The Birds of Shakespeare 
mingles incognito among his soldiers in 
France, one of them tells him: 
That’s a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, 
that a poor and a private displeasure can do 
against a monarch! you may as well go about to 
turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with 
a peacock’s feather.1 
“«« Fly pride,’ says the peacock,” is a pithy 
proverb put into the mouth of Dromio of 
Syracuse.” 
The Dove and the PIGEON are often men- 
tioned in Shakespeare’s writings, without 
any essential distinction being drawn 
between them. Thus, we read in one 
passage that “Venus yokes her silver 
doves,”’* while in another place the birds 
appear as ‘“‘ Venus’ pigeons. Again, in 
a less poetical sphere, they are even inter- 
changed as articles of food. On the one 
hand we find Justice Shallow ordering 
‘““some pigeons” and any other “ pretty 
1 King Henry V.1v.i. 195. * Comedy of Errors, IV. lll. 74. 
3 Venus and Adonis,1190.  * Merchant of Venice, i. vi. 5. 
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