No More Learning

Among the moralities _The Disobedient Child_ may be mentioned.

[19] So in _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, c 1562, we read: 'But
Diccon, Diccon, did not the devil cry ho, ho, ho? ' Cf. also the
translation of Goulart's Histories, 1607 (quoted by Sharp, p. 59):
'The fellow--coming to the stove--sawe the Diuills in horrible
formes, some sitting, some standing, others walking, some ramping
against the walles, but al of them, assoone as they beheld him,
crying Hoh, hoh, what makest thou here? '

[20] Cf. the words of Robin Goodfellow in _Wily Beguiled_
(_O. Pl. _, 4th ed. , 9. 268): 'I'll put me on my great carnation-nose,
and wrap me in a rowsing calf-skin suit and come like some hobgoblin,
or some devil ascended from the grisly pit of hell'.

[21] Cushman points out that it occurs in only one drama,
that of _Like will to Like_. He attributes the currency of the notion
that this mode of exit was the regular one to the famous passage in
Harsnet's _Declaration of Popish Impostures_ (p. 114, 1603): 'It was
a pretty part in the old church-playes, when the nimble Vice would
skip up nimbly like a jackanapes into the devil's necke, and ride the
devil a course, and belabour him with his wooden dagger, till he made
him roare, whereat the people would laugh to see the devil so
vice-haunted'. The moralities and tragedies give no indication of
hostility between Vice and devil.
Cushman believes therefore that
Harsnet refers either to some lost morality or to 'Punch and Judy'.
It is significant, however, that in 'Punch and Judy', which gives
indications of being a debased descendant of the morality, the devil
enters with the evident intention of carrying the hero off to hell.
The joke consists as in the present play in a reversal of the usual
proceeding. Eckhardt (p. 85 n. ) points out that the Vice's cudgeling
of the devil was probably a mere mirth-provoking device, and
indicated no enmity between the two. Moreover the motive of the
devil as an animal for riding is not infrequent. In the _Castle of
Perseverance_ the devil carries away the hero, Humanum Genus. The
motive appears also in Greene's _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ and
Lodge and Greene's _Looking Glass for London and England_, and
especially in _Histriomastix_, where the Vice rides a roaring devil
(Eckhardt, pp. 86 f. ). We have also another bit of evidence from
Jonson himself. In _The Staple of News_ Mirth relates her reminiscences
of the old comedy. In speaking of the devil she says: 'He
would carry away the Vice on his back quick to hell in every play'.


3. _The Influence of Robin Goodfellow and of Popular Legend_

A constant element of the popular demonology was the belief in the
kobold or elfish sprite.