Birds & the Bible
Seona Anderson, November 3rd 2023
There are around 60 different bird species in Shakespeare’s works as well as many types of bird metaphors. These bird species include domesticated birds, game birds, birds of prey, wild birds of forest, field and water and exotic birds from distant lands.
Twenty of these bird species are also found in the texts of the Geneva Bible. The Bible birds form part of religious rites, act as metaphors, signify nobility or ill omen and many of them are listed in the unclean foods of the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Since the first state sponsored publication of the Bible in English in 1539 there have been many subsequent translations which have offered different identifications for some of the bird species. Translators would have to be proficient in several languages as well as having a detailed knowledge of the ecology and wildlife of the Holy Land to ensure accuracy. Unsurprisingly there are innumerable pathways for confusion and misunderstanding in the identification in some of the bird species mentioned in the Bible and translated into other languages in places far from the original locations.
Before the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and the promotion of translation of Bibles into local languages there was a long-standing tradition of exploring the spiritual characteristics of particular birds in addition to their actual descriptions in the Bible. One of the most influential texts exploring this type of symbolic spiritualism was the Physiologus which was probably written in Alexandria perhaps as early as 140 CE. The Physiologus and writers such as Isidore of Seville and Hugh of Fouilloy shared these spiritual understandings of birds and animals which were further promoted through the popular illustrated medieval bestiaries. These Catholic associations and traditions of plant and animals which were not described in the texts of the Bible became to decline in popularity and practice in the decades and centuries following the Protestant Reformation.
Shakespeare was writing in a period of great religious upheaval and his writing reflects this mixed Protestant and Catholic heritage of spiritual bird symbolism. Likewise Shakespeare’s audience would have had a range of knowledge and experience of birds. They had regular encounters with living wild and domesticated birds but they were also influenced by symbolic characteristics of certain birds.
Sparrows appear more regularly in the Geneva Bible of 1560 and 1599 than in the King Jame’s Bible of 1611. Both Bible versions contain the Sparrow verses in the New Testament books of Matthew and Luke, “are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” (Luke 12:6). Sparrows epitomise humbleness but are still beloved of God. These lines are echoed in the words of Hamlet just before his fatal duel with Laertes, “there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”
The Pelican in her piety theme appears 3 times in Shakespeare, in Hamlet, King Lear and Richard II. The story was included in the Physiologus and made popular in the imagery of medieval bestiaries. The story is that the Pelican chicks strike their parents and are killed but then on the third day the mother Pelican takes pity and pierces her own side with her beak which produces blood which revives the chicks. In the Physiologus the Pelican’s self-sacrifice is compared with that of Christ. The Pelican in her Piety was a popular theme throughout the medieval and into the early modern period appearing in church imagery, woodcuts, textile patterns and others. This image appeared in heraldry, including the arms of the 16th century Bishop Fox of Winchester and is still on the state flag of Louisiana.
However, although the Pelican does appear in the texts of the Bible, there is no pious Pelican in either the Old of New Testament. The Pelican in her Piety was a Catholic bird symbol which was still alive and thriving in Shakespeare’s Protestant world.
Other bird species which gained importance and prominence from their Biblical symbolism included the Dove, Turtle Dove, Eagle and Cockerel. The Owl’s reputation as a bird of ill omen and desolate places is emphasised in the Bible.
More Information
Geneva Bible 1599 Visit the Online Geneva Bible via Bible Gateway
King James Bible 1611 Visit the King James Bible Online
Hugh of Fouilloy’s Book of Birds Read the Book of Birds at Archive.org
