Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 25

"her spirits are as coy and wild As haggards of the rock."

And Oth.e.l.lo (iii. 3), mistrusting Desdemona, and likening her to a hawk, exclaims:

"if I do prove her haggard,- I'd whistle her off."[227]

[227] "To whistle off," or dismiss by a whistle; a hawk seems to have been usually sent off in this way against the wind when sent in pursuit of prey.

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:

"If he be now return'd As checking at his voyage."[229]

[228] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 77; see "Twelfth Night," ii. 5.

[229] The use of the word is not quite the same here, because the voyage was Hamlet's "proper game," which he abandons.

"Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 205.

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

"A falcon, towering in her pride of place;"

in "2 Henry VI." (ii. 1) Suffolk says,

"My lord protector's hawks do tower so well;"

and in "King John" (v. 2) the b.a.s.t.a.r.d says,

"And like an eagle o'er his aery[230] towers."

[230] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 456; Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 39; Tuberville's "Booke of Falconrie," 1611, p. 53.

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 (_carree_), 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 pa.s.sages. In "Coriola.n.u.s" (i. 1), Caius Marcius says:

"I'd make a quarry 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."

[231] Also in i. 2 we read:

"And fortune, on his d.a.m.ned quarrel smiling, Show'd like a rebel's wh.o.r.e."

Some read "quarry;" see "Notes to Macbeth." Clark and Wright, p. 77. It denotes the square-headed bolt of a cross-bow; see Douce's "Ill.u.s.trations," 1839, p. 227; Nares's "Glossary," vol.

ii. p. 206.

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:

"If she [_i. e._, Fortune] give aught, she deals it in small parcels, That she may take away all at one swoop."

[232] See Spenser's "Fairy Queen," book i. canto xi. l. 18:

"Low stooping with unwieldy sway."

[233] Ed. Dyce, 1857, p. 5.

Shakespeare gives many incidental allusions to the hawk's trappings.

Thus, in "Lucrece" he says:

"Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells 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 ent.i.tled "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 a.s.sisted 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:

"Hood my unmann'd[236] blood, bating in my cheeks."

[234] See "3 Henry VI." i. 1.

[235] A quibble is perhaps intended between bate, the term of falconry, and abate, _i. e._, fall off, dwindle. "Bate is a term in falconry, to flutter the wings as preparing for flight, particularly at the sight of prey." In '1 Henry IV.' (iv. 1):

"'All plumed like estridges, that with the wind Bated, like eagles having lately bathed.'"

-Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 60.

[236] "Unmann'd" was applied to a hawk not tamed.

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. Oth.e.l.lo (iii. 3) says:

"Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings."

[237] See Singer's "Notes to Shakespeare," 1875, vol. x. p. 86; Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 448.

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 "Oth.e.l.lo"

(iii. 3), says:

"my lord shall never rest; 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 Ca.s.sio's suit."

[238] See pa.s.sage in "Taming of the Shrew," iv. 1, already referred to, p. 122.

So, in Cartwright's "Lady Errant" (ii. 2):

"We'll keep you as they do hawks, Watching until you leave your wildness."

In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), where Page says,

"Nay, do not fly: I think we have watch'd you now,"

the allusion is, says Staunton, to this method employed to tame or "reclaim" hawks.