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,