_Warwick_, in the following scene, amidst the carnage of battle, shouts:-- Clifford of Cumberland, 'tis Warwick calls! And if thou dost not hide thee from the bear, Now--when the angry trumpet sounds alarm, And _dead men's cries do fill the empty air_-- Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me! The expression "_dead_ men's cries do fill the empty air," I have hitherto regarded, as doubtless most other readers of Shakspere have done, as either a misprint or an obsolete form of expression, meaning, in the more modern English, "_dying_ men's cries do fill the empty air." Taken in connection, however, with the continual reference of Warwick to the "rampant bear" as his ancestral "totem" or beast symbol, I am inclined to think it is not improbable that Shakspere, who has made use of such an enormous number of other superstitious fancies as poetic images, as well as illustrations of character, may have had in his mind the old belief that the souls of ancestors, "Pitris," or "Fathers," careered and howled amongst the storm-winds in the form indicated by their beast symbol or tribal "totem." Poetically, the thought is singularly appropriate to the storm and strife of the battlefield, and especially to the frenzied agony engendered by the horrors too often attendant upon "_domestic_ fury and fierce _civil_ strife." Referring to, and quoting from, the "Exodus," a poem of the Cœdman school, Mr. Green ("The Making of England") says--"The wolves sang their dread evensong; the fowls of war, greedy of battle, dewy feathered, screamed around the host of Pharaoh, as wolf howled and eagle screamed round the host of Penda." Shakspere places in the mouth of _Calphurnia_, when recounting the prodigies which preceded Cæsar's assassination, the following remarkable words:-- The graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead: Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds In ranks and squadrons and right form of war, Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol; The noise of battle hurtled in the air, Horses did neigh and dying men did groan, And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets. * * * * * When beggars die there are no comets seen: The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Again, in "Richard III." (Act 3, Scene 2), _Stanley's_ messenger informs _Hastings_ that his master had commissioned him to say he had dreamt that night "the boar (Richard) had raised off his helm." This, he adds, his master regards as a warning to _Hastings_ and himself-- To shun the danger that his soul divines. The boar was the cognizance, crest, or "totem" of Richard. In the fourth scene of the same act, _Hastings_, on hearing his death sentence, exclaims: Woe! woe for England! not a whit for me; For I, too fond, might have prevented this: Stanley did dream the boar did raise his helm; But I disdain'd it, and did scorn to fly.