In the 15th-century English morality play The Castle of Perseverance, the Bad Angel addresses the vice figure Detraccio (also called Backbiter and the messenger of the World) as Flyprgebet (line 1724).
In William Shakespeare's King Lear (IV, i (1605)), he is one of the five fiends that Edgar claimed was possessing him, this one in the posture of beggar Tom o' Bedlam.
Shakespeare got the name from Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603),[2][citation needed] where one reads of 40 fiends that Jesuits cast out and among which was Fliberdigibbet, described as one of "foure deuils of the round, or Morrice, whom Sara in her fits, tuned together, in measure and sweet ucadence."
[3] Victor Hugo made a 1828 theatrical adaptation of the novel Kenilworth titled Amy Robsart, where Flibbertigibet is one of the main characters in the story.
In the 1990 American romantic comedy film Joe Versus the Volcano, Meg Ryan's character Angelica refers to herself as a flibbertigibbet.