Chapter III: Introduction

Before proceeding to examine the ornithology of Shakespeare, it may be well to take a glance at his knowledge of natural history in general.

Pope has expressed the opinion that whatever object of nature or branch of science Shakespeare either speaks of or describes, it is always with competent if not with exclusive knowledge. His descriptions are always exact, his metaphors appropriate, and remarkably drawn from the true nature and inherent qualities of each subject. There can indeed be little doubt that Shakespeare must have derived the greater portion of his knowledge of nature from his own observation, and no one can fail to be delighted with the variety and richness of the images which he has by this means produced.

Whether we accompany him to the woods and fields, midst “daisies pied and violets blue,” or sit with him “under the shade of melancholy boughs,” whether we follow him to “the brook that brawls along the wood,” or to that sea “whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege of watery Neptune,” we are alike instructed by his observations, and charmed with his apt descriptions. How often do the latter strike us as echoes of our own experience, sent forth in fitter tones than we could find.

A sportsman is oft-times more or less a naturalist. His rambles in search of game bring him in contact with creatures of such curious structure and habits, with insects and plants of such rare beauty, that the purpose of his walk is for the time forgotten, and he turns aside from sport, to admire and learn from nature.

That Shakespeare was both a sportsman and a naturalist, there is much evidence to show. During the age in which he lived “hawking” was much in vogue. Throughout the Plays, we find frequent allusions to this sport, and the accurate employment of terms used exclusively in falconry, as well as the beautiful metaphors derived therefrom, prove that our poet had much practical knowledge on the subject. We shall have occasion later to discuss his knowledge of falconry at greater length. It will suffice for the present to observe that there are many passages in the Plays which to one unacquainted with the habits of animals and birds, or ignorant of hawking phraseology, would be wholly unintelligible, but which are otherwise found to contain the most beautiful and forcible metaphors. As instances of this may be cited that passage in _Othello_ (Act iii. Sc. 3), where the Moor compares his suspected wife to a “haggard falcon,” and the hawking scene in Act ii. of the Second Part of _King Henry VI._[11]

Shakespeare, although a contemplative man, appears to have found but little “recreation” in fishing, and the most enthusiastic disciple of Izaak Walton would find it difficult to illustrate a work on angling with quotations from Shakespeare. He might refer us to _Twelfth Night_ (Act ii. Sc. 5), where Maria, on the appearance of Malvolio, exclaims, “Here comes the _trout_ that must be caught with tickling;” and to the song of Caliban in _The Tempest_ (Act ii. Sc. 2), “No more dams I’ll make for fish.” Possibly, by straining a point or two, he might ask with Benedick, in _Much Ado about Nothing_ (Act i. Sc. 1), “Do you play the flouting Jack?”

But our poet seems to have considered--

“The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.”

_Much Ado_, Act iii. Sc. 1.[12]

His forte lay more in hunting and fowling than in fishing,[13] and in all that relates to deer-stalking (as practised in his day, when the deer was killed with cross-bow or bow and arrow), to deer-hunting with hounds, and to coursing, we find him fully informed.

In the less noble art of bird-catching[14] he was probably no mean adept, while the knowledge which he displays of the habits of our wild animals, as the fox, the badger, the weasel, and the wild cat, could only have been acquired by one accustomed to much observation by flood and field.

On each of these subjects a chapter might be written, but it will suffice for our present purpose to draw attention only to some of the more remarkable passages in support of the assertions above made.

Deer-shooting was a favourite sport of both sexes in Shakespeare’s day, and to enable the ladies to enjoy it in safety, “stands,” or “standings,” were erected in many parks, and concealed with boughs. From these the ladies with bow and arrow, or cross-bow, shot at the deer as they were driven past them by the keepers.

Queen Elizabeth was extremely fond of this sport, and the nobility who entertained her in her different progresses, made large hunting parties, which she usually joined when the weather was favourable. She frequently amused herself in following the hounds. “Her Majesty,” says a courtier, writing to Sir Robert Sidney, “is well and excellently disposed to hunting, for every second day she is on horseback, and continues the sport long.”[15] At this time Her Majesty had just entered the seventy-seventh year of her age, and was then at her palace at Oatlands. Often, when she was not disposed to hunt herself, she was entertained with a sight of the sport. At Cowdray Park, Sussex, then the seat of Lord Montagu (1591), Her Majesty one day after dinner saw “sixteen bucks, all having fayre lawe, pulled downe with greyhounds in a laund or lawn.”[16]

No wonder, then, that the ladies of England, with the royal example before their eyes, found such delight in the chase during the age of which we speak, and not content with being mere spectators, vied with each other in the skilful use of the bow.

To this pastime Shakespeare has made frequent allusion.

In _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, the first scene of the fourth act is laid in a park, where the Princess asks,--

“Then, forester,[17] my friend, where is the bush
That we must stand and play the murtherer in?”

To which the forester replies,--

“Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;
A ‘stand’ where you may make the fairest shoot.”

And in _Henry VI._ Part III. Act iii. Sc. 1,--

“Under this thick-grown brake we’ll shroud ourselves;
For through this laund anon the deer will come;
And in this covert will we make our ‘stand,’
Culling the principal of all the deer.”

Again, in _Cymbeline_ (Act iii. Sc. 4), “When thou hast ta’en thy ‘stand,’ the elected deer before thee.” Other passages might be mentioned, but it will be sufficient to refer only to _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ (Act v. Sc. 5), and to the song in _As You Like It_ (Act iv. Sc. 2), commencing “What shall he have that kill’d the deer?”

Deer-stealing in Shakespeare’s day was regarded only as a youthful frolic. Antony Wood (“Athen. Oxon.” i. 371), speaking of Dr. John Thornborough, who was admitted a member of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1570, at the age of eighteen, and who was successively Bishop of Limerick and Bishop of Bristol and Worcester, informs us, that he and his kinsman, Robert Pinkney, “seldom studied or gave themselves to their books, but spent their time in the fencing schools, and dancing schools, in stealing deer and conies, in hunting the hare and wooing girls.”

Shakespeare himself has been accused of this indiscretion. The story is first told in print by Rowe, in his “Life of Shakespeare”:--“He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and amongst them some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in London.”

Mr. Staunton, in his library edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, says: “What degree of authenticity the story possesses will never probably be known. Rowe derived his version of it no doubt through Betterton; but Davies makes no allusion to the source from which he drew his information, and we are left to grope our way, so far as this important incident is concerned, mainly by the light of collateral circumstances. These, it must be admitted, serve in some respects to confirm the tradition. Shakespeare certainly quitted Stratford-upon-Avon when a young man, and it could have been no ordinary impulse which drove him to leave wife, children, friends, and occupation, to take up his abode among strangers in a distant place.

“Then there is the pasquinade, and the unmistakable identification of Sir Thomas Lucy as Justice Shallow, in the Second Part of _Henry IV._, and in the opening scene of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. The genuineness of the former may be doubted; but the ridicule in the Plays betokens a latent hostility to the Lucy family, which is unaccountable, except upon the supposition that the deerstealing foray is founded on facts.”

The more legitimate sport in killing deer was by means of blood-hounds, and in _The Midsummer Night’s Dream_ we are furnished with an accurate description of the dogs in most repute:--

“My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee’d, and dew-lapp’d like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn.”

Act iv. Sc. 1.

In the _Comedy of Errors_ (Act iv. Sc. 2), Dromio of Syracuse alludes to “a hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry foot well,” and in the _Taming of the Shrew_ we have the following animated dialogue:--

“_Lord_. Saw’st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good
At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault?
I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.

_Huntsman_. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord;
He cried upon it at the merest loss,
And twice to-day pick’d out the dullest scent:
Trust me, I take him for the better dog.”

Many more such instances might be adduced, but the reader might perhaps be tempted to exclaim, with Timon of Athens:--

“Get thee away, and take thy beagles with thee.”

Act iv. Sc. 3.

We will therefore only glance at that amusing scene in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (Act v. Sc. 5), where Falstaff appears in Windsor Forest, disguised with a buck’s head on. “Divide me,” says he, “like a brib’d-buck, each a haunch: I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands.”

We have here an allusion to the ancient method of “breaking up” a deer.[18] “The fellow of this walk” is the forester, to whom it was customary on such occasions to present a shoulder. Dame Juliana Berners, in her “Boke of St. Albans,” 1496, says,--

“And the right shoulder, wheresoever he be,
Bere it to the _foster_, for that is fee.”

And in Turbervile’s “Book of Hunting,” 1575, the distribution of the various parts of a deer is minutely described.

The touching description of a wounded stag, in _As You Like It_, can scarcely escape notice. Alluding to “the melancholy Jaques,” one of the lords says,--

“To-day my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestred stag,
That from the hunters’ aim had ta’en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours’d one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th’ extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.”

Act ii. Sc. 1.

Although the deer, as the nobler animal, has received more attention from our poet than the fox and the hare, yet the two last-named are by no means forgotten:--

“The fox [who] barks not when he would steal the lamb”

(_Henry VI._ Part II. Act iii. Sc. 1);

who, when he “hath once got in his nose,” will “soon find means to make the body follow” (_Henry VI._ Part III. Act iv. Sc. 7); and--

“Who ne’er so tame, so cherish’d and lock’d up,
Will have a wild trick of his ancestors”

(_Cymbeline_, Act v. Sc. 2);

receives his share of notice, although it is not always in his praise, and “subtle as the fox” has become a proverb (_Cymbeline_, Act iii. Sc. 3).

From the “subtle fox” to the “timorous hare,” the transition is easy. What “more a coward than a hare”? (_Twelfth Night_, Act iii. Sc. 5.)

In Roxburgh and Aberdeen, as we learn from Jamieson’s “Scottish Dictionary,” a hare is termed “a bawd,” and the knowledge of this fact enables us to understand the dialogue in _Romeo and Juliet_, which would otherwise be unintelligible:--

“_Mercutio._ A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!

_Romeo._ What hast thou found?

_Mercutio._ No hare, sir.”

Act ii. Sc. 4.

That coursing was in vogue in Shakespeare’s day, and practised in the same way as at present, we may infer from such expressions as “a good hare-finder” (_Much Ado_, Act i. Sc. 1), “Holla me like a hare” (_Coriolanus_, Act i. Sc. 8), and “I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start” (_Henry V._ Act iii. Sc. 1).

Rabbits were taken, and no doubt poached, in the same way then as now; for we read of the coney[19] “that you see dwell where she is kindled” (_As You Like It_, Act iii. Sc. 2) struggling “in the net.” (_Henry VI._