Episode 168: Witches, Demons and Fairies

Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 168, Witches, Demons, and Fairies.

In this episode, we're going to look at the Elizabethan fascination with witchcraft and mysterious creatures like fairies, elves, and demons.

Those subjects feature prominently in the literature of the period, and they reveal a lot about the worldview of the people who lived in England in the late 1500s.

There were great debates at the time about the world of magic and witchcraft, whether it was good or bad, whether or not it was consistent with the teachings of the church, and whether it even existed at all.

In this episode, we'll examine how that fascination with the supernatural shaped the literature of Elizabethan England and how it shaped the English language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com, and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes at patreon.com slash historyofenglish.

Now one quick note before we begin.

As you may have noticed, this is a very long episode, much longer than normal.

And that's because there's a lot of information to cover.

But I've chosen to maintain the discussion as a single episode because there's a common theme that runs through all of it.

So, given the length of the episode, I've structured it a little bit differently than normal.

This is a story told in five parts, each of which is presented as a separate segment or chapter.

We'll begin with a look at an influential text on conjuring and magic called The Discovery of Witchcraft.

And then we'll look at Christopher Marlowe's play about a deal with the devil called Dr.

Faustus.

Next, we'll examine the events that caused King James of Scotland to become obsessed with witchcraft, and that led to a series of witch trials that continued well into the following century.

From there, we'll take a look at Edmund Spencer's epic poem called The Fairy Queen.

And lastly, we'll examine the earliest known play or series of plays composed by William Shakespeare.

The plays were about an English king who lived in the prior century, but even they incorporated witches and black magic into the story to help them appeal to audiences at the time.

As we go through this episode, each of those segments or chapters is preceded with a brief musical interlude, so feel free to start and stop at your convenience if the whole episode is a little too long for you.

With that, let's pick up where we left off last time, with the development of English drama during the late 1580s.

In the last episode, we looked at the emergence of playwrights like Thomas Kidd and Christopher Marlowe, and we explored how certain aspects of Roman drama were adapted to the English stage.

One aspect of Roman plays that was carried over into English plays was the fascination with witches and ghosts.

The tragedies of the great Roman playwright Seneca often featured supernatural elements, and since many of the stories involved murder and revenge, it was common to feature ghosts as prominent characters.

It's easy to see why English playwrights embraced that aspect of Roman drama.

Ghosts, witches, and fairies had been a prominent part of English folklore for centuries.

Those beliefs predated Christianity, and after Christianity was introduced, they had existed alongside the new religion, and sometimes were even incorporated into the Christian worldview that dominated Europe.

I touched on this issue in earlier episodes, especially episode 43 during the Anglo-Saxon period of the podcast.

In that episode, we looked at words that go back to Old English, like witch, witchcraft, and elf.

The Anglo-Saxons had many words for supernatural creatures, like a mar, which was an evil demon that came to people while sleeping, and is the source of the word nightmare.

They also had the word wicht, which later evolved into the word white, w i g h t.

It could be used as a general term for a human, but it was also used to refer to unearthly or supernatural beings.

Old English also had the word puck, which referred to a type of spirit that was mischievous.

The word puck was also used as the name of a specific creature that was believed to live in the countryside and often interfered with people's work and chores.

I also noted in that earlier episode that the first English laws against witchcraft were adopted during the reign of Alfred the Great in the late 800s.

Some of those older pagan beliefs were overtaken by the growing influence of Christianity, and the belief in those ancient mythological creatures was increasingly seen as unchristian and was even associated with the devil.

If we are to believe Geoffrey Chaucer, people had largely lost interest in elves and fairies by the late 1300s.

At the time, the French word fairy was a relatively new loan word, and it had a much broader sense than today,

as did the Old English word elf.

The two terms were somewhat interchangeable, and in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer talked about the decline of such beliefs.

In the opening lines of The Wife of Bath's Tale, he wrote the following:

In the olden days of King Arthur, of which the Britons speak with great honor, all was this land was fulfilled with fairies.

The elf queen, with her jolly company, danced full often on many a green mead.

This was the old opinion, as I read.

I speak of many hundred years ago, but now no man can see the elves, you know.

End quote.

Though Chaucer suggests that elves and fairies were the stuff of ancient myth, that was probably an exaggeration.

Those beliefs persisted into the Elizabethan era, especially in the countryside.

In fact, the literature of that period suggests that those beliefs actually had a resurgence and became more vigorous over the course of the 1500s.

During that period, writers began to use lots of new words to describe the supernatural creatures that supposedly lived in the natural world around them.

As I noted, the word fairy had been borrowed from French a couple of centuries earlier, but its use became much more widespread in the early modern period.

It was originally used as a general term for enchantment or magic.

Then it gradually came to refer to a supernatural being in human form with magical powers.

The word fairy had a very broad sense in Elizabethan England.

It could refer to a goblin or gnome, or a figure with a human appearance, or a small elf that lived in wooded regions.

Fairies were sometimes depicted as demons or sinister creatures, and other times they were described as playful tricksters.

Again, depending on the person, they could be seen as either helpful or evil.

The modern sense of the word fairy as a tiny, delicate, winged creature in female form hadn't really become common yet.

That image really emerged after the Elizabethan period.

Another term that emerged in the 1400s and 1500s with a similar meaning was the word sprite.

It was derived from the French word esprit or spirit, and it could refer to a small, mischievous creature, so it often had the same meaning as an elf or fairy.

In the north and in Scotland, people referred to similar types of fairies as brownies,

and again that term is also first recorded in the 1500s.

Around the same time, the word pixie also started to appear in English documents.

The origin of the word isn't entirely clear.

Some people believe that it had a Celtic or Norse origin, but the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the word may go back to that Old English word puck that I mentioned a moment ago.

A puck was a magical creature that lived in the countryside.

The OED indicates that the word pixie may have begun as pucksy, and the vowel sound simply shifted over time.

That word puck actually regained a certain currency in the Elizabethan period.

It was traditionally the name of a specific spirit or fairy that lived in the countryside, and was thought to be benevolent and helpful.

Well, another common name for that fairy was Robin Goodfellow.

Again, it's a name that was first recorded in the 1500s.

And if you're a fan of Shakespeare, some of these names and terms are probably ringing a bell.

Fairies feature prominently in Shakespeare's play called A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the primary fairy in that play is called both Puck and Robin Goodfellow interchangeably.

Shakespeare's version of the fairy is based on the general folklore of rural England.

Robin Goodfellow was a prankster, but he also helped people.

He would sweep the floors at night and help with other household chores when people were away.

The name of Robin Goodfellow also contributed to another common term.

In an earlier episode about Robin Hood, I mentioned that a common nickname for Robin was Hob,

and sometimes Robin Goodfellow was known simply as Hob.

In fact, the word hob was sometimes used as a general term for a fairy or an elf.

Well, in the mid-1500s, that name hob was added to the word goblin to give us the term hobgoblin, which was originally another name for Robin Goodfellow.

Over time, the meaning of hobgoblin evolved and it acquired a more sinister or terrifying sense.

The late 1500s also gave us the first use of the term Will of the Wisp, which referred to ghostly lights found in swamps and bogs that were believed to be caused by fairies.

Another term for those lights was a fire drake, or a kit with the candlestick.

In the following century, a new term emerged for those ghostly lights.

That term was a jack-o'-lantern, which of course would later be applied to lanterns or lights placed inside of pumpkins.

Now, again, regardless of the term used, these supernatural creatures took various forms and were perceived in different ways.

They were sometimes seen as playful and benevolent, but some people considered them to be sinister and evil.

The same was true with respect to people who invoked fairies and supposedly had supernatural abilities and dabbled in the mystical arts.

They were generally called witches.

Some of them were thought to practice helpful or good magic, sometimes called white magic, and others were thought to practice harmful or evil magic, sometimes called black magic.

Those who practiced good magic offered a variety of helpful services.

It was thought that they could do things like help someone find a lost or stolen object, get rid of rats, help crops grow, and even help people fall in love with a special type of love potion.

But most importantly, they were seen as healers, of both people and livestock.

If someone became sick or if their animals became sick, they would often turn to one of those local healers.

Their treatments were usually usually a blend of spiritual and herbal remedies, and they were often the primary medical providers in some parts of the countryside.

As we saw in an earlier episode, modern research has shown that some of those herbal remedies were actually quite effective, so that probably encouraged the notion that those healers had special powers.

Also, the trained doctors of the period were still relying on bloodletting and the old Greek idea of balancing the humors.

So the herbal remedies used by those healers were probably more effective at treating some illnesses than the treatments used by the doctors.

And on top of that, doctors were relatively rare in the countryside.

So for most people, there was no real alternative to those traditional healers.

Those healers were thought to practice a type of good magic, and men and women who practiced good magic were known by a variety of terms, like a cunning man or a cunning woman, or a wise man or wise woman.

Many people thought that those conjurers consulted with fairies to do their work.

This more positive aspect of witchcraft is also reflected in the language.

We have several terms with positive connotations that come from witchcraft.

You might find someone charming or enchanting or entrancing or fascinating.

Charming comes from the use of charms in magic.

Enchanting comes from the use of ritualistic chanting.

Entrancing comes from the use of a trance as part of a magic spell.

And fascinating comes from the Latin word fascinatio, which meant to put someone under a spell.

Charming and enchanting were older terms from Middle English, but entrance and fascinate appeared during the Elizabethan period.

So witchcraft was sometimes seen as a benevolent force.

But of course, the same supernatural powers could be used to cause harm.

It was believed that some practitioners consulted with demons and even the devil himself.

They levied curses and brought about plague and sickness.

They caused livestock to die and crops to fail.

They caused drought and also brought about destructive storms.

Of course, those people were called witches, and that's the way many of us think of that term today.

Originally, the word witch could include those who practiced any kind of magic, either good or bad.

But the Church tended to see all witchcraft as evil, and that shaped how people saw witches, and how they used the term witch over time.

Some people were so concerned about conjuring demons or the devil with their words that they wouldn't even utter the word devil.

It was during the late 1500s that some people started to substitute the surname Dickens for the word devil in many common expressions, which gave us modern expressions like what the Dickens and Go to the Dickens and to scare the Dickens out of someone.

This dual aspect of witchcraft, the good and the bad, is reflected in a major law against the practice which was adopted in 1563, early in Elizabeth's reign.

It didn't prohibit all witchcraft.

It only prohibited witchcraft that caused death or other harm.

So the law wasn't really concerned about those who used witchcraft for good.

It was only concerned about those who misused it to cause suffering.

But not everyone believed in sorcery and witchcraft at the time.

In fact, in 1584, a writer and politician named Reginald Scott sought to debunk the whole idea of witchcraft and magic in general.

He composed a book called The Discovery of Witchcraft, and it's a fascinating text for a period generally marked by superstition and a widespread belief in various kinds of magic.

The book proved to be very popular and was widely read in the late 1500s and 1600s.

There would soon be a major debate over the nature of witchcraft, and the text was widely referenced in those debates.

In fact, it was even banned by later authorities when witch hunts became common.

Nevertheless, the book remained an important text about supernatural beliefs and practices because it was so thorough and comprehensive.

Many scholars think that Shakespeare used it as a source for many of his plays that featured fairies and witches, like A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth.

Reginald Scott was a Protestant, and the book reflects his worldview.

He dismissed magic and superstition, and he said that most actions attributed to witches were actually caused by God or by natural forces.

If someone was sick and suddenly recovered, he said that thanks should be given to God, not to a witch's potion or charm.

And when people experienced pain and suffering, it was the result of God's orderly plan and not the evil workings of a witch or fairy.

He said that only God could work miracles, and that the devil encouraged people to believe in false spirits to deceive them and to divert them from the teachings of God.

So he didn't deny the existence of miracles.

He just denied that witches or fairies were the source.

Scott said that some people claimed to be witches and claimed to have supernatural abilities, but in reality they fell into one of two groups.

They were either frauds who intentionally deceived people, or they were men and women who truly thought they were witches, but suffered from mental illness, or what he called melancholy brought on by humors that were out of balance.

He also said that people should not be accused of witchcraft out of fear or out of retribution for some unpleasant event.

He said that such accusations were false.

He also argued that witch confessions obtained through torture were invalid because the confessions were coerced.

So as you can see, Scott's book took a very modern, skeptical approach to the whole notion of magic and witchcraft.

But for our purposes, one of the most fascinating aspects of the book was the terms he used and the terms he introduced.

First of all, Scott didn't really make much of the distinction between bad witches and good witches, or wise women as they were commonly known at the time.

He wrote,

At this day, it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, she is a witch, or she is a wise woman, end quote.

So that suggests that the traditional distinction between good and bad witches had eroded over time.

He then gave a long list of the various terms that were used to refer to a witch.

Some of them had been around since the Middle English period, like enchanter, soothsayer, diviner, caulker, and conjurer.

He also included the word juggler, which has has a very specific sense today as someone who tosses objects in the air, but at the time it had a broader sense as someone who performs magical or incredible feats.

So juggler had a secondary meaning as a magician or a witch.

Scott also said that a witch was sometimes called an ob or ob,

which was apparently a Hebrew word for a spirit.

And he said that the word was sometimes translated with the Greek word python.

Now today we think of of a python as a kind of snake, but a different sense of the word as a witch or sorceress had developed in ancient Greek, and that word was sometimes used in English as well.

A python was typically a woman who had become possessed by a spirit that lived in her abdomen or belly.

Well, closely related to that same idea was the Latin term ventriloquist.

Scott actually gave us the first use of the term ventriloquy in English, But again, it referred to a type of demonic possession.

It was said that a possessed person, or ventriloquist, spoke as if they were speaking from their belly, not from their mouth.

Again, the sense of that word evolved over time so that today it refers to a person who projects their voice onto another person or object, or usually a dummy.

With respect to spirits and creatures of various types, Scott mentioned familiar terms like satyr, nymph, and imp,

but he also included less common terms like a fawn, which was a rural spirit, and a silen, which was a woodland creature, and an incubus, which was a spirit that descended upon a woman in her sleep.

He also referred to a changeling, which was a spirit that changed its appearance, and a tom tumbler, which was a type of evil spirit.

He also used the word bug to refer to an evil spirit.

At the time, bug was a common term for a scary or frightening spirit.

Now today we think of the word bug as a small insect or insect-like creature, but that sense of the word bug isn't found in any documents until about a decade after Scott's book.

So during the 1580s, a bug was still an evil spirit, not an insect.

It isn't entirely clear how the modern word bug came about, but one theory is that it's ultimately the same word.

The idea is that the sense of the word bug as something scary or frightening was extended to small insects, which often scared people.

Now all of those terms I just discussed are found in documents prior to Scott's book, though some of them were apparently very recent loanwords at the time.

But Scott also gave us the very first recorded use of several other terms.

For example, he referred to an astrologer as a figure caster, and a witch or conjurer as a miracle monger.

For spirits or creatures he gave us the first use of the word sporn as a type of phantom, and the first use of bell beggar for a type of goblin, and the first use of the term the man in the oak for a type of ghost that lived in the woods.

He was also the first to record the word word hellwane for a supernatural appearance in the night sky.

The word urchin was an older term for a hedgehog, but Scott's book is the first to use the term to refer to a goblin or elf, apparently from the notion that such creatures sometimes took the form of a hedgehog.

From that sense of the word urchin as a small creature, it was later extended to a mischievous child, and then sometimes to any small child, especially one considered to be poor or crude by those of higher classes.

The prevalence of all those terms for supernatural creatures gives us a sense of the fascination that people in Elizabethan England had for the spirit world.

Scott's book also provided the first recorded use of the term loving cup to refer to a love potion concocted by a witch or conjurer, and it gave us the term eyebite, meaning to cast an evil eye on someone.

And believe it or not, he was the first known writer to use the word Hispanic in an English document.

He used it in his discussion about the forced confessions obtained from accused witches, which he compared to the torture of the Spanish Inquisition, but he called it the Hispanical Inquisition.

And according to the Oxford English Dictionary, that's the first recorded use of the term Hispanic in English.

Now one other quick note about Reginald Scott's book.

After dismissing the belief in witchcraft and related supernatural ideas, he then described how certain people employed tricks to deceive people.

Though the discussion was intended to reveal what he considered to be frauds and cheats, it was really one of the first textbooks on the art of magic, and the tricks he described are still performed by modern magicians on stages all over the world.

Again, he didn't call it magic.

He called it juggling, using that older and broader sense of the word juggle as a magical or incredible feat.

For example, he described the sleight of hand used in card magic, like the use of false shuffles and the way a card player manipulates the deck to control the location of certain cards in the deck.

He described how people made coins and little balls disappear in their hands through misdirection, and he described an early version of cups and balls where the conjurer makes balls appear and disappear under various cups through misdirection and sleight of hand.

He also described how to make a coin appear to pass through a table or disappear into a handkerchief.

He described how conjurers used boxes with false bottoms to create an illusion in which one type of grain in the box appeared to change into a completely different type of grain.

And he even described how to use a fake blade to give the appearance of passing a knife through a person's arm or tongue.

Throughout the discussion, Scott emphasized that these were merely tricks and not actual magic or witchcraft.

As I noted, these types of tricks were mainly used by individuals to deceive or defraud people at the time.

They weren't generally used as entertainment.

People didn't go to the theaters to watch magic shows yet.

But many of those people did go to the theater to watch a play about magic and about a magician who tapped into the dark arts.

That play was written by Christopher Marlowe, and in the next chapter we'll explore his first dramatic version of the Faust legend presented in English.

Philip Hinslow was a businessman and an entrepreneur in the late 1500s.

He was what we might call a jack of all trades today, at least when it came to business.

He had his hand in a little bit of everything.

He was involved in the cloth industry as a dyer and starch manufacturer.

He was also a timber merchant, a buyer and seller of properties, and a pawnbroker and a money lender.

Oh, yeah, he was also a brothel owner.

But in 1587, he decided to try his hand at a new industry, the burgeoning theater scene around London.

In that year, three years after Reginald Scott's book on witchcraft that we just explored, Hinslow purchased a piece of property on the south bank of the Thames, across the river from the main part of the city of London.

The property contained rose gardens and was called the Little Rose, but Hinslow decided to build a theatre on the property.

It was constructed in 1587, and when it was completed, Hinslow called it, appropriately enough, the Rose.

Now Hinslow's new theater, the Rose, would prove to be one of the most important theaters in Elizabethan England.

And Hinslow would prove to be one of the most important theater owners because of something he did at the time, which survives to this day.

Hinslow kept meticulous records of the theater's business activity, and those records are a gold mine for scholars of Elizabethan drama, and especially for scholars of William Shakespeare.

Hinslow's records are often referred to as his diary because they were really a vast collection of notes and records of things that he found interesting.

In keeping with our theme, his records included the recipe for a concoction that supposedly cured deafness, and even included notes on casting spells.

So Hinslow apparently had an interest in conjuring.

But the most important part of his so-called diary were the day-to-day business records of the Rose Theater.

They show which plays were performed at the theater on which dates, as well as the amount of money that each play generated.

Those records not only help modern scholars to determine when many of the plays of that period were written and performed, but they also indicate how popular each play was at the time.

Unfortunately, the records begin in 1592, five years after the theater was built, so we don't have records for those first few years.

But some of that missing information can be pieced together from other sources.

Thanks to Hinslow's business records, we know that many of Shakespeare's earliest plays were performed at the Rose.

And we also know that Hinslow had a close connection with Christopher Marlowe because his plays were also performed there.

In the last episode, we looked at Marlowe's play called Tamberlaine.

Well, his next major play was probably completed shortly after the Rose Theatre was opened.

The play was called The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, but it's more commonly known as simply Dr.

Faustus.

The play was Marlowe's version of the well-known story of Faust and his Deal with the Devil, only it wasn't well known at the time.

Marlowe's play was actually the first dramatic version of the story in English.

The play may have been staged as early as 1589.

The exact date of the play is a matter of some dispute.

The first official record of the play's performance was at the Rose Theatre in the early 1590s, but as I noted, we don't have records from the Rose in the late 1580s.

However, there is a separate reference to the play which appears to place it around the year 1589.

That reference comes from an anti-theater crusader named William Pryn.

Several years later, he wrote that he had heard from several people that the play had been performed at a public house called the Belle Savage Inn.

Well, the Belle Savage Inn was closed in 1589, so that suggests that the play had been composed prior to that date, assuming Prynne's account is accurate.

At any rate, this particular play called Doctor Faustus was the follow-up to Tamberlaine.

The story of Faust was based on a German legend about a doctor named Johann Faust who was a conjurer and necromancer.

A necromancer was someone who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead.

This German doctor lived a few decades earlier in the early 1500s, and after his death, a legend arose that he had made a pact with the devil.

A German version of the legend was published in 1587, and soon afterwards it was translated into English, and Marlowe apparently based his play on that English translation.

So this was really a brand new story at the time, and few of the theater-goers would have been familiar with it.

Marlowe's version of the story was a tragedy, but it was somewhat unique in that it didn't involve the fall of a great political leader.

Instead, it involved the fall of a doctor who became enthralled with the occult.

In the story, Faustus sells his soul to the devil in exchange for supernatural powers and abilities, but he pays the ultimate price when the term of the deal expires and he's eternally damned.

The play mixed tragedy and farce, and much like Tambourlaine that we looked at last time, it featured Marlowe's eloquent language and an iambic pentameter meter with unrhymed or blank verse.

That was quickly becoming the standard structure of English drama.

So let me give you a quick synopsis of the play.

The play begins by introducing Faustus.

Marlowe includes the following lines To patient judgments we appeal our plawed, and speak for Faustus in his infancy.

Now I mention that passage because it contains the word plaud in the line, to patient judgments we appeal our plaud.

That word is the root of several other words like applaud, applause, and plaudit, and it's a fascinating little word as it relates to the history of the theater.

All of those words were brand new to English in the late 1500s, and the version that Marlowe used here, plaud, is first recorded in this particular play.

The Latin root word was plaudere, and it meant to clap.

It's an interesting word because even the Romans clapped their hands to express approval at the end of a performance, and that sense of the word has survived in words like applaud and applause.

Now audiences would often applaud on their own, but sometimes they would have to be encouraged to do so by the performers.

That led to the word plaudit, which was originally an appeal for applause, but has come to mean a round of applause or an expression of approval.

But audiences also used applause to show disapproval.

If they didn't like a performance, they would interrupt it by clapping, and they would continue clapping until the actor left the stage.

It was like booing or hissing today.

Well, when that happened, the act of disapproval was called explaudo, literally to clap off, as in to clap off the stage.

But the word entered English in the mid-1500s not as explaudo, but explode.

So the word explode was originally a theatrical term for a show of disapproval, and it's cognate with words like applaud and applause.

Of course, a clap involves a sudden burst of noise.

And that secondary sense of the word explode appeared in late Latin and also became the more common meaning of the word in English as well.

Now after being introduced to the character of Dr.

Faustus, we find out that he is a skilled physician, but he's frustrated with the limitations of his profession.

He's acquired all of the medical knowledge that is available, but he wishes for more.

He dreams of being able to defy death by making people live eternally and being able to raise them from the dead.

He reads the Bible and agonizes over the notion that the ultimate consequence of sin is death.

He rejects that notion and exclaims, quote,

Aye, we must die in everlasting death.

What doctrine call you this, Kesera Sera, what will be shall be?

Divinity, adieu,

end quote.

Now that passage contains one of the first recorded uses of the phrase quesera sera in an English document.

Though the phrase sounds like it came from another country, it was apparently coined within England.

It's actually an attempt to render the common English phrase what must be must be into Spanish or Italian.

The resulting phrase quesyra sera was used as the motto of the Russell family, which was a prominent noble family in England.

And that appears to be how the phrase passed into more general usage, no doubt encouraged by Marlowe's use of the phrase here in Dr.

Faustus.

Now, having expressed his frustration with traditional science and religion, Faustus says, quote,

Philosophy is odious and obscure.

Both law and physic are for petty wits.

Divinity is basest of the three, unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile.

Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.

Now I should note that that is standard iambic pentameter.

And it's also an attack on the traditional teachings of the church.

It was edgy stuff in the late 1500s, but Faustus isn't really presented as a sympathetic character.

He's too consumed with his own ego and passions.

The following couple of lines contain the first use of the word concise in the English language, when Faustus says that he confounded the pastors of the church with his concise syllogisms, which meant his concise and logical arguments.

Faustus decides that magic is the only skill that will satisfy his desire for knowledge, wealth, and power.

With the assistance of two other magicians, he utters a long passage in Latin and summons the demon named Mephistopheles.

By the way, Mephistopheles was the name coined in the German version of the story, and and Marlowe's play introduced the name and demon to English audiences.

When Mephistopheles appears, Faustus is frightened by his appearance and commands him to go away and come back in a less threatening form, which the demon does.

He then reappears in the form of a friar.

During the ensuing conversation, Faustus offers to sell his soul to Lucifer if Mephistopheles will do his bidding for twenty-four years.

having thee ever to attend on me, to give me whatsoever I shall ask, to tell me whatsoever I demand, to slay mine enemies and aid my friends, and always be obedient to my will.

End quote.

Now, a quick grammatical note there.

Faustus says that Mephistopheles will slay mine enemies and aid my friends.

So it uses mine in the first instance and my in the second.

Today we would say my in both cases.

We don't really use the word mine that way before a noun.

But during the Elizabethan period, the pronouns my and mine worked like the articles a and an.

The form that was used depended on the initial sound of the noun that followed it.

So today we use a before a word that begins with a consonant, like a car,

and we use an before a word that begins with a vowel, like an apple.

Well, my and mine once worked the same way.

My was used before a consonant, and mine was used before a vowel.

That's why Faustus refers to my friends and mine enemies.

Of course, we don't really use the word mine that way anymore.

Today, mine has been restricted to a possessive pronoun that's typically used by itself in place of a noun at the end of a sentence, like when we say, that hat is mine.

By the way, the change to the modern form with the use of the word my before vowel began in the north of England, and during the late 1500s it was spreading into the south.

Shakespeare used both my and mine before vowels, and by the late 1700s, my was the standard form before both vowels and consonants.

So, returning to the play, Lucifer accepts the offer of Dr.

Faustus.

The doctor's soul will belong to the devil in exchange for 24 years of magical powers to be carried out by Mephistopheles at the doctor's command.

That type of pact between Faustus and the devil is sometimes referred to today as a Faustian bargain.

The phrase is also used more broadly to refer to someone who collaborates with or forms an alliance with an evil person or regime.

Now, Faustus's first demand is for a wife, but Mephistopheles informs him that there's no reason to limit himself to a single wife.

The demon spirit will bring several women to Faustus each morning, and the doctor may have his choice.

The demon says, She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have.

Again, notice the pronoun forms, thine I and thy heart.

Thine and thy work the same way as mine and my.

Thine was used before words beginning with a vowel, thus thine I,

and thy was used before words beginning with a consonant, thus thy heart.

Of course, today, those pronouns have been replaced with the generic word your,

except in poetry and a few other limited situations.

Also, note that that particular line is perfect iambic pentameter de dumb de dum dum dum de dum

she whom thine eye shall like thy heart shall have.

The demon then gives Faustus a book of spells and incantations.

In return the doctor says Thanks, Mephistopheles.

That's one of the first, if not the first recorded use of the word thanks to mean thank you as an expression of gratitude.

Now Faustus is repeatedly visited by a good angel and a bad angel that each try to influence his decisions, with the good angel trying to convince Faustus to repent.

After these events, Faustus travels to Rome and makes his way into the Pope's private chamber, where the Pope is joined by several friars.

Faustus takes the opportunity to play practical jokes.

He makes himself invisible and snatches cups and plates from the men in the room.

Then he swats the Pope's ears.

Rather than using his powers to acquire knowledge and help the world, Faustus spends his time playing tricks on people and impressing them with his magical abilities.

His knowledge of the world and the universe makes him famous, and he's invited to meet the Holy Roman Emperor, where Faustus again displays his magical abilities and entertains the emperor.

At this point, Faustus starts to worry about what he has done, and he ponders his fate.

He realizes that time is quickly passing and his powers will soon come to an end.

The scene then shifts to Faustus and a couple of scholars debating who was the most beautiful woman to ever live.

The scholars suggest Helen of Troy, whose beauty and abduction led to the Trojan War.

Faustus raises Helen from the dead, and they all agree that she was indeed beautiful.

Faustus is increasingly plagued by regret for selling his soul, and Mephistopheles declares him to be a traitor to Lucifer.

Faustus then reaffirms the bargain and asks the demon to return Helen of Troy so that she may become his lover.

He secretly believes that her kiss will save his soul.

We then have what is probably the most famous passage of the entire play.

Upon Helen's entrance, Faustus says, quote, Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Iliam?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

End quote.

It is this passage that has led to Helen of Troy being referred to as the face that launched a thousand ships, because her abduction caused the Greeks to sail to Troy to fight the Trojan War.

But unfortunately for Faustus, Helen cannot save his soul.

On the night before his final day, Faustus asks his scholarly friends to pray for him.

He has decided that it's too late to repent, and in his final hour he realizes the gravity of what is about to happen and he curses his fate.

Thunder and lightning fill the air and horrible demons appear.

They seize Faustus and drag him off the stage to hell.

And with that, the story of Dr.

Faustus Faustus comes to a close.

If Elizabethan audiences expected the Doctor to repent and save himself with a happy ending, that's not what happened.

The final scene was apparently quite dramatic in the way it was presented on stage.

Earlier in the discussion I mentioned a passage about the play composed by William Prynn several years later that helps to date the play.

He said the play was performed at the Belle Savage Inn, which was closed in 1589.

Well, Prynne was a Puritan and a strong opponent of the theater,

and in that same passage he claimed that actual devils appeared on stage during the performance of the play, and the spectacle was so frightening that it literally drove several people mad.

Of course, that was certainly an exaggeration, but it points to the lasting impact of the play on audiences during this period.

The play secured Marlowe's reputation as the greatest playwright of of the period, up to this point in our story anyway.

Marlowe was part of a new breed of writers around London in the late 1500s.

They were highly educated men, having graduated from Cambridge or Oxford, and they were making their living solely as writers.

Prior to this point, writing had tended to be more of a pastime, but now people could make a living at it, especially those who wrote plays for the new theaters that were always looking for fresh dramas.

Later scholars referred to those young educated writers as the university wits.

In addition to Marlowe, they included Thomas Nash, George Peel, and a man named Robert Greene, who was one of the first professional writers in London.

Around the time that Marlowe was composing Dr.

Faustus, Greene published a story called Pandosta, The Triumph of Time.

It proved to be one of Greene's most popular works, and Shakespeare later reworked the story for his play called The Winter's Tale.

But Robert Greene was a troubled soul, by his own admission.

He left his wife and spent his final years in London womanizing and drinking himself to death while living in misery and squalor.

He also became bitter and jealous of other writers who were having more success than him.

He was dealing with his own personal demons during during this period, and it was during this time that he turned his attention to the thieves and cheats that he was hanging around with.

He wrote a series of books about the tricks and deceptions used by thieves and vagabonds on the streets of London.

After that, he spent his time composing plays, some of which were influenced by Marlowe's Tamberlaine and Dr.

Faustus.

And as we'll see a little later in the episode, he also gave us the first reference to William Shakespeare as an actor and playwright in London.

But for now he was among a group of writers who were redefining English literature in the late 1580s.

In 1589, Christopher Marlowe's new play, Dr.

Faustus, was likely being performed for audiences for the first time.

It was the year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and it was a time of great patriotism in England.

The new nationalist sentiment was also mixed with concern about the future.

The conflict with Spain was still not fully resolved, and there was an acceptance that Queen Elizabeth was 56 years old and not going to produce an heir.

That raised the prospect of a succession crisis.

By that point, it was generally accepted that if Elizabeth died, the throne would pass to her cousin, James VI, the King of the Scots.

He was the Protestant son of the late Mary, Queen of Scots.

Of course, if we jump ahead in the story, we know that James did eventually succeed Elizabeth as the English monarch, becoming James I of England in 1603.

He's probably most famous today for the Bible translation that he commissioned, known today as the King James Bible.

Of course, that translation had a tremendous impact on the language we speak.

But before James came to the throne of England, he was well known for something else, his obsession with witches.

In fact, the witch trials that became common throughout Britain and North America in the 1600s largely stemmed from James's desire to eliminate witchcraft from his realm.

And his obsession with witches really began with certain events that took place in this year, 1589.

With James emerging as the likely heir to the English throne, he needed to find a wife and start producing heirs of his own.

Of course, kings and queens didn't really marry for love.

Their marriages were political arrangements, designed to forge alliances with other powers.

And James and his advisors had found the perfect perfect match in Denmark.

The king of Denmark was Frederick II, and his daughter was named Anne.

Like Scotland and England, Denmark was a Protestant country, and James saw the benefit of forging a closer alliance with the Scandinavian country by marrying the king's daughter.

The terms were negotiated, and in late August of 1589, Anne and her entourage set sail from Denmark on their way to Scotland.

But three weeks later, the ships had still not arrived.

James soon learned that the ships had been caught in a storm in the North Sea, and it wasn't clear if the ships had survived the storm.

Of course, there was no internet at the time, so news traveled very slowly.

It wasn't until October that James finally received word that the ships had survived the storm and had been forced to return to Denmark, thereby delaying the marriage ceremony.

Winter was approaching, and that was a time of the year when sailing in the North Sea was the most treacherous, so that meant that the marriage would be delayed until the following spring.

Well, James wasn't the most patient king, so he decided to sail to Denmark to meet Anne and to get married there instead.

He left for Copenhagen in November and managed to make it to Denmark without a problem.

The couple met and were married four days later.

James didn't want to risk sailing back across the sea that late in the season, so he decided to spend the winter in Denmark and to make his return to Scotland in the spring.

It was during that time that he met several prominent people in and around the Danish court who sparked his interest in the dangers of witchcraft.

A few months later, James and Anne set sail for Scotland, but once again the fleet was battered by violent storms.

One of the ships was lost on the voyage, and the king and his new queen barely made it to Scotland alive.

After returning to Scotland, James became convinced that the storms had been caused by witches to prevent the royal marriage, and to eliminate him as the Christian crusader against witchcraft.

In the months that followed, authorities in both Scotland and Denmark rounded up numerous people who were accused of plotting against the king through conjuring and the dark arts.

Though Scotland had laws against witchcraft at the time, those laws had rarely been used or enforced.

But now, James used every bit of his power and authority as king to crack down on what he considered to be the greatest threat to his reign.

Over the next few months, numerous men and women were accused of witchcraft and plotting against the king.

In and around the town of North Berwick, on the east coast of Scotland, about seventy people were accused of conjuring the storms that had battered the king's fleet.

Most of those accused were women, but some men were accused as well.

Many of them were tortured and forced to confess.

It still isn't clear exactly how many people were found guilty and executed, but some of the records of the so-called North Berrack witch trials survive, and they detail the fate of several of the people who were found guilty and either strangled or burned at the stake.

It also seems likely that several people died from the torture they endured during the interrogations.

James actually presided over the interrogation of one of the accused witches named Agnes Sampson.

Her forced confession also led to her execution.

Shortly after the trials, James commissioned a pamphlet called News from Scotland that detailed the accusations against the witches, and helped to spread a general fear of witchcraft across Britain.

The old distinction between good witches and bad witches gradually disappeared, and witchcraft was increasingly seen as the sole domain of those who were allied with the devil.

You'll notice that James's view of witchcraft was very different from that of Reginald Scott, whose book on witchcraft we examined at the beginning of the episode.

Scott argued that witchcraft was just superstition and that people accused of witchcraft were innocent people forced to confess under the pain of torture.

Well, James was aware of Scott's book, and he strongly disagreed with it.

In the the years after the North Berrack witch trials, James composed his own book on the evils of witchcraft called Demonology.

It was published in 1597, and in the preface of the book he took direct aim at Scott's book.

James wrote, quote, The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, has moved me to dispatch in the post this following treatise of mine, to resolve the doubting hearts of many that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised against the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one called Scott, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft.

Six years later James succeeded Elizabeth and became the King of England.

One of his earliest acts as king was to order his officials to gather all of the copies of Scott's book that they could find and burn them.

He also replaced the law against witchcraft that had been adopted early in Elizabeth's reign with a new law.

As I noted earlier in the episode, Elizabeth's statute only punished witches if it was determined that they had caused harm.

But under James's statute, the practice of witchcraft itself was made illegal, and the law even extended to the British colonies in North America.

The Salem witch trials conducted in Massachusetts in the late 1600s were carried out under James's statute, and the statute remained in effect until 1736.

James had written a book about witchcraft, and his obsession also influenced other writers during his reign.

When he became the king of England, the most prominent playwright was William Shakespeare, and shortly afterwards Shakespeare composed Macbeth, partly as a tribute to James.

The play was set in Scotland and featured characters that were believed to be James's distant ancestors.

But some of the play's most memorable characters are the witches who foretell Macbeth's future, and some scholars believe that those passages contain allusions to the North Berwick witch trials.

But before we delve any further into Shakespeare and witches, we need to turn our attention attention to Fairies, and one of the most important epic poems composed in the entire Elizabethan era.

In the next part of the episode, we'll examine The Fairy Queen by Edmund Spencer.

When James of Scotland returned from Denmark in 1590, he became obsessed with those who practiced black magic.

And in that same year, we actually find the first recorded use of the term black magic in an English document.

That document was an epic poem composed one of the most revered poets of the Elizabethan era.

His name was Edmund Spencer, and the poem was called The Fairy Queen.

Many scholars consider Spencer to be the first major poet of consequence to emerge since Geoffrey Chaucer a couple of centuries earlier.

And that connection to Chaucer is notable because Spencer admired Chaucer and he sought to revive the Middle English lexicon that Chaucer had used in the 1300s.

The first thing to know about Edmund Spencer is that he attended the Merchant Taylor School.

In the last episode, I noted that Thomas Kidd, who wrote the Spanish tragedy, was also a student there.

That was the school run by Richard Mulcaster, who I discussed back in episode 163.

Mulcaster was a strong advocate of English, and he thought that English was every bit the equal of Latin or Greek or any other European language.

He also thought that students should be taught in English, not Latin.

It appears that Mulcaster's views rubbed off on Spencer because Spencer's poetic approach was very different from most of his contemporaries.

At the time, there was a general agreement that the English word stock wasn't broad enough to compose elegant poetry because poets needed words that could fit the specific meter of the poem.

And the English lexicon at the time wasn't as large as it is today.

So most poets solved solved that problem by using words from other languages, either ancient languages like Latin or Greek, or contemporary languages like French, Spanish, or Italian.

Christopher Marlowe was a good example of someone who used that approach.

Well, rather than looking across the channel for words, Edmund Spencer decided to look back in time.

As a fan of Chaucer's work, he realized that Chaucer had used many words and many grammatical constructions that were no longer common in the language.

So Spencer decided to tap into that older Middle English vocabulary.

Those older words were sometimes called Chaucerisms, and they tended to give Spencer's poetry a distinctly medieval feel.

The result was a unique approach which was both admired and criticized.

It was criticized because some readers struggled with the older antiquated terms.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to see the contrast between Spencer's distinctly English poetry and the more Latinate poetry composed by his contemporaries.

Spencer's first major poem using that approach was a poem called The Shepherd's Calendar, which was published about a decade earlier in 1579.

The poem was part of a trend at the time called pastoral poetry.

Those types of poems were usually set in the countryside and featured shepherds.

They emphasized the innocence and purity of rural life.

Spencer's poem was called a calendar because it consisted of twelve poems, one for each month of the year.

The speakers were shepherds, and the series of poems illustrated the course of life from youth to old age.

The poems dealt with issues like religion, politics, and poetry itself.

In the poem, he used words like unethis or aneths for scarcely, and korb for crooked, sitha for time, prema for chilled, tati for wavering, and so on.

Again, those were older words that had largely disappeared or were in the process of disappearing in the Elizabethan period.

Spencer also liked to make up new words.

He apparently coined the word bellabone in the poem, which meant a fair maid.

He apparently made up the word cosset for a lamb, though he may have been inspired by words in Old English or French that resembled the word cosset.

The Shepherd's calendar also gave us the first recorded use of several words that are very common today.

For example, it included the first use of the word drizzle, apparently derived from the Middle English word dressa, meaning to fall.

He also gave us the initial use of the word curdle.

Previously, the verb was simply curd, as in the milk curded, but Spencer rendered it as curdled.

He actually used it in reference to a winter which he said curdles the blood.

So in that sense, I guess we can say that he actually gave us an early version of the term blood curdling, as in a blood curdling scream.

And speaking of blood, he also gave us the first use of the term lifeblood in the poem.

Speaking of the cold winter, he wrote, My lifeblood freezing with unkindly cold.

And even though Spencer was renowned for using older English words, he sometimes used loan words, and his poems sometimes contain the first recorded instance of such loan words.

For example, the Shepherd's calendar gave us the first recorded use of the Latin word obsolete.

It also contained the first English use of the word ode, meaning a lyrical poem.

Though the Shepherd's Calendar isn't really a musical poem, it also included the first use of the words violin and tambourine from Italian and French, respectively.

And I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but Spencer also gave us the first use of the word sarcasm as well, a word inherited from Latin and Greek.

The poem also contains the first recorded use of the Greek word catastrophe in an English document.

Now, after composing the Shepherd's calendar, Spencer turned to politics, and he acquired a position as the Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, so he headed there a short time later.

He eventually acquired an estate in Ireland, and this is where Spencer's story becomes problematic, as many people say today.

Spencer was very much a part of the English effort to colonize Ireland and to build settlements and plantations there.

He was also involved in putting down rebellions, and it was during that time that he became close friends with Sir Walter Raleigh.

I noted in an earlier episode that Raleigh largely gave up on his efforts to build a settlement on Roanoke Island in North America after the disappearance of the settlement that became known as the Lost Colony.

After that, Raleigh retreated to his estate in Ireland, and it was there that Edmund Spencer delighted Raleigh with an early draft of his next poem called The Fairy Queen.

At Raleigh's insistence, Spencer returned to London with the first three parts of the long epic poem, and those parts were published in 1590, the same year that the North Verwick Witch Trials began in Scotland.

The poem remains one of the most highly regarded of the Elizabethan era, but it's also challenging.

As I noted, Spencer occasionally used older terms that are no longer common in the language.

And the structure of the poem is very ambitious, some would say a little too ambitious.

The poem has the structure of an epic medieval romance.

It's set in the time of King Arthur.

But the characters in the poem are also allegories representing various vices and virtues.

According to Spencer, the original idea was that the Queen of the Fairies would hold a feast for twelve days, and each day a stranger would appear to ask for help against some menacing force, like a monster or a dragon or a tyrant.

And each time a knight would be directed to help the stranger, thus beginning each adventure.

Each knight was supposed to represent a specific virtue, and each opponent was to represent a specific vice.

There was originally supposed to be twelve parts, which he called books, but Spencer only completed the first six.

The six virtues that he covered in those books were holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy.

So as you read the poem, you have to interpret the older antiquated terms while following the adventure and at the same time grasping the secondary morality play that's being presented.

Again, the first three parts or books were published in 1590, and the second three were published six years later in a new edition that included all six parts.

The poem is set in a land of monsters, witches, wizards, and fairies, and in that regard it reflects the Elizabethan fascination with those supernatural creatures.

It was also dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, who is clearly represented in the poem as the fairy queen herself.

Now, since the entire poem is very long and consists of six distinct stories stories or books, I don't have time to go through the whole thing.

But the first book is probably the most widely read and is highly regarded for its structure, so I'm going to give you a quick overview of that section.

Book I is centred around the virtue of holiness, represented by the central figure of the story, the Red Cross Knight.

Now I'm going to read the opening three stanzas of the poem, which describes the Knight as he rides along in pursuit of his mission.

We find out that he's been dispatched by Gloriana, the queen of Fairyland.

He's accompanied by a beautiful maiden named Una, and they're traveling to her native kingdom, which is being plagued by a dragon.

Una's parents are being held captive in a castle tower by the dragon, and the knight's mission is to defeat the dragon and liberate the kingdom.

Now in presenting these passages, I'm going to do something a little different.

First, I'm going to read them using a contemporary modern English pronunciation.

Then I'm going to play a clip of the same passages in Early Modern English, reflecting the style of pronunciation that would have been used at the time.

That clip comes from Alex Foreman.

Alex is a linguist who does readings in Early Modern English, and he's given me permission to use his version.

I thought you might enjoy hearing his take on the opening of the poem.

So here is the beginning of the Fairy Queen, first in contemporary modern English pronunciation

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain, E clad in mighty arms and silver shield, Wherein old dents of deep wounds did remain, The cruel marks of many a bloody field, Yet arms till that time did he never wield.

His angry steed did chide his foaming bit, As much disdaining to the curb to yield.

Full jolly knight he seemed, and fair did sit, As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit.

But on his breast a bloody cross he bore, The dear remembrance of his dying lord, For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead as living ever him adored.

Upon his shield the like was also scored, for sovereign hope which in his help he had, right faithful true he was indeed in word, but of his cheer did seem too solemn sad, yet nothing did he dread but ever was Edrad.

Upon a great adventure he was bound, that greatest Gloriana to him gave, that greatest, glorious queen of fairyland, to win him worship and her grace to have, which of all earthly things he most did crave, and ever as he rode, his heart did earn, to prove his puisance in battle brave, upon his foe, and his new force to learn, upon his foe, a dragon horrible and stern.

Now here is Alex's version of the same passage in early modern English pronunciation

A gentle Knecht was pricking on the plain, a a clad in Mechhti arms and silver shield, wherein old dints of deep wounds did remind the cruel marks of many a bloody field.

Yet arms till that time did he never wield.

His angry steed did shade his foaming bit, as much disdaining to the Kurb to yield.

Full jolly Knecht he seemed, and fire did sit, As on for Knechtly jousts and fairs encounters fit.

But on his breast a bloody cross he bore, The dear dear remembrance of his dying lord, For whose sweet sack that glorious badge he wore, And dead as living ever him adored.

Upon his shield the lake was also scored, For sovereign hope, which in his help he had, Rached faithful true he was, in deed and word, but of his chair did seem too solemn sad.

Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was he drad.

Upon a great adventure he was bound, That greatest Gloriana to him gave, That greatest glorious queen of fiery Lond To win him worship and her grass to have, Which of all earthly things he most did crave, And ever as he rode his heart did earn to prove his puisance in battle brave, Upon his foe, and his new force to learn, Upon his foe, a dragonorable and stern.

I hope you enjoyed that reading.

If you want to hear Alex doing more readings, including those of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spencer, and others, check out his Patreon, which is patreon.com slash AZ Foreman.

That's AZFOREMAN.

Now, in those passages, it says that the knight was e-clad in mighty arms, rather than clad in mighty arms, and the passage also uses the word e-drad rather than dreaded.

Both of those words are rendered in an older form with the Middle English prefix e.

It was the type of structure that one would have heard during the time of Chaucer.

Again, it's those types of features that make the poem sound and feel more medieval than it really is.

So the Red Cross Knight and the maiden Una are on the way to her kingdom to defeat the dragon.

They are accompanied by a dwarf who travels with with them.

By the way, in the poem, Una represents truth and the true church.

Along the way, they become lost and encounter a monster named Error.

The monster attacks the Red Cross Knight, but the knight eventually kills the creature.

They then meet an old hermit named Archimago, who is secretly an evil wizard.

The name Archimago is a blend of two Latin root words, which basically means magician.

Well, the wizard, disguised as a hermit, offers the travelers a place to sleep for the night, and while they're sleeping, he begins to work his magic.

Amid his magic books he seeks his charms and retrieves several sprites and other demons.

Archimago chooses two of them to do his bidding.

One of the demons takes the form of Una, and tries to seduce the knight, but despite the temptation, the knight rejects the advances.

The demons then return with a new deception.

They awaken the knight and tell him to come see what his companion is doing.

They create the false image of Una lying with another man, which angers the jealous knight and causes him to abandon Una the next morning.

The passage reads, quote,

All in amaze he suddenly upstart, with sword in hand and with the old man went, who soon him brought into a secret part, where that false couple were full closely meant, in wanton lust and lewd embracement, which when he saw, he burnt with jealous fire, the eye of reason was with rage he blent, and would have slain them in his furious ire, but hardly was restrained of that aged sire.

Returning to his bed in torment great, and bitter anguish of his guilty sight, He could not rest, but did his stout heart eat, and wasst his inward gall with deep despite, irksome of life and too long lingering night.

At last fair Hesperus, in highest sky, had spent his lamp and brought forth dawning light.

Then up he rose and clad him hastily, the dwarf him brought his steed, so both away do fly.

Now what stands out about those passages is how distinctly English they are compared with, say, Christopher Marlowe's plays.

There are no recent loan words in that entire passage.

Every word would have been common during the time of Chaucer two centuries earlier.

The one slight exception is the word embracement, which is just the noun form of the word embrace.

Embracement isn't found in Middle English, but embrace was.

In fact, it was very common during that period, going back to at least the early 1300s.

So it wasn't really a new word either.

The passage also uses the word e-blint, which was a very old way of saying blinded.

It's used in the line, the eye of reason was with rage e-blint, meaning that the knight was blinded with rage.

Now after the passages I just read, the Red Cross knight continues on his journey and meets a beautiful maiden named Duessa.

But the Knight doesn't realize that she's a witch in disguise.

She represents falsehood in the poem.

The knight is attracted to Duessa, and as they rest under a tree, the knight breaks off a branch to weave a garland for her.

But blood starts to drip from the broken branch.

The tree then starts to speak in a human voice.

The tree says that it was once a man who had fallen in love with a damsel, but he saw her in her true form as a witch, and the witch had turned him into a tree.

Before the knight realizes that the tree is describing Duessa, she pretends to faint.

The knight revives her with a kiss, and they leave together.

After several more adventures, the knight drinks from a fountain, but he doesn't realize that the fountain is cursed, and it causes anyone who drinks from it to lose their strength.

At that point, a giant appears and attacks the knight, who's unable to defend himself.

Duessa convinces the giant to spare the knight's life by making him a slave, and by Duessa further agreeing to become the giant's mistress.

Meanwhile, the dwarf who had accompanied the knight flees and soon comes upon the original damsel, Una, who's been looking for the Red Cross Knight.

The dwarf tells her everything that's happened, and on their way to rescue the Red Cross Knight from the Giant, they encounter another knight.

This knight wears shining armor, covered with gold and jewels.

We soon find out this is Arthur, rendered as Prince Arthur here, but eventually to become King Arthur.

Together the companions spine the castle where the Red Cross Knight is being held.

Arthur slays the giant, and they manage to free the Red Cross Knight from captivity.

Duessa is revealed to be a witch, and when a robe is taken away, she reverts to her natural witch form.

Spencer writes, her rizzled skin as rough as maple rind.

That word rizzled appears to be a word that Spencer made up.

It's generally believed to be a portmanteau or blend of the words wrinkled and grizzled, thus rizzled.

It's at this point that Arthur reveals his name, though being only a prince at this point, his companions don't recognize him as the king he will one day become.

Arthur says that he had been visited by the fairy queen in a dream and had fallen in love with her.

He has come to Fairyland to find her, and then he leaves to continue his search for her.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross Knight and Una return to their original mission and leave for Una's kingdom to defeat the dragon.

The knight is still weak and recovers at a castle called the House of Holiness.

There he's shown a vision of the future and he learns that he will one day be known as Saint George, the patron saint of England.

The knight and Una finally reach her kingdom and the knight battles the dragon.

At one point the knight is nearly killed, but as he falls he comes to rest in a spring called the Well of Life.

It restores his powers, and in the passage Spencer compares it to the quote German spa.

Now that's a reference to a town in the eastern part of modern-day Belgium called Spa, which is famous for its natural mineral springs.

The springs were thought to have healing powers, and the town had been a popular destination for centuries.

That's why Spencer mentioned it here, and as you might have guessed, the name of that Belgium town is also the source of the modern word spa, meaning a place that offers natural health health treatments or beauty treatments.

In the U.S., we also have the word spa for a hot tub, again from the same source referring to natural mineral springs.

Well, Spencer's reference to the springs in that passage is one of the first recorded uses of the word spa in the English language.

Now, returning to the story, the Red Cross Knight recovers in the spring waters of the Well of Life, and he's finally able to defeat and kill the dragon.

Afterwards, there are great celebrations throughout the kingdom, and the story concludes with the marriage of the knight and Una.

And that's an abridged look at book one of the six separate books of the entire poem.

Again, it's an epic poem, and the subsequent books also contain witches, fairies, and the like.

Now, Spencer's use of older antiquated terms didn't really catch on.

In the end, writers and speakers in general preferred to use Latinate and Greek loanwords to supplement the lexicon.

And Spencer himself was also forced to use such words on occasion.

In fact, he provides the first recorded use of several such words in the English language.

In Book I of the Fairy Queen, he used the word transfixed, which is the first recorded use of any version of the word transfix in English.

It's derived from a Latin root word.

In later books of the poem, he provided the first recorded use of the Latin word pallid and a female version of the word creature as creatress.

As I noted earlier, he gave us the first known use of the term black magic as well in book three.

The word shine is an Old English word, but Spencer is the first known writer to use the adjective shiny.

He used it in reference to, quote, summer's shiny day.

Now, in most cases, those types of words were already in use, and Spencer was simply the first to document them.

But there are a few words that Spencer apparently coined.

The best example is the word blatant, meaning obvious or conspicuous.

But he didn't use the word that way.

In the later books of the poem, he referred to a, quote, blatant beast.

He apparently made up the word to describe the monster, and in his usage it meant loud or noisy.

It's possible that he intended it as a variation of the word bleating, as when an animal cries out.

At any rate, the modern meaning of the word blatant as glaringly obvious appeared in the late eighteen hundreds.

In Book two, Spencer introduced a character named Braggadocchio.

He's a vain and dishonourable knight who steals a horse.

To create the character's name, Spencer took the word brag and added an Italian ending to it.

And over time, that character's name passed into general usage as the word braggadoccio, a word for someone who boasts or brags a lot, or the boasting done by that person.

Earlier I mentioned a portmanteau that Spencer coined, the word rizzled.

Well, in book two, he also coined another portmanteau, the word screws, which appears to be a blend of the words screw and squeeze.

Now Spencer's poem and the language he used were very influential, and many scholars think the fairy queen was a major influence on Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, which I mentioned earlier in the episode.

It also features fairies, and some of those scholars think that Shakespeare helped to give us the modern notion of fairies by combining the smallness of elves with the magical abilities of the fae or fairies presented in medieval romances.

And, speaking of Shakespeare, as we move our narrative into the 1590s, we finally have a couple of important developments that relate to his overall story.

In fact, shortly after the first three books of the Fairy Queen were published, we have the first recorded references to Shakespeare in London.

In the final part of this episode we'll look at that evidence and examine his earliest plays.

Earlier in the episode, I introduced you to Philip Hinslow, the man who built the Rose Theatre in 1587.

As I noted, Hinslow is an important figure in the history of the Elizabethan theatre because he kept detailed records of the Rose's business activity.

I also mentioned that those records don't exist for the first few years.

But in 1592, a couple of years after the first part of the Fairy Queen was published, we finally get those earliest surviving records.

The first records appear for the month of February, and those records indicate the performance of a new Christopher Marlowe play called The Jew of Malta.

It's noteworthy because it inspired Shakespeare's later play, The Merchant of Venice.

But then, in the following month, we find an entry under the date of March 3rd.

The entry indicates the performance of a play called Harry VI.

It was the theater's most successful performance so far in the records, bringing in over three pounds of revenue.

The entry also contains the letters NE indicating that the play was new, presumably performed for the first time at the Rose.

That obscure entry in these financial records is actually quite important, because Harry VI was almost certainly one of William Shakespeare's history plays, known today as Henry VI, Part 1.

It's the earliest record we have of any Shakespeare play.

Now I should note something that may be obvious, but Harry was and is a common nickname for Henry.

So Henry VI would have likely been referred to as Harry VI by some people.

In case you didn't know, the current Prince Harry, son of King Charles, is actually named Henry, Henry Charles Albert David, to be precise.

So it's still a common practice to refer to Henry as Harry.

If you're a Shakespeare fan, you probably know that he actually composed three separate plays about Henry VI, known today as parts I, II, and III.

The play referenced in Henslow's records is apparently the first part of the story, the play known as Part I today.

I should also note that there's some disagreement about the order in which Shakespeare composed those three parts.

Some think that they were written in chronological order, Part 1, then Part 2, then Part 3.

Others think Parts 2 and 3 were written first, and then Shakespeare went back and wrote Part 1 as a prequel.

They also think that Part 1 may have been a collaboration between Shakespeare and one or more other writers.

For reasons that we'll explore in a moment, it's very likely that parts two and three were being performed around the same time, so if part one was new, as Hinslow indicated, then it may have been written as a prequel to piggyback on the success of the other two parts.

The modern labeling of the plays as one, two, and three didn't actually occur until after Shakespeare's death when many of his plays were assembled into the first collection or folio of his work.

At any rate, it appears that Hinslow's entry in March of 1592 refers to Part 1 of Henry VI.

Now, at first glance, it may seem odd that I'm discussing a Shakespeare history play in an episode about witches and fairies.

But a closer look at the plays reveals why.

Because during this period, even a play about a 15th-century king contained a storyline involving witches.

Of course, the play is about Henry VI, or at least it's set during his lifetime.

Many of the events actually take place around him.

I discussed the major events during his life in earlier episodes of the podcast, specifically episodes 135 through 138.

Assuming you don't remember very much about Henry, he was a tragic figure and thus a good source for a tragedy about an English king.

His reign encompassed much of the period known as the Wars of the Roses, and Shakespeare completed the period with his follow-up play, Richard III.

Henry VI was the son of the great warrior king Henry V.

His father had won the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War against France.

The victory turned the tide of the war in favor of the English in the early 1400s.

But Henry V died a short time later of dysentery.

His son, now Henry VI, was only nine months old at the time, so a council had to run the country on his behalf, and part one of Shakespeare's play deals with that early period when Henry was just a child.

It was during that period that the French rallied around a young woman named Joan of Arc, who inspired the French to many victories against the English.

And this is where the supernatural elements come into play.

In Shakespeare's version, the English authorities consider Joan to be a witch who uses sorcery to defeat the English.

In the play, Shakespeare refers to her as Pousselle, which was a French word meaning virgin or maiden.

La Pouscelle was a common term for her in French, but I'll just refer to her by her more common English name, Joan, or Joan of Arc.

Part I opens with the funeral of Henry V.

From the outset, some of the English authorities suspect that witchcraft was the cause of his death.

The Duke of Exeter says, quote,

Or shall we think the subtle-witted French conjurers and sorcerers, that afraid of him by magic verses, have contrived his end, end quote.

The scene quickly shifts to France, where a young maiden gains an audience with the French heir, Charles.

She is Joan of Arc, and she claims that she has received a vision from heaven ordering her to lead the French resistance to the English occupation.

During a battle, Joan drives back the English forces, and the English commander Talbot curses her as a witch.

He says, quote, Here, here she comes.

I'll have a bout with thee.

Devil or devil's damn, I'll conjure thee.

Blood will I draw on thee.

Thou art a witch, and straight away give thy soul to him thou servest.

End quote.

Notice that Talbot addresses Joan with the informal pronouns thee, thou, and thy, instead of the more formal you.

Remember that in early modern English there was a difference in usage between those pronoun forms, which I'll discuss in more detail in future episodes.

But if you were addressing a stranger and you wanted to show contempt, you would use the informal pronouns the, thou, and thy, which is what Talbot does here.

Shakespeare was always very careful about how his characters use those pronoun forms, and he sometimes shifted back and forth.

Two characters might initially be on friendly terms and use you,

and then they might get into an argument and switch to the and thou.

So that's something to take note of when reading or listening to Shakespeare.

Now back to the story.

Talbot and Joan fight each other until the French overwhelm the English.

In retreat, Talbot once again refers to Joan as a witch.

After the defeat, Talbot says that the French victory was, was, quote, contrived by art and baleful sorcery, end quote.

He then says of the French, well, let them practice and converse with spirits.

God is our fortress.

Much of the middle part of the play concerns the ongoing war against the French, and the fractures within the English court that lead to the split between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.

These conflicts become more prominent over the course of the three parts of the play.

Part 1 concludes with Joan of Arc's defeat on the battlefield, and if we have any doubt that she's actually a witch in the story, Shakespeare puts it to rest in the final act.

She uses her spells to conjure spirits who have been giving her advice.

She calls out to the spirits, quote, Now help, ye charming spells and periaps, and ye choice spirits that admonish me and give me signs of future accidents, end quote.

Now that passage may provide some evidence that Shakespeare had been reading Reginald Scott's book on witchcraft that I discussed at the beginning of the episode.

The passage uses the word periats to refer to charms or amulets.

It's ultimately a Greek word that had passed into French.

The first recorded use of the word in English was in Scott's book on witchcraft, and here Shakespeare uses the same word less than a decade later.

Since it's not a very common word, and since since those are two of the first known uses of the word in English, it seems possible that Shakespeare took the word from Scott's book.

Now, Joan summons the spirits to appear before her, but they all remain silent and offer no advice.

She realizes that her magic no longer works.

She says that she's no longer able to force her will.

She laments,

My ancient incantations are too weak, and hell too strong for me to buckle with.

Now France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.

⁇

She's then captured by the English and burned at the stake as a witch.

And that brings an end to Part I of the Henry VI trilogy.

Part II looks at the palace intrigue and divisions that led to the Wars of the Roses.

But even this second part features witchcraft as a plot device.

Early in the play, the king is still a young man, and he marries a French princess named Margaret.

Henry is delighted with his new queen.

He says, Such is the fullness of my heart's content, which is the first recorded use of the term heart's content.

It's a term that Shakespeare may have actually coined himself.

Now, despite Henry's marriage, he's still young and inexperienced, and much of the power rests in the hands of his powerful and popular uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, who is serving as the Lord Protector of England.

Within the royal court, there's a plot to bring down Gloucester, and Gloucester's wife, the Duchess, consults with a witch and conjurer to summon a spirit who will predict the future of Henry's reign.

In a dramatic scene, they conjure a spirit who offers some vague predictions, but they're caught in the act and arrested for dabbling in the dark arts.

The Duchess is found guilty and exiled, and Gloucester himself is forced out of office.

The scene where the Duchess conjures the spirit resembles many of the scenes from Marlowe's play Dr.

Faustus, and many scholars think that the scene represents an attempt by Shakespeare to mimic Marlowe's play, which was still being presented on the stages of London at that time.

With the fall of Gloucester, much of the rest of the play tracks the rise of Richard, the Duke of York, who emerges as the leader of the Yorkist faction and the rival of Henry and the Lancastrians.

At one point, York is sent to Ireland to put down a rebellion, but he suspects that it's an attempt to get rid of him.

He encourages an uprising against the king led by a rebel named Jack Cade.

The idea is to test the waters and see how secure Henry's support is among the nobles and the rest of the country.

Jack Cade's rebellion is an actual event that took place, but of course Shakespeare's version is highly dramatized.

Cade's rebellion was a revolt led by common people, similar to the peasants' revolt that had taken place in the prior century.

And in Shakespeare's version, it's a revolt against not only the government, but also the entire literate class of England.

As the rebellion gets underway, one of Cade's henchmen utters the famous line, The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Cade agrees, not only because they're responsible for the laws, but also because they can read and write.

The rebels then seize a clerk who they assume to be literate.

When Cade's men discover a book in his pocket, Cade asserts, Nay then, he is a conjurer.

So in their minds, the ability to read and write was associated with witchcraft.

And that harkens back to the discussion I've presented before about how the word grammar evolved into the word glamour because the ability to read and write Latin was treated as almost a supernatural power by many people.

When the clerk is asked if he signs his name to a document or simply makes a mark, the clerk says that he signs his name, which is confirmation that he is literate, and thus a villain and traitor.

Cade replies, Away with him, I say, hang him with his pen and ink horn about his neck.

In a later scene, Cade makes it clear clear that his opposition to the lawyers and clerks and lawmakers is because they abuse the common people by binding them to documents that they can't read and understand.

When Cade encounters a certain lord, he says, Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school, adding, It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.

Thou hast appointed justices of peace to call poor men before them about matters they were not able to answer.

Moreover, thou hast put them in prison, and because they could not read, thou hast hanged them, when indeed only for that cause they have been most worthy to live.

Now these are interesting passages because they show Shakespeare's appeal to the common man.

Whereas Christopher Marlowe was a Cambridge man, a so-called university wit, who loved to flaunt his classical learning in his passages, Shakespeare's characters sometimes revel in their opposition to that class.

It gave Shakespeare's plays a special appeal to certain parts of his audience who might have shared some of the same resentments about unscrupulous lawyers and the exploitation of common people by those with a formal education.

Cade's rebellion is soon put down, and Richard, Duke of York, returns to England and defeats Henry VI in battle.

And that brings an end to Part II of the series.

Part III picks up the story there, and much of the plot of this final play in the series centers around the triumph of the Yorkists over the Lancastrians during Henry's reign.

After his defeat at the end of Part II, Henry agrees to recognize Richard of York as his successor, but that decision effectively disinherits his own young son.

Henry's wife, Queen Margaret, is outraged at the prospect that their son has been abandoned in the succession, so she takes up arms and leads her forces against York.

She defeats him and takes him captive.

In a compelling scene, the two face off against each other and exchange insults.

Remember that Margaret had been a French princess, so York calls her she-wolf of France, and then says of her, O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide.

In other words, he says that she has a tiger's heart wrapped inside of a woman's body.

Remember that line, because it'll be important in a moment.

Now, after the exchange, the Queen orders York to be executed.

She says, off with his head, and set it on York gates, so York may overlook the town of York.

Now that's apparently the first recorded use of the phrase off with his head in an English document.

With York's death, his claim to the throne passes to his son Edward, and the remainder of the play focuses on Edward's attempt to defeat Queen Margaret and Henry and his eventual victory in which he becomes Edward VI, the first Yorkist king of England.

So those are parts 1, 2, and 3 of Henry VI, the first first set of plays that are believed to have been composed by William Shakespeare, perhaps as part of a collaboration with one or more other writers.

Again, the first reference to this series comes from Philip Henslow's business records for the Rose Theatre in March of 1592.

But also note that the records don't specifically mention the author of the play, so while we can assume that Shakespeare had been in London for a while by this point, we don't have a specific reference to him.

But a few weeks later, that first reference finally appears in the historical record, and it was not a flattering reference at all.

This first reference came from Robert Greene, who I mentioned earlier in the episode.

You might recall that Greene was one of the so-called university wits, like Marlowe, who had a Cambridge education and made his living as a writer around London.

But he was also a troubled soul who spent the early 1590s drinking himself to death and living in poverty.

He had become a bitter and jealous man who resented the success of other writers, and that resentment apparently extended to a young man from Stratford who had just written one of the most successful series of plays on the London stage.

In August of 1592, a few months after that first reference to the play called Harry VI,

Greene was on the verge of death, and he knew it.

During those final days, he composed a short work based on his life, and the work contained several pointed observations about other writers around town.

The work was really intended for his fellow university wits, like Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nash, and he intended to caution them about a young newcomer, a man with only a grammar school education, who dared to challenge the men who were regarded as the finest writers and poets in England.

In a general comment about actors at the time, Greene wrote, quote,

Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you.

And being an absolute Joannis factotum, he is in his own conceit the only shake scene in a country.

End quote.

Greene died a few days later on September 3rd.

As soon as he died, a local printer named Henry Chettle collected Greene's final writings and published them under a very long title which is usually shortened to just a Groatsworth of Wit.

A groat was a small coin worth four pence.

Greene's Groatsworth of Wit was the bitter thoughts of a dying man, and that passage I just read was a personal attack on the man who would soon become the most revered writer in the English language.

Greene's shake scene was almost certainly Shakespeare.

It's also the first reference we have to him as a playwright in London.

Now, in order to understand the references to Shakespeare in the passage I just read, we have to look a little closer at what was written.

First of all, Greene never really called anyone out by name.

Instead, he described the objects of his scorn with references that his intended readers would understand.

The passage refers to the writer as an upstart crow, so someone who was new on the scene.

Upstart was a relatively new term in the language, and it reflects the social mobility of the period as many commoners and people from the lower classes were starting to acquire wealth and higher status in Elizabethan England.

And for Greene, the young upstart crow was just such a person, a person of low status, presumably with a lesser education, who was moving up in the world.

Greene then says that the young writer had been, quote, beautified with our feathers.

This appears to be directed at his fellow university wits, and suggests that the young writer was using elevated poetry and prose that was previously limited to a small group of highly educated writers like Greene himself.

He then says of the young writer, quote, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, end quote.

As I noted in the last episode, blank verse referred to poetry that was written in iambic pentameter and didn't rhyme, like the poetry and plays of Christopher Marlowe.

According to Greene, this young newcomer was arrogant enough to presume that he could match Marlowe in his mighty line.

And note that reference to his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide.

That's a direct parody of Shakespeare's line that we looked at a moment ago in Henry VI, Part III, when the Duke of York referred to Queen Margaret as a tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide.

It was a line that was probably being recited on the stages of London as Greene wrote that passage, and here he used the same line, only changing the term woman's hide to player's hide, meaning an actor's hide.

So Greene is basically saying that the young writer had a tiger's heart wrapped in an actor's skin.

Greene then refers to the young writer as quote, an absolute Joannis factotum in his own conceit, the only shake-scene in a country.

Shakesee seems to be a clear reference to the name Shakespeare, and before that Greene referred to him as a Ioannis factotum, which is a Latin phrase that literally translates as a Johnny do everything, or a jack do everything.

This is the first recorded use of that phrase, and it's considered to be an early version of the more anglicized term a jack of all trades, which appeared in the following century.

As I've noted before in the podcast, the term jack was often used as a general term for a man or a person.

So when Greene refers to the object of his scorn as a Joanis factotum, or a jack of all trades, that seems to suggest that the person was both an actor and writer.

In fact, that probably explains why we don't have a reference to Shakespeare before this point.

He was probably a young actor forced to do a variety of odd jobs for the theater company he worked with, what was typically called a hireling at the time, and now he had moved up to being a writer.

For a young man with a grammar school education doing odd jobs around a theater company to suddenly write the most popular play on the London stage, well, it was too much for Greene to bear.

And it's one of the great ironies of the story of Shakespeare.

The first reference we have to him as a playwright in London is an attack on him as an overrated upstart without a university degree, while most audiences to day consider him to be the most elevated writer in the English language.

Despite Greene's inflammatory remarks, Shakespeare did have his defenders.

It seems that some of his friends protested Greene's remarks to the man who published the book, Henry Chettle.

A couple of months later, in December, Chettle published an apology.

In the epistle of a book called Kind Heart's Dream, Chettle wrote that he regretted the comments that had been made about the young playwright, and that others, quote, have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.

Unfortunately for Greene, his final manuscript tainted his own reputation more than Shakespeare's, and Greene's death was followed by Christopher Marlowe's death a few months later.

In May of 1593, Marlowe was murdered.

He and several companions had gone out to dinner at a local tavern, and afterward he he got into an argument with one of the men over the bill.

Marlowe drew a dagger on the other man, one Ingram Frizzer, and Frizzer retaliated by stabbing Marlowe in the head, ending his life.

And a few months after that, Thomas Kidd died.

He was the playwright who wrote the Spanish Tragedy that I looked at in the last episode.

So Greene, Marlowe, and Kidd all died in rapid succession, and with them, the first wave of English playwrights faded into history.

The door was now open for the next wave of writers, led by the young upstart crow, one William Shakespeare.

But who was that young playwright who had filled theaters around London and been the object of Robert Greene's ire?

So far in our story, we've only had vague references to the man.

Well, next time, we'll look at the historical record to determine exactly what we know and don't know about William Shakespeare.

And, spoiler alert, there's a lot more we don't know than we do know.

Given the gaps in the historical record, it probably isn't surprising that many people have tried to fill in those gaps with speculation and conjecture.

So, next time, we'll try to sort fact from fiction and determine exactly what we know about the man who is considered by many to be the greatest writer in the English language.

Until then, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast.