Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos)

Painting by Missy Dunaway. Created with acrylic ink on paper. 30x22 inches (76x56 cm)

Painting Key 

Fauna: 3 Common nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos)

Objects: 4 daggers sourced from the Victoria and Albert Museum (left: England, ca. 1590; right: Italy, late 16th century; top: Great Britain, ca. 1600; bottom: Great Britain, 1605)

Plants mentioned by Shakespeare: pomegranate (seeds), red rose, white rose

Shakespeare’s Nightingale

Occurrences in text: 33 (12 "nightingale" and 11 "Philomel")

Plays: Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Poems: “The Rape of Lucrece,” “Sonnet 102”

Name as it appears in the text: "nightingale," "Philomel"

Warning: This post contains descriptions of sexual violence which some readers may find disturbing.

We met the lark in January, and for February, I painted its musical companion, the nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos). Nightingales are solitary, secretive birds. They are active during the day, although they prefer to sing at night.[1] In Old English, “nihtegale” translates to “night singer.”[2]

Shakespeare often pairs the lark and nightingale as morning and evening counterparts. The lark is Shakespeare's herald of the dawn, and the nightingale symbolizes the eve. The lark and the nightingale are sisters in many ways. They look similar, share a mutual association with music, and represent times of the day. Also, both birds are fabled to have traded eyes with reptiles. The lark was said to have switched eyes with the toad, and the nightingale wears eyes stolen from the serpent—which explains why she stays awake all night, fearing the snake's revenge.[3] 

The nightingale is appropriate to introduce near Valentine's Day, given its prominence in Shakespeare's most famous romance, Romeo and Juliet. In this play, one can hear the nightingale’s song drifting through evening scenes. In one of Shakespeare's most well-known bird references, Juliet mistakes the lark’s song for the nightingale’s, hoping that her evening romance with Romeo can continue. Romeo corrects her and departs her bedroom at dawn.

Romeo and Juliet (Act III, Scene 5, Line 1)

JULIET: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO: It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

The nightingale's relationship to time has a more profound significance than simply being a symbol of night. Rebecca Anne Bach shines some light on this in her book, Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare, Descartes, and Animal Studies.[4] Bach explains that all creatures were born into a natural hierarchy that organized the creaturely world. Birds were positioned at the top because they were associated with God.[5] Birds occupied the skies, and some, like the eagle and lark, were believed to fly to heaven's gate.[6] To a Renaissance audience, the close relationship between birds and time is another example of their divine nature, as time is manifested by the sun's movement in the heavens.

The nightingale's connection to God is a theme in "The Owl and the Nightingale," one of the earliest poems in Middle English dating back to 1225.[7] This comical poem records an argument between the titular birds over whose music is more beneficial to humanity: the nightingale, whose gorgeous song invokes the glory of heaven, or the owl, whose mournful cries implore listeners to repent their sins.[8]

The nightingale's song was said to be divinely inspired. In this illustration from 1633 by Henry Hawkins, the nightingale "aspir'd too high, would be like God," and is banished from Eden. Folger Shakespeare Library

The nightingale's alternative name, "Philomel," further strengthens its divine associations. Many of Shakespeare's birds represent Greek or Roman gods, such as the turtle dove (Venus) and the kingfisher (Alcyone). The nightingale represents a minor figure in Greek mythology, Philomel.

The most complete story of Philomel is recorded in Book VI of Metamorphoses, published in 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid.[9] According to Ovid’s myth, Philomel is the daughter of Pandion, King of Athens. Her sister, Procne, marries Tereus, the Thracian king. Tereus abducts, imprisons, and pillages his sister-in-law, Philomel. Afterward, Tereus severs her tongue so she can not reveal his crime, but Philomel manages to convey her story in the form of a tapestry. Procne vows to avenge Philomel by murdering the son she shares with Tereus, and serves the body to Tereus for dinner. Tereus nearly kills both women in retaliation, but at the last moment, all are turned into birds by divine intervention. Tereus becomes a hoopoe, Procne becomes a swallow, and Philomel is transformed into a nightingale. The nightingale's nocturnal, melancholy song manifests Philomel's grief.

Only the male nightingale sings in nature, but in literature, the nightingale is always female, perhaps because of its association with Philomel.[10] Its symbolism swings between beauty and tragedy—two themes that often go hand-in-hand in Shakespeare's writing. The nightingale is a prominent figure in Shkespeare’s narrative poem, Lucrece. The tragic, faithful Lucrece suffers a fate similar to Philomel at the hands of Tarquin. Shakespeare compares her to a "Philomel" nightingale throughout the poem. 

Inspired by the woeful nightingale leaning against a thorn, the tragic figure of Lucrece takes her own life with the pierce of a knife. Illustration by Pierre Le Moyne (1652). Folger Shakespeare Library

Lucrece speaks directly to a nightingale outside her window, confiding in her and seeking guidance. The advice she gleans from the nightingale closes the poem tragically. According to folklore, the nightingale leans her breast against a thorn to evoke a woeful song and to ward off sleepiness.[11] Inspired, Lucrece leans her breast against a knife to end her sadness.

Lucrece (Line 1128)

"Come, Philomel, that sing'st of ravishment,
Make thy sad grove in my disheveled hair.
As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,
So I at each sad strain will strain a tear
And with deep groans the diapason bear;
For burden-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still,
While thou on Tereus descants better skill.

"And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part
To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,
To imitate thee well, against my heart
Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye,
Who if it wink shall thereon fall and die.
These means, as frets upon an instrument,
Shall tune our heartstrings to true languishment.

In my painting, I included references to the nightingale and her female friends, Lucrece and Juliet. The border contains roses, whose thorns cause the nightingale's pain; daggers, which destroy Lucrece and Juliet; and pomegranate seeds, as Juliet's nightingale sings "on yond pomegranate tree." 

My painting includes references to Lucrece and Juliet, including daggers, roses, and pomegranate seeds.

Endnotes

[1] "Nightingale." Animalia.Bio, 6 Feb. 2023, animalia.bio/nightingale.

[2] Greenoak, Francesca. All the Birds of the Air. 2nd ed., Penguin Books, 1981. p. 240.

[3] Greenoak, Francesca. All the Birds of the Air. 2nd ed., Penguin Books, 1981. p. 242.

[4] Bach, Rebecca Ann. Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature. Routledge, 2018.

[5] Bach, Rebecca Ann. Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature. Routledge, 2018.

[6] Bach, Rebecca Ann. Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature. Routledge, 2018.

[7] Armitage, Simon. The Owl and the Nightingale: A New Verse Translation. Princeton University Press, 2022.

[8] Armitage, Simon. The Owl and the Nightingale: A New Verse Translation. Princeton University Press, 2022.

[9] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Metamorphoses". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Metamorphoses-poem-by-Ovid. Accessed 6 February 2023.

[10] Harting, James. The Birds of Shakespeare. London, John Van Voorst, 1871. pp. 124.

[11] Phipson, Emma. Animal Lore of Shakespeare's Time. Glastonbury, The Lost Library, Kegan Paul, 1883. p. 179.