urnful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers."

It is said that this treacherous animal weeps over a man's head when it
has devoured the body, and will then eat up the head too. In Bullokar's
"Expositor," 1616, we read: "Crocodile lachrymae, crocodiles teares, do
signify such teares as are feigned, and spent only with intent to
deceive or do harm." In Quarles's "Emblems" there is the following
allusion:

"O what a crocodilian world is this,
Compos'd of treachries and ensnaring wiles!
She cloaths destruction in a formal kiss,
And lodges death in her deceitful smiles."

In the above passage from "Othello," Singer says there is, no doubt, a
reference to the doctrine of equivocal generation, by which new animals
were supposed to be producible by new combinations of matter.[398]

[398] Singer's "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. x. p. 118.

_Deer._ In "King Lear" (iii. 4) Edgar uses deer for wild animals in
general:

"But mice, and rats, and such small deer,
Have been Tom's food for seven long year."

Shakespeare frequently refers to the popular sport of hunting the
deer;[399] and by his apt allusions shows how thoroughly familiar he was
with the various amusements of his day.[400] In "Winter's Tale" (i. 2)
Leontes speaks of "the mort o' the deer:" certain notes played on the
horn at the death of the deer, and requiring a deep-drawn breath.[401]
It was anciently, too, one of the customs of the chase for all to stain
their hands in the blood of the deer as a trophy. Thus, in "King John"
(ii. 1), the English herald declares to the men of Angiers how

"like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,
Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes."

[399] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 66, 75, 79,
80, 113, 117.

[400] See "As You Like It," iv. 2; "All's Well That Ends Well,"
v. 2; "Macbeth," iv. 3; "1 Henry IV.," v. 4; "1 Henry VI.," iv.
2; "2 Henry VI.," v. 2; "Titus Andronicus," iii. 1, etc.

[401] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. viii. p. 421

The practice is again alluded to in "Julius Caesar" (iii. 1):

"here thy hunters stand,
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe."

Old Turbervile gives us the details of this custom: "Our order is, that
the prince, or chief, if so please them, do alight, and take assay of
the deer, with a sharp knife, the which is don