In hot digestion of this cormorant war.[92]
The pelican is alluded to in the Shakespearian drama in connection with a popular fable that this bird nourishes its young with its own blood. Laertes in Hamlet affirms that to his father’s friends
Thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.[93]
When Lear, in the storm on the open heath, sees the disguised Edgar at the entrance of the hovel, he will not be persuaded that the poor man could have been so beggared save by his unkind daughters, and he asks Kent
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! ’twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters.[94]