Shakespeare’s menagerie 2: ten whales, five caterpillars and a rhino

 

Shakespeare wasn’t right about pigs. But while whizzing through his plays to locate references to swine, sows and hogs and trying to decide if hogs-heads of wine counted as hogs or not, I thought I would see how other animals fared in his work. Twenty six creatures were selected for analysis on a purely subjective basis. Without being mad or risking madness, it wouldn’t have been possible to cover all the others, since it’s said there are mentions of over 600 different species of bird alone in his plays. I don’t know the truth of this, not having counted them. The only one on my list was the eagle, of which there were 37 instances.

Animals were excluded from the list for different reasons. Crabs, for example,  don’t feature because while it’s pretty clear that the roasted crab in the gossip’s bowl described by Puck was a crab apple, it’s less certain whether the crabs referred to by Caliban when he promises to show Stephano and Trinculo ‘where crabs grow’ are a variety of sour apple or a species of marine decapod crustacean. Given this ambiguity, it seemed easier just to ignore them.

Bears were excluded on the grounds that there were too many cup bearers, people bearing news of one sort or another and those of both sexes with beards. Since the search facility couldn’t distinguish between any of the foregoing and the plantigrade mammal of the family ursidae, I decided to dispense with them also. It was bad enough hunting for rats (22 references). In Hamlet I came across several interesting words of which rat was a component, such as ‘implorators’ and ‘ratifiers’, but also 202 instances of ‘Horatio’ which slowed the search down considerably.

Some figures are distorted. There are 145 lions, but 30 of these are accounted for by Snug’s role as Lion in Pyramus and Thisbe. Similarly, the number of boars is almost doubled by Richard III, since the boar was his personal badge (accounting for 11 out of 23 references). Somewhat arbitrarily, the Boar’s Head tavern was excluded from this count, which seems particularly unfair since there is a celebrated pub of that name in Oswestry (and probably many other towns up and down the country).

But this list was never meant to be scientific. Of the animals on it, a few were exotic (25 tigers, 10 whales, 8 elephants, 7 dolphins, 5 crocodiles, 1 alligator and a rhinoceros), while most are familiar and domestic. Many of the animals have emblematic qualities, so foxes (of which there are 38 mentions) are generally cunning or stealthy; wolves (54) are rapacious, while goats (15) and monkeys (14) are associated with lechery – and not just by Othello. Although I have never seen a renaissance painting of the Virgin Mary with a goat tethered to her ankle, she was frequently depicted with a monkey chained to her leg to indicate she had shackled her lustful nature.

The Bible and the bad press it gives to serpents may have accounted for their relatively high score of 33, though none are positive. Antony and Cleopatra accounts for seven of these references, and her relationship with snakes was at best unfortunate.

The Christian tradition with its imagery surrounding Christ the shepherd, Lamb of God, congregations as flocks etc. may have boosted the numbers of sheep (62) and lambs (47) that feature in the plays, but it could also reflect their economic importance to medieval Europe. Although sheep evolved over the dusty plains of the Middle East (with consequent tendency to foot rot on our wet hillsides), by the 1300s the wool trade was driving England’s wealth. Huge churches were built in East Anglia, as much to glorify the power of their patrons as to the glory of God, while newly enriched peasants such as the Pastons of Norfolk helped erode the old feudal hierarchy. (As it happens, the wife of a fifteenth century John Paston was probably related to Sir John Fastolf, thought to be inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff).

Although not the engines of such wealth, medieval agriculture was powered by oxen, and they along with cows, cattle and kine receive 39 mentions. This is still more than the lamentable 37 given to pigs, swine, hogs and sows, though considerably ahead of 7 for the humble chicken. Of the rest, there were 49 cats, 19 mice and 5 caterpillars.

Based on the list of animals for which I searched, it’s hard to spot any patterns in Shakespeare’s plays. The comedies average 10 different animals per play, the histories 11.3 and tragedies 12.4. Similar results are to be found depending on when the plays were written. The early plays (1589-97) averaged 10.5, those from the mid-period (1598-1605) 11.7 while late plays (1606-14) score 11.6.

Predictably enough, therefore, an early comedy has the lowest number of animals mentioned in a play. That’s the The Comedy of Errors (1593-4) with only six different creatures referred to, but this abysmal record is equalled by Richard II (1595-6), Measure for Measure (1603-4), Pericles (1608-9) and The Winter’s Tale (1610-11). King Lear is a definite winner with 18 animals referenced (Coriolanus comes in second with 16), but it’s hard to draw conclusions as you only find what you’re looking for. The Tempest, for example, is brimming with wildlife including marmosets, barnacles, scamels, bees, moles and perhaps crabs, though none of those  were on the list. Similarly, The Winter’s Tale would have been lifted from its ignominious shared bottom place if bears had been included, containing as it does the most famous stage note of all time, ‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’

It’s not too surprising that horses should top the list with 350 references. In part this is because they were high status animals, associated with the nobility. When Macbeth destroys the natural order by murdering Duncan, one manifestation of this abnormal state is that the old king’s horses,

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race

Turned wild in nature as they would

Make war with mankind.

Another, more prosaic reason for the high horse count is simply that they were the means by which people were conveyed around. Thus Richard III scores three easy horse points during the Battle of Bosworth when he cries, ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.’

Dogs came in second on the list with 205 mentions. Again, this is not surprising, since dogs were everywhere in medieval society. Though as Macbeth pointed out to the murderers he enlists, not all dogs were equal.

 

    Hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

    Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept

    All by the name of dogs.
 

In other words, there were dogs and dogs. At the noble end were the hunting dogs, prized like Theseus’ hounds, ‘so flewed, so sanded’ their heads hung ‘with ears that sweep away the morning dew.’ At the other are the curs and mongrels, the ‘demi-wolves’ that snarl and scavenge. When Mark Antony cries havoc and lets slip ‘the dogs of war’ he is not releasing docile, house-trained pooches but the rabid, sharp-fanged creatures of nightmare. Shakespeare, incidentally, uses the word ‘creature’ 116 times in his work (mostly to describe humans, as in ‘fair creature’), but only employs the word ‘animal’ 8 times – while ‘beast’ turns in a creditable score of 104.

Although the globe was becoming explored in Shakespeare’s time, most of it was unknown territory harbouring peculiar creatures of all kinds. In a world in which fabulous and improbable animals such as the narwhal, giraffe and rhino were known to exist, it must have been easy to accept the reality of less plausible creatures, such as the phoenix, centaurs, satyrs, cockatrices and dragons - all of which crop up somewhere in his work.

There are no giraffes or narwhals in Shakespeare, but the animals were known about and narwhal tusks had been traded since Viking times. Queen Elizabeth, it seems, was presented with a carved and bejewelled tusk said to have been worth £10,000. At the time that money was enough to buy you a castle, so somebody must have liked her very much.

A widespread belief in medieval times was that the narwhal tusk in fact came from a unicorn. In many ways it must have been easier to believe in the existence of a horse with a single horn growing from its head than a blubbery creature living in the cold waters of the Arctic able to grow a spiral tooth more than three metres long. Apart from which, unicorns look better on a coat of arms.

So any conclusions? Not really, except that Shakespeare’s observation of animals was as quick and acute as his perception of people. He knew their natures, so that when Falstaff says ‘I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one,’ it’s a simile striking in its unexpectedness. It’s also reflects Shakespeare’s knowledge of natural life, since sows have a tendency to roll onto their piglets and suffocate them (hence the fact that intensively farmed pigs are forced into farrowing crates before they give birth, to restrict their movement).

In an equally telling image Antonio assures Sebastian that when they have killed Alonso and Gonzago their followers will be readily won over, taking ‘suggestion as a cat laps milk.’ It’s a wonderfully domestic picture to express the cynical realities of power. In that one phrase he has captured the essence of cat and corruptible humanity. I think of it every time I see our cat lapping at her bowl. Pigs excepted, Shakespeare gets things right. That’s why he’s Shakespeare.

 

An appendix showing what animals feature in which of Shakespeare’s plays is to be found in the Blog section of www.shakespearecomics.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Shakespeare's menagerie 1: the mysterious absence of pigs

 

 

There is a serious shortage of pigs in Shakespeare. This terrible fact only became apparent  in the last few months, since we borrowed three from friends to clear brambles and weed from our field. Never having had a great deal to do with the animal before, I found them sociable, intelligent, hardy, playful and affectionate. And having found them delightful creatures, I wondered why they featured so rarely in the plays.

There is of course one very good reason why nobody refers much to pigs, because until the nineteenth century, ‘pig’, from the Old English ‘picq’, designated the young animal, rather than the adult. Mercutio talks of a ‘tithe-pig’s tail’ (a pig being given as a form of tax to the church), Caliban mentions pig-nuts and Llewellyn extols the pig saying, ‘Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations’ – but since he is Welsh he is a figure of fun and talking palpable nonsense, which is only what Shakespeare’s audience would have expected.

 Apart from Llewellyn, who was actually talking about Alexander the Great, not pigs at all (though we needn’t go into that here), there are only four other references to pigs in Shakespeare – or seven if you count the hedge-pig in Macbeth, boar-pig in Henry IV part 2 and Caliban’s pig-nuts. Of the rest, two are from Dromio in The Comedy of Errors and two from Shylock.

In other words, not a great deal of pigs. The commonly used words for the adult animal were either ‘swine’ or ‘hog’. Sadly, these make few appearances either. There are fifteen references to swine in the complete plays, nine to hogs and four to sows. That means there are fewer mentions of pigs, swine, hogs or sows than there are plays. This of course is deeply distressing to anybody who loves pigs. It is also surprising, since the animal was ubiquitous in medieval England.

Omnivorous, it was able to live quite happily either in countryside or towns, where it was of great value chomping up waste left in the street. Unlike sheep or cattle that only the more prosperous peasants could afford, virtually everyone could own a few pigs, their salted meat a vital source of protein through the lean winter months.

Perhaps the ubiquity of pigs made them invisible, so much a feature they were barely remarked upon. It is also possible that Shakespeare disdained to mention them because of their lower caste associations. This might have been the case if he’d been the Earl of Oxford, which he wasn’t, or could be a reason why his noble characters barely speak of them, but how come so few of his lower-class characters allude to them when they were an integral part of daily life?

Chaucer was different. In the Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner kept ‘pigges bones’ in a glass jar which he sold as holy relics. And when he suggests the Host should kiss the bones because he was the ‘moost enveluped in sinne’, the Host becomes furious and declares,

   I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond
   Instead of relikes or of seintuarie.
   Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie;
   They shul be shrined in an hogges toord!

No translation is required. Any man proposing to cut off another man’s ‘coillons’ and bury them in an ‘hogges toord’ is clearly not happy.

There is nothing of this verbal energy in Shakespeare regarding pigs, almost all his references to the animal being in connection with their lowliness. In King Lear, Cordelia laments the fact her father was reduced to ‘hovel thee with swine’, while Orlando demands to know of his brother, Oliver,

   Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them?
   What prodigal portion have I spent, that I should come to such penury?

Since pigs were low status creatures, it follows that herding them should have been a low status job, as apparent in the parable of the prodigal son. That unfortunate young man is referred to by Falstaff in Henry IV part 1 when complaining the men he’s recruited for the king’s army are nothing but ‘tattered prodigals latterly come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks’ (‘draff’ being ‘pig swill’, ‘refuse’ or ‘garbage’).

 

This lowliness is also implied by Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale when he says that tinkers, near the bottom of the social scale, bear a ‘sow-skin budget’ – a ‘budget’ being a leather pouch or wallet. And since it is famously known to be impossible to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, one supposes such a pouch to be of inferior quality. 

Added to this, there’s a servant in the same play who says, ‘Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair; they call themselves saltiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols’. Even if you didn’t know that ‘the men of hair’ they have turned themselves into are ‘hairy men’ or ‘satyrs’ (and why should you?), you would guess their performance is a ‘gallimaufry’ (a jumble or hodgepodge) because undertaken by carters, swineherds, shepherds and neat (cow)-herds. What else could you expect?

Their dance may have been called a 'pig's breakfast' except that the term as used to mean something unattractive, a muddle or mess wasn't first recorded until 1933. 'Pig-headed' meaning 'stubborn' or 'stupid' dates from 1647 while expressions such as 'sexist pig', 'chauvinist pig' or 'capitalist pig' are obviously modern - though calling somebody a pig of any sort has never been a compliment. Richard III is denounced by Richmond as 'this foul swine' while Queen Margaret calls him 'Thou elvish-marked abortive rooting hog' - but since Richard's personal badge was a boar, he was probably asking for it.

 It's hard to think of any linguistic associations with pigs that aren’t pejorative. ‘Lazy pig’, ‘ugly pig’, ‘greedy pig’, ‘smelly pig’… the list is endless. Most such expressions in Shakespeare identify the animal as either lazy or greedy. In The Taming of the Shrew Lord says of the drunken beggar, ‘How like a swine he lies!’ and in The Two Noble Kinsman Palamon argues that to delay action would be to allow people to think he ‘lay fatting like a swine’.

 

Lady Macbeth does little to enhance the animals’ image when she tells her husband she’ll induce a ‘swinish sleep’ in Duncan’s grooms with wine and wassail. And as if their PR couldn’t get any worse, Macbeth also associates pigs with witchcraft when the First Weird Sister stirs in the blood of a sow ‘that hath eaten/Her nine farrow – while the Second Weird Sister reports she’s been ‘killing swine’ when asked by the first what she’s been doing with herself of late.

On top of all this, two world religions regard the animal as unclean, a fact touched upon in The Merchant when Launcelot complains, 'This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.'

Why pigs are regarded as unclean is open to question, but perhaps simply because they will eat anything, however apparently disgusting. One might have thought this a virtue. It’s precisely because pigs will eat practically anything that they are ideally suited to a peasant economy - nothing is wasted.

For centuries, pigs were a vital part of rural life. Of her childhood in the nineteenth century, Flora Thompson wrote in Lark Rise to Candleford, ‘A good pig fattening in the sty promised a good winter...  The family pig was everybody’s pride and everybody’s business… The children on their way home from school, would fill their arms with sow thistle, dandelion, and choice long grass, or roam along the hedgerows on wet evenings collecting snails in a pail for the pig’s supper.’

Pigs remained important well into last century. A few years before his death in 2002, Alf Davies recorded reminiscences of his Bronygarth childhood in the 1920s. His father was a miner and on the pig-sty wall were two stone carved Celtic heads, now in the British Museum. Of the pig, Alf said, ‘They cut its throat and they drained it out and Mam would be there with a big pan, stirring the blood to stop it curdling. She made black puddings with that, and sausage. We lived like lords for a fortnight.’

The killing of the pigs was not necessarily pleasant. Flora Thompson said it was ‘a noisy, bloody business… but country people of the day had little sympathy for the sufferings of animals.’ Ours went to the local abattoir. It was under half an hour’s drive from home and looked like a jumble of farm buildings. It was only small and our pigs went through together. They didn’t seem distressed and their end would have been swift. I was sorry to see them go, but that was always part of the arrangement. 

They were great companions and it felt a privilege to get to know them. Friendly and gregarious, they were rarely away from one another’s company and there were never any serious disputes. It’s true that we only had sows and that a boar amongst them might have been more disruptive, but they were incredibly tough (surviving the coldest spring for fifty years with several feet of snow on the ground for weeks), inquisitive (though mostly because they liked to find out if anything new was edible), and intelligent (on hot days they quickly learnt to upend their bucket of water so as to make a wallow). They were also great softies and loved being scratched, one of them almost instantly rolling onto her side and closing her eyes with pleasure.

Shakespeare was right about almost everything but he was wrong about pigs. Thanks to Colin and Cath Stevens for letting us have them on our land. Three more arrive shortly…

Photos: Kevin Hall