Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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however, asks of Timon (“Timon of Athens,” iv. 3):

      “will these moss’d trees,

      That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,

      And skip when thou point’st out?”

      Turbervile, in his “Booke of Falconrie,” 1575, says that the great age of this bird has been ascertained from the circumstance of its always building its eyrie or nest in the same place. The Romans considered the eagle a bird of good omen, and its presence in time of battle was supposed to foretell victory. Thus, in “Julius Cæsar” (v. 1) we read:

      “Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign

      Two mighty eagles fell; and there they perch’d,

      Gorging and feeding from our soldiers’ hands.”

      It was selected for the Roman legionary standard,208 through being the king and most powerful of all birds. As a bird of good omen it is mentioned also in “Cymbeline” (i. 1):

      “I chose an eagle,

      And did avoid a puttock;”

      and in another scene (iv. 2) the Soothsayer relates how

      “Last night the very gods show’d me a vision,

      … thus: —

      I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d

      From the spungy south to this part of the west,

      There vanish’d in the sunbeams: which portends

      (Unless my sins abuse my divination),

      Success to the Roman host.”

      The conscious superiority209 of the eagle is depicted by Tamora in “Titus Andronicus” (iv. 4):

      “The eagle suffers little birds to sing,

      And is not careful what they mean thereby,

      Knowing that with the shadow of his wing,

      He can at pleasure stint their melody.”

       Goose. This bird was the subject210 of many quaint proverbial phrases often used in the old popular writers. Thus, a tailor’s goose was a jocular name for his pressing-iron, probably from its being often roasting before the fire, an allusion to which occurs in “Macbeth” (ii. 3): “come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose.” The “wild-goose chase,” which is mentioned in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4) – “Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done” – was a kind of horse-race, which resembled the flight of wild geese. Two horses were started together, and whichever rider could get the lead, the other was obliged to follow him over whatever ground the foremost jockey chose to go. That horse which could distance the other won the race. This reckless sport is mentioned by Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” as a recreation much in vogue in his time among gentlemen. The term “Winchester goose” was a cant phrase for a certain venereal disease, because the stews in Southwark were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, to whom Gloster tauntingly applies the term in the following passage (“1 Henry VI.,” i. 3):

      “Winchester goose! I cry – a rope! a rope!”

      In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 10) there is a further allusion:

      “Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.”

      Ben Jonson211 calls it:

      “the Winchestrian goose,

      Bred on the banke in time of Popery,

      When Venus there maintain’d the mystery.”

      “Plucking geese” was formerly a barbarous sport of boys (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” v. 1), which consisted in stripping a living goose of its feathers.212

      In “Coriolanus” (i. 4), the goose is spoken of as the emblem of cowardice. Marcius says:

      “You souls of geese,

      That bear the shapes of men, how have you run

      From slaves that apes would beat!”

       Goldfinch. The Warwickshire name213 for this bird is “Proud Tailor,” to which, some commentators think, the words in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1) refer:

      “Lady P. I will not sing.

      Hotsp. ’Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast teacher.”

      It has, therefore, been suggested that the passage should be read thus: “’Tis the next way to turn tailor, or red-breast teacher,” i. e., “to turn teacher of goldfinches or redbreasts.”214 Singer,215 however, explains the words thus: “Tailors, like weavers, have ever been remarkable for their vocal skill. Percy is jocular in his mode of persuading his wife to sing; and this is a humorous turn which he gives to his argument, ‘Come, sing.’ ‘I will not sing.’ ‘’Tis the next [i. e., the readiest, nearest] way to turn tailor, or redbreast teacher’ – the meaning being, to sing is to put yourself upon a level with tailors and teachers of birds.”

      Gull. Shakespeare often uses this word as synonymous with fool. Thus in “Henry V.” (iii. 6) he says:

      “Why, ’tis a gull, a fool.”

      The same play upon the word occurs in “Othello” (v. 2), and in “Timon of Athens” (ii. 1). In “Twelfth Night” (v. 1) Malvolio asks:

      “Why have you suffer’d me to be imprison’d,

      Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,

      And made the most notorious geck and gull

      That e’er invention played on? tell me why.”

      It is also used to express a trick or imposition, as in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3): “I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it.”216 “Gull-catchers,” or “gull-gropers,” to which reference is made in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), where Fabian, on the entry of Maria, exclaims: “Here comes my noble gull-catcher,” were the names by which sharpers217 were known in Shakespeare’s time.218 The “gull-catcher” was generally an old usurer, who lent money to a gallant at an ordinary, who had been unfortunate in play.219 Decker devotes a chapter to this character in his “Lanthorne and Candle-light,” 1612. According to him, “the gull-groper is commonly an old mony-monger, who having travailed through all the follyes of the world in his youth, knowes them well, and shunnes them in his age, his whole felicitie being to fill his bags with golde and silver.” The person so duped was termed a gull, and the trick also. In that disputed passage in “The Tempest” (ii. 2), where Caliban, addressing Trinculo, says:

      “sometimes I’ll get thee

      Young scamels from the rock.”

      some think that the sea-mew, or sea-gull, is

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