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]