Part 3

The VULTURE, not infrequently mentioned by Shakespeare, is not a British bird, though at rare intervals it has appeared as a migrant in this country. The poet most likely never saw one, his allusions to it being obviously based on its reputation for voracity, and partly also on the legend of Prometheus and the eagle. In one passage a speaker asserts “there cannot be that vulture in you to devour so many.”[80] The expressions “vulture thought” and “vulture folly” are used in the Poems.[81] A favourite observation of the braggart Pistol was “let vultures vile seize on his lungs.” Sir William Lucy speaks of “the vulture of sedition that feeds in the bosom of great commanders.”[82] “The gnawing vulture of the mind” is referred to in _Titus Andronicus_. But the most touching allusion in which this bird is used is that where King Lear, wounded to the quick by Goneril’s unkindness, exclaims to her sister, as he raises his hand to his heart,

O Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth’d unkindness like a vulture here.[83]

[Sidenote: _Parrots and Popinjays_]

Reference may be made to two other exotic birds mentioned by Shakespeare――the Parrot and the Ostrich. As one result of the many voyages of discovery in his day, both in the Old and the New World, the PARROT had become a familiar bird in England. Its loud and harsh clamour, its docility, its clever imitation of human speech, but at the best, the paucity of its vocabulary, are duly noted by our dramatist. In one scene we are told how Falstaff was pleased to have “his poll clawed like a parrot,”[84] in another, a lady declares that in her jealousy she will be “more clamorous than a parrot against rain.”[85] Again we hear of

Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper;[86]

also of an indiscreet officer who in his tipsy fits would “speak parrot, and squabble, swagger, swear and discourse fustian with his own shadow.”[87] Nor must we forget the drawer at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap who had only two words of reply to any call, and of who the merry Prince remarked, with a sly hit at the fair sex: “That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman!”[88] The parrot was also known by the name of popinjay, a word sometimes applied to a foppish dandy. It is used in this sense by Hotspur with reference to

A certain lord, neat and trimly dress’d Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new-reap’d Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home. * * * * * * * I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold, To be so pester’d with a popinjay, Answer’d neglectingly I know not what.[89]

The same word was used of the stuffed bird or other mark set up to be shot at in a competition of marksmanship. This kind of sport in archery continues to be kept up in Scotland, or was only recently abandoned. It has been described by Scott in _Old Mortality_. I have myself attended the summer festival of the “Papingo” at Kilwinning where it is said to have been held ever since 1488. The stuffed bird is there suspended from the end of a pole fastened on the steeple at a height of 100 feet from the ground.

The OSTRICH or ESTRIDGE was doubtless an unfamiliar bird in England in the reign of Elizabeth, though its feathers were in repute. When Hotspur asked after “the nimble-footed, madcap Prince of Wales” and his comrades, he was told by Sir Richard Vernon that they were

All furnished, all in arms; All plumed, like estridges that with the wind Baited like eagles having lately bathed, Glittering in golden coats, like images.[90]

Among the marvels told of this bird, it had the credit of digesting iron for the sake of its health. This reputation is alluded to in Jack Cade’s defiance in Iden’s garden, when he vowed to the honest owner that

I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part.[91]

[Sidenote: _The Cormorant and Pelican_]

Three large water-birds, the Cormorant, Pelican and Loon are 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]

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]

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]

[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]

[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]

[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]

[Sidenote: _The Chough_]