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]
[Illustration: THE MAGPIE]
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]
[Illustration: THE JAY]
[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.
[Illustration: THE TURTLE-DOVE]
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]
[Illustration: THE SONG-THRUSH]
[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]
[Illustration: THE WREN]
[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.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE-MARTIN]
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: