Skimmed this play this morning, and couldn't help but notice that there are quite a lot of references to birds in it--swans, crows, the nightingale and the lark (most famed, I supposed in this play)...

And I wondered whether WilliamSs had used quite so many birds in other plays quite as much.

Of course, there's Queen Mab with her spiders and grasshoppers and other strange small creatures, but the birds fly all about. I wonder whether the birds, particularly in the early acts, could be there to suggest how romantic love causes us to feel as though we could fly--and then I move forward in time and recall "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"...