Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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To hunt and hawke, to nourish up and fede
The greyhounde to the course, the hawke to th’ flight,
And to bestryde a good and lusty stede.”
In noticing, then, Shakespeare’s allusions to this sport, we have a good insight into its various features, and also gain a knowledge of the several terms associated with it. Thus frequent mention is made of the word “haggard”—a wild, untrained hawk—and in the following allegory (“Taming of the Shrew,” iv. 1), where it occurs, much of the knowledge of falconry is comprised:
And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,[225]
For then she never looks upon her lure.
Another way I have to man my haggard,
To make her come, and know her keeper’s call;
That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites
That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient.
She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not.”[226]
Further allusions occur in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 1), where Viola says of the Clown:
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time;
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye.”
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), Hero, speaking of Beatrice, says that:
As haggards of the rock.”
And Othello (iii. 3), mistrusting Desdemona, and likening her to a hawk, exclaims:
I’d whistle her off.”[227]
The word “check” alluded to above was a term in falconry applied to a hawk when she forsook her proper game and followed some other of inferior kind that crossed her in her flight[228]—being mentioned again in “Hamlet” (iv. 7), where the king says:
As checking at his voyage.”[229]
Another common expression used in falconry is “tower,” applied to certain hawks, etc., which tower aloft, soar spirally to a height in the air, and thence swoop upon their prey. In “Macbeth” (ii. 4) we read of
in “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 1) Suffolk says,
and in “King John” (v. 2) the Bastard says,
The word “quarry,” which occurs several times in Shakespeare’s plays, in some instances means the “game or prey sought.” The etymology has, says Nares, been variously attempted, but with little success. It may, perhaps, originally have meant the square, or enclosure (carrée), into which the game was driven (as is still practised in other countries), and hence the application of it to the game there caught would be a natural extension of the term. Randle Holme, in his “Academy of Armory” (book ii. c. xi. p. 240), defines it as “the fowl which the hawk flyeth at, whether dead or alive.” It was also equivalent to a heap of slaughtered game, as in the following passages. In “Coriolanus” (i. 1), Caius Marcius says:
With thousands of these quarter’d slaves.”
In “Macbeth” (iv. 3)[231] we read “the quarry of these murder’d deer;” and in “Hamlet” (v. 2), “This quarry cries on havock.”
Another term in falconry is “stoop,” or “swoop,” denoting the hawk’s violent descent from a height upon its prey. In “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1) the expression occurs, “till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged.” In “Henry V.” (iv. 1), King Henry, speaking of the king, says, “though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing.” In “Macbeth” (iv. 3), too, Macduff, referring to the cruel murder of his children, exclaims, “What! ... at one fell swoop?”[232] Webster, in the “White Devil,”[233] says:
That she may take away all at one swoop.”
Shakespeare gives many incidental allusions to the hawk’s trappings. Thus, in “Lucrece” he says:
With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon’s bells.”
And in “As You Like It” (iii. 3),[234] Touchstone says, “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires.” The object of these bells was to lead the falconer to the hawk when in a wood or out of sight. In Heywood’s play entitled “A Woman Killed with Kindness,” 1617, is a hawking scene, containing a striking allusion to the hawk’s bells. The dress of the hawk consisted of a close-fitting hood of leather or velvet, enriched with needlework, and surmounted with a tuft of colored feathers, for use as well as ornament, inasmuch as they assisted the hand in removing the hood when the birds for the hawk’s attack came in sight. Thus in “Henry V.” (iii. 7), the Constable of France, referring to the valor of the Dauphin, says, “’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.”[235] And again, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 2), Juliet says:
The “jesses” were two short straps of leather or silk, which were fastened to each leg of a hawk, to which was attached a swivel, from which depended the leash or strap which the falconer[237] twisted round his hand. Othello (iii. 3) says:
We find several allusions to the training of hawks.[238] They were usually trained by being kept from sleep, it having been customary for the falconers to sit up by turns and “watch” the hawk, and keep it from sleeping, sometimes for three successive nights. Desdemona, in “Othello” (iii. 3), says:
I’ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;
I’ll intermingle everything he does
With Cassio’s suit.”
So, in Cartwright’s “Lady Errant” (ii. 2):
Watching until you leave your wildness.”
In “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), where Page says,
the allusion is, says Staunton, to this method employed to tame or “reclaim” hawks.
Again, in “Othello” (iii. 3),[239] Iago exclaims:
To seel her father’s eyes up close as oak;”
in allusion to the practice of seeling a hawk, or sewing up her eyelids, by running a fine thread through them, in order to make her tractable and endure the hood of which we have already spoken.[240] King Henry (“2 Henry IV.” iii. 1), in his soliloquy on sleep, says:
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge.”
In Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (I. vii. 23), we read:
But sealed up with death, shall have their deadly meed.”
It was a common notion that if a dove was let loose with its eyes so closed it would fly straight upwards, continuing to mount till it fell down through mere exhaustion.[241]
In “Cymbeline” (iii. 4), Imogen, referring to Posthumus, says:
To think, when thou shalt be disedged by her
That now thou tir’st on,”—
this passage containing two metaphorical expressions from falconry. A bird was said to be disedged when the keenness of its appetite was taken away by tiring, or feeding upon some tough or hard substance given to it for that purpose. In “3 Henry VI.” (i. 1), the king says:
Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire,
Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle
Tire on the flesh of me and of my son.”
In “Timon of Athens” (iii. 6), one of the lords says: “Upon that were my thoughts tiring, when we encountered.”
In “Venus and Adonis,” too, we find a further allusion:
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone,” etc.
Among other allusions to the hawk may be mentioned one in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 1):
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i’ the head, and follies doth emmew,
As falcon doth the fowl”
—the word “emmew” signifying the place where hawks were shut up during the time they moulted. In “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 4), Lady Capulet says of Juliet:
and in “Taming of the Shrew” (i. 1), Gremio, speaking of Bianca to Signor Baptista, says: “Why will you mew her?”
When the wing or tail feathers of a hawk were dropped, forced out, or broken, by any accident, it was usual to supply or repair as many as were deficient or damaged, an operation called “to imp[242] a hawk.” Thus, in “Richard II.” (ii. 1), Northumberland says:
Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing.”
So Massinger, in his “Renegado” (v. 8), makes Asambeg say:
New feathers to the broken wings of time.”
Hawking was sometimes called birding.[243] In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 3) Master Page says: “I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast; after, we’ll a-birding together, I have a fine hawk for the bush.” In the same play (iii. 5) Dame Quickly, speaking of Mistress Ford, says: “Her husband goes this morning a-birding;” and Mistress Ford says (iv. 2): “He’s a-birding, sweet Sir John.” The word hawk, says Mr. Harting, is invariably used by Shakespeare in its generic sense; and in only two instances does he allude to a particular species. These are the kestrel and sparrow-hawk.
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