Common Nightingale
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"
This post contains descriptions of sexual violence which some readers may find disturbing.
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.Romeo and Juliet (Act III, Scene 5, line 1)
The lark’s musical companion is the nightingale, a secretive, solitary bird that is active by day, but prefers to sing at night. Its name derives from the Old English nihtegale, meaning "night singer."[1] While the lark serves as Shakespeare’s herald of dawn, the nightingale symbolizes the evening. The two birds are sisters in many ways: they resemble one another, share a close association with music, and embody complementary times of day.
An even stranger parallel appears in English folklore. Both birds were said to have traded eyes with reptiles. According to tradition, the lark exchanged eyes with the toad, while the nightingale stole its eyes from the serpent. This tale was offered to explain why the nightingale stays awake throughout the night, fearing the snake’s revenge.[2]
Nightingales appear in numerous works by Shakespeare, perhaps most prominently in Romeo and Juliet, where their song drifts amidst several evening scenes. In one of Shakespeare’s most well-known avian references, Juliet mistakes the lark’s song for the nightingale’s, hoping the dawn has not yet arrived. Romeo corrects her identification and departs her bedroom as the sun begins to rise.
In the literature of this period, all creatures were understood to occupy a natural hierarchy that ordered the living world. Birds, like humans, were positioned at the top because of their association with the divine.[3] They occupied the skies, and some, such as the eagle and lark, were believed to fly to heaven’s gate. For a Renaissance audience, birds’ close relationship to time reflected their divine nature, since time itself was governed by the sun’s passage through the heavens.
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
Many of Shakespeare’s birds evoke figures from Greek and Roman mythology, including the turtle dove (Venus) and the kingfisher (Alcyone). The nightingale is associated with Philomel, whose story is told in Book VI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE). In Ovid’s account, Philomel is the daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, and the sister of Procne, who marries Tereus, king of Thrace. Tereus abducted, imprisoned, and raped his sister-in-law, Philomel, severing her tongue so she could not reveal his crime. Procne vows to avenge her sister, murdering the son she shares with Tereus. Tereus nearly kills both women in retaliation, but at the last moment the gods transform all three into birds. Tereus becomes a lapwing, Procne a swallow, and Philomel a nightingale, whose melancholy nocturnal song comes to embody her grief.[4] In reality, only the male nightingale sings, yet in literature, the nightingale is almost always female, likely because of its association with Philomel.[5]
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
The sexual violence of this legend shapes the nightingale’s symbolism, which oscillates between beauty and tragedy throughout literature. These themes often intertwine in Shakespeare’s works, particularly in his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, where the nightengale features prominently. Lucrece, or Lucretia, was a Roman noblewoman, and like Philomel, was raped—this time by the Roman prince, Tarquin. Her subsequent suicide sparked the rebellion that overthrew the Roman monarchy. In Shakespeare’s poem, Lucrece addresses a nightengale as "Philomel," confiding in the bird and seeking its guidance. According to folklore, the nightingale presses its breast against a thorn, transforming its pain into a mournful song that wards off sleep.[6] Inspired by this image, Lucrece presses her own breast against a knife, ending her suffering.
The Rape of 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 tragic counterparts, Lucrece and Juliet. The border contains roses, whose thorns cause the nightingale’s pain; daggers, which Lucrece and Juliet use to take their own lives; and pomegranate seeds, as Juliet’s nightingale sings "on yond pomegranate tree."
Endnotes
[1] F. Greenoak, All the Birds of the Air, 2nd edn (Middlesex: Penguin, 1981), 240.
[2] Greenoak, All the Birds of the Air, 240.
[3] R. A. Bach, Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).
[4] Ross, A., Mystagogus poeticus, or, The Muses Interpreter: Explaining the Historicall Mysteries and Mysticall Histories of the Ancient Greek and Latine Poets (London: Printed for Richard Whitaker, 1647).
[5] J. Harting, The Birds of Shakespeare (London: John Van Voorst, 1871), 125.
[6] E. Phipson, Animal Lore of Shakespeare’s Time (London: Kegan Paul, 1883; repr. Glastonbury: The Lost Library), 179.