Painting the birds of Shakespeare

Six paintings from Folger Artist Fellow Missy Dunaway’s series on birds of Shakespeare—the Blackbird, Greylag Goose, Grey Heron, Kingfisher, Wild Turkey, and Wren—are on view at the Folger through January 4, 2026. It’s part of Contemporary Art at the Folger, four solo exhibitions featuring work by recent artist fellows. Dunaway’s ongoing project, The Birds of Shakespeare, is creating illustrations of all 65 bird species mentioned by the Bard, accompanied by essays exploring each bird’s folklore and literary significance.

I began this work four years ago, sparked by my curiosity in birds, literature, and language. My research was supported by a Folger Institute Artistic Research Fellowship, and I continue to draw on the Folger’s rich early modern archive to inform my work and expand its scope.

My subject has long attracted the attention of writers and artists. In 1871, James Edmund Harting published The Ornithology of Shakespeare, establishing the full list of bird species that guides my project today. Others have followed in Harting’s footsteps, including Sir Archibald Geikie (1916), Lavonia Stockelbach (1953), and Peter Goodfellow (1983). All of my predecessors chose to study and research a selection of Shakespeare’s birds.

I aim to be the first artist to illustrate and interpret all 65 species individually. Each painting is rendered in acrylic ink on 30×22-inch paper and paired with a 1,500-word essay examining the bird’s role in Shakespeare’s world. My essays also consider each species within the broader context of early modern culture, avian folklore, and connect them to current conversations in eco-criticism and environmental conservation.

Sixty-five paintings make a large body of work, and I face the dual challenge of maintaining cohesion across the series while ensuring each piece offers a distinct visual experience. To achieve this balance, I use a consistent composition that still allows for variation. Each bird is centered within a garland border comprised of life-size depictions of nests, eggs, feathers, and plants. I also incorporate objects that relate to the bird, drawing from early modern folklore, natural history, and Shakespearean imagery. The objects, color palette, and pose of each bird provide opportunities to make every painting unique.

Although much of my project is carefully planned, I leave room for spontaneity wherever possible. I move through Shakespeare’s birds in no particular order, selecting my next subject at random. I also forgo preparatory sketches, beginning each work directly on the final sheet of paper, guided only by a vague composition seen in my mind’s eye. This approach sometimes leads to missteps. My painting of the wren, for instance, had to be completely redone when I realized it failed to convey the bird’s storied reputation as “king of all birds.” Even so, I enjoy the immediacy of this process. I prefer letting the composition unfold before me; it keeps the work exciting.

When I began my project, I set out to determine whether Shakespeare was a bird watcher. As the work evolved, however, my focus shifted to the birds themselves; their roles in early modern folklore, and the ways storytellers have used birds as mirrors for human psychology. Each species opens a new window into history that I might never have encountered otherwise. The wren and blackbird, for instance, are emblematic of Catholic saints, which led me to learn about the impact of the Protestant Reformation in England. The kingfisher and golden eagle, meanwhile, have deepened my understanding of Greek mythology. Shakespeare’s birds have given me a vivid and unexpected way to learn about history, which has been far more rewarding than learning about the playwright himself.

This change in scope also presented challenges because I am not a historian nor a Shakespearean scholar. I realized I was out of my depth when I began my first painting. I chose the barnacle goose as my starting point because it appears only once in Shakespeare’s works and seemed like an easy entry. It is found in the fourth act of The Tempest. Caliban is hiding from the powerful magician, Prospero, and warns his conspirators, Stephano and Trinculo, to be quiet, or they risk being transformed “to barnacles, or to apes.”

CALIBAN: I will have none on ’t. We shall lose our time
And all be turned to barnacles or to apes
With foreheads villainous low.
—The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1, line 274

At first glance, the barnacle goose’s inclusion feels incidental, but on closer inspection, there are many layers to unpack. To start, the barnacle goose owes its name to the early modern belief that it began life as a barnacle and was, therefore, part-fish. How appropriate, then, that it is mentioned by Caliban—a character who is also part-fish! I didn’t fully grasp this connection until I encountered The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597) by John Gerard, which describes the barnacle goose’s bizarre life cycle as imagined by early modern naturalists.

I attempted a few more paintings on my own but knew I couldn’t advance the project successfully without assistance. I turned to the Folger Shakespeare Library and was awarded a virtual Artistic Research Fellowship in 2021.

The Folger’s librarians directed me to books from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries that featured birds: naturalists’ catalogs, emblem books that conveyed moral lessons through birds, and illuminated editions of Ovid and Aesop’s Fables.

Some of my favorite illustrations were rendered by naturalists Francis Willughby (1635–1672), Pierre Belon (1517(?)–1564), and Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605 (?)). Belon’s work is particularly striking for its anatomical comparisons between birds and humans (as the image from his 1555 book on the natural history of birds shows), seemingly striving to show how we are related.

Our desire to connect with birds finds its fullest expression in the angel, a divine human endowed with wings. Angels are described as “celestial birds” in Aesop’s fables #40, “The Parliament of Birds.” Which creatures are categorized as birds has offered fun surprises in my research. In fable #30, “The Birds and Beasts,” the bat betrays the beasts by joining the avian kingdom, explaining why it hides during the day to escape punishment. Even the Pegasus is regarded as more bird than beast. These creatures appear in Shakespeare’s works, and if they were understood as birds in his contemporary context, I will include them in my project.

The Folger librarians also introduced me to current scholarship in eco-criticism, including the work of Rebecca Ann Bach, Gabriel Egan, and Todd Borlik. This balance between historical and contemporary perspectives proved invaluable. I am naturally drawn to the mysteries and strangeness of the past and I sometimes forget to engage with the present, even though contributing to today’s art world and environmental conservation efforts is central to my mission. The Folger’s librarians are deeply knowledgeable about the library’s early modern books and how they connect to current scholarship. Their guidance has helped keep my work rooted in contemporary discourse while providing the best resources to immerse myself in the richness of the past.

By highlighting the beauty of these creatures and the treasured literature and artwork they inspired, I hope to remind viewers that the destruction of wildlife is a cultural loss as well as an environmental one. Most mainstream environmental messaging I read focuses on the ecological or moral implications of declining avian populations, but I rarely see discussion about the cultural and artistic losses. I believe this is a missed opportunity to bring new audiences into conservation efforts by appealing to emotional and intellectual connections to these species, and I hope to bridge this gap through my work.

You can explore all of Shakespeare’s birds I’ve painted so far at birdsofshakespeare.com, and subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated on the species still to come. I am only halfway through Shakespeare’s birds, and many more surprises await us.