In Bottom’s song in Midsummer Night’s Dream the bird is styled “the plain-song cuckoo gray,” as if its music were as dull as the colour of its coat. When Portia comes back from her memorable trip to Venice and re-enters her home, Lorenzo, who is eagerly expecting her return, says to Jessica:
That is the voice,
Or I am much deceived, of Portia.
Whereupon Portia, overhearing him, remarks to Nerissa:
He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo,
By the bad voice.[116]
As summer advances, the cuckoo’s note, having grown familiar, no longer attracts the notice of the country-folk, as it did when the bird first appeared in April. King Henry IV. avails himself of this common observation when he lectures his son on his misdoings, and compares the Prince’s career to that of “the skipping king” of the previous reign, who lost the respect of the people, and
Was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard not regarded.[117]
The habit of this bird to lay its egg in another’s nest is naturally made much of in the Plays. We are told that “the cuckoo builds not for himself,”[118] and the poet puts questions which still await an answer: