The Birds of Shakespeare 
its young with its own blood. Laertes in 
Hamlet affirms that to his father’s friends 
Thus wide I’ll ope my arms, 
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican, 
Repast them with my blood.! 
When Lear, in the storm on the open 
heath, sees the disguised Edgar at the 
entrance of the hovel, he will not be 
persuaded that the poor man could have 
been so beggared save by his unkind 
daughters, and he asks Kent 
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers 
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh ? 
Judicious punishment! ’twas this flesh begot 
Those pelican daughters.” 
The’ ‘word .“Loon”?)or |) ** Gown 778 
employed by the poet to denote a rogue 
or low fellow. A messenger of evil tidings 
is called by Macbeth a “ cream-faced 
loon.”*? In the play of Pericles: we hea 
of a company that would include “ both 
lord and lown”;* and in Othello Iago 
1 Hamlet, wv. v. 142. 2 Lear, i. iv. 71. 
3 Macbeth, v. iil. 11. Ary. Vi.) 17. 
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