The Ornithology of Shakespeare Critically examined, explained and illustrated — Reading Companion

From the Preface to the Pit: Structure and Method

Harting’s preface explains that his initial articles in The Zoologist (1866) treated only British birds, seriatim, following Yarrell’s History of British Birds. For the book he “re-arranged and re-wrote the whole,” grouping birds into natural orders and adding foreign and domestic species. This structural shift from alphabetical or taxonomic listing to thematic chapters—each devoted to a group such as game birds, waterfowl, or songbirds—allows Harting to compare Shakespeare’s usage across related species. The method also lets him incorporate longer digressions, such as the detailed account of cock-fighting preparation quoted from an old manual, which includes the feeder licking the bird’s eye and the use of “dust of the herb Robert” for wounds. These set pieces give the book a texture part reference work, part natural-history essay.

Recurring Images: Peacocks, Cocks, and the East

Harting repeatedly returns to birds of Eastern origin, tracing how Shakespeare uses them for both simile and symbol. The peacock appears in 1 Henry VI and Troilus and Cressida—Talbot “like a peacock, sweep[s] along his tail,” and Ajax “stalks up and down like a peacock,—a stride and a stand.” Harting supplies the classical price (1,000 drachmæ at Athens) and notes that peacocks’ crests were among the ornaments of English kings. The domestic cock receives even fuller treatment: Harting devotes pages to the ancestry debate (Gallus bankiva as the wild progenitor, following Darwin) and to the elaborate Elizabethan regimen for game-cocks—cutting the mane, clipping wing feathers, scraping spurs. These passages show Harting’s interest in the material culture behind Shakespeare’s metaphors.

Movement Between Scenes: Bird as Bridge

Harting often moves from a single Shakespearean line to a broader natural-history discussion, then back to another play. For instance, the peacock entry begins with Talbot’s boast, jumps to Ælian’s account of Greek prices, then to King John’s fines paid in “peacocks’ crests,” and finally returns to Troilus and Cressida. This zigzag structure mirrors the way a bird’s name can carry different connotations in different dramatic contexts. Harting does not argue for a unified symbolic system; instead, he lets the bird’s real habits and historical associations illuminate each separate usage. The effect is cumulative: the reader sees how Shakespeare drew on a shared Elizabethan knowledge of birds that was at once practical, folkloric, and literary.

Evidence and Inference in the Excerpts

The excerpts provided cover only the preface, the game-cock section, and part of the peacock entry. From these, we can observe that Harting relies on printed sources (Yarrell, Darwin, Ælian) and on unpublished manuals (“the feeder had to lick his bird’s eye”). He is careful to note when a practice is “as old as the Athenians” and when steel spurs were not yet used. The book’s overall argument—that Shakespeare’s ornithology is accurate and detailed—is supported by such concrete parallels, but the excerpts do not reveal how Harting handles ambiguous or erroneous references. The reader should expect a methodical, evidence-based approach, with occasional forays into etymology and folklore, but no overarching thesis beyond the demonstration of Shakespeare’s knowledge.

Harting’s book rewards readers who enjoy following a single thread—a bird’s name—through multiple plays and centuries of natural-history writing. Because the chapters are self-contained, one can dip into the entry on the lark or the owl without reading straight through. The work is best approached as a companion to the plays, not a systematic treatise; its value lies in the specific, often surprising details Harting unearths about how Shakespeare’s original audiences would have heard a bird reference.

Flicking through Harting’s notes on the lark’s song, I felt a quiet ache for the open fields where such birds once thrived, not just in verse but in living air. That led me back to The Mentor: Game Birds of America, Vol. 1, Num. 34, Serial No. 34 — Background and Themes, and I paused there, remembering a clear dawn in my own memory, the smell of wet grass and distant wings.