disparagingly noticed by Shakespeare. The CORMORANT, so well-known
along all our rocky shores, was described by Chaucer as “full of
glotonye,” and by the dramatist as the symbol of a rapacious voracity.
Thus, vanity is described as an “insatiate cormorant”; we are told of
“cormorant devouring Time,” of the “cormorant belly” and of
Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed
In hot digestion of this cormorant war.[92]
The PELICAN is alluded to in the Shakespearian drama in connection with
a popular fable that this bird nourishes its young with its own blood.
Laertes in _Hamlet_ affirms that to his father’s friends
Thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.[93]
When Lear, in the storm on the open heath, sees the disguised Edgar at
the entrance of the hovel, he will not be persuaded that the poor man
could have been so beggared save by his unkind daughters, and he asks
Kent
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! ’twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters.[94]
The word “Loon” or “Lown” is employed by the poet to denote a rogue
or low fellow. A messenger of evil tidings is called by Macbeth a
“cream-faced loon.”[95] In the play of _Pericles_ we hear of a company
that would include “both lord and lown”;[96] and in _Othello_ Iago
sings part of a north-country ballad in which the same word occurs:
[Sidenote: _The Loon_]
King Stephen was a worthy peer,
His breeches cost him but a crown;
He held them sixpence all too dear,
With that he called the tailor lown.[97]
The name of Loon or Loom is a popular appellation which includes three
distinct families of water-birds, all remarkable for their clumsy gait
on land. Whether this name was applied to them after it had first been
in use as an uncomplimentary epithet for a man, or was originally
their own common designation which came eventually to acquire a human
application, remains in doubt. More probably the bird was first owner,
and the word may belong to the group of bird-names like goose, snipe,
kite, hawk and others which have become disparaging epithets for human
subjects. In Lincolnshire the word is in use as the common name of the
Great Crested Grebe. Though now obsolete in conversational English as
an epithet for a rogue it is still in common use in Scotland in that
sense.[98]
[Sidenote: _The Owl_]
The OWL plays a large part in Shakespeare’s references to bird-life.
He does not discriminate between the different members of the large
family probably included under this name, though he distinguishes some
of their respective cries. He heightens the feeling of the eeriness
of night by introducing the remarkable sound of the owl’s voice, and
most effectively when some deed of villainy is on foot, or as one of
the signs popularly supposed to portend coming disaster. He includes
the owl also in that fairy world which he has made so real. It will be
enough to cite a few examples of these different usages in his works.
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]
[Illustration: THE BARN-OWL]
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]
[Illustration: THE CUCKOO]
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]
[Illustration: THE QUAIL]
[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]
[Illustration: THE LAPWING]
[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]
[Illustration: THE MALLARD]
[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]
[Illustration: THE RAVEN]
[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]
[Illustration: THE CHOUGH]
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]
[Illustration: THE STARLING]