Chapter II: Part 2

Traces are said still to linger in Gloucestershire of a legend that had become long ago attached to the owl, and which was known to the great dramatist. He makes use of it in the scene where Ophelia appears distraught from her father’s death. In her incoherent talk she exclaims “they say the owl was a baker’s daughter.”[99] The tradition ran that our Lord one day entered a baker’s shop and asked for bread, which was grudgingly and sparingly given by the baker’s daughter who was thereupon turned by Christ into an owl. There has long been a popular feeling that something specially uncanny and mysterious hangs about this bird.

In the Poems night is pictured in these words:

Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait,
His day’s hot task hath ended in the west;
The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ’tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest.[100]

The time chosen by Bolingbroke for the incantation scene in Gloucester’s garden was

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,
The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,
And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.[101]

In a view of winter the owl is made to play its part:

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.[102]

The poet has noted “the night owl’s lazy flight,”[103] and the predatory habits of the “mousing owl.”[104] He has increased the glamour of the night-scenes in the tragedy of Macbeth by the introduction of this bird. When Lady Macbeth, alone and on the alert for the perpetration of the murder, hears a sound, she exclaims in anxious suspense:

Hark!――Peace!
It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman
Which gives the stern’st good-night.[105]

Her husband, too, after he has done the deed, emerges to her with the eager question “Didst thou not hear a noise?”; to which she replies, “I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.” Next morning before the fatal news had become known it was reported that, through the midst of a storm,

The obscure bird
Clamour’d the livelong night.[106]

The appearance of the owl by day was unusual enough to be considered an evil omen. Among the portents that preceded the assassination of Julius Caesar it was reported that

The bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place
Hooting and shrieking.[107]

When Richard II. realises the machinations of his enemies, and is asked to come down to the base-court to meet Bolingbroke, he exclaims

In the base-court? Come down? Down, court! Down, king!
For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.[108]

The hooting or screeching of the owl was often looked upon as a foreboding of death. Among the nocturnal sounds recounted by fairy Puck, he tells that

Now the wasted brands do glow,
Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud.[109]

Even at a babe’s nativity the sound of this bird’s note might be taken as a bad omen. King Henry VI. tells Gloucester:

The owl shriek’d at thy birth――an evil sign:
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time.[110]

Among its mysterious relationships, the owl was believed to be connected with some of the machinations of witchcraft. It will be remembered that the miscellaneous ingredients which went to the making of the hell-broth of Macbeth’s “midnight hags” included “a lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing.”[111]

Shakespeare’s introduction of the owl into his fairy-land was a dexterous artistic stroke, for it connected a well-known but somewhat mysterious bird with his world of sprites, and gave to that world a further touch of realism. Alike in the _Tempest_ and the _Merry Wives_ this conjunction may be seen. The “dainty Ariel,” Prospero’s “tricksy spirit,” sings:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.[112]

Titania, the Queen of the fairies, when she disperses her train on their several quests, bids

Some keep back
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits.[113]

The popular association of owls with supernatural beings is again noted in the _Comedy of Errors_, where poor Dromio of Syracuse, utterly bamboozled by the confusion of Dromios and Antonios, exclaims:

This is the fairy-land: O land of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls and sprites;
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.[114]

The CUCKOO receives nearly as much notice from Shakespeare as the Owl. In the bright song at the end of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ both birds appear as symbolical, the one of spring, the other of winter.

[Sidenote: _The Cuckoo_]

When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight:
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.[115]

In Bottom’s song in _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ the bird is styled “the plain-song cuckoo gray,” as if its music were as dull as the colour of its coat. When Portia comes back from her memorable trip to Venice and re-enters her home, Lorenzo, who is eagerly expecting her return, says to Jessica:

That is the voice,
Or I am much deceived, of Portia.

Whereupon Portia, overhearing him, remarks to Nerissa:

He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo,
By the bad voice.[116]

As summer advances, the cuckoo’s note, having grown familiar, no longer attracts the notice of the country-folk, as it did when the bird first appeared in April. King Henry IV. avails himself of this common observation when he lectures his son on his misdoings, and compares the Prince’s career to that of “the skipping king” of the previous reign, who lost the respect of the people, and

Was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard not regarded.[117]

The habit of this bird to lay its egg in another’s nest is naturally made much of in the Plays. We are told that “the cuckoo builds not for himself,”[118] and the poet puts questions which still await an answer:

Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?[119]

The very name of the bird could be used as a term of reproach, as where Falstaff, in retort to the repeated gibes of the Prince of Wales, calls him, “Ye cuckoo.”[120]

[Sidenote: _The Woodcock_]

As might be anticipated, the birds which are treated as game take their place in the Shakespearian dramas, as well as the birds of prey that hunted them. The WOODCOCK, for example, is referred to by name nine times, generally in connection with the gin or springe with which in those days it was taken, and in reference to some trick or contrivance by which somebody is caught or deceived. When, for instance, the Duke of York, seized by Queen Margaret and her lords, struggles to free himself from their hands, he is taunted by two of the lords, who both make use of the language of sport. Clifford tells him:

Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin;

to which Northumberland, with equal sarcasm, adds:

So doth the cony struggle in the net.[121]

Ophelia, when cross-questioned by her father as to the attentions paid to her by Hamlet, answers how the Prince

Hath given countenance to his speech
With almost all the holy vows of heaven;

whereupon Polonius abruptly breaks in with the unfeeling comment:

Ay, springes to catch woodcocks; I do know.[122]

Again, in the tricking of Malvolio, as the steward picks up the letter, Fabian, from the lurking-place where Sir Toby and he are watching every movement, exclaims

Now is the woodcock near the gin.[123]

[Sidenote: _The Pheasant and Partridge_]

The PHEASANT is only once mentioned by Shakespeare, and in a ludicrous way. When the Shepherd and the Clown in _The Winter’s Tale_ are accosted by Autolycus on their errand to the king, the following conversation ensues:

_Aut._ I command thee to open thy affair.

_Shep._ My business, sir, is to the king.

_Aut._ What advocate hast thou to him?

_Shep._ I know not, an’t like you.

_Clown_ [_aside_] Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant: say you
have none――

_Shep._ None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.

_Aut._ How blessed are we that are not simple men!
Yet nature might have made me as these are;
Therefore I will not disdain.[124]

We find the PARTRIDGE referred to twice in the dramas, once as part of the game in a puttock’s nest, in the passage already cited, and the second time in the encounter of wit between Beatrice and Benedick at the masked ball when she, pretending not to recognise him, heaps all manner of ridicule upon him, ending with the taunt that if he should hear what she has been saying about him,

He’ll but break a comparison or two on me; which peradventure
not marked or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy;
and there’s a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no
supper that night.[125]

The SNIPE is only once mentioned and the name is used as a contemptuous epithet. Iago, as he soliloquises after an interview with the “gulled gentleman” Rodrigo, affirms

I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane
If I would time expend with such a snipe,
But for my sport and profit.[126]

[Sidenote: _The Quail and Lapwing_]

The QUAIL is likewise referred to in two of the Plays dealing with Greek and Roman history. Antony, comparing his chances in life with Octavius Caesar’s, confesses to himself

The very dice obey him: if we draw lots he speeds;
His cocks do win the battle still of mine;
His quails ever beat mine, inhoop’d, at odds.[127]

Thersites speaks thus slightingly of a great warrior:

Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that
loves quails; but he has not so much brain as ear-wax.[128]

In both these quotations the reference seems to be to a practice of training quails to fight after the manner of cock-fighting.

The allusions to the LAPWING indicate that the dramatist was acquainted with some of the characteristics of the bird. The tactics of the male bird to entice a passer-by away from his nest are expressed in the line

Far from her nest the lapwing cries away.[129]

When the plot is laid to get Beatrice to accept Benedick as her lover, and the plotters see her “couched in the woodbine coverture,” Hero urges:

Now begin;
For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.[130]

Lucio, the Euphuist, in _Measure for Measure_, confesses

’Tis my familiar sin,
With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,
Tongue far from heart.[131]

The WILD DUCK or MALLARD is taken by Shakespeare as a symbol of cowardice and uxoriousness. Falstaff, after robbing the travellers on the highway, without the help of the two chief members of the gang, declares,

An the Prince and Poins be not two arrant cowards, there’s
no equity stirring: there’s no more valour in that Poins
than in a wild duck.[132]

In the description of the flight of Cleopatra from the battle of Actium, the conduct of her Roman lover is thus given:

The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,
Claps on his sea-wing, and like a doting mallard,
Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.[133]

[Sidenote: _The Dabchick and Raven_]

The DABCHICK, DIVE-DAPPER or LITTLE GREBE is portrayed in a dainty little vignette in the _Venus and Adonis_, which brings the bird before our eyes, as it may be seen on many a stream or lake in this country and even on artificial waters, such as those of St. James’s Park. The passage represents Venus vowing to her unresponsive mortal “by her fair immortal hand”:

Upon this promise did he raise his chin
Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave
Who, being look’d on, ducks as quickly in.[134]

The birds of the CROW family are well represented in Shakespeare’s works. Chief among them comes the RAVEN, to which frequent and effective allusion is made. The remarkably dark hue of the bird, including even his bill and his feet, has made his name proverbial as a type of the deepest blackness in Nature. In one of the Sonnets it is said that

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir:
* * * * * * *
Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black.[135]

With pardonable exaggeration, Juliet, as she stood alone in the orchard awaiting her lover, gave vent thus to her longing:

Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.[136]

The blackness of this bird in contrast to the pure whiteness of a dove, supplies an image to Lysander, mistakenly bewitched by the mischievous Puck:

Not Hermia but Helena I love:
Who will not change a raven for a dove?[137]

[Sidenote: _The Raven_]

The Raven has long had the evil reputation of not only killing the smaller wild animals but, in common with the crows and kites, of watching for and attacking those of larger size that look enfeebled by disease or accident. Thus we read that

Vast confusion waits,
As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.[138]

With less justice, the bird has also been credited with savageness of disposition――a character which Shakespeare has sometimes attributed to persons who may outwardly seem to be gentle and kindly. These are said to have “a raven’s heart within a dove.”[139] Juliet expands the simile――

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st.[140]

Yet there was a belief that the Raven can show a wholly different nature:

Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,
The whilst their own birds famish in their nests.[141]

The Raven comes into one of the Scriptural allusions in the Plays where the faithful old Adam, pressing upon Orlando the thrifty savings of his lifetime, consoles himself with the prayer

He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,
Be comfort to my age![142]

But the most frequent reference made by Shakespeare to this bird has regard to its supposed boding power. It is called the “fatal raven.” A messenger of ill news is said to “sing a raven’s note.” When Othello has the first suspicions craftily suggested to him by Iago, he exclaims

O, it comes o’er my memory,
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,
Boding to all.[143]

Again, when the king is approaching the Castle at Inverness, we hear from Lady Macbeth the ominous words:

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.[144]

[Sidenote: _The Crows_]

Under the general name of CROWS Shakespeare seems to group the Carrion Crow, the Hooded Crow and the Rook, though the last-named is plainly distinguished in the description of evening when Macbeth tells his wife

Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rocky wood.[145]

Like the Raven, the Crows are often contrasted with something pure and white. Thus, in a striking simile, we learn that

The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.[146]

The simile is sometimes reversed, as where Romeo, on seeing Juliet for the first time, exclaims:

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.[147]

Although it is usually with the dove that the contrast is drawn, another bird is sometimes chosen:

The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away;
But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.[148]

Again, when Benvolio presses Romeo to come with him to Capulet’s feast, where he will see his Rosaline among the admired beauties of Verona, he challenges him, “with unattainted eye,” to

Compare her face with some that I shall show
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.[149]

[Sidenote: _The Chough_]

In Shakespeare’s day the CHOUGH must have been a much commoner bird in our islands than it is now. At present it is not known to breed on the south coast of England further east than the cliffs of Dorset. Three hundred years ago, however, it seems to have been abundant about the chalk headlands of Kent. That it was a familiar English bird may be inferred from various passages in our poet’s writings. The most striking scene depicted by him, wherein this bird plays a conspicuous part, is his picture of Dover cliffs, drawn so vividly, as from an actual visit to the place:

How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to east one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark
Diminish’d to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high.[150]

It is interesting to notice that while birds are here taken as a help to the eye in estimating the height of the precipice as seen from the summit, a bird is again used as a guide to gauge the height as seen from below:

Look up a-height; the shrill-gorged lark so far
Cannot be seen or heard.[151]

The habits of the chough were not unknown to the poet, since he chose the bird as a symbol for a certain courtier of whom it was said that “it was a vice to know him”:

’Tis a chough, but, as I say, spacious in the possession
of dirt.[152]

The chough’s continuous and unmusical chatter is more than once contemptuously invoked to describe the talk of some men. When Antonio in _The Tempest_ tempts Sebastian to assassinate the honest old Counsellor Gonzalo, he speaks of

Lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily
As this Gonzalo; I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat.[153]

In a passage in _All’s Well that Ends Well_ where the ambush party are concocting some sort of gibberish to deceive the vainglorious Parolles, they agree to talk “Choughs’ language, gabble enough and good enough.”[154] When Puck recounts to Oberon what happened to the rustics when Bottom reappeared among them wearing the ass’s head, he gives an excellent description of the effect of the discharge of a fowling-piece at a bird-haunted cliff:

When they him spy,
As russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky:
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly.[155]

The Chough together with the other members of the Crow family was thought to have a supernatural prophetic gift, and a faculty of revealing hidden deeds. Macbeth’s evil conscience was troubled with the thought that

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augures and understood relations have
By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.[156]

The STARLING is mentioned only once by Shakespeare, in a passage which shows that in his time this bird, which has so remarkable a power of imitation, was taught to say some words. The fiery Hotspur declares that although the King had forbidden him to speak of Mortimer he would find his Majesty

When he lies asleep,
And in his ear I’ll holla ‘Mortimer!’
Nay,
I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion.[157]

[Sidenote: _The Jackdaw and Magpie_]

The JACKDAW appears occasionally in the dramas as obviously a familiar bird, but no outstanding characters are assigned to it, except that it was common and looked upon as somewhat stupid. Reference has already been made to the comparison of the lower orders of society to “crows and daws.” When, in the Temple Garden, the Earl of Warwick was asked to decide a legal point between the supporters of the White Rose and those of the Red Rose, he replied, that if the question had been one of hawks, sword-blades, horses or merry-eyed girls,

I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgement;
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.[158]

The MAGPIE or Maggot-pie has already been alluded to. Macbeth associates it with choughs and rocks as a prophet or discoverer of evil. It is named by King Henry VI. among the boding portents that attended the birth of his murderer Gloucester:

Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempest shook down trees;
The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top,
And chattering pies in dismal discords sung.[159]

The JAY is referred to five times by Shakespeare. In the enchanted isle Caliban offers to guide the drunken Trinculo and Sebastian to some of the dainties of the place:

I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts:
Show thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmoset.[160]

The name of the bird is used as an uncomplimentary epithet for some women, as where Mrs. Ford, in reference to Falstaff’s addresses, declares “we’ll teach him to know turtles from jays,”[161] and where Imogen affirmed, “Some jay of Italy hath betrayed him.”[162] But perhaps the most interesting appearance of the bird in the Plays occurs in the scene of the _Taming of the Shrew_, where after the tailor has been sent about his business, taking with him the cap and gown which had been ordered for Katharine, and with which she was well pleased, her husband addresses her thus:

Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father’s
Even in these honest mean habiliments:
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;
For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich;
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
What is the jay more precious than the lark
Because his feathers are more beautiful?
Or is the adder better than the eel,
Because his painted skin contents the eye?[163]

[Sidenote: _Birds of the Farm-yard_]

The various BIRDS OF THE FARM-YARD have received due attention from the great dramatist. Chief among them, the cock is frequently cited, especially as a recognised chronometer of the morning hours, for in Elizabethan days this mode of indicating time had not gone out of popular use. We all remember the unhappy experience of the carrier in the inn at Rochester “since the first cock.”[164] We also recall how Capulet, bustling among his household, gave them a three-fold indication of the time:

Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow’d,
The curfew-bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.[165]

Shakespeare brings the cock’s shrill clarion even into his fairyland, for Ariel’s song breaks off at this signal:

Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.[166]

But the most detailed and impressive reference to this familiar bird occurs in the memorable scene on the platform before the Castle of Elsinore. The ghost had just appeared to Hamlet’s friends and

[Sidenote: _The Cock and Goose_]

Was about to speak when the cock crew.
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation:
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.[167]

The GOOSE, so frequently alluded to in the Plays, usually appears there as the recognised symbol of human stupidity and cowardice. How far this character, if really deserved by the bird, is the result of domestication and association with man for many centuries, is a question for ornithological psychologists. There can be no doubt that the wild-goose does not deserve the reputation attributed to his degenerate kinsman in the farm-yard. Shakespeare was aware how active and vigilant that bird was among the fens which it haunted. He refers to the sudden uprise and flight of

The wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,[168]

and to the autumnal movement of these fowl to the larger waters, a fact known even to Lear’s fool, who remarks:

The winter’s not gone yet if the wild geese fly that way.[169]

The rapidity with which these birds disappear when they take wing was likewise familiar knowledge. The melancholy Jaques claims that if a man whom he censures does not deserve reproof,

Why then my taxing, like a wild goose, flies,
Unclaim’d of any man.[170]

The difficulty of circumventing the bird is conveyed in the proverbial expression “a wild-goose chase,” which was well known in the time of Elizabeth. Mercutio retorts to Romeo:

Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done; for
thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I
am sure, I have in my whole five.[171]

[Sidenote: _The Swan_]

The SWAN, perhaps in Shakespeare’s day more abundant in this country than it is now, was then regarded as a “Bird Royal” which nobody could keep without a licence from the Crown, and provision for making a certain mark on the bird’s bill to denote its ownership. Our Sovereigns still maintain the Royal Swans on the Thames, and the young birds are regularly taken up in summer to receive the mark. To this bird full recognition has been paid by our dramatist. He places it before us in its usual watery domain, where its nest serves as a symbol of Britain set in the midst of the sea, “like a swan’s nest in a great pool.”[172] He lets us see

The swan her downy cygnets save,
Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings.[173]

We watch the bird’s ungainly gait on land and are told that

All the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.[174]

The perfect stillness of the surface of a sheet of water is marked by

The swan’s down-feather,
That stands upon the swell at full of tide
And neither way inclines.[175]

Again, we watch

A swan
With bootless labour swim against the tide
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.[176]

The time-honoured legend that the “death-divining swan” utters a musical note or wail at the time of dying is repeatedly alluded to by the poet, and sometimes as if it were a reality. Lucrece, at her approaching death, like a

Pale swan in her watery nest,
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.[177]

Prince Henry, son of King John, when told that his dying father had been singing, muses thus:

’Tis strange that death should sing:
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death.[178]

In the scene wherein Othello discovers the double-dyed villainy of Iago, a touching incident is the wandering language of the faithful dying Emilia, whose mind goes back to her beloved mistress:

What did thy song bode, lady?
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,
And die in music. [_Singing_] Willow, willow, willow.[179]

More cheerful is the use of the legend by Portia when Bassanio stands before the caskets, and she, deeply interested in the result, commands

Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.[180]

[Sidenote: _The Turkey-cock and Peacock_]

The TURKEY-COCK, introduced into Europe from the New World in the early part of the sixteenth century, had become quite naturalised in the farm-yards of England by the time of Elizabeth. It is several times alluded to by Shakespeare, sometimes as a symbol of conceited ostentation, and also as an article of food. When in _King Henry V._ Gower sees Pistol approaching, he exclaims to Fluellen “Here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock,” to which the Welshman, who had resolved to make the braggart eat the leek, replies, “’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks.”[181] Not less appropriately is the comparison used of Malvolio, who, as Maria said, had been “yonder i’ the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour.” As the three concealed onlookers watch him strutting down the walk, talking to himself, they can scarcely restrain themselves. Fabian entreats silence:

O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him:
how he jets under his advanced plumes.[182]

It will be remembered that among the produce on its way to London in the carts of the two carriers at the Rochester inn there was a pannier of live turkeys.[183]

The PEACOCK is alluded to several times in the Plays as the accepted personification of pride. Joan of Arc is represented as counselling the Princes:

Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while
And like a peacock sweep along his tail;
We’ll pull his plumes and take away his train.[184]

Thersites says of Ajax that he “goes up and down the field asking for himself; he stalks up and down like a peacock――a stride and a stand.”[185] When King Henry V. mingles incognito among his soldiers in France, one of them tells him:

That’s a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor
and a private displeasure can do against a monarch! you may
as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his
face with a peacock’s feather.[186]

“‘Fly pride,’ says the peacock,” is a pithy proverb put into the mouth of Dromio of Syracuse.[187]

[Sidenote: _Doves and Pigeons_]

The DOVE and the PIGEON are often mentioned in Shakespeare’s writings, without any essential distinction being drawn between them. Thus, we read in one passage that “Venus yokes her silver doves,”[188] while in another place the birds appear as “Venus’ pigeons.”[189] Again, in a less poetical sphere, they are even interchanged as articles of food. On the one hand we find Justice Shallow ordering “some pigeons” and any other “pretty little tiny kickshaws” for the entertainment of Falstaff,[190] and on the other hand, we note that old Gobbo, when he wanted Bassanio to take his son into service, presents to that gentleman “a dish of doves.”[191]

The Dove is typically pure white, and stands as the recognised emblem of gentleness, purity and innocence. Yet in direst emergencies this timid bird may show fight in defence of its young. We are told that

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.[192]

It was believed that when “frighted out of fear” the dove would peck the ostrich,[193] and it had probably been actually observed in hawking experience, that as

Cowards fight when they can fly no further
So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons.[194]

The TURTLE-DOVE, long the accepted symbol of conjugal affection and loving tenderness, has an honoured place in Shakespeare’s pages.[195] We there read of “a pair of loving turtle-doves that could not live asunder day or night.”[196] Florizel takes Perdita’s hand in _Winter’s Tale_, with the significant assertion:

So turtles pair
That never mean to part.[197]

And at the end of the same Play, the widowed Paulina, when all around her has at last ended happily, desires to retire into solitude:

I, an old turtle,
Will wing me to some wither’d bough and there
My mate, that’s never to be found again,
Lament till I am lost.

The Pigeon is not only presented as an article of food; but is sometimes slightingly alluded to, with reflections on its mode of feeding and its timidity. Of the “honey-tongued Boyet” it was remarked

This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease
And utters it again when God doth please.[198]

And Hamlet, reflecting on his slowness to avenge his father’s murder, reproaches himself as “pigeon-liver’d and lacking gall.”[199]

[Sidenote: _The Smaller Birds_]

I have reserved for the last section of this Essay the smaller birds, including the songsters, as these are noticed in Shakespeare’s Poems and Dramas. A number of them are grouped together by Bottom in the ditty, singing which he wakes the sleeping Fairy Queen:

The ousel-cock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill;

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth mark
And dares not answer nay.[200]

[Sidenote: _The Lark_]

Of the birds recounted in this song, Shakespeare’s favourite, if we may judge from the frequency and appreciation with which he mentions it, was the LARK. He makes this bird a rival to Chanticleer in the honour of setting the day agoing. He calls it “the morning lark,” “the herald of the morn,” specially associated with the brightness and glory of dawn.

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty.[201]

Again

The busy day,
Waked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows.[202]

The blithe sound of the bird’s carol is commemorated in the line

The merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks.

How joyfully does this feeling find expression in the exquisite song in _Cymbeline_:

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ’gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty is,
My lady sweet arise:
Arise, arise![203]

The bird-melodies of night and morning were never more delicately commingled than in the garden scene where Juliet, from her window above, would fain persuade her lingering lover that it was not yet near day:

_Jul._ Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

_Rom._ It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops:
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

_Jul._ Yond light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet; thou needst not to be gone.

_Rom._ Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,
’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
How is’t my soul? let’s talk: it is not day.

_Jul._ It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune.
* * * * * * *
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;
O, now I would they had changed voices too![204]

[Sidenote: _The Ouzel and Throstle_]

The BLACKBIRD or OUZEL, depicted in Bottom’s song as “so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill,” though one of our most melodious songsters, receives no commendation from Shakespeare. It is only once again mentioned by him, when its name is used with a rather uncomplimentary meaning. When Justice Shallow enquires of his brother magistrate regarding his god-daughter, Silence replies, “Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow.”[205] It is a pity that the old and distinctive name ouzel for this bird has become obsolete, though it may still be heard in use in Scotland. On the other side of the Tweed, also, where so many linguistic relics of the old alliance with France still remain, the blackbird is likewise known by its French name of merle, while the common name of the thrush is _mavis_, likewise from the French _mauvis_.

The THRUSH or THROSTLE, another of our most musical warblers, is cited thrice by Shakespeare without any further comment on his voice than the compliment in Bottom’s song――“with his note so true.” The bird comes into one of Autolycus’ songs:

The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.[206]

Our great dramatist refers to the WREN no fewer than nine times in his different Plays. Its small size is noticed, and the bird is credited with an amount of courage disproportionate to its stature. When Macduff flees to England his wife bitterly complains that he should have left her and his children without his protection:

He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.[207]

When Imogen, recovering in the cave, hardly knows where she is, she muses With herself and prays:

I tremble still with fear: but if there be
Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity
As a wren’s eye, fear’d gods, a part of it![208]

Shakespeare hardly does justice to the notes of the wren, which are louder, sweeter and more varied than might have been looked for in so tiny a bird. Portia thought that if the nightingale sang by day it would be thought no better than the wren.[209] And, in another passage, words of consolation “from a hollow breast” are likened to “the chirping of a wren.”[210]

[Sidenote: _The Wagtail and Bunting_]

The WAGTAIL is alluded to once by the poet, when its name is used in contempt by Kent towards Goneril’s steward:

Thou zed! thou unnecessary letter! I will tread this
unbolted villain into mortar. Spare my gray beard?――you
wagtail![211]

There is one reference by Shakespeare to the BUNTING, probably the common corn-bunting or bunting-lark, which is not unlike the lark, and further resembles that bird in nesting on the ground. In _All’s Well that Ends Well_, the old lord Lafeu, when assured by Bertram that he had mistaken the character of Parolles, remarks; “Then my dial goes not true; I took this lark for a bunting.”[212]

The REDBREAST or RUDDOCK is most fully referred to in _Cymbeline_. Arviragus enters, bearing in his arms Imogen, seemingly dead, and as he lays the body down he thus addresses it:

With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander
Out-sweetened not thy breath: the ruddock would
With charitable bill,――O bill, sore shaming
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!――bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse.[213]

The list of signs whereby Speed knows that his master Valentine is in love begins thus: “first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a male-content; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence.”[214] When Hotspur presses his wife to sing and she twice refuses, his only remark is, “’Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be redbreast-teacher.”[215]

[Sidenote: _The Hedge-sparrow and Finch_]

The only allusion to the HEDGE-SPARROW occurs in _King Lear_. When Goneril has gone some way in her recrimination of her father, the Fool, who had just before called the old king “a shealed peascod,” breaks into the conversation with these lines:

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it had it head bit off by it young.[216]

The FINCH, included in Bottom’s song, is not elsewhere mentioned by the poet, though the epithet “finch-egg,” as a term of reproach, is hurled by Thersites at Patroclus.[217] Of the various English finches we may suppose that the bird intended was the common chaffinch.

The familiar HOUSE-SPARROW, though often mentioned by Shakespeare, receives little commendation from him. He twice connects it with evidence of the care of Providence, in obvious allusion to passages in Holy Writ. Hamlet observes that “there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”[218] Reference has already been made to the trust expressed by Orlando’s faithful old Adam in Him “that providently caters for the sparrow.”[219] The bird comes also into the presentation of classical deities in _The Tempest_, where Iris tells how Venus’

Waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,
Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows
And be a boy right out.[220]

Thersites, who had been soundly thrashed by Ajax, takes his own method of revenge by declaring

I have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones;
I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pin mater is
not worth the ninth part of a sparrow.[221]

[Sidenote: _The Swallow_]

The SWALLOW is cited in the Plays for the swiftness of its flight, and for its annual migration.[222] When Richmond gives the order to march for Bosworth Field, he adds,

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.[223]

The rapidity with which this bird can pursue its course, even close to the ground, had not escaped the poet’s notice. Titus, in praise of his stud, affirms

I have horse will follow where the game
Makes way, and run like swallows o’er the plain.[224]

When Falstaff was rebuked for his dilatory journey to the field of battle, he justified himself thus:

I never knew yet but rebuke and check was the reward of
valour. Do you think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet?
Have I, in my poor and old motion, the expedition of
thought? I have speeded hither with the very extremest inch
of possibility.[225]

The arrival of the swallow with spring is charmingly brought before us in this little picture of vernal flowers:

Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds.[226]

The regular disappearance of the bird on the approach of autumn is taken as a symbol of human constancy. Timon of Athens is assured by his associates:――“The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship.”[227]

[Sidenote: _The House-Martin_]

For the HOUSE-MARTIN or MARTLET Shakespeare seems to have had a special regard. He had noted the courageous way in which the bird places its nest, and the social instinct which leads it to build in companies where it can find convenient settlements. In one passage we are told:

The martlet
Builds in the weather on the outward wall,
Even in the force and road of casualty.[228]

When King Duncan arrives at the Castle of Inverness, and is delighted with the situation of the building and the pleasantness of the air, Banquo calls his attention to the numerous nests of the house-martin as evidence of the salubrity of the climate:

This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.[229]

[Sidenote: _The Nightingale_]

I have reserved for the last place in the list of Shakespeare’s birds his references to the NIGHTINGALE. These are numerous and may be divided into two groups. In one of them the style is somewhat artificial in tone, reflecting not the poet’s own experience of the bird, but the legendary interpretation of its song that had been handed down from remote antiquity. In the other group, the nightingale takes its natural place as one of our familiar English songsters. There was a Greek myth that Philomela, the daughter of an Attic King, after being cruelly treated by her brother Tereus, was compassionately changed by the gods into a nightingale, and that thereafter she spent her life among woods lamenting in mournful notes the fate that had befallen her. Her name came to be given to the bird. Shakespeare, following this legend, introduces the bird as Philomel into his separate Poems and into the lyrics included in his dramas. In the ordinary dialogue of the Plays, however, dropping the Greek name and legend, he uses the common English appellation of the bird, and, like ancient and modern poets, speaks of the bird as feminine, although it is the male alone that sings.

Along with the ancient myth about Philomela he intertwined another and probably much more recent, but equally unfounded belief that the nightingale, when it sings, leans against a thorn that pierces its breast. This combination of ignorant fancies is most fully expressed in the following passage:

Every thing did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity:
‘Fie, fie, fie,’ now would she cry;
‘Tereu, tereu!’ by and by;
That to hear her so complain,
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon my own.[230]

The same artificial note of sadness runs through the other allusions to Philomel. In _Lucrece_ we read:

By this, lamenting Philomel had ended
The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow.[231]

Again in the _Sonnets_:

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.[232]

The poet has brought Philomel into his fairy-land, and has for the moment left out any reference to the alleged mournfulness of her music:

Philomel, with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
Never harm,
Nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.[233]

In the Plays it is pleasant to find the bird with its English name and in natural surroundings. When Valentine, one of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, was banished from Milan and from the lady of his love, he pictured to himself among the woes that lay in front of him:

Except I be by Silvia in the night
There is no music in the nightingale.

And when afterwards, through stress of circumstances, he found himself compelled to become the captain of a band of outlaws, he found consolation in this wise:

How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale’s complaining notes
Tune my distresses and record my woes.[234]

It will be recollected that among the tantalising tricks played off by the lord and his servants upon Christopher Sly, he was asked

Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays
And twenty caged nightingales do sing.[235]

Nor can we forget the magnanimous offer of Bottom when he wanted to play the part of the lion, and the danger of his frightening the duchess and the ladies was pointed out to him:

But I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as
gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any
nightingale.[236]

The romance of the nightingale’s song was never more thoroughly discarded than by Portia when she returned from her memorable trip to Venice and found a light and music in her hall. She remarked to Nerissa that by night music sounds much sweeter than by day, and received in reply the explanation that “Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.” Portia, however, with her ingenuity of a barrister, insisted in a passage already referred to:

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.[237]

[Sidenote: _Progress of English Poetry_]

The lapse of two centuries from the time of Chaucer witnessed a change in the mood of English poetry in regard to its treatment of birds. The simple and unaffected joy in the voices of the grove, so conspicuous in the poems of the author of the _Canterbury Tales_, had not become less, but it had been accompanied by the growth of a more observant and contemplative spirit. While bird-music was as much appreciated as ever, a much wider field of interest in the feathered tribes had been entered upon. Greater familiarity with bird-life had been attained, and much more was known about the habits of birds. Of this knowledge use was made by way of simile and illustration in regard to human life. How often and how vividly, for instance, does Shakespeare, by means of an analogy from the world of birds, portray the depth of man’s feelings,――his joy, his sorrow and his suffering!

[Sidenote: _Birds in later Poetry_]

The law of evolution, which has been so supreme in the history of organised life on the globe, does not leave the human mind outside of its influence. If there was proof of progress in poetic insight between the days of Chaucer and those of Shakespeare, we may expect to find on examination that other two centuries did not pass without leaving some evidence of change in the tone of our poetry. To test this inference, some typical examples may be taken from the poetry of the nineteenth century where it deals with birds, for comparison with the quotations which have been cited from our great dramatist. The subject is obviously far too wide to be fully entered upon here; but it may be briefly illustrated by selecting three well-known poems by three of the most illustrious of the English poets of the nineteenth century――the “Ode to the Cuckoo” of Wordsworth, the “Ode to the Nightingale” of Keats, and the “Ode to the Skylark” of Shelley.

Coming anew to these poems from a prolonged perusal of Shakespeare, we are first struck by the fact that although so distinct from each other in thought as well as in music, they are akin in being not mere references to the birds, but actual addresses to particular members of the feathered tribes. In each case the ode is no cold description, but a monologue, glowing with appreciation and love, and spoken as it were directly to the subject itself. The birds are recognised as, like ourselves, “travellers between life and death.” Instead of being regarded as “unreasonable,” that is, devoid of any reasoning faculty, and gifted only with what is called “instinct,” they are felt to be linked with us by the possession of many qualities that are closely akin to some of the purest virtues of humanity. And they are acknowledged to be fellow-creatures, partners with us in the great mystery of life. They are communed with as if man’s longings could be made known to them, and as if they in turn might be brought to feel the reality and depth of his affectionate interest in them, or even perhaps be induced to reveal to him the secret of their careless happiness. The poets in their mystic rapture idealise these songsters until they almost seem to cease to be corporeal beings. Thus Wordsworth:

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
* * * * * * *
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery.

Shelley’s ethereal melody becomes even more ecstatic in his address to the Skylark:

[Sidenote: _Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats_]

Hail to thee, blithe spirit――
Bird thou never wert――
* * * * * * *
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine.

To the modern poet the voices of the birds seem to express more directly and simply than any other kind of music the pure _joie de vivre_. Shelley wrote of his Skylark:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,――
All that ever was,
Joyous and clear and fresh,――thy music doth surpass.
* * * * * * *
Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Keats recognised the same joyous feeling in his Nightingale: