Necessity’s sharp pinch.”
And this seems more likely to be the correct reading. Albeit, in support of the former version, the following passage in Lucrece has been adduced:—
“No noise but owls’ and wolves’ death-boding cries.”
It is not to be supposed that Shakespeare was always a firm believer in the popular notions respecting animals and birds to which he has made allusion. In many cases he had a particular motive in introducing such notions, although possibly aware of their erroneous nature, and he evidently adopted them only to impart an air of reality to the scenes which he depicted, and to bring them home more forcibly to the impressionable minds of his auditors, to whom such “folks-lore” would be familiar. This is notably the case as regards the owl, and no one can read the first scene in the second act of Macbeth, or the fourth scene in the first act of Henry VI. (Part II.),
without feeling the impressive effect produced by the introduction of a bird which is held in such detestation by the ignorant, but which naturalists have shown to be not only harmless, but useful.
THE OWL’S GOOD NIGHT.
But—
“The owl, night’s herald, shrieks,—’tis very late.”
Venus and Adonis.
And, therefore, with Boyet, in Love’s Labour’s Lost (Act iv. Sc. 1), we will say:—