How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
Poor harmless fly!
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill’d him.”
Titus Andronicus, Act iii. Sc. 2.
This is but one of the many lessons taught us by Shakespeare in his allusions to the animal world, and the kindly spirit which characterizes all his dealings with animals is frequently exemplified throughout the Plays; perhaps nowhere so clearly as in Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 1, where we are told—
“The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great