Are there earlier incidences than Merchant of Venice of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other?

Question

In [act 2, scene 2 of *The Merchant of Venice*](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/merchant.2.2.html), Launcelot Gobbo is conflicted regarding whether to run from Shylock, or continue working for him. Shakespeare expresses this internal conflict by describing the conscience on one side and a fiend on the other (at his elbow). This is an image which has found its place in popular culture over the years (an angel on one shoulder and a devil on another). But did Shakespeare get it from somewhere? Are there earlier (literary, biblical, cultural etc) sources for this device?

Answer 1

Oh yeah! The Devil and angels show up a lot in medieval drama, and young Will Shakespeare would have seen lots of traveling companies doing medieval plays when he was growing up. We don't necessarily know exactly how they were staged, but we do know that medieval drama used a lot of hellish special effects, including something called a "hellmouth," basically a smoky red entrance to Hell. So it's pretty easy to imagine a stage devil tempting our hero towards that, while an angel tempts him / her to the other side of the stage. If you want a pretty solid example of this, check out "Calimachus" by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim. But that's only an example--medieval drama is full of scenes like that.

By the way, if you want a nice example of how far back the left side has been associated with evil, google the Latin for "left..."