Comments on: Hawk from a handsaw

By: Nathaniel Wander

Nathaniel Wander — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:30:01 +0000

Given that the turtles in “Turtles from Jayes” were almost certainly turtledoves (as also in “The voice of the turtle shall be heard through the land.”), I would bet the metaphorical pair are avian hawks and herons.

However, while Shakespeare would have been familiar with turtledove, jay, hawk and heron the chances of his knowing a hummingbird from a Hawker-Hunter are slim. Hummingbirds disappeared from most of the world 25 million years ago. Modern hummingbirds are confined to the Americas and only became know to Europeans in the course of the 16th century. How far that knowledge would have diffused by the start of the 17th century is anybody’s guess.

By: Anna S.

Anna S. — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 07:38:45 +0000

In response to your questions, yes I’ve heard someone use this phrase aloud; he used it very recently and has used it several times. The ‘world that I live in’ is one in which Canadians exist (I attend a US university, but we’re close enough that we get plenty of Canadian students as well). The person who said it was from Nunavut. It’s apparently a saying up there.

By: Tom Purdue

Tom Purdue — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 18:07:33 +0000

I live in Norfolk, and there is an old Norfolk word “harnser”, meaning a heron, which I believe became corrupted in Hamlet to “handsaw”. So I agree that the meaning of Hamlet’s comment is that he can tell a hawk from a heron, which makes a great deal more sense than comparing a bird to a carpentry tool!

By: Clay Caldwell

Clay Caldwell — Thu, 31 May 2012 23:07:54 +0000

As was recently pointed out in a letter to the Wall Street Journal on 5/31/12 in response to the ornithological use of this term by Laura Jacobs in her book review…the hawk being referred to is more likely the mortar board Candy has referenced. Had Shakespeare been referring to a bird he probably would have said “I know a hawk from a hummingbird”…

By: Candy Woodgate

Candy Woodgate — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:00:54 +0000

to tell a hawk from a handsaw is to be able to distinguish between a carpentry tool and a plastering tool. A plasterers hawk is a board, about 30cm square with a handle in the centre on one side. the plasterer holds the wet plaster on the hawk and applies it in smaller amounts to the wall with another tool called a float.

By: Peter Cowen

Peter Cowen — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:32:03 +0000

From G.K. Chesterton, Shakespeare and the Germans (public domain) :

There is in Shakespeare something more godlike even than humour : something which the English call fun. The neglect of this by the Germans during the long night of German intellectual domination has produced some preposterous fruits in English, American and other criticism.

The notes in my school books used to be full of alternative explanations, frequently German, of such phrases as: ” I know a hawk from a hand-saw.” Grumpt says that ” hand-saw ” should obviously be heron-shaw, to put it in the same ornithological class with hawk; but Mumpt suggests that there may have been an Elizabethan tool called a hawk, to put it in the same mechanical class with hand-saw.

And all the time even a boy who had any flavour of literature, or any guess at the kind of man that Hamlet was supposed to be, could see at once that it was a joke. Hamlet said it as a piece of wild alliteration ; as he might have said: ” I know a baby from a blunderbuss ” ; or, ” I know a catfish from a croquet-hoop.”

By a deep and dry study of the million exaggerations, inconsistencies and ignorances of Shakespeare they build up a sort of rampart round the unfortunate poet to defend him from his real admirers ; for the sulky Ben Jonson had far more genuine sympathy with Shakespeare than the world-patronising Goethe.

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