The Birds of Shakespeare 
allusions to birds, but is displayed also in 
his references to animals both higher and 
lower in the scale of being, which “ have 
never run the risk of familiarity with 
man.” In the remarkable Play which we 
have just been considering it is conspicu- 
ously prominent. The banished Duke in 
the Forest of Arden asks his companions 
if they will go with him to kill some 
venison, but before their answer comes, he 
immediately adds, on reflection : 
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, 
Being native burghers of this desert city, 
Should in their own confines with forked heads 
Have their round haunches gored.! 
This commiseration is expressed much 
more forcibly by one of his “ co-mates 
and brothers in exile,’ the melancholy 
Jaques, who had been overheard, as he lay 
under an oak near the brook, lamenting the 
fate of a wounded stag that had come to 
languish at the same spot. As he watched 
the creature . 
eh ee ae J 
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