whereof Pythagoras is
made author ... which is that souls at their departure from
us did but pass and roll from one to another body, from a
lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, incessantly
wandering up and down, from house to mansion.... Some added
more, that the same souls do sometimes ascend up to heaven,
and come down again.... Origen waked them eternally, to go
and come from a good to a bad estate. The opinion that Varro
reporteth is, that in the revolutions of four hundred and
forty years they reconjoin themselves unto their first
bodies.... Behold her (the soul's) progress elsewhere: He
that hath lived well reconjoineth himself unto that star or
planet to which he is assigned; who evil, passeth into a
woman. And if then he amend not himself, he transchangeth
himself into a beast, of condition agreeing to his vicious
customs, and shall never see an end of his punishments until
... by virtue of reason he have deprived himself of those
gross, stupid, and elementary qualities that were in him....
They (the Epicureans) demand, what order there should be if
the throng of the dying should be greater than that of such
as be born ... and demand besides, what they should pass
their time about, whilst they should stay, until any other
mansion were made ready for them.... Others have staved the
soul in the deceased bodies, wherewith to animate serpents,
worms, and other beasts, which are said to engender from the
corruption of our members, yea, and from our ashes....
Others make it immortal without any science or knowledge.
Nay, there are some of ours who have deemed that of
condemned men's souls devils were made...."[93]

It is at a short distance from this passage that we find the suggestion
of a frozen purgatory:

"Amongst them (barbarous nations) was also found the belief
of purgatory, but after a new form, for what we ascribe unto
fire they impute unto cold, and imagine that souls are both
purged and punished by the vigor of an extreme
coldness."[94]

And over and above this peculiar correspondence between the Essays and
the two speeches on death, we may note how some of the lines of the Duke
in the opening scene connect with two of the passages above cited in
connection with Hamlet's last soliloquy, expressing the idea that nature
or deity confers gifts in order that they should be used. The Duke's
lines are among Shakspere's best: