THE WOODCOCK’S HEAD.
Under the head of “Wild-Fowl” we shall have occasion, in a subsequent chapter, to allude to the opinion of Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls, and to the discussion on this subject in Twelfth Night, when the clown portentously observes to Malvolio,—
“Fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.”—Twelfth Night, Act iv. Sc. 2.
The “woodcock’s head” in Shakespeare’s day, on account of its shape, was a fashionable term for a tobacco-pipe.[130] “Those who loved smoking sat on the stage-stools, with their three sorts of tobacco, and their lights by them, handing matches on the point of their swords, or sending out their pages for real Trinidado. They actually practised smoking under professors who taught them tricks; and the intelligence offices were not more frequented, no, nor the pretty seamstresses’ shops at the Exchange, than the new tobacco office.”[131]
It is somewhat remarkable that while Shakespeare’s contemporary, Ben Jonson, has founded whole scenes upon
the practice of smoking, he himself has made no mention of it. Some commentators have brought this forward as a proof of the comparative earliness of many of his dramas, but smoking was in general use long before Shakespeare left London, and he drew his manners almost entirely from his own age, making mention of masks, false hair, pomanders, and fardingales, all of which were introduced about the same time. But apropos of “the woodcock’s head,” we are wandering away from Shakespeare’s birds.
THE SNIPE.
The Snipe (Scolopax gallinago) has been less frequently noticed by him than the woodcock. Indeed we have been unable to find more than one passage in which it is mentioned.
Iago, alluding to Roderigo, says:—
“For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,