FullReads

In calling the choughs “russet-pated” he makes the bill tinge the whole head, or perhaps gives the effect of the birds’ markings when seen at a distance; the bill is red, the head is black. The chough is a species of crow.

A poet must know the birds well to make one of his characters say, when he had underestimated a man, “I took this lark for a bunting,” as LAFEU says of PAROLLES in “All’s Well that Ends Well.” The English bunting is a field-bird like the lark, and much resembles the latter in form and color, but is far inferior as a songster. Indeed, Shakespeare shows his familiarity with nearly all the British birds.

“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.”

In “Much Ado about Nothing” we get a glimpse of the lapwing:–

“For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.”

The lapwing is a kind of plover, and is very swift of foot. When trying to avoid being seen they run rapidly with depressed heads, or “close by the ground,” as the poet puts it. In the same scene, HERO says of URSULA:–

“I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock.”

The haggard falcon is a species of hawk found in North Wales and in Scotland. It breeds on high shelving cliffs and precipitous rocks. Had Shakespeare been an “amateur poacher” in his youth? He had a poacher’s knowledge of the wild creatures. He knew how fresh the snake appears after it has cast its skin; how the hedgehog makes himself up into a ball and leaves his “prickles” in whatever touches him; how the butterfly comes from the grub; how the fox carries the goose; where the squirrel hides his store; where the martlet builds its nest, etc.

“Now is the woodcock near the gin,”

says FABIAN, in “Twelfth Night,” and

“Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits,”

says CLAUDIO to LEONATO, in “Much Ado.”

“Instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet,”

says CALIBAN, in The Tempest.” Sings the fool in “Lear:”–

“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo
so long
That it had it head bit off by it
young.”

The hedge-sparrow is one of the favorite birds upon which the European cuckoo imposes the rearing of its young. If Shakespeare had made the house sparrow, or the blackbird, or the bunting, or any of the granivorous, hard-billed birds, the foster-parent of the cuckoo, his natural history would have been at fault.

Shakespeare knew the flowers, too, and knew their times and seasons:–

“When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight.”

They have, in England, the cuckoo-flower, which comes in April and is lilac in color, and the cuckoo-pint, which is much like our “Jack in the pulpit;” but the poet does not refer to either of these (if he did, we would catch him tripping), but to buttercups, which are called by rural folk in Britain “cuckoo-buds.”

In England the daffodil blooms in February and March; the swallow comes in April usually; hence the truth of Shakespeare’s lines:–

“Daffodils,
That come before the swallow
dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”

The only flaw I notice in Shakespeare’s natural history is in his treatment of the honey-bee, but this was a flaw in the knowledge of the times as well. The history of this insect was not rightly read till long after Shakespeare wrote. He pictures a colony of bees as a kingdom, with