Preface 
THE attentive reader of Shakespeare’s Poems 
and Plays can hardly fail to notice the 
remarkable frequency of the Poet’s allu- 
sions to Birds, not merely as a great choir 
of songsters, enlivening the woods and 
fields with their varied music, but as 
individual creatures, each endowed with its 
own special characters. Shakespeare has 
drawn an assemblage of bird-portraits to 
which, for extent and variety, no equal is 
to be found in any other great English 
poet. Making ample use of what he had 
himself observed about Birds in their native 
haunts, and combining this personal know- 
ledge with what he could obtain from 
literature and from popular fancy or super- 
stition, he has employed the material thus 
gathered to illustrate, in many an apt simile 
Vv 
