“I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes, with Proteus, for advantages.”
Cockatrice. This imaginary creature, also called a basilisk, has been the subject of extraordinary prejudice. It was absurdly said to proceed from the eggs of old cocks. It has been represented as having eight feet, a crown on the head, and a hooked and recurved beak.[392] Pliny asserts that the basilisk had a voice so terrible that it struck terror into all other species. Sir Thomas Browne,[393] however, distinguishes the cockatrice from the ancient basilisk. He says, “This of ours is generally described with legs, wings, a serpentine and winding tail, and a crest or comb somewhat like a cock. But the basilisk of elder times was a proper kind of serpent, not above three palms long, as some account; and different from other serpents by advancing his head and some white marks, or coronary spots upon the crown, as all authentic writers have delivered.” No other animal, perhaps, has given rise to so many fabulous notions. Thus, it was supposed to have so deadly an eye as to kill by its very look, to which Shakespeare often alludes. In “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 2), Juliet says:
“say thou but ‘I,’
And that bare vowel, ‘I,’ shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.”
In “Richard III.” (iv. 1) the Duchess exclaims:
“O my accursed womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatch’d to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous!”
In “Lucrece” (l. 540) we read:
“Here with a cockatrice’ dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.”
Once more,[394] in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 4), Sir Toby Belch affirms: “This will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices.” It has also been affirmed that this animal could not exercise this faculty unless it first perceived the object of its vengeance; if first seen, it died. Dryden has alluded to this superstition:
“Mischiefs are like the cockatrice’s eye,
If they see first they kill, if seen, they die.”
Cockatrice was a popular phrase for a loose woman, probably from the fascination of the eye.[395] It appears, too, that basilisk[396] was the name of a huge piece of ordnance carrying a ball of very great weight. In the following passage in “Henry V.” (v. 2), there is no doubt a double allusion—to pieces of ordnance, and to the fabulous creature already described: