The Vulture
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]
The Cormorant
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