page 1)
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"The Devil is an Ass."
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In Ben Jonson's "The Devil is an Ass," when Fitzdottrell, doubting Pug's statement as to his infernal character, says, "I looked on your feet afore; you cannot cozen me; your shoes are not cloven, sir, you are whole hoofed;" Pug, with great presence of mind, replies, "Sir, that's a popular error deceives many."
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This belief was held, amongst others, by the erudite King James,[1] and is pleasantly satirized by sturdy old Ben Jonson in "The Devil is an Ass," where Satan (the greater devil, who only appears in the first scene just to set the storm a-brewing) says to Pug (Puck, the lesser devil, who does all the mischief; or would have done it, had not man, in those latter times, got to be rather beyond the devils in evil than otherwise), not without a touch of regret at the waning of his power-- "You must get a body ready-made, Pug, I can create you none;" and consequently Pug is advised to assume the body of a handsome cutpurse that morning hung at Tyburn.
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In the elder play, the Bastard does "the shaking of bags of hoarding abbots," _coram populo_, and thereby discloses a phase of monastic life judiciously suppressed by Shakspere.
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It is not until the idea of the play-test occurs to him that his doubts are once more aroused; and then they return with redoubled force:-- "The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits,) Abuses me to damn me.
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[1] The whole affair was investigated by Dr. Harsnet, who had already acquired fame as an iconoclast in these matters, as will presently be seen; but it would have little more than an antiquarian interest now, were it not for the fact that Ben Jonson made it the subject of his satire in one of his most humorous plays, "The Devil is an Ass."
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[Footnote 4: Dekker's Honest Whore, sc.