Part 2

In maturer life men will do “a thousand dreadful things as willingly as one would kill a fly.”[29] But the poet’s pity extended even to the fly. In a spirited picture of a superb charger he tells how the animal proudly “stamps and bites the poor flies in his fume.”[30] The most detailed and remarkable expression of this commiseration in the whole of Shakespeare’s works, however, is to be found in the unpleasing tragedy of _Titus Andronicus_, which, though printed among his dramas, is doubtless mainly the work of another writer. Yet it contains passages of great power and beauty which are not unworthy of Shakespeare and probably came from his pen. Among these passages I would include the singular scene in which Titus is sitting at table with his brother Marcus, who strikes the dish with his knife, whereupon the following dialogue ensues:

_Titus._ What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?

_Marc._ At that that I have kill’d, my lord――a fly.

_Tit._ Out on thee, murderer! thou kill’st my heart; A deed of death done on the innocent Becomes not Titus’ brother: get thee gone; I see thou art not for my company.

_Marc._ Alas! my lord, I have but kill’d a fly.

_Tit._ ‘But’! How if that fly had a father and mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings And buzz lamenting doings in the air! Poor harmless fly! That, with his pretty buzzing melody Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill’d him.

_Marc._ Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favour’d fly Like to the Empress’ Moor; therefore I kill’d him.

_Tit._ O, O, O. Then pardon me for reprehending thee, For thou hast done a charitable deed. * * * * * * * I think we are not brought so low, But that between us we can kill a fly That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.[31]

[Sidenote: “_The poor harmless Fly_”]

The mind of Titus, broken down by a succession of crushing calamities, had by this time become unhinged, and the extravagance of his language is doubtless designed to show this derangement, though it may perhaps also express the poet’s own underlying pity with even “the poor harmless fly.” Modern science, however, has recently discovered that the house-fly is far from harmless, and that its ruthless extirpation from human habitations, as a dangerous carrier of disease, should be regarded as really what Titus called “a charitable deed.”

Not less effectively than his forerunner Chaucer, does Shakespeare enliven his pictures of day and night and of the seasons of the year by introducing the voices of the birds. He loves the

summer bird Which ever in the haunch of winter sings The lifting up of day.[32]

He tells how “The birds chant melody on every bush,”[33] and recounts where

As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring; Everything did banish moan.[34]

He leads us where we may

See the shepherds feed their flocks By shallow rivers, by whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.[35]

The movement of spring and the renewal of the activity of the birds are well pictured in the song at the end of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_:

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks.

The sadness and silence of the woods in autumn when the birds are dumb, are recorded in these musical lines:

[Sidenote: _In Winter and Storm_]

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.[36]

Again, in a song from which I have just quoted, a graphic picture of winter shows the changed aspect of the birds at that season:

When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian’s nose looks red and raw.[37]

Or we are presented with a storm in which we see

A flight of fowl Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts.[38]

In many passages, to some of which I shall presently allude, the poet heightens the gloom of night by allusion to the nocturnal birds which screech or moan in the dark, or he lightens its eeriness with the pensive melody of the nightingale.

Shakespeare was keenly alive to the strong contrasts so continually placed in juxtaposition by Nature――what he calls

Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding, Ear’s deep-sweet music, and heart’s deep-sore wounding.[39]

He recognised contrasts of this kind both in the animate and the inanimate creation, and not least where the birds are involved:

Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing, What virtue breeds iniquity devours.[40]

He makes the Bishop of Ely account for the reformation of the Prince of Wales by calling attention to the association in Nature of what is baneful with what is profitable.

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality: And so the Prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.[41]

[Sidenote: _Contrasts in Nature_]

The co-existence of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, met the poet even among the tender creatures in whose songs he delighted. He saw that the grief or suffering of one single songster in no perceptible degree quieted the carolling of the rest of the choir.

All thy fellow-birds do sing, Careless of thy sorrowing: Even so, poor bird, like thee, None alive will pity me.[42]

He realised, as many another poet has also found, that there are times in which the joyous songs of birds may even sound harshly to human ears when the heart is bowed down with affliction. Thus he wrote of Lucrece:

The little birds that tune their morning’s joy Make her moans mad with their sweet melody: For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy. * * * * * * * ‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb Within your hollow-swelling feather’d breasts, And in my hearing be you mute and dumb: My restless discord loves no stops nor rests; A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.’[43]

While Shakespeare, like his poetical predecessors and contemporaries, regarded the whole tribe of birds as a great vocal assemblage, a delightful section of animated Nature, that gives life and charm to the countryside, his Poems and Plays stand apart for the remarkable extent to which he singles out individual birds by name, often with such detailed reference to their habits as to show that he well knew them in their native haunts. The birds thus distinguished by him amount to some fifty in number, as given in the following list:

[Sidenote: _Birds mentioned by Him_]

Eagle Falcon Kestrel Sparrowhawk Buzzard Kite Osprey Vulture Parrot Ostrich Cormorant Pelican Loon Owl Cuckoo Woodcock Pheasant Partridge Snipe Quail Lapwing Wild Duck Dabchick Raven Crow Rook Chough Jackdaw Magpie Jay Starling Domestic Cock Goose Turkey-cock Swan Peacock Dove and Pigeon Turtle-dove Lark Blackbird Thrush Wren Wagtail Bunting Redbreast Finch Halcyon or Kingfisher Hedge-Sparrow House-Sparrow Swallow House-Martin Nightingale.

Of a few of them he makes only a single mention, but most of them are more frequently cited, in some cases, indeed, as often as forty or fifty times. Recognising in these creatures traits that remind him of the feelings and actions of mankind, he makes varied and effective use of them as symbols and illustrations with which to enrich his vivid picture of the great drama of human life. The naturalist, interested in noting the attitude of the greatest poet of all time towards living creatures, feels no surprise that Shakespeare’s knowledge of natural history is sometimes inaccurate, or that he should have taken on trust some of the fabulous legends in that subject, which were current in his day. The scientific study of Nature had not yet been seriously undertaken.

I propose to enumerate here the birds individually selected by Shakespeare for special comment, and to cite a few passages from his works in illustration of the various ways in which he makes use of each of them. It will be convenient to take them in groups.

[Sidenote: _The Eagle_]

We may begin with BIRDS OF PREY, following the precedent set by Chaucer, who in his long list tells that “the fowles of ravine were hyest sette.” The EAGLE is cited some forty times. The two birds of this kind native to Britain, the Golden Eagle, and the White-tailed or Sea-eagle, now so restricted in number, were doubtless more abundant in his day. He may have occasionally seen examples of each of them on the wing, though his allusions hardly suggest any personal familiarity with the birds. Recognising the lofty rank of the eagle and its acknowledged dignity above the other birds of prey, he makes the birds themselves, in the arrangements for the obsequies of the Phoenix and Turtle, admit this supremacy.

From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, feather’d King.[44]

The powerful vision which from time immemorial has been ascribed to the eagle[45] is often referred to by the poet, who makes one of his personages even claim that kings of men have eyes like the king of birds. As Richard II. stood on the battlements of Flint Castle the Duke of York pointing to him, exclaimed,

Yet looks he like a king; behold! his eye, As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth Controlling majesty.[46]

The future King Edward IV. was taunted by his brother Richard thus:

Nay, if thou be that princely eagle’s bird, Show thy descent by gazing ’gainst the sun.[47]

With delightful hyperbole, Biron, in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, discovers a power of vision beyond that of an eagle, when he is persuading himself and his friends to abjure their foolish vow “to fast, to study, and to see no woman.” Enlarging on the potency of “love first learned in a lady’s eyes” he declares that it

Gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye: A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d.[48]

Again, in the same Play, the comparison becomes even more grotesquely exaggerated, for the same lover in praising his lady-love demands to know

What peremptory eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majesty?[49]

The eagle was credited not only with a wonderful strength of vision, but also with a remarkable length of life. This belief is alluded to by the churlish philosopher who demands of Timon

Will these moss’d trees, That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, And skip where thou point’st out?[50]

Shakespeare, when he likens the orders of human society to the various grades among the birds, compares the leaders to eagles, and the commonalty to birds of a less reputable kind. The haughty Coriolanus stigmatises the Roman plebs as a rabble that

Will in time Break ope the locks o’ the Senate, and bring in The crows to peck the eagles.[51]

Pandarus, not less contemptuous of the populace of Troy, affirms that “the eagles are gone,” and that there are left only “crows and daws, crows and daws.”[52] The same kind of similitude is applied to the political condition of England. The future Richard III. asserts:

I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.[53]

And Hastings in the same Play remarks

More pity that the eagle should be mew’d While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.[54]

Among Shakespeare’s political allusions in which the eagle appears there is one of some interest as a reminiscence of a far-off unhappy time in our history when the southern half of the island could be likened to the king of birds, while the northern portion was compared to a destructive kind of vermin.

Once the eagle, England, being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs, Playing the mouse, in absence of the cat, To tear and havoc more than she can eat.[55]

The contemplation of the various misfortunes that may befall even the king of birds leads to the reflection:

Often, to our comfort, shall we find The sharded beetle in a safer hold Than is the full-wing’d eagle.[56]

The last line of this quotation recalls another passage in which, as if the writer had watched the bird on the wing, the majestic sweep of its flight is pictured:

The course I hold Flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.[57]

The eagle has been credited with a nobility of nature in keeping with his regal rank:

The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody.[58]

Shakespeare may have seen an eagle in confinement, for his description of its manner of feeding seems as if drawn from actual observation:

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone, Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone.[59]

Whether in captivity or in stuffed specimens, the dramatist had evidently set eyes on the bird close at hand, so as to be able to put so whimsical a comparison into Falstaff’s mouth:

My own knee! When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle’s talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman’s thumb-ring.[60]

[Sidenote: _Hawks and Hawking_]

Shakespeare’s acquaintance with the family of HAWKS was manifestly of the most intimate kind. These birds were common natives of the country, and in great request for the sport of falconry. His writings prove him to have had a detailed knowledge of the terminology of this sport, and he was probably himself a keen falconer in his early years, if not throughout his life. His Plays are full of the technical language of hawking, which he employs by way of similitude in matters of a wholly different nature. As an example of this habit no better illustration can be given than Petruchio’s description of the method he meant to employ to tame his ill-tempered wife. In the approved lingo of the practical falconer he remarks to himself:

Thus have I politicly begun my reign, And ’tis my hope to end successfully. My falcon now is sharp and passing empty; And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged, For then she never looks upon her lure. Another way I have to man my haggard, To make her come and know her keeper’s call, That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites That bate and beat and will not be obedient. She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat; Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not; As with the meat, some undeserved fault I’ll find about the making of the bed; And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster, This way the coverlet, another way the sheets: Ay, and amid this hurly I intend That all is done in reverend care of her.[61]

The extent to which falconry and its language had taken hold of the society of Elizabeth’s time is well illustrated in the scene in Capulet’s garden where Romeo and Juliet make their declaration of mutual attachment. She has twice retired, but again returns to the window for one last word. He has slowly and reluctantly crept back into the darkness, but a voice from above recalls him:

Hist! Romeo, hist! O, for a falconer’s voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again! Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud.[62]

The actual array of hawking is brought before us in the gay scene in the second part of _King Henry VI._ where the King and Queen, with their company and falconers halloing, appear on the stage after a morning’s sport.

_Queen._ Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook, I saw not better sport these seven years’ day: Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high; And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out.

_King._ But what a point, my lord, your falcon made, And what a pitch she flew above the rest! To see how God in all His creatures works! Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.

_Suffolk._ No marvel, an it like your majesty, My lord Protector’s hawks do tower so well; They know their master loves to be aloft, And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch.

_Gloucester._ My lord, ’tis but a base ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

_Cardinal._ … Believe me, cousin Gloucester, Had not your man put up the fowl so suddenly We had had more sport.[63]

Under the general designation of HAWKS most of our larger birds of prey were employed for purposes of sport, and it is mainly with reference to this use of them that they are mentioned by Shakespeare. FALCON, the name most frequently used by him, may include several distinct species.[64] He evidently admired their flight. He speaks of

A falcon towering in her pride of place.[65]

Again, he makes Bolingbroke boast that he would fight Mowbray

As confident as is the falcon’s flight Against a bird.[66]

He notes how

A falcon towering in the skies, Coucheth the fowl below with his wings’ shade, Whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies.[67]

The falcon generally employed in hawking was the female Peregrine, which was held to be more adapted for the purposes of sport than the male. The KESTREL is referred to by Shakespeare, under the local name of _Staniel_ in the scene in _Twelfth Night_, where Malvolio, gulled by Maria, picks up and begins to guess at the meaning of the clever letter, Sir Toby and Fabian watching in concealment:

_Malvolio._ ‘M. O. A. I. doth sway my life.’ Nay but first, let me see, let me see, let me see.

_Fabian._ With what dish o’ poison has she dressed him!

_Sir Toby._ And with what wing the staniel checks at it![68]

[Sidenote: _The Sparrow-Hawk_]

The SPARROW-HAWK (_Musket_) is only once alluded to in the Plays, and then as a kind of pet name applied by Mrs. Ford to little Robin, the page:

How now, my eyas-musket! what news with you?[69]

The BUZZARD is mentioned several times by Shakespeare, and always in a more or less depreciatory sense. It is a large handsome bird, but compared with the falcon is slow and heavy in flight. So in the encounter of wits between Petruchio and Katharine, he in his characteristic falconer’s language asks her:

O slow-winged turtle, shall a buzzard take thee?[70]

In a passage already cited the buzzards are coupled with the disreputable kites. Professor Newton remarks that “in the old days of falconry, buzzards were regarded with infinite scorn, and hence in common English to call a man a ‘buzzard’ is to denounce him as stupid.”[71]

[Sidenote: _The Kite_]

In the time of Elizabeth the KITE (or _Puttock_), now one of the rarest of our birds, was quite common in this country. It was particularly abundant in London, where it fed on the garbage of the streets, and even of the Thames, and where, together with the raven, it was protected by law as a useful scavenger without pay. The frequency of Shakespeare’s allusions to this bird is good evidence of how familiar it must then have been. It is always referred to in some disparaging way. The “hungry kite” did not scruple to carry off any living creature it could overcome even from the very farm-yard. When Warwick mentions to the Queen his suspicions of foul play in Duke Humphrey’s death, he tells her:

Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so suspicious is this tragedy.[72]

In an earlier part of the same Play York asks:

Were’t not all one, an empty eagle were set To guard the chicken from a hungry kite, As place Duke Humphrey for the King’s protector?

to which the Queen replies:――“So the poor chicken should be sure of death.”[73] In _Winter’s Tale_, when Antigonus is sent on his task to carry the child to some distant desolate spot, he takes it up, saying:

Come on, poor babe: Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say, Casting their savageness aside, have done Like offices of pity.[74]

But it was more especially as feeders on carrion or on weakly animals that the kites were held in disrepute. Cassius, before the battle of Philippi, recognises the forerunners of carnage in the foul birds that hovered above him:

Ravens, crows and kites Fly o’er our heads and downward look on us, As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem A canopy most fatal, under which Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.[75]

At the battle of St. Albans York declares that

The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed; But match to match I have encounter’d him, And made a prey for carrion kites and crows Even of the bonny beast he loved so well.[76]

The thievish propensities of the kite when building its nest led it to plunder all sorts of garments that might be bleaching on the hedge,――pieces of rag, old hats, and bits of paper. This habit is sympathetically referred to by Autolycus, who was himself, as he confesses, another “snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.”――“My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen.”[77] The very name of kite became an epithet of contempt and hatred. When Goneril announced to her father in peremptory terms that he must “disquantity his train,” poor old Lear’s indignation was in response hurled at her in these words, “Detested kite.”[78]

The OSPREY, now almost extirpated as a native of these islands, was probably not uncommon in the time of Elizabeth. It is once mentioned by Shakespeare. Aufidius, the General of the Volscians, alluding to the regard of the Roman people for the banished Coriolanus, reluctantly confesses:

I think he’ll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature.[79]

It would almost seem that the poet had himself watched the bird plunge into some clear lake or pond in southern England, and, with unerring stroke, seize in its talons the unsuspecting fish which its keen eyes had detected from aloft.

[Sidenote: _The Vulture_]