Animals

In his plays Shakespeare deploys the cormorant as a symbol of insatiable hunger and gluttony, drawing also on the bird’s reputation as a portent of doom and evil.

Artist Missy Dunaway explores references to the pheasant in “The Winter’s Tale” on her bird-watching expedition through Shakespeare’s works.

Artist Missy Dunaway explores references to the kingfisher in two Shakespeare plays, King Lear and 1 Henry VI.

With the golden eagle, we continue following artist Missy Dunaway on a bird-watching expedition through Shakespeare’s works. The eagle soars throughout Shakespeare’s world, Renaissance literature, and beyond – symbolizing strength, power, and the divine.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom sings a tune about blackbirds to keep up his courage when he finds himself in strange circumstances.

Thanks to its peculiar reproductive cycle, distant migration, and haunting melodies, the cuckoo may hold the title for most folklore among Shakespeare’s birds.

The barnacle goose, referenced in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” was an unmistakable symbol of metamorphosis for a 17th-century audience. It was commonly believed that the barnacle goose evolved from driftwood. Artist Missy Dunaway shares her painting of this fascinating bird along…

Take our quiz on the amazing variety of animals in Shakespeare’s plays, from a mix of dogs and horses to song birds, ferocious wild animals, and much more.

Cats were considered pests, carriers of disease, and indicators of witchcraft, but also objects of affection and partners in play.

Shakespeare and his contemporaries were fascinated with bees as metaphors for human behavior, especially when it came to politics and government.

Conrad Gessner. Icones animalium quadrupedum. 1560. Folger Shakespeare Library. Owls were bad omens for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The general of the French forces, facing an English emissary in Henry VI, Part 1, calls him “Thou ominous and fearful owl…

Edward Topsell. The historie of foure-footed beastes. 1607. Folger Shakespeare Library. STC 24123 Copy 2. When, in Henry IV, Part II, Bardolph calls his page a “whoreson upright rabbit,” he’s not exactly thinking of the animal we now know as…