Repast them with my blood.”

Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5.

King Lear, too, likens himself to a pelican when speaking of his ungrateful children:—

“Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers

Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?

Judicious punishment! ’Twas this flesh begot

Those pelican daughters.”

King Lear, Act iii. Sc. 4.

Again—

K. Richard.····