ACT IV.
Scene 1. Page 543.
Ver. All plum'd like estridges, that wing the wind
Bated like eagles having lately bath'd:
The evident corruption or mutilation in these lines, has rendered any attempt to explain them a task of great difficulty. It will be necessary in the first place to ascertain the exact sense of the word estridge; and although it is admitted that the ostrich was occasionally so denominated by our old writers, it is by no means certain that this bird is meant in the present instance. It may seem a very obvious comparison between the feathers of a crested helmet and those of the ostrich; and had the expression plum'd like estridges stood singly, no doubt whatever could have arisen. It is what follows that occasions the difficulty.
The old copies read, with the wind: now if the ostrich had been here alluded to, the conjectural substitution of wing would have been absolutely requisite; but the line which follows cannot by any possible construction be made to apply to that bird. It relates altogether to falconry, a sport to which Shakspeare is perpetually referring. Throughout the many observations on these difficult lines, it has been quite overlooked that estridge signifies a goshawk. In this sense the word is used in Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Scene 2:
"And in that mood [of fury] the dove will peck the estridge."
There is likewise a similar passage in the third part of King Henry VI., which may serve as a commentary on the above line:
"So cowards fight, when they can fly no further;
So doves do peck the faulcon's piercing talons."
It would be absurd to talk of a dove pecking an ostrich; the allusion is to the practice of flying falcons at pigeons. Thus Golding in his translation of Ovid's metamorphoses, fo. 9: