Part 5

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]

[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.

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:

By this, lamenting Philomel had ended The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow.[231]

Again in the _Sonnets_:

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.[232]

The poet has brought Philomel into his fairy-land, and has for the moment left out any reference to the alleged mournfulness of her music:

Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: Never harm, Nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good night, with lullaby.[233]

In the Plays it is pleasant to find the bird with its English name and in natural surroundings. When Valentine, one of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, was banished from Milan and from the lady of his love, he pictured to himself among the woes that lay in front of him:

Except I be by Silvia in the night There is no music in the nightingale.

And when afterwards, through stress of circumstances, he found himself compelled to become the captain of a band of outlaws, he found consolation in this wise:

How use doth breed a habit in a man! This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns: Here can I sit alone, unseen of any, And to the nightingale’s complaining notes Tune my distresses and record my woes.[234]

It will be recollected that among the tantalising tricks played off by the lord and his servants upon Christopher Sly, he was asked

Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays And twenty caged nightingales do sing.[235]

Nor can we forget the magnanimous offer of Bottom when he wanted to play the part of the lion, and the danger of his frightening the duchess and the ladies was pointed out to him:

But I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.[236]

The romance of the nightingale’s song was never more thoroughly discarded than by Portia when she returned from her memorable trip to Venice and found a light and music in her hall. She remarked to Nerissa that by night music sounds much sweeter than by day, and received in reply the explanation that “Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.” Portia, however, with her ingenuity of a barrister, insisted in a passage already referred to:

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren.[237]

[Sidenote: _Progress of English Poetry_]

The lapse of two centuries from the time of Chaucer witnessed a change in the mood of English poetry in regard to its treatment of birds. The simple and unaffected joy in the voices of the grove, so conspicuous in the poems of the author of the _Canterbury Tales_, had not become less, but it had been accompanied by the growth of a more observant and contemplative spirit. While bird-music was as much appreciated as ever, a much wider field of interest in the feathered tribes had been entered upon. Greater familiarity with bird-life had been attained, and much more was known about the habits of birds. Of this knowledge use was made by way of simile and illustration in regard to human life. How often and how vividly, for instance, does Shakespeare, by means of an analogy from the world of birds, portray the depth of man’s feelings,――his joy, his sorrow and his suffering!

[Sidenote: _Birds in later Poetry_]

The law of evolution, which has been so supreme in the history of organised life on the globe, does not leave the human mind outside of its influence. If there was proof of progress in poetic insight between the days of Chaucer and those of Shakespeare, we may expect to find on examination that other two centuries did not pass without leaving some evidence of change in the tone of our poetry. To test this inference, some typical examples may be taken from the poetry of the nineteenth century where it deals with birds, for comparison with the quotations which have been cited from our great dramatist. The subject is obviously far too wide to be fully entered upon here; but it may be briefly illustrated by selecting three well-known poems by three of the most illustrious of the English poets of the nineteenth century――the “Ode to the Cuckoo” of Wordsworth, the “Ode to the Nightingale” of Keats, and the “Ode to the Skylark” of Shelley.

Coming anew to these poems from a prolonged perusal of Shakespeare, we are first struck by the fact that although so distinct from each other in thought as well as in music, they are akin in being not mere references to the birds, but actual addresses to particular members of the feathered tribes. In each case the ode is no cold description, but a monologue, glowing with appreciation and love, and spoken as it were directly to the subject itself. The birds are recognised as, like ourselves, “travellers between life and death.” Instead of being regarded as “unreasonable,” that is, devoid of any reasoning faculty, and gifted only with what is called “instinct,” they are felt to be linked with us by the possession of many qualities that are closely akin to some of the purest virtues of humanity. And they are acknowledged to be fellow-creatures, partners with us in the great mystery of life. They are communed with as if man’s longings could be made known to them, and as if they in turn might be brought to feel the reality and depth of his affectionate interest in them, or even perhaps be induced to reveal to him the secret of their careless happiness. The poets in their mystic rapture idealise these songsters until they almost seem to cease to be corporeal beings. Thus Wordsworth:

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering voice? * * * * * * * Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery.

Shelley’s ethereal melody becomes even more ecstatic in his address to the Skylark:

[Sidenote: _Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats_]

Hail to thee, blithe spirit―― Bird thou never wert―― * * * * * * * Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine.

To the modern poet the voices of the birds seem to express more directly and simply than any other kind of music the pure _joie de vivre_. Shelley wrote of his Skylark:

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers,―― All that ever was, Joyous and clear and fresh,――thy music doth surpass. * * * * * * * Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Keats recognised the same joyous feeling in his Nightingale:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,―― That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Each poet seeks to interpret for himself the meaning of the song of the bird and the sources of its inspiration. To Wordsworth the Cuckoo seems to be

Babbling to the vale Of sunshine and of flowers.

To Keats the Nightingale was singing of “summer.” Shelley asks the Skylark:

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?

Again, to the poet’s ear the bird-music awakens memories of the past. To Wordsworth the notes of the Cuckoo brought “a tale of visionary hours” in his boyhood when, in his endeavour to set eyes upon the bird, he would

Often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou were still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

To Keats the vista unfolded of the past reached far beyond his own time:

The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown; Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic easements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

The modern poet finds in the varied notes of the birds not the bodings and portents, superstitiously associated in the olden time with such cries as those of the raven and the owl, but high and solemn thoughts of death and the hereafter. Shelley wrote of his Skylark:

Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

And Keats found his heart attuned by the voice of the Nightingale to the contemplation of his own dissolution:

Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain―― To thy high requiem become a sod.

What the future course of English Poetry will be in this same domain cannot be confidently predicted. Already, after the lapse of another century since the three poems appeared which we have been considering, a certain change in the poetic mood with regard to living Nature can be more or less distinctly perceived. With such a splendid past to contemplate, we may be well assured that our Poetry will continue to be radiant with sympathy for all living things. The birds will not fail to retain their “pride of place” in the affections of each generation of poets, and their voices, in the future as in the past, will abide with man as the source of some of the purest pleasure that can solace his heart.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Legende of Goode Women_, Prologue, 30.

Again he declares:

As for myn entent The birdes song was more convient And more pleasaunt to me by many fold Than mete or drink or any other thing. _Flower and Leaf_, 118.

[2] Prologue, 9.

[3] _Parlement of Foules_, 190.

[4] _The Flower and the Leaf_, 34. Even if this poem be held not to have come from the pen of Chaucer, it shows that he was not alone at an early time in his enthusiasm for birds and their song.

[5] _Much Ado about Nothing_, II. i. 197.

[6] _3 Henry VI._ II. ii. 26.

[7] _Titus Andronicus_, II. i. 93.

[8] _Macbeth_, IV. ii. 34.

[9] _2 Henry VI._ I. iii. 86.

[10] _Hamlet_, III. iii. 67.

[11] _3 Henry VI._ V. vi. 13.

[12] _Lucrece_, 87.

[13] _Venus and Adonis_, 601, 604.

[14] _Ib._ 67.

[15] _Lucrece_, 457.

[16] _3 Henry VI._ IV. vi. 10.

[17] _King Lear_, V. iii. 8.

[18] II. i. 31.

[19] IV. iii. 103.

[20] II. v. 1.

[21] V. iii. 17.

[22] II. i. 15.

[23] II. i. 22.

[24] II. i. 46. The dramatist may perhaps have been thinking of this scene when he afterwards put into Hamlet’s mouth a reiteration of the same view of the indifference of the crowd:

Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play, For some must watch, while some must sleep: Thus runs the world away. _Hamlet_, III. ii. 265.

[25] _Venus and Adonis_, 680.

[26] _Ib._ 697.

[27] III. i. 80.

[28] _King Lear_, IV. i. 37.

[29] _Titus Andronicus_, V. i. 141.

[30] _Venus and Adonis_, 316.

[31] _Titus Andronicus_, III. ii. 52.

[32] _2 Henry IV._ IV. iv. 91.

[33] _Titus Andronicus_, II. iii. 12.

[34] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi.

[35] _Ibid._ xx.

[36] _Sonnet_, lxxiii.

[37] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. ii. 908.

[38] _Titus Andronicus_, V. iii. 68.

[39] _Venus and Adonis_, 431.

[40] _Lucrece_, 869.

[41] _Henry V._ I. i. 60.

[42] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi.

[43] _Lucrece_, 1107-1125.

[44] _Phoenix and Turtle_, 9.

[45] Chaucer places at the head of his large company of feathered creatures “the royal egle that with his sharpe look perceth the Sonne,” _Parlement of Foules_, 330.

[46] _Richard II._ III. iii. 68.

[47] _3 Henry VI._ II. i. 91.

[48] IV. iii. 327.

[49] IV. iii. 222.

[50] _Timon of Athens_, IV. iii. 222.

[51] _Coriolanus_, III. i. 136.

[52] _Troilus and Cressida_, I. ii. 235.

[53] _Richard III._ I. iii. 70.

[54] _Ib._ I. i. 132.

[55] _Henry V._ I. ii. 169.

[56] _Cymbeline_, III. iii. 19.

[57] _Timon of Athens_, I. i. 51.

[58] _Titus Andronicus_, IV. iv. 83.

[59] _Venus and Adonis_, 55.

[60] _1 Henry IV._ II. iv. 320.

[61] _Taming of the Shrew_, IV. i. 172.

[62] _Romeo and Juliet_, II. ii. 158. The tassel-gentle or tercel-gentle was the male gos-hawk, much used in falconry.

[63] _2 Henry VI._ II. i. 1-46.

[64] Chaucer alludes to

The gentil faucon, that with his feet distreyneth The Kinges hond. _Parliament_, 337.

[65] _Macbeth_, II. iv. 12.

[66] _Richard II._ I. iii. 61.

[67] _Lucrece_, 506.

[68] II. v. 102.

[69] _Merry Wives of Windsor_, III. iii. 18. Musket or Musquet-hawk was an old name for the cock Sparrow-hawk, and ‘eyas’ meant a fledgling.

Before passing from the subject of hawks and hawking, I should state that the sport is not yet wholly extinct in this country, and that we have at least two extant memorials of the time when it was a favourite pastime here. There is still among our King’s Court officials a Hereditary Grand Falconer, the office being held in the family of the Duke of St. Albans. In old times, and for many generations, the royal stud of hawks was kept at Charing Cross in buildings that were known as The Mews. In the reign of Henry VIII. these mews were turned into stables for horses, but the time-honoured name still clung to them. It became customary to call by this name lanes flanked with stables, and this practice has continued down to our own day. When we speak of “mews,” however, it is always horses and never hawks that come into our minds.

[70] _Taming of the Shrew_, II. i. 206.

[71] _Dictionary of Birds_, p. 67.

[72] _2 Henry VI._ III. ii. 191. Chaucer refers to “the coward Kyte.”

[73] III. i. 248.

[74] II. iii. 184.

[75] _Julius Caesar_, V. i. 84.

[76] 2 _Henry VI._ V. ii. 9.

[77] _Winter’s Tale_, IV. iii. 23.

[78] _Lear_ I. iv. 262.

[79] _Coriolanus_, IV. vii. 33.

[80] _Macbeth_, IV. iii. 73.

[81] _Venus and Adonis_, 551; _Lucrece_, 556.

[82] _1 Henry VI._ IV. iii. 47.

[83] _Lear_, II. iv. 132.

[84] _2 Henry IV._ II. iv. 249.

[85] _As You Like It_, IV. i. 134.

[86] _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 52.

[87] _Othello_, II. iii. 270.

[88] _1 Henry IV._ II. iv. 95.

[89] _1 Henry IV._ I. iii. 33-52.

[90] _1 Henry IV._ IV. i. 97.

[91] _2 Henry VI._ IV. x. 27.

[92] _Richard II._ II. i. 38. _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, I. i. 4. _Coriolanus_, I. i. 119. _Troilus and Cressida_, II. ii. 6.

[93] _Hamlet_, IV. v. 142.

[94] _Lear_, III. iv. 71.

[95] _Macbeth_, V. iii. 11.

[96] IV. vi. 17.

[97] II. iii. 82.

[98] Thus in the song of the “Ewie wi’ the crooked horn” the knave that did the mischief is thus maledicted:

O had I but the loon that did it, I hae sworn as well as said it, Though the parson should forbid it I wad gie his neck a thraw.

[99] _Hamlet_, IV. v. 40.

[100] _Venus and Adonis_, 529.

[101] _2 Henry VI._ I. iv. 16.

[102] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. ii. 899.

[103] _3 Henry VI._ II. i. 130.

[104] _Macbeth_, II. iv. 13.

[105] _Macbeth_, II. ii. 2-4.

[106] _Ibid._ II. iii. 57.

[107] _Julius Caesar_, I. iii. 26.

[108] _Richard II._ III. iii. 182.

[109] _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, V. i. 364. Chaucer refers to “The oule that of dethe the bode bringeth.” _Parlement_, 343.

[110] _Henry VI._ V. vi. 44.

[111] _Macbeth_, IV. i. 17.

[112] _Tempest_, V. i. 88.

[113] _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, II. ii. 5.

[114] II. ii. 188.

[115] V. ii. 881.

[116] _Merchant of Venice_, V. i. 110.

[117] _1 Henry IV._ III. ii. 75.

[118] _Anthony and Cleopatra_, II. vi. 28.

[119] _Lucrece_, 848.

[120] _1 Henry IV._ II. iv. 343.