ted Angelo is yet a
devil;"[5] and Prince Hal confesses that "there is a devil haunts him in
the likeness of an old fat man ... an old white-bearded Satan."[6]

[Footnote 1: In The Virgin Martyr.]

[Footnote 2: In Dr. Faustus.]

[Footnote 3: Coriolanus, I. x. 16.]

[Footnote 4: Merchant of Venice, III. i. 22.]

[Footnote 5: Measure for Measure, III. i. 90.]

[Footnote 6: I Hen. IV., II. iv. 491-509.]

49. The devils had an inconvenient habit of appearing in the guise of an
ecclesiastic[1]--at least, so the churchmen were careful to insist,
especially when busying themselves about acts of temptation that would
least become the holy robe they had assumed. This was the ecclesiastical
method of accounting for certain stories, not very creditable to the
priesthood, that had too inconvenient a basis of evidence to be
dismissed as fabricatious. But the honest lay public seem to have
thought, with downright old Chaucer, that there was more in the matter
than the priests chose to admit. This feeling we, as usual, find
reflected in the dramatic literature of our period. In "The Troublesome
Raigne of King John," an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere
constructed his own "King John," we find this question dealt with in
some detail. In the elder play, the Bastard does "the shaking of bags of
hoarding abbots," _coram populo_, and thereby discloses a phase of
monastic life judiciously suppressed by Shakspere. Philip sets at
liberty much more than "imprisoned angels"--according to one account,
and that a monk's, imprisoned beings of quite another sort. "Faire
Alice, the nonne," having been discovered in the chest where the abbot's
wealth was supposed to be concealed, proposes to purchase pardon for the
offence by disclosing the secret hoard of a sister nun. Her offer being
accepted, a friar is ordered to force the box in which the treasure is
supposed to be secreted. On being questioned as to its contents, he
answers--

"Frier Laurence, my lord, now holy water help us!
Some witch or some divell is sent to delude us:
_Haud credo Laurentius_ that thou shouldst be pen'd thus
In the presse of a nun; we are all undone,
And brought to discredence, if thou be Frier Laurence."[2]

Unfortunately it proves indubitably to be that good man; and he is
ordered to execution, not, however, without some hope of redemption by
money payment; for times are hard, and cash in hand not to be despised.

[Footnote 1: See