Part 1

THE BIRDS OF SHAKESPEARE

PUBLISHED BY JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW Publishers to the University.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

_New York_, _The Macmillan Co._ _Toronto_, _The Macmillan Co. of Canada_. _London_, _Simpkin, Hamilton and Co._ _Cambridge_, _Macmillan and Bowes_. _Edinburgh_, _Douglas and Foulis_. _Sydney_, _Angus and Robertson_.

MCMXVI.

THE BIRDS OF SHAKESPEARE

BY SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, O.M. K.C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S.

GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY 1916

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

Preface

The attentive reader of Shakespeare’s Poems and Plays can hardly fail to notice the remarkable frequency of the Poet’s allusions to Birds, not merely as a great Choir of songsters, enlivening the woods and fields With their varied music, but as individual creatures, each endowed with its own special characters. Shakespeare has drawn an assemblage of bird-portraits to which, for extent and variety, no equal is to be found in any other great English poet. Making ample use of what he had himself observed about Birds in their native haunts, and combining this personal knowledge with what he could obtain from literature and from popular fancy or superstition, he has employed the material thus gathered to illustrate, in many an apt simile and striking metaphor, his vivid presentation of the great drama of human life. If we compare him in this respect with either the poets who preceded or those who have followed him we learn that he stands apart from them all.

The present little volume was written as a Presidential Address to the Haslemere Natural History Society, and was read to the members on March 9th of the present year. The approach of the Shakespeare Tercentenary having brought the poet and his writings more closely to the mind, it appeared to me not inappropriate that a company of naturalists should be asked to consider how one branch of the subjects in which they are more specially interested had been treated by the greatest poet of all time. The Address was nearly finished when I came, for the first time, upon the excellent and exhaustive _Ornithology of Shakespeare_, by Mr. James Harting, published in 1871. I would gladly have availed myself of this volume had I known of it sooner, but I gleaned from it a few quotations which in my search through the Poems and Plays I had missed. My object, however, was somewhat different from that author’s. Approaching the subject from the literary rather than the scientific side, I desired to show that Shakespeare’s delight in birds and bird-music was not less keen than that of Chaucer and the earlier poets, and at the same time to point out how detailed was his acquaintance with birds, and how wide the range of similitudes which he drew from them to the great enrichment of our literature. I have ventured also to illustrate the change of poetic mood since his time in regard to Nature by citing three poems on Birds by three of the great poets of last century.

The _Cambridge Shakespeare_ of W. Aldis Wright is the text from which my citations are made. I have to thank Messrs. Gurney and Jackson for their courtesy in supplying some clichés taken from the illustrations in the useful _Manual of British Birds_ by my friend the late Mr. Howard Saunders, in which the text-figures are so faithful and at the same time artistic.

In all humility I desire to lay this little Tercentenary offering at the shrine of the “Sweet Swan of Avon.”

SHEPHERDS’ DOWN, HASLEMERE, _1st August, 1916_.

List of Illustrations

PAGE

THE EAGLE 32

THE PEREGRINE FALCON 40

THE COMMON BUZZARD 42

THE KITE 46

THE CORMORANT 48

THE BARN OWL 56

THE CUCKOO 58

THE QUAIL 62

THE LAPWING 64

THE MALLARD 72

THE RAVEN 74

THE CHOUGH 78

THE STARLING 80

THE MAGPIE 88

THE JAY 90

THE TURTLE DOVE 94

THE SONG-THRUSH 96

THE WREN 104

THE HOUSE-MARTIN 106

THE NIGHTINGALE 110

A FRIENDLY CHOUGH 119

The Birds of Shakespeare

From the infancy of mankind no tribe of living creatures has awakened more sympathy in the human heart than the Birds of the Air. Their pairing, their nesting, their sedulous care of their young, their arrival in spring and disappearance in autumn, the endless variety of their notes, and the manifold diversity of their habits and dispositions, often so suggestive of analogies with those of human nature, have arrested the attention of even the most unobservant men. This wide range of attraction, appealing so directly to the poetic instincts of humanity, has called forth hearty recognition in the literature of every age and of every tongue. In our own literature this recognition has been more especially ample. Chaucer, the illustrious Father of English Poetry, struck the keynote of that passionate love of Nature which has been maintained among us with ever-growing devotion. “Nature, the vicar of the Almighty Lord,” to use his own expression, filled his soul with a deep, reverential and joyous delight in the endless beauty and charm of the outer world. This pleasure included an ardent appreciation of bird-life, which finds vent continually in simple but enthusiastic language all through his writings. Chaucer was undoubtedly a bookish man, much attached to his favourite authors and to meditation upon them. Yet, as he himself confesses, there were times when the open country, with all its varied sights and sounds, and especially with its exuberant life in plants and animals, had for him even greater attraction. He tells that

[Sidenote: _Chaucer’s Love of Nature_]

On bokes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that there is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But hit be other upon the haly-day, Or elles in the Ioly tyme of May Whan that I here the smale foules singe And that the floures gynne for to springe―― Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun![1]

In his vivid descriptions of scenes in spring and summer, the carols of the birds are always a prominent feature. Thus, at the very beginning of his _Canterbury Tales_, the mere thought of April, with its sweet showers and tender leafage “in every bolt and heath,” recalls to him how the

Smale foules maken melodye That slepen al the night with open yë.[2]

His poem on _The Parlement of Foules_ represents the various birds of the air coming in a crowded throng from all quarters to choose their mates. As he enumerates our familiar birds he couples with their names epithets that express the popular estimation of them. The scene is laid in a garden where

On every bough the briddes herde I singe With voys of aungel in hir armonye.[3]

Again, in his quaint and humorous verses on the _Cuckow and the Nightingale_, the poet transports us into the very heart of the woods to hear a discourse between these two harbingers of summer. For the nightingale he had a fondness which is lovingly expressed in the _Flower and the Leaf_, where we find the picture of a woodland of oaks whose new leaves

Sprongen out ayein the sonne shene, Some very rede, and some a glad light grene; Which, as me thought, was right a plesaunt sight, And eek the briddes songes for to here Would have rejoised any erthly wight; And I, that couth not yet, in no manere, Here the Nightingale of al the yeare, Ful busily herkned with herte and ere, If I her voice perceive coud any-where.[4]

This simple delight in the voices of the birds, so prominent in the poems of the author of the _Canterbury Tales_, was maintained among his successors in English poetry. By Elizabethan times, however, it had become enlarged and enriched by the growth of a more observant and contemplative habit. The spontaneous and irresistible joy of the human soul in the varied beauty of Nature, and not least in the bird-music of the fields and woods, is as marked in Shakespeare’s works as it was in those of Chaucer; but it is now combined with more thought and reflection. The appreciation of life in all its divers forms has grown closer, more sympathetic and more intimately linked with human experience.

[Sidenote: _Surroundings of his Boyhood_]

Shakespeare had the good fortune to be born in one of the pleasantest and most varied districts of England, in the midst of fields and gardens, as well as wide tracts of woodland and heath, among sturdy farmer-folk, and simple peasantry. The face of open Nature lay spread out around him, and his earliest poems bear witness to the range and acuteness of his faculty of observation amid the fields and forests, the beasts and birds of his home. The extent and accuracy of his acquaintance with law have been claimed as proof that he had passed through some legal training. There is sounder evidence that his remarkable familiarity with objects of natural history could not have been derived at secondhand from books, but was acquired from his own personal observation. His youthful surroundings in Warwickshire furnished him with ample opportunity of acquiring and cultivating this knowledge. Nor should it be forgotten that the London in which he spent the active years of his middle life, was a comparatively small town. Open country lay within a short walking distance from any part of it. Heaths and woodlands, with all their riches of animal life, extended almost up to its outskirts. So that even in the height of his busy theatrical career the dramatist could easily, at any interval of leisure, renew his acquaintance with the face of Nature which he dearly loved.

An attentive study of Shakespeare’s dramas supplies probable indications of some of his early observations among natural history objects. When, for instance, he makes Benedick assert that Claudio had committed

the flat transgression of a school-boy, who, being overjoyed with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it,[5]

he probably could remember incidents of that kind among the boys at the grammar school of Stratford. At all events, that he himself had known the excitements of bird-nesting may be fairly inferred from the following passage:

Unreasonable creatures feed their young; And though man’s face be fearful to their eyes, Yet, in protection of their tender ones, Who hath not seen them, even with those wings Which sometime they have used with fearful flight, Make war with him that climb’d unto their nest, Offering their own lives in their young’s defence?[6]

As a concomitant of his love of outdoor life it was natural and almost inevitable that the future dramatist should become a sportsman. There does not appear to be any good reason to question the truth of the tradition that in his youth he joined his Stratford companions in poaching Sir Thomas Lucy’s deer in Charlecote Park. When he wrote the following lines we can well imagine that he had some of his own escapades in mind:

What, hast not thou full often struck a doe, And borne her cleanly by the keeper’s nose?[7]

[Sidenote: _Bird-Capture_]

Both the Poems and the Plays show him to have been well-versed in all the arts then in vogue for the capture of birds dead or alive――the use of bird-lime for the smaller kinds, the fixing of springes and gins, the spreading of nets, the employment of decoys in the shape of caged birds or of painted fruit and flowers, as well as the ordinary weapons for shooting――birding-pieces, bows and arrows, and crossbows and bolts. More especially does he appear to have mastered the whole craft of falconry, then so much in vogue; for his writings are full of the vocabulary of its technical terms. The frequency and detail of the poet’s allusions to the various methods of bird-capture suggest the experience of one who speaks from personal practice. He is fond of introducing these allusions in illustration of the plots and wiles of man with regard to his fellow-men. So many of these methods of capture have gone out of fashion that the modern reader is apt to be surprised at the constant recurrence of references to them in Shakespeare’s writings, and to forget how much more they would appeal to the imagination in the days of Elizabeth than they can do now. A few illustrations may be quoted here. Thus Lady Macduff, musing on the future of her little son, but all unsuspicious of the fate immediately impending on him, tells him

Poor bird! thou’ldst never fear the net, nor lime, The pitfall, nor the gin.[8]

Again, the Duke of Suffolk, having to inform the Queen of King Henry VI. regarding the steps which he has taken about the Duchess of Gloucester, conveys his news in the language of the bird-catcher:

Madam, myself have limed a bush for her, And placed a quire of such enticing birds, That she will light to listen to the lays, And never mount to trouble you again.[9]

[Sidenote: _Similes from Bird-Capture_]

The King in _Hamlet_, torn with compunction for his crime, exclaims

O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that struggling to be free Art more engaged.[10]

The supposed experience of a bird that has once been nearly caught is transferred by the poet to the human heart. King Henry VI. laments his fate in this wise:

The bird that hath been limed in a bush, With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush; And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird, Have now the fatal object in my eye Where my poor young was limed, was caught and kill’d.[11]

On the other hand, the innocent assurance of a blameless soul is likened to that of a bird that has never known the treacherous arts of the fowler.

For unstain’d thoughts do seldom dream on evil; Birds never limed no secret bushes fear.[12]

We find reference to “poor birds deceived with painted grapes,” and to “poor birds that helpless berries saw.”[13] There is a graphic force in the exclamation

Look how a bird lies tangl’d in a net,[14]

and in the simile applied to Lucrece,

Like a new-kill’d bird she trembling lies.[15]

But it is from the sport of falconry that Shakespeare draws most frequently his allusions to bird-capture. Some of these I shall quote in connection with his references to hawks and hawking. The poet does not confine his similes to birds in the wild state, but draws them also with effect from birds in confinement, as where he represents King Henry VI. thanking the Lieutenant of the Tower for courtesy shown to him during his imprisonment:

I’ll well requite thy kindness, For that it made my imprisonment a pleasure; Ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds Conceive, when after many moody thoughts, At last, by notes of household harmony, They quite forget their loss of liberty.[16]

[Sidenote: _His feeling for Nature_]

It will be remembered, also, how touchingly the same comparison appears in the scene wherein Cordelia and Lear are led off the stage guarded. When she asks her father, “Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?” Lear impatiently answers,

No, no, no, no. Come, let’s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage; When thou dost ask me the blessing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, … And take upon’s the mystery of things.[17]

Shakespeare’s feeling for Nature and love of outdoor life are nowhere more fully and admirably expressed than in his delightful Play of _As You Like It_. Pervaded by the very breath of the country and the charms of rural life and sylvan peace, the chief scenes of this drama are laid in a landscape that was doubtless based on recollections of his youthful home, and he appropriately named it after his own “Forest of Arden” in Warwickshire. He transports us to a green woodland, interspersed with copses of hawthorns and brambles, revealing grassy glades among venerable trees, where flocks of sheep and goats are pasturing, while here and there we catch sight of a quiet herd of deer. We meet, too, with shepherds and foresters, and come upon a cottage near the rank osiers by a murmuring stream. Now and then our attention is drawn to some specially picturesque feature in the timber of the forest, such as “an oak whose antique root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along the wood.”[18] Or we are halted

Under an oak, whose boughs were moss’d with age, And high top bald with dry antiquity.[19]

And there are smooth-stemmed beech-trees, on the massive trunks of which a love-sick swain may carve the name of his beloved.

[Sidenote: _His picture of English Landscape_]

Into this essentially English scenery the poet introduces a fence of olive-trees around the sheep-cote, likewise “a green and gilded snake,” together with a “hungry lioness” that lies crouching on the ground, ready to spring upon a man when he awakes from sleep. But these productions of other climes were, from the dramatist’s point of view, no more out of place in his forest, than was the presence of a banished duke with his company of lords and attendants. He had created an ideal landscape out of his own Forest of Arden, and he might clothe it with such vegetation and people it with such beings as he thought that the claims of his art allowed.

Among the first sounds that greet our ears after we enter this land of enchantment are those of an invitation to hear the bird-music:

Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird’s throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither. Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.[20]

And in nearly the last strains that reach us before the drama closes, the carol of the birds comes in again:

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding: Sweet lovers love the spring.[21]

It will be remembered that the contemplation of the woodland peace and happiness of the Forest of Arden inspired the poet with one of the most pregnant passages to be found in his works. Though the quotation has become rather hackneyed from constant use, it deserves to be treasured in the heart of everyone to whom the study of Nature is dear:

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.[22]

[Sidenote: _His Sympathy with Life_]

In this pastoral drama, and throughout his Poems and Plays, Shakespeare manifests the keen pleasure with which the face of Nature filled his soul. The beauty and fragrancy of flowers and woods, the movements and music of birds were a joy to him. But he combined with this enjoyment a feeling of pity for the frailty and suffering of living things. A recent and most able writer on Shakespeare has stated as his opinion that “the wild creatures of the fields and woods, because they have never run the risk of familiarity with man, are outside the circle of Shakespeare’s sympathetic observation.” I venture to think that a more mistaken judgement could hardly have been pronounced. Shakespeare was not a man of science, but he obviously had some of the best qualities of a naturalist――quickness and accuracy of eye and sympathy with life, not of man only, but of every creature that lives and feels. This sympathy shows itself in his allusions to birds, but is displayed also in his references to animals both higher and lower in the scale of being, which “have never run the risk of familiarity with man.” In the remarkable Play which we have just been considering it is conspicuously prominent. The banished Duke in the Forest of Arden asks his companions if they will go with him to kill some venison, but before their answer comes, he immediately adds, on reflection:

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confines with forked heads Have their round haunches gored.[23]

This commiseration is expressed much more forcibly by one of his “co-mates and brothers in exile,” the melancholy Jaques, who had been overheard, as he lay under an oak near the brook, lamenting the fate of a wounded stag that had come to languish at the same spot. As he watched the creature

[Sidenote: _The Wounded Deer_]

weeping into the needless stream; ‘Poor deer,’ quoth he, ‘thou makest a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much;’ then, being there alone, Left and abandon’d of his velvet friends; ‘’Tis right,’ quoth he; ‘thus misery doth part The flux of company:’ anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him And never stays to greet him; ‘Ay,’ quoth Jaques, ‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; ’Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’ Thus most invectively he pierceth through The body of the country, city, court, Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what’s worse, To fright the animals and to kill them up In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.[24]

More detailed and even more full of commiseration is the poet’s vivid description of the hunting of “the purblind hare.”

Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles, How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles.[25]

When he has for a little succeeded in throwing the hounds off the scent,

Poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear, To hearken if his foes pursue him still: Anon their loud alarums he doth hear, Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.[26]

The poet’s feeling of pity descends even to small and fragile forms of living things, to which most people are indifferent or even hostile. Perhaps he may sometimes have credited these feeble creatures with greater sensitiveness to pain than a modern naturalist would allow, as where Isabella in _Measure for Measure_ tells her brother that

The poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.[27]

[Sidenote: _Pity for the humblest Creatures_]

Shakespeare elsewhere alludes to our prevalent insensibility towards the insect world, from our youth upward.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.[28]