There are only 14 references to swans in his complete works. Here they are all said and done:
1 Antony and Cleopatra
[III, 2]
Antony
˜Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue,”the swan’s
down-feather,
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.
Ever watch a swan when the wind is blowing? They have an incredible facility to capture wind through their wings. They can billow them out and float by like a galleon at full-sail. They can appear motionless, though if you look at their feet underwater, the effort is visible.
2 As You Like It
[I, 3]
Celia
I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why so am I: we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together;
And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
This metaphor is the quality I had when writing in the ‘Swans necking…’ post. The love between swans is elegant, poised, and true. Their voice remains the same as in Sh’s time. No Roy Hart, Feldenkrais, Alexander techniques necessary in their vocal evolution.
3 Cymbeline
[III, 4]
Imogen
Where then
Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
Are they not but in Britain? I’ the world’s volume
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in ‘t;
In a great pool a swan’s nest: prithee, think
There’s livers out of Britain.
What this little speech means, I haven’t a clue! Britain is a swan’s nest in a big pool, yeah but that last line ‘prithee, think there’s livers out of Britain’? Out of context or what?
The verse is anyway chopped to bits with some form of outburst indicated. Also it is Cymbeline, one of those weird later problem plays he wrote, and Innogen or Imogen is a complicated young female character. She kinda follows the mold of Prospero’s daughter.
4 Henry VI, Part I
[V, 3]
Earl of Suffolk
An earl I am, and Suffolk am I call’d.
Be not offended, nature’s miracle,
Thou art allotted to be ta’en by me:
So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,
Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings.
Swan as protective parent metaphor. Cygnet to swan, i’ve watched it happen. I love the way they change colour from student grey to the regal bridal dress they reach at adulthood.
5 Henry VI, Part III
[I, 4]
Richard Plantagenet (Duke of Gloucester)
The army of the queen hath got the field:
My uncles both are slain in rescuing me;
And all my followers to the eager foe
Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind
Or lambs pursued by hunger-starved wolves.
My sons, God knows what hath bechanced them:
But this I know, they have demean’d themselves
Like men born to renown by life or death.
Three times did Richard make a lane to me.
And thrice cried ‘Courage, father! fight it out!’
And full as oft came Edward to my side,
With purple falchion, painted to the hilt
In blood of those that had encounter’d him:
And when the hardiest warriors did retire,
Richard cried ‘Charge! and give no foot of ground!’
And cried ‘A crown, or else a glorious tomb!
A sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!’
With this, we charged again: but, out, alas!
We bodged again; as I have seen a swan
With bootless labour swim against the tide
And spend her strength with over-matching waves.
Always wanted to see this. That’ll take that smug grin from their beaks! just kidding, but there is a fascination in watching a disaster happen. They too far away to be able to help, you watch helplessly as all hope fades.
6 King John
[V, 7]
Prince Henry
O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes
In their continuance will not feel themselves.
Death, having prey’d upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now
Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds
With many legions of strange fantasies,
Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,
Confound themselves. ‘Tis strange that death
should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
Still harping on Cygnets! The swan-song is that last tearful dirge tinged with magic right? The cygnet partaking in the dying of its mother. Twice as sad. This whole swan metaphor is the crowning conceit on this meditation on death.
7 Merchant of Venice
[III, 2]
Portia
Away, then! I am lock’d in one of them:
If you do love me, you will find me out.
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof.
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music: that the comparison
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And watery death-bed for him. He may win;
And what is music then? Then music is
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
To a new-crowned monarch: such it is
As are those dulcet sounds in break of day
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear,
And summon him to marriage.
The lover may under-go a ‘swan-like end’. There you go rhetoricians, a shorthand for the whole charade that is the swan-song. Once again the dulcet tones of music are reminding us of a swan’s honking and very full-throated voice as it fades and dies.
8 Merry Wives of Windsor
[V, 5]
Falstaff
The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute
draws on. Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me!
Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love
set on thy horns. O powerful love! that, in some
respects, makes a beast a man, in some other, a man
a beast. You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love
of Leda. O omnipotent Love! how near the god drew
to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in
the form of a beast. O Jove, a beastly fault! And
then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think
on ‘t, Jove; a foul fault! When gods have hot
backs, what shall poor men do? Fo?>< r me, I am here a
Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, i' the
forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can
blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my
doe?
Bit of comic relief by Falstaff, in the play written entirely for him. Sh. wrote it in 2 weeks according to the custom that Elizabeth 1st commissioned its writing. Randy old buck that Falstaff! Imagine the delight of delivering that last line, as soliloquy returns to the conclusive narrative, the expectation that can be hung throughout a whole theatre, ...'my doe?' We're in Act 5 remember and the audience is already steeped in dramatic irony, as the whole of 'Merry Wives of Windsor' could easily be labelled the first farce.
9 Othello
[V, 2]
Emilia
What did thy song bode, lady?
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan.
And die in music.
[Singing]
Willow, willow, willow,
Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor;
So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true;
So speaking as I think, I die, I die.’
The Moor, fool he! A handkerchief and whispered suspicions lead him to his fitful dying fall. Desdemona’s servant Emilia, playing her swan-song.
10 Phoenix and the Turtle
Sh: the authors persona
Line13
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
Hmmm! 7 beats to line. ‘Can’ rimes with ‘swan’. Curiouser and curiouser.
11 Rape of Lucrece
Line 1060
Sh: the authors persona
‘The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceived fly with the filth away;
But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day:
Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly,
But eagles gazed upon with every eye.
The purity of the swan is corrupted by Tarquin’s lustful thoughts. A bit like Jove with Leda actually.
12 Rape of Lucrece
Line 1662
Sh: the author’s persona
And now this pale swan in her watery nest
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending;
‘Few words,’ quoth she, ‘Shall fit the trespass best,
Where no excuse can give the fault amending:
In me more woes than words are now depending;
And my laments would be drawn out too long,
To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.
Poor Lucrece most chaste and beautiful of all wives. But for her husband’s bragging of her at camp, she might have been saved. Or does the tragedy all lie in Tarquin’s camp?
13 Romeo and Juliet
[I, 2]
Benvolio
At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest,
With all the admired beauties of Verona:
Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
Benvolio (trans. Good Will, lol) tries to convince his friend Romeo that this new chickie, Juliet, is no better than his old chickie, Rosalind. Teenagers! Before you know it someone is pregnant, poisoned or dead.
14 Titus Andronicus
[IV, 2]
Aaron
What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!
Ye white-limed walls! ye alehouse painted signs!
Coal-black is better than another hue,
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Tell the empress from me, I am of age
To keep mine own, excuse it how she can.’
Typical of Aaron, one of Sh’s most vile characters to choose a metaphor featuring a swan’s ugliest feature. The metaphor is lavishly bathed in the truth.
