Hawks are taking cinematic flight. In two recent literary adaptations, they are entwined with the lives and emotions of their respective protagonists – Agnes Shakespeare (née Hathaway) and Helen Macdonald.

Birds of prey and their symbolism are explored in Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, and H is for Hawk, based on Macdonald’s 2014 memoir. In these films, hawks become complex and multifaceted figures, articulating gendered relationships to grief, nature, humanity and selfhood.

Hamnet is set in the Elizabethan period, and H is for Hawk in the modern day. However, the relationship between women and birds of prey has an even longer history. My research shows that in the medieval period, too, that relationship was multilayered. Far more than fashionable accessories, hawks offered women both real and symbolic means to express gender, power and status within a male-dominated world.

In the middle ages, the process of training hawks, with its delicate dance of control and release, was popularly associated with the game of courtship between men and women.

Falconry’s romantic connotations are emphasised in art, objects and literature from the time. Images of men and women hunting together with birds of prey feature across a wide range of medieval material culture, from tapestries for castle walls to decorative cases used to contain and protect hand-held mirrors.

The largest of four fifteenth-century tapestries, known collectively as the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, takes falconry as its subject. Lovers are depicted strolling arm-in-arm as their birds hunt prey.

On a smaller scale, two fourteenth-century mirror cases from the collections of the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art show scenes of lovers riding on horseback, each holding falcons. The mirrors may have........

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