Equally forcible, too, are Pistol's words in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 3): "Let vultures gripe thy guts."
Johnson considers that "the vulture of sedition" in "2 Henry VI." (iv. 3) is in allusion to the tale of Prometheus, but of this there is a decided uncertainty.
_Wagtail._ In "King Lear" (ii. 2), Kent says, "Spare my grey beard, you wagtail?" the word being used in an opprobrious sense, to signify an officious person.
_Woodcock._ In several passages this bird is used to denote a fool or silly person; as in "Taming of the Shrew" (i. 2): "O this woodcock! what an ass it is!" And again, in "Much Ado About Nothing" (v. 1), where Claudio, alluding to the plot against Benedick, says: "Shall I not find a woodcock too?" In "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 3) Biron says:
"O heavens, I have my wish! Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish."
The woodcock has generally been proverbial as a foolish bird--perhaps because it is easily caught in springes or nets.[336] Thus the popular phrase "Springes to catch woodcocks" meant arts to entrap simplicity,[337] as in "Hamlet" (i. 3):
[337] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 971.
A similar expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Loyal Subject" (iv. 4):
"Go like a woodcock, And thrust your neck i' th' noose."
"It seems," says Nares, "that woodcocks are now grown wiser by time, for we do not now hear of their being so easily caught. If they were sometimes said to be without brains, it was only founded on their character, certainly not on any examination of the fact."[338] Formerly, one of the terms for twilight[339] was "cock-shut time," because the net in which cocks, _i. e._, woodcocks, were shut in during the twilight, was called a "cock-shut." It appears that a large net was stretched across a glade, and so suspended upon poles as to be easily drawn together. Thus, in "Richard III." (v. 3), Ratcliff says:
"Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself, Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop, Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers."
[338] See Willughby's "Ornithology," iii. section 1.
[339] Minsheu's "Guide into Tongues," ed. 1617.
In Ben Jonson's "Masque of Gypsies" we read:
"Mistress, this is only spite; For you would not yesternight Kiss him in the cock-shut light."