Meaning & Analysis
He cannot distinguish blatantly different things—like a hunting hawk and a carpenter’s saw—hence he is grossly ignorant or undiscerning.
Insights
Crude ignorance
Signals a failure of basic discrimination: the person confuses categories so starkly unlike that their judgment cannot be trusted for even simple choices.
Lack of practical sense
Beyond book knowledge, it mocks an absence of worldly know-how—unable to tell tools from animals, he is unfit for the field or the shop alike.
Pretended confusion
By alluding to Hamlet, it can hint that ‘not knowing’ is strategic—a feint of madness or incompetence used to disarm observers until conditions suit revelation.
Misclassification risks
Warns that sloppy categorization breeds error: when one cannot sort the obvious, finer judgments and higher-stakes decisions will miscarry.
Hawk vs. hernshaw
Many scholars read ‘handsaw’ as a corruption of ‘hernshaw’ (heron). In falconry a hawk pursues a heron; failing to tell prey from predator would be laughably inept—hence the proverb’s bite.
Shakespeare’s signal
Hamlet’s line—‘I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw’—advertises selective clarity: he can distinguish plain realities when he chooses, implying his madness is tactical, not total.
Proverbial variants
An allied taunt is ‘not to know a buzzard from a hawk,’ both raptors but of different status and use—another way to shame bunglers who miss obvious distinctions within a domain.
Cognitive lesson
The saying foregrounds categorization as a civic virtue: societies depend on competent sorting—of facts, roles, and tools. When that breaks, folly multiplies.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Yokes unlike things (bird vs. tool) to dramatize how far the confusion stretches, sharpening the satire.
Paronomasia
The ‘handsaw’/‘hernshaw’ slippage and the h-alliteration with ‘hawk’ create a memorable clang, aiding transmission and punning on mistaken hearing.
Hyperbole
Exaggerates ignorance to the edge of absurdity, making the rebuke humorous and emphatic.
Idiom/ellipsis
The clipped formula omits verbs and context, functioning as a ready-made verdict on someone’s competence.
Transcription
Quotations
And thinkes shee hath the very Quintescence, Of quicke conceite, wherein her wits do walke Yet doth not knowe a Buzzard from a Hawlke.
Shakespeare Citations
I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.