Animals
Birds of Shakespeare: The great cormorant
In his plays Shakespeare deploys the cormorant as a symbol of insatiable hunger and gluttony, drawing also on the bird’s reputation as a portent of doom and evil.
Birds of Shakespeare: The ring-necked pheasant
Artist Missy Dunaway explores references to the pheasant in “The Winter’s Tale” on her bird-watching expedition through Shakespeare’s works.
Birds of Shakespeare: The kingfisher
Artist Missy Dunaway explores references to the kingfisher in two Shakespeare plays, King Lear and 1 Henry VI.
Birds of Shakespeare: The golden eagle
With the golden eagle, we continue following artist Missy Dunaway on a bird-watching expedition through Shakespeare’s works. The eagle soars throughout Shakespeare’s world, Renaissance literature, and beyond – symbolizing strength, power, and the divine.
Birds of Shakespeare: The Eurasian blackbird
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom sings a tune about blackbirds to keep up his courage when he finds himself in strange circumstances.
Birds of Shakespeare: The cuckoo
Thanks to its peculiar reproductive cycle, distant migration, and haunting melodies, the cuckoo may hold the title for most folklore among Shakespeare’s birds.
Birds of Shakespeare: The barnacle goose
The barnacle goose, referenced in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” was an unmistakable symbol of metamorphosis for a 17th-century audience. It was commonly believed that the barnacle goose evolved from driftwood. Artist Missy Dunaway shares her painting of this fascinating bird along…
Quiz: The animals in Shakespeare's plays
Take our quiz on the amazing variety of animals in Shakespeare’s plays, from a mix of dogs and horses to song birds, ferocious wild animals, and much more.
Of the flattering, pampered, reviled, predatory, “harmless, necessary” early modern cat
Cats were considered pests, carriers of disease, and indicators of witchcraft, but also objects of affection and partners in play.
The political insect: Bees as an early modern metaphor for human hierarchy
Shakespeare and his contemporaries were fascinated with bees as metaphors for human behavior, especially when it came to politics and government.
Owls in the early modern imagination: Ominous omens and pitiable sages
Conrad Gessner. Icones animalium quadrupedum. 1560. Folger Shakespeare Library. Owls were bad omens for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The general of the French forces, facing an English emissary in Henry VI, Part 1, calls him “Thou ominous and fearful owl…
Hares, conies, and rabbits: The hunted and the melancholy
Edward Topsell. The historie of foure-footed beastes. 1607. Folger Shakespeare Library. STC 24123 Copy 2. When, in Henry IV, Part II, Bardolph calls his page a “whoreson upright rabbit,” he’s not exactly thinking of the animal we now know as…