reference to the superstition occurs in
"Titus Andronicus" (i. 1), where Lucius, speaking of the unburied sons
of Titus, says:

"Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
That we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile,
_Ad manes fratrum_ sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthy prison of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeased,
Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth."

In olden times, spirits were said to have different allotments of time,
suitable to the variety and nature of their agency. Prospero, in the
"Tempest" (i. 2), says to Caliban:

"Be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast[77] of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee."

[77] Vast, _i. e._, space of night. So in "Hamlet" (i. 2):

"In the dead waste and middle of the night."

According to a popular notion, the presence of unearthly beings was
announced by an alteration in the tint of the lights which happened to
be burning--a superstition alluded to in "Richard III." (v. 3), where the
tyrant exclaims, as he awakens:

"The lights burn blue.--It is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh--

* * * * *

Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent."

So in "Julius Caesar" (iv. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of Caesar,
exclaims:

"How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here?"

It has been a widespread belief from the most remote period that ghosts
cannot bear the light, and so disappear at the dawn of day; their signal
being the cock-crow.[78] The ghost of Hamlet's father says (i. 5):

"But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be"--

and--

"Fare thee well at once.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me."

[78] See p. 104.

Again, in "King Lear" (iii. 4), Edgar says: "This is the foul fiend
Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock."

The time of night, as the season wherein spirits wander abroad, is
further noticed by Gardiner in "Henry VIII." (v. 1):

"Affairs, that walk,
As they say spirits do, at midnight."

It was a prevalent notion that a person who crossed the spot on which a
spectre was seen becam