The Birds of Shakespeare 
The REDBREAST Of RUDDOCK is most 
fully referred to in Cymbeline. Arviragus 
enters, bearing in his arms Imogen, seem- 
ingly dead, and as he lays the body down 
he thus addresses it: 
With fairest flowers, 
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack 
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander 
Out-sweetened not thy breath : the ruddock would 
With charitable bill,—O bill, sore shaming 
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie 
Without a monument !—bring thee all this ; 
Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are none, 
To winter-ground thy corse.! 
The list of signs whereby Speed knows 
that his master Valentine is in love begins 
thus: “first, you have learned, like Sir 
Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a 
male-content ; to relish a love-song, like 
a robin-redbreast ; to walk alone, like one 
that had the pestilence.”* When Hotspur 
1 Cymbeline, tv. 11. 219. Chaucer speaks of “the tame 
ruddock.” 
2 Two Gentlemen of Verona, u.1. 16. 
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