The diary of Master William Silence: a study of Shakespeare of Elizabethan sport

Lauren c e A .Wai di*on

Presented to the
LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

NORM DE EENCIER

THE DIARY OF
MASTER WILLIAM SILENCE

He that will understand Shakespeare must not be content
to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning
sometimes among the sports of the field. — DR. JOHNSON.

THE DIARY OF MASTER
WILLIAM SILENCE

A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE
6- OF ELIZABETHAN SPORT

BY THE

RIGHT HON. D. H. MADDEN, M.A., HON. LL.D.
VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN

NEW EDITION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1907

All rights reserved

•
HOV251965

ry OFJO*^

1025063

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

IN bringing out a new and less costly issue of this work, I have
sacrificed somewhat of the comeliness of the former edition in
order to render it accessible to a larger number of students of
Shakespeare.

Some additions have been made to the notes. Frequent
references will be found to the Master of Game, the earliest
English treatise on the art of venery, which remained in MS.
until the year 1904, when it was printed with a version in
modern English by Mr. and Mrs. Baillie-Grohman. The notes to
this sumptuous volume are a mine of learning, the richness of
which can best be estimated by those who have been compelled to
delve elsewhere in search of information on old-world sport.

The treatise has a twofold association with the work of Shake-
speare. The author has been made known to us in two plays,
Richard II. and Henry V. He was Edward Plantagenet, second
Duke of York, grandson of John of Gaunt. He was appointed
Master of Game by Henry IY. in the year 1406, and his work
is dedicated to one after Shakespeare's own heart : ' young Harry/
skilled not only to 'witch the world with noble horsemanship/
but to sit in judgment upon a ' book of sport.' For to his
'noble and wise correccions' the Master of Game submits his
'litel symple book.' A short notice of this work, and of its author,
in connection with Shakespeare, has been added to the note en-
titled The Book of Sport (p. 366).

If the ancient sport of falconry has been presented in these
pages with any degree of faithfulness, this is due to the writings
of Mr. J. E. Harting. To the acknowledgment of indebtedness
already made, I have to add an expression of gratitude for his
personal aid in the revision of the present edition. The falconry
which passes muster with Mr. Harting may safely be accepted as
orthodox.

The reader of these pages will readily acquit the author of
having entered on the task of collecting and arranging Shake-

vi PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

speare's allusions to field sports and horsemanship with a view to
supporting any foregone conclusion. It was not until these
scattered allusions came to arrange themselves in some kind of
order that they appeared to lead to certain conclusions which
seemed worthy of notice. In the note entitled The Critical Sig-
nificance of Shakespeare's Allusions to Field Sports, a distinctive
characteristic of Shakespeare's workmanship was noted, which
might aid in distinguishing his writings from those of other
dramatists with whom Shakespearian criticism is concerned.

It was further noted that certain passages in the collected
edition of Shakespeare's plays published in Folio in the year 1623
by his fellows Heminge and Condell, which critics had amended
as corrupt, or rejected in favour of readings in some quarto
edition, appeared clothed with beauty and significance in the
light thrown upon them by some long-forgotten sport. This
unexpected result of what I had written had the good fortune
to attract the attention of some eminent scholars engaged in the
work of textual criticism. It enlisted the interest, though it
did not enforce the assent, of Mr. Aldis Wright, to whose
scholarship students of Shakespeare owe so deep a debt. Some
of his criticisms will be found in a note entitled The Authority
of the First Folio, which I have added to the present edition
in order to facilitate reference to the text (pp. 349 - 363).
This part of my work led to an interesting correspondence
with Mr. Horace Howard Furness, who adopts the First Folio
as the text of the monumental Variorum edition, now in course
of publication. It was with no small gratification that I read
these words of his : ' The First Folio is of infinite service in
the study of Shakespeare's plays. With a faith too unquestion-
ing we have accepted the text from the editors of the eighteenth
century, who were apt to regard it as uncorrected proof-sheets,
sadly needing the help of a revising and even of an improving
hand. Thus many an obscurity was expunged, rather than eluci-
dated, mainly through lack of knowledge of Elizabethan life in
doors and out of doors. The inestimable value of Master William
Silence's Diary is the light it throws on many and many an
allusion, hitherto obscure, to that life, thereby confirming the
integrity of the venerable text.'

I was also brought into communication with a former fellow-
student in Trinity College, Dublin, Mr. W. J. Craig, the editor of
The Oxford Shakespeare, then engaged in collecting materials for
a Glossary, in whose death Shakespearian scholarship has suffered
a severe loss.

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION vii

The method of illustration and interpretation suggested in this
volume is one of general application, and I have ventured to
include in the note which I have mentioned references to two
famous passages, which have exercised many minds, and which
may he capable of interpretation hy means of the same method
applied to a class of ideas, present to the mind of the writer, other
than those with which these pages are conversant (pp. 357-363).

The revelation of the personality of Shakespeare which is to be
found in his writings will always be studied with intense interest,
and of late years it has acquired in some minds a special, although
it may be hoped a merely temporary importance.

It was with no thought of engaging in what is now known
as the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy that I wrote these pages.
A student of philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin, I was early
introduced to the writings of Bacon. At that time Baconianism,
as a literary cult, had no existence. Some of us had heard of an
American, Miss Delia Bacon, who wrote a book to prove that
1 Shakespeare ' was the work of her great namesake, and we were
not surprised to learn that before her death the poor lady was
acknowledged to be mad. 'But few of any sort, and none of
name,' had then been bitten; and as we read our Bacon and
our Shakespeare it never occurred to us that Romeo and Juliet
and the Essay of Love were the offspring of the same brain. Had
the idea been suggested to us, as it was to Tennyson, our answer
would probably have been as emphatic as his.

As my work progressed, the form of the Warwickshire youth,
turned poet and dramatist, assumed, by degrees, greater distinct-
ness. It became apparent, as a matter not of opinion but of fact,
that the writer whom we know as Shakespeare had passed many
days among scenes and in pursuits which haunted his memory
throughout life, storing his mind with such thoughts and images
as found expression in the words collected in this book. Whatever
else this man may have been, he was beyond doubt a sportsman,
with rare skill in the mysteries of woodcraft, loving to recall the
very names of the hounds with which he was wont to hunt;
a practical falconer, whose * hawking language ' was not like
Master Stephen's, book-learning ; and a horseman and horsekeeper,
accustomed to speak the homely language of the stable, whose
knowledge of the horse and of his fifty diseases was such as
can only be gained by experience. It also appeared that this
man had an intimate knowledge, not alone of Warwickshire, but
of certain obscure persons and places found to exist in a corner of
his Gloucestershire. It seemed to be deserving of a passing note

viii PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

that the man thus revealed by the writings known as Shakespeare's
was indeed the very William Shakespeare of history and of
tradition, and other than the Francis Bacon of whose pursuits
and tastes we have full knowledge.

The notoriety of Shakespeare's connection with Warwickshire
and Stratford -on- Avon had withdrawn the attention of his
biographers from passages in his works proving with equal
certainty his familiar acquaintance with persons and places in
the adjoining county of Gloucester. It may be fairly claimed
for the former edition of this work that it proved, in the
opinion of competent judges, that ' the Gloucestershire of Shake-
speare was no mere geographical expression, but a real place,
trodden by his foot, and inhabited by real men and women with
whom he had held converse.'

Mr. Sidney Lee, in his Life of Shakespeare, noting Shake-
speare's allusions to Gloucestershire names and places, expresses the
opinion that they have been 'convincingly explained' in this
volume.

Shortly after the publication of the former edition an interesting
work appeared entitled A Cotswold Village; or, Country Life
and Pursuits in Gloucestershire, by the late Mr. J. Arthur Gibbs,
who was, like Master Squele, a Cotswold man. ' Nowadays,' he
writes, 'thanks in great measure to Mr. Madden's book, The
Diary of Master William Silence, it is beginning to dawn on us
that the Cotswolds are more or less connected with the great poet
of Stratford-on-Avon.' He pays to the Diary the tribute of
imitation, for in a chapter which he tells us ' owes its inspiration '
to these pages, Shakespeare, in his proper person, and mounted on
my Irish hobby, * tough and wiry,' is introduced to the sports of
Cotswold, of which he discourses in words which are surely his,
for are they not copied from his plays 1 Mr. Gibbs has a chapter
on Cotswold Pastimes, of which he has evidently made a special
study, in which he adopts the description, in Chapter IX., of the
Holy Ale, as a true picture of an old-world Cotswold village.

In the Last Records of a Cotswold Community, published in
1904, the history of the famous games at which Master Page's
fallow greyhound is said to have been outrun is brought down to
a recent date, and it is interesting to note that in a passage con-
taining a reference to this volume the author finds a local habita-
tion for Justice Shallow.

I found, with no less surprise than satisfaction, that what I had
written had not only led some to a clearer understanding of the
man and of some things which he wrote (for this indeed I felt

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION ix

justified in hoping), but had even recalled some wanderers who
had gone far afield in search of the SHAKESPEARE, whom they
had been forbidden to discern in the man from Stratford.

In the matter of type I have borrowed a time-saving device from
writers not otherwise to be imitated, and by SHAKESPEARE I intend
the author, or his works, and by Shakespeare a man who certainly
did come from Stratford.

It seemed to me strange that the evidence which we possess of
the authorship of SHAKESPEARE should be regarded as sensibly
strengthened by an appreciation of the fact that the writer had
lived, hunted, and hawked about Warwickshire and Gloucester-
shire, although this truth is, of course, conclusive proof that he
was some one other than Francis Bacon. It would have been so
easy for SHAKESPEARE to have engaged the services of a man
from Stratford, with lively recollection of the sports and celebri-
ties of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire — probably the player
Shakespeare — to whom the passages in the plays evidencing local
knowledge would naturally be attributed. Some years ago I
ventured to offer this suggestion for consideration (Literature,
March 5, 1898, reprinted, Among my Books), writing in the
character of a Baconian, and in a spirit of levity which now
seems unpardonable ; for I find that my modest proposal is the
conclusion which Lord Penzance, after a life spent in the
labour of sifting and weighing evidence, felt compelled to adopt,
in A Judicial Summing-up of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy,
as a means of reconciling a theory as to authorship of SHAKE-
SPEARE with facts which his experience as a judge forbade him
to ignore. The allusions to names and places, by which his
judgment was affected — a few only of those which are to be found
in SHAKESPEARE — ' would hardly have been made use of by mere
chance.' The most reasonable explanation, he thinks, is that
those local names and the ribald talk of certain low-comedy
characters (including, of course, Falstaff and his companions, male
and female) ' were put in by William Shakespeare, who prepared
the plays for the stage.' He thinks that 'it is not impossible
that these Stratford personages may have been purposely intro-
duced to foster the belief in the authorship of Shakespeare,
which it would be the object of the real author, whoever he was,
to bring about.' Most students of Bacon would have thought
that a great lawyer and statesman, who had somehow found time
to become a still greater philosopher, would have met with a more
serious difficulty in his way, had he essayed the creation of Falstaff
and of certain other low-comedy characters, than lack of local

x PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

knowledge, and a vocabulary deficient in the matter of ribald talk.
But Lord Penzance's reasoning on a question of fact is, as might
be expected, unanswerable ; and if these pages have the signifi-
cance attached to them by some friendly critics, it is because, by
multiplying tenfold the number of local and personal touches
which no one skilled in weighing probabilities and in dealing with
evidence could possibly attribute to chance, they have so
magnified the share of Shakespeare in the partnership that he
becomes in the end indistinguishable from SHAKESPEARE.

It is no part of my purpose to enter into a discussion of what
is known as the Bacon-Shakespeare question. Had I been so
minded I should have been deterred by the saying of my revered
friend Provost Salmon : ' There is one more foolish than the man
who believes that Bacon wrote SHAKESPEARE ; — the man who
argues with him.'

The personality of SHAKESPEARE, his pursuits, and the ex-
periences of his life, as they have been revealed to us by his
writings, are those of a man other than Bacon, and if these pages
have been of any value in making this truth apparent, it is not by
way of argument, but by allowing SHAKESPEARE to present to the
reader, in his own words, a certain aspect of his complex nature.
The comparison of what SHAKESPEARE has written with the external
evidence which we possess of the personality and history of the
man from Stratford is a study of fact, involving neither dialectics
nor expert opinion. This study can be carried far beyond the
limits of these pages. If, indeed, the authorship of SHAKESPEARE
had been involved in mystery, it would have been possible,
by means of a careful study of what he has written, to construct
an author, endowed with all the qualities of a concrete per-
sonality. In the hope of interesting my readers in the prosecution
of a study which I can do no more than suggest, I propose in a
few words to compare the Shakespeare of history and tradition
with the author, whom I shall suppose to be unknown, as revealed
by the plays and poems which I shall, notwithstanding this
assumption, call by the name of SHAKESPEARE.

For the purpose of this comparison, I shall note, in outline only,
some of the evidence which we possess of the authorship and person-
ality of SHAKESPEARE. This evidence differs in kind and in degree
from what is commonly accepted as conclusive. Shakespeare pub-
lished in his own name two poems that attained immediate success,
and upon them — strangely as it appears to us — he seems to have
been content to rest his fame as author. They were published in a
manner which was certain to attract attention to the personality

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xi

of the author, for they were dedicated to a great nobleman, a
patron of literature ; the later dedication being expressed in terms
betokening intimate friendship. Sonnets which had been noticed
by a writer in 1598 as then in circulation among the private
friends of Shakespeare, who could be under no doubt as to the
authorship, were collected and published as Shakespeare's by
one Thomas Thorpe in 1609. In his lifetime many of his most
successful plays were printed in his name, without his authority.
The authorship of these plays was known to all, and never ques-
tioned. A few years after his death a collected edition of his
plays was given to the world by two of his fellow-players, the
owners of what they claimed to be authentic copies, under the
auspices of one who was at once the severest critic of the
author and an all but idolatrous worshipper of the man. Thus
the authorship of SHAKESPEARE is attested not only by the fact
of publication in his name, and by general acceptance, but by the
independent testimony of men whose knowledge of the fact of
authorship has never been questioned.

This William Shakespeare was not a mere name printed on a
title-page, but a man well known to those among whom he lived.
To his friends he was 'gentle Shakespeare,' a word suggestive of
a retiring and unambitious nature. But to none of those who
knew him in the flesh did it occur that, although this man might be
'a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler,' he was
for SHAKESPEARE ' a little o'erparted.' The greatness of the genius
of this man was recognised not only among his fellows, but in
courtly circles. The man from Stratford became in Ben Jonson's
verse the * sweet swan of Avon,' whose nights upon the banks of the
Thames ' so did take Eliza and our James.' He was the friend
of Southampton, and the editors of the First Folio dedicated their
edition to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, insomuch as
they ' have prosequuted both them and their author liuing with
so much fauour,' words which refer to the man, as surely as to
his works. Southampton's personal regard for the man is proved,
not only by the traditional gift of one thousand pounds, but by
the stronger evidence afforded by the terms of affection in which
the poet was allowed to address his patron in dedicating to him the
poem of Lucrece.

Thus it was that the dramatist, through the patronage of the
Court and the friendship of such men as Southampton, Pembroke,
and Montgomery, was able to gain a wider acquaintance with men
and manners than could be acquired during the struggles of his
early years, or in the company of his fellow-players. Of the

xii PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

mutual affection which, existed between Shakespeare and his
fellow-players up to the time of his death we have touching proof.
To each of his 'fellows' John Heming, Richard Burbage, and
Henry Condell, he left by his will money to buy memorial rings.
Burbage was the impersonator of the dramatist's greatest creations,
and it is to the pious offices of Heming and Condell that we owe
the preservation of those of his plays, twenty in number, which
had not appeared in his lifetime in pirated editions. ' We haue but
collected them,' they write, 'and done an office to the dead, to
procure his Orphanes Guardians ; without ambition either of
selfe-profit or fame; onely to keepe the memory of so worthy
a Friend and Fellow aliue as was our SHAKESPEARE.'

Here and there stray glimpses may be had of this Shakespeare
in the company of poets and men of letters.

Leonard Digges, son of a famous mathematician and Member of
Parliament, and brother of Sir Dudley Digges, who held a high
position as a diplomatist and afterwards as a judge, was well
known in the best literary society of the day. He was a poet of
some repute, but he is best known as the author of commendatory
verses prefixed to the Folio of 1623, and of a more elaborate
composition which was not printed until 1640. To him 'the
memorie of the deceased authour, Maister "W. Shakespeare,' was
no less precious than his ' workes ' which, he predicts in the verses
prefixed to the edition of 1623, would outlive his 'Stratford
moniment/ Spenser on his return to Ireland in 1591, after a
visit to London of some months' duration, sent to his friend
Raleigh the manuscript of a poem containing pen-and-ink sketches
of the poets with whom he had conversed. The subjects of most
of the sketches in Colin Clouts Come Home Again are not named,
and of these unnamed poets none have been identified with a
nearer approach to certainty than Shakespeare. The prophetic
eye of Spenser foresaw the eagle flight of the young poet, whose
earliest essay in playwriting was an appeal to the heroic aspira-
tions of Elizabeth's England, and his name suggested a play
on words, in the manner of the time. 'His Muse,' the poet
writes of Action, 'full of high thoughts invention, Doth like
himself e heroically sound.' And of the man he writes, in
words betokening personal regard, 'a gentler Shepheard may
no where be found.' That this regard was mutual is apparent
from Shakespeare's pathetic reference to Spenser's Tears of the
Muses in A Midsummer Night's Dream ; — ' the thrice three Muses
mourning for the death, Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.'
It was in company such as this that Shakespeare earned from the

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xiii

author of The Returne from Pernassus (1601) the title of 'sweet
Master Shakespeare/ and from Anthony Scoloker (1606) that of
1 friendly Shakespeare.' According to an early tradition recorded
by Aubrey he was ' very good company, and of a very ready and
pleasant smooth wit.' The ' wit-combates ' between this Shake-
speare and the ponderous Ben Jonson were still the talk of
the town when Fuller, born in Shakespeare's lifetime, wrote
his Worthies of England. He must have received accounts of
these famous combats from those who had been present. For
so lively was the image of the scene imprinted on his imagination
that he writes as if it were enacted before his eyes. 'Many
were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two
I behold like a Spanish Great Gallion and an English-man of
war: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in
Learning ; Solid but slow in his performances. Shake-spear with
the English-man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing,
could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all
winds, by the guidance of his Wit and Invention.'

Thus it was that the gentle Shakespeare was known to the men
of his own day, not only as poet and dramatist, but as a prosperous
gentleman, successful in life, and possessed of personal qualities
which made him at once beloved by his fellows, welcomed in the
society of men of letters, and prosecuted with favour by the
highest in the land. 'Most poets die poor, and consequently
obscurely, and a hard matter it is to trace them to their graves.'
Thus Anthony a "Wood (Athence Oxon.) explains the dearth of
knowledge concerning one of the most popular dramatists and
poets of the Elizabethan age, George Peele ; and the comparative
wealth of personal information handed down to us in regard to
Shakespeare is probably due as much to the attractive personality
of the man as to the pre-eminence of his genius. Indeed, in con-
temporary literature you will find severe criticism of the dramatist,
but of the man, nothing but loving admiration.

There never was a time at which a literary imposture would be
more certainly detected than when SHAKESPEARE commenced poet
and dramatist. The revival of learning and the growth of the
universities had flooded London with men of education, often
of genius, living by wits exercised mainly in the writing of plays
and poems. If England was then a nest of singing-birds, the
bickerings of the nestlings found utterance in a curious literature,
well known to students of the age.

The immediate success attained by SHAKESPEARE as a popular
playwright incurred the envious hostility of these critics, before

xiv PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

his genius compelled the admiration of the age, and it is to one
of the brightest and most unfortunate of these University wits
that we owe the earliest criticism of the dramatist and our first
glimpse of the man.

One of SHAKESPEARE'S first essays in play writing was the
transformation of the True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York,
into the third part of Henry VI. So successful was this skilful
appeal to the patriotic feeling which had been kindled by the
defeat of the Armada, that 'ten thousand spectators at least, at
several times,' so Nash wrote in 1592, crowded the playhouse to
see ' brave Talbot, the terror of the French,' after so many years,
'triumphe againe on the Stage.' No marvel that the unlucky
author denounced the successful adapter as an upstart plagiarist,
who, * with his Tyger's heart wrapt in a Player's hide, supposes he
is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you ;
and being an absolute Johannes-fac-totum, is in his owne con-
ceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie.' If the apology for
printing Robert Greene's jealous onslaught on SHAKESPEARE, which
was offered by Chettle in his Kind Heartes Dreame, was — as is
generally believed — addressed to Shakespeare, the civil demeanour,
uprightness of dealing and honesty of the man were even then
as apparent as ' his facetious grace in writting, that aprooves his
Art.'

Ben Jonson was a critic of a different order. He too had good
cause for jealousy if, as we are told by Leonard Digges, his Catiline,
'tedious though well laboured,' and his Sejanus, were irksome
to the playgoer, when compared with the Julius Ccesar of his
artless rival, and even 'the Fox and Subtill Alchimist,' when
acted, have 'scarce defrai'd the seacoale fire and doorkeepers/
while Falstaff, Hall, Poines, Beatrice, Benedick, and Malvolio
drew houses in which you 'scarce shall have a roome.' Jonson
was, according to Drummond of Hawthornden, ' a praiser of him-
self, and a contemner and scorner of others.' This portrait may
be overdrawn, but the man who sat for it was not likely to
speak well of the art of a successful rival, and Jonson said many
hard things of SHAKESPEARE of which his love for the man led
him afterwards to repent. It was of SHAKESPEARE that he said
to Drummond that he wanted art, and sometimes sense, instancing
the shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia in A Winter's Tale, and it
was at SHAKESPEARE and his Andronicus, his 'servant monster,' his
' tales, tempests, and such-like drolleries,' that Jonson sneered, in
the Induction to Bartholomew Fair.

Jonson lived to repent of his hasty words ; but the recantation

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xv

of his hostile criticism of the dramatist is half-hearted compared
with the warmth of his language when he speaks of the man.
' I remember,' he wrote in his Discoveries, * the players have often
mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing
(whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out a line. My answer
hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.' He (that is to
say, SHAKESPEARE), ' had an excellent Phantsie, brave notions and
gentle expressions; wherein hee flow'd with that facility that
sometimes it was necessary he should be stop'd ; Sufflaminandus
erat ; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne
power, would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee
fell into those things could not escape laughter; As when hee
said in the person of Ccesar, one speaking to him, " Cvesar, thou
doest me wrong" hee replyed, " Ccesar did never wrong, but with
just cause" and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee re-
deemed his vices with his vertues. There was ever more in him
to be praysed than to be pardoned.'

With such faint praise does Ben Jonson damn the august
SHAKESPEARE. But of the man, Shakespeare, he wrote, ' I loved
the man and doe honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as
much as any. Hee ' (that is to say, Shakespeare) ' was (indeed)
honest and of an open and free nature.' And it was this man
from Stratford, glorified into the Swan of Avon, who inspired the
noble verses prefixed to the Folio of 1623, by which Jonson more
than atoned for occasional outbursts of a jealous temperament.

I have undertaken to show that a recognisable presentment of
this William Shakespeare might have been constructed from his
works, if all knowledge of a personality, so well known and so
honoured, had perished as completely as that of Homer. He may
not, indeed, throw aside the veil by which the mystery of his inner
self is shrouded, but he has allowed us to learn from his lips all
that is needful to ascertain the identity of the man, and much that
is of interest as regards the occupations and pursuits of his life, and
the conditions under which his genius attained its full maturity.

Can we, then, discover from the writings of this unknown
SHAKESPEARE where he was born and bred? This is the first
question to be asked by the Inquirer. The intimate acquaint-
ance with the mysteries of sport and horsemanship, disclosed
by the passages collected in these pages, would exclude the
idea of a town-bred youth. The Inquirer must be supposed
to have industriously collected the words and phrases which
to the number of over four hundred I have printed in a
separate index to this volume. Noting on the one hand the

xvi PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

strict accuracy with which terms of art are employed, and on
the other the writer's familiarity with the homely language of the
stable, and comparing this wealth of allusion with the writings of
contemporaries, he would conclude that the writer must have
spent several years of early manhood in pursuits which made so
lasting an impression on his mind. With this thought in his
mind the Inquirer might happen to recall words spoken by a
certain shepherd of the 'age between sixteen and three-and-twenty,
and of all the wild work done in those years, with his exclamation,
'would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-
twenty hunt this weather r (Winter's Tale, iii. 3. 59). With
the idea that this might be a personal recollection put, after the
manner of Shakespeare, into the mouth of a rather unlikely person,
the Inquirer might provisionally assume the age of two- or three-
and-twenty as the age at which the boiled brains of the youthful
huntsman turned to the serious work of life.

But where were the years between sixteen and three-and-twenty
spent ? The fact that Shakespeare's characters drawn from country
life were placed by him in Gloucestershire, would naturally direct
the attention of the Inquirer thither in the first instance, and
a close examination of the local allusions which may be found
collected in this volume would satisfy him that these were reminis-
cences founded on personal knowledge. And here our Inquirer
would find himself at a cold fault. This SHAKESPEARE was no
country yokel, bred in the stable, following the hounds and
hawks of some Gloucestershire justice, and partaking in the
games and pastimes of Cotsall. He must have been in early
youth a student of the humanities, laying the foundation of a
learning, not perhaps critical or exact, but sufficient to store his
memory and his imagination with ideas derived from the best
literature of Greece and Rome. This learning could not have
been acquired in the 'wilds of Gloucestershire.' The pursuits
of his early manhood would seem to exclude the idea of 'the
studious universities,' nor would the Inquirer, with the life-story
of Ben Jonson present to his mind, think it necessary to turn his
attention in that direction. Whatever estimate he might form of
the learning of Shakespeare, it must fall short of the colossal super-
structure of erudition which this marvellous man contrived to
erect on the foundation of a grammar-school education, from which
he was taken at an early age and put to a trade so irksome that he
fled from it, and spent some years as a soldier in the low countries.
He held the degree of each of the English universities. But this
was, he tells us, by their favour, not by his studies.

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xvii

In his search for the School of SHAKESPEARE, the Inquirer will
not have far to travel. In an adjoining county, clustering round
the town of Stratford-on-Avon, he will find local references to
persons and places so definite and frequent as to afford conclusive
evidence of personal knowledge. These allusions could not have
been designed to please a London audience, in whose ears they
would have no prosperity. It was in this way that the dramatist
gave utterance, in characteristic fashion, to thoughts and remem-
brances present to his mind. I need not enumerate SHAKESPEARE'S
references to persons and places in Warwickshire, for they have
been long since collected and are well known. But I cannot help
noting the delight of the Inquirer when, approaching the town of
Stratford, he recognises at the ancient seat of a knightly family
the selfsame luces which were borne on the old coat of Master
Shallow.

At Stratford the Inquirer finds the still existent fabric of an
ancient grammar school, of which, and of the studies there con-
ducted, the reader may find a full account in Professor Baynes's
essay entitled, What Shakespeare Learned at School (Shakespeare
Studies), and in an essay in Mr. Churton Collins's Studies in Shake-
speare, entitled Shakespeare as a Classical Student. Suffice it
here to say that the grammar school at Stratford was founded
in 1477 as a centre of the New Learning, and that it was one
of the first in which Greek was taught. The headmaster in the
year 1570 was Walter Roche, a Fellow of Corpus College, Oxford,
and his successors were scholars of repute.

The Inquirer will not be likely to adopt the low estimate of
SHAKESPEARE'S classical knowledge which was for a long time
accepted on the authority of Dr. Farmer's well-known Essay on
the Learning of Shakespeare, published in 1767. His conclusions
will approach more nearly to the more just views which have
prevailed in recent years, and which found expression in the
essay by Professor Baynes. He may indeed be prepared to go
still further, and there is no reason why he should hesitate to
state the result of his research in the words of Mr. Churton
Collins, in which he claims to have demonstrated * that Shakespeare
could read Latin, that in the Latin original he most certainly
read Plautus Ovid and Seneca; that the Greek dramatists, and
all those Greek authors, besides Plutarch, who appear to have
influenced him, were easily accessible to him, as well in their entire
works as in their fragments, in Latin translations.' To this he
may be disposed to add a knowledge of Greek, which might be
less than small in the estimate of a great classical scholar, but yet

xviii PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

sufficient to stamp its possessor as one who had received a classical
education.

Thus it appears that at Stratford, whither the Inquirer has been
led to direct his steps, by many infallible tokens, the son of a
burgess could have obtained the means of acquiring a training
in Latin and even in Greek, which, if he happened to develop
into a man of literary genius, would supply the foundation of a
learning exceeding even the highest estimate of that possessed by
SHAKESPEARE.

The Inquirer will look in vain for a certain answer to the
question : How did this SHAKESPEARE spend in this town of
Stratford the working days of the years between sixteen and three-
and-twenty ? He will find that there were open to the youth of
Stratford certain employments in which a livelihood might be
earned ; and he will note in SHAKESPEARE a recurrence to certain
classes of ideas and recollections so frequent as to invest with a
certain degree of probability the suggestion that he had recourse,
during the early years of manhood, to one or other of these
employments as a means of earning his bread. But further than
this the Inquirer cannot safely travel.

Shakespeare's earliest work is full of reminiscences of the studies
and habits of the grammar school, and a clever boy, on leaving
school, might easily have found employment under the pedant,
whom the world knows as Holophernes. Many reminiscences of
the days when Shakespeare was 'a breeching scholar in the schools '
may be found, especially in his earlier works. The * first heir of my
invention/ Venus and Adonis, is redolent of Ovid, and in his
earliest drama, Love's Labour's Lost, he records his love not only of
Ovidius Naso — 'Why, indeed, Naso? but for smelling out the
odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention/ — but of
another, favourite schoolbook, Mantuanus. 'Old Mantuan, old
Mantuan! who understandeth thee not, loves thee not.' The
humours of the pedant Holophernes in this play and the lessons
of Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives and of Lucentio in The
Taming of the Shrew, all attest his lively recollection of grammar-
school teaching.

The Inquirer could not fail to note, with Chalmers, Malone,
Collyer, and Lord Campbell, the number and appropriateness of
the ideas derived from the law which were constantly suggesting
themselves, in season and out of season, to the mind of the
dramatist. The conclusion thus forced on his mind cannot be
better stated than in the words of Mr. Churton Collins : ' The
number of metaphors, illustrations, and terms of expression,

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xix

derived from the law, and these often of a most technical kind,
to be found in the poems and plays, is extraordinary. Shake-
speare's mind seems always to be reverting to it. Whatever be
his theme, love, death, war, business, pleasantry, argumentation,
didactic admonition, philosophic reflection, it is always at hand
to paint and colour his imagery and diction.' The Inquirer cannot
but desire to find some explanation of a habit of thought and
expression, which though not uncommon at the time, is more
noticeable in the works of SHAKESPEARE than in those of any
contemporary writer.

In this habit of reverting to legal ideas and associations
SHAKESPEARE is far surpassed by another great creative genius.
If the lives of Charles Dickens and of his contemporaries had been
obscured by the mists of three centuries, his novels would
certainly have been attributed by higher criticism to Lord
Brougham. ' Is it conceivable,' it would have been asked, ' that
this man from Chatham could have acquired in the reporters' gallery
of the House of Commons a minute knowledge not only of the
procedure and methods of advocacy in courts of common law and
of equity, but of the inner life and ways of lawyers, even when
consulting in the chamber of a leading counsel? Such a man
might possibly have interested himself in the reform of the poor
law, or in the abolition of imprisonment for debt. But is it
conceivable that he could have undertaken with success the task
of reforming the procedure of the Court of Chancery1? Of
Brougham it might be said that he had taken all knowledge to be
his province ; but he was before all things a law reformer. We
know that he used the novel as a means of propounding philo-
sophical ideas, for that he was the concealed novelist who wrote
Albert Lunel is now admitted. What is more probable than
that he used the same means, with more effectual precautions
against discovery, in advancing the cause dearest to his heart,
the cause of law reform? His public life had all but closed
when the series of novels published in the name of 'Dickens'
began to appear, and after his death in 1868 nothing was pub-
lished in this name but some stray papers and a few numbers of
an unfinished novel, which were probably found among the papers
of Brougham.'

Dickens lived in an age of interviewers and biographers, and we
know that he was for a short time in the office of a Mr. Molloy,
and afterwards, for a year and a half, clerk to Mr. Edward Black-
more, an attorney of Gray's Inn, who wrote to his biographer :
' Several incidents took place in the office of which he must have

xx PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

been a keen observer, as I recognised some of them in his Pickwick
and Nickleby.'

With this knowledge of the lasting impression made on the
mind of Dickens by a casual apprenticeship to the law, the
Inquirer is prepared to give a favourable reception to a conjecture
which, originating with Chalmers, recommended itself, in a greater
or less degree, to Malone, Collyer, Lord Campbell, and Mr. Churtoii
Collins, who suggested that SHAKESPEARE'S lifelong interest in
the law might have been the result of a similar experience in
early life. The Inquirer, seeking, after his fashion, for some
evidence that such an experience could be had in a Warwickshire
country town, would find, as the result of Lord Campbell's research,
that there was at Stratford, established by royal charter, a court
of record, regulated by the course of practice and pleading which
prevailed in the superior courts of law at Westminster. It sat
every fortnight, and had jurisdiction in personal actions to the
then considerable amount of thirty pounds. There were belong-
ing to it, beside the town clerk, six attorneys, some of whom,
Lord Campbell concludes, must have practised in the Queen's
Bench and in Chancery, and have had extensive business in con-
veyancing. There is a curious passage in Nash's epistle to the
Gentleman Students of Two Universities, in which he writes of
a sort of shifting companions, who ' leave the trade of Noverint '
and busy themselves with the endeavours of art. Such a one
* will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical
speeches.' This passage, printed in 1589, may not apply to
SHAKESPEARE, but it proves that a limb of the law turned play-
wright is no improbable supposition. Such a one would, in his
early struggles, frequent the threepenny ordinary, where a copious
legal vocabulary might be acquired even by a casual visitor, such
as the poet and dramatist Thomas Decker, who tells us in his
OulVs Hornbook, that the company at these ordinaries, 'if
they chance to converse, it is nothing but of statutes, bonds,
recognizances, fines, recoveries, audits, rents, subsidies, sureties,
inclosures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judg-
ments, commissions, bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible
matter.'

The Inquirer, at this stage of his research, has reason to con-
gratulate himself on the result of his labours. He has traced the
unknown writer with absolute certainty to a part of England
famed beyond others for the sports and pastimes of country life,
and to a town where a clever youth might readily have acquired
an interest in the law as keen as that of Dickens, and have laid

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xxi

the foundation of erudition, had his tastes led him in that
direction, as great as that of Jonson.

What, then, was the condition in life or calling of this man,
when, having exchanged Stratford for London, he commenced
dramatist? In seeking an answer to this question the Inquirer
will be careful to avoid an error into which many have fallen.
Students naturally make the acquaintance of SHAKESPEARE as he
is revealed by the masterpieces of his mature genius. Few, even
of those who go further, take the trouble of examining the plays
in the order in which they were written, which is now ascertained
with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes ; a course of study
from which attention has been diverted by the general adoption of
the haphazard arrangement of comedies, histories, and tragedies
in the Folio of 1623, where The Tempest, one of SHAKESPEARE'S
latest productions, is printed in the first place.

The man from Stratford of whom the Inquirer is in search is
not the author of tragedies such as Hamlet and Othello, and of
comedies such as As You Like It and of Much Ado ; he is one,
linked indeed with this consummate artist by the tie of personal
identity, but separated from him by many years of work, thought,
study, observation of men and manners, and, it may be, of sin,
suffering, and remorse, spent in the city of London. It is there-
fore to his earliest essays in playwriting that the Inquirer will
turn for information. He will find in them unmistakable evidence
that the man by whom they were constructed might, at this stage
of his career, have been fairly described as a theatrical drudge,
or fac-totum, touching up and adapting for the purposes of some
company of players dramas which were the workmanship of
others. This conclusion would be formed, not as a matter of
opinion, based on the fallible test of criticism, but as a matter
of certainty, resulting from a comparison of the work of SHAKE-
SPEARE with such of the older dramas on which it was founded
as are still extant.

A careful comparison of the second and third parts of Henry VI
with the plays from which they were adapted, will enable the
Inquirer, without aid from the higher criticism, to detect evi-
dence of similar patchwork in Titus Andronicus, and a collation
of The Taming of the Shrew with the old play of The Taming
of a Shrew will throw further light on the method of the adapter.

As years go by, this man, though still an adapter for the pur-
poses of the theatre, becomes an adapter with a difference. He
is no longer content to appropriate the work of another play-
wright, adding scenes and rewriting dialogue to suit the taste of

xxii PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

the playgoer. The hack playwright, illuminating his taskwork
with flashes of genius, has become the mighty magician, trans-
muting the worthless dross of history or novel into the purest
gold 'with heavenly alchemy.' But still he is one and the same,
and when he has discovered the adapter of The True Tragedie,
the Inquirer will have found SHAKESPEARE.

The character of SHAKESPEARE'S earliest work, and the know-
ledge and observance of the technicalities and requirements of the
stagecraft of his day which are traceable throughout his plays,
would suggest that his earliest connection with the theatre was as a
player, and suspicion is turned into certainty when the Inquirer,
having completed his interrogation of the plays, turns to the
Sonnets. He is too well versed in the poetical literature of the
age to expect to find in compositions of this kind an autobiography
of the writer. For the purposes of his quest he passes lightly
over some of the greatest and many of the obscurest of poems,
giving little thought to professions of love made after the
fashion of the time, until his attention is arrested by the occur-
rence of an unmistakable personal note. In a sonnet written in
a downcast mood, the poet laments that he has gone here and
there, and made himself 'a motley to the view,' words which
in his day could not fail to suggest the calling of player (ex).
That this calling was distasteful to the writer is plain from the
opening words of the next succeeding sonnet :

0, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.

There is much in these sonnets and in another written in the
same mood (xxix.) to suggest the personality of the writer.
A poet-actor, without genuine love of his art and discon-
tented with his lot, would not be likely to attain to success in
his calling. He would naturally have recourse to playwriting,
in the hope that fortune might thus better for his life provide.
The life of a successful playwright and manager, although profit-
able, might not altogether satisfy the desires of this gentle and
retiring poet. The literary position of an author would in those
days be fixed by poems rather than by plays. So little were
these regarded as permanent literature that Jonson was laughed
at when in 1616 he published his dramas under the title of

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xxiii

Worses. This man might possibly be found to set more store
on his poems, than on productions from which he looked for gain
rather than glory ; as Scott preferred for many years to be known
as a poet, rather than as a novelist. And Ave can understand that
the author of these sonnets might, when fortune had listened to
his appeal and provided sufficiently for the kind of life which he
enjoyed, have been led by his dislike of public means and public
manners to turns his footsteps from the London playhouse towards
the scenes and enjoyments of country life, whither his thoughts
had always strayed. But from these speculations the Inquirer will
quickly return to the investigation of fact.

It now only remains to discover the name of this player from
Stratford, whom the Inquirer has traced to his taskwork in a
London theatre. His Christian name is William. This he tells
us, not by a formal statement which might be intended to mislead,
but in a sportive mood, and by one of those quips and cranks
in which his soul delighted. This SHAKESPEARE was in the
habit, with other poets of the age, of giving expression, in the
form of a sonnet, to thoughts of widely different kinds. In the
carelessly arranged collection before him, the Inquirer finds, together
with poems of a depth and grandeur unsurpassed in any language,
some tributes of friendship and love, and also some trifling
fugitive pieces which were evidently intended for the private
friends of the writer. In several of these he finds an elaborate
play on the word ' will/ which could have no point or significance
if the name of the jester had not been "William.

Whoever hath his wish, Thou hast thy ' Will,'
And 'Will' to boot, and ' Will' in overplus.

There may be an allusion to some rival William in this
sonnet (cxxxv.), in which the word 'will' occurs twelve times.
The next sonnet in the collection concludes with a conceit evidently
founded on a play on the writer's name :

Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me, for my name is ' Will.'

In his search for the surname of this player William, the In-
quirer works under conditions which restrict him to the consider-
ation of anonymous references to the object of his search. In the
earliest of these we find the unnamed adapter of TJie True
Tragedie lampooned under the name of Shake-scene. The In-
quirer would be ill fitted for his task if Greene's sarcasm failed to
suggest a name so well known in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire
as Shakespeare. He has less hesitation in reading ' spear e' for

xxiv PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

1 scene ' when he recalls another anonymous reference to a poet of
the day, of whom it was said that his muse ' doth like himself
heroically sound,' and William Shakespeare, Player, late of Strat-
ford, stands revealed.-

It may now be asked, Is not this discovery on which your
Inquirer prides himself, a plain matter of fact, well known to
all in London ; to Eliza and to James who were so taken hy
Shakespeare's plays ; to the patrons who prosecuted the man with
so much honour ; to the groundlings who crowded the pit in
thousands to see brave Talbot, the terror of the French,
triumph on the stage; to the printers who pirated his plays;
to the rival dramatists who envied his success; to the men
of letters in whose society he moved; and to the players who
loved him, to whom in his will he left tokens of affection?
Why should the attention of the student be diverted from
Shakespeare's greatest works to early and immature produc-
tions, some of which might not have been printed in his
collected works, if, in the words of his editors, * the Author
himselfe had liu'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne
writings"? And why should a course of study be suggested
which can add nothing to the sum total of human knowledge?
This inquiry cannot be better answered than in words which the
Danish writer, Dr. George Brandes, wrote of Shakespeare : * It is
three hundred years since his genius attained its full develop-
ment, yet Europe is still busied with him as though with a
contemporary. His dramas are acted and read wherever civili-
sation extends. Perhaps, however, he exercises the strongest
fascination upon the reader whose natural bent of mind leads him
to delight in searching out the human spirit concealed and revealed
in a great author's work. "I will not let you go until you have
confessed to me the secret of your being" — these are the words
that rise to the lips of such a reader of Shakespeare. Ranging
the plays in their probable order of production, and reviewing the
poet's life-work as a whole, he feels constrained to form for him-
self some image of the spiritual experience of which it is the
expression.' (William Shakespeare, a Critical Study.)

It was finely said by Hallam that if there was a Shakespeare
of earth, there was also one of heaven, and it is of him that we
desire to know something. This desire can never be fully realised,
notwithstanding all our efforts, for this is the Shakespeare of
whom it was written, ' others abide our question, thou art free.'
But the nearest approach to this unattainable knowledge lies in
the study of the personality of the man who was of this earth,

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION xxv

and the neglect of this study has led to the wildest heresies as
to the personality of the Shakespeare whom we seek to know.
I have suggested in these pages that Shakespeare's thoughts and
recollections of the sports and occupations of country life, told in
his own words, may be regarded as, in some sense, a fragment
of an autobiography, relating indeed to outward matters only,
but to facts which often recurred to his recollection, and which
seriously affected the course of his life. If chapters of deeper
interest are to be added to the autobiography of this man, this
can only be done by an interrogation of his works in the order in
which they were written. Such chapters, conversant with the
growth and development of his mighty intellect, will be found
in Professor Dowden's Shakspere, A critical study of his Mind
and Art.

The student who, in the words of Dr. Brandes, ranges the
plays in their probable order of production, and reviews the poet's
life-work as a whole, may not succeed in wresting from him the
secret of his being. But his labour will not have been spent in
vain, if by such a course of study, pursued in the light of con-
temporary records, he is brought into companionship with a living
personality, loved and honoured by all to whom it was known,
to the discernment of which the eye of the student has often
been somewhat blinded by the exceeding brightness of the light
which surrounds the Shakespeare of heaven.

The preface to the former edition of this work contained the
following words : ' I have to acknowledge with gratitude the
assistance which I received from Dr. INGRAM (Senior Fellow of
Trinity College, Dublin) and from Mr. PALMER (Fellow of Trinity
College), who have kindly read the proof-sheets of this volume as
it came through the press.'

A few weeks after the publication of the book, by the untimely
death of ARTHUR PALMER, the world of letters lost one of the
brilliant scholars by whom the reputation of the classical school
in Trinity College has been built up. Regarding him, I may with
truth apply to myself these words :

Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit,
Nulli flebilior quam tibi,

for our friendship and companionship, dating from early college
days, when we shared the same rooms, continued uninterrupted to
the hour of his death.

xxvi PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

In a review of the life-work of JOHN KBLLS INGRAM, I read,
without sense of disproportion, the word ' myriad-minded ' applied
to him, and the remembrance of his personality suggests to me
another attribute of 'gentle' Shakespeare, the students of whose
works are deeply indebted to his research and illuminating
criticism. His interest in these pages, of which he gave practical
proof, was due to his readiness to welcome any contribution,
however slight, to what he described as ' the study of Shakespeare,
the elucidation of his language, the illustration of his modes of
thinking, and the criticism of his text.' It was at his suggestion
that the greater part of this preface was written, for he believed
that the strange hallucinations by which the imaginationgof some
earnest students of Shakespeare are possessed can best be dispelled
by a study of the personality of the man of whose complex nature
a certain aspect has been revealed to us in the passages from his
works which are collected in these pages.

D. H. MADDEN.

May 6th, 1907.

PEEFACE TO THE FORMER EDITION

A GOOD many years ago accident brought to my knowledge the
sport of hunting the wild red deer, which has been carried on in
the Forest of Exmoor from time immemorial in accordance with
ancient usage. The existence and nature of this pursuit had not
as yet become matters of common knowledge. The Master at that
time was Mr. Fenwick Bisset, an Irish gentleman settled in Somerset-
shire, to whom the sport owed its excellence and fame, if not its
continued existence. Mr. Samuel Warren, of Dulverton, was
secretary ; the huntsman, Arthur Heal, was at the zenith of his
fame; and the Rev. John Russell, although some seventy years
had passed (so I learned from his lips) since he first hunted the
wild red deer, had not as yet entered upon the duties of the parish
in which he spent the last years of his life.

Beginning and ending with the long vacation, the wild sport of
stag-hunting offered many attractions to one whose professional
labours forbade him to yield to stronger temptations presented by
Irish sport during the working months of the year. Again and
again I revisited those happy hunting grounds, and in each succeed-
ing autumn the thoroughly Shakespearian character of the sport
and of its surroundings impressed me more and more. I began by
collecting passages illustrating the scenes with which I became
familiar. Then came the idea of a stag-hunt, after the manner of
The Noble Arte of Venerie and of Exmoor, in which a description
of the various incidents of the chase might serve to illustrate and
to connect the scattered passages in which Shakespeare has re-
corded his recollections of the harbouring, the unharbouring, the
hunting, the baying, and the breaking up of the hart.

The hounds were of necessity Master Robert Shallow's, and the
tale was naturally told by Master William Silence, the lettered
member of the family group.

Thus attracted to the study of Elizabethan sport, and gaining
some knowledge of what Ben Jonson calls ' the hawking language,'

xxvii

xxviii PREFACE TO THE FORMER EDITION

I proceeded to conduct my Gloucestershire friends, with certain
additions to their number, through a variety of scenes, in the
company of William Silence, who records his experiences in a
diary, and who finally collects certain notes, the loss of which I
endeavour to supply in a chapter entitled The Horse in Shakespeare.
Every lover of the horse who is a student of Shakespeare must have
been struck by the number and appropriateness of his references
to horses and to horsemanship; and I found that some passages
which once seemed obscure became clear, and that others gained a
new significance, in the light of such knowledge of the old-world
phraseology of the manage as may be acquired from the copious
sources of information set forth in a note entitled The Book of
Sport.

Thus, little by little, in successive vacations and spare moments
of time, and in varying scenes, the book grew, and with it my
amazement at Shakespeare's knowledge of the most intimate secrets
of woodcraft and falconry, and, above all, of the nature and dis-
position of the horse. In his use of this knowledge for the illus-
tration of human character, thought, and action, he stands alone.
To understand the lessons which he would thus teach us, it is
necessary to know the language in which they are conveyed, and
to most readers the languages of ancient woodcraft, of the manage,
and of falconry are unknown tongues. I venture to hope that
these pages may in some degree aid the student of Shakespeare in
following the advice of Dr. Johnson prefixed to this volume, and
that he may succeed in finding in the sports of the field a meaning
which escaped him in the study.

Whenever a knowledge of the incidents or of the terminology of
Elizabethan sport suggested a departure from the text of The Globe
Shakespeare, which I have generally adopted, I have noted the
variance. • The consequence has uniformly been to restore the read-
ing of the Folio of 1623. This circumstance suggested an inquiry
into the authority of this edition, which I refer to as 'the Folio.'
The result is embodied in a note entitled The Critical Significance
of Shakespeare's Allusions to Field Sports, in which I venture to
present, for the consideration of Shakespearian critics, certain
matters of fact and certain suggestions which forced themselves on
my attention during the progress of my studies.

I have to acknowledge with gratitude the assistance which I
received from Dr. INGRAM (Senior Fellow of Trinity College,
Dublin) and from Mr. PALMER (Fellow of Trinity College), who have
kindly read the proof -sheets of this volume as it came through the
press.

PREFACE TO THE FORMER EDITION xxix

I believe that the book requiring least apology from its author is
one which adds to our understanding and appreciation of the work
or character of one of the great men whom our race has produced.
Whether these pages have in this way justified their existence, it
is for their readers to determine.

D. H. MADDEN.

April 23, 1897.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PEEFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION v

CHAPTER PREFACE TO THE FORMER EDITION .... xxvii

I. THE DIARY .... .1

II. How THE HART WAS HARBOURED . .11

III. How THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED . . . .25

IV. How THE HART WAS HUNTED . .40
V. How THE HART WAS BAYED AND BROKEN UP .57

VI. AFTER THE CHASE .... .66

VII. SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL . .83

VIII. THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES .... 103

IX. THE HOLY ALE . . . . . . .116

X. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW ..... 137

XI. A RIDE ON COTSWOLD ...... 157

XII. A DAY'S HAWKING . . . . . .186

XIII. A DEAD LANGUAGE . . . . . .209

XIV. THE TAKING OF THE DEER . . . . .221
XV. THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE . 241

NOTES

NOTE

I. THE CRITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SHAKESPEARE'S ALLUSIONS

TO FIELD SPORTS ..... 306

The Folio of 1623, 308. Later Editions, 311. Ben Jonson
and the First Folio, 314. Leonard Digges, 316. Titus
Andronicus, 317. Shakespeare's Method of Adaptation,
322. King Henry VI., 325. King Henry VIII., 330.
Plays not included in the First Folio, 331. Pericles,
332. A Yorkshire Tragedy, 333. Two Noble Kinsmen,
335.

II. THE AUTHORITY OF THE FIRST FOLIO . . . 351

III. THE BOOK OF SPORT . . . . . .364

xxxi

xxxii CONTENTS

NOTK PAQK

IV. SHAKESPEARE ON ANGLING ..... 372

V. THE BEAR-GARDEN ...... 374

VI. SIR THOMAS MORE ON FIELD SPORTS .... 376

VII. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS ..... 378

VIII. SHAKESPEARE AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE . . . 380

IX. THE LANGUAGE OF FALCONRY ..... 384

INDEX OF SUBJECTS ...... 389

INDEX OF WORDS, ETC. . . . 393

THE DIARY OF
MASTER WILLIAM SILENCE

CHAPTER I

THE DIARY

0, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er ;
But there's more in me than thou understand'st.

Troilus and Cressida.

ALTHOUGH the fact is not recorded in Cam den's Britannia,
you may rest assured that for many centuries the worshipful
house of Shallow was of repute in Gloucestershire. The
family is now extinct ; but the blood and quality of Shallow
are so widely diffused throughout the three kingdoms that the
fact need hardly be regretted.

The founder of this ancient house, one Eobert de Chatel-
hault, is said to have flourished in the time of Henry II.
Tradition asserts that he served as a butt for the rude witti-
cisms of the Court, and that the King at the instigation of
Thomas Becket conferred on him a grant of a large tract
of land in the 'wilds of Gloucestershire,' in order (as the
Chancellor suggested) that he might hold somewhat in capite
in default of brains.

This practical joke endowed the courtier with possessions
rather extensive than valuable, and the successive represen-
tatives of the house were never particularly successful in
their efforts to increase them. They had an unhappy knack
of attaching themselves to the losing side, not from any
generous sympathy with the weaker, but from a firm belief
in its prospects of success. They never happened to hit off

THE DIARY

the right answer to the question put to one of them on a
noteworthy occasion, — ' under which King, Besonian ? ' Partly
from these causes, and partly by reason of some clever, but
unlucky dispositions of their money (among which was a
sum of one thousand pounds advanced to one Sir John
Falstaff, but not repaid), the estates and possessions of the
house decreased rather than increased as years rolled by.
It was probably due to inattention to spelling and to the
niceties of pronunciation that the family name declined
from the high-sounding Chatel-hault to the more homely
Shallow : — causes which have sufficed to convert De la Pole
into Poole, Bourchier into Butcher, Grenville into Greenfield,
and De Vere into Weir. The losses, however, as well as
the adventures of the family, were on a provincial scale.
The head of the house was always a man of considerable
position in his county; and, save in the cut of his beard
and the fashion of his clothes, there was but little difference
between the Kobert de CMtel-hault of the Plantagenets
and the Kobert Shallow of the Tudors.

Now, whatever you may think of this account of the
name and ancestry of Kobert Shallow (and it is quite as
trustworthy as many given by heralds), the man himself
was, beyond all doubt, a fact. There was in the year of
grace 1586 one Robert Shallow, Esquire, justice of the peace,
if not also of the quorum, and custos rotulorum. The name
by which he was known to the Gloucestershire folk of the
day is a trifling matter of detail. It was quite as much
a matter of course for this Kobert Shallow and his ancestors
to keep a kennel of hounds, as to write themselves 'armigero'
in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation — for the Shallows
could mostly write their names and additions. In his
park, the dappled fallow deer yielded their lives to the
crossbow of the woodman, and were coursed with grey-
hounds after the fashion of a long-forgotten sport, highly
esteemed by our ancestors. His falcon, stooping from her
pride of place, struck the mallard by the river banks, and
when his tercel-gentle shook his bells, the partridge cowering
in the stubble dared not stir a wing. His greyhounds
contended for the silver-studded collar, the prize awarded
at the games on Cotswold. Trout were caught by tickling

MASTER ROBERT SHALLOW 3

in the peculiar river of the justice, and the young dace was
a bait for the old pike in the sluggish Severn. To supply
his larder, springes were set to catch woodcocks, birds were
taken with lime-twigs, and bat-fowling was not despised.
in the absence of better sport. Is it not as certain that
Master Silence took part in his kinsman's sports, as that
he sang snatches of song after supper in his hall ? What
fitter name than Slender for the little man with cane-
coloured beard — out of his element, and therefore very like
a fool, in company with sweet Anne Page, but of whom
a different account would be given by the sportsmen on
Cotswold, by the warrener with whom he fought, or by the
bear-ward when Sackerson was loose? Master Shallow, we
may be sure, would never have troubled himself to push the
fortunes of his kinsman Slender, if he had not been beholden
to him for something beyond the occasional services of his
man Simple. What could Master Slender do for the justice,
but look after his hounds and hawks ? Such a hanger-on was
a recognised part of the establishment of an old-fashioned
country gentleman.

To join in the justice's sports, the yeomen of the country
and burgesses of the neighbouring towns were made heartily
welcome, after the good old fashion which still survives
in the custom of the English hunting field. The name of
one only of the company thus assembled can be stated with
absolute certainty, for he has recorded the incidents of each
sport with an accuracy unattainable even to the highest

fenius save by actual experience. It is the name of William
hakespeare.

It so happens that by a curious train of circumstances
I became possessed of a record of certain events in the
history of this Eobert Shallow and his fellows, which took
place in the autumn of the year 1586. The story is as
follows, In my boyhood I was a frequent visitor at an old-
fashioned house in one of the southern counties of Ireland,
the home of a family of English descent. The first of the
race who settled in Ireland obtained a grant of a portion of
the vast estates forfeited by the Earl of Desmond. Sir
William (so he was known in the family) gave his name
to a massive square tower or keep, the oldest part of the

4 THE DIARY

rambling and dilapidated residence of his descendants. A
chronicle in stone, the old house presented to the eye a
sensible record of the vicissitudes endured by the adopted
country of Sir William. The entrance hall had been the
refectory of a Cistercian abbey, founded by the piety of
some forgotten Geraldine. This portion of the ancient
building had been incorporated with the massive castle
erected by Sir William, for the construction of which the
remainder of the conventual buildings served as a con-
venient quarry. The abbey church indeed was spared, and
mouldered hard at hand, scarcely concealed from sight by
thickly growing laurels. Of Sir William's castle, one tower
only remained. The rest of the building had been de-
molished by one of Cromwell's lieutenants. The earth-
works on which his cannon were planted, known to this day
as Cromwell's Camp, are plainly traceable in an adjacent
field. For several generations, the descendants of Sir
William gloomily surveyed the desolation of his castle from
the tower which bore his name ; but as times improved they
constructed out of the ruins a moderate-sized dwelling-
house, in the style of solemn hideousness which prevailed
in the early years of the Georges. The upper room in Sir
William's tower had always a strange fascination for my
imagination. It was used as a lumber-room, and contained
a mixed assortment of broken furniture, old newspapers and
account books, oaken boxes, and worm-eaten books too
unsightly for the book-cases which lined the walls of the
room beneath, dignified by the name of the library.

In course of time the old place passed into the possession
of a more distant relation ; and, my own employments
leading me into different paths, I had all but forgotten Sir
William's tower, when I chanced to meet its owner in a
London street. I dined with him at his hotel, and listened
to his lamentations over the state of the country, by which
I understood him to mean the neglected condition of fox
coverts and the destruction of foxes. After dinner he
produced a bundle of mouldy papers closely written over
in an antique hand, which, he said, had been found among
some title deeds in an oaken chest in Sir William's tower.
He had brought them with him, thinking that some one

SPORT IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE 5

might tell him what they were about. " I tried to make
them out," said my worthy kinsman ; " but I could not get
very far. There is a lot of rubbish about lyme-hounds,
vauntlays, hunting at force, and hawking, that I cannot
make head or tail of. But the fellow is no sportsman, for
he calls the hounds ' dogs/ and says a fox may be killed by
gins, snares, as well as by hunting, so that you get rid of the
vermin anyhow. When I came to that, I could read no
more. But I thought that somebody might make something
of it. However, I'm glad I met with you. You're welcome
to it. It's of no use to me."

I took the papers home, and on examining them I found
that they consisted of a journal, in which the writer (who
was evidently Sir William, the founder of the family) had
recorded with much minuteness the events of some days
spent at his father's house in Gloucestershire in the autumn
of 1586, shortly before he left England to adventure for
Ireland. The journal was kept, the writer said, to preserve
for old age a record of the happiest days of his life. The
narrative begins with a memorable chase of a hart far into
the Cotswold hills, and proceeds to tell of sport with the
fallow deer in the park of some Gloucestershire justice,
apparently a kinsman of the writer. Various experiences
in hawking are narrated, together with some matters of a
personal nature, relating to the writer and one Mistress
Anne whose father was a Cotswold man, and an old friend
of the justice.

My interest was excited no less by the date of the manu-
script, than by its association with Sir William's tower, for
I had long been a student of Elizabethan literature, and had
taken pains to make myself acquainted with the manners
and customs of the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, Marlowe,
Ben Jonson, and Spenser. As I read and re-read the
narrative, I became more and more conscious of living in
the midst of scenes with which I had been long familiar.
The sensation was borne in on me of having heard all this
before, I knew not how or when. By degrees the figures,
hazy and undefined at first, began to assume definite forms.
There was no mistaking the Gloucestershire justice for any
other than Master Shallow, and this clue once obtained, it

6 THE DIARY

was easy to identify Abraham Slender, Justice Silence, Will
Squele, and the rest. The writer was evidently a man of
some education. He had been brought up at Oxford, and
was a member of one of the Inns of Court. From his
references to a sister named Ellen, and to Justice Shallow as
his kinsman, I had no doubt whatever as to his identity.
He was plainly William, the son of the Gloucestershire
gentleman whom we know by the name of Silence.

Shal. And how doth my good cousin Silence 1

Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

Shal. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow 1 and your
fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen *?

Sil. Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow !

Shal. By yea and nay, sir, I dare say my cousin William is
become a good scholar : he is at Oxford still, is he not ?

Sil. Indeed, sir, to my cost.

Shal. A' must, then, to the inns o' court shortly.

2 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 3.

There were frequent references to some stranger from a
neighbouring town, a visitor at the house of one whom I
identified as Clement Perkes of the Hill — the honest yeo-
man for whose knavish antagonist William Visor of Woncot
the countenance of the justice was bespoken by his serving-
man Davy. This young man, carelessly mentioned at first,
seemed to acquire a strong and unaccountable influence
over the writer's mind. There was a time when I hoped to
convince the world that the nameless stranger in Gloucester-
shire was none other than William Shakespeare. With this
view I collected from time to time, and interwove with the
narrative, the various passages in his works which led me to
believe that he had been an actor in the scenes described
by the diarist. But I have long since given up all idea of
proving to the satisfaction of another mind this, or, indeed,
any other proposition, except that the three angles of a
triangle are equal to two right angles, or certain other truths
similarly proved, and equally interesting. And now, when
I read over the result of my labours, I have little hope that
any one in this critical age will accept my explanation of
the mysterious visitor to Cotswold, and I have some fears

A FRAGMENT OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7

lest Sir William and his journal may have to be sacrificed
to the doubts of an unbelieving generation.

After all, what a book contains is of more importance to
the reader than the story of how it came to be written ; and
the most sceptical reader of these pages cannot question the
fact that Shakespeare tells you here, in his own words, his
thoughts and memories of country life. The homely scenes
and unintellectual pursuits on which his mind loved to
dwell may not be unworthy the attention of yours. And it
seems to me that his record of experiences in country life
may in some sense be regarded as a fragment of an auto-
biography : in a limited sense only, and in relation to out-
ward matters, but to facts which he thought of much, and
which seriously affected the course of his life: one, more-
over, which we may value in the utter hopelessness of any
revelation, in his writings or elsewhere, of the inner life and
real self of the man Shakespeare.

Vainly have succeeding generations beaten against the
bars of the impenetrable reserve in which he has enclosed
himself. In despair, some have fallen back on their inner
consciousness, and have thereout developed theories, hy-
potheses, and transcendental criticisms. Others ransack
archives and registers. These, at all events, discover truth,
but mostly in the shape of parchments and entries in worm-
eaten books in which the name of Shakespeare is written,
with curious diversity of spelling.

Take any ' Life of Shakespeare : ' strip it of extracts from
registers, copies of conveyances, exemplifications of fines,
bonds, wills, pedigrees of Arden, suits for tithes, grants of
arms, records of Stratford ; these, and such-like, are nothing
but legal evidence going to prove that he and others were
born and married; that they bought, sold, and dealt with
property, like their fellows ; and finally died and were
buried.1 What remains of the man or of his life ?

1 I allow these words to remain as they were written, some years before
the publication of the former edition, for they fairly represent the result
of an attempt to gain some knowledge of the life of Shakespeare by the
means then available. The student of to-day is in a different position. By
the aid of the information contained in Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of William,
Shakespeare, Mr. Elton's William Shakespeare: His Family and Friends,
and George Brandes' William Shakespeare, and in the light of the con-

8 THE DIARY

We know that he lived in the country town of Stratford,
probably until his twenty-third year, and it is likely that he
exchanged this life for London, not of free choice, but under
some sort of compulsion. We know that he invested his
earnings in the purchase of property about Stratford, and
finally in building a house, whither he retired while still in
the full splendour of his fame as a poet, and (what he would
seem to have valued more) in the height of his fortune as a
manager: that he never troubled himself to collect or edit
his plays : and that he ceased to write for the stage some
years before his death, which took place somewhat suddenly
(it is said) when he was yet in middle life. We may, if we
please, believe certain traditions. The most venerable of
these was current in Stratford in the seventeenth century,
and can be traced to several independent sources. It is the
well-known deer-stealing story, thus recorded in its earliest
and crudest form by the Eev. Thomas Davies, a Gloucester-
shire clergyman, who died in 1707: 'Much given to all un-
luckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits ; particularly from
Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned,
and at last made him fly his native country to his great
advancement.' It was generally said at Stratford that his
wife and children remained there, and that when his fortunes
began to mend he spent each autumn with them. There is
another story, traceable also to the seventeenth century,
according to which his skill in the matter of horses enabled
him to earn a livelihood on his arrival in London — distancing
all competitors in care of theatre-goers' horses, so that boys
at the theatre door (says the story) traded on his name, and
would say, " I am Shakespeare's boy, sir."

I care not to discuss which is more probable, the sub-
stantial truth of these stories, or their entire fabrication ; nor
yet the further question, how it came to pass that when
people invented stories about Shakespeare (if they did invent
them) they thought of deer and horses. Shakespeare's love

temporary notices collected by Mr. Hughes in The Praise of Shakespeare, he
may attain to an acquaintance with the man Shakespeare, not, indeed,
satisfying, but fuller than is attainable in the case of any other dramatist
of the age, with the exception of Ben Jonson, who lived much before the
public, and loved to take them into his confidence.

SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE 9

of the country needs no illustration from the gossip of
Stratford. It is a simple matter of fact that the life lived
in Warwickshire had for him some charm sufficient to with-
draw him from the full life of London, forsaking the
wit-combats of the Mermaid tavern for a quiet game of
shovel-board at the Falcon with John Combe. It is also a
matter of fact that his mind was at all times so possessed
with images and recollections of English rural life, that he
refrained not from attributing a like possession to men of all
sorts and conditions, regardless of time, place, or circum-
stance. Prospero sets on his spirits in hunter's language,
by names well known in Gloucestershire kennels. Ulysses
compares Achilles sulking in his tent to a hart keeping
thicket. The fallen Caesar suggests to Antony a noble
hart, whose forest was the world, bayed and slain by blood-
stained hunters. Titus Andronicus proclaims a solemn
hunting after the fashion of Gloucestershire. Egyptians,
Athenians, and Komans are intimately acquainted with the
coursing matches of Cotswold. Roderigo of Venice and
Pandarus of Troy speak the language of English sportsmen.
Theseus hunts the country round Athens with hounds as
thoroughly English as was the horse of Adonis. The flowers
of Warwickshire blossom in every clime, and we encounter
in the most unlikely places the familiar characters of rural
life — under a pent-house at Messina, in the cottage of a
Bohemian shepherd, and in the hall of an Italian noble.

Shakespeare wrote no drama of country manners. The
life of woods and fields was to him something more than
a scene for the action of a play or two. It is the atmos-
phere in which the poet and the creatures of his fancy live,
move, and have their being. His reminiscences are scattered
throughout his works — here a little and there a little. And
it seems to me that his scattered hints gain rather than lose
in significance, when they are taken from a context with which
they have often but slight connection, and are grouped with
other passages inspired by a common idea.

Some sort of interpretation they need ; for the pursuits
and pastimes of the sixteenth century have, for the most
part, disappeared with the physical aspect of the country,
and without some explanation or illustration suggestions

10 THE DIARY

and hints of the past might not be understood. Of field
sports, none are generally practised after the fashion of
three centuries ago, with the exception of hare hunting in
an unenclosed country ; and even the hare is now pursued
with other horses and other hounds. Woodlands have been
felled. Vast tracts of arable land, then tilled by village
commoners on the open field system, have been enclosed
and allotted in severalty. What were once tracks across
heather-clad or swampy wilds, the home of red deer and
native horses, are now macadamised highways, separated
from richly cultivated fields by banks and hedge-rows. The
natural landmarks of hill and river remain ; but even they
have suffered change, and if Master Shallow were now to
revisit his Gloucestershire manor, the only object which
could satisfy him beyond doubt of its identity is the tower
of the village church.

If we would realise in some degree the England of three
centuries ago, we must seek it in the moorland districts
of the west, where the general elevation of the surface has
restricted the area of cultivation to the bottoms, and to the
lower slopes of the hills. Vast tracts of upland remain
unenclosed, the haunt of red deer and moorland ponies.
There also primitive manners linger, and ancient sport
survives. The hart is hunted as he was hunted throughout
England when Elizabeth was Queen. The Noble Arte of
Venerie is still cited as an authority. The village fair ; the
wrestling green: the songs and catches of villagers in the
inn kitchen ; parson and yeoman discoursing by the covert
side on the mysteries of woodcraft ; the hare hunt on the
unenclosed hillside; the 'assembly' on the opening day of
the hunting season ; the c mort o1 the deer ' in the moorland
stream ; the frank recognition of differences of rank ; the
old-world games ; the harvest-home dinner ; are all stray
wafts of the Elizabethan age. No more than distant
mutterings of the storms which have since then broken
over England have reached the lonely moors of Exe and
Barle, and merry England, like the setting sun, lovingly
lingers on the hillsides of the west.

CHAPTER II

HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

I with the morning's love have oft made sport,
And like a forester, the groves may tread.

A Midsummer Night's Dream.

THE justice's deer park had been enclosed under a royal
licence at a time when a man could no more take to himself
without lawful title the right to empark animals ferce
natures, than he might assume coat-armour, a barony, a
manor, or the estate of esquire. These things were then
clearly understood, and mistakes never occurred. The park
was extensive and well stocked with fallow deer. Of red
deer there were none, for an old prejudice of woodcraft,
since exploded, forbad the keeping of deer of different species
within the same pale.1

Outside the park, a valley, thickly wooded, extended
upward to the higher level of Cotswold. Through this
western valley a crystal trout stream hurried downward to
join the Severn Sea. It was the 'peculiar river' of the
justice. But in defiance of his rights, youngsters from
Dursley and Woncot would grope for trouts under the
stones with which its bed was strewn, and catch them by
tickling as they lay among the weeds in its sunny shallows.

But the horsemen who now follow its course are not

thinking of the stream or of its inhabitants. As they slowly

ascend the narrow path (or trench, as it was called in the

language of woodcraft), they look around on every side for

something which they evidently came forth to find in this

sequestered valley. The elder leads the way. His homely

dress of russet brown, his keen eye and manly air, proclaim

him an honest and independent yeoman. He is Clement

1 Shirley's English Deer Parks.

11

12 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

Perkes of the Hill. The younger man's lofty cast of
features and gentle bearing suggest a higher station. Those,
however, who limited their observation to costume and
outward matters would set him down as a scrivener or
lawyer's clerk, or possibly a schoolmaster, from some neigh-
bouring town. He is the nameless stranger of the journal.

" Here they be," says Clement Perkes to his companion, as
they emerge from a tangled thicket. " Here be th' assembly.
The justice ha'n't come, but the serving-men ha' spread the
cloths, and Davy and William Visor of Woncot be tasting
the wines."

The scene which met the eyes of the younger horseman
as he joined his friend would to the eye of a modern looker-
on suggest a picnic, but a sixteenth -century sportsman
would easily recognise the preparations for the 'assembly'
or outdoor dinner, with which our ancestors inaugurated the
solemn hunting of the hart, when proclaimed on some note-
worthy occasion, or in honour of a distinguished visitor.

A level spot of bright green turf met the eye, over-
shadowed by many an oak, 'whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook, which brawls along this wood.' l Of such
a spot the soldier-poet G-eorge Gascoigne wrote :

Who list by me to learne Assembly for to make
For Keysar, Kyng, or comely Queene, for Lord or Ladies' sake :

Or where, and in what sort it should prepared be,
Marke well my wordes, and thanke me then, for thankes I craue
in fee.

The place should first be pight on pleasant gladsome greene,
Yet under shade of stately trees, where little sunne is seene,

And neare some fountaine spring whose chrystalle running

streames
May helpe to coole the parching heate ycaught by Phoebus' beames.

Where breath of westerne windes may calmely yield content,
Where casements neede not opened be, where ayre is never pent,

Where shade may seme for shryne and yet the sunne at hande,
Where beautie neede not quake for cold, ne yet with sunne be
tande.2

1 As You L. ii. I. 31.

2 The book from which these lines are quoted is an important work,
referred to in these pages as The Noble Arte. It is entitled, 'The Noble

THE ASSEMBLY 13

The assembly is to be held at noon, and as the hour
approaches, gaunt serving-men, clad in their master's blue
coats and wearing his badge on their sleeves, appear on the
scene, leading heavily laden pack-horses, more hungry-
looking than themselves. First comes the butler, whose
jade carries baskets, packed with black-jacks of ale and
flagons of wine. Setting these to cool in the running brook,
the butler spreads on the levellest portion of the turf a large
linen cloth, on which he places some score of trenchers and
knives. Next come 'William cook' and his men, and as
they unlade their pack-horses they afford appetising glimpses
of cold capons, loins of veal, neats' tongues powdered,
sausages and other savoury knacks and kickshaws, evidently
provided for the entertainment of a numerous company.

The explanation of the scene is soon given. Master
Petre, a man of note in these parts, had just brought home
a fair and wealthy bride, the lady Katherine, and the
hunting was proclaimed in their honour. The justice had
insisted that none of the pomp and circumstance of the
noble art of venery should be omitted. For Master Petre
had travelled much, and Master Shallow would not have
him say that a Gloucestershire justice yielded to any in due
observance of the ceremonies of the chase. On ordinary

Arte of Venerie or Hunting, wherein is handled and set out the Vertues,
Nature, and Properties of fiuetene sundrie Chaces, together with the order
and maner how to Hunte and kill eueryone of them. Translated and
collected for the pleasure of all noblemen and gentlemen, out of the best
approued authors, which haue written anything concerning the same : and
reduced into such order and proper termes as are used here, in this noble
Realme of England.' The Noble Arte was published in 1575 by Christopher
Barker, and is usually bound with Turbervile's Book of Faulconrie, published
by Barker in the same year. The name of the translator and collector is
not given. I have in a note on The Book of Sport given some reasons for
doubting the authorship of Turbervile, to whom it has been ascribed, and I
find that my doubts are shared by the editor of The Master of Game. The
volume contains a number of poetical effusions contributed by George
Gascoigne, the author of the earliest English satire (The Steel Glas, 1576),
to whom Hallam assigns * a respectable place among the Elizabethan versi-
fiers.' It is for the most part a translation of La Venerie, a well-known
work by Jacques du Fouilloux, published in 1561, which went through many
editions. Most of the woodcuts in The Noble Arte are borrowed from this
book, but that representing the assembly is original. Several of the wood-
cuts have been reproduced by Mr. Hedley Peek in a series of articles in the
Badminton Magazine, entitled, Old Sporting Prints,

14 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

occasions no such formalities were observed. When the
justice rode a-hunting it was usually after dinner, but when
Master Slender had his will, the welkin rang from early
dawn with sound of horn and cry of hounds, and merry
shouts of 'hunt's up' chased away the lingering shades of
night.

Unwillingly, and with no expectation of a day's hunting
after his mind, Abraham Slender proceeded to carry out his
kinsman's behests, and to organise a solemn hunting, accord-
ing to the use of princes and honourable persons. After all,
the hounds were the justice's, and he must be obeyed. He
might have consoled himself with the reflections that in
matters of the chase, if the master proposes he certainly
does not dispose, and that the unexpected generally occurs.
But Master Slender, as we know, had not sufficient phil-
osophy to keep him from quarrelling at a bear-baiting, and
his temper to-day is none of the sweetest.

The hour of noon drew near as Perkes and his companion
reached the place of the assembly. The clatter of hoofs
and sound of voices announced the approach of a large party
from the direction of the Hall. The justice led the way.

"Good morrow, good morrow, honest neighbour Perkes,
thou art welcome, thou and thy friend. Nay, keep a good
heart ! for if judgment was given against thee at the
sessions, 'twas no fault of thine, or of thy suit. Thou hast
been always a good neighbour, and a true friend of the
deer. Thy turn will "

The rest of the sentence was lost. The justice stopped
short when his eye caught William Visor of Woncot, who
stepped obsequiously forward, cap in hand, and with bended
knee wished his worship good day, hoped his health was
good, and received the justice's welcome as it had been the
benediction of a bishop.

By the time these greetings were over, the justice and
his companions had dismounted, and had handed their
horses to the care of their attendants. Perkes and his
friend, who were unattended, made their horses fast to
neighbouring trees, and seated themselves on the turf by a
cloth placed at a respectful distance from that which was
spread for the justice and his friends.

A BLACK OUSEL 15

At Master Shallow's right sat Petre's bride, straight and
slender as the hazel twig, ' as brown in hue As hazel nuts
and sweeter than the kernels.' l Opposite sat her husband.
We know him as Petruchio, masquerading in the thin
disguise of a Veronese; a disguise quickly thrown aside
when he reaches his country house, and rates Nathaniel,
Gregory, and Philip after the fashion of a Gloucestershire
country gentleman. There was an affected plainness in his
attire, but a close observer would infer from his appearance
and manner that he had seen somewhat of foreign countries
and courts.

His next neighbour, Master Abraham Slender, was open
to no such imputation. Never, indeed, had he quitted
Gloucestershire, save on one occasion some two years ago,
of which we have heard somewhat, when he accompanied
his uncle Master Shallow on a visit, certainly to Windsor,
and for aught we know to London. Never again will he be
induced to leave his native county. "London," he is wont
to say, " may be a mighty fine place. But Gloucestershire
is the place for a gentleman. Why, not a soul here but
knows who I be, and doffs to me accordingly. Whereas
when I was in Windsor I might as well be a scholar or an
ordinary man, for all the worship I had when I went
abroad."

Old Justice Silence is there of course, with his son
William and his dark-eyed daughter Ellen, Master Shallow's
god-daughter — 'a black ousel'2 her father would call her

1 Tarn, of Shrew, ii. 1. 255.

2 2 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 9. Both thrushes and blackbirds were included in
the class 'ousel.' A black ousel simply means a blackbird. Brunettes were
not admired in Tudor days. The 'woman coloured ill' (Sonnet cxliv.), 'as
black as hell, as dark as night' (Sonnet cxlvii.), must have possessed strong
counterbalancing charms to conquer the poet's objection to her colour. Her
complexion is 'dun,' and 'black wires grow on her head' (Sonnet cxxx.).
This prejudice survives in the use of the word ' fair ' to denote light in
colour, in conjunction with such words as hair and complexion. It is said of
Beatrice: If fair-faced,

She would swear the gentleman should be her sister ;

If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antique,

Made a foul blot. Much Ado, iii. 1. 61.

There was therefore no need for commentators to invent a saying, according
to which a black ousel was equivalent to a black sheep ; or to imagine a kind
of bird, so called, which seldom mates.

16 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

whenever her beauty was commended — but black or fair she
would seem to find favour in the eyes of Master Petre'a
cousin Ferdinand. This Ferdinand Petre was a frequent
visitor at Petre Manor.1 He had been a fellow student with
William Silence at Gray's Inn, of which he is now a
member ; ' to my cost,' his father always adds, when he
announces the fact, and no doubt with truth ; for while the
fair Ellen, like Imogen, is simply attired in a riding suit, 'no
costlier than would fit a franklin's housewife,' 2 her brother
and his fellow student display all the bravery of the latest
London fashion.

Will Squele and his fair daughter Anne had ridden many
miles to take part in the justice's solemn hunting. He and
the justice had been boon companions in the olden times —
fifty-five years ago, as old Silence never fails to remind them
— when they heard the chimes at midnight in all the inns
of court.

Shal. I was once of Clement's Inn, where I think they will
talk of mad Shallow yet.

Sil. You were called ' lusty Shallow ' then, cousin.

Shal. By the mass, I was called anything ; and I would have
done any thing indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and
little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and
Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man ; you had not
four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns o' court again.

2 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 15.

Will Squele is old no doubt — he cannot choose but be old —
yet he is hale and hearty, and his bright eye and russet
cheek bespeak the healthiness of his Cotswold home.

" Much good may it do your good hearts, preface, preface,"
said the justice as the company sat down to meat. Valiant
trenchermen they were for the most part, and required little
encouragement to do full justice to the repast. But there
comes at length to Tudor sportsmen, as to Homeric heroes,
a moment when the desire of eating and drinking has been
expelled. Then comes business.

The arrival of this moment was marked by the approach

1 PET. Bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither. (Tarn, of Shrewt iv.
1. 154.) 2 Cymb. iii. 2. 78.

THE FORESTER 17

of the huntsman to the justice to make his report. You
may see him on his knees in a woodcut in The Noble Arte,1
presenting on a dish the tokens from which the weight and
age of the hart may be estimated, describing where he is
harboured, and detailing the measurement of the impression
of his slot, or forefoot :

Lowe I crouche before the Lordings all.
Out of my Home the f ewmets lette I fall ;
And other signes and tokens do I tell
To make them hope the Harte may like them well.
Then they commande that I the wine should taste,
So biddes mine Arte ; and so my throte I baste.2

Now it so happens that Master Silence, with another
present at the assembly, had been out betimes with the
huntsman and the forester. He tells in his diary the story
of the hunting, beginning before the dawn of day ; for to
harbour a stag, or to take a purse, you must 'go by the
moon and the seven stars, and not by Phoabus.' 3

Fal. Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us
that are squires of the night's body be called thieves of the day's
beauty \ let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions
of the moon : And let men say we be men of good government,
being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the
moon, under whose countenance we steal. 1 Hen. IV. i. 2. 26.

Among the duties of the forester is to aid the huntsman
in harbouring the deer ; finding out where he has made his
lair, and whether he may be yet found there when the time
has come for him to be hunted. And so Theseus, when he
would show Hippolyta sport with his hounds, bred out of
the Spartan kind, gave his orders to the forester betimes :

Go, one of you, find out the forester ;
For now our observation is performed ;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley : let them go :
Despatch, I say, and find the forester.

Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 108.

1 See Note 2, p. 12.

2 The Blazon pronounced by the Huntsman.— The Noble Arte.
8 1 Hen. IV. i. 2. 15.

18 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

On this occasion, as on many others, the skill of the
huntsman and of the forester was not unaided. That honest
yeoman, Clement Perkes of the Hill, had of late suffered
much of a great hart,1 which had ravaged his fields, wasting
more than he destroyed, biting here and there an ear of
corn, and for the sake of a single favourite morsel uprooting
entire plants, after the manner of fastidious old males of the
species red deer. He had seen him, in the evening twilight,
browsing among his smaller cattle, and had noted the points
which he bore on his wide and massy antlers. From long
observation the yeoman knew well the haunts and habits
of the deer, both in summer when they fed on his oats and
turnips, and in winter when they were driven to eat strange

Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st.

Ant. and Cleo. i, 4. 65.

Now this hart was wont, having made a hearty meal at
goodman Perke's expense, to betake himself a little before
dawn to a neighbouring wood, in the depth of whose shade
he had often found refuge from the many terrors with which
daylight is beset in the eyes of a hunted beast of the
forest.2 But on the night before the assembly his move-

1 The male red deer is now ordinarily called a stag, the female a hind, and
the young a calf. In the diarist's time the generic term for the male was
'hart.' But if you would speak in the strict language of woodcraft, you
would call him in the first year 'a Hind calfe, or a calfe, the second yeere you
shall call him a Broket ; the third yeere you shall call him a Spayad : the
fourth jeere you shall call him a Staggard ; the fift yeare you shall call him

a Stag ; the sixt yeere, you shall call him a Hart But if the king or

queene doe hunt or chace him, and he escape away aliue, then after such
a hunting or chacing he is called Hart Royall.' (Manwood, The Forest
Lames, 1598.) Thenceforth, after proclamation, he was free to return to the
forest from whence he came, and no man might meddle with a hart royal
proclaimed. Mr. Hunter (Illustrations of Shakespeare) suggests that when
Csesar said of Cleopatra that she ' being royal, Took her own way,' (Ant. and
Cleo. v. 2. 339), the licence accorded to the hart royal to go his own way was
present to his mind ; and certainly instances may be found in Shakespeare
of similar conceits. The stag, or hart, at six years of age should have
acquired ' his rights,' — that is to say, the brow, bay, and trey antlers— and
two- [points on top of each horn. The modern use of the term 'royal' to
denote a stag with all his rights and three on top, is altogether inaccurate,
and without warranty of any writer of authority on woodcraft.

2 Manwood contrasts the beasts of the forest— the hart, the hind, the
hare, the boar and the wolf— with the beasts of the chase, or of the field —

THE HART IS FOUND 19

ments had been watched from an adjoining copse by eager
eyes. In the uncertain light, dim shadows could be dis-
cerned flitting across the cornfields which lay between the
Hill and the woods of Shallow Hall. They were deer
beyond doubt, but was the great hart among them ? As the
light improved, Perkes and his companion descended to the
field, and examined the place whence the deer had departed.
The ground was too hard to preserve the slot, or impression
of the foot of deer ; but evidence of their presence was not
long wanting. Here some tender ' springs ' or shoots had
been cropped greedily. This was the work of a hind.
Further off were stalks of oats with half the ear bitten off.
This was more like the delicate feeding of a hart. Next
they examine a patch of turnips which Perkes, a farmer
of advanced views, had sown in the open. There they lie,
some bitten in the ground, but others uprooted and tossed
recklessly around. This is beyond doubt the work of the
beast which they have come to seek. The heart of the honest
yeoman leaps for joy ; for what was the spoiling of his crops
weighed against the certainty of a glorious day's sport ?

Now must the huntsman be sent for. Before he arrives the
deer will have lain down in their lairs, and may be harboured
without fear of disturbing them, due caution being observed.

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

Hamlet, i. 1. 166.

As they await the huntsman, Perkes and his companion
note the progress of the dawn, and mark

what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east ;
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Rom. and Jul. iii. 5. 7.

the buck, the doe, the fox, the marten, and the roe. The former feed by
night, and ' make their abode all the daytime in the great couerts and secret
places in the woods.' 'According, as the prophet Dauid saith in his 104th
Psalme, Thou makest darkness that it may bee night, wherein all the beasts
of the forest doe mooue.' Furthermore, 'it doth appeare by the prophet
Dauid in the 50th Psalme,' that there are also beasts of the field, which are
the beasts of the chase ; for ' againe hee saith : I know all thefoules upon the
mountaines, and the wilde beastes of the fields are mine.'

20 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

How is it that in Shakespeare we find the truest pictures of
the glories of the sunrise ? He tells us himself :

I with the morning's love have oft made sport,
And, like a forester, the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair hlessed heams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

Mids. N. Dr. iii. 2. 389.

Poets love to describe the evening twilight, and the splen-
dours of the setting sun. They speak of that which they
have seen. But the sportsman must be up betimes, and
watch the vagaries of the weather, on which his prospects of
sport depend, and if he should happen to turn poet, he may
tell us his experiences.1

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy ;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

Sonnet xxxiii.

The sun had risen over Cotswold before William Silence
and the huntsman joined Perkes and his friend in the field.
The huntsman brought with him his liam-hound. This was
a pure-bred blood-hound, used in those days for finding and
harbouring the deer. He was so called because he was
held in hand by means of a leather strap called a liam ; a
Norman-French term of venery, derived from ligamen. He
was all nose and no cry, being used to hunt absolutely
mute.2 He was sometimes called slot-hound (Scottice sleuth-
hound), because he drew on the slot or footmark of the deer ;
and sometimes a limer or lym, as in Edgar's catalogue of
dogs.

1 For other descriptions of sunrise see 1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 221. ; 1 Hen. IV.
v. 1. 1 ; Ven. and Ad. 855 ; Rom. and Jul. ii. 3. 1 ; Jul. Goes. ii. 1. 101 ;
3 Hen. VI. ii. 1. 21.

2 Fr. Limiers : Chiens que ne parlent point (La Venerie).

THE LIAM-HOUND 21

Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,
Hound or spaniel, brach or lym,
Or bobtail tike or trundle-tail ;
Tom will make them weep and wail :
For, with throwing thus my head,
Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.

K. Lear, iii. 6. 71.

Holding his hound by the liam, the huntsman advanced
towards the place where the deer had been seen, after the
fashion described in George Gascoigne's verses in The Nolle
Arte, entitled The Blazon pronounced ly the Huntsman.

I am the Hunte, which rathe and earely ryse,

My bottell filde with wine in any wise ;

Twoo draughts I drinke, to stay my steppes withall

For eche foote one, bicause I would not fall.

Then take my Hownde in liam me behinde,

The stately Harte in fryth or fell to finde,

And whiles I seeke his slotte where he hath fedde

The sweete byrdes sing, to cheare my drowsie hedde.

And when my Hounde doth streyne upon good vent

I must confesse the same dothe me content.

It was not long before the blood-hound acknowledged
the line or 'trail'1 of the hart, straining forwards and
feathering, but giving no tongue. In hunting language, he
had the hart in the wind. The huntsman then held him
short, pulling in the liam, and thus let him draw on the
line of the hart, until they reached a thickly- wooded part of
the valley, just outside the pale of the justice's park. Here
was plainly marked the 'entry/ where the deer had dis-
placed certain branches as he entered the thicket. To mark
the spot, the huntsman's companions formed a ' blemishing '
by plashing down some twigs, so that the place might be
known again. Then the huntsman beat round the wood
with his hound twice or thrice, making circuits or 'ring-
walks/ one in the open where he could use his eye to aid his
hound, and another in the scent-carrying thicket which
surrounded the wood. He has thus ascertained that the

1 Hamlet, ii. 2. 47 ; iv. 5. 109 ; Merry Wives, iv. 2. 208.

22 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

hart has not left the wood. In the soft earth by the entry
the print of the fore-foot or slot is clearly visible. The
huntsman takes the measurement. It is plainly that of
a great hart, showing the mettle of the rich pastures of the
western valley.1

Thus had the hart been harboured on the morning of the
assembly, and the day's sport arranged accordingly. The
spot for the assembly had been selected in the valley where
the deer was harboured, but about a mile lower down. The
hart was to be unharboured in the presence of the company,
and forced by means of toils2 or nets placed in the way
which he would naturally take, to run into the park at a
spot where a carefully constructed toil led up to an opening
in the pale. Once within the park, escape was impossible.
The justice and his guests could follow the hounds if they
pleased, or better still betake themselves to the hill at the
upper end of the valley, and enjoy the music of the best-
tuned cry of hounds in Gloucestershire as — the chorus
swelled by relay after relay — they pursued the unhappy
hart from thicket to thicket until, exhausted by heat, fatigue,
and his weight of flesh, he could run no longer, but was
forced to stand at bay, and after a short struggle yield his
life to the sword of the huntsman.

This mode of pursuit was preferred by the justice to
what was known as hunting at force, or pursuing the stag
whithersoever he might choose to go in the open country.3

1 For ' harts beare their heads according to the pasture and feede of the
country where they are hied* (The Noble Arte}y as King Henry's soldiers
knew when he thus addressed them :

And you good yeomen,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture. Hen. V. iii. 1. 25.

2 See Love's L. L. iv. 3. 2 ; Jul Goes. ii. 1. 206 ; Hamlet, iii. 2. 362 ; Ant.
and Gleo. v. 2. 351.

3 This is the hunting of the buck or stag ' if they bee not confyned within
the limits of a parke or pale, but haue libertie to chuse their waies according
to their own appetites, which of some Hunts-men is cald hunting at force.' —
(Markham, Cavalarice. Fr. a force de chiens. ) The disuse of the toil, or net,
marks the emerging of a field sport from the utilitarian epoch in which it
had its birth. So long as the final cause of hunting was the destruction
of beasts of prey or the acquisition of food, the net was used to aid and
expedite the labours of huntsmen and hounds. When love of sport became
the motive power, the instinct of the hound and the craft of the sportsman

THE CRY 23

It was fitter for the entertainment of guests, and it brought
out the qualities of cry for which his hounds had been bred
for generations. The justice's hounds, like Theseus', were
no ' common cry of curs ' as Coriolanus was wont to call the
populace, but match'd in mouth like bells,

Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.

Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 128.

This result was not attained without careful breeding.
' If you would have your kennell for sweetness of cry then
you must compound it of some large dogs that have deep
solemn mouths, and are swift in spending, which must, as
it were, bear the base in the consort ; then a double number
of roaring and loud ringing mouths, which must bear the
counter tenor ; then some hollow plain sweet mouths, which
must bear the mean or middle part ; and so with these three
parts of musick you shall make your cry perfect ; and herein
you shall observe that these hounds thus mixt, do run just
and eaven together, and not hang off loose from one another,
which is the vilest sight that may be ; and you shall under-
stand that this composition is best to be made of the
swiftest and largest deep mouthed dog, the slowest middle
siz'd dog, and the shortest legg'd slender dog ; amongst
these you may cast in a couple or two small single beagles,
which as small trebles may warble amongst them ; the cry
will be a great deal the more sweet.' x What did it avail to

were left unaided. Game, rabbits and fish are still taken in nets, but
not by sportsmen. Xenophon's harriers drove their hare into skilfully
arranged nets. And Portia must have witnessed some such hunting, else she
would not have said to Nerissa, ' The brain may devise laws for the blood,
but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree : such a hare is madness the youth,
to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple ' (Merck, of Fen. i. 2. 19).
Good sport might be had even with the aid of nets, in the days of Shake-
speare as in those of Horace,

Manet sub Jove frigido
Venator, tenerae conjugis immemor,
Seu visa est catulis cerva fidelibus,
Seu rupit teretes Marsus aper plagas.

But when the chase, not the death, of a beast of venery is solely in question*
toils and nets are done away with. See an article in the Quarterly Review,
Jan. 1895, entitled, Our Sporting Ancestors.
1 G. Markham, Country Contentments.

24 HOW THE HART WAS HARBOURED

have hounds bred for tenor, counter tenor, treble and bass,
when the whole kennel run all but mute, hunting a hart at
force over the Cotswold hills ? These were the sentiments
of Shallow and many of his contemporaries, and so it is that
in illustrations of the period you may see the huntsman and
company furnished with poles and horns, pursuing the deer
on foot, in a manner possible only when he is hunted, not at
force, but within the confines of a pale.

CHAPTER III
HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

The poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly. Lucrece.

AND now, having learned how the hart was found, and how
it was intended to hunt him, let us go back to the assembly
where we left the huntsman reporting to his master of the
size and whereabouts of the harboured deer.

"'Tis well done, in faith, John Hunt," said the justice,
" 'tis well done indeed too. A great hart, and in pride of
grease. Come Master Petre, we will lead the lady Katherine
to a vantage ground within the park, where she may best
hear the music of the cry. Come Cousin Silence, come
Master Squele, come on, come on. And my god-daughter
Ellen too, and the fair Ann Squele. By the mass, time was
when I would have found the deer myself, and harboured
him, and unharboured l him too."

1 'We herbor and unherbor a harte,' according to The Noble Arte, 'we
lodge and rowse a Bucke ; we forme and start a Hare ; we burrow and bolt a
Come ; we kennell and unkennell a Fox. ' The word * rouse' seems to have been
generally used in the absence of special terms of venery. We find it applied to
the lion and the panther, and Gervase Markham in his edition of the Boke
of St. Albans (1595) sanctions its application to the hart. But it was in
strictness a term of art used in reference to the buck, and it is so used by
Shakespeare. Thus, even if other indications were wanting, we could have
told that Belarius and the sons of Cymbeline were engaged in the sport of
shooting fallow deer with crossbow when he exclaimed, ' Hark, the game is
roused ' ! Cymb. Hi. 3. 98), and that Henry Bolingbroke had in his mind the
chase of the buck, when he assured the Duke of York that his son would
have found in John of Gaunt a father ' to rouse his wrongs and chase them
to the bay ' (Rich. II. ii. 3. 128). Neither ' harbour' nor 'unharbour' occur
in Shakespeare in a sporting sense, unless indeed the nightly refuges of the
deer, both red and fallow, are suggested in the lines.

My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly,
And slaves they are to me that send them flying :

25

26 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

"Aye, and hunted and killed and powdered and eaten
hiin, I warrant," said Petre.

" I' faith, I'd ha' done anything and roundly too. But it
may be, Master Petre, that you or your cousin Ferdinand
would yourselves take part in the unharbouring of the
game ? "

" Not I, in faith," said Ferdinand Petre, " the pleasure of
the hunt for me, and the toil for those who like it, say I.
'Tis well that some are found to get out of their beds before
cock-crow, and to tear their flesh in thorny brakes at mid-
day, and all to see a liam-dog do what a Christian cannot.
I'll hearken to the music of your organs, Master Shallow,
and let those who love the task blow the bellows." 1

0, could their master come and go as lightly,
Himself would lodge where senseless they are lying !

Two Gent. iii. 1. 140.

But the coney has his burrow (Coriol. iv. 5, 226) and the hare is started, ' 0,
the blood more stirs, To rouse a lion than to start a hare !' (1 Hen. IV. 1. 3.
197). When Sir Toby Belch drew his sword on Sebastian, Olivia took the
offence as one offered to herself, saying to Sebastian, ' He started one poor
heart of mine in thee ' (Twelfth N. iv. 1. 63). Dr. Johnson writes : * I know
not whether here be not an ambiguity intended between heart and hart.'
The quibble is a favourite one, but assuredly it is not intended here. Abso-
lute certainty in Shakespearian criticism is attainable only in regard to
matters of venery and horsemanship. Shakespeare would as soon write of
rousing a fox as of starting a deer. ' I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox,'
said Master Ford (Merry Wives, iii. 3. 174), an operation present to the mind
of Hamlet when he tells Horatio to observe his uncle at the play,

If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen. — Hamlet, iii. 2. 85.

1 The references in the diary to Ferdinand Petre are not without signifi-
cance. Scanty though they be, they suggest him as a disciple of the then
fashionable school of Lyly, the author of Euphues. He would be therefore,
of necessity, hateful to one of the temperament of the lady Katherine.
With this knowledge, we can understand what Petre meant when, in the
course of taming his shrew, he said to his servant,

Sirrah, get you hence,
And bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither ;
One, Kate, that you must kiss, and be acquainted with.

Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 153.

It did not become necessary to resort to this extremest discipline, and we hear
no more of Ferdinand. Indeed, but for our diarist, he with William and
Ellen Silence, and Will Squele the Cotswold man, would have for ever
remained names and nothing more.

EUPHUISM AND SPORT 27

From this conversation I infer that Master Ferdinand
Petre belonged to the modern school of fashionable and
cultured Englishmen, who affected to despise the sports of
their fathers, except as leading up to a social event, such as
a solemn hunting or hawking party, capable of scenic effect,
and affording refined enjoyment to eye and ear. * At these
dayes' (1575), writes the author of The Nolle Arte, 'there
are many men which beare homes and bewgles, and yet
cannot tell how to use them, neyther how to encourage and
helpe theyr hounds therewith, but rather do hinder than
furder them, hauing neyther skill nor delight to use true
measure in blowyng : and therewithal seyng that Princes
and Noble men take no delight in hutyng, having their eyes
muffled with the scarfe of worldly wealth, and thinking
thereby to make theyr names immortall, which in deede
doth often leade them to destruction bothe of bodie and
soule, and oftener is cause of the shortening of theyr lyfe
(which is their principall treasure here on earth), since a
man shall hardly see any of them reygne or Hue so long as
they did in those dayes that every Forest rong with houndes
and homes, and when plentie of flagon bottels were caried
in every quarter to refresh temperately.'

A generation earlier, the most cultured man of his day,
Master Thomas More, afterwards Lord Chancellor of Eng-
land and Martyr, devised certain pageants for a painted
cloth, representing the stages of the life of man, and over
the pageant representing manhood was written :

Manhod, I am, therefore I me delyght

To hunt and hawke, to nourishe up and fede

The grayhounde to the course, the hawke to th' flyght,

And to bestryde a good and lusty stede ;

These thynges become a very man in dede.

In the age of euphuism, as in the days of dandyism and
sestheticism, there must have been many who would have
gently shuddered at the robust sentiments of Sir Thomas
More.1 And indeed some of the choicest spirits of the age,
dazzled by the light of the new learning, were blind to the

1 See Note, Sir Thomas More on Field Sports.

28 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

beauty and significance of the facts which nature reveals to
her faithful followers in pursuit of science or of sport ; the
falcon ' waiting on ' beneath the cloud ; the mallard on the
wing ; the subtlety of the hare ; the mysteries of scent ;
the patient labour of the hounds ; the music of their cry ;
the tragedy of the hart at bay; the wariness of the many-
summered trout; the inexhaustible wonder of the horse;
and the infinite variety of that world of animal instinct, the
study and development of which constitute the essence of all
that deserves the name of sport. To many the country was,
in the words of Bacon,1

a den
Of savage men ;

and the lover of country sports

a loose unruly swayne

Who had more ioy to raunge the forrest wyde
And chase the salvage beast with busie payne
Than serve his Ladies' love, and waste in pleasures vayne.

Fairie Queen.

But no such ideas were current in Gloucestershire, nor
indeed do we find any trace of them in the pages of the
diarist, who simply records that as the justice led his party
to the hill-top, the rest of the company made ready to assist
at the unharbouring of the hart.

William Silence seemed especially keen. For turning to
Abraham Slender, who with the huntsman was employed
in setting apart four or five couples of hounds, he said,

1 In attributing to Bacon the poem from which these lines are taken, I
follow Archbishop Trench and Mr. Palgrave, who include it in their collec-
tions on the authority of the evidence collected by Mr. Spedding in his
edition of Bacon's Works. It is described by Mr. Palgrave (notes to The
Golden Treasury] as 'a fine example of a peculiar class of poetry — that
written by thoughtful men, who practised this art but little.' Verses of this
kind may be attributed to Bacon without violent improbability, though he
has been at pains to prove his incapacity of the higher flights of poetry by
printing in the year 1625 a Translation of certain Psalms into English Verset
with a dedication to his very good friend Mr. George Herbert, in which he
has transmuted fine oriental imagery into poor rhyming prose. Si sic omnia
dixisset, Aristotle might yet reign in the schools. It would, however, be
unreasonable, and contrary to experience, to look for poetry of the highest
order at the hands of a great philosopher, statesman, and lawyer.

A PERSONAL EXPLANATION 29

" cousin Abraham, if it so be that you send a vauntelay or a
relay1 into the park, I will, if it so please you, accompany
them, and thus help in the hunting."

Abraham Slender's mind worked slowly. He could not
understand such a proposal coming from William Silence,
who, though fond of sport after a fashion, seldom troubled
himself about details, and was not at all likely to volunteer
to act as a pricker in setting a relay. As he turned round
to answer William, he caught sight of the justice and his
guests making their way towards the park. Master Shallow
led the way, entertaining the lady Katherine and her husband
with his very best conversation. Then followed old Silence
and his daughter Ellen, and last of all came the fair Anne
Squele, casting, as it seemed to Abraham Slender, a longing,
lingering look behind, which was not directed towards him.

" No," said Slender, " I will set no relay to-day."

"Nay, but Master Slender," said the huntsman, "if the
master be not content with the cry, and the worshipful
lady "

" I'll warrant ye," said Slender, " take up the hounds, and
bring them to the western valley."

"Now for the hart!" said William Silence, "what hart
could withstand you, cousin Abraham, when furnished like
a hunter you go forth to kill it ? "

Abraham Slender mounted his horse with an uneasy
feeling that William was laughing at him, and that the
bystanders enjoyed it.

This apparently trivial incident was recorded by the
diarist because it determined not only the issue of the day's
sport, but the course of his life.

William and Anne Squele had been playmates in child-
hood. In early youth they had together followed the justice's
hounds, and flown their hawks on the breezy uplands of
Cotswold.

1 ' When they set houndes in a readynesse whereas they thinke a chase
will passe, and cast them off before the rest of the kennell come in, it is
called a Vaunte laye. When they tarrie till the rest of the kennell come in,
and then cast off, it is called an Allay. But when they hold until the
kennell be past them, then it is called a Relay.' (The Noble Arte.) The
relay, the liam-hound, and many other ancient observances of the chase,
seem to be still in use in French stag-hunting.

30 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

How should love,

Whom the cross-lightnings of four chance-met eyes
Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow
Such dear familiarities of dawn ?
Seldom, but when he does, Master of all.

So it fared with William Silence and Anne Squele, though,
like Leolin Averill and Edith Aylmer, they were not

by plight on broken ring
Bound, but an immemorial intimacy.

Abraham Slender had been with them always. They had
looked upon him as a necessary instrument of sport, like
horse, hound, or hawk. Considered as a human being he
served rather as a butt than as a companion, and it certainly
never occurred to Silence to regard his kinsman as a possible
rival. At the assembly, however, the justice had somewhat
markedly placed his nephew next to Anne, while Silence's
knife and trencher had been laid at a distance. Moreover,
there was something in the manner of his old friend Will
Squele which he did not quite understand. And Abraham
Slender must have had some pretty strong motive for
keeping Silence from joining the party in the park, when he
risked the ruin of the day's sport, and the just wrath of the
justice, by departing from the usual course of sending forward
relays of hounds to be laid on at the various points where
the chase was expected to pass, so as to strengthen the cry
and enhance the excitement of the sport. William Silence's
mind worked rapidly, and led him to a conclusion not very
far removed from the truth. It was shortly this : Abraham
Slender was a suitor for the hand of Anne, approved by her
father, and supported by the powerful influence of Master
Shallow, who had sworn a great oath that he would not be
baulked a second time in his designs for the settlement in
life of his nephew.

The immediate result of Abraham Slender's refusal to
send forward relays of hounds to the park was that the
huntsman had with him the whole kennel of hounds when
he arrived at the thicket in the western valley, where the
hart had been harboured.

DRAWING THE COVERT 31

The covert was a small one, and so Slender and the hunts-
man decided on drawing it with the entire cry. It was in
those days usual to single1 the harboured deer, and unharbour,
or force him to break covert, by means of the liam-hound,
held in hand by the huntsman, and laid on the trail at the
'blemishing' which marked the place where the hart had
entered the covert. In modern stag-hunting the work of
segregating the warrantable stag and compelling him to
break cover is performed by the huntsman with the aid of
three or four couples of the steadiest hounds, called, when
so employed, tufters ; a course absolutely necessary to be
followed in the case of large woodlands when many deer of
various kinds are certain to be on foot, and to divide the
pack. This process, however, whether conducted by liam-
hound or by tufters, may be dispensed with when the deer
has been harboured within the narrow limits of a small
thicket, whence he can be expelled by the entire pack.

The ' prickers ' or mounted huntsmen 2 were disposed
around the wood, on the opposite side to the toils, so that
the hart might have them in the wind.3 If, notwithstand-

1 * When he (the hart) is hunted and doth first leave the hearde, we say
that he is syngled or empryned.' (The Noble Arte.) Thus Aaron, saying
' Single you thither then this dainty doe' (Tit. Andr. ii. 1. 117), uses a term
of art. So do Richard, when he says to Warwick, * Single out some other
chase, for I myself will hunt this wolf to death' (3 Hen. VI. ii. 4. 13) ; and
Armado, when he says to Holofernes, * Arts-man preambulate, we will be
singled from the barbarous' (Love's L. L. v. 1. 85). Thus the Folio. The
first quarto, pirated doubtless by some one ignorant of the language of the
chase, reads 'singuled,' and is followed by The Globe Shakespeare and by the
Cambridge editor, who writes, ' The Folio edition is a reprint of this Quarto,
differing only in its being divided into Acts, and as usual, inferior in accuracy,'
this passage being possibly one of those upon which the charge of inaccuracy
is founded. The term ' single ' was also applied to picking out the scent of
the hunted beast, ' till they have singled With much ado the cold fault
cleanly out' (Fen. and Ad. 693).

8 Fr. piquers (La Fenerie).

3 'When he (the hart) smelleth or venteth anye thing, then we saye he
hath (this or that) in thewinde.' (The Noble Arte.) 'I sent to her,3 said
Bertram, of Rousillon,

By this same coxcomb that we have i' the wind,
Tokens and letters which she did re-send.

All's Well, iii. 6. 121.

In order to drive a deer into the toils it was needful to get to windward of
him, so that having you in the wind, he might break in the opposite
direction ; a stratagem of woodcraft well known to Hamlet, when he said

32 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

ing, he should break covert in their direction, the prickers
were to ' blench ' l or head him, so as to force him into the
toils.

No sooner had the hounds been uncoupled and put into
cover, than a triumphant note from Belman, followed by a
jubilant chorus, announced that the hart had been found.

'The game is up/ whispered Clement Perkes, in words
which long afterwards fell naturally from the lips of the
banished Belarius.2 He and his friend eagerly scan the
corner of a wood extending upwards from the western valley
to the common which stretches up the hillside, unenclosed
and covered with bracken and rough grass. Beyond the
summit of the hill lie many miles of dreary moorland and
barren waste — the ' wilds in Gloucestershire.1 3 They have
not long to wait. A magpie, chattering volubly, has risen
startled from the thicket ; and a moment afterwards, thrust-
ing aside the brushwood, the monarch of the forest stands
at gaze before them.

For an instant his kingliness is forgotten. He is

the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly. Lucrece, 1149.

But only for an instant. The first amazement over, his
majesty returns. He scorns to run like ' coward hares/ 4 or
to slink away like the ' fox in stealth.' 5 As one who takes
part in some royal pageant, he moves with grave dignity

of his hunters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, *Why do you go about to
recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil ? ' (Hamlet, Hi.
2. 361.) Prendre le vent ; c'est soy ranger du coste qui vient le vent. (La
Venerie.) If, notwithstanding, the hart should break in the wrong direction,
he must be ' blenched/ or headed, so as to drive him into the toil. This
word is used in Shakespeare in the sense of to start aside, or fly off; a
sense akin to its meaning in woodcraft, and possibly derived from it. (See
Sonnet ex ; Measure for M. iv. 5. 5 ; Wint. Tale, i. 2. 333 ; Troil. and Ores.
i. 1. 28 ; ii. 2. 68 ; Hamlet, ii. 2. 626.)

kepe

(R. Langton in Ellis Orig.}, f Saw you not the deare come this way ? . . . I
beleeve you have blancht him.' (Lyly, Galathca.) The word is still in use
on Exmoor.

2 Cymb. iii. 3. 107. 3 Rich. IT. ii. 3 (stage direction).

4 Cymb. iv. 4. 37. 5 K. Lear, iii. 4. 96.

THE GREAT HART KEEPS THICKET 33

through the field, disdaining to notice the lookers on. He
turns upwards from the corner of the wood, and slanting
along the side of the open valley, ascends to the upland
level, shows for an instant his crowned head over the sky
line, and then is lost to sight.

Clement Perkes' companion knew too much of hunting
to intermeddle in matters demanding an intimate acquaint-
ance with the mystery of woodcraft. Such intermeddling is
as pernicious as was the interference of the ignorant in
matters of state in the eyes of Menenius, when he thus
addressed the rabble of Rome as they cried out against
Coriolanus,

Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt

With modest warrant. Coriol. iii. 1. 274.

And so he kept silence.

Clement Perkes was also silent for a moment, but owing
to another reason. This was not the hart he harboured in
the thicket. A glance informed his practised eye that it
was a somewhat younger deer — a conclusion confirmed by
further examination. His body was not so heavy ; his
colour was darker ; his antlers smaller, and of fewer points ;
and his tread more elastic. He was, however, a warrantable
deer ; a hart of ten, carrying all his rights, with two points
on either side. He might have entered the thicket after the
great hart had been harboured in the early morning. He
had doubtless been roused by the older deer, then quietly
lying concealed in the harbour whence he had ejected his
younger and weaker brother on the approach of the hounds.
This is one of the many devices, which it were tedious here
to relate, practised by an aged and experienced hart when
he would avoid breaking covert, or thicket as it was some-
times termed.1 And so, when the Grecian leaders fail to
induce Achilles to quit his tent the similitude is suggested
of a noble hart whom no device may drive from his chosen
covert, and Ulysses says :

1 Gervase Markham notes as an instance of the *' maliciousnea of the
Hart," that he "busieth himselfe about the finding out of the dennes of
other beasts, hiding himself therein, and letting the dogges by that means
to overslip him. (Countrey Farme, 1616.)

34 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

There is no tarrying here ; the hart Achilles

Keeps thicket. Trail, and Ores. ii. 3. 269.

Abraham Slender likewise saw the deer break covert and
ascend the hill. He, too, was silent for a moment. Then,
as with a sudden impulse, he shouted, " the hunt is up, the
hunt is up."

"Nay, nay, Master Slender," cried the huntsman, emerg-
ing from the thicket with the leading hounds ; " whip off the
hounds. Tis not the hart."

"It is the hart," said Slender; "collect the hounds, and
lay them on."

" Nay, but Master Slender, the great hart keeps thicket,
and a' may yet be driven into the toils ; but as for this
other, all be half over Cotsall or ever the hounds be out of
covert."

" I say it is the hart," said Slender, and added in a lower
tone, " I'll warrant you with the justice, John Hunt. I be
not so big a fool as I look. An' you hunt not this hart, you
and William Visor may look for my countenance when you
lack it."

John Hunt was never so puzzled in his life. Abraham
Slender never made a mistake in a matter of woodcraft. He
had a full view of the deer. What could it mean ? This,
however, was certain, that neither he nor his friend William
Visor of Woncot could risk the displeasure of Abraham
Slender ; he knew by far too much ; and so he, too, joins in
the cry of " the hunt is up."

"The hunt is up, the hunt is up," the tally-ho of our
ancestors — the heart-stirring signal that the game has gone
away — the chorus of many a Tudor hunting-song — now
echoes from the western valley to the mountain top.

The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey,
The fields are fragrant and the woods are green.

Tit. Andr. ii. 2. 1.

The prickers hurry to the spot from all sides of the covert'
while footmen join in loudest chorus.

The hart catches a distant echo of the cry, and hastens
with redoubled speed across the wilds of Cotswold. Of such
a startling note thought Juliet when she said :

BAWLERS AND BABBLERS 35

It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division ;
This doth not so, for she divideth us ;
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes ;
0, now I would they had changed voices too !
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day.

Rom. and Jul. iii. 5. 26.

Meanwhile the hounds are being collected. A couple,
Brabbler and Fury, have followed the line of the hart half-
way up the hillside. They must be stopped. " Turn head,
and stop pursuit," cries the huntsman, and as Perkes gallops
forward at the words his companion reflects that a chase
may be too hotly followed ; that the truest man is not he
who flashes wildly ahead of his fellows at the outset of the
chase ; and that there are bawlers, babblers and overtoppers
among men as among hounds. ' You see this chase is hotly
follow'd, friends/ said the French king of the English
advance on Agincourt. Whereupon the Dauphin exclaims,
in words well known in the English hunting field, 'Turn
head, and stop pursuit.' He thus explains his meaning,
delivering himself of a maxim of woodcraft, excellent in
itself, but somewhat out of place, as events soon proved :

For coward dogs

Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten
Runs far before them. Hen. V. ii. 4. 68.

" ' Hang, cur, hang/ " cried John Hunt, as Brabbler
returned crestfallen and in disgrace ; surely the very hound
present to Thersites' mind when he said of Diomed, 'He
will spend his mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound,
but when he performs, astronomers foretell it.' l

"Ay, marry, hang him/' said Abraham Slender, "and if
Fury be not trashed all overtop and destroy the cry."

"I'll warrant ye," said John Hunt, producing some long
straps from a bag which he carried at his side, " I han't ben
hunt for forty year to Master Shallow without knowing well
' who to trash for overtopping.' 2 I'ld ha' trashed Fury and

1 Troil. and Ores. v. 1. 98. 2 Tempest, i. 2. 81.

36 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

Tyrant before I'd left kennel if I'd only known what was i'
the wind ; but," he added in a low growl, " as for this day's
hunting, it fairly passes, and the great hart a-waitin', as one
might say, to be driven into the toil."

It is certain that the scene now presented to the eye, and
the sounds which reached the ear, often recurred to the
memory of one who loved to dwell upon all incidents of the
chase. If he deemed them worthy of his thoughts, we may
well spare a few moments, while the hounds are being
collected and (when needful) trashed, in order to learn the
lessons of the bawling, the babbling, and the overtopping
hound. They are to be met with elsewhere than by the
covert side, but nowhere do their qualities meet with
quicker recognition or surer retribution. 'If they be to
busie before they finde the Sent good, we say they Bawlej
says the author of The Nolle Arte ; ' If they be to busie after
they finde good Sent, we say they Bdble?

The bawler who cries upon no scent is a degree worse
than the babbler. If he be a hound, he is straightway
hanged. ' Hang, cur ! hang/ says Antonio to the boatswain,
needlessly busy, as he thinks, with his nautical outcry. We
know why he was to hang, for Sebastian had just denounced
him as a * bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog.1 1 If the
bawler be a man, no one heeds him, and he is lost to use,
and name, and fame, as if he were hanged. Master Ford of
Windsor was a bawler, giving tongue and busy before he
found the scent to be good. 'I'll warrant we'll unkennel
the fox.'2 Thus he cried out, thinking that Jack Falstaff
had been run to ground in his chamber. 'I cannot find
him,' was the confession of the convicted bawler; but he
was ready next moment, with the fatuity of his kind, to
spend his mouth and promise ; ' Will you follow, gentlemen ?
I beseech you, follow ; see but the issue of my jealousy ; if I
cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open
again.' 3

The babbler, or brabbler, has more to say for himself than
Master Ford. There is no mistake about the scent, but the
babbler, in his fussy impatience, is in danger of misleading

1 Tempest, i. 1. 43. 2 Merry Wives, iii. 3. 173.

3 Ibid. iv. 2. 206.

THE OVERTOPPING HOUND 37

others, and of over-running the line. We remember how
busily Buckingham cried out and spent his mouth, when
Wolsey passing by in state fixed on him his eye, full of
disdain. The cardinal was a venom-mouthed butcher's cur,
an Ipswich fellow, who should be forthwith cried down to
the king ; brave words, but babble. ' Be advised/ said
Norfolk, in whose experienced eyes Buckingham was a
babbling puppy, too busy, though the scent was good:

we may outrun,

By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running. Hen. VIII. i. 1. 139.

The overtopping hound is not necessarily a bawler, or
even a babbler. His fault is that his hunting is too quick
for the rest of the pack. Nowadays he would probably be
drafted. In the days of the diarist, ready means of com-
munication between masters of hounds not being in existence,
the huntsman would level him down to the body of his
companions by a process known as trashing.1 There is no

1 The use of the word ' trash ' among terms of venery, both as a verb and
as a substantive, is now clearly established (see the note on the word in
Nares' Glossary, and the examples collected in Johnson's Dictionary, by
Todd). It is used as a substantive by Gervase Markham in his Country
Contentments. He mentions trashes, with couples, liams, collars, etc., among
articles commonly kept in a huntsman's lodgings. Curiously enough the
verb has not been found in books of sport, but there is some evidence of its
use by hunters up to the beginning of the present century. (See the notes to
Othello, ii. 1 , in the Variorum of 1821.) It is a word of French origin. In U
Blason de Veneur (La Venerie], the huntsman describes himself as

Mettant la traict au col de mon Limier
Pour aux forests le cerf aller chercher.

1 Trait: longue corde que Ton attache k la botte du Limier pour le mener en
quete ' (Dictionnaire des termes de Venerie, etc. Paris, 1709). But of the nature
and use of the trash there can be no doubt. They are clearly shown in the
following note to Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting (Letter X.) ; a book of the
highest authority, the work of a scholar, a sportsman, a keen observer, and
an entertaining writer. * A hound that runs too fast for the rest ought not
to be kept. Some huntsmen load them with heavy collars ; some tie a long
strap round their necks ; a better way would be to part with them. Whether
they go too slow or too fast, they ought equally to be drafted.' However
the trash may have been applied, it clearly appears, from Beckford's words,
to have consisted of a long strap, kept by the huntsman (according to
Markham) with collars, liams, and other articles of the same kind. When
the hound was running, this long strap, dragged along the ground, handi-
capped the overtopping hound. I have been so fortunate as to see an

38 HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

connection, etymological or otherwise, between the trashed
and the trashy hound. When lago associates the words, he
does so in obedience to an instinct always strong, but
specially powerful in regard to terms of venery. Embar-
rassed by the impatience of Eoderigo, he compares the too
eager lover to an overtopping hound :

If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash
For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,
I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip.

Othello, ii. 1. 312.

None knew better than Prospero that the best of hounds
need trashing, if you would have your pack run together,
and so he tells us that his usurping brother,

Being once perfected how to grant suits,

How to deny them, who to advance and who

To trash for overtopping, new created

The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em,

Or else new form'd 'em. Tempest, i. 2. 79.

Ben Jonson was not afraid to suggest the application of
some such process to Shakespeare himself,1 in whom he notes
'excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions,
wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was
necessary he should be stopped.' Shakespeare would have
called it ' trashed for overtopping ; ' but the learned Jonson,
borrowing words spoken by Augustus of Haterius, writes

accurate representation of Prospero's trash in a painting in the possession of
Lord Barrymore, in which one of his ancestors — master of the Cheshire
foxhounds about the middle of last century — is depicted hunting with
his pack. One of the hounds has attached to his collar a long strap,
which trails on the ground. This hound, Bluecap, the winner of a match
mentioned in Daniel's Rural Spwts, was considered worthy of a separate
portrait, also in the possession of Lord Barrymore. He was thus an excep-
tionally fast hound, and would certainly have been trashed by Prospero or
his brother by means of the long strap which Beckford mentions as in use
about the time when this picture was painted. It is quite possible that
this strap may have been used, not only to restrain a hound from over-
topping, but, held in hand by the huntsman, to prevent a hound that was
' embossed ' owing to overwork, from adding to his fatigue by running about
at large. (See note at p. 37.)
1 Discoveries, De Shakespeare nostrat.

THE OVERTOPPING HOUND 39

Sufflaminandus erat. And if poets, like hounds, must needs
be levelled down lest one should overtop the rest of the cry,
a trash of no ordinary dimensions would have been needed
to bring Shakespeare to the level of even rare Ben himself.
Let us therefore rejoice that Shakespeare was allowed to
hunt the trail of his fancy unrestrained by trash — such, for
example, as would have been supplied by the dramatic
unities of time, place, and action.

CHAPTER IV

HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

I have horse will follow where the game
Makes way, and run like swallows o'er the plain.

Titus Andronicus.

MASTER SHALLOW and his friends from their vantage ground
in the park, like Theseus and Hippolyta on the mountain
top, could with their ears 'mark the musical confusion Of
hounds and echo in conjunction;'1 and with their eyes they
might follow the hart until, ascending the hillside, he had
reached the upper stretches of the wold.

When it became apparent that the hounds were about
to be laid on the trail of this deer, three members of the
company, impelled by different motives, left the park and
approached the hounds.

Master Ferdinand Petre, though he despised hunting,
affected the riding of the great horse, as did most of his
school. He was now mounted upon a grey Flanders mare,
well trained in the manage, and bought at a great price from
Petre's neighbour, one Sir Smile. A modern critic, had the
mare appeared by the covert side, would call her a cart-horse.
But Ferdinand was proud of her shapes and dimensions,
which he rather ostentatiously contrasted with those of the
home-bred hunting jades — uncomely curtals he would call
them — to the obvious discontent of the Gloucestershire jus-
tices, and the no small amusement of Petre, who never lost
a chance of making sport at the expense of his cousin.

" Come," said Petre, as his cousin Ferdinand was parading
his prancing bean-fed steed before the admiring eyes of Ellen
Silence, " if thou art a man, and thy grey mare be ought but

1 Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 115.
40

FLANDERS MARE AND IRISH HOBBY 41

' a hollow pampered jade/ match thyself and her against one
of these uncomely curtals, and take thy choice."

Old Silence said nothing, but there was meaning in his
grunt, and Ferdinand Petre, slowly, and with a bad grace,
joined the party by the covert side.

It was surely by a feeling akin to instinct that Will
Squele, when the hart made for the hills, was impelled to
quit the justice's party, and to turn the head of his stout bay
curtal towards his Cotswold home. But was it instinct, or
filial affection, or some other motive power, that impelled
the fair Anne, turning a deaf ear to all entreaties, and saying,
" I must needs follow my father," to canter down the hill-
side, cross the western valley, and join Will Squele in his
homeward ride ? Time, and the sequel of the chase can
alone make their motives clear. Suffice it to note here
the fact that the party in the park was thus reduced to
Master Shallow, his god-daughter Ellen, Petre and his bride,
with old Master Silence. There we may leave them for
the present — for they will hear or see no more of the
chase to-day — and return to Abraham Slender and the
hounds.

The early moments of a great moorland run differ widely
from the quick find and eager rush by which, in modern times,
a brilliant burst with fox-hounds is inaugurated. There is
plenty of time and there is no lack of space. These meta-
physical conditions being satisfactory, a quiet air of pleasur-
able anticipation pervades the assembly during the interval
— sometimes a long one — between the unharbouring of the
deer and the laying on of the pack. None of our Gloucester-
shire friends would have been guilty of the unsportsmanlike
malpractice of pursuing the hart, instead of riding to the
hounds ; and accordingly they are collected in a group by
the thicket near the spot where the deer broke covert.

Here conies John Hunt with the hounds, old but wiry
and hard bitten, ' furnished like a hunter,' x with sword by
his side and twisted horn slung over his shoulder, mounted
on a compact home-bred gelding, somewhat under fifteen
'handfuls' (as he would tell you) in height. Abraham

1 As Yo>i L. iii. 2. 258.

42 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

Slender is close at hand. I need not here describe in detail
his horse, for you shall in due time see his picture, drawn
as 'when a painter would surpass the life In limning out
a well-proportion'd steed.' 1

But I would ask you to note that William Silence has
discarded the little ambling nag on which some days before
he had ridden from London, for a great horse, or horse of
service, of the high Almain breed, borrowed for the occasion
from his friend Petre, by his management of which within
the pale he had hoped to commend himself to the eyes of
Mistress Anne, and like Henry the Fifth ' bound his horse
for her favours/ Now the discarded ambler was of a breed
which took kindly to this artificial pace, but could, if need
be, gallop as well. It was known as the Irish hobby, a light
but wiry horse, swift, pleasant to ride, and of great endur-
ance. It had not the imposing presence of Petre's horse
of service, nor had it been BO perfectly broken to the
manage. Hence Silence's choice, to which we owe much ;
for thus it came about that he lent his Irish hobby to
Clement Perkes for the use of a visitor, who otherwise must
needs follow on foot as best he could, inasmuch as with
gentle persistence he had refused the kindly yeoman's offer
of a stout galloway, the only hunting nag which the modest
stable at The Hill could provide. When we have added
William Yisor of Woncot, the number of prickers is com-
plete. He had hired a half -starved jade in the village of
Woncot, where Marian Hacket kept a plain ale-house, with-
out welt or gard of any ivy-bush, and sold beer and cheese
by pint and by pound to all that came, over her door being
a legend, ' vilely painted, and in such great letters as they
write, Here is good horse to hire.' 2

Meanwhile, the collected cry were laid on the line of the
hart. The western valley re-echoed with loud shouts of
" there boy, there, to him, to him," 3 and with the music of

1 Ven. and Ad. 289. 2 Much Ado, i, 1. 267.

3 Pistol's words, 'As many devils entertain; and "To her, boy, say I'"
(Merry Wives, i. 3. 61.) ; and Lucio's aside to Isabella, 'to him, to him,
wench,' when she addressed the deputy Angelo on behalf of her brother
(Measure for M. ii. 2. 124), suggest a reminiscence of this exclamation.
That it was in strict accordance with the usage of hunters is vouched by the

IN FULL CRY 43

the hounds, as opening on the trail, and acknowledging the
burning scent, they raced along the hillside, flashing through
the rough and tangled grass.

"Ten miles, as the crow flieth, to the water where the
Cotsall harts mostly soil, and if so be that we set him not
up there, and a' runneth straight, all make for the brook in
the long wood seven miles further across the wold. But 'tis
my galloway nag to a packhorse that a'll turn towards Hog-
shearing, for there goeth yonder Master Squele to bid him
welcome home, and not a hart on Cotsall knoweth his own
run as well as doth Master Squele. I' faith, he's a ' Cotsall
man,' true bred."

Thus Clement Perkes, as the hounds, now in full cry,
began the steep ascent towards the point where we lost sight
of the hart. His companion understood that his horse must
be carefully nursed, if he would see the finish of this glorious
chase. Steep is the ascent from the western valley to the
upper ranges of the wolds. Now must be practised the
wholesome self - restraint which Norfolk inculcated on
Buckingham when, incensed by the insolence of Wolsey,
he spent his tongue, and incurred reproof as a babbling
hound. The experience of to-day approves Norfolk's horse-
manship, no less than his woodcraft :

Stay, my lord,

And let your reason with your choler question
What 'tis you go about : to climb steep hills
Requires slow pace at first : anger is like
A full hot horse, who being allow'd his way,
Self-mettle tires him. Hen. VIII. i. 1. 129.

It is quicker no doubt to ascend the hill after the fashion
of that sprightly Scots of Scot, Douglas, that runs o' horse-
back up a hill perpendicular.' J

Prin. Was that the king, that spurred his horse so hard
Against the steep uprising of the hill ?

author of The Noble Arte, who enjoins the huntsmen when the hart
prepareth to flee to ' blowe for the houndes, and crye to them, that's he ;
that's he, to him, to him' ; an echo of Xenophon's dvapodv 6' ^/cetV<w /ufr, atiry
TTCUS, aury vrcus, TTCU $17, vat M (Gynegeticus, vi. 18).
1 1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 376.

44 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

Boyet. I know not ; but I think it was not he.
Prin. Whoe'er a' was, a' show'd a mounting mind.

Love's L. L. iv. 1. 1.

On this occasion it was Master Ferdinand Petre who
showed a mounting mind. He and his steed had more ex-
perience of the sudden and swift career of the manage than
of the art of riding to hounds. Not only did he allow his
full hot horse his way, but he spurred him forward after the
fashion of the career, as though he would 'outrun By vio-
lent swiftness that which we run at.'1 The result showed
the truth of the old saying quoted by Fitzwalter, ' How
fondly dost thou spur a forward horse ! 2 He flashed past the
remainder of the field, and was the first to reach the summit
of the ascent, whence a long gradual slope led to a small
stream struggling through a marshy bottom. No sooner
did his bean-fed horse scent the keen upland breeze, and
see before him the long descent with the hounds ascending
the opposite side of the valley, than he took the bit in his
teeth, and aided by the downward-sloping hill defied his
rider's control ; for

What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career 1

Hen. V. iii. 3. 22.

Not Ferdinand Petre's, certainly, although he was not ' want-
ing the manage of unruly jades.'3 Clement Perkes and his
companion reached the summit of the ascent just in time to
see him disappear among the rushes of the marsh, into
which his horse wildly plunged. But his fate points a moral.
Surely some such experience suggested these words :

Biron. You must not be so quick.
Eos. 'Tis 'long of you that spur me with such questions.
Biron. Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire.
Eos. Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

Love's L. L. ii. 1. 118.

The path along which Will Squele and Anne were can-
tering homewards had not diverged too far from the line of

1 Hen. VIII. i. 1. 141. 2 Rich. II. iv. 1. 72.

3 Rich. II. iii. 3. 179.

A COMPARISON 45

the chase to allow them to witness the catastrophe. It did
not surprise them, for Will Squele was experienced in horse-
manship and in woodcraft, as was John of G-aunt in statecraft
when he foretold of Kichard II :

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired

And thus expiring do foretell of him :

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,

For violent fires soon burn out themselves ;

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes.

Rich. II. ii. 1. 31.

Master Ferdinand's disappearance did not lose him
much of the run, for his horse was all but pumped out.
William Silence fared better for a time. He knew too
much of hunting and of Cotswold to press his horse, or even
to give him his head, at the beginning of a run across ' the
wilds in Gloucestershire/ And so he kept with Clement
Perkes, who was husbanding the resources of his hardy
galloway, so far as was consistent with retaining command
of the hounds. Too generous to accept the proffered return
of his Irish hobby, William Silence soon became conscious
that the exchange was a disastrous one, as events had turned
out. The stately paces of the High Almain might have
charmed Anne Squele as they chased the hart from thicket
to thicket within the pale; but before the summit of the
second hill had been gained, his great unwieldy carcass
showed unmistakable symptoms of distress,1 and in a few
minutes more he was ridden to a standstill, while the Irish
hobby was as fresh as at the start. The reason is not far
to seek. The speed of the great horse and of the hobby
had been absolutely the same, but relatively very different.
Pace, like age, is a relative term. What is slow for the
hare is fast for the tortoise, and the hobby could maintain
with ease for half a day a speed that would tire out the
High Almain in a couple of miles.

1 There is a reminiscence of a pmnped-out and labouring horse in Philos-
trate's description of Bottom and his company, as having ' toiled their
unbreathed memories ' with the lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe
(Mids. N. Dr. v. 1. 74).

46 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

When the summit of the second ascent had been reached
a wide and swelling expanse of upland afforded better gallop-
ing. It was rough enough here and there, and the horses,
like the unbacked colts following Ariel's tabor, had to make
their way through ' tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss
and thorns, Which enter'd their frail shins.' 1

There was many an ' acre of barren ground, long heath,
brown furze,' for which nevertheless Gonzalo in The Tempest
would gladly have exchanged ' a thousand furlongs of sea.' 2
Here and there, where water had accumulated and could
find no escape (as on certain level places at the summits of
hills) there were soft spots, whose dangerously green hue
warned the galloping rider to have 'good judgement in
horsemanship,' for, as the Dauphin of France added, with a
vivid recollection of past disaster, 'they that ride so and
ride not warily, fall into foul bogs.' 3 But, on the whole, the
going was sound enough, and the discreet and careful rider
found no difficulty in fulfilling Venus' injunction to Adonis,
* on thy well breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.' 4

As for the hounds, I must on their behalf crave indul-
gence at the hands of some reader who may perchance
treasure amongst his brightest memories a glorious run
over Exmoor; recalling, as he summons up remembrance
of things past, how hard was the task to keep within
measurable distance of Arthur Heal and his hounds, racing
with a burning scent across the sedgy uplands of the North
Forest and the treacherous bogs around Exe Head, until
the welcome slopes of Brendon were reached ; how the horse-
hoofs, "dashing through the sweet honey-scented heather
now in the full glory of its autumn colouring, scattered light
wreaths of delicate bloom as they descended to the classic
water of Badgeworthy ; how, when the line was hit off
again after a short and welcome check, his little thorough-
bred mare ascended the hill towards Farley Combe, fresh as
when she left Yard Down ; and how, when the stag turned
to bay in the valley of Watersmeet, he called to mind the
scene where the deer was set up after the moorland run

1 Tempest, iv. 1. 180. 2 Tempest, i. 1. 68.

3 Hen. V. iii. 7. 59. 4 Yen. and Ad. 678.

MASTER SHALLOW'S HOUNDS 47

recorded in the pages of Katerfelto.1 Master Shallow's
hounds could not compete in dash or speed with these
huge twenty-five-inch fox-hounds, overdrafts from the best
kennels in England. If the truth must be told, the fastest
of his pack was not much superior in speed to an average
harrier of the present day. The speed of the old-fashioned
running hound may be estimated from the sentiment of an
old-world sportsman, recorded by Peter Beckford, who was
wont to say that a fox shows no sport unless he stands up
for four hours before hounds. Theseus' hounds were ' slow
in pursuit.' 2 But though slow, the hounds were sure, and it
must be remembered that they were seldom uncoupled save
at a mature and obese hart, such as could not stand up in the
open for many minutes before the Exmoor stag-hounds of to-
day. And due proportion being maintained between horse,
hound, hart, and hunter's expectations, good sport is the result.

For all that, the cry soon began to present but a sorry
appearance. The couple or two of small hounds cast in for
treble were soon left behind, and the rest though 'matched in
mouth like bells, each under each,' were unequal in speed
and endurance. A compact body when first laid on, they
have become a straggling line. Although they do not run so
mute as the modern fox -hound when hunting deer, yet they
give but little tongue.

This did not escape the notice of the hare-hunter from
Stratford, and an observation which he put long afterwards
into the mouth of one Koderigo, suggests the reason of the
difference between the hunting of the same hounds in pur-
suit of the hart, and of the hare or the fox. When that
sportsman, nominally of Venice (whom lago had just com-
pared to an overtopping hound), began to discover that he
was getting very little in return for his expenditure of time
and money, he reflected : ' I do follow here in the chase, not
like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry. My
money is almost spent ; I have been to-night exceedingly
well cudgelled ; and, I think, the issue will be, I shall have
so much experience for my pains, and so, with no money at
all and a little more wit, return to Venice.' 3

1 Wednesday, Sept. 7, 1881. 2 Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 128.

3 Othello, ii. 3. 369.

48 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

The scent of deer is much more powerful to canine percep-
tion than that of fox or of hare. Each hound may receive
his share and enjoy the treat in decorous silence, without
noisy expression of either exultation or envy, unlike those
who compete for the possession of a more precarious joy.
In hunting the hare, there must be many a Eoderigo, clamor-
ously demanding his share of the fun ; while the scent of
the stag suffices to supply every hound with his quantum of
enjoyment, each in his turn.

After some miles of galloping the line crossed a stream,
and the leading hounds threw up their heads. As often
happens in the chase of the hare, so now in hunting the hart
' the hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt.'1 The
hounds are at fault, and the result is a 'let/2 or, as it would
now be called, a check.

Drawing rein, and dismounting to ease his panting nag,
Clement Perkes's companion watches with keen interest the
working of the hounds as they try to single f with much ado
the cold fault cleanly out.' Many a time did the scene
recur to his mind ; notably when he pictured Malvolio try-
ing to puzzle out a meaning from the scattered symbols and
obscure hints in Maria's letter :

*

Mai. What should that alphabetical position portend? If I
could make that resemble something in me, — Softly ! M, 0, A, I —

Sir To. 0, ay, make up that : he is now at a cold scent.

Fab. Sowter will cry upon't, for all this, though it be as rank
as a fox.3 Twelfth Nighty ii. 5. 130.

And, again, in The Tempest we may catch an echo of cries
overheard by the side of a Cotswold stream :

1 Ven. and Ad. 692. 2 Two Nolle Kinsmen, iii. 5. 156.

8 This passage lias puzzled those who approach it with the idea that the
fox was the object of Sowter's pursuit, and Hanmer suggests 'be n't.' The
word ' rank ' was generally used in a bad sense, never (so far as I know) to
denote a burning scent. The idea seems to be that the line of the hunted
hare or deer was cleverly picked out, though foiled by some scent as rank as
a fox, which was known as a beast of stinking flight, and detested, as
the cause of 'riot,' by hare-hunters pure and simple, from Xenophon to
Shakespeare ; fyvt) . . . Tapax&di] d£ t)Tav dXc67re/ces 7ry>o5ie££\0w(rt ylyverai
(Cynegeiicus}.

THE CHASE IN JEOPARDY 49

A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers spirits in shape of dogs
and hounds, and hunt them about, PROSPEEO and ARIEL setting
them on.

Pros. Hey, Mountain, hey !

Ari. Silver ! there it goes, Silver !

Pros. Fury, Fury ! there, Tyrant, there ! hark ! hark !

Tempest, iv. 1. 226.

The huntsman, now that scent is lost for a time, at all
events, jeopards1 with his horn, an ancient usage that places
the prospects of the chase indeed in jeopardy. The jeopard ;
the 'recheat' (which Benedick, jesting after the fashion of
his day, would have winded upon a horn elsewhere than in
his own forehead2) ; and the mort, are mentioned among the
measures of blowing in general use by Gascoigne, in The
Wofull Wordes of the Hart to the Hunter printed in The Nolle
Arte :

So now he blowes his home, even at the kennell dore,

Alas, alas, he blowes a seeke, alas yet blowes he more ;

He jeopardes and rechates ; alas he blows the Fall,

And soundes that deadly dolefule Mote, which I must die withall.

At length a hound gave tongue, and several of the pack

1 I have sought in vain for any explanation of this term of art, which is
plainly akin to the word in common use— jeopardy. An old legal term,
derived like many terms of venery from Norman-French, suggests a possible
etymology. There are certain ancient Acts of Parliament known as Statutes
of Jeofails, by which error in legal process might be amended, when the
pleader acknowledged his mistake, and which derived their name from his
admission — J'aifailU. The word 'jeopard,' as a term of woodcraft, may be
similarly derived from J'ai perdu, signifying the loss of the trail pursued by
the hounds.

[The passage in the text taken from George Gascoigne, and the foregoing
note are quoted in The New English Dictionary, under the heading
"Jeopard, t 3. Venery (meaning uncertain; see quotes)." I have been
unable to find any confirmation of my conjecture. If the promised "Chap-
tire that shall be of all blowynges " had been added to The Master of Game,
it might have thrown light on the subject. It is possible that jeopardes may
be a corruption of an older term 'jopeye,' which is found in The Master of
Game, and which, according to Cotgrave, is "an old word signifying to
whoot, showt, crie out alowd." "And if he fynde that he may well blow
the rigthes and halowe and jopeyo iii or iiii tymes and crie loude le voy
le voy till the houndes be come thither and have well knaght it" (The
Master of Game, p. 105).]

2 Much Ado, i. 1. 242.

50 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

followed him, as he noisily pursued a line in the direction
whence we have just come. Not so Belman, Silver, or Echo,
who treated the incident with the contempt it deserved. He
was merely hunting counter (or heel, as it is now called),
that is to say, pursuing backwards the line of the hunted
hart. A halter will probably be the fate of the hound who
persists in thus misleading his fellows. ' If thou gettest any
leave of me, hang me, hang me ; if thou takest leave, thou
wert better be hanged. You hunt-counter : 1 hence ! avaunt ! ' 2
said Falstaff to the servant of the Lord Chief Justice;
meaning thereby that he was on a wrong scent.

How readily the mob, like the puppies of the pack, follow
the misleading cry ; ' the rabble call him lord,' reports a cer-
tain gentleman to the King and Queen of Denmark.

They cry ' Choose we : Laertes shall be king ; '
Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds ;
* Laertes shall be king, Laetes king ! '

Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry !
0, this is counter, you false Danish dogs !

Hamlet, iv. 5. 106.

Abraham Slender and the huntsman leave the hounds to
themselves, and Perkes's friend looks on, while they cast in
quest of the missing scent. He has noted them well as they
swing around, and, opening like a fan, sweep over the neigh-
bouring ground. He has told us their very names. There
go Mountain, Fury and Tyrant.3 There goes King wood,4
clarum et venerabile nomen. Here is Sowter, truest hound,5
who will carry the line of a hunted deer, even though it be
foiled by scents as rank as that of a fox was supposed to be.
Yonder is Lady the brach, known both to Harry Hotspur6
and to King Lear's fool ; 7 and there go the pick of the
kennel — Merriman; Clowder; the deep-mouthed brach
whose name we know not ; Echo, slow but sure ; Silver and
Belman, whose comparative merits have given rise to many

1 The words thus united, and so forming a term of venery, in the Folio are
separated in the quarto.

2 2 Hen. IV. i. 2. 100. 3 Tempest, iv. 1. 256.

4 Merry Wives, ii. 1. 122. 6 Twelfth N. ii. 5. 135.

6 1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 240. 7 K. Lear, i. 4. 125.

BELMAN IS FULL OF VENT 51

a long discussion between Silence and John Hunt ; l and
lastly, there is 'Brabbler the hound;'2 of whom, from to-
day's performance, there are hopes that he may, after all,
escape a halter. Six couples in all, or about one-half of the
entire cry.3

"Hark to Belman." These few words completely change
the aspect of affairs. The trusty hound has — in the words
of the huntsman's report to his master, which found its way
into the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew — ' cried
upon it at the merest loss, And twice to-day picked out
the dullest scent.' Aware from his lengthened experience
that scent travels downstream, he has been anticipating the
Baconian philosophy by a systematic interrogation of nature
in an upstream direction, and has at last hit on a scent-
holding tuft of rushes at the point where the stag left the
stream (or broke soil as it was termed) to ascend the slope of

1 Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. i. 17-26. 2 Trail and Ores. v. 1. 99.

3 The man who can tell by their names the hounds with which he is used
to hunt, if he is not the huntsman, generally knows quite as much about hunt-
ing— sometimes more — and Shakespeare has given proof that he is no exception
to this rule. Mr. Beckford, in his Thoughts on Hunting (1781), includes
among the names of hounds in common use, Fury, Tyrant, Ringwood,
Merryman, Belman, Echo, Mounter, and Saunter. For the last two,
Shakespeare's Mountain and Sowter may be misprints. All the other names
have some meaning applied to hounds ; but Mountain and Sowter (cobbler)
absolutely none, Mr. Beckford, who lived in a county adjoining Gloucester-
shire, must have got hold somehow of Master Shallow's nomenclature. For
the names which they employ in common were then by no means in general
use. They are not among the fifteen familiar names of hounds mentioned in
verses on fox hunting printed by Mr. Beckford, and in an earlier list, in
Cox's Gentleman's Recreation (1674), I find none of them, with the single ex-
ception of Ringwood. But Ringwood was the typical name of a running
hound, from the time of Xenophon, whose catalogue of forty-seven names
for hounds, each possessing some significance, includes 'TXetfy. The word
' brach,' which occurs also in Troil and Ores. ii. 1. 126, and K. Lear, iii.
6. 72 (Fr. brache or braquet), appears to have been originally synonymous
with ' rache,' meaning a hound hunting by scent (see the notes on Rache and
Brach in the Appendix to The Master of Game}. In the time of Shakes-
peare the word ' brach ' had been appropriated to females of the class of running
hounds; *a brach is a mannerly name for all hound bitches' (Gentleman's
Recreation — Cox). There is some difficulty in fixing, even approximately, the
number of hounds in the Justice's cry. It was certainly less than that of the
modern pack. For Somerville, writing in 1735 (The Chase), feels bound to

Censure that numerous pack, that crowd of state
With which the vain profusion of the great
Covers the lawn.

52 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

the opposite hill. No sooner had the hound acknowledged
the scent than his whole nature seemed to change. From
being lethargic, mute, dull, and ' at a fault/ he at once became
'sprightly walking, audible, and full of vent/ as different
from his former self as war from peace. Could Dr. Johnson
have practised as he preached, and looked for Shakespeare's
meaning among the sports of the field, he surely would
not have mutilated the words put into the mouth of a
certain serving-man of the Volscian general, Tullus Aufidius,
(his huntsman for aught I know), which was thus printed in
the Folio :

Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does
night ; it's sprightly walking, audible, and full of vent.1 Peace is
a very apoplexy, lethargy • mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible.

Coriol. iv. 5. 236.

Now may be seen the advantage of a good character
honestly won. The words " Hark to Belman " are scarcely
out of the huntsman's lips before the pack have flown to his
summons, and in another moment they are carrying the line
along the side of the opposite hill.

No one heeds the bawler or the babbler. But there is no

1 Pope, re- writing Shakespeare after his fashion, read ' sprightly, waking,
audible, and full of vent,' and Dr. Johnson, adopting this reading, explained
the last term as meaning ' full of rumour, full of materials for discourse.' Dr.
Baynes, in an article in the Edinburgh Review (Oct. 1872), afterwards printed
in Shakespeare Studies (1894), first pointed out that ' vent ' was a term of art
in woodcraft, signifying ' scent. ' In the lines of Gascoigne quoted from The
Noble Arte, the hound is described as straining ' upon good vent,' and the
word is used in the same sense in other passages of the same work. The word
* vent' occurs as a verb, in the sense of 'to scent' in Spenser (Shepheard's
Calendar) and Drayton (Polyolbion). It is the Norman-French equivalent
for the Anglo-Saxon 'wind,' used frequently in the sense of scent by Shake-
speare, both as a verb and as a substantive ; Tit. Andr. iv. 1. 97 ; ibid. iv.
2. 133 ; All's Well, iii. 6. 122 ; ibid. v. 2. 10 ; 3 Hen. VI. iii. 2. 14 ; Hamlet,
iii. 2. 362. In The Shepheard's Calendar, the bullock 'venteth into the
winde.' This term of art must have been somewhat unusual in poetry, for
Spenser thinks it needful to explain it in his Qlosse thus, * venteth, snuffeth
in the winde.' It is strange that the restoration of the Folio thus suggested
has not been generally adopted. Dr. Schmidt (Shakespeare Lexicon] accepts
it conditionally upon its being shown that the word * vent ' bore the meaning
attributed to it ; a condition surely amply fulfilled. The comparison of war
(K. John, iv. 3. 149) to an eager hound is a favourite one with Shakespeare,
as in Hen V. iii. 1. 31, and Jul. COBS. iii. 1. 273. The Globe and Cambridge
editions read ' sprightly, waking,' with Pope.

THE HART IS EMBOSSED 53

mistake about Belman. In hunting language, he is 'true-
bred/1 and of 'such as can hold in/2 and 'will ne'er out.'3
There can be no reasonable doubt that he is the very hound
present to the mind of his master when he thus enlarged on
his serving-man Davy's powers of sticking to his quarry.
' The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that. A'
will not out, he is true bred.'4

The line taken by the hart after he had broken soil was
that which had suggested itself to the mind of Will Squele,
when he turned his horse's head homewards. Doubtful of
his power to stand up before hounds until the long wood
could be reached, the hunted deer turned sharply to the left
after crossing the stream, with the evident intention of
reaching the well-known wood and water near Master
Squele's abode.

The hounds settled down on the line of the straining
hart,5 and his fate was sealed. He had as little chance of
escape from his fell and cruel pursuers as the Duke of Illyria
from the love of the fair Olivia :

Cur. Will you go hunt, my lord ?
Duke. What, Curio 1
Cur. The hart.

Duke. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have :
0, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,

1 Twelfth N. ii. 3. 195. 2 1 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 85.

3 Ant. and Cleo. ii. 7. 35.

4 2 Hen. IV. v. 3. 69. When you uncouple your young hounds from the
old and experienced hounds, 'you must,' says the author of The Noble Arte,
' have good prickers and huntesmen on horsebacke in the tayle of them to
make them holde in close.' To ' hold in chase ' was a phrase in common
use: K. John, i. 1. 223 ; Coriol. i. 6. 19 ; Lucrece, 1736 ; Sonnet cxliii.

5 'When he (the hart) runneth verie fast, then he streyneth' (The Noble
Arte). If Mr. Collier had known of this meaning of the word, he need not
have conjectured ' strayed ' in the passage where Hermione, forced to appear
in a Court of Justice, thus addresses Leontes :

I appeal

To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes
Came to your court, how I was in your grace,
How merited to be so ; since he came
With what encounter so uncurrent I
Have strain'd to appear thus. Wint. Tale, iii. 2. 46.

Nor need Dr. Johnson have conjectured ' have I been stain'd ' for the reading
of the Folio.

54 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

Methought she purged the air of pestilence !

That instant was I turned into a hart ;

And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

E'er since pursue me. Twelfth Night, i. 1. 16.

" ' We have almost embossed him/ " l said Slender to the
huntsman, in words familiar to the lords at the French
Court, "'you shall see his fall to-night.'"2 The practical
question is how to keep on terms with the hounds until the
woodland stream is reached, some seven miles distant, where
the stag is almost certain to turn to bay. Now can the
happy possessor of a good continuer (as a stayer was then
called by horsemen) realise the force of the ditty, ' As true
as truest horse, that yet would never tire.'3 And if to con-
tinuing power he adds a fair turn of speed, he is all that can
be desired. So thought Benedick, when with such a chase
as this present to his mind he said to Beatrice :

I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a
continuer, but keep your way i' God's name ; I have done.
Seat. You always end with a jade's trick : I know you of old.

Much Ado, i. 1. 139.

Long afterwards, the idea was suggested to the mind of the
Stratford sportsman of a continuer who had settled down to
his stride, who had, as it were, got his second wind in the
pursuit of virtue; and he made the merchant describe Timon
of Athens as

A most incomparable man ; breathed, as it were,
.To an untirable and continuate goodness.

Tim. of Ath. i. 1. 10.

1 ' When he (the hart) is foamy at the mouth, we saye that he is embost '
(The Noble Arts). An 'embossed rascal' is a sporting term of contempt
playfully applied by Prince Henry to Falstaff (1 Hen. IV. iii. 3. 177), whom
it was very gracious fooling to liken to a rascal or lean deer. Doll Tearsheet
was more literal when she thus addressed the beadle, ' come you thin thing,
come you rascal ' (2 Hen. IV. v. 4. 34). Dr. Johnson's note on the former
passage is 'to emboss a deer is to enclose him in a wood,' and on the latter
* embossed, is swollen, puffy.' Dr. Schmidt (Shakespeare Lexicon) thus inter-
prets the word: 'to ambuscade (French embusquer, Ital. imboscare).' The
word is used in each of these three meanings in Chaucer. Applied to Falstaff,
it was probably intended to suggest a play on the word in the sense of 'swollen,
puffy.' Compare Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. i. 17 ; Ant. and Cleo. iv. 13. 3; Tim.
of Ath. v. 1. 220.

2 All's Well, iii. 6. 107. 3 Mids. N. Dr. iii. 1. 105.

HE TAKES SOIL 55

Master Slender is with John Hunt and the main body of
the pack. He could say with Titus Andronicus,

I have horse will follow where the game
Makes way, and run like swallows o'er the plain.

Tit. And. ii. 2. 23.

William Visor of Woncot has long since taken the last
groatsworth out of his hired jade, but Perkes and his com-
panion hold good places. ' Know we not galloway nags ? ' 3
asked Ancient Pistol ; irrelevantly, after his fashion, but not
without significance. If we know them, we can have no
difficulty in recognising the hardy little animal on which the
yeoman is mounted. If we know them not, Gervase Markhana
tells us of the character which they bore, ' There is a certain
race of little horses in Scotland, called Galway Nagges, which
I have seene hunt the Buck and stagge exceeding well, and
indure the chase with good courage.' 2 As to the Irish hobby,
and Master Slender's English horse, their powers of endur-
ance are attested by the same authority, for he tells us of
1 the best Barbarys that ever were in their prime I saw them
overrun by a black hobby at Salisbury ; yet that hobby was
more overrun by a horse called Valentine, which Valentine
neither in hunting nor running was ever equalled, yet was a
plain-bred English horse both by sire and dam/

As for the hounds, they have again become an ever
lengthening line, and three couples only carry the trail of
the hunted deer to the bottom of the valley, near the woods
of Hogshearing. There they check. There is a stream at the
bottom, and the hill beyond is steep, covered with rough
bracken and gorse.

" He ha'n't taken soil," said Perkes to Slender. " No ! but
a' will soon," he added, eagerly scanning the opposite bank,
" for there a' goeth, straight up hill."

To the yeoman's practised eye this unwonted mode of
ascending a hill betokened a last reckless effort on the part
of the deer doomed to failure.

The hounds saw him, too, and opened in louder chorus as
they dashed forward to the view. Heavily labouring; his

1 2 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 204. a Cavalarice.

56 HOW THE HART WAS HUNTED

antlers thrown back ; his head hanging down ; his mouth
embossed no longer, but black, dry and open; his fur be-
drabbled and torn ; . the poor hunted beast, after a few vain
attempts to climb the hill, turned back. His strength,
unequal to the labour of ascent, carried him quickly down-
wards, and dashing into the thick woodlands he was lost to
view.

The hounds, driven again to their noses, carried a burn-
ing scent, until they arrived at the bed of the stream. The
scent of the deer, unlike that of the hare, improves as the
animal sinks. A track, or c trench,' led along the side of the
stream, so narrow as to admit but a single horseman.
Along this trench the riders followed in single file until they
reached the extremity of the woodland, where was a long
deep pool, formed by damming the stream in order to flood
Master Squele's water meadows. Again the hart is viewed.
He is swimming, keeping in the middle of the stream so as
to avoid touching any scent-holding bough. The hounds
dash in, but, as he knew well, they could only approach him
by swimming. Up and down this pool, now swimming, now
running, sweep hart and hounds, while the narrow valley
resounds with the music of the hounds and the shouting of
the hunters, and all knew well that the end was nigh at
hand.

CHAPTER V

HOW THE HART WAS BAYED AND BROKEN UP

Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart ;
Here didst thou fall ; and here thy hunters stand
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lothe.

Julius Caesar.

THERE are those to whom the sequel of the day, when the
run is over, is mere shambles work, fit for butchers, not for
sportsmen. To some, the notes which tell that all is over
with a noble beast of venery summon up sad associations, for
Leontes, among the tokens of woman's frailty, includes

to sigh, as 'twere
The mort o' the deer. Wint. Tale, i. 2. 117.

This feeling was certainly not generally shared by sports-
men, and these pages would forfeit all claim to strict veracity
if they did not reflect the interest which the writer of the
journal, in common with most of our ancestors, took in the
obsequies of the hunted hart. The gentle reader is warned
off the following pages. Deer must be killed, but in the
quibbling words of the thane of Eoss — for even in telling to
Macduff the sad story of the slaughter of his dear ones, he
could not forego a familiar pun —

To relate the manner

Were, on the quarry of these murdered deer,
To add the death of you. Macbeth, iv. 3. 206.

The hart was no sooner strengthened by the cooling
stream than he bethought him of the traditions of his kingly
race. ' If we be English deer/ said the gallant Talbot, liken-
ing his host to the Cotswold hart, fighting stoutly to the last
in face of overwhelming numbers,

57

58 HOW THE HART WAS BAYED AND BROKEN UP

be then in blood ;

Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch,
But rather,, moody-mad and desperate stags,
Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel
And make the cowards stand aloof at bay ;
Sell every man his life as dear as mine,
And they shall find dear deer of us, my friends.

1 Hen. VI. iv. 2. 48.

In deep water, beneath a great rock, he makes his final
stand. His enemies, smaller in size, can approach him only
in front, and swimming. Calmly he awaits their attack,
while the leading hounds, reinforced by a few stragglers, bay
in a semicircle around their foe.

The familiar and welcome sound of the bay serves to
guide Clement Perkes and his companion to the spot where
the hart was set up. Although not actually with Abraham
Slender and the huntsman at the end of the run, they are
nigh at hand, and the ' timorous yelping of the hounds ' l
informs their experienced ears that ' the hounds are at a
bay.2

The hopes of the hunters were raised by the same sounds
that caused alarm in the breast of Venus, fearful for the
safety of her beloved Adonis,

Because the cry remaineth in one place,

Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud ;
Finding their enemy to be so curst,
They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first.

Yen. and Ad. 885.

Who goes first? Young Fury, trashed though he was, rushed
on the foe, and received a wound from the formidable brow
antlers of the hart. He retired howling. Who goes next ?
The courtesy of the cry became more strained, and the
chorus waxed louder and louder, as the gallant hart gave
proof that he was no ' dull and muddy-mettled rascal/ 3 but

1 Ven. and Ad. 881. 2 Ibid. 877.

3 Hamlet, ii. 2. 594. The definition of * rascal,' as a term of venery, in
the New English Dictionary is, I believe, accurate : ' The young lean or in-
ferior deer of a herd, distinguished from the full-grown antlered bucks or
stags.' Shakespeare expresses the same idea by the word "unseasonable"
(Lucrece, 581). According to Puttenham, in the sense in which it is now

ECHO REPLIES 59

1 in blood ' not alone to run, but to fight too, and sell his life
right dearly.

He to whose lot it has fallen from time to time to view the
hart in his native wild — not the dishorned and carted deer
in some potato garden — ' hold at a bay ' his foes ' the fell and
cruel hounds/ will not be surprised to find the image re-
curring again and again to one present at the death of the
Cotswold hart, although he may well marvel at the truthful-
ness with which every feature of the familiar scene is
reflected in the poet's mirror. If any words could convey
to the imagination an adequate idea of the effect produced
upon the senses, they are surely those put into the mouth of
Hippolyta. She tells us that she

was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete 1 they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear
Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

Mid*. N. Dr. iv. 1. 117.

The effect of echo in enhancing the cry of hounds — ' the
musical confusion of hounds and echo in conjunction'2
was often noted. ' Wilt thou hunt ? ' asks the Lord of
Christopher Sly :

used as a term of reproach, it was in the first instance spoken ' by the figure
Mctaphore ... as one should in reproach say to a poore man, thou rascale
knaue, when rascall is properly the hunter's terme giuen to young deere, leane
and out of season, and not to people' (Arte of English Poesie, 1589). The
term is found in The Master of Gfame, usually in connection with young and
immature deer. But Shakespeare was better versed than Puttenham, and he
tells us that an old deer may yet be a rascal, as we shall see further on.
' Come you thin thing ; come you rascal,' Mistress Dorothy Tearsheet says
pleasantly to the beadle (2 Hen. IV. v. 4. 34 ; cf. 1 Hen. VI. i. 2. 35).
* Muddy ' or ' muddy-mettled ' rascal, would seem from the passage quoted
from Hamlet^ and from another exclamation of Mistress Tearsheet's (2 Hen.
IV. ii. 4. 43), to have been phrases in use among woodmen. ' Thou rascal
that art worst in blood to run ' (Coriol. i. 1. 163 ; cf. Love's L. L. iv. 2. 3,
and Hen. VI. iv. 2. 48).

1 It is evident that the Spartan hounds and Cretan bears behave after the
fashion of the Southern hound and English hart.

2 Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 115.

60 HOW THE HART WAS BAYED AND BROKEN UP

Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them
And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.

Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. 2, 46.

And Tamora, the Gothic Queen, thus addressed her beloved
Moor:

Whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds,
Replying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns,
As if a double hunt were heard at once,
Let us sit down and mark their yelping noise.

Tit Andr. ii. 3. 17.

In the chase of the hare, when the pack gives tongue, and
' spend their mouths : Echo replies As if another chase were
in the skies.'1 But it is at the baying of the hart, when
hounds are pent within the confines of the narrow valley
where he mostly soils, and when the music of the cry is
turned to the * sweet thunder' of the bay — as by some mighty
organ-stop — that the truthfulness of Hippolyta's description
is borne in on the mind. Then we feel certain that she
speaks the words of one who had often stood by woodland
stream, and marked how, by re-echoing the sweet thunder,
the groves, the skies, the fountains, and every region near
seem'd all one mutual cry, as if all nature took part in the
tragedy of the hart at bay.

How long this scene would have lasted, had not man
interposed, cannot be told. Certain it is that many a gallant
hound must have fallen a victim to the fury of the hart, and
that the cry would have told a tale of disaster such as that
which met the eyes of Venus. Led onwards by the sound of
the bay,

Here kennelPd in a brake she finds a hound,

And asks the weary caitiff for his master,

And there another licking of his wound,

'Gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster :
And here she meets another sadly scowling,
To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouth'd mourner, black and grim,

1 Yen. and Ad. 695.

TAKING ASSAY 6l

Against the welkin volleys out his voice ;

Another and another answer him,

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,
Shaking their scratch'd ears, bleeding as they go.

Yen. and Ad. 913.

As soon as the deer began to hold the hounds at a bay,
Slender and the huntsman dismounted. As they approached
the stream, a clear voice beside them said :

" Give me your horses to hold. I knew well that he must
needs take soil in this water, when I noted what point he
made after breaking thicket."

It was the voice of Will Squele. A Cotswold man, he
knew every inch of the country ; an old sportsman, he could
tell the run of the deer to a nicety ; and while we have been
galloping up and down hill with the hounds, he and Anne
have taken the shortest road from point to point.

" Ecod," says Abraham Slender, " go as I may, Will Squele
on Bay Curtal is ever there before me."

Clement Perkes and his companion, warily approaching
the hart from behind, cast around his antlers a rope carried
by the huntsman for that purpose. His head having been
thus pulled back, the huntsman cut his throat with his
sword, and crying " Ware hound ! " to keep the hounds from
breaking into the deer, blooded the puppies, ' that they may
the better love a deer, and learn to leap at his throat,' as Mr.
Cox quaintly explains in his Gentleman's Recreation.

' The mort o' the deer ' having been duly blown by such of
the company as carried horns, there next came the solemnity
of taking assay, and breaking up the deer.

The hart having been slain, assay should be taken by the
best person oLthe company that hath not taken assay before.
' Oure order is/ says the author of The Nolle Arte, ' that the
prince or chiefe (if so please them) doe auger and take assaye
of the deare with a sharpe knyfe, the whiche is done in this
mariner. The deare being layd upon his backe, the prince,
chiefe, or such as they shall appoint, comes to it : And the
chiefe huntsman (kneeling, if it be to a prince) doth holde
the deare by the forefoote, whiles the prince or chief cut a
slyt drawn alongst the brysket of the deare, somewhat lower

62 HOW THE HART WAS BAYED AND BROKEN UP

than the brysket towards the belly. This is done to see the
goodnesse of the flesh, and how thicke it is.'

On this occasion the honour of taking assay fell to Mistress
Anne Squele. You may realise the scene if you look at an
interesting woodcut in The Nolle Arte, depicting the chief-
est huntsman on bended knee, handing the knife to a noble
lady, while an attendant holds her richly caparisoned horse.1

But it were long to tell of the cutting and cabbaging of
the head, and of the ceremony to be used in taking out the
shoulder, and selecting the ' deintie morsels/ and ' the caule,
the tong, the eares, the doulcets,2 the tenderlings (if his head
be tender), and the sweet gut, which some call the Inch-
pinne, in a faire handkercher together, for the prince or
chiefe;' how a little gristle upon the spoon of the brisket is
cast to the crows or ravens which attend hunters; how there
has been seen 'a raven so wont and accustomed to it that
she would never fayle to croake and crye for it all the while
you were in breaking up of the deare, and would not depart
untill she had it ; ' how the numbles or umbles are wound
up, to serve in the making of umble-pie.

These weighty matters of the art of venery were, indeed,
foolishness in the eyes of the learned and satirical Erasmus.
'When they have run down their game/ he says of the sports-
men of his day, among whom he held his own when in
England,8 ' what strange pleasure they take in cutting it up.
Cows and sheep may be slaughtered by common butchers,
but what is killed in hunting must be broke up by none
under a gentleman, who shall throw down his hat, fall
devoutly on his knees, and drawing out a slashing hanger
(for a common knife is not good enough) after several cere-
monies shall dissect all the parts as artificially as the best-
skilled anatomist, while all that stand round shall look very
intently, and seem to be mightily surprised with the novelty,
though they have seen the same a hundred times before, and
he that can but dip his finger and taste of the blood, shall
think his own bettered thereby/ 4

1 This woodcut is original, and not borrowed from La Venerie.

2 Two Nolle Kinsmen, iii. 5. 154.

3 See Note, Sir Thomas More on Fitld Sports.

4 Erasmus, Aforice Encomium.

THE HOUNDS ARE REWARDED 63

If these daring words had come to the knowledge of our
Gloucestershire friends, they would simply have said that
much learning had made the writer mad, so firm an article
of faith it was that the carcase of the hart should not be
thrown rudely to the hounds, as the fox, the marten, or the
gray, but should be reverently disposed of. ' Let's kill him
boldly, but not wrathfully ; ' said Brutus of Julius Caesar ;

Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcase fit for hounds.

Jul. Gees. ii. 1. 172.

Caesar fell, having been given less law by his pursuers
than the Cotswold hart. And as we read Mark Antony's
words, we could almost believe that he too had stood with
Abraham Slender by the waterside ; ' stained with the varia-
tion of each soil ' betwixt find and finish, as was ' Sir Walter
Blunt new lighted from his horse ; ' J and ' bloody as the
hunter/2 signed and crimsoned with the blood of the deer,
after the somewhat barbarous fashion of the chase.

Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart ;
Here didst thou fall ; and here thy hunters stand
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe.3
0 world, thou wast the forest to this hart ;
And this, indeed, 0 world, the heart of thee.
How like a deer, strucken by many princes,
Dost thou here lie ! Jul. Gees. iii. 1. 204.

As time went on, the observances at the death of the deer
grew into a burden too heavy to be borne. Life became
fuller of action and incident, and was felt to be too short for

1 1 Hen. IV. i. 1. 64.

* Twelfth N. iii. 4. 243. Compare the English herald's description of his
troops ;

Like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come
Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,
Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes.

K. John, ii. 1. 321.

3 Lethe (for which Theobald and Collier read 'death') according to Capell
(Glossary) is 'a term used by hunters to signify the blood shed by a deer at
its fall, with which it is still a custom to mark those who come in at the
death.'

64- HOW THE HART WAS BAYED AND BROKEN UP

such old-world ceremonies. They were more solemn and
elaborate in 1486 l than in 1575, and a hundred years later
they seem to have resolved themselves into the summary
process of handing a knife to the prince, or lady of quality,
with which to cut the deer's throat, leaving the rest to
inferiors: a form in which the ceremony was observed in the
forest of Exmoor on a notable occasion in the month of
August 1879.2

The ceremonial of assay and breaking up having ended,
the paunch is given to the hounds as their quarry or reward.
The blood-hound, or limer, would have been entitled to the
first share, according to the usage of the chase,3 had he been
there to claim his rights. But this day's chase exceeded his
limited powers of hunting. Keen-scented, but unaccustomed
to hunt at large, he has not the trained sagacity which would
enable him to run down the scent which he is the first to
detect. He is at this moment hunting counter, pursuing the
trail backwards, with keen enjoyment, across the hills towards
Shallow Hall. He is, in the words applied by Dromio of
Syracuse to the catchpole,

A hound that runs counter and yet draws dry-foot well.4

Com. of Err. iv. 2. 39.

1 Boke of St. Albans. They are still more elaborate in The Master of
Game.

2 This custom was generally observed in the last century. Pope con-
tributed to the Guardian a paper on cruelty to animals (No. 61). He dares
not attack hunting, * a diversion which has such authority and custom to
support it. ... But,' he adds, ' I must animadvert upon a certain custom
yet in use with us, and barbarous enough to be derived from the Goths, or
even the Scythians ; I mean that savage compliment our huntsmen pass
upon ladies of quality, who are present at the death of a stag, when they put
the knife in their hands to cut the throat of a helpless, trembling, and
weeping creature,

questuque cruentus
Atque imploranti similis.'

3 The Nolle Arte. ' Droit de limier, Luy donner a manger de la Chair de la
beste qui aura este prinse ' (La Venerie). 'Unto the bloodhound, that is vnto
the dog which by his sent hath led the vay to the Hart his lodging he shall
cast the head and the heart as his right and due' (G. Markham, Country
Farme, 1616). An elaborate ritual is prescribed in 1 he Master of Game.

4 There is a quibble in these words, as in many of Shakespeare's allusions
to woodcraft. The counter or compter, according to Dr. Johnson, was the
name of a London prison, served by the catchpole, who thus was humorously
said to * run counter ' though keen of scent. ' To draw dry-foot ' was a phrase

THE HOUNDS ARE REWARDED 65

The deer having been thus disembowelled secundum artemt
the venison is reserved for the powdering tub, and we know
on the best authority that his 'skin's a keeper's fee.'1 Jack
Falstaff had not seen a deer killed for many a year, but he
knew well of what the prince was thinking when he said,

What, old acquaintance ! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life ? Poor Jack, farewell !
I could have better spared a better man :
0, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity !
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.
EmbowelFd will I see thee by and by :

Till then, in blood, by noble Percy lie. (Exit.)

Fal. (Rising up) Embowelled ! If thou embowel me to-day,
I'll give you leave to powder me and eat me too, to-morrow.

1 Hen. IV. v. 4. 102.

The day's sport over, the hounds were recoupled, and a
strake of nine, to call the company home, was wound by the
huntsman. This had the effect of bringing another figure on
the scene.

in constant use. Thus Gervase Markham gives instructions by which a horse
may be taught to draw dry-foot, like a hound (Cavalarice). It is used in
contradistinction to tracking footsteps in wet or moist ground, to signify
hunting with nothing to guide the hound but the scent where the object of
pursuit has passed along dry-foot. Mr. Monck Mason points out that the
phrase occurs in an Irish Statute, 10 William III. c. 8, sec. 10, under which
the training of a hound ' to hunt on dry foot ' is attached as a condition to
obtaining a licence to use a setting dog. The jest would have no prosperity
save in the ears of those who knew the defects, as well as the virtues, of the
liam-hound, which indeed is often represented in old engravings as held in
hand during the chase. Otherwise he would probably be found running
counter. The fool in Fletcher's Mad Lover quibbles on the word 'counter'
(i. 1), but his thoughts turn, not to the chase, but to false coin.
1 3 Hen. VL iii. 1. 22.

CHAPTER VI
AFTER THE CHASE

Where is the horse that doth untread again
His tedious measures with the uubated fire
That he did pace them first ? All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy 'd.

Merchant of Venice.

WHEN William Silence had been passed by Slender on the
hillside, all idea of taking part in the chase was at an end.
His first thought was of his over-ridden horse. Satisfied
that no permanent harm had been done, he applied his mind
to the inquiry — which way have the hounds gone ?

In the wilds of Gloucestershire, as on Exmoor, this question
must be asked of nature, not of man. There is this advan-
tage, that nature never lies. But you must know her
language. William Silence had not forgotten at Oxford or
Gray's Inn the early teaching of Cotswold. He gains the
summit of the hill, and looks around him. In a pool to the
right, a heron calmly resting on one leg plainly says —
neither horse nor hound has passed my way. In another
direction sheep huddled in masses, and wild horses disturbed
and excited as plainly tell the story of the chase which has
swept over the hills in their sight.

The deer has most probably made for the wooded valley
near Hogshearing. If so, Squele and Anne will be up before
he is taken. This was certain. What was to be done?
Should he return home and leave Master Slender in un-
disputed possession ? Or should he follow as best he could,
trusting to his ready wit to regain the advantage which he
had lost ? This would, at all events, insure an early meeting
with Anne Squele. And if this accursed hart would only
go elsewhere, and take Abraham Slender with him, no

WITH MASTER SQUELE 67

invidious comparisons could be drawn, and he would be
sure of a hearty welcome as a victim of one of the number-
less mishaps to which hunters are subject. So he makes
his way as best he can towards Hogshearing. If the deer
has gone in that direction, the riders must have crossed the
morass in the bottom of the next valley. There is but one
sound crossing, and as Silence reaches it his conjecture is
converted into certainty by the sight of fresh prints of horse-
hoofs on the soft earth. Still he follows on. At last the
sound of the mort reaches his ear, borne thither amidst the
intense stillness of the waste. The hart has been killed.
No doubt Anne and Slender are making merry over his dis-
comfiture. Still he follows on. He is making his way
through the tangled woodland by the stream when a strake
of nine, close at hand, reveals the whereabouts of the
company. A few more steps bring him face to face with
Master Squele, who, with his daughter, was leading the way
to the house.

"Welcome, Master William," said the cheery franklin.
" Turn back with us. The company will eat and drink under
my roof before they turn homewards. 'Tis a good head, a
hart of ten. 'Tis pity you missed the sport when he held
the hounds at a bay. But Master Slender says that you
had enough of it by the time you were half-way up the
long hill. Well, I rode not the chase myself to-day. But
when I was your age "

" My horse had enough of it, not I. But 'tis all one. I
missed the chase."

" Nay," said Anne, " how can it all be one, for

by Saint Jamy,
I hold you a penny,
A horse and a man
Is more than one,
And yet not many. Tarn, of Shrew , in. 2.84.

What, that great and serviceable horse, whose ' tender hide ' l
shone so brightly ? Why, when next you and your fellow
hunt in these parts, you must condescend to one of those
uncomely country curtals which you derided at the assembly.

1 Yen. and Ad. 298,

68 AFTER THE CHASE

And pr'ythee, Master Silence, has Master Ferdinand Petre
yet regained his great and serviceable rnare ? "

" I know not," said Silence gloomily.

" Be of good heart," said Anne, " you know the country
saying, ' Jack shall have Jill ; Nought shall go ill. The man
shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.' 1 As for
you, Master Slender, you and your beast are too fit company
ever to part."

" Oh la. Mistress Anne." Repartee never was Slender's
strong point, much as he had studied the Book of Riddles,
and even The Hundred Merrie Tales.

The party now emerged from the wood, and found them-
selves in front of the old house at Hogshearing — so inti-
mately associated with Squele.

It was a long, low, two-storied house, built of grey stone,
with mullioned windows, pointed gables, and high chimneys.
Many such residences of the franklin, or country gentleman
of moderate means, have escaped destruction on the one
hand, and on the other reconstruction and modernisation, by
becoming the residences of substantial farmers. It was
surrounded by a moat. This appendage of a country house
had ceased to be necessary for purposes of defence, and was
condemned by the sanitary reformers of the day as unwhole-
some. Eeformers, however, made but slow progress in
those days. Mariana, as we know, lived in the moated
grange, and all men could understand when England was
compared to a

precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands.

Rich. II. ii. 1. 46.

Besides, the moat had its uses. In the absence of a regu-
larly constructed fish-pond, it served as a convenient stew,
in which fish might be kept and fattened for the master's
table.2 For our ancestors loved fish, even the coarser sorts,

1 Mids. N. Dr. iii. 2. 461.

2 * You can see the marks of old fish-ponds in thousands and thousands
of places. I have noticed, I dare say, five hundred since I left home.'
(CobbeWs Rural Rides.)

A MOATED DWELLING-HOUSE 69

especially when cooked with poignant sauce. But whether
they loved them or not, they must needs eat them in time of
Lent. For even after the ^Reformation, stringent laws were
passed ' against eating of flesh upon days forbidden/ and
' for restraint of eating flesh in Lent, and on fish dayes ; '
and Justice Shallow, when giving the charge at quarter
sessions,1 would commend it to the jury to inquire ' if any
person (other than by reason of age, sickness, childing, or
licence) have within this year eaten flesh in Lent, or upon
any fish day observed by the custom of this realm ; ' and
further, f If any innholder, taverner, alehouse-keeper, com-
mon victualler, common cook, or common table-keeper, hath
uttered or put to sale any kind of flesh victual upon any day
in the time of Lent, or upon any Friday, Saturday, or other
day appointed by former law to be fish day (not being
Christmas day), except it be to such person as (resorting
to such house) had lawful licence to eat the same according
to the statute thereof made.' With these statutes did Sir
John Falstaff seek to frighten Mistress Quickly, when he
told her,

Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh
to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law ; for the which, I
think, thou wilt howl.

Host. All victuallers do so : What's a joint of mutton or two in
a whole Lentl 2 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 371.

We must not therefore hastily credit our ancestors with
depraved taste when we find them preserving and fattening
for the table such abominations as tench and bream, but we
should rather regard their fish-ponds, stews and moats as part
of the general policy of the realm, and very conducive to
the due observance of the law, especially as administered by
justices of the peace.

1 See Lambarde's Eirenarclia, or of the Office of Justices of Peace (1581).

2 5 Eliz. c. 5 ; 27 Eliz. c. 11. In the 39th section of the former statute
it is carefully explained that this legislation is politically meant for the in-
crease of fishermen and mariners, and not for any superstition in the choice of
meats ; and under the 40th section, any one publicly preaching or teaching
that this statutory eating of fish or forbearing of flesh is ' of any necessity
for the saving of the soul of man ' is punishable * as spreaders of false news
are and ought to be.'

70 AFTER THE CHASE

Beside the moat was a mound, crowned with a summer-house,
in which you could sit, and angle from the water a carp, or
perch, or other dainty fish. For many held with Ursula, that

The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.

Much Ado, iii. 1. 26.

Beyond were a fair orchard and garden. Squele, like most
country gentlemen of the day, was a practical gardener, with
special skill in the art of graffing.1 By this art, he would
explain,

we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race : this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature. Wint. Tale, iv. 4. 92.

He would point with pride to certain box trees, cut into
the shapes of beagles, pursuing a flying hare. The training
of these hounds he would call an old man's hunting, delight-
ing the eyes while it tired not the legs, and wasting neither
corn nor coin.

It was a 'curious-knotted garden,'2 where walks and beds
were arranged in quaint devices. The air was heavy with
the perfume of autumn flowers ;

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram ;

The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun

And with him rises weeping : these are flowers

Of middle summer, and I think they are given

To men of middle age. Wint. Tale, iv. 4. 104.

On the sunny walls of the house hang

dangling apricocks,

Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.

Rich II. iii. 4. 29.

1 The Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare, by the Rev. Henry N.
Ellacombe, M.A., will be read with pleasure by every student of Shakespeare
who shares his master's love of the garden. 2 Love's L. L. i. 1. 249.

THE SQUELES OF COTSWOLD 71

Around the porch

Doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle

Gently entwist, Mids. N. D. iv. 1. 47.

and sweet eglantine and rosemary are planted by the win-
dows. It was a bright spot amidst the waste, pleasant to the
eye and sweet-scented, where generation after generation of
English gentlemen had passed their uneventful lives. They
wished for no happier lot. Many a time had Squele spoken
words which one who knew him well put into the mouth of
Alexander Iden, a gentleman of Kent :

Lord, who would live turmoiled in the court,
And may enjoy such quiet walks as these »
This small inheritance my father left me
Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy.
I seek not to wax great by others' waning,
Or gather wealth, I care not, with what envy :
Sufficeth that I have maintains my state
And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

2 Hen. VI. iv. 10. 18.

You may believe the Idens and Squeles when they so
protest, for they knew no other life. But as for your
banished dukes and courtiers, in Arden or in the frontiers of
Mantua, put no faith in them. They will sing you sweetly
'of the green holly,' and try to persuade themselves that
' this life is most jolly.'1 They will protest that they ' better
brook than flourishing peopled towns. . . . This shadowy
desert, unfrequented woods.'2 But believe them not. For
towards the end of the fifth act (as soon, in fact, as oppor-
tunity offers) they hasten to return to the life they despise ;
a fact much marked of the melancholy Jaques, who alone is
faithful to Arden :

What you would have
I'll stay to know at your abandon'd cave.

As You L. v. 4, 201.

Over the doorway were emblazoned on sculptured stone
the arms of the Squeles of Hogshearing ; in a field, vert, a

1 As You L. ii. 7. 183. 2 Two Gent. v. 4. 2.

72 AFTER THE CHASE

hog, squelant, proper, charged with a pair of shears, gules ;
motto, Great Squele, little wool; a supposed allusion to the
barrenness of the family acres, compared with the preten-
sions of their owners. Like many other examples of the
canting heraldry so lightly esteemed by the Baron of Brad-
wardine, it was founded on false etymology. For we, who
live in an age that is nothing if not critical, know that
Hogshearing — or Ugs-wearing as it appears in old docu-
ments— has nothing to do with either swine or wool. The
former part of the compound — ugs or usk — is plainly British,
and suggests the water in which the hart was killed. As to
the latter, it would be rash to express an opinion, inasmuch
as it has been the subject of learned disquisitions before
various archaeological societies, and opinions differ as to
whether it is traceable to a British, Saxon or Norman-
French root ; or (as the more learned opine) is an interesting
fragment of a Turanian tongue, spoken in Cots wold before
the advent of the British Celt.

However this may be, the Squeles were gentlemen, not
only of coat-armour, but of blood and ancestry, and had
held the lands and advowson of Hogshearing for centuries.
These were, in fact, an outlying portion of the Shallow
estates, granted by a CMtelhault to a follower of gentle
blood, to hold of the manor of Chatelhault, at a time when
such subinfeudation was legal. Somewhat of the old rela-
tionship survived, and although they had been companions
as boys and men, neither old Silence nor Will Squele ever
quite forgot that, while they held of the manor of Shallow,
Kobert Shallow held in capite of the Queen. He was their
lord, and they were his men. It was hard to withstand
him, even when he would dispose of their children in
marriage. If their lands were to descend to an infant heir,
the lord, as guardian in chivalry, could dispose of his ward
in marriage by way of sale, for his own profit, subject only
to exception for disparagement. This was of the nature
of things, an incident of land. What, then, did William
Silence mean when he called Justice Shallow an old med-
dling fool ?

"And now, my masters," said Squele, as the company
arrived at his garden gate, " come in and refresh yourselves

A FRIENDLY OFFER 73

before you turn homewards. Tis a long and weary ride
across the wold."

" By your leave," said Slender, " if John Hunt and I may
have some barley-water for our horses, I have no stomach
for victual, and I am loth to leave the hounds."

"If that be your will," said Squele, "come into the
stables, and while you look to your nags, my Gregory
will bring you out some cakes and ale, if ye will have 'no
better victual. Why, Master William, your horse is sorely
tired."

" In truth he is, and I fear much he will never carry me
home," said Silence, who foresaw the possibility of an in-
vitation to man and horse to pass the night at Hogshearing.

" Leave him here for this night," said Squele hastily,
"you may ride home on 'my horse Grey Capilet ... he
will bear you easily and reins well.' l My man, when he
brings the venison to the justice in the morning, shall lead
over your horse and bring my nag back with him."

It was impossible to refuse so friendly an offer. But
William could not help reflecting that the occasion must
have been urgent which lent him Grey Capilet, for Will
Squele was never known before to share with another the
' bonny beast he loved so well.' 2

" Saddle Grey Capilet," shouted Squele to his stable varlet.
"Here, take the furniture from off Master Silence's horse.
The saddle fits him well enough. But stay, Master William,
his mouth has never been used to such a new-fangled bit.
We country folk ride our horses to make them go, not to
throw them on their haunches, to play the dancing horse, like
Bankes's curtal."3

1 Twelfth N. lii. 4. 314.

8 2 Hen. VI. v. 2. 12.

* When Moth said to Armado, * the dancing horse will tell you ' (Love's X.
L. i. 2. 56), he had in his mind Bankes's celebrated performing horse Morocco
alluded to in many contemporary plays, and even in such grave treatises as
Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World and Sir Kenelm Digby's Treatise
on Bodies. (See the Notes to Love's L. L. in the Variorum edition of 1821,
and a note to The Parson's Wedding in Dodsley's Old Plays.) It is said that
poor Bankes and his unhappy curtal were burned as magicians in Italy.
G. Markham, moved perhaps by his love of the horse, defends Bankes against
the opinion maintained by ' euen some of good wisdome . . . that it was not
possible to bee done by a Horse that which that curtal did, but by the assist-

74 AFTER THE CHASE

" I will fetch Grey Capilet's bridle," said Silence eagerly ;
" I know of old where it hangs."

He had long been seeking for an excuse to follow Anne
into the house, but found none hitherto ; for, as we have seen,
Slender and Squele had managed to keep the company in the
stables.

Silence left the yard, and going round to the front door,
passed into the hall. It was a low dark room, flagged, and
scantily strewn with rushes. In one corner an oaken book-
case contained a few classical authors, Ovid, Virgil, Horace,
and Tulley's philosophical writings ; the Grammar of Henry
VIIL well marked, The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Elyot, de-
claring Latin ~by English, as greatly improved and enriched by
Thomas Cooper in 1552 ; and The Scholemaster, a Plaine and
Perfite way of teaching children to understand, write, and
speak the Latin Tong, by Koger Ascham, 1570. For Will
Squele had gone to Oxford from an ancient school at Shrews-
bury, and had brought thence a strong love for a few Latin
masters, and for a poor "Welsh lad, Hugh Evans, who had
received a free education at Shrewsbury, and afterwards as
servitor at Oxford, and whom he had made happy for life by
presenting him to the vicarage of Hogshearing, the tithes of
which were worth full sixteen marks a year. It was from
Evans that William Silence learned the elements of Latin,
and it was the conversation of the parson and his patron that
early instilled into his mind a love of learning. For Will
Squele (whose exploits at Clement's Inn were grossly ex-
aggerated by Master Shallow) was

certainly a gentleman, thereto
Clerk-like experienced, which no less adorns
Our gentry than our parents' noble names,
In whose success we are gentle.

Wint. Tale, i. 2. 391.

ance of the Deuill ;' holding not only that 'the man was exceeding honest/
but that any horse could be brought in less than a month to do the same ;
such is * the excellency of a Horse's aptnesse and understanding' (Cavalarice).
Morocco must have lived to an extraordinary age, unless (as would appear
more probable) the allusion in the diary is to an earlier curtal trained by
Bankes, who is not likely to have attained at once the absolute perfection dis-
played in his training of Morocco.

GREY CAPILET'S BRIDLE 75

At the other side of the hall a door led into a small closet,
which served as a harness-room, amongst other offices of a
varied character. Here hung Grey Capilet's bridle. Silence
paused for a moment, then opening the door of the adjoining
parlour, he passed through it, and knocked gently at a
door.

"Come in," said a voice he knew well. He opened the
door, and found himself in the small withdrawing room,
which Anne Squele had appropriated as her own. Through
the open window came in the sweet scent of gilliflowers and
honeysuckle. A few books lay on the table, Lyly's Euplmes,
the Eclogues of Virgil (for Anne read Latin with her father
and Sir Hugh), and a huge manuscript book of recipes, which
had grown under the hands of the successive generations of
feminine Squeles. You will find many of those secrets dis-
closed by the industrious Gervase Markham in his ' English
Housewife, containing the inward and outward Vertues which
ought to be in a compleat woman j as her skill in Physick,
Surgery, Cookery, extraction of oyls, Banqueting stuff, order-
ing of great Feasts, Preserving of all sorts of wines, conceited
Secrets, Distillations, Perfumes, ordering of Wool, Hemp,
Flax, making Cloth and Dying : the knowledge of Dayries ;
Office of Malting ; of Oats their excellent use in a family ; of
Brewing, Baking, and all other things belonging to a house-
hold.' There you may learn how to make a kickshaw, or
quelquechose, and the same authority tells you elsewhere
that ' spermaceti is ... excellent for inward bruises, and to
be bought at the apothecaries.'1 The virginal was a gift from
her godfather, Master Shallow. The room was adorned with
needlework of various kinds, cut works, spinning, bone-lace,
and many pretty devices, with which the cushions, carpets,
chairs, and stools were covered.

" I came to seek Grey Capilet's bridle," said William; and
his manner had lost the assurance which had marked it at
the assembly.

" And have you so forgotten the ways of the place, Master
William, that you need to be shown where the bridle hangs ?"

"I have forgotten nothing, nor am I like to. It is not

1 Cheap and Good Husbaiidry.

76 AFTER THE CHASE

because I have forgotten, but because I cannot forget that
— that "

" That you want Grey Capilet's bridle," said Anne hastily,
running into the hall. " Nay, here it is, but you must take
it and begone, or we shall have Master Slender looking for
the bridle too. Stay a moment. Did my father tell you that
the lady Katherine had bidden us to ride a-hawking with her
on Monday ? Now farewell, for I hear father's voice, and he
will want the bridle."

Grey Capilet was saddled, bridled, and mounted at last.
The company took leave of Master Squele, and proceeded
homewards across the waste.

Master Silence's feelings were somewhat mingled. He had
intended to say something to Anne — much conveyed in few
words — and he had only asked for a bridle. But then she
had told him that they were bidden to Master Petre's. Did
not this imply, be thou bidden also ?

Master Slender and the huntsman were occupied with the
hounds. Young Fury's wound was not serious, and he had
treated his case after the manner of Adonis' hound by

licking of his wound,
'Gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster.1

Yen. and Ad. 915.

Merriman is sorely fatigued, or (in the language of venery)
embossed. He must be tended. It may be (as Mr. Dyce
suggests) that he is to be trashed ; that is to say, restrained
from running about and thus adding to his fatigue, by using
for this purpose the long strap known as a trash, buckled to
his couple and held by the huntsman. The other hounds
are coupled, in the fashion in which they were brought to
the assembly, and so they journey homeward. On the way
Abraham Slender and the huntsman discuss the perform-
ances of the hounds. Not one event during the long day
escapes their recollection. There can be no doubt as to the
converse held by them, for their very words have been re-
corded by one who heard them.

1 ' The tongue of the dog in most cases is his best surgeon ; when he can
apply that, he seldom needs any other remedy.' (Beckford, Thoughts on
Hunting, )

DISCOURSE BY THE WAY 77

Lord. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds :
f Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd;1
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd brach.
Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good
At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault ?
I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.

First Hun. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord ;
He cried upon it at the merest loss
And twice to-day pick'd out the dullest scent :
Trust me, I take him for the better dog.

Lord. Thou art a fool ; if Echo were as fleet,
I would esteem him worth a dozen such.

Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. i. 16.

Thus their critical discourse 'distinguished the swift, the
slow, the subtle;' for hound differs from hound, as man from

man,

every one

According to the gift which bounteous nature

Hath in him closed. - Macbeth, hi. 1. 96.

I cannot answer with the same certainty for William
Silence and his companion. But I have never thought that
doubt was cast on the authenticity of the diary, or on the
identity of the nameless stranger, by the fact that its author
is silent, just when we should wish him to speak. A day
spent with Shakespeare is in our eyes something so wonder-
ful that we can scarcely understand its passing without note
or comment. And yet many days were so spent by many
scores of people, not one of whom has thought fit to record
its events. Why should the diarist differ from his fellows ?
Besides, I see no proof that Shakespeare possessed at any
time of his life those personal qualities which afford, or seem
to afford to the casual looker on, assurance of greatness. To
those who knew him in the flesh he was ' gentle ' Shake-
speare. This word is without counterpart in our speech of

1 The text is certainly corrupt, for Merriman was not a 'brach,' a word
which in Shakespeare's time had come to signify a female hound. (See note,
ante, p. 51.) Mr. Dyce reads: 'Trash Merriman,' an emendation which has
not found favour with critics who, regarding the trash as a weight or clog,
naturally remark that Merriman's fatigue would be rather aggravated than
lightened by such an appendage. It appears, however, that the trash some-
times, at all events, took the form of a long strap attached to the couple of
an over-topping hound (see note, ante, p. 37).

78 AFTER THE CHASE

to-day, but it certainly excludes the idea of an overpowering
or self-asserting personality. Indeed, had not William
Silence been possessed of education and discernment above
his Gloucestershire neighbours, he would scarcely have ad-
mitted to companionship one so far below him in condition. ~*.
But although there may have been some discourse of
weightier matters, which we would have gladly shared, the
hounds and their doings were not forgotten. Had it been
otherwise, one of the company would not have known their
very names, nor could he have drawn with pen and ink a
portrait so lifelike, that the author of Tlie Chase of the Wild
Red Deer, when he would describe the hounds1 with which
the stag was hunted on Exmoor in his youth — lineal
descendants of Master Shallow's kennel — finds that he can
do so most aptly in the words of Theseus :

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung,
With ears that sweep away the morning dew :
Crook-knee'd and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.

Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 124.

In Shakespeare's time hounds hunting by scent were
roughly divided into three classes. There was the blood-
hound, or limer, whose acquaintance we have already made,

1 The old Exmoor stag-hounds, the last survivors of the southern hound,
were sold in 1825 to a German baron, and their place was taken by a pack
composed of large drafts of fox-hounds. These hounds are superior in dash and
speed to their predecessors, but among the defects of their qualities must be
noted an absence of that tuneable cry, musical discord, and sweet thunder,
which were characteristic of the older breed. ' A nobler pack of hounds no
man ever saw. ... In height the hounds were about twenty-six to twenty-
eight inches, colour generally hare-pied, yellow, yellow and white, or badger
pied, with long ears, deep muzzles, large throats, and deep chests. In
tongue they were perfect, and when hunting in the water, or on half scent, or
baying a deer, they might be heard at an immense distance.' (Chase of the
Wild Red Deer.} In the composition of this interesting work (of which
a second edition was recently published), the late Dr. Collins of Dulverton
was assisted (to what extent is a matter of dispute) by a friend, referred to
in the preface as ' a dear lover of the sport, ' who is known to have been Sir
John Karslake, sometime Attorney-General for England.

THE RUNNING HOUND 79

used for the most part in finding and harbouring the game ;
there was the ' beagle pure-bred,' about which we shall hear
something by-and-by; and, lastly, there was the ordinary
running hound.1

Your pack of beagles hunted the hare, as their proper
quarry; but your kennel of hounds 'will indeed hunt any
chase exceeding well, especially the hare, stag, buck, roe,
or other.' Adonis was wont to add the fox to the category
thus set forth in The Noble Arte, for he was thus bidden by
Venus :

Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,

Or at the roe which no encounter dare :

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,

And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.

Yen. and Ad. 673.

The running hounds differed widely as regards size and
speed, according to the nature of the country in which they
were bred and hunted. You may read much in the old
books of sport about northern, west country, and southern
hounds, and about their several qualities ; and also of the
complexion and nature of the fallow, the dun, and the white
hound, and of the 'blacke hounds anciently come from
Sainct Hubert Abbey in Ardene.' You may also learn
from The Noble Arte how their breeding is affected by the
* starre Arcture, and sygnes of Gemini and Aquarius, for the
dogges which shall be engendered under those signes shall
not be subject to madnesse, and shall commonly be more
dogges than bytches."

The common stock from which these several varieties
sprang was the blood-hound. The characteristics of this
species are more apparent the further back we go in the
history of the hound. They may be plainly traced in the
old Exmoor stag-hounds, and in the kennel of Theseus.
They become less evident, as, generation after generation,
the modern fox-hound was developed from the old southern
hound by careful breeding and judicious crossing. In the

1 Chiens courans (La Venerie.)

80 AFTER THE CHASE

course of this development some rare qualities of nose and
cry have certainly been lost. But the philosophic stag-
hunter, dismounting after a twenty-mile gallop across Exmoor
from Yard Down, may reflect that Theseus' hounds, tuneable
as was their cry, could no more have accounted for the four-
year-old galloper set up at Watersmeet, than a pack of
beagles could kill a fox in Leicestershire ; and that neither
to hounds nor to men has the grace of absolute perfection
been vouchsafed.

But however 'sweet and delectable' the way over the
* high wild hills and rough uneven ways ' of Cotswold was
made by such 'fair discourse/1 neither riders nor horses
retraced their steps with the keen enjoyment which they
felt in the early day.

Who riseth from a feast
With that keen appetite that he sits down 1
Where is the horse that doth untread again
His tedious measures with the unbated fire
That he did pace them first ? Merch. of Ven. ii. 6. 8.

Each participated in the weariness of the other with that
subtle sympathy and intercommunication of feeling which
exists between man and a brute companion, 'Imitari is
nothing : so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper,
the tired horse his rider/ 2

1 Rich. II. ii. 3. 4.

2 Love's L. L. iv. 2. 129. This passage is explained by commentators as
referring to ' the dancing horse,' Bankes's famous curtal, said to have been
attired with ribbons ; and Mr. Grant White goes so far as to print the words
* 'tired horse. ' I believe it to express in condensed and elliptical language,
characteristic of Shakespeare, the same idea which is fully developed in the
Sonnet quoted above ; — the sympathy of the horse with his rider, the
mysterious ' instinct ' by which ' the beast that bears me, tired with my
woe,' becomes a partaker of my feelings, as the hound shares thoughts of his
master, and the ape of his keeper. As it has been elsewhere expressed, 'that
horse his mettle from his rider takes' (A Lover's Complaint, 107). The
passage, thus interpreted, expresses a favourite thought of the author's ; but
I cannot understand how a riderless horse going through a barebacked per-
formance can be said to imitate a rider, because its master chooses to adorn it
with ribbons. The sense of the passage would have been more apparent if
the meaning had been noted which was formerly borne in the language
of farriers by the word * tired ' as applied to the horse. It was a term of art,
and as such is fully explained in the chapter of Markham's Maister-peece
entitled ' Of Tyred Horses ' (Book I, ch. 62). * In our common and vulgar
speech we say every horse that giveth over his labour is tyred.' This may

THE TIRED HORSE 81

Some such experience, one of the company afterwards
developed in the form of a sonnet :

How heavy do I journey on the way,

When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say

' Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend ! '
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,

Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know

His rider loved not speed, being made from thee :
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on

That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide;
Which heavily he answers with a groan,

More sharp to me than spurring to his side ;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind;

My grief lies onward, and my joy behind. Sonnet L.

Master Silence's feelings agree so perfectly with the temper
of his horse that he forbears to rail at his sluggish pace, as

proceed * from the most extreme Labour and Travail which is true tyredness
indeed,' or from some fault of the horse's, among others, ' from dullness of
spirit,' for which an excellent remedy is to take ' three or four round pebble
stones, and put them into one of his ears, and then tye the ear that the stones
fall not out, and the noise of those stones will make the Horse go after he is
utterly tyred.' Shakespeare (as we shall see more fully by-and-by) put into
the mouths of his characters, irrespective of nationality or condition in life,
the common and vulgar speech of English farriers — according to Markham,
for the most part very simple smiths — to suit whose capacity he writes in his
Maister-peece so as to be understood by the weakest brain. Blundevill, whose
readers were more enlightened, and who translated largely from foreign
authors, in his chapter ' Of Tired Horses ' uses the word in its correct sense,
as ' tired with over much labour. (Four Chief est Offices of Horsemanship,
1580.) It is, I think, certain that the beast of Sonnet L., plodding dully on,
tired with his rider's woe, was affected with the kind of tiring that ' pro-
ceedeth from dullness of spirit,' otherwise Shakespeare would never have said,
in the person of the rider,

The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide.

Had he suffered from ' true tyredness,' his treatment at his hands would
have been very different ;

sodden water

A drench for sur-reined jades, their barley-broth. Hen. V. iii. 5. 1.
If Shakespeare had translated into ordinary English the * common and vulgar
speech ' of the farrier, and told us that the dull-spirited horse imitates his
dull rider, no one, however tired, could have misunderstood his meaning.

82 AFTER THE CHASE

he would have done at other times ; — for he was sufficiently
energetic to sympathise with Harry Hotspur, who says of
mincing poetry, ' 'Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag;'1
and of the mystic Owen Glendower,

0, he is as tedious
As a tired horse, a railing wife ;
Worse than a smoky house.

1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 159.

'All things that are/ Gratiano tells us, 'are with more
spirit chased than enjoyed.' This is the secret of the fasci-
nation which the sports of the field exercise over mankind.
Their very essence is pursuit and endeavour, not possession;
and in these lies the chief enjoyment of life. The objects of
the sportsman's pursuit are often ' past reason hunted/ and
though (unlike other objects) they contain no poison so as to
be 'past reason hated/ yet they are indeed 'before, a joy
proposed ; behind, a dream.'2 Happy is he whose slumbers
are visited by no worse dreams than the harbouring and
hunting of the Cotswold hart.

1 1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 135. 2 Sonnet cxxix.

CHAPTER VII
SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and
any pretty tiny kickshaws, tell William cook.

Second Part of King Henry IV.

IF you visit the western slope of Cotswold in search of the
ancient dwelling of the Shallows, which we are now ap-
proaching in the company of the diarist, you need not be
disappointed.

I do not promise that you will succeed in tracing the
foundations of the Hall, or in fixing to your satisfaction the
site of the dovecot, or of the arbour in which the justice
was wont to regale his guests with a dish of caraways and a
last year's pippin of his own graffing.1 But although these
matters may be left in doubt, evidence will not be wanting
that you have come to the right place. You have only to
bear in mind the local indications given by Davy, the
justice's factotum :

Davy. I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of
Woncot against Clement Perkes of the hill.

Shdl. There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor ;
that Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.

Davy. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet,
God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his
friend's request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself,
when a knave is not. I have served your worship truly, sir, this

1 'Pepyns with carawey in contite' are prescribed for dessert by John
Russell, of the household of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, in the
Boke of Nurture (circ. 1460), and in Wynkyn de Worde's Boke of Keruinge
(1513). These curious treatises on the household management of the day
were annotated and reprinted (with Hugh Rhodes's Boke of Nurture, 1577)
by Mr. Frederick Furnivall in 1866.

84 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

eight years ; and if I cannot once or twice in a quarter bear out a
knave against an honest man, I have but a very little credit with
your worship. The knave is mine honest friend, sir ; therefore I
beseech your worship, let him be countenanced.

ShaL Go to ; I say he shall have no wrong. 2 Hen. IV. v. 1. 41.

If you seek for proof that you are in the neighbourhood of
these worthies, you need but look around you.

Looking northward, you may see how the Cotswold up-
lands send forth in the direction of the estuary of the Severn
a detached portion, or spur, which, standing forth from the
mass in well-defined outline, has received from the country
folk the distinctive name of The Hill. Here local tradition,
oblivious of the worshipful Shallows, long pointed out the
site of a modest homestead, once the dwelling-place of a
family of yeoman race, named Perkis or Perkes, of whom
one has been discovered by searchers in parish registers,
born in 1568, and bearing the name of Clement. The home
of his antagonist, William Visor, is not far distant, but is
bidden from sight by intervening uplands. It is Wood-
mancote, or Woncot, a suburb of Dursley, which has
retained to the present century its connection with the
family of Visor, or Vizard. For in the list of wardens of
St. Mark's Chapel of Ease at Woodmancote, the name of
Vizard occurs in 1847, 1848, and 1861, and in a pedigree
of the family, printed in Dursley and its Neighbourhood (by
the Kev. John Henry Blunt, Kector of Beverston), we read
that William Vizard died February 14, 1807, and the descent
of this nineteenth-century William Visor of Woncot is
traced from Arthur Vizard, bailiff of Dursley in 1612, whose
tomb is in Dursley churchyard.1

If you ascend The Hill, and look towards the setting sun
and the far-distant mountains of Wales, the thought is still
borne in on you, quocunque ingredimur in aliquam historiam
vestigia ponimus. For as the eye travels over the rich and
smiling landscape stretching westward to the estuary of the
Severn, and rests for a moment on a spot near the town of
Berkeley, you are startled to find yourself exclaiming in the

unmis
pages.

1 Mr. Sidney Lee (Life of Shakespeare) regards these local references as
tnistakable, adding that they are "convincingly explained" in these

SHAKESPEARE IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE 85

words of Hotspur, ' There stands the castle, by yon tuft of
trees.' l

' Tore God, you have here a goodly dwelling and a rich/
exclaimed Sir John Falstaff, as he surveyed this very pros-
pect from the justice's orchard ; ' Barren, barren, barren ;
beggars all, beggars all, Sir John,' his host thought it polite
to protest, but truth compelled him to add, 'Marry, good
air.' Good air and comparative barrenness were indeed the
main characteristics of the swelling uplands, extending east-
ward from the justice's Hall to the ancient city of Ciren-
cester, and northward as far as the borders of Warwickshire.
A region of bare hills and billowy downs, famed for a breed
of white-fleeced sheep, and for its Whitsun games, whose
fame might have perished but for their restoration by Kobert
Dover, and their celebration by the poets of the day.

Shallow and his surroundings are distinctly of Gloucester-
shire. There never was any reason for transferring them to
Warwickshire and the neighbourhood of Stratford, even if
there did not exist at the farthest side of Gloucestershire
Woncot with its Visor ; The Hill with its Perkes ; Berkeley
Castle standing by its tuft of trees ; an ancient tradition of
Shakespeare's sojourn ; and a family of the name claiming
kinship with the poet.2

1 Rich. II. ii. 3. 63.

2 In the autumn of the year 1887 (and here I speak in my proper person),
finding myself in the neighbourhood, I visited Dursley. Leaving the railway
station, I met an aged countryman, of whom I asked the way to Woncot. He
at once pointed out the road to Woodmancote. I then asked him the shortest
way to The Hill. Without further question he directed me to Stinchcombe
Hill, one of several surrounding eminences, of which the Rev. R. Webster
Huntley, in his Glossary of the Cotswold Dialect, writes, ' On Stinchcombe
Hill there is the site of a house wherein a family named Purchase or Perkis
once lived.' On the level table land, which forms the summit of the hill, I
met a groom exercising a horse in training for some local race, of whom I in-
quired, as a stranger in Gloucestershire, " How far is it to Berkeley ?" and he
made answer thus (I wrote down his words), "Ye can see a tower of the
castle. It lays along of the clump of trees." Unfortunately the day was too
misty to allow me to verify his statement, but I am quite prepared to accept
its truth, for it does not rest on his testimony alone : —

North. I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire :
These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draw out our miles. . . .
How far is it to Berkeley ? . . .

Percy. There stands the castle by yon tuft of trees.

Richard II. ii. 3. 51.

86 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

It is strange that this combination of circumstances has
not attracted more of the attention which has been lavished
on the surroundings of Shakespeare's Warwickshire life ; for
the belief current in Dursley from time immemorial that
Shakespeare passed some part of his early life in or near
that town, holds a distinct position among the many tradi-
tions that have clustered around the name of Shakespeare.
The mere fact of the existence of such a tradition bespeaks
careful consideration, for the notoriety of Shakespeare's con-
nection with Stratford-on-Avon has warned off all other
rivals, and the claim of Dursley to be also associated with his
name is unique. If the story is unfounded it is difficult to
suggest how it came to be thought of. For the tradition is
certainly older than any knowledge of the facts discovered by
modern register-hunters ; and Dursley — a small country
town, lying at the south-western extremity of Cotswold, dis-
tant a few miles from the estuary of the Severn, and separated
from Warwickshire by almost the entire length of Glouces-
tershire— is not in any way connected with Stratford-on-
Avon, or with any patent fact in the life of Shakespeare.

The truth is that Shakespeare completely foiled his pur-
suers and led them on a false trail, when it one day occurred
to him, in a wicked mood, to take a fling at the Lucys of
Charlecote by identifying with some member of the Lucy
family a character which had already taken hold of the
public, and was accepted as a type. Thenceforth Shallow was
Lucy, and his local habitation was Charlecote, not the ' wilds
in Gloucestershire.' I have elsewhere stated in detail my
reasons for believing that the Gloucestershire justice of
Henry IV. is not a study of Sir Thomas Lucy, and that the
touches which have connected him with the family of Lucy
appear for the first time in the second edition of the Merry
Wives. At present I simply ask the reader to take Shake-
speare at his word, and to believe that when he wrote of

1 This is an exact description of the Castle as seen from the Hill, the Castle
having been from time immemorial shut in on one side, as viewed therefrom,
by an ancient cluster of thick lofty trees. ' Thus Mr. Huntley, in a note to
his Glossary ', in which he collects some further evidence of the connection of
the family of Shakespeare with the neighbourhood of Dursley. See Note,
Shakespeare and Gloucestershire, in which the local references to Gloucester-
shire are noted.

AN ANCIENT MANOR-HOUSE 87

Gloucestershire, of Woncot, and of The Hill he meant what
he said.

Of the original dwelling of the Shallows little remained
in the time of the diarist save a strong vaulted chamber
used as a kitchen, and some adjoining rooms which served
as buttery, pantry, and for other domestic purposes. The
part of the house surrounding the Court where we first made
the acquaintance of the Gloucestershire justices, was built
in the early years of the Queen's reign. The security of the
times, with advancing civilisation and increased means of
enjoyment, had led to a wonderful development of domestic
architecture; and Shallow Hall, though it could not, in
point of dimensions, beauty, and associations, compete with
Haddon, Penshurst, or Knole, or even with Charlecote,
presented nevertheless an interesting example of an ancient
manor-house, rebuilt and enlarged in the Tudor period. How
is it that in certain ages of the world the meanest man can-
not do ill that which at other times the noblest fails to do
well, save by way of imitation ? Was ever parish church
designed amiss in the thirteenth century, or dwelling-house
in the sixteenth ? Was ever tolerable church or house built
in the nineteenth, unless by reproducing the work of an
earlier age? We are so boastful of our enlightenment and
progress that it is well to be reminded of the depths of our
incapacity. The last decade of this century may perhaps — for
it has yet [1897] some years to run — give to the world a great
dramatist, poet, or writer of romance. It will not, I think,
produce a building of original nineteenth -century design
upon which the eye can be content to rest with the pleasure
imparted by the harmonious combination of mullioned
windows, pointed gables, and clustering chimneys, which
constitute the charm of Tudor architecture.

Long and wearisome as were the miles across the ' high
wild hills and rough uneven ways ' of Cotswold, they came
to an end at last, and our party, having seen to the comfort
of their horses, crossed the court-yard and entered the hall.
A long oaken table ran from top to bottom of the hall, which
was spacious, and flagged with stone. It had an open oaken
roof, with massive beams and rafters. Great bay windows,
diamond-paned and mullioned, extended in height the entire

88 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

way from the floor to the roof. The floor had been newly
strewn with rushes, the 'cobwebs swept; the serving men
in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer
his wedding garment on ' l in honour of Petre and his bride.
The walls were hung, not indeed with the arras of which we
read in lordly mansions, but with the more homely painted
cloth, * wherein,5 says Harrison, 2 ' either diverse histories, or
hearbes, beasts, knots, and suchlike are stained.'

There were moral and religious stories, like * Lazarus in
the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores.' 3
There were pretty poesies too, such as were engraven by
goldsmiths on rings. ' Set this in your painted cloths,' 4 said
Pandarus, when he had instanced his experience in verse.
These legends and pictures suggested many smart questions
and pretty answers, and if the merry Beatrice had her
' good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales' 5 the melancholy
Jaques was accused of indebtedness for his matter to the
painted cloth. 'You are full of pretty answers,' said he to
Orlando. 'Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths'
wives, and conned them out of rings ? '

Orl. Not so, but I answer you right painted cloth,6 from whence
you have studied your questions. As You L. iii. 2. 287.

The great oaken screen, separating the hall from the
passage by which you entered, was hung with corslets,
helmets, bucklers, pikes, halberts, and spears. On it there
hung, a prey to rust and decay, the coat of mail in which
Eobert de Chatelhault was clad when he rode with his
patron, Henry II., into the city of Dublin to receive the
homage of Irish chieftains. To one who looked upon this
venerable relic, it suggested a fine simile, of which Ulysses
made good use when he would impress upon Achilles the
folly of virtue seeking c remuneration for the thing it was.'
For ' good deeds past/ he tells him,

' are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

1 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 48.

2 Description of England (1577), prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicles.

3 1 Hen. IV. iv. 2. 27. 4 Trail, and Ores. v. 10. 46.
5 Much Ado, ii. 1. 135. 6 Lucrece, 245.

THE JUSTICE'S LIBRARY 89

As done : perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright : to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery.' Trail, and Cres. iii. 3. 148.

But most of the surroundings of the hall were suggestive
of less gloomy reflections. In the deep embrasures of one
window, cross-bows, arrows, hunting and hawking poles were
piled in confusion. Upon an oaken board in another lay the
justice's library. It was scanty, even for those times, for
the Shallows never affected literary tastes. But the book-
hunter would hail it with delight could he chance on it in
some forgotten cupboard, for it contained a well-worn copy
of the Boke of St. Allans, Nicholas Malbie's Remedies for the
Diseases in Horses, Fitzherbert's Boke of Huslandrie, Lam-
barde's Eirenarcha ; or, Office of Justices of Peace (presented
by William Silence), and Turbervile's Boke of Falconrie,
bound with The Nolle Arte of Venerie. These were for
serious use. For books of sport were used by the Shallows
and Silences for practical purposes, and not as manuals of
etiquette and guides to polite conversation; as was the
custom of the upstart gentlemen of the day, who bought
them by the score, but who rarely understood their inner
meaning. Of such a reading public, the genuine sportsman
would say, with Hector :

0, like a book of sport1 thou'lt read me o'er;
But there's more in me than thou understand'st.

Troil and Ores. iv. 5. 239.

Light literature was represented by Sir Guy of Warwicke,
the Foure Sonnes of Amon, the Ship of Fooles, the Budget of
Demaundes, and the Hundred Merrie Tales; and I gather
from the conversation at supper that, but for Abraham
Slender, it would have been furnished with the JBooke of
Riddles, in which the justice specially delighted.

In the deep recess of another window stood a small table,
with a double desk, on one side of which lay Foxe's Book of
Martyrs, and on another a large church Bible, from which
(as we know) the justice now and then borrowed a quotation,

1 See Note, The Book of Sport.

90 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

and, I am sorry to add, but little else. There were a few
small tables, useful in foul weather when the justice would
play at dice or cards, calling in his honest neighbours,
yeomen of the country, such as Clement Perkes of The Hill ;
for in those days distinctions of class were so clearly marked
and rigidly observed, that associations such as this led to no
misunderstanding or confusion. Those who were thus bidden
took their places below the great silver Salt, separating
guests who supped on terms of equality with the justice
from the 'lower messes/1 a phrase which came to have a
meaning (as in the mouth of Leontes) somewhat akin to
that of the masses, whom some are used to contrast with the
classes who sit above the Salt.

The walls above the painted cloths were adorned with
antlers of harts and other trophies of the chase, the justice's
devotion to which was attested by other visible signs.
Benches were littered with hawks' hoods and jesses, hawking
gloves, and collars, Hams, and trashes for hounds. A few
dogs lay on the rushes ; but of the running hounds, Lady
the brach alone was admitted to the hall. She was not half
so good and true a hound as Belman, but because she
happened to please the justice, everything was permitted to
her; for in hounds as with men, in Gloucestershire as in
Eome, under Tudors as under Caesars, proUtas laudatur et
alget. ' Truth's a dog must to kennel ; ' said Lear's most
material fool, 'he must be whipped out, when Lady the
brach may stand by the fire and' — do as she pleases.2

Although Silence and his companions had returned to
Shallow Hall by the shortest route, it was dark when they
arrived, and the justice had already led his guests to supper
in the hall. It was expected that those who took part in
the chase should sup with the justice, and accordingly the
whole party, gentle and simple, came together into the hall.
The head of the deer was borne aloft before the huntsman,
who blew a strake on his horn as he entered. The justice
sat at the head of the long oaken table. At his right hand
sat the lady Katherine ; at his left her husband, with old
Silence. His daughter Ellen with Ferdinand Petre (who

1 Wint. Tale, i. 2. 227. 2 K. Lear, i. 4. 124

A HARD QUESTION 91

seems to have fouud his way back to the park at an early
hour) were nigh at hand. They were joined by William
Silence and Abraham Slender, while Perkes and his com-
panion, with John Hunt, took their places below the Salt.

" Ho, ho ! " cried the justice, when he saw the deer's head,
" how's this ? This cannot be the hart whose tokens and
measurements were reported to me at noon. How's this?
This must be answered, John Hunt. How came you not to
hunt the hart which was harboured for the delectation of my
guests ? You, goodman Perkes, 'twas you harboured the hart,
and you saw him break thicket. How's this, how's this? Have
you forgotten your woodcraft ? This must be answered."

This was too bad; — to have his woodcraft put to shame
before the company, and the great hart ravaging his corn-
field at this very moment : Clement Perkes could not lie to
save his life, not to say his character for woodcraft. He
gasped, grew red, and looked doubtingly at Slender, who was
not prepared for this emergency.

" The great hart, an't please your worship," said the
huntsman promptly, " did break thicket ; but they changed
to another deer in the round wood. I said I thought it,
Master Slender."

" Aye, aye, good lack," said Slender, in amazement at such
dexterity.

"But I was not right certain till we viewed him in the
Hogshearing valley, and then 'twas too late. I met a varlet
as saw the great hart leave the round wood after sunset."

" I knew well how it was," said Shallow triumphantly.
" I knew it well, and I said it throughout. I said they had
changed somewhere. But I am sorry, Master Petre, I am
sorry. I had wished you better sport."

" Nay, Master Shallow," said Petre, " vex not yourself for
me, we have had a right merry day, have we not, Kate?
For my part I care not for hunting at force,1 though I love
well enough the music of a well-chosen cry of hounds, or a
pack of merry beagles, bred for music, not for murder. Live
and let live, for me."

1 I find that Mr. Baillie-Grohman came independently to the conclusion
that the pursuit of the stag in the open at force with running hounds had
gone out of fashion in the time of the diarist (Master of Game, Appendix 134.)

92 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

When the hunting party had taken their places at the
table, the justice resumed his conversation with Master
Petre, and we are in time to hear a few of his comments on
topics of the day.

"And now that you have brought home your bride,
Master Petre, you will, I doubt not, follow the use and
ancient custom of your worshipful ancestors, dwelling in
the country alway, and resorting neither to courts nor to
foreign countries. Your father, Sir Anthony, was of that
mind. He spent his whole rent and revenue (scot and lot
only excepted) in hospitality and good house-keeping. His
house was no Mock-beggar Hall. It was ever open to all
comers "

"Yea, that it was, and sometimes closed to its master.
Many a time hath he been driven out of his own bed to lie
at a tenant's house for a night or two, so haunted was his
house by unbidden guests, resorting thither with man and
horse, hawk and hound. Give me the house-keeping of cities
and towns, where a man may make choice of his own guests,
and where he need not fill his hall with great tall hulking
useless fellows, but may keep such serving-men only as are
required for necessary uses. Our fathers needed them to
sustain their quarrels. But we need them not."

" Nay, there thou speakest foolishly, for what profiteth it a
man to be better than his neighbours if he have no greater
worship? If a gentleman be not largely resorted to, what
worship can he have in the shire, or what authority on the
bench at quarter sessions, when he giveth the charge ? If I
walk in the town at assize time but slenderly attended, how
shall it be known that I am a better man than my kinsman
Silence here, or my cousin Slender, who keeps but three men
and a boy yet, until his mother be dead ? "

" How, indeed," said old Silence ; " for if one who is not
only of the peace but of the quorum and cust "

" Cousin Silence, it is as I have said : need more be said ? "

"In truth, Master Shallow, you have asked me a hard
question," said Master Petre, " and I cannot answer it ; you
are too clever for me."

" Now that is spoken like a worthy son of your father, and
I doubt not but that after further converse with me, you and

AN ANCIENT CONTROVERSY 93

all your brethren will dwell at home, and be no longer scat-
tered abroad throughout the world."

" To my mind," said Petre, " it is a good wind that scatters
young men over the world, to seek their fortunes further
than at home, where small experience grows. For myself,
my substance is such that I could live at home, as did my
father. But what should my younger brethren do at home ?"

"It is true," said Master Shallow, "the old saying now
holds not good that service is the younger son's inheritance.
The more's the pity. I mind the time when the younger son
of an esquire would be proud to serve a knight, and the
younger son of a gentleman an esquire, as the younger son
of a duke would serve his prince. But now, goodman
Tomkins' Jack is thrust into a blue coat, and Peter Patch-
panel taken from the carpenter's bench to the parlour, to the
great detriment of those of gentle blood. And yet even at
this very day I know gentlemen's younger brothers that wear
their elder brother's blue coat and badge, attending him with
reverent regard and dutiful obedience, as if he were their
prince sovereign. This is as it should be."

" A beggarly profession, say I. As the old saying hath it,
'A young serving-man, an old beggar.' Unless, indeed, he
turn tapster, as another saying hath it : 'An old cloak makes
a new jerkin; a withered serving-man a fresh tapster.'1 I
allow, indeed, that if a younger son profiteth by his learning
at the University or at the Inns of Court, he may proceed in
the study of the common law, divinity, or physic. But
besides your kinsman William, how many of your blood or
acquaintance have so profited ? And for the rest I say,
better seek their fortunes abroad, than turn ploughman at
home, or even wear the blue coat of their eldest brother.
Indeed, if their eldest brother were of my mind, he would
not be in the country for them to serve, but would lead a
civil life in cities and great towns, as do the nobility of
foreign countries."

" But if you live not at home, tilling your demesne land,
how shall your house be kept, and your neighbours love you ?"

"My father," said Petre, "had six or seven hundred acres
of demesne land, whereon grew the provision for his house-

1 Merry Wives, i. 3. 18.

94 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

hold. This I let out to husbandmen, and there is scarcely an
acre but yields me a crown. And so both fare best. I can
live where I please, and need not to play the ploughman my-
self, and the ploughmen can live on the land, as their calling
is. Believe me, the husbandman loves his landlord best,
when he lives like a gentleman in the city, though for fear or
flattery, when he dineth at your board, he may say he is
sorry your worship should dwell away. As for your country
sports and pastimes, I allow, indeed, that a gentleman may
exercise himself in hunting, and especially in hawking, but
these pastimes may be followed in the neighbourhood of
courts and cities. But his great delight should be in arms,
in the riding of great and serviceable horses, and also in study
of books."

" As to books," said Master Shallow, " we have good store
of them, and we lack not pleasant mad-headed knaves that
be properly learned, and will read for us in diverse pleasant
books, as Sir Guy of Warwick, the Four Sons of Amon, the
Ship of Fools, the Budget of Demands, the Hundred Merrie
Tales, the Book of Songs and Sonnets, the Book of Riddles,
and many other pithy and excellent authors. The Book of
Riddles, indeed, cousin Slender, has not been found since
Allhallowmas last, when thou borrowedst it, for thy mother
as thou sayedst. I pray thee, see to it."

" Your learning is, indeed, most seemly and suitable," said
Petre. " How sayest thou, Master Silence, would not learn-
ing like this amaze and delight thy fellow at Gray's Inn,
Master Francis Bacon ? "

"Why, that is spoken like a most grave and reverend
young man," said the justice, " and, Master Petre, persuade
me not, but rest well assured that Kobert Shallow, Esquire,
will dwell continually at home among his neighbours, as he
hath done any time these three hundred years, for all your
brave words."

"'All his successors gone before him hath done't,'"
said Slender, " ' and all his ancestors that come after him
may; they '"l

1 The conversation at the justice's table closely resembles a dialogue between
Vincent and Valentine, contained in a curious old tract entitled * Cyuile and
Vncyuile Life. A discourse very profitable, pleasant, and fit to be read of

A DISAPPOINTMENT 95

The remainder of Slender's speech has been lost to the
world, for supper being ended, the company rose from their
seats while the ladies sought the withdrawing room, where
Ellen Silence did the honours of her godfather's house. It
was the custom at the justice's to sit long after supper.
Sometimes the company would adjourn to the orchard,
sometimes (as now) they would make merry in the hall.

"And now," said the justice, " is there no merry wag who
will give us a song ? "

"I know one who can give you a hunter's song," said
William Silence, " for I heard him singing snatches of it as
we rode homewards together — the song must speak for itself,
but I can answer for the voice of the singer."

And here, not for the first or the last time, the hope that I
might find somewhere in the diary some words which fell from
the lips of the nameless stranger was doomed to disappoint-
ment. There was, indeed, a song enclosed in the pages of
the diary. But it was written on a separate piece of paper,
and appeared from internal evidence to have been written at
a much later period by the diarist, who would seem to have
occupied himself in embodying his recollections of the older
song in words borrowed from the writings of the singer. To
enable the reader to form his own opinion upon this matter,
I here print the song exactly as I found it, adding references

all Nobilitie and Gentlemen, where in the forme of a dialogue is disputed
what order of lyfe best beseemeth a gentleman in all ages and times'
(1579. Reprinted by the Roxburghe Society in a volume entitled Inedited
Tracts). So close is the resemblance, that did the dates admit of it, it might
be supposed that the writer of the tractate had sat at Master Shallow's board.
There are also certain suggestions of two other tracts reprinted in the same
volume ; The Seruing-man's Comfort (1598), and The Courtier and the
Countryman^ by Nicholas Breton (1618). It seemed worth while preserving
from authentic sources some hints of a conflict which raged whenever Petree
and Shallows met together, the course of which may be clearly traced in the
literature of the day — for instance, in the popular songs of the Old and the
New English Gentleman. Victory rested with those whom, no doubt, the
Petres and Valentines regarded as the stupid party — the Shallows, the Silences,
and the Vincents. This result was due to solid immobility, rather than to any
success in dialectics. And thus England escaped the disasters which were
brought upon France by estrangement of the landed aristocracy from local
interests and affairs, resulting from their devotion to the Cyuile Life ; and
if the old order must needs change in time and give place to new, Master
Shallow and his fellows have had no small share in bringing it to pass that
the revolution shall be a gradual and a bloodless one.

96 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

to the passages of which — whatever be the value of my
theory — it is undoubtedly compounded.

THE HUNTE, HIS SONG.

My hounds are bred of Southern kinde,1
So flew'd, so sanded they ;

With crooked knees and dew-laps depe,

With cares the morning dew that swepe
Slowly they chase their praye ;

Their mouths as tuneable as belles

Each under each in concert swells.

[ The reste shall bear this burden 2
The hunte is up, the morne is bright and gray,3
Hunting us hence with hunte's up to the day.4

My horse cache common one excels 5

In shape, in courage, pace,
In colour, bone, and symmetry ;
Of fire compacte, and pure ayre he,6

The minion of his race ; 7
Pryde in his braided mane, his tayle
Aloft, or falling like a vaile.8
The hunte is up, &c.

His hooves are round, his joints are short,9
His fetlocks shagge and longe ;

His breaste is broade, and full his eye,

His head is small, his crest is highe,

His legs are straight and stronge,

His ears are shorte, his buttockes wide

Swelling beneath his tender hyde.
The hunte is up, &c.

The foxe that lives by subtilty10

We kill as best we can,
By gynnes or snares,11 but in the chase
We'll have some sporte before we case12

I Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 124. 2 As You L. iv. 2. 14.

3 Tit. Andr. ii. 2. 1. 4 Horn, and Jul. iii. 5. 34.

5 Ven. and Ad. 293. 6 Hen. V. iii. 7. 22.

7 Macbeth, ii. 4. 15. 8 Ten. and Ad. 314.

9 Ven. and Ad. 295. 10 Cymb. iii. 3. 40.

II 2 Hen. VI. iii. 1. 257. 12 All's Well, iii. 6. 110.

THE HUNTSMAN'S SONG 97

This enemy of man ;
And if he stowes his bush away1
He lives to runne another daye.
The hunte is up, &c.

The harte unharboured, stands at gaze2

One moment, then awaye
He trippes with light and aery boundes,
Until the fell and cruel houndes3

He holdeth at a bay ;4
No rascall he — his head of stele
The bloody houndes shall surely feele.5
The hunte is up, &c.

Beyond all beastys poor tim'rous Wat6

The hunter's skille doth trye,
See how the hounds, with many a doubte
The cold fault cleanly single out !

Hark to their merrie crie !
They spende their mouthes, echoe replies,
Another chase is in the skies.
The hunte is up, &c.

Their quarry or their hallo we wonne7

I tender well my houndes,8
I wind my home to call the lost,
I care them when they are emboss'd,

And binde their bleeding woundes.
'Tis merrie hunting, but in hall
'Tis merrier yet, when beards wagge all.9
The hunte is up, &c.

The hunting song, whatever may have been its words,
was right well received by the company, When the
applause had ended the justice thus addressed William

1 ' The tayle of a foxe is called his bush, or (as some used to say) his holly
water sprinkle.'— The Noble Arte.

2 Lucrece, 1149. 3 Twelfth N. i. 1. 22.

4 Tarn, of Shrew, v. 2. 56. 5 1 Hen. VI. iv. 2. 49.

6 The hare, see Ven. and Ad. 673-708.

7 ' The rewarde of death of any beast of Venerie is called the quarry or
reward ; of all other chases it ia to be called the hallowe.' — The Noble Arte,
ante, p. 64.

8 Tarn, of Shrew. Ind. 1. 16. 9 2 Hen. IV. v. 3. 37,

98 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

Silence. " Now, cousin William, your father had you at
Oxford, to his cost, and have you learned there no merry
song, strange tale, or pleasant riddle, wherewith to divert
the company ? "

"I cannot sing, Master Shallow," said William Silence;
"one singer is enough in a family, and you will hear my
father anon. But I will, with your leave, repeat you a
certain ancient drinking-song writ by one Quintus Horatius
Flaccus, which I have made bold to do into English :

Persian-like pomp, boy, is not to my mind :
Hateful are chaplets with linden entwined :
Spare, then, to search through the gardens to find
The latest blown rose.

Naught to plain myrtle add — rack not thy brain —
Master nor man need the myrtle disdain ;
Bowered in vines, whilst thou serv'st, and I drain
This cup in repose.

"At all events," continued young Silence, it is good
philosophy, if so be that a man be accommodated thereto."

"Accommodated ! " said the justice, " ' it is good : yea,
indeed, is it: good phrases are surely, and ever were, very
commendable. Accommodated ! it comes of accommodo,
very good : a good phrase.'1 But for the matter of the song,
'tis no philosophy. Quintus Horatius was a poet, he was
no philosopher. Have I not construed him myself ? When
I was a boy, I tell thee, Master William, I'ld ha' been
soundly breeched for calling a poet a philosopher. A poet's
a poet, though he write the Latin tongue. The song is a
good song. But you should sing it to the tune of Green
Sleeves, or Light oy Love, and 'twill sound merrier far ; and if
you put it to a refrain, as the ' hunt is up ' or * down, derry
down/ the rest of the company may bear the burden, for a
song without a burden is, I take it, no better than ' a curtal
dog,' or a fox that hath lost his bush."

The conversational powers of the justice could not long
be maintained at this high level. As the evening wore on,
Petre, William Silence, and Master Ferdinand formed a group

1 2 Hen. IF. iii. 2. 74,

DISCOURSE AFTER SUPPER 99

by themselves, while Justice Shallow and old Silence fell
into their wonted groove of discourse. The serving-men
were appealed to, and joined freely in conversation. For a
good serving-man was expected to make himself not only
generally useful, but agreeable to boot. He was not only to
wear his garments decently (especially his livery coat, sword
and buckler), to carve well — knowing how to unlace a cony,
raise a capon, and trump a crane — but he should have skill
in wrestling, leaping, running, and dancing. In the words
of an old writer, ' there are ako of those that can shoote in
long Bowes, crosse Bowes, or handgunne ; yea there wanteth
not some that are both so wise and of so good audacitie as
they can & doo (for lacke of better company) entertain their
Maister with table talke, bee it his pleasure to speake either
of Hawkes or houndes, fishinge or fowling, sowing or
graffinge, ditchinge or hedginge, the dearth or cheapenes of
grayne, or any such matters whereof Gentlemen commonly
speake in the Country, bee it either of pleasure or profit,
these good fellowes know sumwhat in all.'1

We know well the matters of which Shallow and old
Silence would discourse before supper. Then it was ' How
a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair ? How a score of
ewes now ? ' ; and as to Davy, he would entertain his
master with talk of the serving of precepts ; of sowing the
headland with wheat ; of * the smith's note, for shoeing, and
plough-irons ; ' of how ' a new link to the bucket must needs
be had ; ' and of the stopping ' of William's wages, about the
sack he lost the other day at Hinckley fair.'2

But why not, when we may, exchange the dull notes of
the diarist for a lively record of the very words spoken ? It
needs only to read Master Petre and Ferdinand for Falstaff
and Bardolph as the visitors at the Hall, and the story is
complete. This change matters little, for though at Shallow
Hall men might come and men might go, yet the after-
dinner talk ever flowed in the self-same stream. And if you
observe a change in Master Ferdinand Petre after supper,
arid seek for an explanation, you must study the operations
of ' good sherris-sack ' upon the brain, and upon ' the foolish

1 The Cyuile and VncyuiU Life, 1579. 3 2 Hen. IV. v. 1. 14.

100 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

and dull and crudy vapours which environ it/ noting the
no less wonderful change wrought thereby in the deportment
of old Silence.

Petr. \FalJ\ This Davy serves you for good uses ; he is your
serving-man and your husbandman.

Shal. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet. . . .
By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper ; a good
varlet. Now sit down, now sit down : come, cousin.

Sil. Ah, sirrah ! quoth-a, — we shall

Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer. (Singing.)
And praise God for the merry year ;
When flesh is cheap and females dear,
And lusty lads roam here and there

So merrily,
And ever among so merrily.

Petr. [Fal.] There's a merry heart ! Good Master Silence, I'll
give you a health for that anon.

Shal. Give Master Ferdinand [Bardolph] some wine, Davy.

Davy. Sweet sir, sit. . . . Preface ! What you want in meat,
we'll have in drink. But you must bear : the heart's all. (Exit.)

Shal. Be merry, Master Ferdinand [Bardolph], ... be merry.

Sil. (Singing.)

Be merry, be merry, my wife has all.

For women are shrews, both short and tall :

'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,1

And welcome merry Shrove-tide.
Be merry, be merry.

Petr. [Fal.] I did not think Master Silence had been a man of
this mettle.

Sil. Who, 1 1 I have been merry twice and once ere now.

He-enter DAVY.
Davy. There is a dish of leather-coats for you.

(To Ferdinand [Bardolph]).
Shal. Davy !

Davy. Your worship ! I'll be with you straight. (To Ferdinand
[Bardolph]) — A cup of wine, sir 1

1 A song with this line as a burden is mentioned in The Seruing -man's
Comfort (1598), as commonly sung after supper in hall.

MASTER SILENCE SINGS 101

Sil. (Singing.)

A cup of wine, that's brisk and fine,
And drink unto the leman mine :
And a merry heart lives long-a.

Petr. [Fal.] Well said, Master Silence.

Sil. An we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet o' the
night.

Petr. [Fal.] Health and long life to you, Master Silence.
Sil. (Singing.) Fill the cup and let it come ;

I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom.

SJial. Master Ferdinand [Honest Bardolph], welcome : If thou
wantest any thing, and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart . . .
welcome, indeed, too. I'll drink to Master Ferdinand [Bardolph]
and to all the cavaleros about London.

Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die.

Ferd. [Bard.] An I might see you there, Davy,

Shal. By the mass, you'll crack a quart together, ha! will
you not, master?

Ferd. [Bard.] Yes, sir, in a pottle-pot.

Shal. By God's liggens I thank thee : the knave will stick by
thee, I can assure thee that; A' will not out: he is true bred.

Ferd. [Bard.] And I'll stick by him, sir.

Shal. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing; be merry.

Petr. [Fal.] Why, now you have done me right.

(To Silence^ seeing him take off a bumper.)

Sil. (Singing.) Do me right,

And dub me knight :

Samingo.
Is't not so?

Petr. [FaL] 'Tis so.

Sil. Is't so? Why, then say, an old man can do somewhat.

2 Hen. IV. v. 3. 10.

So they talked, and so old Silence sang, until the word
was given ' carry Master Silence to bed;' while one that sat
at the board thought thus with himself of Master Shallow
and his men.

'It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence
of his men's spirits and his : they, by observing of him, do
bear themselves like foolish justices; he, by conversing
with them, is turned into a justice-like serving-man : their

102 SUPPER AT SHALLOW HALL

spirits are so married in conjunction with the participation
of society that they flock together in consent, like so many
wild-geese. If I had a suit to Master Shallow, I would
humour his men with the imputation of being near their
master : if to his men I would curry with Master Shallow
that no man could better command his servants. It is certain,
that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as
men take diseases, one of another : therefore, let men take
heed of their company.

' I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep
in continual laughter'1 . . . not Prince Harry, but the
world ; and that beyond the wearing out of many fashions,
even so long as the English tongue shall be spoken.

And he kept his word.

1 2 Hen. IV. \. 1. 72.

CHAPTER VIII
THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

I will fetch off these Justices : I do see the bottom of Justice Shallow.

Second Part of King Henry IV.

IT has been already observed that the original outlines of
Master Kobert Shallow of Gloucestershire; of his fellows
Slender and Silence ; and of Davy, Clement Perkes, William
Visor, with their local surroundings, were somewhat obscured
by the subsequent identification of the justice with Sir
Thomas Lucy of Charlecot in Warwickshire. That Shake-
speare at some time of his life intended this identification
is beyond doubt. But I am convinced that no such design
formed part of his original conception. In some notes to
these pages I have collected various local indications which
seem to show that the Gloucestershire of Shakespeare was
no mere geographical expression, but a real place trodden
by his feet, and inhabited by real men and women with
whom he had held converse. We have spent so much time
in their company, that it may be worth while to pursue
the subject somewhat further, and to devote a few pages to
the inquiries : was Master Kobert Shallow originally intended
as a caricature of Sir Thomas Lucy ? And if not, how
happened it that the characters came to be generally identi-
fied?1

The Lucys of Charlecot were among the foremost knightly
families of England. Their associations were courtly, as well

1 Many of the facts referred to in this chapter are collected in Malone'a
Life of Shakespeare, and in an interesting and suggestive article which
appeared in Fraser's Magazine (April 1877), entitled Master Robert Shallow,
signed, C. Elliot Browne. I have not thought it necessary to verify Malone's
dates, or his extracts from the Commons Journal and other sources of infor-
mation.

103

104 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

as literary. Sir Thomas Lucy was born in 1532, and was
educated by Fox the martyrologist, no mean scholar, and the
author of several comedies in Latin, who found a refuge at
Charlecot after his expulsion from Magdalen College, and
before he became tutor in the family of the Duke of Norfolk.
At the early age of fifteen, or thereabout, Thomas Lucy
married a rich heiress, and four years afterwards succeeded
to the family estates, on the death of his father, Sir William
Lucy, Knight. A few years later he rebuilt the ancient
hall at Charlecot, constructing it in the form of the letter E
by way of delicate compliment to his sovereign, who recog-
nised his loyal devotion by visiting him in the year 1572.
He was elected knight of the shire in 1571, and again in
1584. The Commons Journal bears witness to his attention
to public business. In 1571 we find him serving on a com-
mittee appointed upon a motion for uniformity of religion,
and for redress of certain defections ; the object of the motion
being (as appears from the speech of the mover) to ' purge
the common prayer book, and free it from certain super-
stitious ceremonies, as using the sign of the cross in baptism,
&c.' He took part in a conference with members of the
House of Lords, ' touching the bill against priests disguising
themselves in serving-men's apparel/ In 1584 he presented
a petition touching the liberty of godly preachers, ' and also
for the speedy supply of able and sufficient men into divers
places now destitute, and void of the ordinary means of
salvation/ In the same year we find him associated with
Sir Philip Sidney, the Lord Kussell, Sir Walter Kaleigh, and
Sir Thomas Cecil on a committee to consider 'in what
measure and manner they should supply Her Majesty by
subsidy/ His latest parliamentary appearance was as mem-
ber of a committee, to whom was referred a bill for the
preservation of grain and game. This bill never became
law ; it may have been to the same effect as 7 James I. c. 11,
entitled ' An Act to prevent the spoil of corn and grain by
untimely hawking, and for the better preservation of
pheasants and partridges/

He served twice as sheriff, in 1569 and in 1578. He
appears to have been chosen as arbitrator in disputes
between burgesses of Stratford. Clarenceux king-of-arms,

THE LUCYS OF CHARLECOT 105

in the person of Cam den the antiquarian, with Windsor
and Lancaster heralds, attended the knight's funeral (so
he certifies) and bore 'the cote of arms' of which we
have heard, probably (for it was then autumn) flaunting the
white luces (kauriant, arg.) in the sight of one who was
just then re-writing his first hasty rough sketch of a comedy
entitled The Merry Wives of Windsor. His son Sir Thomas
appears to have been possessed of a collection of French and
Italian books. Of his grandson, also Sir Thomas, a con-
temporary poetaster writes :

The all beloved and highly-prized gem,
That in the Court's brow like a diamond,

Or Hesperus in heaven doth lighten them
For men to see their way in glory's ground.

Another grandson of Sir Thomas Lucy was Bishop of St.
David's, and I have read that a third was to have been a
member of James I.'s ' Academe Koyal.'

Altogether, the family of Lucy had many points of contact
with the great world of the day, and life and conversation at
Charlecot must have been affected by various currents of
contemporary thought and action — religious, political, courtly,
and literary.

Essentially shallow the old Puritan knight may have been,
but his associations and surroundings, and (so far as we can
judge) his characteristics were widely different from those of
the Gloucestershire justice whom the world knows by the
name of Kobert Shallow. Socially, morally, and intellectually
they breathed atmospheres as different as is the air which
clings to the warm meadows, scented pastures, and stately
woodlands of Charlecot, from the thin and eager breezes of a
Cotswold hillside.

The Eobert Shallow of the second part of Henry IV. had
in early life enjoyed one glimpse of the larger and fuller life
of the metropolis. That golden time was now fifty-five years
distant. He had been in truth but an outsider, a spectator
of scenes enacted by others. But to his sight the very
ordinary adventures of his youth assumed gigantic propor-
tions, as he looked back to them across the dead level of his
Gloucestershire existence. The advent of Sir John Falstaff

106 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

'about soldiers' revived ancient recollections of Clement's
Inn, 'where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.'
Those were the days when he 'would have done anything,
indeed, and roundly too/ when he and old Silence heard the
chimes of midnight, with the famous swinge-bucklers, little
John Doit of Staffordshire, black George Bare, Francis
Pickbone, and our friend Will Squele a Cotswold man.
These memories mingled strangely with the prosaic realities
of everyday life.

Shal. The mad days that I have spent ! and to see how many of
mine old acquaintance are dead !

Sil. We shall all follow, cousin.

Shal. Certain, 'tis certain ; very sure, very sure : death, as the
Psalmist saith, is certain to all ; all shall die. How a good yoke
of bullocks at Stamford fair ?

Sil. By my troth, I was not there.

Shal. Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living

Sil. Dead, sir.

Shal. Jesu, Jesu, dead ! A' drew a good bow ! And dead ! a'
shot a fine shoot : John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much
money on his head. Dead ! a' would have clapp'd i' the clout at
twelve score ; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and
fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to
see. How a score of ewes now 1

Sil. Thereafter as they be : a score of good ewes may be worth
ten pounds.

Shak And is old Double dead? 2 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 36.

Sir John arrives, and is greeted as an old acquaintance,
but with the deference due to a visitor from the greater
world. He affects to recognise Shallow's companion :

Fal. Master Surecard, as I think 1

Shal. No, Sir John; it is my cousin Silence, in commission
with me.

Fal. Good Master Silence, it well befits you should be of the
peace.

Sil. Your good worship is welcome. Ibid. 95.

Shallow proceeds to call the roll of recruits, with his wonted
fussy iteration :

MASTER ROBERT SHALLOW 107

Where's the roll ? where's the roll 1 where's the roll 1 Let me
see, let me see, let me see. So, so, so, so, so, so, so j Yea, marry
sir ! Ralph Mouldy ! Let them appear as I call j let them do so ;
let them do so. Let me see. Ibid. 106.

Business concluded, the justice talks of old times. He does
not get much response at first from the knight, who probably
never exchanged a word with him in their youth :

Shal. 0 Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in
the windmill in Saint George's field ?

Fal. No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that.

Shal. Ha ! it was a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork
alive ?

Fal. She lives, Master Shallow.

Shal. She never could away with me.

Fal. Never, never : she would always say, she could not abide
Master Shallow.

Shal. By the mass, I could anger her to the heart. She was
then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well 1

Fal. Old, old, Master Shallow. Ibid. 206.

The knight, all this time, has been turning over in his mind
and considering to what profitable use he may turn the prof-
fered friendship of the justice :

As I return, I will fetch off these justices : I do see the bottom
of Justice Shallow. Lord, lord, how subject we old men are to
this vice of lying ! This same starved justice hath done nothing
but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath
done about Turnbull-street, and every third word a lie, duer paid
to the hearer than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at
Clement's Inn like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring :
when a' was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish,
with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife : a' was so
forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible ; a'
•was the very genius of famine. Ibid. 323.

In those bygone days Jack Falstaff, page to Thomas
Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, would not have been conscious
of the existence of the Gloucestershire squireling. But times
have changed, the knight's purse needs replenishing, 'and
now has he land and beefs. Well, I'll be acquainted with
him, if I return : and it shall go hard but I will make him a

108 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

philosopher's two stones to me ; if the young dace be a bait
for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I
may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end.' 1

He does return. And sorely are the resources of the
Shallow establishment taxed to provide a suitable entertain-
ment for him and his followers.

Shal. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a
joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William
cook.

Davy. Doth the man of war stay all night, sir ?

Shal. Yes, Davy. I will use him well : A friend i' the Court
is better than a penny in purse. Ibid. v. 127.

Such is the Shallow of the second part of Henry IV. If
he is intended as the counterfeit presentment of Sir Thomas
Lucy, the satire is certainly veiled, and it was not necessary
to conceal it further by locating the whole group of characters
at the further extremity of an adjoining county. In outward
circumstances there is nothing in common between the head
of the household in which Davy served so many good uses,
and the wealthy entertainer of royalty at Charlecot. It is
not possible that the old precisian, married at fifteen, full of
prayer-book revision, priest's apparel, parliamentary com-
mittees, preservation of game and grain, domestic archi-
tecture, affairs of court and state, and varied activities con-
tinued throughout life, could have discoursed, like Kobert
Shallow, of nothing beyond the homely surroundings, the
trivial occurrences, and petty economies of rustic life, with
occasional reminiscences of a half-mythical youth in which
he saw afar off the doings of a great world of which he
formed no part. There would have been no point in repre-
senting Sir Thomas Lucy, the host of the Queen, as having a
distant view of royalty but once in the tilt-yard, and then
getting his head broken for crowding among the marshal's
men. Indeed, from what we know of the master of Charlecot,
his history, position, tastes, pursuits, and surroundings, he
might fairly be selected as a type of country gentleman
contrasting in every particular with the immortal Justice of
Henry IV.

1 ibid. 353.

SHALLOW AND FALSTAFF 109

The second part of Henry IV. was produced about the
year 1597, The Gloucestershire justices attained immediate
popularity, and were recognised as types. Ben Jonson in
Every Man out of his Humour, first acted in 1599, thus
alludes to Master Shallow :

Savi. What's he, gentle Mons. Brisk? Not that gentleman?
Fast. No, lady: this is a kinsman to Justice Shallow.

In Decker's Satiromastix (1602) we read of 'spangle babies,
these true heirs of Master Justice Shallow.' And a letter
has been preserved from one Sir Charles Percy, a member
of the Northumberland family, settled at Dumbleton in
Gloucestershire, addressed to a friend in London, probably in
the year 1600, in which this passage occurs : ' I am here so
pestred with cuntrie businesse that I shall not bee able as
yet to come to London. If I stay heere long in this fashion
I think you will find mee so dull that I shall be taken for
Justice Silence or Justice Shallow.'

We now come to Robert Shallow of The Merry Wives of
Windsor. According to a tradition of respectable antiquity
The Merry Wives was written in fourteen days, by command
of the Queen, who wished to enjoy the spectacle of Falstaff
making love. The existence of the quarto — an early edition
of the first sketch as performed 'both before her Majestie
and elsewhere ' — affords some confirmation of a story which
is more likely to be true than fabricated for no reason that
can be readily imagined. The quarto differs from the Folio
as a rough draft from a completed work, not as an imperfect
copy from an original document. Scenes are rearranged and
entire passages transposed. Nor is this all. In the quarto,
Shallow plays a very subordinate part. Now Shallow was
one of the best known and most popular of Shakespeare's
creations. If the first scene of the comedy had originally
stood as we have it now, it is unlikely that the most hasty
or careless of surreptitious coypists could have missed all
about the justice's new-born dignities, his dozen white luces
in his coat, with their suggestions, to his apprehension so apt
and sensible. In the quarto, Shallow, so far from bragging of
his county offices and ancient coat- armour, keeps up his old
deferential bearing towards Falstaff. ' Tho ' he be a knight,

110 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

he shall not thinke to carrie it so away.' He is, in short, the
Gloucestershire Robert Shallow of Henry IV. without any
suggestion of Sir Thomas Lucy as yet superadded. He is,
no doubt, owner of a deer-park, for he has deer and a keeper.
But this would never suggest Sir Thomas Lucy, who had no
park, though he probably had deer. Parks were numerous
in Gloucestershire, and Robert Shallow, simple though he
stood, was of sufficient substance to lay his hands forthwith
on one thousand pounds, and may well have possessed a
deer-park.

Shallow takes but little part in the action of the early
sketch. His chief business is to introduce his nephew
Slender, and to identify him with the Gloucestershire group.
This inimitable character assumes his full proportions in the
Folio, but is fairly developed in the quarto. It has been
well said that he represents the young Gloucestershire of
the day. He may have been endowed by nature with a fair
share of intelligence, but it has all been devoted to the study
of the habits of the lower animals for purposes of sport.
He can detect the presence of bears in Windsor by the
peculiar barking of the town curs. He knows the perform-
ance of every greyhound on Cotswold.

To him Master Page is the master of the celebrated fallow
greyhound, rather than the father of sweet Anne Page. He
had fought with a warrener, and had thus taken the first
degree in that school of fashion, of which the masters have
' full often struck a doe, and borne her cleanly by the
keeper's nose?'1 His serving-man boasts that 'he is as tall
a man of his hands as any is between this and his head.'
He measures the relative proportions of men and things by
the standard of Gloucestershire. He is interested in the
blazonry of arms — very necessary to be understood of gentle-
men, and a part of every manual of etiquette, from the Boke
of St. Allans to the Compleat Gentleman.

Slen. I may quarter, coz.
Shal. You may, by marrying.2

His uncle, though he came to Windsor unattended, is a
person of consequence in his own county, for ' a justice of

1 Tit. Andr. ii. 1. 93. a Merry Wives, i. 1. 24.

ABRAHAM SLENDER 111

the peace sometimes may be beholden to his friend for a
man. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother
be dead : But what though ? yet I live like a poor gentleman
born.'1

But still he can make a hundred and fifty pounds jointure
(no mean sum in those days), and Page chooses him for his
money and position, among the suitors for his daughter's
hand. He is a degree above the burgesses of Windsor, ' O,
I should remember him/ says Mistress Quickly; 'does not
he hold up his head, as it were, and strut in his gait ? '

It was rare humour to exhibit this specimen of young
Gloucestershire in sharp contrast with the civil burgesses of
Windsor, and with the gilded youth of London represented
by Fenton the companion of ' the wild prince and Poins,' of
whom it is said, he c capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth,
he writes verses, he speaks holyday, he smells April and
May.' In this company Slender was accounted a fool.
Awkward in address, unaccustomed to the give and take of
civil society, and not having at hand his Book of Songs and
Sonnets or his Book of Riddles, he was unhappy alike in
earnest and in jest. He makes love to Anne Page by talking
to her of bear-baiting. He offends Master Page by insisting
on the defeat of his dog on Cotsall. Conversationally at his
wits' end, he appeals to his uncle to come to his rescue with
the marvellous family joke of how his father stole two geese
out of a pen.

By the addition of Slender, the group of Gloucestershire
worthies was complete. As types of English country life
they stand unrivalled. It is strangest of Shakespearian
paradoxes that the limner of these portraits never professed
to sketch a contemporary Englishman.

Years passed by. The Merry Wives was re-written, we
know not when ; and in the completed edition the identity
of Robert Shallow was destroyed, we know not why. In
the opening lines of the first scene the old Gloucestershire
Justice tells the audience that he is now a great county
magnate, of the quorum, and no less than custos rotulorum,
and that his name is Lucy, for this is meant by the heraldic

1 Ibid. 281.

112 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

device by which his coat was charged with luces. It was a
pity. Critics have deplored the degradation of Jack Falstaff
into another and a lesser man in obedience to the Queen's
commands, and we may regret the sacrifice of old Eobert
Shallow to the promptings of resentment against some
member of the Lucy family. What the provocation was can
never be known. The least probable of all theories is that
Shallow was identified with Lucy to avenge an old quarrel
about deer-stealing, raked up after twenty years, and when
old Sir Thomas was dead. It is more probable that the
deer-stealing legend had its origin in the first scene of the
re- written Merry Wives, and colour is given to this suppo-
sition by the earliest version of the story, as it appears in
the diary of Mr. Davies. But Falstaff steals Shallow's deer
in the early sketch, before the county dignities and white
luces come on the scene. So far from receiving any con-
firmation from the opening scene of The Merry Wives, the
story is distinctly discredited by the discovery of its prob-
able origin. The tradition, however, should not be wholly
disregarded, for the fact that it was accepted in Stratford
at an early date is evidence that Shakespeare's tastes and
habits made it seem likely to the townsfolk that he might
have got into trouble by loving sport, not wisely, but too
well.

To fit him for his new-born dignities, and probably to
heighten the satire as regards Sir Thomas Lucy, Shallow
undergoes a perceptible change. The old Gloucestershire
justice is fussy, important in his way, and self-complacent ;
but deferential rather than self-asserting. Shallow, the
custos rotulorum, is decidedly pompous. He dwells on his
dignities, and poses as a personage. 'Eobert Shallow,
Esquire, saith he is wronged.' He patronises * honest Master
Page,' on whom he had bestowed a gift of venison, ('you
know, sir, one says honest to one's inferiors,' remarked Fag
to Captain Absolute).

Page. I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for
my venison, Master Shallow.

Shal. Master Page, I am glad to see you : much good do it
your good heart ! I wished your venison better ; it was ill killed.

SHALLOW AND LUCY 113

How doth good Mistress Page 1 — and I love you always with my
heart, la ! with my heart. l

He has a way of summing up a discussion with an ex-
pression of his opinion, as if all further question were idle,
as in the matter of Page's dog: 'Sir, he's a good dog, and
a fair dog: can there be more said? he is good, and fair.'2
This may have been a trick of Sir Thomas's. We have one
composition undoubtedly from his pen, 'set down by him
that best did know what hath been written to be true,
Thomas Lucy' — it is the epitaph on his wife, the Lady
Joyce Lucy, which may be r^ead upon her monument in
Charlecot church. After enumerating her many virtues,
amongst others the negative one that she was 'never con-
victed of any vice or crime,' the knight sums up : ' when all is
spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished
with virtue as not to be bettered and hardly to be equalled
by any.'

" But whatever may have induced Shakespeare to transmute
Shallow into Lucy, we who are not in the quarrel may dis-
port ourselves with the old justice in his Gloucestershire
manor in the hundred of Berkeley. What took Shakespeare
to the abode of the Perkeses and Visors can never be known ;
from which is derived this advantage that it is impossible to
disprove the story told in these pages. A yeoman's guest in
a remote country neighbourhood, he would have many op-
portunities of mixing on familiar terms with the country
esquires, and thus seeing the bottom of Master Shallow and
his fellows. It was the custom of the cultured and civilised
Lucys to sneer at the old-fashioned Shallows, who, for want
of better company, filled their halls with yeoman neighbours.
This we may learn from the following fragment of a dialogue
between Vincent, the country gentleman, and Vallentine, the
courtier, taken from the Oyuile and Vncyuile Life, already
referred to and published in the year 1579.

Vincent. In fowle weather, we send for some honest neighbours,
if happely we bee with our wives alone at home (as seldome we
are), and with them we play at Dice and Gardes, sorting our selues

1 Merry Wives, i. 1. 80. 2 Ibid. 98.

114 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE JUSTICES

accordinge to the number of Players, and their skill, some to Tick-
tacke, some Lurche, gome to Irish game, or Dublets : other sit
close to the Gardes at Post & Paire, at Ruffe, or Colchester
Trumpe, at Mack or Maw : yea, there are some euer so fresh
gamesters, as wil bare you copany at Nouem Quinque, at Faring,
Trey trip, or one & thirty, for I warrant you we haue right good
fellowes in the countrey, sumtimes also (for shift of sports, you
know, is delectable) we fall to slide thrifte, to Penny prick, & in
winter nights we use certaine Christmas games very propper &
of much agilitie. ... Or if we haue cotinually dwelt at home &
bin Justices of Peace, we accopt what grave Judges & gentlemen
we haue scene sit on our Bench, & with what eloquence we haue
(when it was our turne) geuen the charge.

Vallentine. Certainly, Syr, you haue told me of many proper
pleasures, and honest exercises. But with all let me aske you
what Neighboures these companions bee, of whom you have told
me.

Vincent. They are our honest neighbours, Yeomen of the Coun-
trey, and good honest fellowes, dwellers there about : as Grasiers,
Butchers, Farmers, Drovers, Carpenters, Carriers, Taylors, & such-
like men, very honest and good companions.

Vallentine. And so I thinke, but not for you beeing a Gentleman.
For as their resort vnto your house shall give them occasion to
learne some point of ciuility, and curtesie, so your conuersinge with
them will make you taste of their bluntnes and rusticitie, which wil
very euill become a man of your calling.

Vincent. What, would you then haue me Hue alone and solitary ?
That were worse then to be dead.

Master Shallow and this Vincent had much in common.
They were both justices of the peace, who dwelt continually
at home. Vincent, like Shallow, had his views on the subject
of the education of youth. Having sent them 'to the
Universitie where may become so learned as they gaine by
learning their owne living/ he would have them brought up
1 in ye Innes of Court where if they profite, wee suffer them
to proceede ; if not, speedily revoke them from thence, least
they acquaint themselves to much with the licentious cus-
tomes of the Cittie;' reasons which may have induced the
elder Shallow to revoke Master Robert from the company of
the swashbucklers of Clement's Inn, where after fifty-five
years they talked of mad Shallow yet. Shallow, like Vincent,

A VISITOR IN HIS HALL 115

expected his serving-man to discourse of ' sowing or grafting,
ditchinge or hedginge, the dearth or cheapnes of grayne, or
any such matters.' And Shallow, like Vincent, was wont to
bid to Shallow Hall not only the Slenders and Squeles, but
old Double of the next town,1 with the Perkeses, the Visors,
and I make no doubt the Shakespeares and their kindred.

Shakespeare's selection of the rustic Vincents, rather than
the civil Vallentines, for immortalisation in his plays, was no
doubt influenced by the consideration that they lent them-
selves more readily to caricature. It may also be due, in
part, to the fact that their mode of life afforded him better
opportunities of studying their special characteristics. Thus
it came to pass that the silent youth who in Master Shallow's
hall noted ' the semblable coherence of his men's spirits and
his/ could ' see the bottom of Justice Shallow/ and thereby
attained such excellent matter as without the same oppor-
tunities it might have been, even for him, impossible to
devise.

1 Dursley was the ' town ' to dwellers in the neighbourhood of Woncot and
the Hill. In old times, says De Foe, it was 'noted for sharp over- reaching
people, from whence arose a saying of a tricking man, " He is a man of
Dursley,'" a saying equivalent, according to Fuller, to fides Punica. But he
adds, "the inhabitants will endeavour to confute and disprove this Proverb,"
to make it false now, whatsoever it was at the first original thereof ( Worthies
of England 1662. Dursley and its Neighbourhood, by the Rev. John H.
Blunt, 1877). Shakespeare's country justice is Shallow, and his kinsman
Slender. Was it without design that the dweller in the neighbouring town
of Dursley was old Double ?

CHAPTER IX
THE HOLY ALE1

Were I in England now . . . there would this monster make a man ; any
strange beast there makes a man ; when they will not give a doit to relievo a
lame beggar. TJie Tempest.

IT was from no Sabbatarian feeling that Abraham Slender
rested from hunting on the day following the chase of the
Cots wold hart.

It was all very well for parson Savage of Dursley to
denounce the country customs of church-ales, and morris-
dances in the churchyard, with Eobin Hood, Maid Marian,
and such-like abominations. For Master George Savage
was, as all the countryside knew, a puritan. To the Slenders
and Aguecheeks of the day, a puritan was simply the arch-
enemy of human enjoyment. ( 0, if I thought that, I'ld beat
him like a dog!'2 Such would have been Slender's short
method with the puritans, if he had thought of the subject
at all.

As for the Justice, he had (as we all know) a leaning
towards puritanism ; but even he would never have gone so
far as to hold that Sunday was an unfit day for sport. He
would often ride over on Sundays to Dursley, where he was
used to put up his horse with his kinsman, old Silence.
" Master George Savage," he would say, " is a godly and
painful preacher ; moreover, the church is fair and lightsome,
the windows having been glassed with clear white glass, and

1 Nowadays, according to the author of A Cotswold Village, it is beginning
to dawn on the inhabitants of the Cotswolds that they are more or less con-
nected with the great poet of Stratford-on-Avon— a fact which he is good
enough to attribute in great measure to these pages. It is satisfactory that
go high an authority should adopt and quote from a chapter intended to
reproduce in some measure a Cotswold village scene of three hundred years ago.

2 Twelfth N. ii. 3. 153.

116

SHALLOW CHURCH 117

all Popish abominations having been thoroughly removed.
I mind well when Dursley church was whitelimed through-
out. Old Double did it. Aye, that he did, and thoroughly
too. I mind well when he bought twenty-five sacks of lime
of the lime burner of Sudbury.1 Truly your quicklime is a
marvellous great purger of your false doctrine. Whatso-
ever is expended on my own church at Shallow must needs
be laid out of my own charge, and the cost of glassing and
of lime is great, or else you would see no idle images or lying
histories in the windows, or on the walls."

The Perkeses and Bullealfs of the next century made short
work of windows, wall paintings, and images, with but little
thought of the cost of replacing them. The whirligig of
time has brought in his revenges. Their descendants of to-
day have raised quite a large sum, notwithstanding agri-
cultural depression, for the purpose of replacing the stained
glass in accordance with ancient fragments, and of restoring
the wall paintings, traces of which were discovered beneath
the seventeenth-century plaster.

But Master Shallow was not in earnest like these men, or
even as his thirteenth - century ancestor, who built the
church at his proper cost to avoid the consequences in the
next world of having in the present life forcibly deprived
his neighbour of his wife. Little practical result of Master
Savage's teaching was discernible beyond an occasional
pious ejaculation, or doubtful quotation from psalmist or
apostle, and the substitution of the approved 'by cock and
pie/ ' by yea and nay,' for the racier expletives of Clement's
Inn.

As for his tenants at Shallow, Sir Topas and the un-
cleansed church, with ' Pharaoh's soldiers in the reechy
painting,' and ' god Bel's priests ' 2 in its idolatrous windows,
were good enough for them. The advowson, part of the
estates of Shallow, was, of course, turned to as profitable use
as might be. The justice was one of those of whom Burton
writes : 3 ' Patrons they are by right of inheritance, and put
in trust freely to dispose of such livings to the church's
good: but (hard taskmasters they prove) they take away

1 See Note, Shakespeare and Gloucestershire.

2 Much Ado, iii. 3. 142. 3 Anatomy of Melancholy.

118 THE HOLY ALE

their straw and compel them to make their number of
bricks ; commodity is the straw of all their actions ; and him
they present in conclusions, as a man of greatest gifts that
will give most ; no penny, no Paternoster, as the saying is
... a clerk may offer himself, approve his worth, honesty,
religion, zeal, they will commend him for it, but probitas
laudatur et alget. If he be a man of extraordinary parts,
they will flock afar off to hear him. . . . But if some poor
scholar, some parson chaff, will offer himself, some trencher
chaplain that will take it to the halves, thirds, or accept of
what he will give, he is welcome.' On these terms it was
that Sir Topas was made welcome to the advowson of Shallow
— a dull man, learned, however, in the nature of spirits, and
with some skill in the matter of exorcism.

But the justice had no intention of deserting Shallow
church and Sir Topas on the Sunday which followed the
chase of the Cotswold hart. A memorable and significant
event had taken place in the parish, which was to be the
occasion of a function of unusual solemnity.

A few days previously Mistress Slender's brindled cow
had brought into the world a calf, in other respects ordinary
enough, but possessing two heads instead of the customary
allowance of one.

A reader unacquainted with the habits of thought pre-
valent in the Elizabethan age may be pardoned for inquiring
what relation such an event could bear to a religious cele-
bration in the village of Shallow, and his curiosity is so
reasonable that I proceed to gratify it ; the more readily
because the events of the day as detailed by the diarist may
afford some idea of the manner in which a Sunday festival
was held in a Gloucestershire village three hundred years
ago.

Old Mistress Slender was sitting in her parlour, concocting
a cordial mixture for which her family had long been famous,
when Simple rushed in, followed by the entire household and
exclaiming, " For the Lord's sake, mistress, the devil is born to
the brindled cow, and Sir Topas is out hunting with Master
Abraham. I fear we be all undone."

Now, at this very moment, the sound of Master Slender's
horn announced that he and Sir Topas were returning from

A STRANGE PORTENT 119

hunting ; a fact that the excellent lady accounts among the
fortunate circumstances of her life, as often as she recounts
a story which took its place among the family narratives,
second only to the famous tale of how her late lamented
husband stole two geese out of a pen. "For what," she
would say, " might a poor lorn widow do with the devil in
her byre, and she not a papist, and not having so much as
an agnus in the house, which, indeed, the justice calleth
idolatry, and he must needs be right ; but I mind well that
my mother never was without an agnus, though kept under
lock and key, and in those days never a calf had more than
one head. But the saying is you cannot eat your cake and
have your cake, and it may be that the agnus is not worth
the fine, especially with Sir Topas nigh at hand, for all
the county knows that he is mighty powerful with the foul
fiend."

Scarcely had these thoughts passed through the mind of
the worthy lady when Sir Topas and Abraham Slender
entered the parlour.

" For heaven's sake, Sir Topas," exclaimed Mistress Slen-
der, " may mercy preserve us, the foul fiend is in the byre,
and hath been seen of Simple. For the love of heaven cast
him forth, Sir Topas, or we are undone."

A clergyman of the Church of England requested by a
parishioner to cast out a devil would in these days probably
manifest some surprise. Sir Topas showed none. He
accepted the appeal as a call to the discharge of occasional
duty, of a kind rare, perhaps, but quite within the scope of
his clerical office.

Turning to Simple he asked, "How hath the foul fiend
manifested himself ? "

" With two heads, an't please your worship," said Simple,
"and four hoofs, and that smell of brimstone as is not to be
believed."

" This must be looked to forthwith," said Sir Topas, " for
the safety of the family, and for the credit of the parish, in
the which there hath been known no manifestation of the
powers of evil since Nan Kettle was burned for witchcraft.
You, Simple, show me the locus in quo"

" Aye, forsooth, if that be the name o't. But a' be within

120 THE HOLY ALE

the byre. Ib be the door behind the stable, your worship
knows it well. I'll tarry with my mistress to protect her,
an't it please your worship, lest the foul fiend may perchance
assault her when cast out by your worship."

" Follow me, Mistress Slender," said Sir Topas, " and thou,
cowardly hind. 'Be not afraid of the fiends of darkness.
They may not withstand the powers of light."

Opening the door of the outhouse, Sir Topas looked in,
saw the brindled cow quietly standing by her unhappy
offspring, now no more, and thus addressed Mistress Slen-
der:

" Fear not, madam, and thou Peter Simple hide not behind
thy mistress ; this is no manifestation of the powers of evil.
This is a portent of the same order of things as comets,
eclipses, falling stars, or the commoner marvel of the rain-
bow, which obey no natural law but are set forth for the
admonition and guidance of peoples. It may be that this
sign is vouchsafed for the rising and fall of many in this
parish, or even in this county. Let the creature be placed
with all care in the church porch, so that it may be reverently
viewed by all. It is my design to discourse thereon next
Sunday."

The news of the monstrous birth spread far and wide.
Squires and yeomen from neighbouring parishes, burgesses
from Dursley, and even the parson from Berkeley came to
see the marvellous portent.1 Opinions were much divided
as to its significance. The most popular theory connected
its appearance in some way with designs of the papists.
Clement Perkes hoped it boded no ill to the Queen. William
Visor asked what could men expect when commons were en-
closed and rents raised ?

1 The dramatists take many sly hits at the love of the British public for
such spectacles as monsters. ' Were I in England now,' said Trinculo, when
he discovered Caliban lying on the ground, * as once I was, and had but this
fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver : then
would this monster make a man ; any strange beast makes a man' (Temp,
ii. 2. 29). ' I beseech you heartily,' said Ford to the company, 'some of you
go home with me to dinner : besides your cheer, you shall have sport ; I will
show you a monster. . . . All. Have with you to see this monster.' (Merry
Wives, iii. 2. 80.) 'We'll have thee,' says Macduff to Macbeth, as he calls
on him to yield, ' as our rarer monsters are, Painted upon a pole, and under-
writ " Here you may see the tyrant'" (Macbeth, v. 8. 25).

SIR TOPAS DISCOURSES 121

There was, indeed, an opposition party. It was said that
parson Savage of Dursley talked of foolish superstition. But
this was generally attributed to envy on his part, inasmuch
as the marvel had not been vouchsafed to his parish, and the
announcement of his intention to discourse on the subject of
idle beliefs attracted but little attention when it became
known that the portent would be visible for the last time in
the porch of Shallow Church on Sunday.

The quiet little hamlet presented an unusually gay
appearance on this memorable occasion. The village green
was covered with booths. There were attractions of various
kinds. The churchwardens had taken advantage of the
unusual concourse of strangers as the occasion of a church-
ale. Great barrels of ale, the product of malt contributed
by the parishioners according to their several abilities, were
set abroach in the north aisle of the church, and their
contents sold to the public. This was an ordinary way of
providing for church expenses, against which earnest re-
formers inveighed, but as yet in vain so far as Shallow was
concerned.

The church stood conveniently near the village green, and
the brisk trade which was carried on all day was not in-
terrupted by the progress of divine service. Sir Topas's
discourse suffered serious interruption by reason of the
numbers who crowded into the aisles to gaze on the portent,
or to patronise the church-ale. A few from time to time
made their way to the chancel, so as to catch portions of the
discourse, and joined in the hum of approval by which the
regular listeners testified their appreciation of each telling
point. The majority of the congregation stood, a few only
being accommodated with seats. Amongst these were the
justice, Abraham Slender and his mother, William Silence,
with Squire Petre and the lady Katherine, who had ridden
over from Petre Manor for the interesting occasion.

The discourse was indeed worth riding many miles to hear.
The preacher chose as his text the words Being dead, yet
speaketJi. After a learned exordium, in the course of which
he referred to Aristotle de Historid Animalium, lib. vii. cap.
9, he approached the topic of the day. The word ' monster '
he derived ' a monstrando, quia monstranturj as this portent

122 THE HOLY ALE

is now displayed before your eyes. But I would also add ut
monstrent. They are showed that they may show the special
handiwork of Providence, and though peradventure dead, yet
speak.' Why should not this portent be as instructive as the
appearance of a comet? 'Each comet (as experience hath
taught men) is in its kind doctrinal, and blaze th forth
something or other worthy our observation. Nee in vanum
toties arsere cometce : seldom are those super-terrestrial blazes
kindled in vain. Men do commonly count them prcenuncios
belli et calamitatum, forerunners of some imminent calamities.1
Then followed the practical application. At this point,
however, the notes of the diarist become somewhat defective.'
The preacher had asked Quis peccavit ? and was replying
Neque hie neque parentes, when he found the attention of
his audience suddenly distracted. 'Have patience, good
people/ he exclaimed again and again with increasing warmth;
for he was not so meek as that 'most gentle pulpiter' of
whom Kosalind asks ; ' what tedious homily of love have you
wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, "Have
patience, good people " ? ' 2 His efforts were in vain, and the
cause of the disturbance soon became apparent. It was due
to the arrival in the church porch of a pedlar, who proceeded
to advertise his wares at the top of his voice, somewhat as
follows :

Lawn as white as driven snow ;
Cyprus black as e'er was crow ;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses ;
Masks for faces and for noses ;
Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady's chamber ;
Golden quoifs and stomachers,

1 The learning displayed in this discourse raised doubts in my mind as to
whether it was the original composition of Sir Topas, or something in the
nature of a homily, proper to be used on occasions of the kind. The latter
theory is borne out by the fact that the selfsame discourse was delivered at
Plymouth in the year 1635, and printed in a pamplet entitled 'A True arid
Certaine Relation of a Strange-Birth which was borne at Stonehouse in the
Parish of Plimmouth on the 20th of October, 1635, together with the Notes
of a Sermon preached October 23, 1635, in the Church of Plimmouth at the
interring of the sayd Birth.' (Reprinted in Arber's Old Book Collectors'
Miscellany],

2 As You L. iii. 2. 165.

AN UNSEEMLY INTERRUPTION 123

For my lads to give their dears.

Pins and poking sticks of steel,

What maids lack from head to heel :

Come buy of me, come : come buy, come buy ;

Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry :

Come buy.1 Wint. Tale. iv. 4. 220.

The attraction was evidently great, for Sir Topas was
speedily deserted by the female portion of his congregation,
and by not a few of the other sex. He soon brought his
discourse to a somewhat inglorious conclusion, in the presence
of few beyond the 'ring of country gentles' seated in the
chancel.

" Come home with us to dinner, Master Silence," said Petre
to William, as they left the church together; "we will
discourse of Oxford days after the fashion of your father and
Master Shallow, when they touch on Clement's Inn."

"I cannot withstand the temptation of such excellent
discourse," said William Silence, " and with the leave of the
fair lady Katherine, I gladly accept your proffered hospitality."

As they left the church together, they found the pedlar
the centre of an eager crowd, before whom he was displaying
a broadsheet on which was printed a marvellous ballad. This
was a true and certain history of the portent, in doggerel
verse, illustrated with a rude woodcut, and attested by the
hands of Sir Topas and the churchwardens of the parish,
Abraham Slender witnessing it as a marksman. * Why should
I carry lies abroad ? ' said the pedlar, whom we know as
Autolycus.

This was not the only ballad in his wallet, and Petre and
his companion pause to listen for a moment as Simple and
his sweetheart Mopsa, with their friend Dorcas, cheapen his
wares.

Simple. [Clown.] What hast here ? ballads 1
Mop. Pray now, buy some : I love a ballad in print o' life, for
then we are sure they are true.

1 Some such experience, we may be sure, prompted Bishop Griudal's injunc-
tion to the laity at York : 'The churchwardens shall not suffer any pedlar, or
others whatsoever, to set out any wares to sale, either in the porches of churches
or in the churchyard, nor anywhere else on holy days or Sundays while any
part of divine service is in doing or while any sermon is in preaching.'

124 THE HOLY ALE

Fed. [Autolycus,] Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a
usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money bags at a burden,
and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed.

Mop. Is it true, think you ?

Fed. Very true, and but a month old.

Dor. Bless me from marrying a usurer !

Fed. Here's the midwife's name to 't, one Mistress Taleporter,
and five or six honest wives that were present. Why should I
carry lies abroad 1

Mop. Pray you now, buy it.

Sim. Come on, lay it by : and let's first see more ballads ; we'll
buy the other things anon.

Fed. Here's another ballad of a fish that appeared upon the
coast on Wednesday the four-score of April, forty thousand
fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts
of maids : it was thought she was a woman and was turned into a
cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her.
The ballad is very pitiful and as true.

Dor. Is it true, too, think you 1

Fed. Five justices' hands at it, and witnesses more than my
pack will hold.

Sim. Lay it by too : another.

Fed. This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one.

Mop. Let's have some merry ones.

Fed. Why, this is a passing merry one and goes to the tune of
'two maids wooing a man;' there's scarce a maid westward, but
she sings it; 'tis in request I can tell you.1 Wint. Tale, iv. 4. 262.

This is. the self -same roguish pedlar whom we have met in
foreign parts travelling under the name of Autolycus, but
who is in truth when at home in Gloucestershire none other

1 Ballads and broadsides on the popular subject of monsters were numerous
in the days of the diarist. No fewer than ten are included in a collection of
seventy-nine black-letter ballads and broadsides printed between the years
1559 and 1597 (London, J. Lilly, 1870). Autolycua may have had some of
them in his pack, for one is entitled, ' The true discription of this marueilons
straunge Fishe which was taken on Thursday was Sennight the xvi. day of
June this present month in the yeare of our Lord God, MD. Ixix.' Some of
these curious productions were evidently composed with a view to some
religious function like that celebrated in Shallow Church, concluding with
pious doggerel of which the following is a fair specimen :

All ye that dothe beholde and see this monstrous sight so strange,
Let it to you a preachyng be from synfull lyfe to chaunge ;
For in these latter dayes trulye the Lord straunge syghts doth showe,
By tokens in the heauens hye and on the yearth belowe. (Ballad 1564.)

AUTOLYCUS AT HOME 125

than the elder Sly the pedlar of Burton-heath, whose son
Christopher, ' by education a card-maker, by transmutation a
bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker/ was (he
tells us) 'by birth a pedlar.'1

Standing in the church porch, the pedlar is quickly sur-
rounded by an admiring crowd. There are matrons who
listen with sympathetic ears to the gruesome tales told by
his well-authenticated ballads and broadsides ; simple village
maidens gazing with rapture on his glittering gew-gaws ; and
simpler rustic swains ensnared into cheapening his wares.
Well may he exclaim when his day's work is done, and his
trumpery all sold : ' Ha, ha ! what a fool Honesty is ! and
Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman !'2

The crowd make way for the Petres and Silence as they
leave the church and, passing through the churchyard, reach
the village green.

With them let us pause for a moment and note the scene
which presented itself to their eyes. The entire space
between the churchyard and Abraham Slender's house was
studded with booths and alive with preparations for the
merry-making which was to follow the church service of the
morning. Hither had flocked, as vultures to a carcass, the
rogues and vagabonds of the county. In the years which
preceded the establishment of a poor-law England was
flooded with a torrent of vagrancy and pauperism constituting
a real social danger of the age. This feature of rural life
will be found faithfully reflected in the mirror held up to it
by Shakespeare.

These are the 'vagrom men' whom Dogberry bid the
watch to comprehend, and if one would not stand, to ' take
no note of him, but let him go ; and presently call the rest
of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a
knave.'3 They are the 'vagabonds, rascals and runaways
. . . famish'd beggars, weary of their lives/ with whom,
according to Richard, his army had to cope.4

These rogues and vagabonds were of certain recognised
orders, clearly defined as the estates of the realm. The

1 Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. ii. 20. 2 Wild. Tale, iv. 4. 606.

3 Much Ado, ii. 3. 25. 4 Rich. III. v. 3. 316.

126 THE HOLY ALE

Abraham man according to Awdelay1 'is he that walketh
bare armed, and bare legged, and fayneth hym selfe mad, and
caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or such
lyke toy, and nameth himself poore Tom.' And so when
Edgar came on the stage in King Lear ' disguised as a mad-
man,' and naming himself poor Tom, the audience at the
Globe at once recognised a familiar figure.

Edg. Who gives anything to poor Tom 1 whom the foul fiend
hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and
whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire. . . . Bless thy fine wits 1 Tom's
a-cold — 0 do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-
blasting and taking ! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul
fiend vexes. K. Lear^ iii. 4. 51.

Then there was the prygman 2 or prygger ; ' for to
prigge signifieth in their language to steal.'3 'What
manner of fellow was he that robbed you?' asked the
clown of Autolycus who had just picked his pocket.

Aut. A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with troll-my
dames4 . . . having flown over many knavish professions, he
settled only in rogue ; some call him Autolycus.

Clo. Out upon him ! prig for my life, prig ; he haunts wakes,
fairs, and bear-baitings. Wint. Tale, iv. 3. 89.

The pedlars were comparatively respectable, for Harman
says of them that ' they bee not all euill, but of an indif-
ferent behauiour.' In this particular they were not very un-
like to him whom we have just left vending his wares in the
church porch.

Akin to the prigs are the 'dronken tynckers/ of whom
Harman says that they 'be beastly people,' an opinion
shared, I doubt not, by ' Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of
Wincot,' in regard to a certain member of the fraternity of
vagabonds, by birth as well as by profession ; namely,
Christopher Sly, ' by present profession a tinker/ who was on
his own showing 'fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale.'5

1 Fraternitie of Facabondes, 1565.

2 Awdelay. 3 Harman, Caveat for Cursitors, 1567.

4 The ladies with whom these gentry consorted were known as trolls, or
doxies ; * with heigh ! the doxy over the dale,' sings Autolycus.

5 Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. 2. 21.

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS 127

A troublesome knave was he who was known as choplogic.
According to Awdelay the choplogyke is 'he that when
his mayte rebuketh him of hys fault he wyll geue hym XX
wordes for one, els byd the deuils Pater noster in silence.
This proude prating knave wyll maintaine his naugh tines
when he is rebuked for them.' ' How now, how now, chop-
logic ! ' said Capulet to Juliet, when she would maintain her
naughtiness though rebuked by her father ; ' what is this ? '

1 Proud,' and ' I thank you,' and ' I thank you not,'
And yet ' not proud ; ' mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds.

Rom. and Jul. Hi. 5. 150.

Then there is the ruffler, placed by Harman first among
the vagabonds, ' because he is first in degre of this odious
order, and is so called in a Statute made for the punishment
of Vacabonds, in the XXVII yeare of Kyng Henry the eight,
late of most famous memory.' And when Saturninus spoke
reproachful words to Andronicus, he offered him a valiant
son-in-law :

One fit to bandy with thy lawless sons,
To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome.

Tit. Andr. i. 1. 312.

The rogue, properly so called, was a vagabond of low
degree, herding with the beasts of the field, and ' their end
is ey ther hanginge, which they call trininge in their language,
or die miserably of some loathsome disease.' * Mine enemy's
dog,' says Cordelia,

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night

Against my fire ; and wast thou fain, poor father,

To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,

In short and musty straw 1 K. Lear, iv. 7. 36.

It is said by Harrison1 that Henry VIII. 'did hang up
threescore and twelve thousand in his time.' But in spite
of hanging, starvation, misery, and diseases, the country
swarmed with these 'roguing thieves.'2 Their number is
estimated by Harrison as not less than ten thousand ; and

1 Description of England. 2 Pericles, iv. 1. 97.

128 THE HOLY ALE

we may be certain that the rest of the fraternity, with
Autolycus, were always to be found at wakes, fairs, bear-
baitings, and (not least of all) on such occasions as the holy-
ale at Shallow.1

William Silence little thought as he stood with the
Petres on the village green, amused spectators of the humours
of the church-ale, that his fate and that of Anne Squele
trembled in the balance. And yet such was the fact. Master
Shallow was at that moment walking with his sister Mistress
Slender across the green, arranging the preliminaries of the
projected marriage between Abraham Slender and Anne
Squele. He had opened the matter to old Will Squele the
day before at the hunting, and had found as little difficulty
with him as with Master Page of Windsor when he went to
him on a similar errand about a year before. It was the old
story. William Silence was the younger son of a small
country gentleman. He had to make his way in the world
by his wits, not being (as was Hamlet's waterfly Osric)
' spacious in the possession of dirt.' 2 Now the wit of man
is a commodity that cannot be surveyed, walked over, and
appraised by your Squeles and your Shallows, in the same
manner as the soil by which the crust of the earth is now
for the most part covered. No doubt Abraham Slender kept
but three men and a boy ; but this was only until his mother
be dead, and he could make a jointure of one hundred and
fifty pounds a year. The land was there. It could be seen,
and the assurances could be kept under lock and key in a
strong chest. And so Will Squele's choice fell on Abraham
Slender.

As for Anne, she said, with her predecessor in the justice's
favour :

This is my father's choice.
O, what a world of vile ill-favour'd faults
Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year !

Merry Wives, iii. 4. 31.

But let us not despair of William Silence's suit, but rather
let us wish him victory over his 'foolish rival, that her

1 See Note, Rogues and Vagabonds. 2 Hamlet, v. 2. 90.

MASTER SLENDER'S SUIT 129

father likes Only for his possessions are so huge,' 1 and let
us say with mine host of the Garter : ' he will carry't, he will
carry 't ; 'tis in his buttons ; he will carry't.' 2

" William Silence doth affect the wench," said Shallow to
his sister ; " this much I learned from Will Squele, and it
may be that she favoureth his suit. These wenches be but
silly fools. The lad hath a ready wit and a high spirit, and
it may be that these vanities overcloud her vision, so that
she discerneth not the land. It must be remembered, good
sister, that though she be a Shallow, 'tis but on her great-
grandmother's side; thou didst not say yea to Abraham
Slender's father for his wit or his learning, I warrant thee,
good sister."

" I hope I knew my duties better than so to demean my-
self, and yet my goodman had a pleasant and a ready wit.
I've ofttimes heard thee tell the tale of how a' stole "

" Aye, marry, it is a good jest. It is an old jest. It is
both good and old. Can there be more said ? Abraham
Slender shall wed the wench. Eobert Shallow shall not be
withstood in his own county of Gloucester, and by the
younger son of cousin Silence, save the mark ! It was not
so in Windsor. A justice of the peace should not essay to
command a wife but in his own county. Master Squele and
Cousin Silence will have a care that I am answered in this
matter. As for William Silence, I fear that much learning
hath undone him."

" The which can never be laid to the charge of my son,
brother Eobert. When a' doth speak, a's an absolute Shallow,
though I say it that should not glory in my infirmities. But
in feature a' somewhat favoureth his father, which is indeed
as it should be, for what's bred in the bone will come out in
the face."

" Well, well," said the justice, "he's well enough. I have
broken the matter to Master Will Squele. He will give his
daughter three hundred pounds. Abraham can make her a
jointure of one hundred and fifty. The man of law is draw-
ing the specialties, and Sir Hugh Evans will marry them
when it shall please me to fix the day."

1 Two Gent. ii. 4. 174. 2 Merry Wives, iii. 2. 70.

K

130 THE HOLY ALE

"And hast opened the matter to my son Abraham ?"

" Aye, marry," said the justice, " and he hath dealt with
it in a becoming fashion. He said he would marry her upon
any reasonable demands. He would do a greater thing than
that, upon my request, in any reason. A' meant well, ay,
that a' did. Ay, I think my cousin meant well."

Thus disposing of the fate of William Silence and Anne
Squele, Master Kobert Shallow and his sister arrived at the
home of the latter. All that remains of the old dwelling of
the Slenders, long since converted into a farmhouse, may be
seen standing at the further end of the village green from
the ancient church. The passing stranger pauses to admire
the fine old Tudor archway, now built up into the farmyard
wall, through which Shallow and his sister entered the
courtyard where the Petres and William Silence were mount-
ing their horses to ride across the wold to dinner at Petre
Manor.

Taking leave courteously of old Mistress Slender and of
the justice, and bestowing a groat on Peter Simple who held
his horse's head, Petre mustered his small party for their
homeward ride. Following a track defined by ruts of pass-
ing wagons, which would not now be dignified by the name
of a road, the riders arrived at the pale enclosing the park
in which Petre had expected to meet ' these rascal knaves '
his serving-men, when he brought home his bride to his old-
fashioned manor-house among the Cotswold Hills.

There were strange doings then in Petre Manor, and the
tale lost nothing by telling in the taverns and alehouses of
Gloucestershire. Clement Perkes, we may be sure, had told
the story to his Stratford visitor over their ale. But
William Silence was a late arrival from London, and had
not time to pick up the gossip of the neighbourhood. His
head just now was full of other matters, and his only infor-
mation on the subject was that conveyed to him by his
senses ; — that his old Oxford friend had wedded a lady of
spirit and beauty, who made him to all appearance a most
loving and charming wife.

The place wore a neglected and deserted air, as of one
whose master cared more for wandering abroad than for
looking after domestic matters at home. Crossing the half-

PETRE MANOR 131

choked and neglected moat, Silence and his friends dis-
mounted in a grass-grown courtyard, surrounded by the
ancient and mouldering manor-house, half stonework, half
timber, which had sheltered many generations of Petres.
There had been indeed some improvement in the condition
of the serving-men who rushed out to meet their master,
since it was said of them :

Nathaniel's coat, sir, was not fully made,

And Gabriel's pumps were all unpink'd i' the heel •

There was no link to colour Peter's hat,

And Walter's dagger was not come from sheathing :

There were none fine but Adam, Ealph, and Gregory :

The rest were ragged, old, and beggarly ;

Yet, as they are, here are they come to meet you.

Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 135.

For the orders of old Groorne (he was as much Grumio, as
Petre was Petruchio) had in some sort been attended to.
' Let their heads be sleekly combed, their blue coats brushed
and their garters of an indifferent knit: let them curtsy
with their left legs and not presume to touch a hair of my
master's horse-tail till they kiss their hands.'1

As William Silence looked round the courtyard his atten-
tion was diverted from the mouldering house and ancient
retainers by the cordial and unmistakable welcome accorded
to its master by another class of occupants. In one corner
a badger peered cautiously from a butt or barrel which, lying
on the ground, served it as an earth. In another, a fine old
dog-fox of the greyhound kind rattled the chain by which
he was fastened, to attract the attention of his master; a
handsome but a treacherous pet. The tale of his misdeeds
in after life suggested a simile :

For treason is but trusted like the fox,

Who ne'er so tame, so cherish'd and lock'd up,

Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.

1 Hen. IV. v. 2. 9.

Along one side of the courtyard ran a long low shed in
which were hawks of every kind, from the proud falcon to

1 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 93.

132 THE HOLY ALE

the humble eyess-musket. They recognised the presence of
their master after the fashion of the * royal bird ' of Jupiter,
the ' holy eagle,' who ' prunes 1 the immortal wing and cloys
his beak, As when his god is pleased.5 2

A raven of glossiest plumage hopped eagerly across the
pavement, and, eyeing Silence with curious glance, greeted
Master Petre by directing against his jack-boots vigorous
but ineffective charges of his long and sharp beak. When
the door of the hall was opened by Curtis, a chorus of sporting
dogs headed by Troilus the spaniel greeted their master,
while ' the little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart/ 3
barked joyously around their mistress.

" I perceive, Master Petre," said Silence, " that you have
not lost your love for the brute creation, which gave you as
your companion at Oxford yonder brock that is now daring
the assaults of the dog so that he may welcome your
approach."

" These," said Petre, " are friendships which I have laid in
store against evil days. If it should be my lot to fall out
with fortune, I would have around me some eyes besides
thine, my bonnie Kate, into which I may look without read-
ing therein the story of my decline.4 But come, Master

1 To * prune ' ia a technical term in falconry, ' one of the kyndeli termis
that belong to hawkis,' according to the BoTce of St. Albans. When a hawk
prunes, or picks her feathers, ' she is lyking and lusty, and whanne she hathe
doone she will rowse hire myghtyly.' ' 'Cloys is doubtless a misprint for
cleys, that is, claws. Those who have kept hawks must often have observed
the habit which they have of raising one foot, and whetting the beak against
it. This is the action to which Shakespeare refers ' (Harting, Ornithology of
Shakespeare).

2 Cymb. v. 4. 118. 3 K. Lear, iii. 6. 65.

4 Homer, like Shakespeare, has many bad words and few good to throw at
a dog, but he recognises him as the companion of man. And both he and
Shakespeare bear testimony to his fidelity, and unchanging love of his
master. Sir Henry Holland (Recollections of Past Life) relates that Lord
Nugent (whom he calls the greatest Shakespearian scholar of his day) bet
him a guinea that no passage could be found in Shakespeare commending
directly or indirectly the moral qualities of the dog. Sir Henry paid, after a
year's careful search — this was before the days of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, Dr.
Schmidt, or the monumental Lexicon, which Shakespearian students owe to the
industry of Mr. Bartlett. It was money paid under a mistake of fact, for
Timon, turned misanthrope, thus contrasted the faithfulness of the dog with
the faithlessness of mankind :

Tim. Who, without those means thou talkest of, didst thou ever know
beloved ?

A CONSTANT FRIEND 133

Silence, I hope Sir Topas and the ride have bestowed on you
as good an appetite as they have on me."

As William Silence sat down with his host to the plain
but substantial dinner set forth in the long dark oaken hall,
he observed that foreign travel and experience had wrought
but little change in the Petre whom he knew so well at
Oxford. While he recalled his ' odd humours ' which had
prompted him ofttimes to go but 'mean apparelled/ and
sometimes led him into more serious adventures, he reflected
on the substratum of good sense, pluck, and mother-wit
which always stood him in stead. And after the lady
Katherine had withdrawn, when his heart was warmed by
Petre's generous wine he determined to act on an impulse
which had been gradually gaining strength during the day,
and, opening to his friend the state of affairs between him and
Anne Squele, he resolved to appeal to him for advice and
assistance. Although he had not the knowledge which we
possess of Petre's matrimonial views, and experiences, he
knew enough of his character to divine that his advice would
not be hampered by the local prejudices and conventional
views which William Silence had never regarded with
respect, and towards which he now found himself in an
attitude of hopeless antagonism.

Petre listened to his friend's story with evident interest.
When Silence had concluded, he thought for a moment.
Then, rising from his seat, and striking the table so violently

Apem. Myself.

Tim. I understand thee ; thou hadst some means to keep a dog.

Tim. of Athens, iv. 3. 314.

The useful qualities of the dog are fully recognised, ' every one According to
the gift which bounteous nature Hath in him closed' (Macbeth, iii. 1. 97),
and especially the qualities which arc valuable in the running hound. But
the horse, not the dog, was the chosen friend and companion of Shakespeare.
Scott, on the other hand, loved the dog as a friend, but traduced him as a
hound hunting by scent. Scott, as we know from his early letters, had been
an enthusiastic courser. But he did not possess Shakespeare's knowledge of
running hounds and of their methods of pursuit when they can no
longer hunt by sight but are driven to their noses. Had it been otherwise
he could not have described the hounds with which Fitz-James hunted the
stag (bloodhounds of black St. Hubert's breed) as baffled and unable to
account for their stag, simply because he dashed down a darksome glen and
was lost to hound and hunter's ken, in a sinking condition, when (as we have
seen) scent becomes more and more burning. The word ' ken ' tells its own
tale. The bloodhounds were then coursing the deer.

134 THE HOLY ALE

that the parrot dropped from his perch in fright, he said :
" If I mistake not, I can help you in this matter with some-
what better than good advice. I have of late received letters
from my kinsman, Sir John Perrot, now Lord Deputy of
Ireland, in which he bids me tell him if I know of any
young gentleman of parts, who is willing to adventure for
that country — but stay, I will fetch the letter itself."

Opening a worm-eaten cabinet of the blackest oak, Petre
pulled out a miscellaneous assortment of articles — jesses for
hawks; couples, leashes, capes, collars and trashes for
hounds ; with tavern bills, and other such-like unconsidered
trifles.

"As you know of old, Master Silence, my coffers are not
of the well-ordered sort, but all will come right at last — nay,
here is the letter; my kinsman writes: 'And now of the
happy and blessed turn the Queen's affaires have taken in
this Ilande. The Irishrie, being by continual warres so
wasted that scarce anie of them — 'nay, this concerns the
wars, but you are a man of peace ; stay, here it is :

Moreover, the lande of this islande is for the most part held by no
tenure of lawful origin, but by a certain lewde custom to which the
barbarous inhabitants give the name of Tanistry, wherein is much
that is contrary to the lawes both of God and man, and to the
nature and eternall fitness of things in regard to the tenure of
lande. And I am informed by those of my council who are
skilled in such matters that the rightful title of the Queen Her
most excellent Majestic to good store of the lande of this islande
might be peaceably established by the labours of cunninge and
paynful lawyers, whereby it might be purged of the unlawful
usages & salvage customs by the which it is now overlayd and de-
filed, to the dishonour of God, and the great losse of the Queen
Her Majesty. "Wherefore if you can send unto me any younge
man of gentyl birth and good repute, learned in the lawe & with
special skille in the matter of tenures, escheats, and forfeiture, I
will ensure him profitable employment herein, and such a degree
of favour and countenance as may gain for him faire recompense
in this worlde, as well as the assurance of partaking in such good
workes as may tend to his eternall welfare.

" Now, Master Silence, what say you to the prospect thus
held out to you?"

PLOT AND COUNTER-PLOT 135

" I like it well, Master Petre, and I heartily thank you.
What especially moves me is the hope thereby held out to
me of being forthwith enabled to maintain a wife. For
being but of late admitted to the degree of an utter
barrister "

" I take you," said Petre, " you have learned already to set
more store on the bird in the hand than on two in the bush.
But come, let us join the lady Katherine in her bower. If I
mistake not she will further your suit, and if I help you to a
living, why, she may help you to a wife."

When the matter was opened to Katherine, she entered
into the project with all the energy of her nature. The
plan of campaign was soon arranged. It was, as might
have been expected from its authors, short, sharp, and
decisive. There were to be no tedious long-drawn wooings,
no parleyings with old Will Squele, no negotiations with
Master Shallow. William Silence was to ask Anne, fair
and straight, to marry him forthwith and go with him to
Ireland, to seek their fortune under the patronage of the
Lord Deputy, bespoken on their behalf by Master Petre.

The sports which had been arranged for the following
days lent themselves readily to the development of the plan.

On Monday, Petre flew his hawks on Cotswold, and Will
Squele with his daughter Anne were to be of the company,
and on the following day all had been bidden to hunt the
deer with greyhound and cross-bow in the justice's park,
This hunt had been in fact designed by the justice so that
Abraham Slender might have an opportunity of advancing
his suit to Anne Squele in the seclusion of the stand or
ambush from which they would shoot the driven deer. This
much was shrewdly suspected by Silence, and he imparted
his suspicions to his friend.

" 'Twere rare sport," said Petre, " to upset their schemes.
You know the old saw, ' there's no such sport as sport by
sport o'erthrown.' l Can you prevail with John Hunt that
he may put Mistress Anne in some sequestered stand of
which Abraham Slender wots not, and so carry it off with
the justice that it may be believed that he did it in error ? "

1 Love's L. L. v. 2. 153.

136 THE HOLY ALE

" I know not whether I may prevail with John Hunt,"
said Silence, " but I know of somewhat that will."

" Then," said Petre, " put money in thy purse, use it and
spare not. It may be that in lieu of a buck you slay a hart.
And now, my Kate, let's to the court and view the hawks.
Here, take thy hood like a noble falcon as thou art. None
but an eyess may weather unhooded. Come, let's to the
hawks. They are of the best, though I say it that should
not."

CHAPTER X

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

I know her spirits are as coy and wild

As haggards of the rock. Much Ado about Nothing.

MASTER PETRE'S hawks were, in truth, worthy of his com-
mendation, and since our diarist has thought it worth while
to bestow upon them a large share of his tediousness, we
of the nineteenth century who cannot hope to see them in
the flesh may find a few minutes spent in his company
to be not altogether wasted, if we are enabled thereby to
realise in some degree the favourite sport of our ancestors
and to apprehend allusions which might otherwise have
escaped us.

When Silence had passed with his host from the hall
into the courtyard they found there an arrival. This was
a young man mounted on a stout Galloway nag and bearing
with him a newly taken and untrained hawk. Petre
immediately recognised the stranger who had accompanied
Clement Perkes to yesterday's assembly, by whose gentle
bearing and superiority to his surroundings Petre had
been more strongly impressed than were the untravelled
and unsophisticated natives of Gloucestershire. His errand
was soon explained. Clement Perkes had captured a fine
young hawk, and he begged Master Petre to accept it at his
hands. It would seem that the worthy yeoman conceived
himself to be under some obligation to his powerful neigh-
bour. It may be that Petre in his blunt honest way had
counteracted the influence bespoken by Davy on behalf of
that arrant knave, William Visor of Woncot. This, how-
ever, is mere conjecture. The diary contains no notice of
the suit of Visor against Perkes. I wish it were otherwise.

137

138 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

A day would have been well spent at quarter sessions in
hearing Justice Shallow give the charge,1 and in enjoying
the humours of constables and third-boroughs, as the head-
boroughs were commonly called, — ' third, or fourth, or fifth
borough'2 as Christopher Sly has it — Dogberry, Verges,
Elbow, or Dull; all would have afforded matter for the
diarist's pen. But we must take things as we find them.
I only know that Petre graciously accepted Clement Perkes's
gift, and courteously invited the stranger, when he had
committed the hawk to the falconer's care, to accompany
the party on their visit to the hawks.

To such chance encounters the world owes more than
it suspects.

The afternoon was fine, and the hawks had been taken
from the hawk-house or mews where they were confined
at night and during the moulting season.3 They stood
{ weathering ' in the open courtyard, attached by long
leathern leashes to upright cylindrical pieces of wood,
known as blocks. Around the legs of each bird there
constantly remained fastened 'jesses';4 narrow strips of
soft leather, with small flat silver rings called 'varvels,'
through which passed the leash or line by which the hawk
was held in hand by the falconer in the field or attached to
perch or block.

There stood 'old Joan,' her master's delight and pride.
She was a true falcon, a female of the species properly
called 'peregrine,'6 but sometimes, by way of special honour,

1 'Common forms' of charges to be delivered at quarter sessions, very
useful to justices lacking in knowledge or invention, are given in Lambarde's
JEirenarcha, a Treatise on the Office of Justices of Peace, already referred to,
and published in 1581. Dogberry's charge to the watch was a reminiscence
of what he had heard with admiration from the lips of the justices at
quarter sessions. .

2 Tarn, of Shrew, Ind. i. 13.

3 Hence the expression 'mew up' or 'mew' in the sense of 'confine.' Tarn,
of Shrew, i. 1. 87. 188; K. John, iv. 2. 57 ; Mids. N. Dr. i. 1. 71 ; Rich. III.
i. 1. 38. 132 ; Ibid. 3. 139 ; Mom. and Jul. iii. 4. 11.

4 Othello, iii. 3. 261.

5 The ' peregrine ' falcons, though of an indigenous species, were mostly
imported from abroad. Great numbers were taken at Valkenswaard in
Holland, during the annual migration of birds. A description of the mode
of capture will be found in Mr. Harting's Essays on Sport and Natural
History. An account of a year's capture is given in The Field of December

THE HAWKS ARE VISITED 139

' gentle ' ; a noble bird, with full dark eye, hooked and azure
beak, the rich brown of her plumage on back and head
contrasting with the sober colours of the plain but useful
goshawk standing by her side.

1 The female of all byrdes of praye and ravyne ia ever
more huge than the male, more ventrous, hardie, and
watchful/ and the female peregrine has given her name to
the gentle art of falconry, 'because,' says Turbervile, 'the
falcon doth pass all other hawkes in boldness and curtesie,
and is most familiar to man of all other byrdes of praye.'

But those who, like Shakespeare, were careful to use
terms of art aright, distinguished the 'falconer,' who pur-
sued his quarry with the long-winged hawk or falcon, from
the ' astringer.' The latter was so called from the goshawk
or estridge (Fr. austour or autour ; Lat. astur), the repre-
sentative of the race of short-winged hawks.1

For you must know that every hawk is not a falcon,
although every falcon is included under the generic term of
hawk. Amidst all the confused nomenclature of the older
books on falconry, the distinction between the long-winged
falcon and the short-winged hawk is never lost sight of.
The 'falcon, towering in her pride of place,'2 is a different
creature from Master Ford's ' fine hawk for the bush,'3 with
which he invited his friends to go a-birding after breakfast.
The reader will be in no danger of confounding these differ-
ent species after he has witnessed their performances in
the company of the diarist and his friends. In the mean-
time, suffice it to say that the long-winged hawks — such as
the gerfalcon, peregrine falcon, merlin, and hobby — differ
not only in structure of wing and beak, but in their mode of

12, 1896, from which it appears that the haggard falcon still deserves the
character given her by the old writers. One of the hawks taken was a fine
haggard falcon, described as having become very tame and gentle, notAvith-
stauding her recent capture.

1 Bert, in his Treatise of Hawks and Hawking (1619), gives directions
1 worthy to be had in good estimation both of the falconer and austringer,'
but specially addressed to the latter ; and the Perfect booke, of keeping
sparkawkes and goshawkes (first printed by Mr. Harting from a MS. of about
the year 1575) is intended to correct errors of ' unskilful ostringers.' ' They
be called ostringers which are the keepers of Goshawkes or Tercelles'
(Gentleman's Academie).

2 Macbeth, ii. 4. 12. » Merry Wives, iii. 3. 247.

140 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

flying and seizing their quarry, from the short-winged kinds,
of which the goshawk and sparrow-hawk alone were used in
falconry.

The former are the true falcons, ' fine-tempered, generous
birds, whose home is in the open country, and whose
dashing style of flight is only adapted to wild plains and
hills.'1 They are hawks of the tower and of the lure,
towering aloft in their pride of place, thence descending on
their prey with a downward stoop or swoop, and finally
coming to the lure.

The short-winged goshawk and sparrow-hawk, on the
other hand, are the true ' hawks/ as distinguished from
the nobler race of ' falcons.' They are birds of the fist,
flying after their prey from their master's hand and return-
ing to it when the flight is over ; using it, in fact, in lieu of
the bush whence in a state of nature they pursue bird or
rabbit. They are 'shifty, lurching fliers, deadly enough in
their own country, which is the close woodland, through
which they can thread their way like a woodcock or owl,
and that with extreme rapidity for a short distance.'1

And so we can understand how the art of an astringer
differed from that of a falconer as widely as the hunting of
a pack of beagles from that of foxhounds. Each had its
own professors and treatises, and the stage direction in AWs
Well that Ends Well,2 ' enter a gentle astringer,' would not
have puzzled an Elizabethan sportsman as it has perplexed
learned editors, who now for the most part omit this term
of art, thereby missing a distinct and characteristic point.

It was the fashion of our ancestors to sneer at the French
as falconers. They did not regard the rigour of the game,
but condescended to any quarry that came in their way ; as
their descendants are accused by British sportsmen of in-
cluding in their garnebags the blackbird and the lark. 'We'll
e'en to it like French falconers,' said Hamlet, 'fly at any
thing we see/3 But of their skill in the art of an astringer
there was no doubt. When Turbervile comes to treat of
the short-winged hawks he puts the opinion of his French
masters in the forefront. He writes ' of the goshawke, after

1 Falconry, Badminton Library. 2 All's Well, v. 1. 7.

3 Hamlet, ii. 2. 450.

THE FALCON AND THE HAWK 141

the opinion of Willian Tardiff, a Frenchman/ and 'of the
sparowhawke out of the French authors,' both being in-
cluded in the 'genrall division of goshawkes, whom the
Frenchmen call autour.' There 'was thus a special fitness
in attaching to the Court of France a gentle astringer,1 and
there may have been good grounds for Helena's confidence in
the power of the king's astringer whom she remembered
to have seen in the Court.

This man may help me to his majesty's ear,

If he would spend his power. All's Well, v. 1. 7.

But let us return to old Joan, before whose block we left
the company assembled.

" I perceive," said Silence, " that your favourite falcon is
hooded when she weathers, from which I conclude you hold
with Master Turbervile that pains are but lost with an eyess,
and that you rather labour to man and reclaim the wild
haggard of the rock."

"Aye, my Kate," said Petre, "hath he not well said?

1 The short-winged hawk, especially the goshawk, appears to have been
from an early period held in high estimation by the French. For Cavendish
in his Life of Wolsey (1557) describes a visit to the house of a great French
noble, in the hall of which was a hawk's perch whereon stood three or four
fair goshawks. In England the place of honour would certainly have been
occupied by peregrine falcon or tercel -gen tie. According to the Boke of St.
Albans, the peregrine was the hawk of an earl, the goshawk of a yeoman. We
learn from Mr. Harting's Bibliotheca Accipitraria that French falconers to
this day apply the term fauconnerie to flights with long-winged hawks only,
giving to flights with the short-winged kinds the ' expressive and very con-
venient term autourserie,' and that two treatises on Autourserie were
published in Paris so lately as 1887. For 'a gentle astriuger' Stevens
conjectured ' a little stranger,' but subsequently discovered his error, which,
he says, ' should teach diffidence to those who conceive the words which
they do not understand to be corruptions ; ' a lesson, alas, easily forgotten.
Mr. Grant White, retaining the words of the Folio, and quoting from the
Boke of St. Albans, 'they ben called Ostrigeres that keep goshawkes or
tercels,' adds, ' the tercel was the aristocrat among hawks ; Juliet calls
Romeo " tercel-gentle." ' Mr. Hunter (Illustrations of Shakespeare), rightly
conceiving that 'a word or two more than commentators have given us
is necessary for the just apprehension of the kind of person intended,'
supplies the want by pointing out that the astringer in question had the care
of 'a species of hawk called gentles.' It is a pity to spoil so excellent
a point, but an astringer had no more to do with a tercel-gentle than a
M.F.H. with beagles. The tercel-gentle was the male of the peregrine ; the
tercel of the goshawk. The word 'gentle' indicates that this particular
astringer was, as we should expect from his associates, a gentleman.

142 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

He knoweth thee for a haggard by thy hood. Nay, frown
not, Kate, for what falconer would choose an eyess if he had
skill to man a haggard ? "

These words, I confess, as I read them in the diary,
although they awakened some slumbering recollections, con-
veyed no very clear idea to my mind, and as the reader may
be in the same mental condition, I willingly impart to him
the knowledge which enabled me to understand allusions,
the point of which would otherwise have been lost.

You may train your falcon in either of two ways. You
may take from the eyrie the nestling or eyess (Fr. niais),
rearing and making it to }rour use from its earliest days.
Or you may capture a full-grown wild hawk, after she has
been taught to fare for herself by the sternest of taskmasters
for man or bird, — hunger :

Quis expedivit psittaco suum
Picasque docuit verba nostra conari
Magister artis ingenique largitor
Venter.

The lessons learned in this school will not be forgotten,
and the wild hawk or haggard, reclaimed and manned, has
learned somewhat to which the eyess can never attain.
'Eyasses,' says Master Turbervile, 'are tedious, and do use
to cry very much in their feedings, they are troublesome
and paynfull to be entered.' To the experienced falconer
they seemed as useful and promising as a company of chil-
dren in the eyes of an astute stage manager. 'An aery of
children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question,
and are most tyrannically clapped for't,1 may be the fashion
of the hour and berattle the common stages, but they afford
scant hope of mature excellence. ' He that meddleth with
an eyess,' says Master Bert, ' will spend his time to no
purpose, except a long expectation of good will give him
satisfaction.'

And so, if you would have a hawk at once high-spirited,
loving and tractable, you must man and train a haggard ;
that is to say, a wild hawk which has lived and fared
at liberty until she has moulted for the first time and has

1 Hamlet, ii. 2. 354.

THE HAGGARD 143

assumed her adult plumage. On this point all the masters
of falconry are of one mind. ' She has been forced often to
praye for herself,' says Turbervile, and so her flight and
stooping are more deadly, for in her old life, if she missed
her bird, she had to go supperless to bed.

But though the wild falcon makes the best hawk when
manned and trained, the haggard unreclaimed is the type of
worthlessness and inconstancy.

If I do prove her haggard,

Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
lid whistle her off and let her down the wind,
To prey at fortune. Othello, iii. 3. 260.

The haggard falcon that has never learned constancy to
her legitimate pursuit will ' check/ or change the quarry at
which she is flown for any magpie or crow that fortune may
throw in her way. 'The peregrine seems often to strike
down birds for his amusement/ says Mr. St. John, writing
of the male haggard ; ' I have seen one knock down and
kill two rooks who were unlucky enough to cross his flight
without taking the trouble to look at them after they fell.'1
Inconstant and profitless ever, the untrained haggard is like
the random jester. Clever he may be : for

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.2 This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man's art.

Twelfth N. iii. 1. 68.

And many a man has built on no more solid foundation a
reputation for wisdom, which a lifetime of fruitless flights
has failed to destroy.

It is no easy task to reclaim the 'proud disdainful
haggard.'3 ' She hath lived long at liberty/ says Bert,
' having many things at her command, and she is therefore
the harder to be brought to subjection and obedience.'

1 Wild Sports of the Highlands.

2 See note, The Language of Falconry.

3 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 2. 39.

144 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

You cannot begin with kindness. The wild hawk must be
half starved and watched all night so as to tire her out, and
tame her by hunger and sleeplessness.1 * You must be
watched ere you be made tame, must you ? ' said Pandarus
to Cressida.2 'My lord shall never rest/ Desdemona pro-
mised :

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. Othello, in. 3. 22.

When discipline has done its work, then, but not till
then, * there cannot be too much familiarity between the
man and hawk.' Then may her wild heart be tamed to
regard her keeper's hand with loving apprehension. 'My
inducements to carry her thus in the evening and night
would make her love me as her perch, and by taking her up
so early in the morning I would persuade her that there had
beene her pearch all night.' What Bert teaches in prose
Beatrice has said in poetry. Hero had said of her :

I know her spirits are as coy and wild

As haggards of the rock. Much Ado, iii. 1. 35.

Hear her profession when manned and reclaimed :

Contempt, farewell ! and maiden pride, adieu !

No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee,

Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.

Ibid. 109.

All the masters of falconry, ancient and modern, would
bid Benedick be of good cheer. Mark their testimony ;
' onely I say and so conclude/ says Bert, ' that your haggard
is very loving and kinde to her keeper, after he hath
brought her by his sweet and kind familiarity to understand
him.' ' Moreover/ says Mr. Lascelles, ' though we cannot

1 It may be that Master Page spoke the language of falconry when he said
to Falstaff, tamed and subdued, ' Nay, do not fly ; I think we have watch 'd
you now.' (Merry Wives, v. 5. 107.) Adonis is compared to 'a wild bird,
being tamed by too much handling ' ( Ven. and Ad, 560).

2 TroiL and Ores. iii. 2. 45.

THE HAWK WATCHED TAME 145

definitely account for this, the temper of the wild-caught
hawk is, as a rule, far gentler and more amiable when once
she is tamed than is that of a hawk taken from the nest.'1
To the same effect says Master Symon Latham : * but
leaving to speak any more of these kinde of scratching
hawkes that I did never love should come too neere my
fingers [eyesses], and to returne unto the curteous and faire
conditioned haggard falcon, whose gallant disposition I
know not how to extoll or praise so sufficiently as she
deserves.' 2

But there will ever remain somewhat of the wild bird
about your reclaimed haggard, noble and loving though she
be, and I am certain that neither Benedick nor our friend
whom they call Petruchio would have it otherwise. And so
she must be hooded when she comes abroad on the fist or on
the block, else she would bate (Fr. se battre) and flutter, with
an eagerness to which the placid eyess is a stranger. The
eyess may be set abroad to weather unhooded at any time of
day, but a haggard should always be hooded, to prevent her
from ' bating ' and continually striving to be gone, whereby
her training would be greatly hindered. ' Come, civil night/
says Juliet, ' Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my
cheeks,'3 thus combining pun and poetry after a fashion
possible only to Shakespeare, who, indeed, at times gives us
pun without poetry, when visited by recollections of horse,
hound, or hawk. The Constable of France, when he would
belittle the Dauphin's valour, called it a hidden virtue, never
seen by any but his lackey ; ' 'tis a hooded valour, and
when it appears it will bate ' (abate).4

And this was what Master Petre meant when he would
say that William Silence knew the lady Katherine for a
haggard by her hood.

"Come, keep on thy hood, my lady Kate," said Petre,
laughing ; " be the haggard never so reclaimed, she must
needs wear her hood when she weathers, else she will bate.
Or if thou bate not weathering hoodless, thou wilt take a
rheum, and fare worse. Nay, I did but praise thee, sweet

1 Falconry, Badminton Series.

2 Symon Latham, The Faulcon's Lure and Cure., 1615.

3 Rom. and Jul. iii. 2. 10. 4 Hen. V. iii. 7. 121.

146 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

Kate, when I called thee a haggard. God forbid that I
should have wedded an eyess. In regard to all manner of
creatures," he continued, " I have ever observed that they
which be wildest of nature are often the easiest tamed, and
when tamed, are the most loving. What can be wilder than
the raven or the haggard of the rock ? Think you that a
barn-door fowl with all her seeming gentleness would ever
be so loving to mankind as these creatures of the wild ? My
parrot loves me better than his daily food, for he is ever
ready to forsake it if I but offer to stroke his head. And
yet the sailor from whom I had him told me that there is no
bird more wild when he liveth at liberty. The wild goose
is of all wild-fowl the most fearful, and shunneth most the
abode of man, and yet I have myself taken one when yet
young and kept him pinioned with his sober kith and kin,
marvelling much how familiar he would be with man, and
how he would follow and come at my call, while his sleek,
home-bred fellows heeded me not. I have read that the
Numidian lion can requite a kindness and be loving to man,
if only you approach him not at feeding time. I have
heard moreover that the Arab steeds of late brought into
this land, although children of the desert, are more faithful
and loving to their masters than the gentler-seeming grey
mare of Flanders. If you seek to have, with obedience,
love and not liking only, take a wild thing and tame it."

" Then," said Silence, " he did not amiss who took a shrew
to wife, to tame her. You know the merry-conceited jest
of The Shrewd Wife lapped in Morel's Skin ? "1

"He might do worse than tame a shrew," said Petre,
" but if he would reclaim a haggard, let him be assured that
she came forth out of the eyrie of a peregrine, and let him
'avoid a puttock.'"2

" I fear that your good man preaches as he did not
practise," said Silence to the lady Katherine politely.

"Be not too assured of that, Master Silence," said the
lady, smiling ; " 'tis a good falconer can tell an eyess from
a haggard when he sees her manned and hooded on her
master's fist."

1 Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society, 1853. a Cymb. i.l. 140.

HOW TO MAN THE HAGGARD 147

"An' your ladyship were a falcon," pursued Silence, led
by ignorance and desire to please into dangerous ground, " I
must needs confess that you was sometime a haggard, since
it were but scant courtesy to call you an eyess. But
being so fair and gentle a lady, I may not believe that
you needed ever to be reclaimed from ill conditions, even
though it were by so skilled and painful a falconer as
Master Petre."

It was not until some time afterwards that Silence
understood the significance of the shout of laughter with
which this carefully prepared speech of his was received by
Petre ; laughter in which the lady Katherine, although at
first she seemed disposed to bite her lip and frown, heartily
joined.

" 'Tis an excellent -conceited jest, i' faith it is," said
Petre, "to tame a shrew as you would man a haggard, by the
book of sports. Come Kate, sit down on this bench, and do
you hearken, my masters. I will make known unto you the
first heir of my invention — perchance indeed it may be the
last — and you may name it The Taming of the Shrew, or
The Manning of the Haggard, as you please. It may serve
your turn, Master Silence, sooner than you wot of, as it hath
served mine."

So saying, Petre drew from his pocket a bundle of manu-
script notes. These were written, he explained to Silence,
by the desire of Master Edmund Bert, a gentleman of Essex,
who had been their fellow-student at Oxford. They had all
been enthusiastic falconers, but Bert had devoted special
attention to training and flying the short-winged hawk, and
as a ' gentle astringer ' was second to none, even in France.
Petre loved flying at the brook with falcon or tercel-gentle,
and above all things, when occasion served, the flight at the
heron with a cast of well-trained haggard falcons. When
they had parted, Petre on his travels and Bert for Essex,
vowing lifelong friendship, it had been arranged that each
should commit to writing his experiences in the practice of
his favourite art, in the hope that they might sometime
meet and compare notes together. Long afterwards, when
Master Edmund Bert was advanced in years and in failing
health, he gave to the world An Approved Treatise of Hawkes

148 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

and Hawking.1 In his preface addressed to the friendly
readers, he says, ' I did never purpose to publish in common
these my labours, but to have given them privately to whom
they are dedicated, and to whom I stand devoted [a clear
reference to Master Petre] ; but being discovered to some of
my friends, and by them made knowne to many of the rest,
their importunities and earnest perswasions have made mee
put it to the presse.'

Master Petre's notes on the art of reclaiming a haggard
have been lost to mankind. They appear to have been
somewhat resented by the diarist, inasmuch as Petre in-
sisted on reading them out in the disguise of a free trans-
lation, and offering them to his friend as personal experiences
which might prove useful in his future relations with Anne
Squele. 'A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that
hears it.' Curiously enough, the lady Katherine seemed
rather to enjoy what might be supposed to reflect on
herself, while the effect on William Silence was altogether
different. Petre's rough jokes and blunt allusions jarred on
his feelings, and he half repented that he had exposed his
tender feelings to this coarse handling. However, when he
called to mind the practical sympathy and ready help
extended to him by Petre, he reflected,

Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise ;
Though he be merry, yet withal he's honest.

Tarn, of Shrew, iii. 2. 24.

So he was content to dismiss the incident without comment,
as an example of the 'odd humours' which occasionally
led his friend into extravagance. Indeed the only remark of
Petre's noted by him is one described as ' an excellent con-
ceipted jeste.' I should have deemed it a poor pun, did I
not find it reproduced in three several sonnets included in a
collection comprising some of the finest poetry in the English
language. " Aye, Master William, tame her as thou mayest,
I warrant thee thy wife will yet have her Will."

But Master Petre's practical application of the maxims of
falconry has not been lost to the world through the reticence

1 London, 1619 ; reprinted with an introduction by Mr. J. E. Harting.
London, Quaritch, 1891.

THE ESTRIDGE 149

of the diarist. So well did the jest prosper in the ears of
one who heard it, that we need not the services of the diarist
to reproduce the speech.

Pet. Thus have I politicly begun my reign,
And 'tis my hope to end successfully.
My falcon now is sharp and passing empty ;
And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged,
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 ate no meat to-day, nor none shall eat ;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not ;
As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I'll find about the making of the bed ;
And here I'll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets :
Ay, and amid this hurly I intend
That all is done in reverend care of her :
And in conclusion she shall watch all night :
And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl
And with the clamour keep her still awake.
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness ;
And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.
He that knows better how to tame a shrew,
Now let him speak ; 'tis charity to show.1

Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 191.

I cannot say to what this scene might have led, had not
the lady Katherine brought it to a close by rising from her
seat and proposing to go round the hawks with Master
Silence and the stranger who had brought with him the
latest addition to their number.

You will find in Shakespeare the names of the hawks in

1 Mr. Lascelles (Falconry, Badminton Library) notes ten words in this
passage as technical terms in falconry, and adds, ' Had Petruchio been a
falconer describing exactly the management of a real falcon of unruly
temper, he could not have done it in more accurate language.' That the
central idea of Petruchio's method of training was thoroughly understood in
the age of falconry, appears from Fletcher's sequel to The Taming of the
Shrew, entitled, The Woman's Prize ; or, the Tamer Tamed. See note, The
Language of Falconry.

150 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

common use : the falcon and her tercel-gentle ; the estridge,1
or goshawk, and her tercel ; and the musket. These were
the names oftenest in the mouths of practical falconers, but
other kinds were used for special purposes. In the BoTce of
St. Albans, the eagle is for an emperor, the gerfalcon for a
king, the peregrine for an earl, and the merlin for a lady.
The goshawk, so highly placed in the great houses of France,
was in England assigned to a yeoman, the sparrow-hawk to
a priest, and the musket to 'an holiwater clerke.' These
subtle distinctions of rank had become somewhat out of date
in what our diarist regarded as the democratic age in which

1 Mr. Douce (Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1807) was the first to point out
that Shakespeare wrote of the estridge or goshawk, not of the ostrich, when
he made Enobarbus say of Antony :

Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious,
Is to be frighted out of fear ; and in that mood
The dove will peck the estridge ; and I see still,
A diminution in our captain's brain

Restores his heart. Ant. and Cleo. iii. 13. 195.

The same idea was present to the mind of Clifford when he thus taunted
Richard Duke of York :

So cowards fight when they can fly no further ;
So doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons.

3 Hen. VI. i. 4. 40.

A dove pecking an ostrich is not a lively image, and I doubt that the idea
would ever have occurred to a commentator, had he been aware that a kind
of hawk in common use was known as an estridge.

When Hotspur inquired of Sir Richard Vernon as to the nimble- footed
madcap Prince of Wales and his comrades, that daffd the world aside and
bid it pass, they were described as

all furnish'd, all in arms ;
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Bated, like eagles having lately bathed.

1 Hen. IV. iv. 1. 97.

Thus Shakespeare wrote, and thus the Folio reads. But critics, with the
ostrich still in their thoughts, could not understand the allusion, or the
association of the 'estridge' with the technical term 'bated,' and they chose
to read

All plumed like estridges [ostriches] that wing the wind,
Bated like eagles having lately bathed.

This emendation labours under the disadvantage that it reduces to nonsense
what is at all events intelligible. The only objection to what Shakespeare
wrote is that the feathers of a goshawk, bating and fluttering with the wind,
do not afford so striking a simile as the plumes of an ostrich. But if this
objection did not occur to Shakespeare we need not trouble ourselves about
it. The Cambridge editors obelise the passage. I have followed Dr.
Schmidt (Shakespeare Lexicon) in accepting the text of the Folio, which is
clear enough when the meaning of the technical terms of falconry is under-
stood.

HAWKS USED IN FALCONRY 151

he lived. Master Petre aspired to neither imperial eagle nor
kingly gerfalcon, nor did he possess the exotics of the race,
the lanner, sacre, or Barbary falcon. The eagle was never
of practical account with English falconers.1 The great
northern falcons — known as gerfalcons — nearly twice the
size of the peregrine, were indeed incomparable in regard to
flight and stoop, especially for the flight at the heron and
the kite, but they were costly, hard to reclaim, and liable to
disease in the damp climate of these rainy isles.

The peregrines were represented not only by the falcon
proper, but by a cast of tercel-gentles. The males of the
hawks principally used in falconry — the peregrine and
goshawk — were called ' tiercels,' or ' tercels/ because (it is
said) they are smaller than the females by one third ; the
male of the nobler species — the peregrine — being dis-
tinguished by the addition of the word ' gentle/ There was
thus a subtle tribute paid by Juliet to her lover's nobility of
nature when she would call him back, as a falconer lures the
'tassel-gentle.' Smallest, and of least reputation, on the
other hand, was the musket or male sparrow-hawk, especially
when an eyess. ' Here comes little Kobin/ says Mrs. Page, as
FalstafFs tiny page enters, and is thus accosted by Mrs.
Ford : ' How now, my eyas-musket ! What news with
you ?'2 Between Komeo and Kobin there was fixed a gulf as
wide as that which parted the tercel-gentle from the eyess-
musket in the estimation of the falconer.

Of the long-winged hawks, besides the peregrine, the
merlin and the hobby were in constant use. The merlins
were bold, active, and tractable; and in appearance, miniature
falcons. They were flown at the lesser birds, but Petre
showed with pride a cast of females, which had proved
themselves capable of coping with the pigeon. The hobby,
a beautiful bird and a high-flyer, was also easily tamed. It
was not so bold as the merlin, and was chiefly used in the
daring of larks. The lark was 'dared' or terrified by the
approach of the hobby, and thus fell an easy prey to
the fowler, lying still until it found itself enclosed in his net.

1 See the chapter on trained eagles in Hints on the Management of Hawks
(J. E. Harting), pp. 167-193.

2 Merry Wives, iii. 3. 21.

152 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

' The dogs range the field to spring the fowl,' says Nicholas
Cox,1 'and the hobbies soar over them in the air, and the
silly birds, fearing a conspiracy between the hawks and
the dogs to their utter destruction, dare not commit them-
selves to their wings, but think it safer to lie close to the
ground, and so are taken in the nets.' In default of a hobby
the larks were dared by other means ; by a mirror or by a
piece of scarlet cloth. Thus Wolsey, with his Cardinal's
scarlet, cowed the barons of England. 'If we live thus
tamely/ says the Earl of Surrey,

To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,
Farewell nobility ; let his grace go forward,
And dare us with his cap like larks.

Hen. VIII. Hi. 2. 279.

Of the short-winged kind, the goshawk, by her name of
estridge, attained the honour, as we have seen, of giving its
name to a distinct branch of the art of hawking. Strong,
useful, and capable, though not so handsome as the falcon,
from which she differed widely (as we shall see) in her mode
of flight, the goshawk held an honourable place in the order
of hawks. Less efficient was the tercel or male of the
goshawk, and lower still the sparrow-hawk of either sex ;
though in the eyes of some ' the quicke handling of them in
his flying pleaseth more than the goshawke.' But as Master
Bert adds : * They may be fitly compared unto a large
gelding and a smaller, the first having a large and long
stroke goeth faster than he seemeth, the other that gathered
short and thick seemeth to goe much faster than he doth ;
the larger shall inforce the lesser and strike thrise for the
ground that he will almost at twice performe; my opinion
is he that riddeth most ground, with most ease, shall longest
endure. Judge you selve the difference betweene the gos-
hawke, Tarsell, and spar-hawke.'2

1 Gentleman's Recreation.

2 Irish goshawks were of high repute. Derricke has some verses in their
praise (Image of Ireland, 1581), and Nathaniel Cox (Gentleman's Recreation)
tells us that ' there are none better than those which are bred in the North
parts of Ireland, as in the province of Ulster, but more especially in the
county of Tyrone.' To the same effect writes Blome in his Gentleman's
Recreation (1686), with special mention of Tyrone. Large tracts of Ireland,

KITES AND BUZZARDS 153

These are the aristocracy of the race; each had its own
merits, and was flown at its proper quarry. As for the
canaille of the tribe raptores — kites, kestrels, buzzards, hen-
harriers, and such-like — they found no place in the hawk-
house, and were regarded by the falconer as next of kin to
barndoor owl, of whom a portent was recorded :

A falcon towering in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.

Macbeth, ii. 4. 12.

These were what Turbervile calls ' base bastardly refuse
hawks, which are somewhat in name, and nothing in deed.'
Their names were often on the lips of the falconer, but only
as terms of reproach. To 'play the kite,' or to use 'vile
buzardly parts ' bespeaks a worthless hawk (according to
Turbervile), and Shakespeare had a true falconer's contempt
for 'kites That bate and beat and will not be obedient/1
and also for the worthless kestrel, or staniel. This hawk was
sometimes trained. But it was lacking in courage, and was
allotted by the old writers to the knave or servant. * He's a
coward and a coystril that will not drink to my niece till
his brains turn o' the toe like a parish top,'2 says Sir Toby
Belch. 'With what wing the staniel checks at it/3 he
exclaims, as Malvolio, with the fatuity of this ignoble hawk,
catches at the sham letter laid in his way.

now unhappily denuded of trees, were in the days of falconry thickly
wooded, and a happy hunting ground for the short- winged hawk. ' Tyrone
among the bushes' is a saying current in that county, and Master Ford's
' fine hawk for the bush ' may have been a native of Tyrone, of the breed so
highly commended by the author of the Gentleman's Recreation. Fynes
Moryson, in his Description of Ireland (1616), says that Irish goshawks were
much esteemed in England and ' sought out by many and all means to be
transported thither.' King John, Mr. Harting tells us (Essays on Sport and
Natural History) used to send to Ireland, amongst other places to Carrick-
fergus, Co. Antrim, for hawks. According to G. Markham, ' of all sorts of
merlins, the Irish merlin is the best' (Countrey Farme, 1616).

1 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 198.

2 Twelfth N. i. 3. 42. «The Castrel ... is a Hawk of a very Cowardly
nature, and a slow Goer afore-head, and therefore not much in use ' (Blome,
Gentleman's Recreation, 1686). Mr. Freeman (How I became a Falconer) tells
of early experiences with a kestrel which he mistook for a sparrow-hawk.
' The kestrel disappointed me| very much, for he was frightened out of his
wits at a live starling, and would not always kill a sparrow.' Perhaps some
such experience suggested the words ' a coward and a kestrel. '

3 Ibid. ii. 5. 124.

154 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

As the eagle is the noblest, so the kite or puttock is the
basest of his tribe. ' I chose an eagle/ says Imogen, ' and
did avoid a puttock.' 1 And Hastings says of Clarence, sent
to the Tower, while Kichard is at large :

More pity that the eagle should he mew'd,
While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

Rich. III. i. 1. 132.

The hawks having been visited and their points dis-
cussed, the company bethought them of Clement Perkes's
newly-taken hawk, which had been delivered by his messenger
into the falconer's hands. They passed from the courtyard
to the hawk-house. This was a long covered shed where
the hawks were sheltered at night. Here, too, they were
set down to mew, or moult, when the season came round,
from which use buildings of this kind derived their name of
' mews.' The Koyal mews by St. Martin's Lane became the
Koyal stables, and the name was borrowed by humbler
localities, with no clear appreciation of the original meaning
or history of the word.

In a room at the end of the mews the falconer was hard
at work, surrounded by the implements of his art. ' Every
good falconer,' says Turbervile, 'should have his imping
needles at hand.' The loss of a principal feather from a
falcon's wing seriously interfered with her high-flying
powers. And as the falconer would have his falcon fly the
highest pitch, it was part of his art to repair occasional
mishaps by the process known as ' imping.' The stump of
the broken feather was joined either to the separated frag-
ment, or to a similar feather, of which the falconer was
careful to have good store. This was commonly effected by
inserting into the pith of both feathers a slender piece of
iron, called an 'imping needle,' steeped in brine, which
forthwith rusted, and incorporated both parts into a single
feather. To effect this neatly was one of the triumphs of
the falconer's art :

What finer feate than so to ympe a feather as in vew

A man should sweare it were the olde, and not set on anew?2

. i. 1. 139. 3 Turbervile, Booke of Faukonrie.

IMPING AND SEELIttG 155

Thus would the falconer restore his hawk's injured wing,
and when the statesman would redeem the broken fortunes
of his country, he urged his hearers to

Imp out our drooping country's broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt
And make high majesty look like itself.

Rich. II. ii. 1. 292.

The falconer and the statesman would level up. But it
is ever the desire of the envious to level down to their own
standard those whom natural advantages and training have
enabled to fly a higher pitch. Thus, when the tribunes
Flavius and Marullus forbade that images should be decked
with Caesar's trophies, and drove from the streets the
crowds who assembled to rejoice in his triumph, they
reasoned thus :

These growing feathers pluck'd from Csesar's wing1

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,

Who else would soar above the view of men

And keep us all in servile fearfulness. Jul. Cces. i. 1. 77.

The company found the falconer busily engaged in seeling
the eyes of the new arrival. It was then the custom to
close the eyes of a newly-taken hawk until she had become
accustomed to the hood, by drawing through the eyelids
a fine silken thread. Desdemona, said lago,

could give out such a seeming,
To seel her father's eyes up close as oak.

Othello, Hi. 3. 210. 2

The poor bird was completely blindfolded. I am sorry to
say that the company laughed merrily at her confusion as
she staggered and strutted along the floor, unable to find
her perch, or to save herself from destruction without her

1 Of. Sonnet Ixxviii. 6.

2 Of. Othello, i. 3. 270. Mr. Harting would read this line, ' To seel her
father's eyes up close as hawk.' But I see no sufficient reason to depart
from the Folio. It is quite in the manner of Shakespeare to pass rapidly
from metaphor to metaphor, more especially when a term of art, in wood-
craft or falconry, presents itself to his mind.

1 56 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

keeper's helping hand ; and as I read of the scene, I under-
stood what Antony meant when he said :

The wise gods seel our eyes ;

In our own filth drop our clear judgements ; make us
Adore our errors ; laugh at's, while we strut
To our confusion. Ant. and Cleo. Hi. 13. 112.

And yet, did the bird but know it, this seeling and these
blind endeavours were but steps in the course of training
which was to convert the profitless haggard into the noble
falcon, reclaimed from ill conditions, and fitted for her
master's use.

The hawks having been visited, their achievements re-
counted, and their points discussed, the party returned to
the house. Petre courteously invited his visitors to stay for
supper. But Silence must needs return to his father's
house, whither some company had been bidden, and the
stranger begged to be excused. So they mounted their
horses and rode together homewards across the wolds.

CHAPTER XI
A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

In Gloucestershire :

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draw out our miles, and make them wearisome ;
And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,
Making the hard way sweet and delectable.

King Richard II.

'AND after some converse concerning matters of grave
moment touching our several affairs (whereof more anon),
we fell to speak of Cotswold and of Arden, and of the sports
and pastimes which may be there enjoyed in their seasons,
and so merrily homewards.'

Thus the diarist begins the story of his ride across Cots-
wold. The convenient time for writing of graver matters
seems never to have come, and what they were is left to
conjecture.

You may, therefore, not hold it proven that a ride home-
ward with William Silence was the occasion of the resolve
that robbed Stratford-on-Avon of a sporting attorney to
give Shakespeare to the world. This resolve, however, must
have been made at some time, and under some circumstances ;
and what is more likely to have caused it than chance
association with a visitor from the great world, whose
conversation unfolded to the eyes of home-bred youth
visions of the boundless possibilities offered by London to
genius and daring ? The humours of the town ; the
newsmongers and diners with good Duke .Humphrey at
Paul's; the playhouse at Blackfriars; the wit-combats in
the taverns; the bravery of fair ladies and gallants, and
far-off visions of the splendid Court of great Elizabeth,
appealed to his imagination. But most of all he was

157

158 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

moved by the immediate prospect of a sufficient livelihood,
and by the remoter possibility of such wealth as might
enable him to walk the quiet paths at home with surer
footing, partaking of the real enjoyments of life.

And as years advanced, his knowledge of what he had
gained, and what he had escaped, with observation of the
consequences of the fateful resolve which each man must,
once for all, make for himself, found expression in words.

It was when Shakespeare had arrived at middle age that
he wrote what Professor Dowden calls his reflective dramas.
Looking back from the serene table-land of the Delectable
Mountains on the way which he had trodden, he could mark
where Bypath meadow led astray, and could discern certain
who had taken the wrong path, wandering blindfold among
the tombs, victims of Giant Despair.

The self -same thought which the tinker of Elstow, turned
preacher, was impelled by the necessity of his genius to
embody in action, gave the dramatist pause, and with him
action for a moment gave place to teaching.

For he tells us by the mouth of Cassius that 'men at
some time are masters of their fates.'1 That is to say, each-
man born into the world may expect that to him will come,
sooner or later, his golden opportunity. If he seize it, he
may become that for which he is best fitted by nature, be
it dramatist, soldier, handicraftsman, lawyer, statesman, or
divine ; for all men have not the same gifts. But if he let
it slip, he has no right to expect that it will recur. It may
be right that he should let it pass. But it remains true all
the same that

Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd,
Shall never find it more. Ant. and Gleo. ii. 7. 88.

It was while this thought was present to his mind that
he thus taught us by the mouth of Brutus,

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune :
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Jul Cats. iv. 3. 218.

1 Jul. Cces. i. 2. 139.

A LESSON FROM SHAKESPEARE 159

And as he pondered still further on such matters, he thought
over the riddle of success and failure in life.

0 heavens, what some men do,
While some men leave to do !
How some men creep in skittish fortune's hall,
While others play the idiots in her eyes !

Trail, and Ores. iii. 3. 132.

The task of rounding off the lesson of life is fitly en-
trusted to him who was to the Greek TroXvjuLrjri 9 ; a word
aptly rendered by an English sportsman — 'that same
dog-fox Ulysses.'1

He contrives that Achilles shall see himself treated by
the Greeks as if he were forgotten. The 'general' pass
strangely by, and the princes lay negligent and loose re-
gard on him. He cannot understand the change. He has
not fallen out with fortune ; why should he have fallen out
with men ?

Ulysses suggests the reason. The Greeks look upon
Ajax as the coming man, and they have turned to worship
him.

Achil. I do believe it ; for they pass'd by me

As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me
Good word nor look ; what, are my deeds forgot ?

Ibid. 142.

Then Ulysses takes up his parable, and in words so
familiar that I need not quote them, explains that forgetful-
ness of good deeds past is simply obedience to the laws
of nature, one touch of which makes the whole world kin,
adding that

beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.

This, therefore, is the conclusion of the whole matter:
choose the right path and continue to walk therein, for

perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright : to have done is to hang

1 Troil. and Ores. v. 4. 12.

160 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way ;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast : keep then the path ;

For emulation hath a thousand sons

That one by one pursue ; if you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by

And leave you hindmost. Ibid. 150.

And yet Mr. Euskin writes : ' At this time of being and
speaking, among .active and purposeful Englishmen I know
not one who shows a trace of ever having felt a passion of
Shakespeare's, or learnt a lesson from him.'1

But though the diarist's notes of his homeward ride may
bring us no nearer to a knowledge of what Shakespeare
was, we may be helped towards a better understanding of
what he wrote by a more familiar acquaintance with the
scenes and occupations amidst which a great part of his life
was spent. In the pursuit of this knowledge no aid is to be
despised, and something may be learned from the discourse
chronicled by the diarist, even though it related to no
higher topics than the sporting capabilities of Stratford-
on-Avon and Cotswold.

In truth, if you would enjoy the sports of the field in their
seasons, no better spot on earth need have been desired three
centuries ago than the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon.
There every variety of sporting country was to be found :
' frith/ or woodland ; ' fell,' or open field ; and ' wold,' or
open, forest-like land. On one side of Avon lay the frith, or
woodlands of Arden, and on the other a richly cultivated fell,
or open champaign country. 'Warwickshire,' writes Camden,
' is divided into two parts, the Felden and the woodland, i.e.
the Champain and woody country, severed in some sort by
the river Avon, running obliquely from north-east to south-
west through the middle of the county. On the south side
of tbe Avon lies Felden, a champain country whose fertile
fields of corn and verdant pastures yield a most delightful
prospect from the top of Edgebill.'

1 Prceterita (1886).

THE COUNTRY AROUND STRATFORD l6l

To one who had long dwelt between Felden and Arden,
the physical characteristics of these several districts seemed
to illustrate the difference between an open and a furtive
disposition, and so he wrote of woman :

Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,

Lays open all the little worms that creep ;

In men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain

Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep:

Through crystal walls each little mote will peep :
Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,
Poor women's faces are their own faults' books.

Lucrece, 1247.

Let us then, with Camden, take a view of the woodland
which (he tells us) lay north of the Avon, occupying a larger
extent, being for the most part covered with woods, though
not without pastures, cornfields, and iron-mines. Arden
was in Shakespeare's time a district throughout which were
scattered survivals of the primeval forest which once clothed
the English midlands. The Britons retreating before the
advancing Saxon found shelter in its fastnesses, and the
names by which the physical features of the country are
still known bear witness to their presence. In their tongue,
the river which separated their retreat from the open country
is Avon, and the forest fastness is Arden. The forest of
Ardennes owes its name to a kindred word in the language
of the Gaulish Celt. The British woodland gave its name
to a family of gentle birth, of which some branches were
rich and powerful, while others approached in condition to
the yeomen, with whom they intermarried ; for the wife of
John Shakespeare of Stratford was Mary Arden, daughter
of Eobert Arden of Wilmecote.

Arden was never a forest in the legal sense of the term.
Nor was it in the sixteenth century a tract of continuous
woodland. Towns and villages had come into existence,
the names of which still tell the tale of their woodland
origin: Henley in Arden; Hampton in Arden; Weston in
Arden. Towards Stratford the country had been generally
cleared. Leland, who travelled from Warwick to Stratford
about the year 1533, describes the country through which

162 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

he passed as for the most part under cultivation. Had he
held a northward course, he would have emerged from Arden
only to reach the open moorland which is now the Black
Country, and guiding his course by the fires of the iron-
workers, he would have come upon a town not long after-
wards described as ' Bremicham, swarming with inhabitants,
and echoing with the noise of anvils/1

It is a pleasing illusion to imagine that Shakespeare chose
as the scene of his most poetical comedy the woodlands of
his native Warwickshire, linked with the memories of his
early youth, and associated with his mother's name. It is
an illusion, for we know that the scene and plot of As You
Like It were borrowed from Thomas Lodge's novel Eosalynd
published in 1590, the Arden of which is the Luxemburg
Ardennes. Shakespeare's Arden is peopled with inhabitants
of English birth. But the fact that William and Audrey
are of Warwickshire does not prove that they inhabit an
English forest; for was not Anthony Dull, constable, of
Navarre; Autolycus of Bohemia; Dogberry of Messina
and Nicholas Bottom of Greece ?

But it really matters little whether Shakespeare thought
of the Warwickshire Arden when by the alchemy of his
mighty genius he transmuted into an immortal drama
Lodge's perishable tale; pretty and full of quaint conceits,
but writ in water, and only remembered, or worth remem-
bering, as the quarry of Pentelicus is regarded because of
the glory of the Parthenon. Shakespeare did unto Lodge's
Arden as he would have done unto the desert of Sahara if
the exiles of the novel had happened to wander thither ; he
filled it with the creatures of his native midlands.

Michael Drayton, a Warwickshire man, takes Arden as
the subject of the thirteenth song of his Polyolbion.

This song our shire of Warwick sounds,
Revives old Arden's ancient bounds.
Through many shapes the Muse here roves,
Now sporting in these shady groves
The tunes of birds oft stays to hear,
Then finding herds of lusty deer,
She huntress-like the hart pursues.

1 Camden's Britannia.

THE FOREST OF ARDEN 163

To his imagination, Arden, though fallen from the ancient
greatness of ' her one hand touching Trent, the other
Severn's side,' was still a vast region of dim mysterious
woodland, the haunt of song-birds of every note, and of

both sorts of seasoned deer,
Here walk the stately red, the freckled fallow there.

And so Dray ton lays the scene of his stag-hunt in this
woodland district. ' To express that wondrous sport ... to
our old Arden here most fitly it belongs.'
In its groves

Hunt's up, to the morn the feathered sylvans sing . . .
The mirthful quires with their clear open throats
Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes
That hills and valleys ring, and even the echoing air
Seems all composed of sounds about them everywhere.

Such was the country around Stratford, a region like to
that with which Lear endowed Goneril,

With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd :
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads.

K. Lear, i. 1. 65.

The river afforded quarry for the falconer, who loved
' flying at the brook,' at

The duck and mallard first, the falconer's only sport
(Of river flights the chief, so that all other sort
They only green fowl term).1

It supplied also fish for the angler — coarse fish for the most
part, the pursuit of which was not likely to inspire that love
of the subtler mysteries of the gentle art, of which no
trace can be found in Shakespeare. For strict observance
of truth, the constant feature of these pages, compels an
admission. I find in the diary little mention of the angler's
art, and that little of a disappointing kind ; such sentiments,
for example, as one that was long afterwards put into the
mouth of Ursula, when she would catch Beatrice with a
feigned story of Benedick's devotion :

1 Polyollion.

164 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish

Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,

And greedily devour the treacherous bait ;

So angle we for Beatrice. Much Ado, iii. 1. 26.

I wish it were otherwise, but I cannot say that I am
surprised. In those dark pre-Waltonian ages the ordinary
experiences of the angler included neither the mystery of
trout-fishing with fly, nor the heart-stirring rush of the
salmon in the pool, that crowded hour of glorious life
compensating in enjoyment for an age without a rise,

Wipe away from the table of the angler's memory all
experiences with salmon and trout, and what remains ?
Boyish recollections of the gregarious 'fool gudgeon' swarm-
ing around worm on crooked pin, rushing in shoals on
their destruction — apt image of the ' opinion ' of the crowd,
mostly fools, caught by the 'melancholy bait* of assumed
gravity.1 In riper years, having attained an age when 'no
fisher but the ungrown fry forbears,'2 he marks how the
'carp of truth' may be taken by 'bait of falsehood/3 and 'if
the young dace be bait for the old pike ' he sees ' no reason
in the law of nature ' 4 why he should not catch him, any
more than why the pike should not snap at his natural prey.
But all this is poor sport at best, and I am not surprised
to find that it engaged but a small share of the thoughts of
the diarist and his companion.5

Such were the resources of the country by which
Stratford was immediately surrounded. But at no great
distance were the vast wolds, stretching from the border of
Warwickshire to the south-western extremity of Gloucester-
shire, then, as now, known as Cotswold. So famed was
this district for sports of various kinds, that a Cotswold
country became a common expression of the day. 'The
best soyl,' says Burton — a Leicestershire man — 'commonly
yields the worst ayr; a dry sandy plat is fittest to build
upon, and such as is rather hilly than plain, full of downes,
a Cotswold country, as being most commodious for hawking
hunting wood waters and all manner of pleasures.' Cots-

1 Merck, of Fen. i. 1. 101. 2 Van. and Ad. 526.

3 Hamlet, ii. 1. 63. 4 2 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 355.

5 See Note, Shakespeare and Angling.

THE COTSWOLD GAMES 165

wold ; its sports and pastimes ; its Whitsun-week games, at
which sturdy shepherds contended for the mastery before the
assembled 'ring of country gentiles'1 in leaping, throwing
the bar, running at quintain, and other manly exercises,
were household words among the Warwick folk dwelling
near the Gloucestershire border. The ancient Cotswold games
seem to have declined somewhat, and to have been revived
by one Kobert Dover, an attorney of Barton-on-the-heath in
Warwickshire, to whom were addressed a number of odes by
Ben Jonson, Drayton, and other poets of the day, which
were collected and published in 1636, under the title of
Annalia Dubrensia. The programme comprised field sports
as well as athletic exercises.

The swallow-footed greyhound hath the prize,
A silver-studded collar.

Dover is celebrated in this volume as the restorer, not the
founder of these games, and we may be sure that the per-
formances of their greyhounds on Cotswold supplied a fre-
quent topic of conversation to the burgesses of Stratford in
the days of Shakespeare's youth. And even if the diary
were silent on the subject, we should have been certain that
this topic must have been suggested by a ride across
Cotswold.2

For Cotswold was then to coursing what Newmarket is to
horse-racing, and St. Andrews to golf ; the recognised home
and centre of the sport. Abraham Slender knew by heart
the performance of every dog that had ever contended for
the silver collar at the Cotswold games, a knowledge which
he at times let appear when there was no need of such
vanity. For we all remember how it was needful for Master
Shallow, when he would pay court to Master Page of Wind-

1 Annalia Dubrensia. Of Dover it is recorded in this volume, ' He was
bred an attorney, who never try'd but two causes, always made up the
difference.'

2

been

of the Cotswold Games, <fcc." By C. R. Ashler." The author, referring to" this
volume, finds a local habitation for Justice Shallow. (Sec Note, Shakespeare
and Gloucestershire. )

166 A RIDE ON COTS WOLD

sor, to smooth his feathers which had been somewhat ruffled
by an unhappy suggestion of Slender's.

Slen. How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he
was outrun on Cotsall.

Page. It could not be judged, sir.

Slen. You'll not confess, you'll not confess.

Shal. That he will not. 'Tis your fault, 'tis your fault, 'tis a
good dog.

Page. A cur, sir.

Shal. Sir, he's a good dog, and a fair dog ; can there be more
saidl He is good and fair. Merry Wives, i. 1. 91.

Eagerly did the riders discuss the incidents and humours
of the sport. First comes the hare-finder, most venerable of
institutions. For Arrian, writing some fourteen centuries
before our diarist, tells us that in his day it was the custom
to send out hare-finders (rou? /caTOTrreuo-oi/Ta?) early in the
mornings of coursing days.1

To detect a hare in brown fallow or russet bracken needs
sharp and practised eyes. And so it was as good a jest for
Benedick to say of the blind god of love that 'Cupid is
a good hare-finder/2 as to call Vulcan 'a rare carpenter/

'As soone as he espieth her, he must cry So how.'
Thus writes the author of The Noble Arte of the hare-finder.
And so when Mercutio cried ' So ho,' Eomeo, recognising the
familiar hunting language, asks ' What hast thou found ? '

Mer. No hare, sir, unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is
somewhat stale and hoar ere it be spent. (Sings.)

An old hare hoar,
And an old hare hoar,
Is very good meat in lent ;
But a hare that is hoar
Is too much for a score,
When it hoars ere it be spent.'3

Rom. and Jul. ii. 4. 136.

1 The Gynegeticus of Arrian (sometimes called the younger Xenophou)
was intended to supplement the work of his master, by treating of the sport
of coursing with greyhounds. 2 Much Ado, i. 1. 186.

3 These lines are fairly described by Dr. Johnson as a ' series of quibbles
unworthy of explanation, which he who does not understand, needs not
lament his ignorance.' A hare is still called a bawd in some parts of
Scotland (Jamieaon's Scottish Dictionary).

COURSING WITH GREYHOUNDS 167

The greyhound, fawning upon his master, is an image
familiar of old: — viroTrrri^ava \i irapei Arrian writes. 'What
a canny deal of courtesy,' says Hotspur of Henry Boling-
broke, 'This fawning greyhound then did proffer me.'1
Caius Marcius describes Titus Lartius as

Holding Corioli in the name of Kome,

Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash,

To let him slip at will. Coriol. i. 6. 37.

A livelier image is suggested by the chorus in the pro-
logue to Henry V., picturing the ' swelling scene ' when

should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment.

But as the sport advances, fawning gives place to excite-
ment, and the careful slipper must beware lest he spoil sport
by too much eagerness; like Harry Hotspur, to whom
Northumberland thus complained : ' Before the game is afoot,
thou still let'st slip.'2 He must keep back his hound, well
knowing that by so doing he whets rather than disedges
his appetite for the chase. ' I am sorry but not af eard ;
delayed but not altered,' said Florizel, when thwarted and
opposed in his love for Perdita :

what I was, I am ;

More straining on for plucking hack, not following
My leash unwillingly. Wint. Tale, iv. 4. 475.

When the game's afoot, though not before, you may cry
havoc, and unslip the dogs of war. ' There is none of you
so mean and base/ said King Harry to his yeomen soldiers
before the breach at Harfleur,

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. Hen. V. hi. 1. 30.

'The game's afoot/ he adds, 'follow your spirit.' When
this word has been given, you may enjoy the humours of
the course, and admire the speed and dexterity of your

1 1 Hen. IV. i. 3. 251. 2 1 Ren. IV. i. 3. 278.

168 A RIDE ON COTS WOLD

greyhound, 'which runs himself and catches for his
master.'1

Thus spoke Tranio, when he complained that Lucentio
slipped him like his greyhound, and used him for his own
ends, and his words were commended as 'a good swift
simile, but something currish.'2

And if you chance to witness the kill, you may call to
mind Benedick's commendation of Margaret's jest, ' Thy wit
is as quick as the greyhound's mouth ; it catches.'3

'It could not be judged/ according to Master Page,
whether or not his fallow greyhound was 'outrun on Cotsall.'
How this came to pass you may learn from a study of the
laws of the leash, or coursing, as they were commanded,
allowed, and subscribed by Thomas Duke of Norfolk in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. There we read of the judge
of the leash, who, in Drayton's words,

Runs his horse with fixed eyes, and notes

Which dog first turns the hare, which first the other cotes.4

In these laws it is prescribed that the judges shall give their
judgments presently before they depart from the field ; but
if the course be equal, and the hare be not borne, then the
course must be adjudged equal. Thus it was that Master
Page's fallow greyhound, although not outrun on Cotsall,
failed to win the course.

The comparative merits of the greyhounds, then as now,
were determined by a variety of performances, or points of
the course, such as the turn, go by, wrench, cote, and the
bearing, or taking of the hare. Those who are interested in
this ancient sport (among whom I cannot be included), and
who desire to compare these laws with the rules of the
National Coursing Club, will find both codes printed in
Mr. Harding Cox's contribution to the Badminton Library.
They will note the disappearance from the modern rules of
a term denoting one of the most important points of the
course according to ancient authorities ; that, namely, which
was known as the cote. This was when a greyhound turned
the hare, having first outstripped, or coted, his competitor ;

1 Tarn, of Shrew, v. 2. 52. 2 See also 3 Hen. VL ii. 5. 129.

3 Much Ado,v.2.ll. 4 Polyolbion.

THE LAWS OF THE LEASH 169

'we co ted them on the way, and hither they are coming,'1
said Rosencrantz of the players, using a term of art, per-
fectly intelligible to Hamlet, but which has been generally
interpreted as meaning ' to overtake.' It is plain, however,
from Eosencrantz's words ' hither they are coming,' that he
had not only overtaken, but outstripped, or * coted them on
the way.'

1 On Cotswoldian ground/ sings Master William Denny,2

The swallow-footed greyhound hath the prize,

A silver-studded coller ; who outflies

The rest in lightnings speed, who first comes by

His strayning copes-mate, with celerity

Turns his affrighted game, then coates againe

His forward Eivall on the senselesse plaine

And after Laborinthian turnes surprise

The game, whilst he doth pant her obsequies.

If I am compelled to admit that Shakespeare preferred
coursing to angling, the balance is in some degree redressed
by his love for the hunting of the hare with running hounds.

It is easy to understand why, in common with the
sportsmen of his age, he preferred the pursuit of the hare
to that of the fox. For fox-hunting, as we now understand
it, did not exist in his day. There was then no systematic
keeping of country, or stopping of earths. Coverts were
left entirely to nature. If cubs were hunted, it was merely
for the purpose of exterminating vermin. The ordinary
kennel of running hounds, uncoupled at every chase, was
master of none ; and even the best of the breed, if reserved
exclusively for fox-hunting, would have been wanting in
the speed and drive needful to enable them to account for a
straight-necked fox in Meath or Leicestershire. The riders
would have fared even worse, for the modern hunter is still
further in advance of the hunting and hawking nag of our
ancestors.

1 Hamlet, ii. 2. 330.

2 Annalia Dubrcnsia. The folio of 1623 reads (Love's Labour's Lost, iv.
3. 87) : ' Her amber hair for foul hath amber coted.' The last word is now
usually spelt 'quoted,' and probably rightly ; for although amber hair might
well be said to outstrip or excel amber, yet it is not easy with this interpre-
tation to assign any intelligible meaning to the words ' for foul.'

170 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

The author of TJie Noble Arte writes of the chase of the
' foxe and badgerd and such like vermine/ But he says of
the fox, ' I account small pastime of hunting them, especially
within the ground/ There was, in truth, but little sport
in bolting the fox with terriers from earth to earth, and
destroying the vermin anyhow, somewhat after the fashion
of the Scottish fox-hunter, described by Scott in Guy
Mannering, and by Mr. St. John in his charming Wild
Sports of the Highlands.

But there may be discerned in the works of Shakespeare
the germs of modern fox-hunting. Adonis is advised by
Venus, in lieu of hunting the savage and dangerous boar,
to uncouple at the hare, roe, or 'the fox which lives by
subtlety ; '

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,

And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.

Yen. and Ad. 677.

This was the chase of the fox above ground or in the open,
for which you may find directions in The Nolle Arte, and
in other books of sport of the Elizabethan age. When you
have marked a fox to ground and stopped the neighbouring
earths or ' kennels,' you may uncouple your running hounds,
unkennel your fox, and say with the lord in All's Well,1
' We'll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him/2
Master Ford understood hunting as well as birding.
When he had, as he thought, safely marked to ground that
old dog-fox, Jack Falstaff, he thus addressed the company
assembled at the earth :

Here, here, here be my keys; ascend my chambers; search;

1 iii. 6. 110.

2 The fox's skin was, in hunting language, his case. '0 thou dissembling
cub ! ' says the Duke to Viola,

what wilt thou be

When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case ?
Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow,
That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow ?

Twelfth N. v. 1. 167.

This meaning of the word ' case ' was present to the framer of the following
pun : ' Though my case be a pitiful one, I hope I shall not be flayed out of
iV(Wiwt. Tale, iv. 4. 844).

A TUDOR FOX-HUNT 171

seek, find out ; I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. Let me stop
this way first. [Locking the door.] So, now uncape.1

Merry Wives, iii. 3. 172.

But although some sport might thus be had with the fox
ere you case him, the final cause of fox-hunting was the
destruction of noxious vermin. No word is too bad for ' the
fox that lives by subtlety.' He is ' a crafty murderer,'2 and
' subtle as the fox for prey '3 is the miscreant who may be
likened to the 'fox in stealth.'4 This custom of giving the
fox a bad name survived among sportsmen to the days of
Somerville and Beckford, in poetry as well as in prose. For
in the classic pages of The Chase the fox is denounced as the
wily fox, the felon vile, the conscious villain, and the subtle
pilfering fox. And even in the early years of the nineteenth
century, there were districts where the church bell was
rung when a fox had been marked to ground, to summon
' every man who possessed a pick-axe, a gun or a terrier

1 The Right Hon. John Monck Mason was an Irish sportsman as well as a
Shakespearian critic, and his early experiences in county Galway stood him
in stead when seeking for the poet's meaning in the sports of the field. He
detected the absurdity of the explanation given by Warburton and Stevens
of the word ' uncape as signifying the letting out of a bagged fox. ' Ford,'
he writes, * like a good sportsman, first stops the earths and then uncouples
the hounds.' It is not necessary, however, to read with him ' uncouple ' for
' uncape.' Professor Baynes, in an article in the Edinburgh Review (Oct.
1872 ; reprinted with other essays, 1894), points out that ' though no
example of its techincal use has yet been found, there can be little doubt
that " uncape" was a sporting term locally or colloquially employed instead
of "uncouple."' He then proceeds to show that the word 'cape' had in
Shakespeare's day the meaning of a narrow band encircling the neck, and
that it might fairly be used as a synonym for what was in the case of a grey-
hound called his collar, and in the case of a running hound his couple. In
Tain, of Shrew, iv. 3. 140, the 'small compassed cape' attached to Katherine's
* loose-bodied gown ' was a small circular collar around her throat. In
support of Professor Baynes'a suggestion that various kinds of collars,
couples, or capes for hounds were certainly in use, I may add that in an in-
ventory of furniture in the palace of King Henry VIII. (reprinted in The
Retrospective JRevieiv, 1827) we find with 'hawkes whoddes embrawdered,
hawkes belles, Irishe arrowes,' and other sporting appliances, ' Itm, Ixv
lyams and collors of dyvers sortes.' Furthermore, it appears from the word
1 copesmate,' in the lines of William Denny, quoted at p. 169, that the collar
of the greyhound was sometimes called his cope, or cape ; a term which
would appear to be equally applicable to the couple of the running hound.

2 2 Hen. VI. iii. 1. 254. 3 Oymb. iii. 3. 40
4 K. Lear, iii. 4. 96.

172 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

to hasten to the sport and lend a hand in destroying the
noxious animal.' l

No law was given to a fox. 'Do not stand on quillets
how to slay him/ says Suffolk of Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester — whose appointment as protector to the king he
had compared to making the fox surveyor of the fold, —

Who being accused a crafty murderer,

His guilt should be but idly posted over,

Because his purpose is not executed.

No ; let him die, in that he is a fox,

By nature proved an enemy to the flock,

Before his chaps be stain'd with crimson blood,

As Humphrey, proved by reasons, to my liege.

And do not stand on quillets how to slay him :

Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,

Sleeping or waking, 'tis no matter how,

So he be dead. 2 Hen. VI. iii. 1. 254.

' It was true we give laws to hares and deer, because they
are beasts of chace, but it was never accounted either
cruelty or foul play to knock foxes or wolves on the head as
they can be found, because they are beasts of prey.' Thus
Oliver Saint John met the plea of law put forward on
behalf of Strafford. 'This illustration would be by no
means a happy one, if addressed to country gentlemen of
our time ; but in Saint John's day there were not seldom
great massacres of foxes, to which the peasantry thronged
with all ~the dogs that could be mustered ; traps were set ;
nets were spread, no quarter was given, and to shoot a
female with cub was considered as a feat which merited the
warmest gratitude of the neighbourhood.'2 Some such
massacre Lear had in his mind when, clasping Cordelia in
his arms, he exclaimed :

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes. K. Lear, v. 3. 22,

Far different was the language used in regard to the
hare. 'He is the mervellest beest that is in any londe,'

1 Memoir of the Rev. John Rus»ell.

2 Macaulay, History of England.

THE HONEST MAN'S CHASE 173

wrote Dame Juliana Barnes — a sentiment which she thus
expands :

That beest kyng shall be calde of all Venery
For all the fayre spekyng and blawyng less fere
Coramyth of sechyng and fyndyng of the hare.1

'Of all chases/ says the author of The Noble Arte,
'the hare makes the greatest pastime and pleasure;' and
Gervase Markham declares2 that ' the hunting of the hare is
every honest man's and good man's chase,' ranking far above
the hunting of the fox or badger, which are ' not so much
desired as the rest, because there is not so much art and
cunning.'

The days spent by the diarist under his father's roof
were occupied with other pursuits than the chase of the
hare. I cannot, therefore, say for certain that the justice
kept, in addition to his kennel of running hounds suitable
for every chase, a pack of beagles devoted exclusively to the
hunting of the hare. I know, however, that they were in
high favour with Gloucestershire sportsmen. The sordid
pot-hunter, when he uncouples at his game, may care only to
'score their backs, And snatch 'em up, as we take hares,
behind.'3 But the true sportsman took delight in the
music of a pack composed of 'the little beagle which may
be carried in a man's glove, and bred in many countries for
delight onely, being of curious scents, and passing cunning
in their hunting; for the most part tyring (but seldom
killing) the prey except at some strange advantage.'4 Thus
when Sir Toby Belch said of Maria, 'she is a beagle
true-bred,'5 he meant to compliment her keenness and
sagacity.

1 Thus in the first edition (1486) reproduced in facsimile by Mr. W.
Blades in 1881, the writer, here as in other instances, follows The Master of
Game : ( The hare is the kynge of alle venery, for al blowyng and the fair
termys of huntyng commen of the seckyng and fyndyng of the hare for
certayn it is the merveiloist beest that is.' A still older authority (Twici,
1328) says of the hare: 'Ele est la plus merveilouse beste ke est en ceste terre.'
Amongst other marvels she is at one time male and at another female, whereby
the huntsman is embarrassed, for he cannot blow the menee of it as of other
beasts. 2 Country Contentments. 3 Ant. and Cleo. iv. 7. 12.

4 Gervase Markham, Country Contentments.

6 Twelfth N. ii. 3. 195.

174 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

The performances of such a pack divided with Master
Page's fallow greyhound the attention of the Gloucestershire
folk assembled at the Cotswold games, where

greyhound is for coller tride
More than for death of harmelesse Hare
And kennells pack't, that how they cry'd
Not what they kilPd, men may declare
For hunters most heroyick are they
That seeke the prise and shun the prey.1

But we have in truth lost little by the diarist's omission
to chronicle the incidents of the chase of the hare. For this
pastime, as it is at present pursued, approaches more closely
to the use of our forefathers than any other field sport of the
present day. It has, indeed, suffered but little change since
the days of Xenophon. I have known a master of harriers,
of rare skill, listen with respect to the precepts and observa-
tions on hare-hunting contained in The Nolle Arte ; but I
should not like to try the experiment of reading to an enthusi-
astic fox-hunter the opinions of the author in regard to the fox.
Moreover, I am quite certain that all that could be said by
the diarist or by his companion in regard to the hare-hunt is
to be found in a poem entitled Venus and Adonis, published
in the year 1593, the ' first heir ' of the author's ' invention,'
and written, in all probability, about the time of the ride on
Cotswold.

And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles

How he outruns the wind and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles :2

The many musets through the which he goes

Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

1 Poem by William Basse on the Cotswold games (Annalia Dubrensia).
His motto — Dulcia sunt qucc rarius eveniunt solatia — has been well rendered
by a frequenter of the games, with a lively recollection of his annual holiday
on Cotsall :

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work ;

But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. 1 Hen IV. i. 2. 228.

2 Of. 2 Hen. VI. ii. 3. 94.

THE HUNTING OF THE HARE 175

Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,

And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,

And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer :

Danger deviseth shifts ; wit waits on fear :

For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,

Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out ;

Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies,

As if another chase were in the skies.

By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,

Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,

To hearken if his foes pursue him still;1
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear ;

And now his grief may be compared well

To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn and return, indenting with the way ;

Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay :

For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low never relieved by any. Ven. and Ad. 679.2

1 These lines read like a poetical version of Xenophon's words : irpo\an-
pdvovres 8t ras Ktiva.* tylaravTai Kal dvaKaOl^ovres ^iralpovffiv avTotis Kal
tiraK&vovffiv, ct TTOV ir\t](rtov K\ayyi] tf i^60os rdv KVV&V (Cynegeticus).

2 These stanzas are quoted at length by Coleridge in his lectures on
Shakespeare, as an example of 'affectionate love of nature and natural
objects,' and the lecturer adds that the poems ' give us at once strong
promise of the strength, and yet obvious proofs of the immaturity of his
genius.' Coleridge's thoughts on Shakespeare, like those of Goethe and Ben
Jonson, possess the rare interest attaching to the reflections of one man of
genius upon the work of another. But when he descends to criticism, and
proposes to amend the following passage,

Fal. Now, the report goes she has all the rule of her husband's purse ; he
hath a legion of angels.

Pist. As many devils entertain ; and ' To her, boy,' say I.

Merry Wives, i. 3. 68.

by reading 'As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine,' the lowest depth
of conjectural emendation is reached, and Theobald has his ample revenge
for the exclamation, ' What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald
must have had.' His rejection of the lines in Mark Antony's speech,

176 A RIDE ON COTS WOLD

Sweetening the way with discourse on these and such-like
matters, William Silence and his companion approached
the village green of Shallow. The shades of evening
were closing around the scene, but the humours of the
holy -ale still continued in full career. Neither the
diarist, nor the age in which he lived, was given to
moralising; and yet I can trace in his pages certain
f or esh ado wings of that public opinion by which assemblies
of this kind were ultimately suppressed.1 It is not necessary
to believe all that is said by Master Philip Stubbes in his
Anatomic of Abuses (1583) in regard to the coarse and full-
blown iniquities of his time. But it is impossible to study
the plays, ballads, sermons, jest-books, and satires of the age
without understanding that there was a dark as well as
a bright side to merry England. It is hard to realise in
these pagans of Shallow — with their coarse pleasures, their
large jests, their rollicking country pastimes, their keen
animal enjoyment of life, and their frank immorality — the
sires and grandsires of the puritans of the next century,
whose mission it was to impart to the modern life of English-

0 world, thou wast the forest to this hart ;
And this, indeed, 0 world, the heart of thee.

Jul. Cces. iii. 1. 207.

on the ground that ' the conceit is a mere alien,' is scarcely better. Many of
Shakespeare's allusions to sport are alien to the context or to the action of
the play, although closely akin to the writer's thoughts, and an alien
conceit on such a topic is, in itself, strong evidence of Shakespeare's
workmanship.

1 Mr. Hamilton, in his Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen
Anne, mentions an order of justices made in July 1595, declaring that
4 Church or parish ales, revels, May games, plays and such other unlawful
assemblies of the people of sundry parishes into one parish on the Sabbath
Day and other times, is a special cause that many disorders, contempts
of law, and other enormities are there perpetrated and committed, to the
great profanation of the Lord's Sabbath, the dishonour of Almighty God,
increase of bastardy and of dissolute life, and of many other mischiefs and
inconveniences, to the great hurt of the commonwealth.' They were
accordingly prohibited on the Sabbath Day. ' In January 1599 the Justices
took a long step further, and having discovered that many inconveniences
"which with modestie cannot be expressed" had happened in consequence
of these gatherings, they ordered that parish ales, church ales and revels
should thenceforth be utterly suppressed. . . . An or*ler of Easter 1607
declares that church ales, parish ales, young men's ales, clerks' ales, sextons'
ales, and all revels are to be utterly suppressed. Yet we find so late as
1622 that the war against them was being still carried on.'

THE PAGANS OF SHALLOW 177

speaking men, even when blessed by an admixture of Celtic
blood, a sad seriousness deeper rooted than the beliefs from
which it sprang.

To trace even in outline the natural history of the
evolution of Puritan from Pagan would far transcend the
design of these pages. But I would note in passing certain
things. In the first place, the picturesque pagans of the
plays and jest-books were not the whole of England ; any
more than the Sir Oliver Martexts and Sir Nathaniels,
or the curates of The Hundred Merrie Tales, constituted
the whole of the English Church. As there were Pro-
testants before the Reformation, so, I am convinced, there
were in England puritans before puritanism. One of the
most entertaining of Erasmus' Colloquies describes a visit
to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury before its spolia-
tion, in the company of an Englishman, Gratianus Pullus by
name, who is described as no Wickliffite, although he had
read Wickliffe's books.1 This Pullus has been identified
with Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, on the rather slender evidence
of a statement by Erasmus in another work,2 that Colet was
his companion when he visited Canterbury. But whether
the Pullus of the dialogue is intended for Colet, or designed
by Erasmus to represent the typical Englishman in his
attitude towards relics and shrines, that keen observer must
have detected in the English character many germs of the
puritanism of a later day.

Again, amidst all the swinish excesses of the church-ale
and the foolishness of Sir Topas, a visitor to Shallow Church
might have discovered a grain of seed destined to spring up
into a mighty tree, overshadowing the whole land. For in
the chancel of Shallow Church there stood a roughly hewn
oaken desk, and to it was chained, in obedience to the
law (together with Foxe's Book of Martyrs and Jewel's
Apology), a certain Book, lately done into the vulgar
tongue, destined to furnish a great people, just quickening

1 Mendemus. Vinclevita quispiatn, opinor.

Ogygius. Non arbitror ; etiamsi libros illius legerat, incertum unde

nactus.

These words of Ogygius are certainly not suggestive of Colet, whose
opinions and literary resources were well known to Erasmus.

2 Modus orandi Deum.

178 A RIDE ON COTS WOLD

to intellectual life, with all the thoughts, associations, and
aspirations which go to the formation of national character,
and to constitute for many years practically the whole
of their prose literature. And so it happened, in the words
of Mr. Green,1 that England became the country of a book,
and that book was the Bible; and the prophecy of Miles
Coverdale was fulfilled, when he said that he would give to
the people of England something that would do away with
the singing of ' hey nony nony, hey troly Idyl and such-like
phantasies.

But we are still with the diarist in the age of ( hey nony
nony,' and if we would catch somewhat of its spirit, we
should do well to note the group by which he was en-
countered on his approach to Shallow Green ; for, rude
though they be, they are of the number of those who show
' the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.'

" Who and what are these ? " asked Silence of Simple,
whom he recognised as one of the three men-servants
provisionally kept by his kinsman Abraham Slender. He
was thus answered :

"'Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three
neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves
all men of hair; they call themselves Sal tiers, and they have
a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols,
because they are not in't ; but they themselves are o' the
mind, if it be not too rough for some that know little but
bowling, it will please plentifully.' " 2

This was Shallow's modest contribution to the dramatic
spirit of the age. It was a time when play-acting was in
the air, and men of all sorts and conditions caught the
contagion, with varying symptoms.

We know how it showed itself in the parish of which Sir
Nathaniel was curate. There the performers were more
ambitious than the shepherds, neat-herds and swine-herds of
Shallow; and with the assistance of the village pedant,
Holofernes, the Nine Worthies were presented, Sir Nathaniel
being cast for the part of Alexander the Great. We know
also how mercilessly the performers were 'baited' by the
great lords and ladies whom they would entertain, and how

1 History of the English People. a Wint. Tale, iv. 4. 331.

A GALLIMAUFRY OF GAMBOLS 179

easily Alexander the Conqueror was overthrown by their
raillery. ' There an't shall please you/ said Costard, elated
with the receipt of his impersonation of Pompion the Big,
'a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon
dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and
a very good bowler; but for Alisander — alas, you see how
'tis, a little o'erparted/1

Greater things than these were attempted in towns
like Stratford-on-Avon. There you would find an entire
company, with a scroll of every man's name, able to dis-
charge you all the parts in such plays as The most lamentable
comedy, and most cruel dcatli of Pyramus and Thisby. We
know how Nick Bottom, the weaver, Francis Flute, the
bellows-mender, Eobin Starveling, the tailor, Tom Snout,
the tinker, and Snug, the joiner — hard-handed men, that
worked in Stratford — answered to the call of Peter Quince,
the carpenter. Sweet Bully Bottom, who had simply the
best wit of them all, and would discharge you any part, in
any beard, albeit his chief humour was for 'Ercles' vein,
a tyrant's vein,' was beyond all doubt a local celebrity,
as well known in Stratford as Clement Perkes on The Hill,
or William Visor in the village of Woncot.

In the eyes of Theseus and Hippolyta all this was mere
tedious folly, necessary to be endured by persons of quality,
and mitigated in some degree by the jests and merriment
in which they were at liberty to indulge at the expense of
the actors. ' The best in this kind,' said Theseus, ' are but
shadows ; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend
them/2

It needed, in truth, a poet's imagination to realise the
debt owed by humanity to the base mechanicals of Stratford,
and to the rude peasants of Shallow. Had not the drama
been deeply rooted in the native soil, it could not have borne
such excellent fruit. This is a law of nature in regard to all
the arts. It was to the village festival and the goat-song in
honour of Dionysus that we owe the sublimity of ^Eschylus,
the grace of Sophocles, the humanity of Euripides, and
the inexhaustible mirth of Aristophanes. And two thousand
years later, in another period of marvellous intellectual

1 Love's L. L. v. 2. 584. 2 Mids. N. Dr. v. 1. 212.

180 A RIDE ON COTSWOLD

growth ; from mysteries and miracles enacted on village
scaffold or rood-loft in parish church — with their strange
admixture of religion and broad farce, Termagant and
Herod side by side; — through the intermediate links of
moralities, rude comedies like Ralph Roister Doister and
Gammer Gurton's Needle, and bloody tragedies such as Gor-
loduc and Titus Andronicus, there was developed in less
than the space of a lifetime the supreme art that culminated
in Hamlet and As You Like It.

It is ever thus. Impenetrable is the mystery enshrouding
the birth of individual genius. But we know that it cannot
be grown to order, as an exotic in a hothouse. It thrives
not on the patronage of the great, the largess of the rich,
or the criticism of the learned. If it were otherwise the
Victorian age would have far surpassed those of Elizabeth
and Pericles in wealth of dramatic genius. How many
itinerant ballad-singers went to make up one Homer ? To
how many rude masons and builders, each doing art-work
perfect of its kind, do we owe the majesty of York Minster,
the beauty of Lincoln, the strength of Ely, the grace of
Salisbury, and the refinement of Westminster? How
many village altar-pieces were painted in the days of
Eaphael ? How many music-loving German peasants went
to produce one Handel ? The world may see another
Shakespeare, but before then we should look for some
assurance that the drama has again taken possession of the
heart of the people, such as was afforded by the rude
gallimaufry of gambols, enacted by disguised rustics on the
village green of Shallow.

Born and bred amidst such surroundings, the poet's mind
received a tincture stronger and more enduring than that
by which in later life, through public means and public
manners, his nature became subdued ' to what it works in,
like the dyer's hand.'1 For it is the vase of freshly -moulded
clay that longest holds the rose-scent. And year by year, as
autumn came round, he renewed his giant strength, like
another Antaeus, by contact with the earth from which he
sprang.2 Thus it came to pass that his images of country

1 Sonnet cxi.

2 The tradition that Shakespeare spent each autumn with his family at

AN AGE OF PLAY-ACTORS 181

life and of field sports are as fresh and vivid in middle
life as they were in the early days of Venus and Adonis
and Love's Labour's Lost, or as we find them in the later years,
when, again living amidst the scenes and pursuits of the
' age between sixteen arid three-and-twenty/ 1 he wrote The
Tempest and Cymbeline.

And so by constant arid lifelong devotion to nature — for
sport is but one form of nature worship — he kept alive in
middle life the sensations of boyhood, and the child was the
father of the man, his days being

Bound each to each by natural piety.

It is in the simple and abiding facts of nature that the
greatest and sanest intellects have sought and found refuge
from the vain questionings and imaginings of the human
mind, and from the lies that have been invented to quiet
them. I do not know that this feeling has been better ex-
pressed in prose than by Charles Kingsley, when he wrote :
' Gladly would I give up history to think of nothing but
dicky-birds — but it must not be yet. Som

too old to think, I trust to be able to ffifow away al
suits save natural history, and die with my mind full of
God's facts, instead of man's lies; ''or in poetry than by
"Wordsworth, when, complaining that the world is too much
with us, he exclaims :

Great God ! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn —
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.

Such glimpses can be had by all who seek for them where
they may be found. It was thus when the world was young.
The preacher set his heart to search out by wisdom, concern-
ing all things done under heaven — the sore travail given by
God to the sons of men. And with fullest knowledge of the
wisdom, madness, and folly of men, he pronounces all to be
vanity and vexation of spirit. Then he turned to nature.

Stratford is confirmed by the fact that he continued throughout his life to
be described iii legal documents as of Stratford, which he evidently regarded
as his permanent abode. * Wint. Tale, iii. 3. 59.

182 A fclDE ON COTS WOLD

'And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Leba-
non, even unto the hyssop that springe th out of the wall ;
he spake also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things
and of fishes.' His words have been lost to mankind. But
of some things I am certain. What he spake of beasts and
of fowl had nothing in common with the passages quoted in
these pages ; for the literature of the children of Jacob
shows no trace of devotion to any of the sports of the field,
loved by Esau, not wisely but too well. Again, I feel sure
that he wrote of them in the spirit of the Canticles rather
than in that of Ecclesiastes ; and lastly, I doubt not that
what he spake of nature, with what he wrote of men, led up
to one and the same ' conclusion of the whole matter : fear
God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty
of man.'

The wisest and greatest of moderns gives the same answer
to the obstinate questionings by which the great king of
Israel was sorely perplexed some twenty-eight centuries
ago. In vain will you look to Shakespeare for any light
upon the great religious, social, and philosophical questions
of his day.

What was his creed ? He has been variously described,
and with equal confidence, as a Koman Catholic and as a
Protestant ; as a deist and as an atheist. An English lawyer
suspects, and a Frenchman of letters proves to his complete
satisfaction, that he was a Roman Catholic.1 A Scottish
Bishop claims him as a faithful son of the English Church
of the Reformation.2 Many lessons in true religion may
be learned from Shakespeare; but with regard to the con-
tending factions of the day he had nothing to teach us,
unless it be the easy-going toleration thus characteristi-
cally expressed by a certain clown: 'For young Charbon
the puritan and old Poysam the papist, howsome'er their
hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one ; they
may joul horns together, like any deer i1 the herd.'3

1 Historical Memoirs of English Catholics, by Charles Butler (1819).
Shakespeare, par A. L. Rio. (Paris) 1864. See also an article in the Edin-
burgh Review (Jan. 1866) entitled, Was Shakespeare a Roman Catholic? and
a recent article in the Fortnightly Review, 1904, by Mr. W. S. Lilly.

2 Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible, by Charles Wordsworth,
Bishop of St. Andrews (1864). 3 AW* Well, i. 3. 55.

SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS 183

What were his politics ? He has been claimed as the
harbinger of the modern spirit. He has been described as
' incarnated uncompromising feudalism in literature ; ' l while
according to Gervinus, ' no man fought more strongly against
rank and class prejudice than Shakespeare,' who dared in
the reign of James I. ' to speak of political freedom.' But
of his proper opinions I can find no trace ; — unless, indeed,
he has put them into the mouth of Sir Andrew Aguecheek,
when he said :

I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.

Twelfth Night, iii. 2. 33.

What was his philosophy ? I doubt that he could have
formulated his ideas after the fashion of any school. But
that he never applied his mind to obtain some solution of the
problems of life is not to be believed. What is life ? What
is matter, in itself, apart from our sensations ? How came
they into being ? What is their appointed end ? Is this
vast universe nothing more than an aggregate of ever-shifting
phenomena, capable of discovery by empirical science ? Does
materialistic philosophy leave nothing unaccounted for ; and
are the boastful words addressed by Lucretius to his master,
and re-echoed by feebler imitators to-day, borne out by fact :

Natura tua vi
Tarn manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est ?

What of

Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised ?

What of the visions of prophets and seers, and revelations,
in every age, of things unseen by the eye of sense ? What
of the store of ideas having no counterpart in the world of
matter, the presence of which to the mind is a fact more

1 Walt Whitman, quoted by Prof. Dowden (Shakespere, His Mind and
Art).

184 A RIDE ON COTS WOLD

certain than the objective existence of a material universe,
inasmuch as they form part of our very consciousness ?

Those whose minds are racked by questions like these will
look in vain to Shakespeare for definite answers. But they
may learn from him something better than cut-and-dry dog-
matism. They are taught the mental attitude which befits
them in regard to a whole universe of objects of thought,
not capable of being touched, tasted, handled, or weighed in
balances of scientific construction. In inquiries into the
nature and origin of life, as in the subdivision of matter, an
ultimate point is at some time reached, beyond which research
remains as fruitless after three centuries of Bacon as it was
after two thousand years of Aristotle. Such a point may
also be reached in the confines of the seen and unseen worlds,
beyond which if we would pass it must be under some
guidance other than that of philosophy, This is a great
truth, the realisation of which is Summa sapientia; and it
has never been better expressed than by words put into the
mouth of Hamlet, in the presence of a mysterious something,
for which the philosophy of Wittenberg could not account :

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our1 philosophy.

Hamlet, i. v. 167.

There is a middle course possible between, on the one
hand, denying the existence of these undreamed-of things,
and, on the other, wasting a lifetime in fruitless efforts to
give them form and definition. The practical mind of
Shakespeare was in little danger of falling into the latter
extreme, or of ignoring the attractions of the world of sense.
Perhaps, after all, if the diarist had faithfully recorded all
that was said in the course of his ride on Cotswold, we should
have had no richer inheritance than some stray thoughts of

1 Thus the Folio. The alteration of 'our' into 'your,' adopted from the
quartos by the Cambridge editors, is not only a departure from the true
original text, but, like many errors of the surreptitious copyists, mars a dis-
tinct point. Hamlet and Horatio had been fellow-students of philosophy at
Wittenberg.

[I am indebted to Mr. W. Aldis Wright, the editor of the Cambridge
Shakespeare, for a note on the reading of the quartos, which will be found in
the Note entitled The First Folio.]

A PRACTICAL CONCLUSION 185

outward things, not very different from those with which the
passages collected in these pages are conversant. If we seek
for converse high

Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate :
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute. . . .
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame ;

and would know where, and from whom, such discourse may
be had, we may inquire of the great puritan poet, who of all
the qualities of Shakespeare selects for admiration his
' native wood-notes wild.'

CHAPTER XII
A DAY'S HAWKING

Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook,
I saw not better sport these seven years' day.

Second Part of King Henry VI.

WHEN William Silence aiid his sister Ellen left old Silence's
house in order to take part in Master Petre's hawking, they
had little fear lest Abraham Slender should join the company,
and thus mar their plots. Ellen Silence was in her brother's
confidence, and had made sure of this on the day before.
She was, as we know, the justice's favourite god-daughter,
and she and her father were wont to dine at Shallow Hall on
Sundays. Coming over to the Hall after Sir Topas's famous
discourse had been brought to an inglorious end, she found
there to her surprise Master Will Squele and the fair Anne.
Their presence was part of the justice's deep-laid scheme.
He was resolved that Abraham Slender should lack no oppor-
tunity of pressing his suit, especially in view of the dangerous
proximity of William Silence. Heartily did Silence laugh as
Ellen told what she had seen and heard ; how Abraham
would not come in to dinner until Anne had been sent to
the garden to bid him; and with what grave formality the
message had been delivered. Let us hear her story in the
very words of the speakers :

Anne. Will't please your worship to come in, sir ?

Slen. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily ; I am very well.

Anne. The dinner attends you, sir.

Slen. I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. Go, sirrah,
for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin Shallow. (Exit
Simple.) A justice of peace sometime may be beholding to his
friend for a man. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my

186

MASTER SLENDEft AND THE BEARS 187

mother be dead : but what though 1 yet I live like a poor gentle-
man born.

Anne. I may not go in without your worship : they will not sit
till you come.

Slen. I' faith, I'll eat nothing ; I thank you as much as though
I did.

Anne. I pray you, sir, walk in.

Slen. I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruised my shin
th' other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of
fence ; three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes ; and, by my troth,
I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. Why do your dogs
bark so 1 Be there bears i' the town 1

Anne. I think there are, sir ; I heard them talked of.

Slen. I love the sport well \ but I shall as soon quarrel at it as
any man in England. You are afraid, if you see the bear loose,
are you not ?

Anne. Ay, indeed, sir.

Slen. That's meat and drink to me, now. I have seen Sackerson
loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain; but, I
warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it, that it
passed : but women, indeed, cannot abide 'em ; they are very ill-
favoured rough things. Merry Wives, i. 1. 275.

" Now, by all that's holy," said Silence, " I'll wager on the
bear against the lady. If there be bears in the town, you
will not see Abraham Slender to-day."

As he was so saying, they overtook Clement Perkes and
his friend, wending their way from the hill to take part in
the day's sport in accordance with Petre's hospitable invita-
tion of the day before. They went on foot, provided, for the
purpose of clearing obstacles, with hawking poles, like to that
the breaking of which well-nigh cost the eighth Henry his
life in a Hertfordshire ditch.

"What say you, goodman Perkes," said Silence, "you know
Master Slender and his ways? There are bears in the town.
Think you that he will find it in his heart to leave them ? "

"T faith that a' wont," said the honest yeoman, "a'd
sooner leave to live than a'd quit the bear-garden."

' And so we fell to talking of bears and bear-bay tings and
bull-baytiugs, and what manner of men they be that haunte
them.' These are the diarist's words.

188 A DAY'S HAWKING

When I read so far, I again hoped that I might be able to
give to the world some words from the lips of the nameless
stranger. Again I was doomed to disappointment. But
though the diary is silent as to his words, we have a better
and more enduring record of the thoughts of one of the
party.

Who are the lovers and haunters of bear-baitings and
such-like sports ?

(a) The knave, Autolycus :

Out upon him? Prig, for my life, prig; he haunts wakes,
fairs, and bear-baitings . . . not a more cowardly rogue in all
Bohemia. Winter's Tale, iv. 3. 108.

(b) The fool, Abraham Slender, and his congener, Sir
Andrew Aguecheek :

I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have
in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. Twelfth Night, i. 3. 97.

(c) The sot, Sir Toby Belch :

You know [said Fabian to the knight, of Mavolio] he brought
me out o' favour with my lady about a bear-baiting here.

Sir To. To anger him we'll have the bear again ; and we will
fool him black and blue, shall we not, Sir Andrew 1
Sir And. An we do not, it is pity of our lives.

Twelfth Night, ii. 5. 8.

If it be true that the puritan Malvolio objected to the bear-
baiting, not for the pain it gave the bear, but for the pleasure
it afforded the sportsman, Sir Toby was even with him, and
would have the bear back again, not so much for the sport's
sake as to anger the puritan.

(d) The villain, Richard III. If he were not a frequenter
of the bear-garden, he could not have said :

Rich. Oft have I seen a hot o'erweening cur

Run back and bite, because he was withheld ;
Who, being suffer'd with the bear's fell paw,
Hath clapped his tail between his legs and cried ;
And such a piece of service will you do,
If you oppose yourself to match Lord Warwick.

Clif. Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump,
As crooked in thy manners as thy shape !

2 Hen. VI. v. 1. 151,

SOME HAUNTERS OF PARIS-GARDEN 189

Images from the bear-garden are for ever recurring to the
mind of Richard. Thus he compares his father York, en-
gaged in battle, to

a bear, encompass'd round with dogs,
Who having pinch'd a few and made them cry
The rest stand all aloof, and bark at him.1

3 Hen. VI. il 1. 15.

(«) The wretch, Thersites, to whose lips the cries of Paris-
garden rise familiar, when Menelaus and Paris fight before
his eyes :

Now, bull ! now dog ! 'loo, Paris, 'loo ! Now my double-
henned sparrow ! 'loo, Paris, 'loo ! The bull has the game ; ware
horns, ho ! Troil. and Ores. v. 7. 10.

(/) The monster, Aaron ; ' I was their tutor to instruct
them/ he boasts of Tamora's sons, whom Lucius had called
barbarous beastly villains, like himself :

That bloody mind I think they learned of me,
As true a dog as ever fought at head.

Tit. Andr. v. 1. 101.

(g) The common rabble, thus addressed :

You'll leave your noise anon, ye rascals : do you take the Court
for Paris-garden ? ye rude slaves, leave your gaping.

Hen. VIII. v. 4. 1.

Could Shakespeare have said in plainer language that
bear-baiting and bull-baiting were in his eyes sports fit only
for knaves, fools, sots, villains, wretches, monsters, or the
common rabble ?

1 This passage and the preceding are not to be found in the Whole Con-
tention of the Houses of York and Lancaster, the older play taken by Shake-
speare as the foundation of his work. They are touches carefully added by
the master hand of the artist, in limning the features of Richard's character.
Richard's thoughts recur to bear-baiting ; Hamlet's to recollections of wood-
craft and falconry. These small matters, we may be sure, are not without
significance. The incidents of bear-baiting were, of course, familiar to all,
and reference to bears, bear-herds, and the stake are not infrequent ( Twelfth
N. iii. 1. 129 ; 2 Hen. VI. v. 1. 144 ; Jul. Cats. iv. 1. 48 ; K. Lear, iii. 7.
54; 2 Hen. V. i. 2. 192; etc.). Allusions of this kind are very different
from the passages quoted above, which were intended to represent the
speakers as habitual frequenters of the bear-garden.

190 A DAY'S HAWKING

And yet no pastime had, in his day, a stronger hold of
the people of England than bear-baiting, and its kindred
amusements of bull-baiting and cock-fighting. They had
not in Shakespeare's eyes the charm of the honest sports of
the field, though he could admire the pluck of the British
mastiff. ' Foolish curs ' (the Duke of Orleans calls them)
' that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and
have^ their heads crushed like rotten apples ! >l Englishmen,
indeed, have little more sense. They never know when they
are beaten; or, as the Constable of France put it, some
centuries before Napoleon, 'If the English had any appre-
hension they would run away.'2

Professional feeling may possibly have, to some extent,
blinded the eyes of the play-house manager, to the attractions
of the bear-garden; for there was traditional war between
the play-house and the bear-garden at the Bankside, and
neither would lose an opportunity of girding at the other.

However this may be, it is certain that Abraham Slender
was not one of the company assembled in the courtyard of
Petre Manor on the morn of the hawking party. But
William Silence's triumph was short-lived. He had to learn
by yet another instance that the course of true love never
did run smooth. Old Will Squele was there also. His cold
reception of William Silence's greetings, and his manifest in-
tention of keeping his daughter by his side, forbad all hope
of a private interview on that day. But his loss is our gain.
For if he had not been baulked in his expectation, Silence
certainly would not have bestowed upon the sports of the
day the close attention which we find reflected in the pages
of his diary.

A fair scene met the eyes of the company assembled in
the courtyard of Petre Manor. It was a glorious day
in September, such as might well bring upon the giant in
the immortal allegory his worst of fits. Bright colours
glancing in the sun, and the merry sounds of hawks, dogs,
and men, dispelled the gloom which usually hung around
the mouldering courts of the ancient manor-house. The
lady Katherine, like most women of spirit, loved dress.
The hardest part of her training was when she had to forego

1 Hen. V. iii. 7. 153. 2 Ibid. 145.

THE HAWKS ARE MADE READY 191

the gown elaborately fashioned by Feeble, the woman's
tailor. We may be sure that the gossip of Petre Manor
lost nothing in the telling, as Feeble related at The Hill to
Clement Perkes and his visitor the strange doings of the
squire. ' I never saw ' (said poor Kate) ' a better fashioned
gown, more quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable.'1
She wears this gown now. If you are curious as to such
matters, and look at the illustration in Turbervile's Booke
of Faulconrie, representing a great lady riding out a-hawking,2
you will find in her gown all the peculiarities against which
Petre directed the shafts of his ridicule, and in particular
' the sleeves curiously cut.'

Pet. What's this 1 A sleeve ? 'Tis like a demi-cannon ;
What, up and down, carved like an apple tart 1
Here's snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,
Like to a censer in a barber's shop ;
Why, what, i' devil's name, tailor, call'st thou this 1

Tarn, of Shreiv. iv. 3. 88.

If you study the curious old print carefully, you may
imagine, rather than discern, the place of the tiny velvet
cap, from which the veil depends. It affords neither shade
nor warmth. But what of that ? For, as the lady Katherine
explains: 'This doth fit the time, And gentlewomen wear
such caps as these.'3 Fashion had not then decreed that
ladies should ride out hunting or hawking in the austere
rigidity of the modern riding-habit and hat, and indeed both
sexes displayed in the field much of the bravery of apparel
characteristic of the time.

The day was a favourable one for the sport. It was clear,
without being too hot, and above all was calm. 'During

1 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 3. 101.

2 This lady is Queen Elizabeth. Some of the illustrations in this book are
taken from an older French work, La Fauconnerie, by Jean Frauchieres, usually
bound with La Venerie f by Jacques du Fouilloux, from which many of the
illustrations in The Noble Arte are borrowed. But the figure of Queen
Elizabeth, in characteristic attire, is a distinctive feature of the English
works. The likeness is remarkable in the print which shows the huntsman
presenting on his knees to the ' noble Queene ' the tokens of the hart (The
Noble Arte). In the French original (La Venerie) the huntsman kneels
before the King — ' Devant le Roy viens pour mon report faire.'

3 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 3, 69.

192 A DAY'S HAWKING

windy weather it is only at a great risk of loss that hawks
can be flown at any quarry.' l The careful falconer would
not let a valuable haggard falcon, manned and reclaimed, like
old Joan, go out in a high wind.

Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high ;
And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out.

2 Hen. VI. ii. 1. 3.

But if you would get rid of a haggard that proved irre-
claimable, you would * whistle her off and let her down the
wind, to prey at fortune.' 2

The hawks had not been fed that day, for it is true of
beasts and birds of prey, as of mankind, that 'hunger will
enforce them to be more eager/ 3 or ' as an empty eagle, sharp
by fast.' 4

Look, as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk,

Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight,

Make slow pursuit, or altogether baulk

The prey wherein by nature they delight ;

So surfeit- taking Tarquin fares. Lucrece, 694.

Those that were required for the day's sport were placed,
hooded, upon a wooden frame or * cadge' carried by an
attendant, called from his occupation a ' cadger.' His was
the humblest task connected with the sport, and his title, like
that of knave, became in time a term of reproach.

And so the company, some on horseback and some on foot,
sallied from the courtyard, and made their way across the
meadows to the great common-field lying between Petre
Manor and the brook.

" And first," said Petre to Master Shallow, " I will show
you a flight at the partridge. Here, in this cornfield, where
the stubble grows high beside the balks,5 I dare swear a
covey lies. The birds are yet young, and we may see some
sport, and withal furnish the larder for supper. 'Where's
my spaniel, Troilus ? ' 6 Here, Troilus, to it, to it." Troilus,

1 Salvin and Brodrick's Falconry in the British Isles.

2 Othello, iii. 3. 262. 3 1 Hen. VI. i. 2. 38. 4 Ven. and Ad. 55.

8 * The Common land is divided by the Baulks, and cannot be profitably
or conveniently cultivated in its present state" (Report of Inclosure Com-
mittee, Last Records of a Cotswold Community , 1904).

6 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 153.

THE PARTRIDGES ARE ENMEWED 193

the spaniel, beat the stubble, ranging far and wide over the
acres1 divided by the balks. Full of grass and weeds, and
standing high, before the days of reaping machines and care-
ful tillage, it afforded ample cover, especially where it mingled
with the rough grass covering the balks, or boundaries sepa-
rating the acres of the extensive common-field.

The falconer, taking a falcon from the cadge and holding
her on his fist, followed the dog. It was not long before
Troilus acknowledged the presence of the game, by setting
after the manner of well- trained spaniels. The falconer at
once unhooded and cast off the falcon, whistling her from
his fist. Mounting higher and higher in wide circles, she
seemed to the ordinary looker on as though she would be
lost for ever in the clouds, unless something were done to
recall her attention to the game before her. Not so to the
practised falconer, who held Troilus by the collar, to prevent
him from rushing in and springing the birds before the
falcon had mounted to her full pitch.

It was hard to believe that the ever lessening spot between
the company and the sun was a comrade of man, under his
control, and taking an intelligent if not altogether disinter-
ested part in his pastime. Yet so it was, and if Troilus'
point had proved a false one, the falcon would have followed
man and dog, as they beat the extensive common-field, hawk
and dog working together with one common end in view.2
But Troilus was of the right sort, else his name would not
have been handed down to us, and there was no mistake
about his point.

At length the falcon, swinging round and round in lessen-
ing circles, reached her full pitch, and hung steadily with her
head to the wind, some hundred and fifty yards above the
earth. In the language of falconry, she waited on, ' towering
in her pride of place/ 3 She was ' a falcon towering in the
skies.' 4

Petre could claim, with Warwick the king-maker, that he
had perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment ' Between two

1 1 Hen. IV. i. 1. 25.

2 See a description of the combined action of hawk and greyhound in
pursuit of the antelope in Persia, Quarterly Review, xxxvi. 358.

3 Macbeth, ii. 4. 12. 4 Lucrece, 506.

194 A DAY'S HAWKING

hawks, which flies the higher pitch ? ' and he might have
added, with truth,

Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth ;
Between two blades, which bears the better temper ;
Between two horses, which doth bear him best ;
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye ?

1 Hen. VI. ii. 4. 10.

Of the falcon now waiting on he would say that she is not
one to ' fly an ordinary pitch.' l She was the best of his
falcons, except old Joan, and was generally reserved for
' flying at the brook.' But Petre was impatient to show the
company what his hawks could do, and so he now flew her in
the field. As for old Joan, not a falcon in Gloucestershire
could mount her pitch. But she was a thoroughly trained
and made heroner, and was never flown at any less noble
quarry.

Meanwhile the covey lay like stones beneath the shadow
of the bird of prey and the terror of her bells. The hawk
was always furnished with bells attached to her legs. ' As
the ox hath his bow, sir,' says Touchstone, ' the horse his curb,
and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires.'2 They
served a twofold purpose. By their sound a falconer could
trace an erring hawk, while they struck terror to the heart
of the listening fowl.

Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
, With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells.

Lucrece, 510.

In partridge-hawking, while the falcon or tercel-gentle
was mounting to its pitch, the sound of its bells secured the
close lying of the covey, cowed as were England's barons by
the king-maker.

1 The word ' pitch,' signifying in falconry the height to which a falcon
soars or towers (1 Hen. VI. ii. 4. 11 ; 2 Hen VI. ii. 1. 6. ; Jul. CMS. i. 1. 78),
was used figuratively (Rich. II. i. 1. 109 ; Tit. Andr. ii. 1. 14 ; Horn, and
Jul. i. 4. 21 ; Jul. C'ces. i. 1. 78 ; Sonnet Ixxxvi. G), and came to mean height
in general (Twelfth Night, i. 1. 12 ; 1 Hen. VI. ii. 3. 55 ; Rich. HI. iii, 7.
188 ; Sonnet vii. 9). The point to which the long-winged hawk towers was
also called ' her place ' (Macbeth, ii. 4. 12).

2 As You L. iii. 3. 80.

A FELL SWOOP 195

Neither the king, nor he that loves him best,
The proudest he that holds up Lancaster,
Dares stir a wing, if Warwick shakes his bells.

3 Hen. VI. i. 1. 45.

They were in hawking language 'enmewed,' and dare not
show themselves openly any more than could, follies and vices
in the city of Vienna, under the stern rule of Angelo the
Deputy, of whom Isabella says,

This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head and follies doth enmew l
As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil.

Measure for M. iii. 1. 89.

When Petre was satisfied that the falcon was steadily
waiting on, Troilus was allowed to spring the birds. The
falcon instantly selected her quarry from the covey, and
directing her course by a few strokes, swooped downward
with closed wings. This is the stoop, or swoop, of the long-
winged hawk, by which it kills or stuns its prey. Of such
a deadly stoop thought Macduff, when he explained of
Macbeth, 0 hell-kite ! All 1

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam

At one fell swoop? Macbeth, iv. 3. 21.

But the fatal blow was not then dealt. The partridge
singled out by the falcon happened to be the old cock bird.
Partly by strength of wing and partly by craft, he eluded
the first onslaught of the enemy, and fled for shelter to a
neighbouring thicket, while the rest of the covey settled
down in a more distant part of the great common-field.

1 The correction ' enew ' adopted by Dr. Schmidt (Shakespeare Lexicon)
and Professor Baynes (Shakespeare Studies) is unnecessary and inept. The
secondary use of the word ' enmew ' in the sense of ' to cause to lie close and
keep concealed, as hawk in mew,' is illustrated by a passage in Beaumont and
Fletcher's Knight of Malta, where a warrior besetting a town is compared to a
falcon mounting her pitch, and is said to 'inmew the town below him.'
' Enew is a term used in connection with flying at the brook. It is used by
Drayton, Turbervile, and Nash (Quatemio), apparently in the sense of driving
the fowl into the water. Hence, probably, its derivation in the Norman
French language of hawking. It is not as appropriate to the passage quoted
in the text as the original reading. It is more natural to speak of Angelo
causing follies to lie close, than of driving them into water.

196 A DAY'S HAWKING

When the falcon recovered herself, she again mounted into
the air. The falcon does not fly after game in a stern chase,
as the greyhound courses the hare, or the short-winged hawk
pursues its quarry. She must needs soar aloft, and then
swoop down. Circling around, she marked with keen eye
the spot where the bird had ' put in,' and making her point
accordingly, waited on, high above the thicket, but not rising
to her full pitch.

Again the bird was put up by Troilus, and again the
falcon stooped from her pride of place, swift and resistless
as a thunderbolt. This time her aim was unerring. In the
language of falconry she 'stoop'd as to foot' her quarry;1
and when Master Petre and the falconer rode up, she had
' soused '2 the partridge, and holding it firmly in her foot, she
had begun to devour, or in hawking language to tire on the
bird, after the manner of birds of prey :

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone.
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuff'd or prey be gone.3

Ven. and Ad. 55.

Had she been left to herself, 'twere long ere she had been
' disedged ' (or had the edge taken off her keen appetite) by
that on which she tired.4 But as she was needed for further
flights, the falconer took the bird from her, rewarding her,
however, with the head, so as to stimulate her to further
exertion^and having hooded her, replaced her on the cadge.

The party then betook themselves to the division of the
common-field whither the rest of the covey had flown, dis-
cussing as they rode the incidents of the flight — somewhat
after the following fashion of a certain royal hawking party:

K. Hen. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest !
To see how God in all his creatures works !
Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.
Suf. No marvel, an it like your majesty,

My lord protector's hawks do tower so well ;

1 Cymb. v. 4. 116. 2 See K. John, v. 2. 150.

3 Of. 3 Hen. VI. i. 1. 268 ; Tim. of Ath. iii. 6. 5 ; Lucrece, 417.

4 Cymb. iii. 4. 96 ; cf. Rich. II. i. 3. 296 ; Hamlet, iii. 2. 260.

THE USE OF THE LURE 197

They know their master loves to be aloft

And bears his thoughts above his falcon's pitch.

Olo. My lord, 'tis but a base ignoble mind

That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.1

Car. I thought as much ; he would be above the clouds.2

2 Hen. VI. ii. 1. 5.

The next flight was not so successful as the former.

"The birds are yet young," said Petre, "and may well
be taken by a tassel-gentle. I will now essay a flight with
one which I had of Master Edmund Bert in exchange for an
Irish goshawk. Here, master falconer, let's try what Jack
can do."

The falconer took the bird from the cadge, and followed
Troilus to the place where they had marked down the scat-
tered covey. The dog forthwith began to draw, and the fal-
coner unhooded and cast off the hawk ; but, as ill luck would
have it, he forbore to hold Troilus back, and the dog, spring-
ing forward, flushed the game before the hawk had mounted
to its full pitch. Downward swooped the hawk, but with
uncertain aim, pursuing his quarry rather than striking it
down, and, in the end, missing it altogether. Petre and
Silence rode as hard as they could, but as the direction
taken by the partridge was down-wind, the danger of losing
the tercel-gentle was imminent.

" ' Had not your man put up the fowl so suddenly/ " said
Silence, " ' we had had more sport.' " 3

" Hist, Jack, hist ! " cried Petre. " ' 0 ! for a falconer's
voice, to lure this tassel-gentle back again.' * ... * Hillo,
ho, ho, boy ! Come, bird, come.' " 5

Thus snouted Petre, but the hawk heeded him not, and
they could hear the sound of his bells as he flew down-wind.
The falconer quickly came up, holloing " ' Jack, boy ! ho !

1 Of. K. John, i. 1. 206.

2 In The Whole Contention the hawking incident occurs. But the dia-
logue has been re-written and materially changed by Shakespeare, in order
no doubt to bring it into accord with true falconry.

3 2 Hen. VI. ii. 1. 45. * Rom. and Jul. ii. 2. 159.

5 Hamlet, i. 5. 115. This is the language of Falconry. For, according to
Blome, when you would train a hawk to follow you, "you should with a
gentle and low voice call her after you as before directed, saying, "Come,
come" ' (Gentleman's Recreation, 1686).

198 A DAY'S HAWKING

boy!"'1 and soon succeeded in attracting the attention of
the erring tercel-gentle, partly by his voice, but mostly by
use of the lure. This was a sham bird, usually constructed
of pigeon's wings weighted, to which was attached food for
the hawk, known as a train.2 Attracted by the semblance of
a bird, and by the reality of a meal, the hawk soon descended
to the lure. So it was in due course removed, rehooded, and
restored to the cadge.

The flight of the falcon, whether at her quarry or to the
lure, is the very type of speed, confidence, and strength.
When Henry Bolingbroke would fight with Thomas Duke of
Norfolk, his onslaught, we are told, would be ' as confident as
is the falcon's flight Against a bird.'3 And of Venus, when,
hearing a merry horn, she believes her Adonis to be still
alive, we read,

As falcon to the lure, away she flies ;

The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light.

Ven. and Ad. 1027.

Several flights were then tried, with varying fortune, until
the bag contained two and a half brace of partridge.

Then said Petre, " By my faith, this hath been a deadly
day to the birds. Let us now stay our hands, and essay a
flight at some other quarry."

"Only two brace and a half of partridge," exclaims the
shooter of driven game, used to slaughter his birds by
the hundred ; brace, dozen and score were useful words in
the reckoning of our forefathers, but they are out of date
in the tale of a modern battue ; — " Only two brace and a half
of partridges, what poor sport ! "

In a dialogue, after the fashion of old books of sport,
between AUCEPS, as the spokesman of falconry, and CARNI-
FEX, on behalf of modern shooters, each commending his

1 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 42.

2 ' Devilish Macbeth,' says Malcolm, * By many of these trams had sought
to win me into his power' (Mad. iv. 3. 117). 'To train' frequently occurs
in the sense of ' to allure ' (Com. of Err. iii. 2. 45 ; K. John, iii. 4. 175 ;
1 Hen. IV. v. 2. 21; 1 Hen. VI. ii. 3. 35; Tit. Andr. v. 1. 104). The
hunters of the wolf are instructed in The Noble Arte how to ' lay down their
traynes ' so as to allure them to the place where they desire to find them.

3 Rich. II. i. 3. 61.

AN OLD-WORLD DIALOGUE 199

recreation, AUCEPS would, I think, have held his own. He
would have admitted at once that the art of fowling could
never, in his time, have attained to the slaughter of several
hundred birds by one man in a single day. A few, no doubt,
might be killed by bird-bolt,1 shot from stone-bow,2 or by
birding-piece,3 if you could use it aright, and had skill to
stalk on until the fowl should sit,4 and under presentation of
the stalking horse to shoot your bolt.6 The creeping fowler
might approach the wild goose, or duck, or russet-pated
chough,6 before it could spy him. But for one bird killed by
the discharge of his caliver, many ' a poor hurt fowl ' would
' creep into sedges,' 7 and if it had the good luck to recover,
it would be more wary in future, for what could ' fear the
report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild
duck,' 8 unless it were one of Falstaff 's commodity of warm
slaves ? As for those that were not hit, the fowler is not
likely to meet with them again, after that they,

Kising and cawing at the gun's report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky.

Mids. N. Dr. iii. 2. 22.

Full many a fowler had good right to respond to the falconers'
toast, as given by Petre: 'a health to all that shot and
miss'd.'9

The fowler, it is true, had his ' springes to catch wood-
cocks/10 and his lime-twigs, familiar to the thoughts of the
stranger from Stratford.11 He would take birds at night by
bat-fowling.12 He had his nets, his pitfalls, and his gins.13
But birds will become shy where bushes are constantly
limed.

The bird that hath been limed in a bush,
With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush ;

3 Hen. VI. v. 6. 13.

1 Much Ado, i. 1. 42 ; Love's L. L. iv. 3. 25 ; Twelfth N. i. 5. 100.

2 Twelfth N. ii. 5. 51. 3 Merry Wives, iv. 2.59.
4 Much Ado, ii. 3. 95. 5 As You L. v. 4. 111.

6 Mids. N. Dr. iii. 2. 20. » Much Ado, ii. 1. 209.

8 Hen. IV. iv. 2. 20. » Tarn, of Shrew, v. 2. 61.

10 Wini. Tale, iv. 3. 36 ; Hamlet, i. 3. 115 ; Ibid. v. 2. 317.

11 The liming of birds is alluded to by Shakespeare in thirteen passages.

12 Tempest, ii. 1. 185. 13 Macbeth, iv. 2. 34,

200 A DAY'S HAWKING

to say nothing of the disadvantage that the fowler, in order
to use his bird-lime, net, or springe aright, must take pains
to learn somewhat of the nature and habits of the bird he
would take, "from which labour, Master CARNIFEX," AUCEPS
would readily admit, " the shooter of driven game would
seem, from what you say, to be wholly free; although,
indeed, the master and deviser of the drive doth stand
in need of some such knowledge."

Hunger's prevention, he would add, is the end of fowl-
ing,1 whereas falconry has ever been a gentle and noble art
in the eyes of princes and honourable persons. Further,
he would point out that ladies took delight in the gentle
art of falconry, especially in the flight of the merlin,
whereas it is not to be supposed that they would be present
at the mere slaughter by the hundred of innocent birds,
although he would readily admit that such slaughter was
excusable, and even commendable, for the prevention of
hunger.

Whereupon CARNIFEX would, with some indignation, ex-
plain that he did not shoot birds for the prevention of
hunger ; that each bird he shot cost him four or five times
its value as an article of food; that his was the sport of
princes, and right honourable, as well as honourable persons ;
that he wondered how it could be compared to taking of
birds by bird-lime and springes, the sport (if it could be so
called) of the rabble of towns ; that as for ladies, they loved
nothing better than walking with the guns; and, finally,
that he would like to see AUCEPS try his hand at shooting
the driven grouse, or the rocketing pheasant.

" I grant you," AUCEPS would reply, " that to shoot a bird
flying is indeed more than I can attain unto. I have heard
it said of one that he * rides at full speed, and with his
pistol kills a sparrow flying.'2 but I believe it not. But
what if he did? Is it to be said of the shooter with the
bow who is ' clapped on the shoulder and called Adam/3 or
of the skilful player at tennis, billiards, or bowls, that he
excelleth in field sports because his aim is good? Then

1 Gervaae Markliam published in 1621 a book entitled Hunger's Preven-
tion; or, the Whole Arte of Fowling by Water and Land.

2 1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 379. 3 Much Ado, i. 1. 261.

THE LADY'S STRATAGEM 201

should Bankes be the greatest of horsemen, and the dancing-
horse the noblest of steeds, because they have attained to
do what Alexander and Bucephalus could not ? Unless, in-
deed, it is to be taken that whatsoever endeth in the destruc-
tion of the greatest number of lives, even though it be to
the profit of none, and without exercise of cunning or skill
(save the mean handicraftman's skill of aim), is to be
considered as the first of sports."

But whatever were the arguments used by the disputants,
we may be certain that neither would have yielded one jot
to the other. You may more easily induce a man to abandon
the political principles and professions of a lifetime (if you
go the right way about it) than change his opinions on
matters of sport. Nay, it is easier to turn one from the
faith of his forefathers. And so grouse and partridge will
still be driven, and, in time, salmon and trout may be driven
too, while the angler, stroke-all in hand and luncheon-basket
by his side, sits beside some narrow channel through which
the driven fish must needs pass. And the same reasons will
be given, The fish have grown so wild and shy that they
will not look at the most craftily constructed fly. Why,
even now, an old and wary trout in an over-fished chalk-
stream has been seen to rush away in terror from a natural
fly alighting above his nose. Then it is so much more
difficult to strike the salmon as he darts past you in the
stream than when he closes his mouth for an instant on
your hook. And some may be found old-fashioned enough
to regret that yet another ancient sport had been degraded
to the level of a mere game of skill.

"And now," said Petre, "for a flight at the brook. I
know where we may take a mallard or a duck. But on our
way thither we may perchance find a heron at siege. I
would love well, Master Silence, that you should see old
Joan stoop from her pride of place. Not another falcon in
Gloucestershire flies a pitch like hers."

And hereupon the lady Katherine conceived, and promptly
executed a scheme which the diarist afterwards noted as
determining the whole course of his affairs. " For," he adds,
" to the readye witte and spirit of that most admirable ladye
do I owe all the happiness of my lyfe."

202 A DAY'S HAWKING

Turning to Petre she said: "Thou knowest the country
saying: 'The falcon as the tercel for all the ducks i' the
river/1 by which I understand him who useth it to intend
that he would wager as much on the lady as on her lord.
Now, my lord, I challenge thee to this contest. Take thou
thy falcons and tercel-gentles for flying at the brook, and
leave to rue the lady's hawks — this cast of merlins. I will
keep by me Mistresses Ellen Silence and Anne Squele. Do
thou take Master Squele and the rest of the worshipful
company, and when we meet at dinner let's see which may
show the better sport."

"It's a wager," said Petre, adding in a whisper as he
placed one of the merlins on his wife's hand, " whichever
may show the better sport, I know who hath the keener
wit."

Anne Squele took the other merlin, and accompanied by
Ellen Silence, rode off in the direction of some fallows, the
favourite haunt of larks, while Petre, attended by falconer
and cadger, led William Squele and the rest of the company
through the woodlands towards the brook.

As the lady Katherine had anticipated, Master Ferdinand
Petre found some excuse for following their party. Attach-
ing himself to Ellen, he left Katherine and Anne free to
cloak their meaning "by 'talking of hawking.'2 like Cardinal
Beaufort and the good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester.

Not a suspicion crossed the mind of Will Squele. He
welcomed the move as relieving him from all trouble in the
matter of keeping watch on his daughter. Nor did Silence
realise at the moment that the lady Katherine had brought
to the settlement of their affairs that superabundant energy
which, thwarted, misdirected, and misunderstood, had brought
her into trouble and disrepute in her maiden years. The
stream which had fretted and chafed against each opposing
pebble became a useful motive power, once its collected
waters were turned into a fitting channel — all the more
valuable by reason of the volume of force which had been
wasted before.

Her quick woman's wit had divined that a crisis was at
hand. She had noted the attitude of Squele towards

1 Trail, and Ores, iii, 2. 55. 2 2 Hen. VI. ii. 1. 50.

THE SHORT-WINGED HAWK 203

William, and the misery which Anne vainly tried to hide.
And so she rightly concluded that if she and her husband
were to be of service to their friend, immediate action must
be taken.

" Let's have some sport by the way," said Petre, " as we
ride through this woodland. ' I have a fine hawk for the
bush/1 Here, give me that Irish goshawk, and let Master
Squele have on his fist the sparrow-hawk I had of Master
Bert."

The way to the brook lay through a thickly wooded valley,
and the hawks were carried with their hoods lightly fastened,
in anticipation of a flight at rabbit or bird.

What degree of success they attained I cannot say. The
diarist has failed to note the flights at the bush with the
particularity bestowed on the doings of the falcon and
tercel-gentle. The flight of the short- winged hawk, though
swift and deadly, is not so attractive or suggestive as the
lofty tower and resistless stoop of the falcon. They are not
(in the language of falconry) hawks of the tower, or of the
lure, but of the fist. They fly after their quarry from the
hand, whither they return when the flight is over. To them
their master's hand takes the place of the branch from which,
in their wild state, they watch for their prey.

Most parts of the country are frequented by the kestrel or
windhover, and by the sparrow-hawk. The observer, com-
paring the actions of these common birds, can form some idea
of the difference between the practice of the falconer and of
the astringer. The kestrel, though the most ignoble of long-
winged hawks, still possesses the characteristics of its race.
It hovers in the air, waiting on, until some unhappy field
mouse emerges from its hiding-place, and then it stoops on
its victim. The sparrow-hawk, on the other hand, lurches
from tree to tree, and having selected its quarry, pursues it
in a stern chase, like shot discharged from a fowling-piece,
a similitude which was present to the godfathers of the
' musket ' when they named it after the male sparrow-hawk,
the smallest hawk employed in falconry.

And so we see that every long-winged hawk, though base

1 Merry Wives, iii, 3. 247.

204 A DAY'S HAWKING

and degraded as the kestrel, or the puttock or kite,1 is afalco
still, and of the same order as the eagle, that ' o'er his aery
towers, To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.'2 It is
a different creature from the accipiter, or short-winged hawk ;
and though one falcon may fly a higher pitch than another,
as one man excels his fellows in thought or action, yet are
they alike subject to the conditions of a common nature
which makes the whole world kin. ' The king is but a man
as I am/ said King Henry to the soldier John Bates. ' The
violet smells to him as it doth to me ; the element shows to
him as it doth to me ; all his senses have but human con-
ditions ; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears
but a man ; and though his affections are higher mounted
than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like
wing.' 3

But though the eye of the diarist found little in it to
admire or record, there were many who took delight in the
flight of a well-trained hawk, pursuing its quarry with un-
erring aim through the thickest bush ; and in the days of the
diarist, as in those of Chaucer, the keenest sportsmen, as well
as the noblest in the land, would often ride abroad 'with
grey goshawk in hand.'

The woodland was soon passed, and the hawks were
returned to the cadge, in anticipation of the great event of
the day.

Crossing a wide stretch of open country, the company at
length reached a long winding valley, where the brook had
been dammed up and converted into a pond, somewhat after
the fashion of the water where the hart was taken. It was
stocked with large trout.

With the exception of certain human consciences, there
is nothing in nature so marvellous as the elasticity of the
organisation of the trout, and its power of adapting itself
to altered surroundings. It has no fixed principles in the
matter of size and weight. Leave it in a rocky mountain
stream, and it will live and die among its fellows a two-ounce

1 Imogen thus compares the nobility of Posthumus, the ' poor but worthy
gentleman ' of her choice, with the baseness of Cloten, ' I choose an eagle,
And did avoid a puttock' (Oymb. i. 1. 139).

3 K. John, v. 2. 149. 3 Hen, V. iv. 1. 104.

THE HERON AT SIEGE 205

trout. Transfer it to a pond productive of insect life, and
it thinks nothing of reaching the weight of five or six
pounds. Having attained to such eminence, it devours its
less weighty kith and kin, if they should cross its path. And
so this pond supplied Petre Manor with goodly fish, especially
in the season of Lent. When, however, Petre last returned
home, he shrewdly suspected that it had

been sluiced in's absence,
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour. Wint. Tale, i. 2. 194.

Petre's disposition was not jealous or suspicious, like that of
poor Leontes, in matters great or small. But he never
believed in any of the Smile family. They were, he would
say, too sweet to be wholesome. And his suspicions were
probably well founded.

Now this pond held not only trout fit for the dish, but
hosts of smaller fry, and eels, affected by the heron. About
two miles southward there was a well-stocked heronry,
separated from the brook by a stretch of open wold. No
better country could be desired for the sport of flying at the
heron. Towards the end of February, or early in March, the
herons begin to ' make their passage.' It is then their custom
to sally forth in the morning to distant rivers and ponds in
search of food. Towards evening they leave their feeding
grounds, and return to the heronry. The falconer stations
himself in the open country, down-wind of the heronry, and as
the bird flies over him on its homeward way, the falcons are
cast off, and the flight begins.

This is the sport of taking herons on the passage. It was
commonly practised in spring, but at other seasons of the
year excellent sport might be had if a heron could be found
at siege, and in the hope of such good fortune the company
made for the pond.

Petre, like Bertram, had a ' hawking eye.' l He quickly
discerned a heron, busily engaged in fishing, and half con-
cealed by willows growing thickly around the pond. He at
once made ready for action. Old Joan was a noted heroner.
She was never flown at any other quarry, and she had been

1 All's Well, i. 1. 105.

206 A DAY'S HAWKING

brought out on the chance of finding a heron at siege.
Taking with him Joan and another well-trained haggard
falcon, and loosing their hoods so as to be ready for a flight,
Petre (who loved to fly his hawks himself) left the company
at a short distance, and dismounting approached the heron,
being careful to keep under the wind, and concealing himself
behind his horse.

At last the wary heron spied him, and, slowly rising, left
the siege. As soon as he had flown a couple of hundred
yards, the falcons were unhooded and cast off. Old Joan
sighted him at once, the other falcon joined in, and the flight
began.

The heron took in the position at a glance. The heronry
lay up-wind, and was distant at least two miles. He could
never succeed in making this point, flying in the teeth of the
wind and pursued by two swift and eager falcons. The country
on every side was bare, and afforded no prospect of shelter.
Driven from earth in despair, he sought shelter in the clouds.
Lightening himself by throwing overboard the result of the
morning's fishing, he ascended to the heavens in spiral curves,
making wide circuits as he mounted aloft. The higher the
heron mounted, the higher soared the falcons. This is what
the old falconers celebrate under the name of the ' mountey '
or ' mountee.' What circles they describe ! There goes old
Joan. Turning her back on the quarry, she rushes into the
wind for full half a mile, and then, sweeping round in a vast
circle, is carried high above the heron. The company can
see them still, but it takes a sharp eye to ' know a hawk
from a handsaw/ l even though the wind is southerly. If it
were north-north-westerly, the birds, carried forward by the
wind, would fly between the spectator and the sun, and to tell
hawk from heron would be harder still.2 They can just see

1 Hamlet, ii. 2. 397.

2 The heron was also called heronshaw (heronsewe in Chaucer's Squier's
Tale, and herounsew in John Russell's Boke of Nurture, circ. 1430), easily
corrupted into handsaw. Shakespeare does not hesitate to put into the
mouths of his characters vulgar corruptions of ordinary language, current in
the stable or in the field. Thus Lord Sands talks of springhalt (stringhalt),
and Biondello of fashions (farcy) and fives (vives). In the edition of Hamlet
by Mr. Clarke and Mr. Aldis Wright, we find the suggestion that* the north-
westerly wind would carry the hawk and the handsaw between the falconer
and the sun, with the consequence that they would be indistinctly seen, while

A FLIGHT AT THE HERON 207

old Joan close her wings, and precipitate herself with fell
swoop on the heron. By a swift movement he narrowly
escapes the blow. Meanwhile the second falcon has mounted
over both. Stooping downward she dashes a few feathers
from the heron's wing, and drives him nearer to the earth.
Old Joan, by ringing into the wind, has more than recovered
her advantage, and is preparing for a deadly stoop. The
three birds are now nearer to the ground, and in full view of
the company, who have followed as best they could, on foot
and on horseback, the course of the flight, carried by the
wind about a mile from the spot where the heron was found.
They are in time to see the finish. Joan's second swoop hit
the heron hard. Her mate renews the attack. In a moment
Joan is bound to the heron. The second falcon comes in,
and the three birds descend steadily to the ground.

The falcons have learned by experience to let go the heron
as they approach the ground. They thus avoid concussion,
and the danger of being spitted by the heron on his sharp,
sword-like bill — a formidable weapon of defence. But the
contest on the ground, which might have been fraught with
danger to the falcons, was soon put an end to by the falconer,
who seized the heron, and rewarding the falcons, hooded
them, and restored them to the cadge.

Then followed some flights at the brook. This sport, in
the opinion of some, ranked higher than heron hawking.
For, as Turbervile says, ' although it [a flight at ye hearon]
be the most noblest and stately flight that is, and pleasant
to behold, yet is there no suche art or industrie therein as in
the other flights. For the hawk fleeth the hearon moved

it would be easy to tell the difference between them when the wind was
southerly. I believe this to be the origin of the saying. It was probably a
common one in Shakespeare's time, which naturally fell out of use with the
practice of falconry. In aid of this suggestion, I may add that in an article
on Falconry in the British Isles in the Quarterly Review (1875), an account of
a flight at the heron is quoted from an old French writer, who describes the
heronshaw as mounting directly towards the sun, pour se coumir de la darte.
The Soothsayer in Cymbeline (iv. 2. 350) notes as a portent that Jove's bird,
the Roman eagle, 'vanished in the sunbeams.' This annoyance must have
occurred constantly on a bright morning with a strong north-north-westerly
wind. The angler who, under similar conditions, in order to have the wind
in his favour, fishes with the glare of the sun in his eyes, can sympathise with
Hamlet when he describes himself as 'mad north -north -west.' When the wind
is southerly he can know a rise from a ripple.

208 A DAY'S HAWKING

by nature, as against hir proper foe ; but to the river she
fleeth as taught by the Industrie and diligece of the
falconer.'

Whatever be the cause, I can find in the diary no record
of the sport, and I must console myself with the knowledge
that flights at the brook did not differ essentially from those
in the field at partridge, although the mallard, being larger
and stronger on the wing, afforded better sport, and, indeed,
could not be successfully flown except by well-trained
haggard falcons.

CHAPTER XIII
A DEAD LANGUAGE

Talking of hawking. . . . Second Part of King Henry VI.

SHORTLY before eleven o'clock — the dinner hour at Petre
Manor — the company reassembled in the old courtyard.
Petre could, as we know, give an excellent account of the
morning's sport. He was in high spirits, not only on this
account, but by reason of some intelligence rapidly conveyed
to him by his wife, who rode into the courtyard with her
party shortly after the rest of the company had returned
from flying at the brook. It is needless to say that they had
nothing to show in the way of results, and Petre would
doubtless have made merry at their expense, had he not
feared to arouse suspicions in the mind of Will Squele. For
the performances of Petre's merlins were well known to
every Cotswold man, and the lady Katherine and Anne
Squele were too expert in the gentle art of falconry to come
back empty-handed, had there not been some good reasons
for the marring of their sport.

A few words sufficed to put William Silence in possession
of Petre's scheme, and of the arrangements which Katherine
had made with Anne for carrying it into effect. It only
remained for William to make the necessary preparations on
his part, and for all to meet at the solemn hunting of the
deer with cross-bow and greyhound, proclaimed by the justice
for the following day.

The details of this scheme are so interwoven with the
nature of the sport in which they were to engage, that I
deem it best to allow the justice's plot and Petre's counter-
plot to unfold themselves side by side with the incidents of
the solemn hunting. I do so the more readily inasmuch as,

P 209

210 A DEAD LANGUAGE

in not anticipating the events of the morrow, I am following
the example of the diarist, from whose notes I can gather
little beyond the facts that he excused himself from staying
to dinner with his friends, and busied himself in preparation
for what was to prove the most eventful day in his life.

Scanty as are the notes of the diarist, they may have
served to impart to the reader some knowledge of the
favourite sport of our forefathers — a pursuit interesting in
itself, and deserving special attention, inasmuch as it has
left its mark plainly traceable on the literature of the
Elizabethan age. Even those who cared nothing for the sport
do not fail to bear witness in their writings to the estimation
in which falconry along with the other sports of the field —
but in a pre-eminent degree — was then generally held.

Each popular sport or pastime tends to develop a language
of its own, affected by its votaries, but generally distasteful
to the outside public. The non-sporting guest at a country
house in a hunting county, or the uninitiated visitor at a
golfing hotel, conscious of missing the point of tales and
allusions, commonly falls into the error of hurling at the
offending sport the strong condemnation which ought to be
directed against his own ignorance.

The language of falconry was picturesque, unique, and
lent itself readily to poetical imagery. It was borrowed by
men of letters, and affected by men of fashion, at one of the
most interesting periods of our history. Incorporated with
the literature of the day, it forms part of our inheritance
from the Elizabethan age. As a sporting language it is
long since dead ; although, like Latin, it may be spoken here
and there by a few learned professors. But three hundred
years ago ' small Latin ' was not more fatal to the reputation
of a scholar than was ignorance of the language of falconry
to the character of a gentleman. To 'speak the hawking
language ' was, according to Ben Jonson, affected by those
' newer men,' who aped the manners of the older gentry.1

It was to qualify himself for gallants' company by skill in
this tongue that Master Stephen, having bought a hawk, hood
and bells, desired a book to keep it by.2 For those who were
not to the manner born had to acquire this language by

1 Speech according to Horace. 2 Every Man in his Humour.

THE HAWKING LANGUAGE 211

painful study. Hence the immense popularity and ready sale
of books of sport in the Elizabethan age, a subject dealt with
at greater length in a note.1

Even those who professed ignorance or dislike of the sport
are found writing in the language of the day. Sir Philip
Sidney is credited with the saying that of all sports, next to
hunting, he hated hawking most.2 And yet in Arcadia the
falcon and goshawk are flown, and the ' Sport of Heron ' is
affected by princes. Nor does he ignore the detested sport
of hunting. For the stag is pursued with hounds, ' their crie
being composed of so well-sorted mouths that any man would
perceive therein som kinde of proportion, but the skilful
woodmen did finde a music.'

Spenser may have been of the same mind with his friend
and patron Sidney. But his pages prove that he was well
skilled in the hawking language, and many apt illustrations
evidence familiarity with the sport.

The traces of this forgotten tongue discernible in the prose
and poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries take
the form, sometimes of set descriptions, and oftener of inci-
dental allusion. Of the former, the best known are Drayton's
description of the sport of flying at the brook, in the twentieth
song of his Polyolbion (1612-22) ; Nash's oft-quoted passage
in praise of hawking in Quatemio ; or, a Four ef old Way to a
Happy Life (1633) ; Massinger's lifelike picture of the sport
in which we have taken part with Master Petre, of flying at
the ' hearon put from her seige ' and at ' the partridge sprung '
in The Guardian (1633) ; Heywood's colloquy between two
lovers of falconry in A Woman Killed with Kindness, with
its profusion of technicality, suggestive of careful study in
the book of sport ; and Fletcher's imitation of Shakespeare's

1 See Note, The Book of Sport.

2 The following passage in Spenser's Elegy upon the death of Sir Philip
Sidney, under the name of Astrophel, may, in its curious language, refer to
Sidney's professions, as it certainly does to his practice, with regard to field
sports :

Besides, in hunting such felicitie,

Or rather infelicitie he found,

That every field and forest far away

He sought, where salvage beasts do most abound :

No beast so salvage bnt he could it kill,

No chase so hard, but he therein had skill.

212 A DEAD LANGUAGE

falconry, in his sequel to the Taming of the Shrew, entitled
The Woman's Prize.

Elaborate descriptions of this kind introduced for a set
purpose afford little evidence of practical knowledge of the
sport; of which indeed Drayton confessed ignorance in his
Illustrations prefixed to the fifth song of Polyolbion. More
suggestive are the casual illustrations and the borrowed
phraseology which we light on here and there, often where
we should least expect them. ' Since I was of understanding
to know we know nothing, rny reason hath been more pliable
to the will of faith : I am now content to understand a
mystery without a rigid definition in an easy and Platonic
description.'1 Here we recognise Sir Thomas Browne the
philosopher; but when he adds 'and thus I teach my hag-
gard and unreclaimed reason to stoop into the lure of truth,'
the sportsman stands confessed ; and the further thought
is suggested that the falconer sets more store on one
reclaimed haggard than on many eyesses that need no
reclaiming.

It was no doubt a kindly remembrance of his early years
at Montgomery Castle, where he learned the proverb * the
gentle hawk half mans herself,' 2 that suggested to the saintly
George Herbert, writing a poem on Providence, the thought,
' Birds teach us hawking.'

It so happens that not one of the playwrights between
whose authorship and that of Shakespeare controversy has
arisen among critics, gives any proof of practical interest in
falconry, or in any other sport of the field. It had been well
for them and for letters if it had been otherwise. But the
dissipation of town life had stronger attractions. Marlowe
— son of a Canterbury shoemaker — was killed in a tavern
brawl in his thirtieth year, but not until he had, in his mighty
line, created English blank verse, and given the world a
richer harvest of finished work than Shakespeare at the same
time of life, though not such rare buds of promise. Greene,
before he took his degree at Cambridge, travelled in Italy
and Spain, where he practised ' such villainy as is abominable
to declare,' and after a chequered career as schoolmaster,
student of physic, priest and dramatist, died miserably at
1 Edigio Medici, 1642. 2 lacula Prudentum.

ANT AID TO CRITICISM 213

about the same age as Marlowe, denouncing with his dying
breath, as an upstart crow beautified with his feathers, one
who bestowed upon poor Greene and his revilings the rather
doubtful boon of immortality, in return for some indifferent
plays adapted to his use. Fletcher was son of a Bishop of
London, at one time a favourite of the Queen's, of whom we
read that he was especially skilled in riding the great horse.
The dramatist died of the plague at the age of forty-nine,
and little is known of his private life. His plays show that
he had skill in hawking language, as we should expect from
his birth and breeding, but he gives little evidence of interest
in this or in any other field sport. His occasional allusions
to sport have not — except in the single instance already
mentioned, where he deliberately and avowedly imitated
Shakespeare's work — the unmistakable flavour which dis-
tinguishes the thoroughly Shakespearian allusion, and they
are usually introduced with an evident view to dramatic
effect. ' Sporting Kyd ' has not made good his title to the
character pleasantly bestowed on him by Ben Jonson, so far
as his language is concerned.

Now, inasmuch as Marlowe, Greene, Fletcher and Kyd
happen to be the dramatists whose workmanship needs to be
discriminated from that of Shakespeare, it follows that any
points of contrast become of importance. I have in a note
pursued the train of thought thus suggested, and pointed out
a use which may be served by Shakespeare's allusions to field
sports and kindred matters, by way of test, and in aid of
criticism, when it has to be decided whether any particular
play or passage is the work of Shakespeare or of some con-
temporary dramatist.

It was not until late in life that Ben Jonson — town bred
by his stepfather, a master bricklayer — was introduced to a
sport, the strange fascination of which he had often noted
with wonder. He was not surprised when Master Stephen
bought a hawk, hood and bells, and lacked nothing but a
book, whereby he might keep his hawk and learn the hawk-
ing language ; for Master Stephen was a fool. But when he
found a wise man seriously follow hawking he could not
understand it, until one day he visited in Warwickshire Sir
Henry Goodyere, a gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber,

A DEAD LANGUAGE

the friend and patron of Drayton, described by Camden as
' a knight memorable for his virtues/ to whom he writes :

Goodyere, I'm glad, and grateful to report

Myself a witness of thy few days' sport ;

Where I both learn'd why wise men hawking follow,

And why that bird was sacred to Apollo :

She doth instruct men by her gallant flight,

That they to knowledge so should tower upright,

And never stoop, but to strike ignorance ;

Which if they miss yet they should re-advance

To former height, and there in circle tarry

Till they be sure to make the fool their quarry.1

Who were these wise men, whose love of hawking amazed
Ben Jonson ? I know of one, who in all respects answers
the description; that wise man, namely, of whom Jonson
wrote in his Discoveries, ' I loved the man, and do honour
his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any/

There was, indeed, in the Elizabethan age, another wise
man of transcendent genius, also well known to Jonson, who
happened to be a man of birth and breeding, but who differed
from his fellows in his attitude towards the sports and
pastimes of the day, and in whose mind the allusions col-
lected in these pages would have excited no emotion, unless
it were one of distaste. When Francis Bacon took all know-
ledge for his province, his omne scibile comprehended none of
the mysteries in which the writer of these passages found
unceasing delight. This is not to be wondered at. The ' age
between sixteen and three and twenty ' 2 was passed by him
in pursuits far different from those which engaged the life-
long affection of Shakespeare. Had he been so inclined, the
delicacy of his health in early life would have forbidden
him to indulge in violent exercises. We should not have
looked for any indication of such tastes, had he possessed
them, in his philosophical works ; although I doubt that
Shakespeare could have written the Natural History, or
the New Atlantis, without his speech in some degree be-
wraying him. It is in Bacon's Essays — the recreation (as
he calls them) of his other studies — that we expect to find

1 Epigrams. 2 Wint. Tale, iii. 3. 59.

BACON AND FIELD SPORTS 215

evidence of his lighter pursuits. And so it is. In his Essays
he writes lovingly of gardens, trees, flowers, aviaries, and
fountains ; he discourses on foreign travel, and condescends
to such toys as masques, triumphs, dancing, and acting to
song ; but never writes of horse, hawk, or hound. In the essay
on Building, indeed, at the end of a long list of possible
wants in a site for a great mansion, he mentions * want of
places at some near distance for sports of hunting, hawking,
and races.' But beyond this general and almost inevitable
reference to field sports, and a very commonplace reference
to the greyhound and the hare in the essay on Discourse, he
has nothing to tell us about any of them, not even when he
speaks of the exercises proper to be taken for the regimen of
health and in aid of studies, a topic which led the studious
recluse, Burton, to discourse with interest — though as an
outsider — on hawking, hunting and fishing as cures for
melancholy, and inspired him to expand Dame Juliana
Barnes' commendation of angling into a passage not un-
worthy of Isaac Walton.1

Bacon's attitude towards field sports, so far as it can be
gathered from his writings and from the known course
of his life, was probably that of his kinsman Burleigh,
of whom Fuller tells the following tale : ' When some
noblemen had gotten William Cecil, lord Burleigh and
Treasurer of England, to ride with them a hunting, and the
sport began to be cold : " What call you this ? " said the
Treasurer. " Oh, now," said they, " the dogs are at fault."
" Yea," quoth the Treasurer, " take me again in such a fault,
and I'll give you leave to punish me ! " Thus as soon may

1 'But he that shall consider the variety of baits, for all seasons, and
pretty devices which our anglers have invented, peculiar lines, false flyes,
severall sleights, &c., will say that it deserves like commendation, requires
as much study and perspicuity as the rest, and is to be preferred before many
of them ; because hawking and hunting are very laborious, much riding and
many dangers accompany them ; but this is still and quiet ; and if so be the
angler catch no fish, yet he hath a wholesome walk to the brook side,
pleasant shade by the sweet silver stream ; he hath good ayr, and sweet
smells of fine fresh meadow flowers ; he hears the melodious harmony of
birds; he sees the swans, herons, ducks, water-hens, coots, &c., and many
other fowl with their brood, which he thinketh better than the noyse of
hounds or blast of horns, and all the sport that they make ' (Anatomy of
Melancholy, Part 2, ii. 4).

216 A DEAD LANGUAGE

the same meat please all palates as the same sport suit with
all dispositions.'

Sudden and complete was the downfall of hawking
and of the hawking language. Falconry naturally declined
during the years of the civil war arid the Commonwealth,
with other sports and pastimes. But in the case of this
sport — once the great national field sport of England — its
revival after the Restoration was but an expiring flicker.
No stronger evidence of its decay could be given than the
fact that in the year 1718 a book entitled The Compleat
Sportsman was published by one Giles Jacob, in which he
states that he took no notice of the diversion of hawking,
because it was so much disused in his time, ' especially since
sportsmen are arrived at such perfection in shooting/
Hedgerows and enclosures have taken part with gun and
dog in the extinction of falconry, and although there never
has been a time when hawks were not flown by lovers of the
sport in some part of the British Isles, it cannot be said
to have ranked among our .national field sports during
the last two centuries.

But although the falcon, and the gentle art to which she
gave her name, are too picturesque in their accessories, and
lend themselves too readily to poetic treatment, to lose their
place in literature, they hold it with a difference. Dryden
is the latest English classic who writes the hawking language
with the accuracy of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare.
Thenceforward the noble falcon is unsexed, and degraded to
the level of her tercel ; surely because it was men who held
the pen. Such an outrage could not have been perpetrated
in an age of falconry. You will always find it tacitly assumed
by the lords of creation, in the absence of practical experi-
ence, that the falcon must needs be of their sex ; such is the
innate nobility of the bird.

Homer loves to compare the earthward descent of his
goddesses to the downward swoop of the long-winged (ravvn-
repvyi) hawk. He was far too keen an observer of the
animal world, especially in its relation to sport, to overlook
the superiority of the female of the race, if it had been
made manifest to him in practical experience. When,
therefore, we find that his falcons are males, we may fairly

THE FALCON IN HOMER 217

infer that the language, as well as the art, of the falconer
was unknown in the Grecian communities among whom he
lived.1

Scott had, in common with Homer and with Shakespeare,
an intense love of nature and of country life ; a sentiment
which is, according to him, a common feature of genius.2
He was a sportsman, too, although less catholic in his tastes
than Shakespeare. When, therefore, we find his goshawks
soaring high, and hovering, after the fashion of a long-
winged falcon towering in her pride of place, and when we
note that his ' falcons ' are often males,3 even if flown at the
heron (a flight only to be essayed with a cast of haggard
falcons), we need no further evidence that falconry was
unknown in his time; and from this and other tokens we
may infer that he was less attracted by the sports and
pastimes of antiquity than by other features of those bygone
times which he has reproduced with such lifelike reality — a
unique example in letters of an antiquary inspired by the
creative genius of a poet.

The language of hawking must now, like the dead tongues
of antiquity, be painfully acquired by laborious research.

1 l'p?;£ (translated ' falcon ' in Liddell and Scott's Lexicon) is masculine.
George Chapman, translating the Iliad in 1602, when the hawking language
was still a living one, could not think or write of a falcon otherwise than as
a female, and instinctively restored her proper sex ; thus rendering the Greek
words descriptive of the quarry upon which ?/>?;£ w/ctfTrrepos is described as
swooping (6pveov dXXo), ' a fowl not being of her kind ' (II. xiii. 62). The
hawk called KipKos, also a long-winged hawk, is Aa0p6raTos TreTerjv&t' (II.
xxii. 139) and 5e£t6s 6pvis (Odyss. xv. 525). In Latin falco and accipiter are
both masculine. I have not been able to fix the period in the development
of the English tongue and of the art of falconry, when the nobler bird
appropriated to herself the name of falcon. In Chaucer's Assembly of
Fowles, the falcon is female, and her mate a tercelet, the form in which the
word still appears in French. 3 Life of Swift.

3 In The Abbot, Ivanhoe, and Rob Roy. It is really as incorrect to call a
falcon 'he' as to speak of a bull as 'she,' and yet illustrious examples in
letters might be cited as authorities for the solecism. For example, Tennyson
published a poem entitled The Falcon, of which the noble bird is the central
tigurc, and consistently a male. In a poem by Mr. William Morris bearing
the same name, the same unsexing occurs ; and even the great lexicographer
thus misquotes a line from Macbeth, 'A falcon towering in his pride of place.'
In time these examples may justify the use of the word ' falcon ' as a neutral
term, but hitherto neither dictionaries nor writers on natural history give
any sanction to an abuse of language which breaks the continuity of literary
usage, and falsifies the traditions of an ancient and picturesque national
pastime.

218 A DEAD LANGUAGE

And here the student encounters peculiar difficulties. If in
his study of Homer he would learn the precise meaning of
some unfamiliar word, he turns to his Liddell and Scott
in full assurance of finding the necessary explanation and
illustrations. Beading his Faerie Queen, he meets the word
tassel-gent, and is informed by Mr. Todd in a foot-note,
accurately, but irrelevantly, that 'tassel is the male of
goshawk.' If he has brought to his literary studies some
knowledge of natural history, it strikes him as strange that
Juliet should choose as the type of her lover the male of an
inferior race of hawks. To remove all doubt as to the
accuracy of his information he consults Nares's Glossary,
a work specially designed for the illustration of Shakespeare.
There he reads 'Tassel, or Tassel-gentle. The male of the
goss-hawk, properly tiercel, supposed to be called gentle from
it's docile and tractable disposition,' and Juliet's meaning
utterly eludes his grasp.

Fully assured by the passages quoted at page 150 that
the word ' bate ' conveyed to the minds of the speakers some
definite meaning upon which they thought it worth while to
dwell, and even to play, he turns for enlightenment to the
works of a recognised authority, Mr. Strutt. He reads in
Sports and Pastimes of the English People that a hawk was
said to bate ' when she fluttered her wings to fly after game.'
His perplexity is not lessened when the same authority
informs him, in the glossary to Queen Hoo Hall, that ' when
a hawk is said to bate, he leaves the game.'

Mr. Strutt's authority as an antiquary stands high, and he
has certainly collected, in his various works, a great deal of
interesting information. But in regard to falconry and all
other mediaeval field sports, he is a most untrustworthy guide.
His romance, Queen Hoo Hall, is interesting from the fact
that it was completed and edited by Scott, whose well-known
hunting song, ' Waken lords and ladies gay/ shines as a gem
of purest ray serene in a rather indifferent setting. If this
earliest essay (1808) turned Scott's mind in the direction of
romance-writing, the world owes to Strutt a debt which may
well outweigh many heresies in falconry and woodcraft,1

1 Different kinds of hounds and of deer are mixed up in inextricable con-
fusion. For example, ' ban dogs ' are confounded with hounds. ' A hart

SOME HERESIES IN FALCONRY 219

such as we should not have expected to find in a tale written
by a professed antiquary.

When professed antiquaries confuse a hawk's jesses with
her bells ; when so keen a sportsman as the author of The
Moor and the Loch tells us that of Scottish hawks ' the largest
is the goshawk, the young males of which are called falcon-
gentles, and were once thought a distinct species ; ' 1 and
when even Charles Kingsley's peregrine, forgetful of tower
and stoop, shot 'out of the reeds like an arrow ' after the
manner of a short- winged hawk, and having 'singled one
luckless mallard for the block, caught him up, struck him
stone dead with one blow of his terrible heel, and swept his
prey with him into the reeds again,' 2 we need not marvel at
the mistakes of lesser men. But it is worth noting that the
hawking language, once spoken by the card with absolute
accuracy, is the only dead language of antiquity which it is
considered allowable to write without any regard to the
meaning of its words; an indulgence which authors are
tempted to allow themselves, partly from consciousness of
the ignorance of their readers, and partly by reason of the
vague, pleasurable ideas of mediaeval sport and gallantry

(sic) of the second year,' described as a * velvet-headed knobbler,' breaks
cover instead of the harboured stag. This latter was * a buck (sic) of the first
head ; ' it is coursed by greyhounds for a couple of miles, and afterwards by
'a sufficient number of slowhouuds.' It would be easy to fill pages with
equally absurd explanations of old-world sporting terms, extracted from
various notes and glossaries. They are of little significance, save when they
mar the point of a simile or allusion. If, for instance, 'jesses' meant 'the
leathers that fasten on the hawks' bells ' (as explained by Mr. Church in a
note to the Faerie Queen) a beautiful and familiar passage would have abso-
lutely no significance. It is satisfactory to note that the glossary contributed
in 1887 by Mr. W. Aldis Wright to the edition of Shakespeare in most general
use (The Globe Shakespeare) is generally the most accurate in matters of
falconry and woodcraft. Mr. Baillie-Grohman in a note appended to The
Master of Game, entitled ' Errors,' describes the mistakes into which modern
writers on old-world sport — Strutt in particular — have fallen as an 'engorging
avalanche of misinformation.' I note with satisfaction that this volume,
though included in the books referred to by the editors, does not appear in
their black list. If the information conveyed in these pages is accurate, this
is due to the fact that it has been taken directly from some old-world ' book
of sport,' independently of modern writers, save only in the matter of
falconry, where I felt safe in supplementing the teaching of my Turbervile and
my Latham in discipleship to Mr. Harting.

1 The Moor and the Loch, containing minute instructions in all Highland
Sports, by John Colquhoun. 2 Hereward the Wake, chap. xx.

220 A DEAD LANGUAGE

associated with its terminology, however recklessly mis-
applied.1

It is a pleasanter task to point out where a knowledge of
this dead tongue may be acquired. Mr. Harting's Ornithology
of Shakespeare is the work of a practical falconer, who has in
his Bibliotheca, Accipitraria applied himself to the historical
and antiquarian aspect of the sport. The study of Mr.
Lascelles' contribution to the Badminton Library, of Messrs.
Salvin and Brodrick's Falconry in the British Isles, Messrs.
Freeman and Salvin's Falconry, and Mr. Freeman's Howl
became a Falconer among the modern, and among the older
writers, of the works of Turbervile, Latham, and Bert, will
supply all that is necessary for literary purposes.

Those who have pursued such a course of study, and thus
familiarised themselves with the tongue, have detected
various traces of the hawking language scattered through
the works of Shakespeare. Many terms of art employed
by him with faultless accuracy have been explained and
illustrated in the foregoing pages. Others of less obvious
significance are collected in a note entitled The Language of
Falconry.

1 Dr. Drake, in his valuable work on Shakespeare and his Times, describes
the haggard as ' a species of hawk wild and difficult to be reclaimed. '

CHAPTER XIV

THE TAKING OF THE DEER

Bos. Well, then, I am the shooter.

Eoyet. And who is your deer ? Love's Labour's Lost.

1 IT is a thievish forme of hunting to shoote with gunnes and
bowes, and greyhounde hunting is not so martial a game ' as
' the hunting with running houndes,' which is ' the most
honourable and noblest sort thereof/

This saying is part of the ' kingly gift ' bestowed on his
ill-fated son by the British Solomon, who added to his skill
in kingcraft a knowledge of woodcraft which might, had we
power to test it, prove equally profound.

The sentiment may be just, but it would not have been
approved in Gloucestershire. In that county, indeed, if we
may believe its historian, a kind of hunting more thievish
still was winked at, and if there be any truth in the story
that Shakespeare took refuge with kinsfolk in Gloucestershire
after a misadventure in the matter of deer, he could not have
fled to a better sanctuary.1

But, indeed, the taking of a deer was in those days
nowhere regarded as a serious offence, except possibly by
him to whom the deer belonged. It ranked distinctly
higher than cony-catching, and yet Simple evidently re-

1 ' The last anecdote I have to record of this chase [Michaelwood] shows
that some of the principal persons in this county (whose name I suppress
where the family is still in existence) were not ashamed of the practice of
deer- stealing. Henry Parmiter of Stone, an Attorney-at-Lawe ; Giles . . .
then of Stone, Attorney-at-law ; Giles . . . then of ... George Small-
wood, then of Dursley, and seven others, all men of metall and good woodmen
(I mean old notorious deer-stealers) came in the night time to Michaelwood
with deer-nets and dogs to steele deer ' (Fosbrooke's History of Gloucestershire,
quoting Smith MS. ). Mr. Malone, in his Life of Shakespeare, has collected
several passages illustrative of the opinion of the age as regards deer-stealing
and kindred adventures.

221

222 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

garded it as a feather in his master's cap that he had
'fought with a warrener.'1 No offence was intended to
Aaron the Moor, but rather the contrary, when it was
asked of him,

What, hast them not full often struck a doe,
And home her cleanly by the keeper's nose 1

Tit. Andr.il 1. 93.

The reformed deer-stealer would, in after life, speak of his
escapades, much as Mr. Eobert Sawyer or Mr. Benjamin
Allen might relate the capture of an occasional knocker
in the hot days of youth. 'There is another kinde of
coursing,' the author of The Nolle Arte of Venerie is not
ashamed to write, 'which I have more used than any of
these ; and that is at a deare in the night ; wherein there is
more arte to be used tha in any course els. But because
I have promised my betters to be a friend to al Parkes
Forrests and Chaces, therefore I will not here expresse the
experience which hath bene deerer unto me, particularly,
than it is meete to be published generally.' ' To steal deer '
was classed with robbing orchards, carousing in taverns,
and dancing about maypoles, as belonging to a class of
exploits — venial in unruly youths, but unfit for grave
scholars.2 ' Our old race of deer-stealers/ wrote Gilbert
White, ' are hardly extinct yet ; it was but a little while ago
that over their ale they used to recount the exploits of their
youth.' In the time of the author, 'unless he was a
hunter, as they affected to call themselves, no young person
was allowed to be possessed of manhood or gallantry.'3

It is, however, in the lawful taking of deer with cross-
bow and greyhound that we are about to engage, a pastime
upon which in the days of our diarists no cloud of royal
disfavour rested, for it is recorded of Elizabeth that on one
day in the year 1591, at Cowdray in Sussex, her grace saw
from a turret ' sixteen bucks all having fayre lawe, pulled
downe with greyhounds in a laund or lawn.' 4 It was also
highly appreciated by her subjects for practical reasons.

1 Merry Wives, i. 4. 28. 3 Overthrow of Stage Playes, 1599.

3 Nat. Hist, of Selborne. 4 Nichols's Progresses.

DEERSTEALING 223

For as Sir Thomas Elyot had remarked some years before,
1 kylling of dere with bowes or grehunds serveth well for
the potte (as in the commune saynge), and therefore it
muste of necessitie be some tyme used. But/ he adds, ' it
contayneth therm no commendable solace or exercise, in
comparison to the other fourrne of hunting, if it be diligently
perceiued.'

The solemn hunting, big with the fate of William Silence,
as well as of many a fat and seasonable buck, had been
proclaimed in honour of Petre and his bride. It was
customary with the lords of the manor of Shallow periodi-
cally to announce an observance of this kind, not only for
love of sport and venison, but in order to assert their lawful
rigbts. For by the custom of the manor each tenant was
bound to find one man three times a year to drive the deer
to a stand, to be taken whenever the lord should please.1
This particular hunting, however, was designed by the
justice to serve a further purpose. It was intended to afford
an opportunity to Abraham Slender of pressing his suit,
and finally securing Anne beyond possibility of escape.
The conditions under which the sport was practised rendered
it suitable for such a purpose, and also for the counter-plot
designed by Master Petre, who looked forward with eager-
ness to the enjoyment of seeing the engineer hoist with his
own petard, especially when that engineer was Master
Shallow.

Meanwhile, it is needful to know something about the
sport, in order to understand how readily it lent itself to the
designs of the opposing parties. This knowledge is not easy
of attainment, for killing of the deer in a pale with cross-
bows and greyhounds is a thing of the past, and the books
of sport treat generally of hunting the deer with running
hounds, and do not concern themselves with the details of a
pastime, which, indeed, needed no explanation to contem-
porary Englishmen.

You may, however, obtain all necessary information from

1 The burgesses of Bishop's Castle held of the See of Hereford by a
similar tenure : ' Omiies Burgenses de Bishop's Castle in com. Salop, debent
invenire unum hominem ter per annum, ad Stabliamentum pro venatione
capieuda quaudo Episcopus voluerit ' (Blount's Antient Tenures).

224 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

Shakespeare, for throughout his life he loved to dwell upon
the sport and its humours.

In his earliest comedy, Love's Labour's Lost, you may
find a lively picture of the pastime; in the eyes of Sir
Nathaniel, ' Very reverend sport, truly ; and done in the
testimony of a good conscience.'1 It was on the death of
the deer killed by the Princess of France — 'a buck of
the first head/ according to Sir Nathaniel, but only 'a
pricket ' in the eyes of the matter-of-fact Dull — that Holo-
f ernes composed an ' extemporal epitaph,' in which he tells
us: 'To humour the ignorant, call I the deer the princess
killed a pricket.'2

The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing

pricket,
Some say a sore; but not a sore, till now made sore with

shooting.
The dogs did yell ; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket

Or pricket sore, or else sorel, the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel.
Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more L.

Love's L. L. iv. 2. 58.

And in the earliest tragedy the composition of which is
in any degree Shakespeare's, a 'general hunting'3 is recog-
nised by Aaron the Moor as affording rare opportunity for
strategy and wile.

My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand ;
There will the lovely Roman ladies troop :
The forest walks are wide and spacious ;
And many unfrequented plots there are

1 Love's L. L. iv. 2. 1. 2 Ibid. 49.

3 This would seem to mean a hunting, not only with cross-bow and grey-
hound, but with running hounds also. Aaron points to the former when he
speaks of singling out and striking home a dainty doe; Titus Andronicus to
the latter, in the words,

The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey,
The fields are fragrant and the woods are green :
Uncouple here, and let us make a bay. ii. 2. 1.

In Holinshed we read of 'a genrall huntyng with a toyle raysed, of foure or
five myles in lengthe, so that many a deere that day was brought to the
quarrie.' As to this meaning of the word quarry, SGepost, p. 236.

A GENERAL HUNTING 225

Fitted by kind for rape and villainy ;
Single you thither then this dainty doe,
And strike her home by force, if not by words ;
This way, or not at all, stand you in hope.

Tit. Andr. ii. 1. 112.

Nor did advancing years or London life quench his
passion for the sport. It would seem to have gained new
strength after he had finally taken up his abode at Stratford,
for again in Cymleline, one of his latest plays, as in his
earliest, we find a hunting proclaimed with all the rites
of woodcraft. 'Up to the mountains/ cries Belarius to
Cymbeline's disguised sons;

he that strikes

The venison first shall be the lord o' the feast ;

To him the other two shall minister ;

And we will fear no poison, which attends

In place of greater state. Cymb. iii. 3. 73.

And when the sport is over,

You, Polydore, have proved best woodman, and
Are master of the feast. Cadwal and I
Will play the cook and servant, 'tis our match.

Ibid. iii. 6. 28.

It is fortunate that we can draw upon this storehouse of
information, for the diarist was too much occupied with the
main issue of the day to note the incidents of sport, and
these pages would be well-nigh blank, had not its events
been recorded by another chronicler.

The scene of the hunting was the park into which the
great hart would have been driven on the memorable day of
the chase across Cotswold, had not Abraham Slender other-
wise determined. Within the pale great numbers of fallow
deer were enclosed. In those days herds of deer of both
kinds — red as well as fallow — roamed at large, especially
throughout woodland districts like Arden, where the 'poor
dappled fools' ranked as 'native burghers of this desert
city.'1 But here and there a 'park ribbed and paled in*
confined the deer with barrier impassable, save by some

* As You L. ii. 1. 22.

226 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

errant buck, of whom the keeper might say, as Adriana of
her husband,

top unruly deer, he breaks the pale
And feeds from home. Com. of Err. ii. 1. 100.

We may learn from the instance of the Cotswold hart to
compare the fate of the deer confined within a pale, with the
chances of escape open to his fellow when hunted at force
across an unenclosed country ; — a thought which occurred to
the mind of Talbot, surrounded by the outnumbering hosts
of France:

How are we park'd and bounded in a pale,
A little herd of England's timorous deer,
Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs !

1 Hen. VI. iv. 2. 45.
There is, however, a difference, for

Our Britain's harts die flying, not our men.

Cymb. v. 3. 24.

In the ' chief est thicket of the park' the justice would
often take his stand, making his way thither, as did King
Edward and his huntsmen, ' under the colour of his usual
game.' l

For the sport, however, of hunting with cross-bow and
greyhound, a park like the justice's was specially fitted.
The ' thick grown brake ' 2 and close coppice afforded abundant
covert for the deer. Here and there were ' wide forest walks/
and many a fair ' laund,' across which the deer when driven
presented a fair mark to the arrow of the shooter. 'Then,
forester, my friend,' asks the Princess,

where is the bush
That we must stand and play the murderer in ?

Love's L. L. iv. 1. 7.

We may learn the answer to this question from two
keepers, as, in accordance with a stage direction, they enter
a chase, with cross-bows in their hands, and thus converse :

First Keep. Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves ;
For through this laund anon the deer will come,

1 3 Hen. VI. iv. 5. 3, 11. 2 Ibid. iii. 1. 1.

WITHIN THE PALE 227

And in this covert will we make our stand,

Culling the principal of all the deer.
Sec. Keep. I'll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.
First Keep. That cannot be ; the noise of thy cross-bow

Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.

Here stand we both, and aim we at the best.

3 Hen. VI. in. 1. 1.

' I am glad/ said Falstaff, when he saw that Ford's scheme
for his discomfiture was not an unmixed success, as regards
its author, ' though you have ta'en a special stand to strike
at me, that your arrow hath glanced.'1

A special stand,2 we now know, was a hiding-place con-
structed in the thickest brake, commanding the laund across
which the deer were expected to pass, and affording conceal-
ment, 'in the ambush' of which the shooter might 'strike
home.'3

Why hast thou gone so far,
To be unbent when thou hast ta'en thy stand,
The elected deer before thee? Cymb. iii. 4. 110.

Thus asked Imogen of Pisanio, when he failed to execute his
deadly purpose. It was a question to be asked, for when
the deer are driven by the stand, then comes the moment for
action.

First you must choose aright, in woodcraft as in love ;

When as thine eye hath chose the dame,
And stall'd the deer that thou shouldst strike,
Let reason rule things worthy blame.

The Passionate Pilgrim, xix.

Unless this is done well, all will go ill. 'End thy ill aim
before thy shoot be ended,' pleads Lucrece with Tarquin,
appealing, but in vain, to the better instincts of woodcraft ;

He is no woodman that doth bend his bow

To strike a poor unseasonable doe. Lucrece, 580.

At the time of the justice's hunting, in the month of
September, the skilled woodman, ' culling the principal of all

1 Merry Wives, v. 5. 247.

2 Cf. Measure for M. iv. 6. 10, which savours of woodcraft.
' Measure for M. i. 3. 41.

228 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

the deer,' would pick out a ' buck, and of the season too.' *
Later on in the year, when bucks were no longer seasonable
venison, he would ' single out a dainty doe, And strike her
home/ 2 He would stall as c fat a deer ' as might be, and one
' in blood ' ; 3 no rascal, or worthless deer, a term of venery
which has passed into common use as a word of reproach.
In making this choice he must depend on his practised eye.
You cannot judge by the antlers alone. As a rule the better
the head, the fatter the deer. But there are exceptions, and
you cannot always judge of the deer by his antlers. As
Touchstone says,

Horns 1 Even so. Poor men alone 1 No, no ; the noblest deer
hath them as huge as the rascal.4 As You L. iii. 3. 56.

But in shooting or coursing, ' at a deare in the night/ no
such careful discrimination is possible, and, as Falstaff has it,

When night-dogs run all sorts of deer are chased.

Merry Wives, v. 5. 252.

Eoger Ascham5 compares 'a father that doth let loose his
son to all experiences/ to * a fond hunter that letteth slippe
a whelpe to the hole herde. Twentie to one he shall fall
vpon a rascall, and let go the faire game. They that hunt
so, be either ignorant persones, preuie stealers, or night
walkers/

And the foremost deer, that leads the herd, may be a rascal
after all, and ' worst in blood to run ' if it came to the pinch.
For it is not the best of men, or of deer, that push themselves
in front of their fellows. Thus said Menenius Agrippa to
the self-asserting citizen, whom he called the great toe of the
mutinous assembly :

1 Merry Wives, iii. 3. 169. 2 Tit. Andr. ii. 1. 117.

3 1 Hen. IV. v. 4. 107.

4 Touchstone's intimate knowledge of woodcraft is illustrated by an
incident of the deer-stalking season of 1893. A stag bearing twenty points
on his antlers was shot in Glenquoich Forest by Lord Burton, who sent to the
Field a drawing of the head, writing that the deer was ' in the worst condition
I have ever seen, and covered with warbles.' He was, in short, a rascal,
though bearing huger horns than the noblest deer that had fallen to the rifle
within living memory (v. ante, p. 58).

5 Scholemaster, 1570.

THE RASCAL DEER 229

Men. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest,
Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost ;
Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,
Lead'st first to win some vantage. Coriol. i. 1. 161.

Hence we learn that it needs a wary and practised eye to
detect the rascality of the big-horned, self-asserting brute,
who to win some vantage thrusts himself in front of the herd ;
and herein consists the woodman's art.

Having stalled his deer, the hunter, if he be indeed a
woodman, will ' strike home/ and kill outright, for, as the
Princess of France tells the forester,1

mercy goes to kill,

And shooting well is then accounted ill.
Thus will I save my credit in the shoot ;
Not wounding, pity would not let me do't.

Love's L. L. iv. 1. 24.

In shooting with the cross-bow, it was no easy matter to
kill outright, and the wounded deer was a common incident
of the chase, and topic of discourse.

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play ;
For some must watch, while some must sleep :

So runs the world away. Hamlet, hi. 2. 282.

' I found her,1 said Marcus Andronicus of poor Lavinia, —
ghastliest object in that ghastly tragedy — to his brother Titus,
who cannot refrain from a familiar pun,

straying in the park,
Seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer
That hath received some unrecuring wound.
Tit. It was my deer ; and he that wounded her

Hath hurt me more than had he kill'd me dead.

Tit. Andr. iii. i. 88.

To course the wounded deer, greyhounds were held in
leash, close by the stands, 'swift as breathed stags, ay,
fleeter than the roe.' 2 And in an enclosed park, most of the

1 The same idea underlies the concluding lines of Sonnet cxxxix.

Since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.

2 Tarn, of Shr. Ind. 2. 49.

230 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

stricken deer were in this way picked up and saved from a
lingering death.

The venison thus obtained was accounted ill killed, a
matter of some moment when it was intended as a present
to bespeak good will, or ' bribe buck,' as it was commonly
called. ' Divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch/ said
Falstaff to the merry wives ; ' I will keep my sides to myself,
my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I
bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha ? Speak
I like Herne the hunter ? ' *

When last the justice sought a wife for Abraham Slender,
and desired Master Page's consent to his marriage with
sweet Anne Page, he sought to obtain his good will by
sending him a bribe buck.

Page. I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for
my venison, Master Shallow.

Shal. Master Page, I am glad to see you ; much good do it your
good heart ! I wished your venison better ; it was ill killed.

Merry Wives, i. 1. 80.

But in the deep recesses of the unenclosed forest the
stricken deer, mortally wounded but not killed outright,
' their round haunches gored . . . with forked heads ' were
doomed to a lingering death, such as that which moved the
melancholy Jaques to moralise on the spectacle of the stricken
hart in Arden, ' left and abandoned of his velvet2 friends.'

1 Ay,' quoth Jaques,

1 Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ;
'Tis just the fashion : wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? '

It was a piteous sight, the death of the stricken deer :

Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood ;
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans

1 Merry Wives, v. 5. 27.

2 The covering of the uewly-grown an tiers is called ' velvet.'

THE STRICKEN DEER 231

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

Coursed one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase ; and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears. As Yuu L.ii. 1. 31.

It will have occurred even to those less evilly disposed
than was Aaron the Moor, that the sport which we have
described was one affording many opportunities ' for policy
and stratagem/

The justice's stratagem was to place Anne in Abraham
Slender's stand. There he was to press his suit. If she
demurred, Slender was to get over her scruples by carrying
her off bodily with the aid of William Visor, who owed the
justice a good turn, and had in readiness a stout horse to
carry them to his house at Woncot, where Sir Topas waited
to make them man and wife.

William Silence was to be disposed of by placing him in a
distant stand with Petre and the lady Katherine. It seemed
clear to the wisdom of the justice that the honour of the
position assigned to him, and the duty of entertaining the
principal guests, would keep him out of harm's way for
the day. For himself, he would best provide for the amuse-
ment of the company by seeing to the driving of the deer,
leaving the shooting of them to younger hands.

Petre's stratagem was equally simple. "Do you and
Mistress Anne take your stand in the same bush. Have a
good horse in readiness. 'I have been with Sir Oliver
Martext, the vicar of the next village,' l for I dared not to
open the matter to Sir Topas. He loveth not Sir Topas,
and is consumed with envy by reason of the portent and the
church-ale. He will attend you at goodman Perkes's.
There you may be made fast enough or ere you be missed at
the hunting. Good lord, 'twill be rare sport when you
present yourselves to the company assembled at the quarry
of the slaughtered deer. I warrant you this day's work, if
it be an evil one for the bucks, will make two hearts right

1 As You L. iii. 3. 43.

232 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

merry. Nay, Master Silence, I mean not you and Mistress
Anne. That remains for proof hereafter. But Master Squele
will joy inwardly, and Master Slender will scarce refrain from
rejoicing outwardly. This business of the justice's was never
to their minds."

"But in what manner will you dispose of Abraham
Slender ? " asked Silence. " It is true that his heart is not
in the matter. But he is bound to do the justice's will in this,
as in other matters."

" Let him be put in the stand with my wife," said Petre,
" a hundred marks my Kate will keep him still enough till
all be over. She will discourse him so learnedly of bears,
tell him such marvellous tales of Sackerson, and praise his
woodcraft so discreetly, that he will forget all about Mistress
Anne, in his desire to display his skill in shooting before
a lady of such excellent discernment."

To carry out this scheme, the aid of the forester was
needed. It was by his directions that the company were to
be conducted to the special stands assigned to them. This
aid, however, might be bought. In those days (I write of
three hundred years ago) there could be found foresters and
keepers willing to accept gold at the hands of their masters'
guests. ' Take this for telling true.' So saying, the Princess
in Love's Labour's Lost rewards the forester, who leads her to
what he describes as ' a stand where you may make the fairest
shoot.' l When Cloten would gain admittance to Imogen, he
bethinks him thus :

" I know her women are about her ; what
If I do line one of their hands 1 'Tis gold
Which buys admittance ; oft it doth ; yea, and makes
Diana's rangers false themselves, yield up
Their deer to the stand o' the stealer.

Cymb. ii. 3. 71.

I know not whether this thought was suggested by the
venality of Master Shallow's forester. But it is certain that
he was somehow induced to lend his aid. It was arranged
that he should himself attend to the driving of the deer,
leaving to assistants the placing of the company in their

1 Lore's L. L. iv. 1. 18.

THE PLOT THICKENS 233

stands. Thus it would be easy to persuade the justice after-
wards that these varlets mistook his directions, and he would
escape scot-free.

And now that we know something of the sport, and of
the plots and counter-plots to which it gave birth, let us
return to the never-to-be-forgotten spot where each of us
first made the acquaintance of the Gloucestershire justices —
the court * before Justice Shallow's house.' 1 And when you
once again stand in the old courtyard, be not surprised to
find unchanged the stage direction, 'Enter Shallow and
Silence meeting.' They have so met at any time these fifty-
five years, and have spoken the same words. They would do
so still, were they yet alive.

Shal. Come on, come on, come on, sir ; give me your hand, sir,
give me your hand, sir ; an early stirrer, by the rood ! And how
doth my good cousin Silence ?

Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow. ^ ^

There is no need for the justice to inquire after his god-
daughter Ellen, or William, formerly of Oxford but now of
Gray's Inn, for they are here to answer for themselves, and
by some strange coincidence Master Ferdinand Petre arrives
in their company. The next arrivals who receive the effusive
greetings of the justice are Will Squele and his daughter
Anne. Shortly afterwards the guests of the day, Master
Petre and the lady Katherine, ride into the courtyard,
followed by attendants holding in leash a brace of grey-
hounds which had accompanied the justice's invitation. This
attention was customary where special honour was intended,
and for some reason or other Petre was courted by the
justice with singular observance.

Third Serv. Please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman,
Lord Lucullus, entreats your company to-morrow to hunt with him,
and has sent your honour two brace of greyhounds.

Tim. I'll hunt with him ; and let them be received,
Not without fair reward. Timon. of Ath. i. 2. 192.

Petre's enjoyment of the scene was due, no doubt, to the
expectation of outwitting the justice and his nephew — for he

1 2 Hen. IV. iii. 2.

234 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

loved not your Shallows or your Slenders — and (in justice it
ought to be added) to the prospect of serving a friend, and
rescuing Anne Squele from the fate to which her father was
ready to consign her.

" Good morning, Master Slender," said Petre, when he had
escaped from the greetings of the justice.

" Give you good morrow, sir," said Slender.

" By my word, Master Slender, you are indeed furnished
as a hunter. Mistress Anne, have a care that he slay not a
hart."

" Ha, ha, ha, most excellent, i' faith," said the justice, " the
word hart hath a double meaning. It signifieth the heart of
man, or woman, too, for the matter of that, as well as a
warrantable male of the red deer. Very singular good;
well said, Master Petre, well said."

" Master Slender," said Anne, " is too good a woodman to
bestow a thought on ought but the deer when a solemn
hunting is proclaimed."

"But," said Petre, "Mistress Anne, what if you be his
deer ? You know 'tis the burden of many an old song.

For, 0, love's bow
Shoots buck and doe."1

Trail, and Ores. iii. 1. 126.

" In faith, Mistress Anne says but the truth, for when a
solemn hunting is proclaimed "

I know not what awkward avowal on Slenders part was
interrupted by the justice.

" Ha, ha, ha, Master Petre, you can do it, you can do it.
I commend you well, very good, i' faith ! "

Marvel not at the success of Petre's poor and threadbare
wit. He was a great man in those parts. Moreover, the
jests had stood the test of time. They were familiar to the
ear, requiring no effort of the intellect to comprehend them,
and so they were highly esteemed in Gloucestershire and

1 The male of the fallow deer is commonly called a Luck, the female a doe,
and the young a fawn. In the strict language of venery, the male is called in
1 the first year a fawn, the second year a pricket, the third year a sorel, the
fourth year a sore, the fifth year a buck of the first head, the sixth year a great
buck.' — Gentleman's Recreation (Cox).

THE COMPANY ASSEMBLE 235

elsewhere, and I have no doubt from their frequent recurrence
that they were an unfailing source of merriment in the play-
house.

It was not without design that Petre entertained the
company with these and such-like jokes, for an opportunity
was thus afforded to the lady Katherine of drawing Anne
aside, and instructing her as to the part which she was to
play in the drama of the day.

" ' Go, one of you, find out the forester/ "J said the justice
at length to the tenants and retainers who crowded the
courtyard, some holding greyhounds in leash, some supplied
with cross-bows2 for the use of the shooters, while others
were ready to act as drivers of the deer, in accordance with
the custom of the manor. The forester having been found
made his report to the justice as to the whereabouts of the
various herds of deer, and suggested that while the company
were being conducted by his assistants to their special stands,
he should with the justice superintend the work of the
drivers.

Think not that I have imported into the sport of our
ancestors a modern term of art. The drivers are an in-
stitution as old as the famous hunting with ' bomen ' and
' greahondes ' proclaimed on the hills of Cheviot, and cele-
brated in the ballad of which Sir Philip Sidney wrote, * I
never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas that I found
not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.'

1 Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 108.

2 At the time of our diarist, the cross-bow had superseded the long bow
as an instrument of woodcraft, to the great sorrow of sportsmen of the old
school, as well as of those who were concerned for the ancient defences of the
realm. 'Verily, I suppose,' writes Sir Thomas Elyot (The Gouernor, 1531),
'that before crosse bowes and hand gunnes were brought into this realme by the
sleighte of our enemies, to thentent to destroye the noble defence of archery,
continued use of shotynge in the longe bowe made the feate so perfecte and
exacte amonge englisshe men, that they then as surely and soone killed suche
game whiche they listed to have as they now can do with the crosse bowe or
gunne, and more expeditely and with the lasse labour they dyd it.' The
preamble of an Act passed * for avoidyng shoting in crosbowes ' states that the
' king's subjects daily delite them selfes in shoting of crosbowes, whereby
shoting in long bowes is the lesse used ' (6 Hen. VIII. c. 1 3 ; 33 Hen. VIII.
c. 6). See Mr. Baillie-Grohman's valuable note (The Master of Game), entitled
'Arms of the Chase,' and also ' The Cross-bow' by Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey
(Longmans, 1903).

236 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

The dryvars thorowe the woodes went,

For to rease the dear ;
Bomen bickarte uppone the bent

With thar browd aras cleare ;
Then the wyld thorowe the woodes went,

On every syde shear,
Greahondes thorowe the greves glent,

For to kyll thear dear.

And so the drive began, and before it ended many a fat
and seasonable buck bit the dust. Some were killed out-
right as they fled past the marksmen ; others wounded
only by the arrow, were coursed and pulled down by grey-
hounds.

At length the mort was sounded, and the day's hunting
was at an end. The company then left their stands, and
assembled at the quarry, where the slaughtered deer were
exposed to view.

The word 'quarry ' has, in its time, borne several meanings.
It was derived, like most terms of venery, from Norman
French. We have already met with the word as signifying
the reward given to hounds. It was also used to signify the
place whither the slaughtered deer were brought when the
chase was over, for the purpose of being viewed and broken
up.1 When the hunting on the Cheviot hills was over, and
a hundred fat deer lay dead,

The blewe a mort uppone the bent,

The semblyd on sydes shear,
To the quarry then the Perse went

To se the bryttlynge off the deare.

1 The word 'quarry,' signifying the reward of the hounds at the death
of a beast of venery (ante, p. 64), is a term of woodcraft, so different
in meaning as to suggest a different origin. It is the French curce
derived from quir, the skin of the deer on which the reward was given to the
hounds. ' Et il serra mange sur le quir. Et pur ceo est il apelee quyrreye '
(Twici). It is not easy to trace the connection between the reward so given
to the hounds and the place to which the slaughtered game were brought, a
sense in which the word is used in The Master of Game : ' And all the while
that the huntyng lasteth shall cartis go about fro place to place to bryng the
deer to the quyrre and ther lay it on a rewe all the hedes oo way and
euery deres fete to other bak.' A possible derivation of the word, used in
this sense, is carrd; the square in which the game is collected. Mr. Baillie-
Grohman has an interesting note on the word 'quarry' (The Master of Game,
Appendix).

THE DEER ARE DRIVEN 237

Or, as the ballad modernised by a contemporary of the diarist

nas 1"> Lord Percy to the quarry went

To view the slaughtered deere.

The word was also applied to a heap of slaughtered game,
such as was collected in the quarry. * This quarry cries on
havoc/ said Fortinbras, viewing the dead bodies of Hamlet,
Laertes, and the King.1 * I'd make a quarry,' said Coriolanus,

With thousands of these quarter'd slaves as high

As I could pick my lance. CorioL i. 1. 202.

And finally, about the time of the diarist, it came to bear
yet another meaning, in which it is commonly used by
modern dealers in antique phraseology — that is to say,
living game as an object of chase.

It was, however, in a different sense that the justice used
the word when he invited the company to assemble at the
quarry, and to partake in the ceremonies which marked the
close of a solemn hunting.

It fell to Master Petre, as the guest of highest degree, to
decide who was first woodman. He had no difficulty in
awarding the palm to Abraham Slender. Tried by all the
tests of woodcraft, he was clearly first. He had culled the
principal of all the deer driven past his stand, and had killed
his quarry outright, not one needing to be pulled down by
greyhounds. He is, in short, one who * handles his bow like '
a woodman, not like ' a crowkeeper.' 2

The company were so merry that the absence of William
Silence and Anne Squele was not observed, and to this
merriment Petre contributed of set purpose. The part that
he then played was afterwards assigned to another humorist
of a different type.

Ptt. [Jaques]. Let's present him to the [justice] like a Roman
conqueror ; and it would do well to set the deer's horns upon his
head, for a branch of victory. Have you no song, forester, for this
purpose 1

For. Yes, sir.

Pet. [Jaques]. Sing it ; 'tis no matter how it be in tune, so it
make noise enough.

1 Hamlet, v. 2. 375. a K. Lear, iv. 6. 87.

238 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

SONG.

For. What shall he have that killed the deer ?
His leather skin and horns to wear.
Then sing him home ;

[The rest shall bear this burden.
Take thou no scorn to wear the horn ;
It was a crest ere thou wast born :

Thy father's father wore it,
And thy father bore it :
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.1

As You L. iv. 2. 3.

"'Bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither/"2 cried Petre,
as the merriment subsided ; " it appertaineth to my office to
declare who hath proved worst woodman, as well as best.
Come, Master Ferdinand, you have liberty to speak for
yourself, only I pray you, let it be in the vulgar tongue, so
that you be understanded of the company. What deer hath
fallen to your arrow this day ? "

" This dearest dear," said Master Ferdinand, taking Ellen
Silence by the hand, and leading her to where her father
stood between Justice Shallow and Petre. " Were there ten
thousand royal harts in yonder quarry, they would be as
nothing in comparison with the queenly heart that hath
fallen to me this day."

"Well said, indeed," said Shallow, "well said, indeed.
Eobert Shallow commends you. 'Tis well, i' faith, that the
words hart and deer have a double meaning, else many an
ancient and merry jest had been lost. But, Master Ferdi-

1 I know no surer proof of the genuineness of the diary and the correct-
ness of the theory propounded in these pages in regard to its origin, than
the wearisome iteration therein of poor jests about harts, deer, and horns.
For you may find in Shakespeare a play on the words ' deer ' and ' hart ' re-
peated some dozen times, while jests and allusions on the subject of horns,
such as those in which Petre indulged, occur nearly thrice as often. * I
question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that like this
of " horns" is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has dis-
covered even a plausible origin ' (Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare. ) On
this curious subject see Horns of Honour, by J. T. Elworthy (Murray,
1900).

2 Tarn, of Shrew, iv. 1. 154.

BESIDE THE QUARRY 239

nand, you have chosen well. I* faith you have chosen well,
and, cousin Silence, by yea and nay, you may no more call
' your fairest daughter and mine ... a black ousel,' as you
have used this many a day past, as often as we might meet."

"Silence gives consent," said Petre, waving his hand in
the direction of the worthy justice, Ellen's father, who
seemed deprived of all power of speech by the suddenness of
the event — things were not expected to occur suddenly in
Gloucestershire — " well, cousin Ferdinand, if thou hast failed
to win the horns as best woodman, be of good cheer, thy
forehead may be furnished yet."

While these scenes were being enacted, two figures, having
dismounted from horseback, emerged from the shadow of
the wood, and, crossing the laund where the quarry had
been formed, approached the group of merrymakers. These
were William Silence and Mistress Anne Silence, formerly
Squele, his wedded wife.

And here, at the supreme moment of his life, the pen of
the diarist, ready enough in chronicling trifles, seems to
falter and to fail him. But we are not without a better
and more enduring record of what was said and done. For,
many years afterwards, the scene beside the quarry, and
the story of sweet Anne's discomfiture of Justice Shallow,
of Abraham Slender, and of her selfish father, recurred to the
memory of one who never troubled himself to construct a
plot when he could find one ready to his hand. He had
been commanded by his Queen to write a play wherein
Falstaff should be presented as a lover, for the delectation
of the Court. The surroundings must needs be English.
It were idle then to turn to Italian novel, and the incident
was scarcely worthy of the dignity of a history. In these
straits he bethought him of the fortunes of an old Glou-
cestershire acquaintance. So pleased was he with the notion,
that he brought the whole company from Gloucestershire to
Windsor for the occasion, and gave the world one comedy,
and only one, the scene of which is laid in England.

Thus it comes to pass that the story of the taking of the
deer concludes in words worthier of the occasion than some
meagre notes hastily written on the last page of THE DIARY
OF MASTER WILLIAM SILENCE.

240 THE TAKING OF THE DEER

Squele [Page]. My heart misgives me, here comes William
Silence [Fenton]. How now, Master 1

Anne. Pardon, good father ! . . .

Squele. Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master
Slender? . . .

William [Fenton]. You do amaze her ; hear the truth of it.
You would have married her most shamefully,
Where there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
The offence is holy that she hath committed ;
And this deceit loses the name of craft,
Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
Since therein she doth evitate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

Petre [Ford]. Stand not amazed ; here is no remedy ;
In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate. . . .

Squele. Well, what remedy 1 [William], heaven give thee joy !
What cannot be eschew'd must be embraced. . . .
Heaven give you many, many merry days !

Merry Wives, v. 5. 225.

CHAPTER XV
THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the
lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a theme as
fluent as the sea ; turns the sand into eloquent tongues, and my horse
is argument for them all. King Henry V.

' 'Tis now fifty and four yeares since these words were writ,
and ten yeares since my deare wife receiued at the hands of
Captaine Anthony Petre (then of the householde of the Lord
Deputy) by way of remembraunce from his mother the
ladye Katherine — now well stricken in yeares, but of great
repute for zele in good workes and aulmsdedes — that Boke
in which are written many things whereof we may say with
Tully senectutem ollectant, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur,
rusticantur. And as I think over those neuer-forgotten
tymes, I call to minde the commandement of olde; hospi-
talitatem nolite oblivisci, per Jianc enim latuerunt quidam
angelis hospitio receptis. 'Tis passing strange how little
I can remember of our discourse in those dayes, and that
little appertayneth rather to horse, hawke and hound than
to weightier matters. And indede as a solace for my
declining years, now (as I may saye) in the sear and yellow
leaf, I have bethought me to collect what he hath written,
and what I can call to minde that he did saye, in regard to
those sports and pastimes wherein we delighted, and in
the which he excelled all others of his yeares with whom I
have ever chaunced to mete. Of this my design I haue
hitherto accomplished naught beyond noting in the mar-
gents certaine passages relating to the Horse, and the conceipt
of a fourfold diuision, somewhat after the fashion of Maister
Thomas Blundeuill, his boke on horsemanshippe,1 which I

1 The foure chiefest Offices belonging to Horsemanship, that is to saie, the
office of the Breeder, of the Rider, of the Keeper, and of the Ferrer. In the

K 241

242 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

have followed, but after the manner of a disciple rather than
of a slaue.

' In the first part I would declare concerning the choosing
of Horses, and the order of their breeding ; in the second of
how to diet and to breake the Great Horse, and therein of
his nature and disposition, and how to make him a horse
of seruice. Thirdlie, I would discourse of the whole arte of
riding the Great Horse, and fourthlie (and lastly) to what
diseases Horses be subject, together with the names of such
diseases, and the kindlie and proper termes meet to be used
in discoursing concerning the Horse and his furniture. Suche
is my designe, in the accomplishment of which I meane to
perseuere

Dum res et aetas et sororum

Fila trium patiuntur atra.'

Whether it was due to advancing years, to the troubles
which burst on the land of his adoption in the following year
(1641), or to the arrest of the fell sergeant death, I know not ;
but these are the last words written by the hand of the diarist
of which I have any knowledge.

When I read this postscript my first thought was to rescue
from the rubbish of Sir William's tower that priceless volume,
noted by the diarist's hand, the existence of which was, to
my mind, conclusively proved. I admit that his words are
ambiguous. I confess that a friend of great literary attain-
ments, to whom I showed the diary and the postscript,
regarded the writer as simply one of a numerous class of
adventurers invited to settle in Ireland in 1586 after the
forfeitures in Munster, many of whom came from the south-
western counties of England. As to the postscript, he
conjectures that it may refer to a collection of the works of

first part whereof is declared the order of breeding of Horses. In the second
how to breake them and to make them Horses of seruice. Conteining the
whole Art of Riding, latelie set forth and now newlie corrected, and amended
of manie faults escaped in the first printing as well touching the Bits aa other-
wise. Thirdlie, how to diet them, as well when they rest as when they trauell
by the way. Fourthlie, to what diseases they be subject, together with the
causes of such diseases, the signes how to knowe them, and finallie how to
cure the same. London, 1565, 1580.

THE DIARIST'S POSTSCRIPT 243

Gervase Markham (who served in Ireland under Essex, with
his brothers Francis and Godfrey, and may thus have been
known to the diarist), bound together, as was not uncommon,
and comprising not only his Discourse of Horsemansliippe
(1593), Cavalarice (1607), and Maister-Peece of Farriery
(1615), but his Country Contentments (1611) and the English
Hous-wif, com/pairing the inward and outward vertues which
ought to be in a compleat woman (1615), by the last of which
the volume was specially recommended to the wife of the
diarist. He regards an allusion to King Lear, more than
thirty years after the publication of the play, as in no way
significant ; adding that by quoting its author as he would
quote a classic, the diarist rather negatives the notion that
he was an acquaintance. I mention this opinion, not that it
is entitled to serious consideration, but as an illustration of
the truth that high literary attainments do not necessarily
confer that power of dealing with circumstantial evidence by
which alone such questions can be solved as the authorship
of the letters of Junius, the personality of the man in the
iron mask, the relations of Swift to Stella, the origin of the
round towers of Ireland, and, I would humbly add, the identi-
fication with William Shakespeare of the nameless stranger
who three hundred years ago was a partaker of the sports
and pastimes of Gloucestershire gentlemen.

I give in his own words the answer of the owner of Sir
William's tower to my earnest letter of inquiry : —

There used to be a lot of rubbishy old books in Sir William's
tower. The covers made capital gun-wads. Don't you remember
cutting them up yourself ages ago, with the machine we used to
work in the old muzzle-loading times 1 The leaves must have been
used by the housemaids for lighting fires, for I cannot now find
even the Continuation of Rapin. I am certain that an old Shake-
speare was burned, because I remember our getting into a scrape
about it. My mother said it was a shame, when she saw the leaves
in the grate. We told her it was no harm, for it was all marked
and scribbled over, besides being badly printed and rottenly spelt,
and my father said it was no great matter, as there was a newer one
much better bound in the library. If this is any use to you, you
can have it. But there is a smaller one that would easily go by
book post, by a Mr. Bowdler ; you could return it when you have
done with the old rubbish I left you.

244 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

I spare the reader all expression of my sorrow and
remorse, and in lieu of vain words, I present to him the
result of an endeavour to repair the ravages of my thought-
less youth, and to reconstruct the work which perished
with Sir William's folio of 1623. And I bid him to remem-
ber that the diarist's notes would have recorded actual facts,
and to reflect how much fine writing and ecstatic transcen-
dentalism must have been lost to the world if learned com-
mentators had been subject to the like restriction.

And so I proceed, adopting the fourfold division of the
diarist.

I

FIRSTLIE, CONCERNING THE CHOOSING OF HORSES, AND
THE ORDER OF THEIR BREEDING

As soon as the adventurer from Stratford could afford it
with prudence, (but no sooner, I am certain) he thus resolved ;
in the words of Pericles, Prince of Tyre,

I will mount myself
Upon a courser, whose delightful steps
Shall make the gazer joy to see him tread.

Pericles, ii. 1. 163.

But that which was a joy to the gazer was mortification to
the less fortunate fellows of the owner of the courser,1 and
when he followed it up by the acquisition of landed property
and armorial bearings, one of them could restrain himself
no longer, and so he put into the mouth of a cavilling scholar
these words :

England affords those glorious vagabonds

That carried earst their fardels on their backes

Coursers to ride on through the gazing streetes,

Looping it in their glaring satten sutes,

And Pages to attend their maisterships,

With mouthing words that better wits have framed

They purchase lands, and now Esquiers are made.2

1 According to Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary, it was not until the
seventeenth century that the word ' courser ' conveyed any suggestion con-
nected with the racecourse. Originally applied to the great horse, it had in
Shakespeare's time become a term of general application, seldom, however,
used, except in poetry.

3 The Returnefrom Pernassus, acted in 1602.

THE COURSER 245

The last couplet is supposed to point the reference un-
mistakably to Shakespeare, to whose father a grant of
arms was made (probably at the instance of the poet) in
1596, and who bought a house and land at Stratford in the
following year. To my mind, the courser is no less sugges-
tive. I believe that its advent preceded by many years the
acquisition of either land or armorial bearings, and a sly hit
at the envy of his fellows may have been intended when in
touching up Greene's True Contention he made Jack Cade
thus address the Lord Say :

Thou dost ride in a foot-cloth, dost thou not ?
Say. What of that 1

Cade. Marry, thou oughtest not to let thy horse wear a cloak,
when honester men than thou go in their hose and doublets.

2 Hen. VI. iv. 7. 51.

However this may be, to buy this courser he must needs
go to Smithfield. This great London mart had not the best
of characters. ' Where's Bardolph ? ' asked Falstaff.

Page. He's gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.

Fal. I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in
Smithfield; an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were
manned, horsed, and wived.1 2 Hen. IV. i. 2. 55.

These words record a personal experience in horse-dealing,
the key to which — as to most of Shakespeare's allusions to

1 Smithfield was a mart for horses from the reign of Henry II. Later on,
Froissart tells us that Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and John Ball * assembled their
company to commune together in a place called Smithlield, where every Friday
there is a market of horses' (Chronicles, Lord Berners' translation). Here
was held the celebrated fair, the humours of which are drawn to the life by
Ben Jonson in his Bartholomew Fair, the comedy which won for him the title
of 'rare Ben Jonson.' 'You are in Smithfield,' says Waspe to his master,
' you may fit yourself with a fine easy-going street nag for your saddle again
Michaelmas term, do.' Dan Jordan Knock em, one of the characters in this
play, is a horse courser, or jobber, a class which ranked lower in public
estimation than the horse-master, who either bred the horses he sold, or
bought them as young, unbroken colts (Fitzherbert, Boke of Husbandrie).
Fitzherbert, one of the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas tempore
Hen. VIII. , proclaims himself a horse-master. Burton (Anatomy of Melan-
choly) bears testimony to the evil repute of Smithfield, and it was a common
saying that ' a man must not make choyce of three things in three places : of
a wife in Westminstre ; of a servant in Paules ; of a horse in Smithfield ; lest
he chuse aqueane, a knave, or a jade.'

246 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

horses and sport — may be found where least you would
expect it ; in this instance in a Roman play.

When Octavius Csesar was taking leave of his sister
Octavia, wedded to Mark Antony, the aspect of his counte-
nance was noted by two lookers-on : by his friend Agrippa,
and by Domitius Enobarbus who followed the fortunes of
his rival Antony. They spoke as follows :

Eno. (aside to Agr.) Will Csesar weep?

Agr. (aside to Eno.) He has a cloud in's face.

Eno. (aside to Agr.) He were the worse for that, were he a

horse ;
So is he, being a man. Ant. and Cleo. in. 2. 51.

Enobarbus' grim jest would have prospered better in the ear
of a Smithfield horse-courser than it has fared with some of
the critics. Mr. Grant White explains it as ' an allusion to
the dislike which horse fanciers have to white marks or
other discoloratious in the face of that animal.' The horse-
courser could have told him that the words meant the exact
opposite. The horse with a cloud in his face was one with
no white star. Fitzherbert, in his Boke of Husbandrie, com-
mends the white star. ' It is an excellent good marke also
for a horse to have a white star in his forehead. The horse
that hath no white at all upon him is furious, dogged, full of
mischief e and misfortune.'1 Thus Gervase Markham; but
in the common language of the stable, such a horse was said
to have a cloud in his face. Equus nebula (ut vulgo dicitur)
in facie, cujus vultus tristis est et melancholicus, jure vitu-
peratur, says the learned Sadleirus in his work, De procrean-
dis etc. equis (1587).2

But Smithfield taught the lesson fronti nulla fides. The
horse carefully chosen for his fair white brow developed
in time the fateful cloud. For the Smithfield horse-courser
had skill to make a false star in the forehead, and the old

1 Cavalarice, G. Markham.

2 From Sadler's words ut vulgo dicitur, the expression ' cloud in the face '
seems to have been in general use. Those who had not Shakespeare's
intimate knowledge of the language of the stable probably used it without
any clear idea of its meaning, as Burton may have done when he wrote
* every louer admires his mistress, though she be very deformed of herselfe —
thin leane chitty face, haue clouds in her face' (Anatomy of Melancholy).

A CLOUD IN THE FACE 247

masters of farriery did not scruple to tell him how the trick
might be done, so as to deceive the unwary — for they taught
also how to distinguish the artificial from the natural white.
And so the purchaser, notwithstanding all his care, might
find himself the owner of such a steed as Emily bestowed
on Arcite : a black on6j owing

Not a hair-worth of white,1 which some will say
Weakens his price, and many will not buy
His goodness with this note ; which superstition
Finds here allowance.2

It may have been for good cause that the superstition of
the clouded face found allowance with the author of these
lines and of Antony and Cleopatra, for the story of the
showy black courser with the ill-omened face was perhaps
a personal reminiscence of what happened to the writer
in very deed, but fortunately with a less tragical result as
regards the rider. As Arcite, mounted on his horse, was

Trotting the stones of Athens, which the calkins
Did rather tell than trample ; for the horse
Would make his length a mile, if t pleas'd his rider
To put pride in him ; as he thus went counting
The flinty pavement, dancing as 'twere to the music
His own hoofs made,

a sudden spark flew forth, with this result :

The hot horse, hot as fire,
Took toy at this, and fell to what disorder
His power could give his will, bounds, comes on end,
Forgets school-doing, being therein train'd
And of kind manage ; pig-like he whines
At the sharp rowel which he frets at rather

1 ' A coal black without any white ' is, according to Markham (Maister-
pcece), 'a cholerick horse' partaking 'more of the fire than of the other
elements.' Homer had sound views in regard to the forehead, for at the
funeral games in honour of Patroclus, the horse noted by Idomeneus

65 rb fj.ev &\\o rbffov 0oiVt£ fjv, ev d£ /meTibirq)
\evKov afjfj.' trtrvKTO Trepirpoxov, rjvre fAr/vy.

II. xxiii. 454.

2 Tico Nolle Kinsmen, v. 4. 50. As to Shakespeare's share in the author-
ship of this play, see Note, Critical Significance of Shakespeare's Allusions to
Field Sports.

248 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

Than any jot obeys ; seeks all foul means

Of boisterous and rough jadery, to disseat

His lord that kept it bravely : when nought serv'd,

When neither curb would crack, girth break, nor differing

plunges

Disroot his rider whence he grew, but that
He kept him 'tween his legs, on his hind hoofs
On end he stands,

That Arcite's legs, being higher than his head,
Seem'd with strange art to hang ; his victor's wreath
Even then fell off his head ; and presently
Backward the jade comes o'er, and his full poise
Becomes the rider's load.

1 Furious, dogged, full of mischiefe and misfortune/ in the
words of Gervase Markham, was this ill-starred steed ; and
though ' proper palfreys black as jet/ 1 might please the eye
in the sallet days when the showy black courser was bought,
and when Titus Andronicus was thought worth adapting, we
can trace, along with the development of the mighty genius
of Shakespeare, the growth of a sounder judgment in the
matter of horseflesh. Later on, roan Barbary, and the
Dauphin's prince of palfreys, are more to his mind ; proving
him to be of the same opinion with Master Blundevill, who
tells us that ' a fair rone ' is among all kinds c most commend-
able, most temperat, strongest and of gentlest nature.' Of
this roan we shall hear more anon, for it also is a personal
reminiscence.

But there is more to be looked to, if you would choose
your horse aright, than his white marks, his colour, or even
than that ' ostrich feather/ of which Blundevill says that the
horse that hath it ' either on his forehead, or on both sides of
his maine, or on the one side, or else behind on his buttockes,
or in anie place where he himself cannot see it, can never be
an euill horse.' For, he wisely adds, ' though the horse be
neuer so well coloured and marked, yet is he little worth
unlesse his shape be accordinglie.' And I am certain that
the author of Venus and Adonis, though he may have had
reason to rail at Smithfield in the matter of the clouded face,
made no mistake in regard to shape, provided he carried in
1 Tit. Andr. v. 2. 50.

ADONIS' COURSER 249

his eye the points which he had noted in Adonis's trampling

courser :

So did this horse excel a common one

In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Round-hoof d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide :
Look, what a horse should have he did not lack.

Yen. and Ad. 293.

This is a picture of the perfect English horse, drawn with
pen and ink, as

when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportioned steed.1

Ibid. 289.

In the horse of to-day these qualities, inherited from his
native-born ancestors, would be deemed underbred.

For in the year of Shakespeare's death (1616) there

1 Professor Dowden asks in regard to this passage, 4 Is it poetry, or a
paragraph from an advertisement of a horse sale ? ' (Shakspere, his Mind and
Art). And in truth it is scarcely more poetical than Blundevill's catalogue
of points in his chapter entitled, What shape a good horse ought to have, from
which I give the following extract, in his own words, but in the order of the
description of Venus and Adonis : * Round hoofe ; pasterns short ; his joints
great with long feawter locks behind which is a signe of force ; his breast
large and round ; his eyes great ; his iawes slender and leane ; his nostrils so
open and puffed up as you may see the read within, apt to receiue aire ; his
necke bending in the midst ; his eares small or rather sharp ; his legs straight
and broad ; his maine should be thin and long ; his taile full of haires ; and
his rumpe round.' Was the line of Venus and Adonis ending ' full eye, small
head, and nostril wide ' ringing in the ears of Michael Barrett, when among
the qualities of the perfect English mare he included ' a small head, full eye,
wide nostril ? ' (The Vineyard of Horsemanship, 1618). Ben Jonson obviously
parodies this passage in Bartholomew Fair, when he makes Knockem the
horse-courser speak thus of Mrs. Littlewit, ' Dost thou hear, Whit ? Is't not
pity my delicate dark chestnut here, with the fine lean head, large forehead,
round eyes, even mouth, sharp ears, long neck, thin crest, close withers, plain
back, deep sides, short fillets, and full flanks ; with a round belly, a plump
buttock, large thighs, knit knees, strait legs, short pasterns, smooth hoofs
and short heels, should lead a dull honest woman's life, that might live the
life of a lady ? ' But rare Ben was just then in a mocking mood, and he had
his fling at The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and Titus Andronicus in the
Induction to this play. These ebullitions, however, did not interrupt a
friendship which on the part of Ben Jonson approached (so he tells us) to
idolatry.

250 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

occurred an event of signal importance in the history of the
horse; a history, by the way, in antiquity beggaring the
puny records of human life on this planet, and stretching
back to palaeozoic ages, when Hipparion roamed the plains
with, as yet, no thought of consolidating the several divisions
of his foot into a hoof, to the manifest advantage of horse,
groom, and farrier. In that year there was imported into
England the first of those Arabian horses from whom the
modern thoroughbred traces his descent. In earlier times a
cross between an eastern horse — usually a Barb — and an
English mare was not uncommon. It was an idea familiar
to the mind of lago.1 The stock thus produced was of high
repute.2 But it was not until the middle of the seventeenth
century that a systematic attempt was made to produce a
sub-species of a distinct and permanent character by judi-
cious crossing of the best native with the best Arabian
strains. This was the origin of the thoroughbred, happily
combining the highest qualities of the two unmixed races
from which it sprang, and in its best form unrivalled
throughout the world for speed, courage, and beauty.3

In Tudor times neither the race-horse, the carriage-horse,
the cart-horse, the hack nor the hunter, as we now under-
stand the terms, were in existence. There were in use horses
of various kinds, home-bred or imported, more or less suited
to the several purposes for which they were employed.
There were 'the Turke, the Barbarian, the Sardinian, the
Napolitan, the Jennet of Spaine, the Hungarian, the high
Almaine, the Friezeland horse, the Flanders horse, and the
Irish hobbie.' The last-mentioned had not attained the
quality and reputation of his descendants ; but still he was
' a prettie fine horse, having a good head and a bodie in-
differentlie well proportioned, saving that manie of them be
slender and pin-buttocked, they be tender mouthed, nimble,
light, pleasant, and apt to be taught, and for the most part
they be amblers, and therefore verie meete for the saddle

1 Othello, i. 1. 112. 2 Blundevill.

3 An important work, entitled The Origin and Influence of the Thorough-
bred Horse (1905), has been recently published by the well-known scholar,
Professor William Ridgeway, a distinguished graduate of the University of
Dublin, who is Professor of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge.

THE EASTERN HORSE 251

and to travell by the way.' They were, however, ' somewhat
skittish and fearfull, partlie perhaps by nature, and partlie
for lacke of good breaking at the first/1

Of these breeds the diarist would, I think, have selected
two only for special notice, the English horse and the Barb.
The Stratford youth who limned out the shapes of the hand-
some home-bred courser came, in later years, to know and to
celebrate the rare qualities of the eastern horse. If in the
former task his verse is somewhat prosaic, this would seem
to be the result of sympathy with its subject-matter ; for his
prose becomes instinct with the poetry of motion when
inspired, like the Dauphin of France, by the exquisite paces
of the * wonder of nature.'

Dau. I will not change my horse with any that treads but on
four pasterns. Qa ha ! He bounds from the earth as if his en-
trails were hairs ; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, chez les narines
de feu ! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk : he trots the
air : the earth sings when he touches it : the basest horn of his
hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

Orl. He's of the colour of the nutmeg.

Dau. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus;
he is pure air and fire ; and the dull elements of earth and water2

1 Blundevill, Foure Chief est Offices.

2 This reference to the elements has more significance than appears on the
surface. The old writers on horses or farriery classify horses according to
the element which is supposed to predominate in their composition. I quote
from Blundevill ; but they are all of the same mind with Shakespeare, and
give the preference to * pure air and fire.' * He is complexioned according as
he doth participate more or lesse of any of the iiii Elements. For if he
hath more of the earth than of the rest, he is melancholic, heauie, and faint
hearted, and of colour a blacke, a russet, a bright or darke dunne. But if
he hath more of the water then is he flegmatike, slowe, dull and apt to
lose flesh, and of colour most commoulie milke white. If of the aire, then
he is sanguine, and therefore pleasant, nimble, and of colour is comonlie a
bay. And if of the fire, then is he cholerike, and therefore light, hot, and
fierie, a stirer, and seldom of anie great strength, and is wont to be of colour
a bright sorrell. But when he doth participate of all the foure elements,
equallie, and in due proportion, then is he perfect, and most commonlio shall
he be one of the colours following,' among which we find 'a faire rone.'
The due proportion in which the four elements should participate is thus
defined by the Dauphin : ' He is pure air and fire, and the dull elements
of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while
his rider mounts him ' (Hen. V. iii. 7. 22.), and he is a fair roan. * I am fire
and air,' said Cleopatra ; * my other elements I give to baser life ' (Ant. and
Cleo. v. 2. 292.) Gervase Markham (Maister-peece) deals with this subject

252 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider
mounts him : he is indeed a horse ; and all other jades you may
call beasts.

Con. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent
horse.

Dau. It is the prince of palfreys ; his neigh is like the bidding
of a monarch and his countenance enforces homage. ... I once
writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus : ' Wonder of Nature.'

Hen. V. iii. 7. 11.

I believe that this roan Barb — prince of palfreys — came
into Shakespeare's possession somewhere about the year
1592. Thenceforth a change comes over the poet's con-
ception of the perfect horse. The fiery courage and elastic
tread of the eastern horse — transmitted to the thoroughbred
of to-day — must have been a revelation to one accustomed
to the somewhat wooden paces of the thickset, straight-
pasterned courser of Stratford. 'This roan shall be my
throne/ he would say in the words of Hotspur, who could
abide the ' forced gait of a shuffling nag ' as little as ' minc-
ing poetry.' l We meet this roan Barb again in the person
of the roan Barbary on which Henry Bolingbroke made his
triumphal entry into London —

Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know.

Rich. II. v. 2. 8.

Proudly he bore his proud rider, and with the sympathetic
instinct* of the eastern race shared his master's pride, and
seemed to know his feelings, as the tired horse imitates his
rider.2 There is little difficulty in identifying the same
favourite with the red roan courser, plainly of eastern race,
'of the colour of the nutmeg,3 and of the heat of ginger,'
whose praises we have heard the Dauphin sing. Indeed, if
I were disposed to adopt the language of criticism, I should
class the historical plays as the roan Barbary group. In the
tragedies we meet with Barbary horses now and then, but

at greater length, detailing the diseases to which horses of each complexion
are most subject.

1 1 Hen. 17. iii. 1. 133. 2 Ante, p. 80.

3 A nutmeg when grated is suggestive of the colour known as red roan.

ROAN BARBARY 253

1 the bonny beast he loved so well/ 1 the prince of palfreys,
is no more. Can we wonder that the period when they were
written was, in Professor Dowden's language, a period of
depression and gloom ?

But although the eastern horse had his peculiar charm,
I conclude from the testimony of the best judges that, of
the various unmixed races then in use, the English was the
best and most serviceable. ' The true English horse, him
I mean that is bred under a good clime, on fir me ground, in
a pure temperature, is of tall stature, and large propor-
tions.'2 Thus Gervase Markham expresses the opinion of
those who were best competent to judge — an opinion which
he supports by several instances of rare merit in English
horses.

But native-bred horses did not always, or indeed com-
monly, attain this standard of excellence. The herds that
roamed over heaths, forests, and moors seem to have de-
generated into mere ponies. 'The great decay of the
generation and breeding of good and swift and strong
horses ' is deplored in the preambles of 27 Hen. VIII. c. 6,
and 32 Hen. VIII. c. 13. The altitude and height prescribed
by these statutes, thirteen ' handfuls ' for mares and fifteen
for horses, tell their own tale, and even this standard for
horses was afterwards lowered to thirteen hands in regard to
certain ' marishes or seggy grounds ' in Cambridgeshire and
elsewhere.

These statutes (which in Elizabeth's reign had been
suffered to fall into desuetude) were not successful in raising
the standard of the native breed. ' Horses are abundant,
yet, although low and small, they are very fleet,' wrote Herr
Eathgeb in 1602 ; and to the same effect is the testimony of
Hentzner, who visited England in 1592, 'the horses are
small, but swift.'

Horses of this class did very well for hunting and hawking
' nagges, and for ambling roadsters.' But the great horse, or

1 2 Hen. VI. v. 2. 12.

2 ' Yorkshire doth breed the best race of English horses ' (Fuller,
Worthies). So say all the old writers, including Shakespeare, for in a
letter written to the Lord Chamberlain the horses for which the writer sent
are described as * well chosen, ridden, and furnished. They were young and
handsome, and of the best breed in the north ' (Hen. VIII. ii. 2. 2).

254 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

horse of service, fit for warfare and the use of princes, was in
danger of becoming extinct.

' The necessarie breeding of horses for service whereof this
realm of all others at this instant hath greatest neede'
was urged on Elizabeth's ministers, and not without success.
Blundevill tells us that when he determined with himself ' to
have translated into our vulgar tongue the foure bookes of
Grison treating in the Italian tongue of the Art of riding
and breaking great horses . . . my L. Burleigh high Treasurer
of England ... of his Lordship's goodnesse vouchsafed to
peruse my first draught, and misliked not the same:' and
that it was at the instance of the Lord Robert Dudley, Earl
of Leicester, 'Maister of the Queenes Maiesties horses/ that
the writer substituted for this translation his complete and
original treatise in the vulgar tongue on The Foure Chief est
Offices of Horsemanship.

In dedicating this work to 'his singular good Lord, the
Lord Robert Dudley, Earle of Leicester,' the author appeals
to the patriotism as well as self-interest of ' Noblemen and
gentlemen of this realme having Parkes or ground impaled
meete for such use' that these enclosures 'might not wholie
be emploied to the keeping of Deere (which is altogether a
pleasure without profite), but partlie to the necessarie breed-
ing of Horses for service.'

The timely adoption, under similar circumstances, of the
system of breeding in enclosures, has rescued from degeneracy
the Exmoor pony, a beautiful and interesting survival of the
indigenous English horse, in the miniature form common in
moorland and mountainous districts. The process of natural
selection cannot be looked to for the production, or survival,
of what is fittest for the artificial needs of mankind, and
when the breeding of horses was left pretty much to chance,
we cannot be surprised to find complaints of the degeneracy
of the race.

Master Blundevill's appeal to the noblemen and gentle-
men of England to turn their enclosures to practical use in
improving the breeding of horses, and the statutes which I
have quoted, lead to the conclusion that horse-breeding in
England was in his time generally conducted after the hap-
hazard fashion still in use in open and unenclosed countries.

THE NATIVE-BIIED HORSE 255

Under such conditions 'compaynys of beestys' of various
kinds roamed the hillsides and wastes. Each 'company' had
its kindly and proper term, which no gentleman, if he had
the smallest regard for his character, would dream of misusing.
According to the Boke of St. Allans, you should apply the word
'herd' to deer, and 'drove' to cattle, but you must be careful
to speak of a 'stode of maris/ a term of art which, in the
phrase 'stud farm/ retains to the present day its special
application to the mare. You should likewise speak of a
'Ragg (rage) of coltis, or a Kake' (race). The word 'herd1
had become in Shakespeare's time of more general applica-
tion, although it was still the appropriate term to designate
a company of deer.1 And those who were particular in the
use of language, when applying this general term to a com-
pany of beasts for whom usage had provided a more specific
designation, were careful to explain themselves ; after the
manner of Shakespeare, describing an experiment which he
tried, or saw tried, upon a race of colts, full of rage, upon
the Cotswold hills.

Jes. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive :
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unharidled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood ;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand.
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music ; therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods ;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.2

Merch. of Yen. v. 1. 69.

1 As You L. ii. 1. 52; All's Well, i. 3. 59; 1 Hen. VI. iv. 2. 46; 3 Hen.
VI. iii. 1. 7. In the Jewell for Gentry (1614), largely taken from the BoJce of
St. Allans, ' ragg ' appears as ' ragge.' The word ' race ' appears in the form
* rake. ' We learn that if the colt's head be restrained, he will hardly be
1 brought to rake coolely.' I have not met with the word ' ragg ' in the form
' rage.' Strutt (Sports and Pastimes of the English People) renders it ' rag.'
But Strutt is an untrustworthy guide in such matters. See the next
succeeding footnote as to the use of the word ' rage ' in reference to colts.

2 In Shakespeare's time the word * race,' although retaining (as we have

256 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

' The mares of this kind or race,' writes Blundevill of the
' Libian ' race, ' as the authors write, be so delighted with
musicke, as the heardman or keeper, with the sound of

seen) its primary application to a company of colta, was used to designate a
breed or kind of horses, distinguished with reference either to the country
whence they originally came, or to the person by whom they were bred. The
former use of the word is illustrated by the passage from Blundevill quoted
above, and in the eighth chapter of his book on the breeding of horses he
mentions a custom ' used even at this present daie at Tutberie, whereas the
Queene's Maiestie hath a race.' Elsewhere he calls to witness in support of
some statement, ' not onlie the Queenes Maiestiea race, but also other men's
races and speciallie Sir Nicholas Arnolds race. ' We can thus understand why
Duncan's horses, beauteous and swift, were called the 'minions of their
race ' (Macbeth, ii. 4. 15). There was no need for Theobald to read * minions
of the race;' very probably and poetically, according to Johnson, and with
the full approval of Steevens, who writes, 'I prefer "minions of the race,"
i.e., the favourite horses on the race-ground;' an emendation and explana-
tion, however, which I regard as doubly objectionable, inasmuch as they not
only needlessly alter the text, but attribute to Shakespeare an allusion to a
pastime which he absolutely ignores. Nor need Malone have tampered with
the printing of Sonnet li., by introducing needless brackets, and thereby
spoiling the sense. The sympathy of horse with his rider is the subject of
the preceding Sonnet. The beast that bears the poet from his friend plods
dully on, tired with his rider's woe. But when he returns, there is no horse
so swift as to keep pace with the poet's desire :

Therefore desire, of perfect'st love being made,
Shall neigh, no dull flesh in his fiery race.

As we have seen (p. 251 n.), horses were classed according to the element
which was supposed to dominate in their composition. The Dauphin's
palfrey was 'pure air and fire,' as distinguished from the 'dull elements
of earth and water' (Hen V. iii. 7. 22). And so desire is likened to a steed,
of a race or breed so compact of fire as to admit of no dull flesh in its
composition. Malone, followed by the Cambridge editor, isolated the words
' no dull flesh,' thus printed in the Globe :

Shall neigh — no dull flesh — in his fiery race.

Traces of the terms ' rage ' and ' ragerie ' as applied to colts may be found in
early literature. Thus Chaucer, of old January, ' He was al coltish, ful of
ragerie' (Marchantes Tale). Thence it came to be used generally of rough
horse-play. The word is now obsolete (see Todd's Johnson's Dictionary) in
this sense, but in Shakespeare's time it was still in use, with no doubt a sug-
gestion of its original application. In the lines quoted above the words ' full
of rage ' describe the mad bounds and neighing of the unhandled colts.
Prince Hal's coltish humours suggest to his father the ragery of an uncurbed
and unhandled colt :

His headstrong riot hath no curb,
When rage and hot blood are his counsellors.

2 Hen. IV. iv. 4. 62.

And there ia a reminiscence of this use of the word, coupled with a
characteristic quibble, in the Duke of York's advice with regard to Richard,

A RACE OF COLTS 257

a pipe, male lead them whither he will himselfe ; ' a device
borrowed by Ariel when he would mislead Caliban and the
drunken varlets of the King of Naples :

I beat my tabor ;

At which like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,
Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music : so I charmed their ears
That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through
Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,
Which entered their frail shins ; at last I left them
I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell.

Tempest, iv. 1. 175.

But even under this haphazard system of breeding, good
results were obtained when conditions were favourable.
' Witnesse Gray Dallavill, being the horse upon which the
Earle of Northumberland roade in the last rebellion of the
North; witnesse Gray Valentine wch dyed a Horse never
conquered; the Hobbie of Maister Thomas Carleton's, and
at this houre most famous Puppey, against whom men may
talke, but they cannot conquer.'1 Witness Sir Andrew
Aguecheek's good horse 'grey Capilet,'2 and more famous
still, Richard's 'white Surrey,'3 whose name bespeaks him of
the same race and colour.

Shakespeare has noted with a distinguishing mark each
of the several classes of horse in general use in his time.

First in importance was the great horse, or horse of
service, meet for the wars or for the tourney. To ride the
great horse, according to the order of the manage, was
esteemed among the necessary accomplishments of a gentle-
man. He is 'Mars fiery steed/ whereof to 'sustain the
bound and high curvet ' was a part of manly honour.4 He
is a ' fiery Pegasus/ 5 and to turn and wind him was, as we

The king is come ; deal mildly with his youth ;
For young hot colts being raged do rage the more.

Rich. II. ii. 1. 69.

The word 'raged' is obelised in the Globe, although correctly explained in the
Glossary appended to the edition of 1891, as ' chafed, enraged.'

1 Markharn, Cavalarice. 2 Twelfth N. iii. 4. 315.

3 Rich. III. v. 3. 64. * All's Well, ii. 3. 299.

5 1 Hen. IF. iv. 1. 109.

S

258 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

shall see anon, the greatest achievement of noble horseman-
ship.

A horse of no ordinary power was needed to sustain the
weight of a knight in full armour, in addition to the cum-
brous furniture and heavy plates which the charger bore for
his own protection. The Clydesdale of to-day approaches
most nearly to the great war-horse of our ancestors, from
which this noble animal has been developed by careful
breeding through many generations. The High Almain or
German horse was ' stronglie made and therefore more meete
for the shocke1 than to pass a cariere, or to make a swift
manege, because they be verie grosse and heauie.' Of the
same class, we are further told by Blundevill, was the Flanders
horse, ( sauing that for the most part he is of a greater stature
and more puissant. The mares also of Flanders be of a great
stature, strong, long, large, faire, and f ruitfull, and besides that
will endure great labour.' The momentum imparted to these
huge animals in the career must have enhanced considerably
' the grating shock of wrathful iron arms.'2 We shall hear
more of the career and swift manage when we come to the
third division of the diarist.

Here may be noted the excellence of the Neapolitan
horses.3 Although not so meet for the shock as the heavier
horses of Flanders and Germany, for the lighter exercises of

1 This word is used by Shakespeare. Compare 1 Hen. IF. i. 1. 12 ; Hen.
V. iv. 8. 114 ; Rich. III. v. 3. 93 ; and (metaphorically) Rich. II. Hi. 3. 56.

2 Rich. II. i. 3. 136.

3 The Neapolitans were famous not only for horses, but for horsemanship.
* At this day,' writes Peacham in his Compleat Gentleman (1627), 'it is the
onely exercise of the Italian Nobility, especially in Naples, as also of the
French, and great pitty of no more practised among our English Gentry.'
Grisoni, the well-known writer (Ordini di Cavalcare), was a Neapolitan, and
the founder of a school. It is not therefore without design that Portia is
made thus to describe her Neapolitan suitor :

For. I pray thee, over-name them ; and as thou namest them, I will
describe them ; and according to my description, level at my affection.

Ner. First, there is the Neapolitan prince.

For. Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse ;
and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts, that he can shoe
him himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith.

Merck, of Fen. i. 2. 39.

Theobald, unaware that the word Neapolitan would, to Shakespeare, naturally
suggest ' colt,' reads ' dolt.' ' Hapless Shakespeare ! '

THE AMBLER 259

the manage they were unequalled. ' In mine opinion/ writes
Blundevill, ' their gentle nature and docilitie, their comelie
shape, their strength, their courage, their sure footmanship,
their well reining, their lof tie pace, their cleane trotting, their
strong gallopping, and their swift running well considered
(all which things they haue in maner by nature) they excel
numbers of other races, euen so farre as the faire Greihounds
the fowle Mastiffe Curres.'

With the disuse of defensive armour and with changes
in the mode of warfare, the great horse became quite out of
fashion. But he was not, like a rusty mail, condemned to
hang in monumental mockery. For the blood of the Tudor
war horse runs in the veins of the heavy draught horses of
to-day, and in the best specimens of this class we may trace
many characteristics of their famous progenitors.

Next in importance, and in far more general request, was
the roadster. He was an ambling, not a trotting horse. In
Tudor times all travellers, and most goods, were conveyed
on horseback. Coaches had been but lately introduced, and
were unknown outside the great cities. Carts labouring
heavily through the inire were in use, but only for short
distances. Many of the roads were little better than tracks
impassable save for the packhorse or the hackney roadster,
and even the best of them in the pre-macadamite ages were
rough and uneven. To the wayfarer who had to travel his
weary miles under such circumstances, a horse trained to
the easy pace known as the amble was almost a necessity.
' Take away the ambling horse/ writes Blundevill, ' and take
away the olde man, the rich man, the weake man, nay
generally all men's travels ; for coaches are but for streets,
and carts can hardly passe in winter.'

The word amble did not then, as now, denote a slow and
easy trot. It was an artificial pace, in which the horse
moved simultaneously the fore and hind legs on each side, a
mode of progression which may be now studied in animals
differing as widely in other respects as the African camel
and the American pacer. In teaching the horse to amble,
the legs on each side were attached by means of trammels.1

1 Macbeth's words, If the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, Macbeth, i. 7. 2,

260 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

Some horses took more naturally to this pace than others,
notably your Irish . hobby, which was therefore in much re-
quest for an 'an ambling gelding.'1 The movement in the
trot of the thick-set, straight-pasterned horse of unmixed
native breed was a very different motion from the smooth
trotting of the well-bred saddle-horse of to-day; and the
hardness (as it was called) of this pace, compared with the
amble, made the journey appear long and tedious. * Sir,'
said Benedick to Claudio, * your wit ambles well ; it goes
easily.'2 Kosalind expressed the general sense of the riders
of her day when she noted as wearisome the hard pace of a
trotting horse.

Time travels in divers paces with diverse persons. I'll tell you
who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops
withal, and who he stands still withal.

Orl. I prithee, who doth he trot withal ?

Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the con-
tract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized : if the interim
be but a se'nnight, time's pace is so hard that it seems the length
of seven year.

Orl. Who ambles Time withal ?

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath
not the gout, for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study
and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain, the one lack-
ing the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing
no burden of heavy tedious penury ; these Time ambles withal.

Orl. Who doth he gallop withal ?

Ros. *With a thief to the gallows, for though he go as softly as
foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.

Orl. Who stays it still withal ?

Ros. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between
term and term and then they perceive not how time moves.3

As Ton L. iii. 2. 326.

are thus paraphrased by Johnson : * If the murder could terminate in itself,
and restrain the regular course of consequences.' The manner in which the
regular course of a horse was restrained by strapping together the legs on
each side — 'which is called among horsemen trammelling '—will be found
fully described in Gervase Markham's Cheap and Good Husbandry.

1 Merry Wives, ii. 2. 319. 2 Much Adot v. 1. 159.

3 Mr. Hunter substitutes 'amble' for 'trot,' and vice versd, supposing
that the ' se'nnight ' appeared seven years from the slowness of the pace, and
not from its hardness ; a double error, for there is no reason to suppose that

THE FOOT-CLOTH HORSE 261

But if the ambling gelding was preferred for swift and
easy travelling on the road, the foot-cloth horse served for
show. He was a trotting-horse, like the great horse, which,
no doubt, served this purpose in the piping days of peace.
In ' the chequir roul of nombre of all the horsys ' l appertain-
ing to the Earl of Northumberland in 1512, among his
' clothsell hors/ we find mention of ' a great double trotting-
hors called a curtal for his lordship to ride when he comes
into townes.' Of such a clothsell curtal thought Lafeu, an
old lord, when he said,

Hd give bay Curtal and his furniture,

My mouth was no more broken than these boys',

And writ as little beard. All's Well, ii. 3. 65.

A great personage entering a town in state would exchange
his ambling nag for a trotting-horse, called a clothsell horse
or foot-cloth horse from the sell or saddle adorned with foot-
cloth, well known to us from pictures of the day ; as

the duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed
Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know,
With slow but stately pace kept on his course,
Whilst all tongues cried ' God save thee, Bolingbroke ! '

Rich. II. v. 2. 7.

On such a trotting-horse Lord Hastings rode through
London when warned of his doom.

Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble,
And started,2 when he look'd upon the Tower,
As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house.

Rich. III. iii. 4. 86.

With this knowledge we may more perfectly understand
the bitterness of Jack Cade when he accused Lord Say of

the ambler was slower than the trotting-horse. In fact, some of the fastest
movers of the present day are pacers, and would have been by our ancestors
called amblers. I have been told that in some parts of Asia where a good
deal of travelling is done on horseback, the horses are frequently amblers, in
the strict sense of the term.

1 Quoted, Sidney's Book of the Horse.

2 Thus the Folio, using an apt term in speaking of the horse. The Globe
and the Cambridge editors read ' startled. '

262 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

riding on a foot-cloth horse, and why it was that a trotting
horse was associated with the idea of pride.

Edg. Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend
hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and
whirlipool, o'er hog and quagmire ; that hath laid knives under his
pillow, and halters in his pew ; set ratsbane by his porridge ; made
him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched
bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor.

K. Lear, iii. 3. 51.

The great horse was always a trotter,1 and I have no doubt
served, in times of peace, as a foot-cloth horse. But after
the introduction of the eastern horse, his ' delightful steps '
brought him into request on state occasions. Bolingbroke,
as we have seen, rode a Barb, and of the same race, I doubt
not, was the 'hot horse, hot as fire,' on which Arcite was
mounted when, 'trotting the stones of Athens/ he verified
the superstition of the clouded face.2

The horses used in hunting and hawking were mostly of
native breeding, and of very various degrees of merit. But
a cross between an English mare and a Barbary horse was
highly esteemed for speed and endurance. It was commended
by Blundevill to him that delighteth in those sports, ' to the
intent he maie have such Coltes of him as will be able to
continue in such extreame exercises as to gallop the Bucke,
or follow a long winged Hawke. Either of which exercises
killeth yoerelie in this realme manie a good Gelding.'

From this and other references to the hunting horse of the
day, I conclude that it had shared in the general decay of
the native-bred horse, before its regeneration by an admixture
of eastern blood. In the dialogue already quoted, entitled
The Cyuile and Vmyuile Life (1579), Vallentine the courtier
complains to Vincent the country-gentleman that 'many
Gentlemen there are that spend yearly so much hay and
corne upon huntinge and hawkinge lades as would maintayne
halfe a dozen able horses to serue their Prince. ... Also (if
you marke it well) it is (besides the necessity) a better and
more commendable sight to see a Gentleman ride with three

1 According to the old writers it was not considered meet that horses of
service should amble. 2 Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 4, ante, p. 247.

HUNTING AND HAWKING NAGS 263

fayre horses, than fifteene of those vncumly Curtalles ' ; an
estimate of the common hunting and hawking jade that
Vincent does not see his way to dispute.

Much of the hunting and hawking of the day was done
on foot, and a very ordinary nag sufficed for the require-
ments of the rider, unless indeed for such rare and 'extreme
exercises ' as the hunting at force of the Cotswold hart, or
keeping in sight a cast of falcons, as hawk and handsaw are
borne into the sunbeams by a keen north-north-westerly
wind.1

Humbler but useful tasks were performed by the post-
horse,2 the cart-horse, or fill-horse,3 whose life would seem to
have been a hard one. ' Whip me ? ' says Pompey to good
old Escalus,

No, no ; let carman whip his jade :
The valiant heart's not whipt out of his trade.

Measure for M. ii. 1. 269.

The pack-horse,4 with his pack-saddle5 laden with mer-
chandise, was a familiar object, not only on the highway,
but on numerous tracks known as pack-horse roads, which
are still pointed out in various parts of the country. His
pace was neither trot nor amble, but a fast walk, known as
a foot pace. 'If you will chuse a Horse for portage, that
is, for the Pack, or Hampers, chuse him that is exceeding
strong of Body and Limbs, but not tall, with a broad back,
out ribbs, full shoulders and thick withers, for if he be thin in
that part, you shall hardly keep his back from galling.' 6 In
this task the carriers whom we have met in the Eochester
inn yard do not seem to have succeeded. ' I prithee, Tom/
said the First Carrier to his fellow, ' beat Cut's saddle, put
a few flocks in the point ; poor jade is wrung in the withers
out of all cess.' 7

Nothing has, heretofore, been said of the running-horse,
or as we should now call him, the race-horse. And this for
a sufficient reason. He is the only horse in whom, and in

1 See ante, p. 206.

2 2 Hen. IV. Ind. 4 ; Rich. III. i. 1. 146 ; Rom. and Jul. v. 1. 26.
8 Merck, of Ten. ii. 2. 100. 4 Rich. III. i. 3. 122.

5 Cartel, ii. 1. 99. 6 Markhara, Cheap and Good Husbandry.

7 1 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 6.

264 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

whose doings, Shakespeare took no interest, and the horse-
race is the only popular pastime to which no allusion can be
found in his writings. It is true that the Turf and the
thoroughbred are institutions of later date, for which we are
indebted to the Stuarts, not to the Tudors. It is true that
these institutions had not, as yet, filled the country with
ruined gamblers, and flooded the horse-market with worth-
less weeds, in order that here and there a horse might be
bred of rarest power to gallop for a couple of miles, carrying
on his back a boy or attenuated man. Nevertheless, the
popularity of horse-race and running-horse is attested by
the literature of the Elizabethan age. Full knowledge of the
sport is brought home to Shakespeare with certainty, for
horses as well as greyhounds were ' outrun on Cotsall.' In
the Cotswold games, celebrated in later years under the
auspices of Mr. Kobert Dover, the horse-race held a fore-
most place. Its several incidents, differing little from those
of to-day, are commemorated by the contributory poets
in their verses, and by the artist who designed the curious
frontispiece illustrative of the games.1

The impulse to match horse against horse is probably
coeval with the subjugation of the animal by man. It is
certainly older than the passion for Olympic dust, or for the
later -day triumphs of the Turf. Traces of this primeval
instinct — faint and far between — may be discovered in
Shakespeare. In a wit-combat between Romeo and Mer-
cutio, Romeo exclaims, ' Switch and spurs, switch and spurs ;
or I'll cry a match,' whereupon Mercutio, ' JSTay, if thy wits
run the wild-goose chase, I have done.'2 There was no
need for a critic to substitute ' goats ' for ' goose/ for
Mercutio had clearly in his mind a 'way our Ancestors
had of making their Matches,' thus described by Nicholas
Cox: 'The Wild goose chase received its name from the

1 The date of the publication of Annalia Dulrensia was 1636. But
according to Anthony Wood, Dover carried on for forty years those games
(Athence Oxon. ) of which he appears to have been the restorer, not the founder.
The horse-race is taken as a matter of course, not as a new or exceptional
item in the programme. The Annalia Dubrensia fixes its place among
English sports with the same certainty as Homer's description of the games
in honour of Patroclus proves the chariot race to have been a usual pastime in
the heroic age. 2 Rom. and Jul. ii. 4. 73.

THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE 265

manner of the flight which is made by Wild geese, which is
generally one after another ; so the two Horses after the
runing of Twelvescore Yards had liberty which horse so-
ever could get the leading to ride what ground he pleas'd :
the hindmost Horse being bound to follow him within a
certain distance agreed on by Articles, or else to be whipt up
by the Triers or Judges which rode by, and whichever Horse
could distance the other won the Match/ l

There is also a distant recognition of the match or wager,
as something heard of rather than seen, in Cymbeline, one
of Shakespeare's latest plays. Imogen, about to fly to
Milford, inquires of Pisanio how many score of miles may
be ridden in a day. Pisanio suggests that one score would
be enough for her.

Imo. Why, one that rode to execution, man,

Could never go so slow : I have heard of riding wagers,

Where horses have been nimbler than the sands

That run i' the clocks behalf. But this is foolery :

Go, bid my woman feign a sickness ; say

She'll home to her father ; and provide me presently

A riding suit, no costlier than would fit

A franklin's housewife. Cymb. iii. 2. 72.

The match or wager between two horses is plainly
different from the horse-race, in which several competitors
strive for the mastery, as at the Cotswold games. And in
the horse-race Shakespeare shows no interest whatever. It
occupies the unique position of a sport recognised by Bacon2
and ignored by Shakespeare ; so let it pass.

1 Gentleman's Recreation, 1674. The writer tells us that this chase fell
into disuse, being ' found by experience so inhumane and so destructive to
Horses, especially when two good horses were matched.' It was popular in
the time of Burton, for he writes (Anatomy of Melancholy, 1632), of 'riding
of great horses, running at ring, tilts and turnements, horse-races, wild goose
chases, which are the disports of greater men, and good in themselves,
though many gentlemen by that means gallop quite out of their fortunes.'
The running of train-scents with hounds succeeded the wild-goose chase as a
mode of deciding matches, and it, in turn (according to Cox), ' afterwards
was chang'd to three heats, and a straight course.'

2 Essay of Building (1625).

266 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

II

SECONDLIE HOW TO DYET THE GREAT HORSE, AND
THEREIN OF HIS NATURE AND DISPOSITION, AND HOW
TO MAKE HIM A HORSE OF SERVICE

1 My horse/ said Mark Antony, ' is

a creature that I teach to fight,
To wind, to stop, to run directly on,
His corporal motion govern'd by my spirit.'

For that, he says, ' I do appoint him store of provender/1

Bottom, the weaver, may have overrated his gifts as an
actor, but in the character of a four-footed beast of burden
he proves that an ass can discourse most wisely on pro-
vender ; thereby suggesting that we should do well to take a
hint even from an ass in a matter which he thoroughly
understands, as Zeuxis took hints from a cobbler on the paint-
ing of a shoe. ' Say, sweet love/ asks Titania, ' what thou
desirest to eat.'

Bot. Truly, a peck of provender : I could munch your good
dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay : 2 good
hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

Tita. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.

Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 33.

Bottom's views on the subject of dry provender are
sound. But unsound reasons may be given for sound con-
clusions; witness the carriers loading their pack-horses in
the Kochester inn-yard, to bear London- wards Kentish

1 Jul. Goes. iv. 1. 29.

2 'A bottell of haie,' according to Blundevill, is the allowance prescribed
by Camerarius for a horse at each feed. Bottle, in this sense, meant a
bundle, and survives in the saying, ' Look for a needle in a bottle of straw.'
This use of the word ' bottle,' like many other words, phrases, and modes of
pronunciation, has survived from the Tudor age to the present time in parts
of Ireland, as Chaucer's English was observed by Stanilmrst to have survived
to his time (Description of Ireland, 1577). Witnesses examined before me
in the counties of Tyrone and Cork have spoken of ' bottling ' straw and
hay, and have explained that they meant to express the idea of forming
it into bundles. And a witness in Belfast said, ' There was nothing but a
bottle of hay in the bottom of the cart. '

BOTTOM ON DRY PROVENDER 267

turkeys, and 'a gammon of bacon and two razes of ginger to
be delivered as far as Charing Cross,' while they converse
after the manner of their kind :

Sec. Car. Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and
that is the next way to give poor jades the bots. This house is
turned upside down since Robin Ostler died.

First Car. Poor fellow, never joyed since the price of oats
rose; it was the death of him. 1 Hen. IV. ii. 19.

If carriers on the Kentish road were ignorant of the
natural history of the bot (which we know to be the off-
spring of eggs, attached to certain leaves and swallowed by
the horse), they erred in good company. We read in
Blundevill that bots are engendered most commonly by
1 fowle feeding,' and Markham,1 referring to the opinion of
his 'masters, the old antient farriers,' attributes their
presence in the body of the horse to 'foul and naughty
feeding.'

' My brother Jaques he keeps at school,' complains
Orlando of his unjust and cruel brother,

and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me
rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here
at home unkept ; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my
birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox 1 His horses are
bred better ; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they
are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired.

As You L. i. 1. 5.

'Fair with their feeding/ in this lies the whole art of
horse-keeping. Fair provender should be fairly apportioned
to the work done, noting the different conditions of the
'soiled horse,'2 'the fat and bean-fed horse,'3 the 'hot and
fiery steed,'4 the 'hollow pamper'd jade,'5 and the horse that
is truly tired, to which you must offer neither oats nor beans,
but ' barley broth ... a drench for sur-rein'd jades.'6

If you neglect this maxim, the result will be disaster.
Your fat and bean-fed horse, overfed and underworked, may
point a moral. ' The times are wild,' said Northumberland,

1 Maister-peece of Farriery. 2 K. Lear, iv. 6. 124.

3 Alids. N. Dr. ii. 1. 45. 4 Rich. II. v. 2. 8.

5 2 Hen. IF. ii. 4. 178. 6 Hen. V. in. 5. 19.

268 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

contention, like a horse

Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
And bears down all before him. 2 Hen. IV. i. 1.9.

Thus it came about that Duncan's horses,

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.

Old M. 'Tis said they eat each other.

Ross. They did so, to the amazement of mine eyes

That look'd upon't. Macbeth, ii. 4. 14.

For if the story is (as we are told) ' a thing most strange
and certain/ the explanation of the portent may be found in
overfeeding and underwork, the ruin of many as beauteous
and swift as they, ignoring the 'hot condition of their
blood.11

But the horse of service, if hard work is looked for, must
be highly fed. ' The confident and over-lusty French' before
Agincourt noted how their own 'steeds for present service
neigh,' and comparing their 'hot blood' with the starved
condition of the English, and of their horses reduced to
chewing grass, made sure of easy victory, and mockingly
suggested finding the English, and giving ' their fasting
horses provender,' so as to make the fight a fair one.

Their poor jades

Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips,
The gum down roping from their pale-dead eyes,
And in their pale dull mouths the gimrnal bit
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless ;
And their executors, the knavish crows,
Fly o'er them, all impatient for their hour.
Description cannot suit itself in words
To demonstrate the life of such a battle
In life so lifeless as it shows itself. Hen. V. iv. 2. 46.

The Frenchmen soon learned that a gallant horse, though
half starved, is a different animal from

1 Merch. of Vin. v. 1. 74.

THE MANAGE 269

pack-horses,

And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia,
Which cannot go but thirty miles a-day.

2 Hen. IV. ii, 4. 177.

For even in regard to the beast that perisheth, there is
somewhat more to be thought of than abundance of meat and
drink. There is the quality of its spirit. King Harry said
of his force * our hearts are in the trim,'1 and when this is so,
it is a long way to the end of man, horse, or hound.

Avoiding the extremes of overfeeding and starvation, and
taking care that your horses are fair with their feeding, you
will have them ' taught their manage.'

In training any animal — not excepting man — it is before
all things needful to understand the nature and disposition
with which you have to deal. For, notwithstanding wide
differences between individuals, there has been given to each
species of created beings a separate and individual nature.
And so it is that we understand each other (in Bishop
Butler's words) when we speak of such a thing as human
nature. Brute creatures, according to this great thinker,
need not to be trained up in the way they should go, ' nature
forming them by instincts to the particular manner of life
appointed them, from which they never deviate.' But if you
would have a brute creature deviate from his particular
appointed manner of life to another, for which nature has
supplied the capacity but not the needful instincts, you must
train him as you would a child. For example, the whole
nature of the horse, physical, intellectual, and moral,2 proves
him 'created to be awed by man,' and 'born to bear.'3 But
in this he is perfected, not by instinct, but by training, and
here comes in the similitude between man and beast, on
which Shakespeare loved to dwell.

The horse has been chosen by two lovers of the race for

1 Hen. V. iv. 3. 115.

2 If you take exception to the application of the word ' moral' to what is
called the brute creation, I refer you to a suggestive passage in Bishop Butler's
Analogy, where he describes as both invidious and weak an objection taken to
certain of his arguments for the immortality of the soul, by reason of their
applicability to brutes as well as to mankind.

3 Rich. II. v. 5. 91.

270 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

illustration of human character and conduct ; by Swift1 in a
single work, in the way of contrast, and for purposes of
bitterest satire ; by Shakespeare, constantly, with a kindly
and tolerant feeling towards both creatures, and in the pur-
suit of that truly eclectic philosophy which turns even adver-
sity to sweet uses, and

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

As You L, ii. 1. 16.

Many are the sermons for which the horse and his train-
ing supply him with the text ; short, practical, and to the
point.

Thus Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, when he advised
vigorous measures against heretics, reminded the Council
that the first care of the trainer is to get the mastery of his
horse; until this has been achieved, gentleness is out of
place.

For those that tame wild horses
Pace 'em not in their hands to make 'em gentle,
But stop their mouths with stubborn bits, and spur 'em,
Till they obey the manage. If we suffer,
Out of our easiness and childish pity
To one man's honour, this contagious sickness,
Farewell all physic : and what follows then ?
Commotions, uproars, with a general taint
Of the whole state. Hen. VIII. v. 3. 21.

But though it is necessary to prove who is master, care
must be taken to avoid unnecessary violence, as children
should not be provoked to wrath, but brought up in due
nurture and admonition.

'The king is come/ says the Duke of York of poor
Richard,

1 'He was also a tolerable horseman,' writes Sir Walter Scott, 'fond of
riding, and a judge of the noble animal, which he chose to celebrate, as the
emblem of moral merit, under the name of Houynhnhnm' (Life of Swift).
His earliest misadventure was at Kilkenny College, where he expended all his
little store of money in buying a mangy horse on its way to the knacker's yard
(Sheridan's Life of Swift), but soon repented of his bargain when the poor
brute dropped down dead. Stella's horse, Johnson, is remembered amidst all
the varying interests of his London life.

HOW TO TAME WILD HORSES 271

deal mildly with his youth ;
For young hot colts being raged l do rage the more.

Rich. II. ii 1. 69.

Above all things, allow plenty of time for growth, and do
not begin your training too soon.

Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish'd,
Who plucks a bud before one leaf put forth *?

If springing things be any jot diminish'd,

They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth :

The colt that's back'd and burden'd being young

Loseth his pride and never waxeth strong.

Yen. and Ad. 415.

This is a text upon which, if time and place did serve,
much might be said. How many springing things of rarest
promise wither in their prime, or prove nothing worth in after
years, from overwork in youth ? The evil was not so rife
three hundred years ago as in these days of competitive ex-
aminations, open scholarships, and forced culture. Shake-
speare's wisdom is not of an age, but for all time, and of all
his object-lessons from the animal world there is none more
deserving of being laid to heart than the poor spiritless jade,
unequal to sustained effort, once a promising colt, but hope-
lessly ruined for life, inasmuch as he was backed and
burdened, being young, by an impatient master, too eagerly
desirous of immediate results.

But the discipline of punishment is not the whole of
training. There is the discipline of reward. The manage
had not only its needful corrections, but its helps and cherish-
ing, by hand, leg, and voice. Shakespeare calls them 'aids'2
and ' terms of manage.' 3 He has given us examples.4 It is

1 In a footnote at p. 256, it is shown that the word ' rage ' was a kindly
and proper term to be used in speaking of colts, and in Shakespeare's time
the play upon this word in the text conveyed to the ears of a Tudor horseman
some meaning now lost. That the words stand in need of explanation is
evident from the following list of conjectural emendations taken from the
notes to The, Cambridge Shakespeare, which retains the original text, without
obelising the word 'raged' as in the Globe Edition; 'inrag'd' (Pope);
'being 'rag'd' (Hanmer); ' being rein'd ' (Singer); * being urg'd' (Collier);
' being chaf'd ' (Jervis) ; ' being curb'd ' (Keightley) ; ' be-wringed ' (Bulloch) ;
1 being rous'd ' (Herr).

2 A Lover's Complaint, 117. 8 1 Hen. IF. ii. 3. 52.

4 The old writers are at one with Shakespeare in this matter of ' helps and

272 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

when the Dauphin cries ' Qa ha ! ' to his prince of palfreys
that he ' bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs.'1
Adonis addressed to the duller courser of Stratford not
only his stern ' Stand, I say/ but his ' flattering Holla.' 2
Kichard II. bemoaned roan Barbary's forgetfulness of the
hand that 'made him proud with clapping him/ the royal
hand from which the ungrateful jade had often eaten bread.3
Hermione pleaded on behalf of mankind in general, and her
own sex in particular, that they too might have their aids
and rewards, and she insists on the ill effects of correcting
when you ought to cherish.

Cram's with praise, and make's

As fat as tame things : one good deed dying tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Our praises are our wages : you may ride's
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre. Wint. Tale> i. 2. 91.

In the commonwealth of Utopia ' they do not only fear
their people from doing evil by punishments, but also allure
them to virtue with rewards of honour.'4 Socrates sug-
gested as his desert, a sentence of maintenance at the public
expense in the Prytaneum, and public rewards as well as
punishments are hinted at in the Republic of his disciple
Plato — surely the most dismal of ideal communities, where
the domestic virtues are impossible, and poetry and fiction
are unknown. In the kingdom of Lilliput, whoever can prove
that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for a
certain time, may add to his name the title of snilpall or
legal, and draw a certain sum of money out of a fund appro-
priated for that use; the image of Justice, in Lilliputian
Courts of Judicature, is formed with a bag of gold open in
her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show

corrections of the voyce.' Michael Baret ( Vineyard, 1618), in addition to
' Backe, I say, Stand, and such like,' is of opinion that ' Will, you Roague ;
Ah, thou Traytor ; So, thou Villaine ; or such like, will helpe to bring him
into the more subiection, so that he doe not perceive the man to betimerous.'
According to the Art of Riding (1584), ' a cowardly horse must be corrected
courteously.' 1 Hen. V. iii. 7. 13.

2 Yen. and Ad. 284. 3 Rich. II. v. 5. 85.

4 More's Utopia, ch. ix., Robinson's translation, 1551.

THE DISCIPLINE OF REWARDS 273

that she is more disposed to reward than to punish. Those
people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us
when told that our laws were enforced only by penalties
without any mention of reward. And yet, despite philoso-
phers ancient and modern, Swift's observation still holds
true : ' Although we usually call reward and punishment the
two hinges upon which all government turns, yet I could
never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation
except that of Lilliput.' It remains for some social reformer
in the future, by means of a system of public rewards out of
money voted by Parliament, at once to provide infinite
possibilities in Committee of Supply, agreeably to diversify
the labours of a going Judge of Assize, and to give practical
effect to the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, More, Swift, and
to the wisdom which Hermione derived from long experience
and intimate knowledge of the nature of the horse.

The comparison of the body politic to a horse, and of a
ruler to its rider, is a favourite one with Shakespeare. ' The
estate is green and yet ungoverned,' said Buckingham,

Where every horse bears his commanding rein,
And may direct his course as please himself.

Rich. III. ii. 2. 128.

'The times are wild/ said Northumberland in the days of
Hotspur's rebellion,

contention, like a horse
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
And bears down all before him. 2 Hen. IV. i. 1. 9.

Similes of this kind, however, are among the commonplaces
of literature. Shakespeare's application of his experience
of the horse is commonly of a more direct and personal
character.

In studying mankind, we must regard not only individual
men, and human nature in the abstract, but also certain
types, or varieties, in accordance with which the dissimilar
atoms constituting the sum total of humanity seem to ar-
range themselves.

The study of these types, or characters, was much

274 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

affected by our early satirists.1 Shakespeare is a dramatist,
not a satirist, and he presents us not with characters, but
with living men and women. But these men and women
sometimes classified their fellow-creatures, as we might.
And in so doing, moved by some common impulse, even
when alike in nothing else, when they would illustrate their
meaning, they sought in field or stable a counterpart to each
human character.

Take, for instance, the Hollow Man. Who does not know
him ? Loud-voiced, confident, self-asserting ; in the eyes of
the ignorant the type of the ideal Strong Man. But call on
him in the needful time of trial, and he will fail to respond.

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith ;
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle ;
But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial. Jul. Gees. iv. 2. 22.

This hollow deceitful jade is far removed from the ideal
horse, typical of a very different man. Troilus and Cressida
was written shortly after the appearance of Chapman's
translation of the Iliad. This work of genius — uncouth and
rugged, but instinct with the heroic spirit — must have been
a revelation to one possessed of ' small Latin and less Greek/
and striving to attain a full understanding of the great
masters of the old civilisation. It may well be that the
Father of Poets was thus made known to the greatest of his
sons, as he was long afterwards revealed to another of the
chosen race :

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne :
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold ;

1 The Characters of Bishop Hall (1608), better known as a divine than as
a satirist, may be read with interest at the present day. He was followed
by the ill-fated Sir Thomas Overbury, a Gloucestershire man, who published
in 1614 his Characters; or, Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry
Persons, and in imitation of his work John Earle, afterwards Bishop of
Salisbury, wrote Micro-cosmographie ; or, a Peece of the World discovered in
Ussays and Characters (1628), displaying, in Hallam's opinion, 'acute ob-
servation, and a happy humour of expression.'

HORSES AND MEN 275

— Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.

Shakespeare's Latin and Greek may have needed the aid of
English translations, but, however this may be, he succeeded
in clothing his conceptions of classical antiquity in flesh and
blood, and in presenting them with a living reality unattained
by his learned contemporary and critic, Ben Jonson. Among
his presentations of the men and women who live in the Iliad,
none is so natural or so Homeric (the words mean the same
thing) as Ajax the Strong Man ; truest, if not greatest, among
the heroes of the Iliad.

Achilles had withdrawn in wrath to his ships, reckless of
the slaughter of his fellows and of the ruin of the Achaean
cause. Then was the occasion, and the man was found in
Ajax. Plain, sparing of words, but, when needful, speaking
straight to the point, he was in all respects the opposite of
the Hollow Man. So far was he from making gallant show
and promise of great qualities, that he seemed to conceal
them even from himself. In search of a parallel for his
absence of self -consciousness, Shakespeare, like Homer, turns
instinctively to the ' great and sane and simple race of
brutes.' l

In the scene in which Ulysses unfolds to Achilles the
consequences of his withdrawal, he insists that a man can
hardly be called lord of the qualities with which he is
endowed, nor can he be said really to know them, until by
communicating his parts to others, he beholds them * form'd
in the applause where they're extended.' Wrapt in this
thought, he apprehends one, unknown even to himself, whom
chance is about to make famous, so as even to dim the recol-
lection of great Achilles' deeds.

The unknown Ajax.

Heavens, what a man is there ! a very horse,

That has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are

Most abject in regard and dear in use !

What things again most dear in the esteem

1 Pelleas and Ettarre ; see Iliad, xi. 556, xiii. 702. 'This man, lady,'
says one to Cressida, of Ajax, ' hath robbed many beasts of their particular
additions' (Trail and Ores. i. 2. 19).

276 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

And poor in worth ! Now shall we see to-morrow —

An act that very chance doth throw upon him —

Ajax renown'd. ' Troil. and Ores. iii. 3. 125.

Ajax goes about his work with as little self-conscious
affectation as an honest horse, who simply does his kind.
' Thou sodden-witted lord ! ' says Thersites, ' thou hast no
more brain than I have in mine elbows ; an assinego may
tutor thee : thou scurvy-valiant ass ! thou art here but to
thrash Trojans.' *

The lies currently told and believed of a great man are
no small aid towards forming an estimate of his real
character ; a branch of study in which singular advantages
may be enjoyed by the future historian of the present age,
provided always he has skill to discern lies from truths. The
Greeks before Troy, in default of modern institutions, had to
be content with their Thersites. According to him, Ulysses
was a dog-fox, and Ajax a stupid beast of burden, whom it
were gross flattery to compare in intellect with a horse.
' Thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a
prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red
murrain o' thy jade's tricks.'2 Sent by Achilles to Ajax
with a letter, he exclaims : ' Let me bear another to his horse ;
for that's the more capable creature.'3 But neither he nor
Ulysses can think of the Strong Man4 without the idea of
the horse presenting itself to their minds ; nor can Nestor,
who thus complains :

Ajax is grown self-will'd, and bears his head

In such a rein, in full as proud a place

As broad Achilles. Ibid. i. 3. 188.

1 Troil. and Ores. ii. 1. 47.

2 Troil. and Ores. ii. 1. 18. 3 Ibid. iii. 3. 309.

4 Gervinus in his note on Troil. and Ores, remarks, ' that in single
instances we stumble, as it were, upon a psychological commentary. The
hand is masterly with which, in the delineation of Ajax, physical strength is
exhibited strengthened at the expense of mental power ; the abundance of
similes and images with which the rare but simple nature is described is
inexhaustible ; the discernment is wonderful with which all animal qualities
are gathered together to form this man, at once both more and less than
human.' All these qualities, and Shakespeare's concentrated experience of
man and horse, are gathered together in the words ' a very horse, That has
he knows not what. '

THE UNKNOWN AJAX 277

Not that Ajax was devoid of the fiery spirit to which the
word 'rage,'1 in a meaning now lost, was formerly applied,
with special reference to the horse. Among the Trojan
heroes depicted in the house of Collatinus,

In Ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigour roll'd ;
But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent
Show'd deep regard and smiling government.

Lucrece, 1398.

His rage was real, not figured like the Hollow Man's.
It was also in keeping and harmony with the other parts of
his nature. He was not like

some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weaken's his own heart.

Sonnet xxiii.

He was there to thrash Trojans. He knew it, and did his
work in simple good faith, thoroughly, as an honest horse
fulfils his daily task.

In describing the Stedfast Man as one 'breathed, as it
were, To an untirable and continuate goodness '2 there is a
suggestion of the stable. For in the stable language of the
day a horse possessing what is now known as staying power
was called a continuer.

Bene. I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so
good a continuer. Much Ado. i. 1. 142.

And there is something more than mere suggestion in the
line

As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire.

Mids. N. Dr. in. 1. 98.

Nearly akin to the Hollow Man is he whom we have met
in the course of our pilgrimage, travelling under the name of
Mr. Talkative, ready to discourse of all matters, sacred or
profane. ' What shall we do to be rid of him ? ' asked
Faithful. Let us hear the answer of his fellow -pilgrim,
translated into the language of the stable.

1 As to this application of the words ' rage ' and ' ragerie,' see the note to
p. 255. 2 Timon of Ath. i. 1. 10.

278 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

1 Enter Tranio, brave/ full of brave words, and classical
allusions :

Gre, What ! this gentleman will out-talk us all.
Luc. Sir, give him head ; I know he'll prove a jade.

Tarn, of Shrew, i. 2. 248.

But the selfsame trial which reveals the jade in Mr. Talk-
ative reveals also the True Man, or woman. Paulina
denounced Leontes in unmeasured terms for his cruel ill-
treatment of the gentle Hermione and of her innocent
child. To the jealous king she was c a callat of boundless
tongue,' and her husband Antigonus was 'worthy to be
hanged that wilt not stay her tongue.' But Antigonus knew
better :

La you now, you hear

When she will take the rein I let her run;

But she'll not stumble. Wint. Tale, ii. 350.

Then there is the Wrathful Man. He is best treated as
Mr. Talkative, and given his head, for

anger is like

A full hot horse, who, being allow'd his way,
Self-mettle tires him. Hen. VIII. i. 1. 132.

More dangerous still is the Brute, who gives way to the
baser passions of his nature. It were well to restrain him if
you can, but be not too sanguine of success, for

What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career ?

Hen. V. iii. 3. 22.

If curb and rein fail, there is nothing for it but to leave him
also to himself, for

O, deeper sin than bottomless conceit

Can comprehend in still imagination !

Drunken Desire must vomit his receipt,

Ere he can see his own abomination.

While Lust is in his pride, no exclamation
Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,
Till like a jade Self-will himself doth tire.

Lucrece, 701,

CERTAIN CHARACTERS 279

But neither man nor horse can be finally disposed of by
classing them simply as good or bad. There are infinite
varieties of either species. There is, for example, the Bore —
no need to enlarge on him. He too has his counterpart in
the horse ;

0 he is as tedious
As a tired horse, a railing wife,
Worse than a smoky house.

1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 160.

And there are the Headstrong, the Forward, and the
Wayward, for each of whom a different treatment is pre-
scribed. The Headstrong is not, like the Brute, absolutely
unmanageable. And for him must be provided ' the needful
bits and curbs ' to which the Duke of Vienna likened the
'strict statutes and most biting laws,'1 put in force by his
deputy Angelo, a similitude somewhat like that which pre-
sented itself to the mind of Claudio, when he compared the
body public to

A horse whereon the governor doth ride,
Who, newly in the seat, that it may know
He can command, lets it straight feel the spur.

Measure for M. i. 2. 164.

But the free and forward horse needs neither the stimulus
nor the discipline of the spur.

How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse !

Rich. II. iv. 1. 72.

And even should forwardness degenerate into waywardness
there is no need to have recourse to strict or biting methods.
A word of manage spoken in season, how good is it ! ' Backe,
I say. Stand and such like ' are among the terms of manage
recommended by old writers. ' Will, you Eoague. Ah ! thou
Traytor. So thou, Villaine, or such like it, will help to bring
him into the more subjection, so that he do not perceiue the
man to be timerous.'2 Celia knew this when she said to
Kosalind, 'Cry "holla" to thy tongue, I prithee; it curvets
unseasonably.'3

1 Measure for M. i. 3. 20. 2 Michael Baret, 1618.

8 As You L. iii. 2. 257.

280 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

Then there are the Indifferent. They find their counter-
part in the whole equine race. It is best so. The horse is
designed by nature to bear whatever burden may be placed
upon his back, kindly, but with the smallest amount of indi-
vidual preference. To this end his affectionate but shallow
nature is no less adapted than his physical structure. The
horse has his likings and dislikings, a lasting memory of
injuries, and a kindly feeling towards master and groom.
But he is generally indifferent to the personal element in
his surroundings. Lovers of the horse, disposed to rail at the
fickleness of a favourite, can sympathise with poor dethroned
Kichard II. in his indignation at the forgetfulness of roan
Barbary :

Groom. I was a poor groom of thy stable, king,

When thou wast king ; who, travelling towards York

With much ado at length have gotten leave

To look upon my sometimes royal master's face.

O, how it yearn'd my heart when I beheld

In London streets, that coronation day,

When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary,

That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,

That horse that I so carefully have dress'd !

K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary ? Tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him 1

Groom. So proudly as if he disdain'd the ground.

K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back !

That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand ;
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble ? Would he not fall down,
Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back 1
Forgiveness, horse ! Why do I rail on thee,
Since thou, created to be awed by man,
Wast born to bear ? Rich. II. v. 5. 72.

Kichard was a thoughtful, if not a practical, student of the
horse, and in these words he has suggested the secret of man's
dominion. Captain Lemuel Gulliver's master wondered ( how
we dared to venture upon a Houynhnhnm's back; for he
was sure that the weakest servant in his house would be
able to shake off the strongest Yahoo, or, by lying down, and

RIDING THE GREAT HORSE 281

rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to death.' The answer
is a simple one, and was suggested by Shakespeare. The
dominion of man over the horse, like that of a governing
race of men over an inferior, rests entirely on prestige. One
is born to command. The horse, by reason of his nervous
and impressionable nature, is 'created to be awed.' Take
away the awe, and the advantage is on the side of the horse.
Reverse the order of nature, take from man the higher
faculties which we call reason, and transfer them to the
horse; this done, a Houynhnhnm is a possibility, and a
Yahoo a certainty.

Ill

THIRDLIE OF THE WHOLE AETE OF RIDING THE
GREAT HORSE

It could not be otherwise than that Shakespeare's favourite
character, in whom some have seen reflected the image of his
creator,1 should be devoted to the horse ; not with the foolish
affection of Kichard II. — who marvelled that roan Barbary,
fed with bread from his royal hand, could bring himself to
carry Henry Bolingbroke proudly — but after a fashion
thoroughly practical, in accordance with his genius.

'I saw young Harry with his beaver on/ Sir Eichard
Vernon reports to Hotspur,

Rise from the ground like f eather'd Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

1 Hen. IV. iv. 1. 104.

1 Gervinus discusses the conjecture ' that Shakespeare conferred upon
Prince Henry many essential qualities of his own nature,' and concludes that
* in the most essential respects the character of our poet was reflected in
Prince Henry ' (Shakespeare Commentaries). There is a singular interest
attached to self-portraits by great artists, such as Holbein, Rembrandt,
Reynolds and Murillo, and imagination busies itself in labelling certain pen-
and-ink sketches with names great in literature. Thus David Copper field
becomes DICKENS ; Maggie Tulliver, GEORGE ELIOT ; Childe Harold, BYRON ;
and Henry of Monmouth, SHAKESPEARE. It is at all events certain that if
Shakespeare's counterfeit presentment were limned by himself, it must needs
take the form of an equestrian portrait.

282 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

This world-witching horsemanship differs as widely from
the impetuosity of Hotspur as from the sentimentality of
poor Kichard, who, notwithstanding his attention to roan
Barbary, was conscious of 'wanting the manage of unruly
jades.'1 The contrast between the characters of Henry of
Monmouth and of Harry Hotspur, foreshadows the destiny
appointed to each ; fame and empire to the one ; to the
other failure, and a rebel's grave. Each was brave, and
each was a horseman. But they were unlike in horseman-
ship as in gallantry. Hotspur, true to his name, might
have appropriated to himself John of Gaunt's dying saying,
' He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes.'2 He too,
like Richard, had a favourite roan.

Hot. Hath Butler brought those horses from the sheriff?
Serv. One horse, my lord, he brought even now.
Hot. What horse ? A roan, a crop-ear, is it not ?
Serv. It is, my lord.
Hot. That roan shall be my throne.

Well, I will back him straight ; O esperance !

Bid Butler lead him forth into the park.

1 Hen. IV. ii. 3. 70.

Hotspur's roan had other work to do than eat bread
from his master's hand. ' Give my roan horse a drench/ he
would cry. This was after killing ' some six or seven dozen
of Scots at a breakfast ; '3 and sorely the poor beast needed
his 'barley-broth,' which many even now agree with
Shakespeare in approving as ' a drench for sur-rein'd jades.'4
In dreams he would urge his bounding steed to the field
with ' terms of manage.' Waking he would rail on ' the
forced gait of a shuffling nag,'5 as no better than 'mincing
poetry,' and deride Owen Glendower, calling him ' as tedious
as a tired horse.'6

But this bluster and impetuosity gave as little promise of
the noble horsemanship wherewith Henry of Monmouth
could witch the world and woo a wife, as of the mental and
moral qualities which won him his place in history. ' If I

1 Rich. II. iii. 3. 179. 2 Rich. II. ii. 1. 36.

3 1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 115. 4 Hen. V. iii. 5. 19.

5 Ibid. ii. 3. 52; iii. 1. 134. 6 1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 159.

THE MANAGE 283

could win a lady,' he tells Katherine of France in his blunt
way, 'by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my
back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should
quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love,
or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a
butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off.'1

As 'for these fellows of infinite tongue that can rhyme
themselves into ladies' favours, they do always reason them-
selves out again ' ; and Henry's estimate of the lasting
impression made on the female heart by the qualities in
which he was conscious of excelling, is borne out by the
experience of the sad, pale, deserted maid, who recalls
among the perfections of her faithless betrayer,

Well could he ride, and often men would say

' That horse his mettle from his rider takes ' :

Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,

'What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!'

And controversy hence a question takes,

Whether the horse by him became his deed,

Or he his manage by the well-doing steed.

But quickly on this side the verdict went :

His real habitude gave life and grace

To appertainings and to ornament,

Accomplished in himself, not in his case :

All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,

Came for additions : yet their purpose trim

Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

A Lover's Complaint, 106.

In Tudor times to excel in horsemanship ranked highest
among courtly graces. The King of Denmark was a
murderer and a usurper, but he had not forgotten the
princely accomplishments of his youth. And when he
would stimulate Laertes by a report of the praise bestowed
on his skill in fence by a gentleman of Normandy, he knew
how to enhance the value of his commendation.

Two months since,

Here was a gentleman of Normandy :
I've seen myself, and served against, the French,

1 Hen V. v. 2. 142.

284 THE HOUSE IN SHAKESPEARE

And they can well on horseback ; but this gallant
Had witchcraft in't; he grew into1 his seat;
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As had he been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast ; so far he topp'd my thought,
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks,
Come short of what he did.

Laer. A Norman was't ?

King. A Norman.

Laer. Upon my life, Lamond.

King. The very same.

Laer. I know him well ; he is the brooch indeed,

And gem of all the nation.2 Hamlet, iv. 7. 82,

Had the diarist completed his self-appointed task, we
might have learned much of the horsemanship of his day.
More elaborate than the exercises of the military riding
school, and less fantastic than the tricks of the circus, the
manage of our ancestors afforded excellent training for nerve
and temper, as well as for hand and eye.

Blundevill, in his second book, devoted to an exposition of
the art of riding the great horse, describes seven stages in

1 Thus the Folio. The first quarto has ' unto,' precisely the error which
we should expect from a surreptitious copyist, incapable of appreciating
the vigour and truth of the original. The Cambridge Edition follows the
quarto.

2 It is not without design that this picture of ideal horsemanship is drawn
by the hand, not of Hamlet, but of his uncle. Shakespeare's men of action,
Henry V.j Hotspur, Mark Antony, the Dauphin of France, and the King of
Denmark (among whose sins irresolution found no place) are his horsemen. It
is so in history, from Alexander the Great to Oliver Cromwell. Hamlet was
visited by recollections of the chase. He had a practical knowledge of falconry,
a sport which, in its ordinary pursuit, required but little physical exertion.
But his thoughts do not dwell on horsemanship, an exercise to which I would
venture to apply the following words written by Goethe, and Englished by
Thomas Carlyle : ' The fencing tires him,' Wilhelm Meister says, 'the sweat is
running from his brow ; and the Queen remarks, He's fat and scant of breath.
Can you conceive him to be otherwise than plump and fair-haired ? Brown-
complexioned people in their youth are seldom plump. And does not his
wavering melancholy, his soft lamenting, his irresolute activity, accord with
such a figure ? ' The horse, in Shakespeare's words, takes his mettle from his
rider, and I fear that Hamlet, had he essayed to turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
would have proved 'wanting the manage of unruly jades,' like one who
resembled the high-souled Prince of Denmark only in so far as he was infected
by the fatal evil of irresolution,

THE STOP 285

the course of his education, each of which has been noted by
Shakespeare.

First you must pace him ; this is the elementary teaching
upon which the higher education of the manage must be
founded. It does not come by nature, and the Lord Lysi-
machus of Mytilene understood what was meant when it
was said to him of Marina, ' My lord, she's not paced yet !
you must take some pains to work her to your manage.' 1

Although the horse in a state of nature will walk, trot,
and gallop, yet he must needs be ' paced ' if he is to acquit
himself well under artificial conditions, while the amble and
the 'false gallop' are purely artificial movements. Master
Michael Baret published in 1618 a book entitled An Hippo-
nomie, or Vineyard of Horsemanship, in which he sets forth
' how to bring any horse of what age and disposition soeuer
to a faire and commendable pace, onely by the hand ' : a
matter in which he is compelled respectfully to ' digresse '
from his master, Gervase Markham, who insists on the use of
the trammel in teaching horses to amble, and in which he
differs also from Shakespeare, who in a passage already
quoted (ante, p. 270) suggests that wild horses need bit and
spurs for discipline, as well as pacing in the hand.

The false gallop, or artificial canter, was denoted by the
Latin term succussatura, and the idea of jolting would be
naturally associated with that pace in the case of the
straight-pasterned, thickset horse of the day. With this
knowledge we understand why Touchstone calls doggerel
rhymes ' the very false gallop of verses.' 2

'Secondlie,' says Blundevill, 'you must teach him to be
light at stop.' If the great horse knows not the stop, his
performances are as crude and unpleasing as poetry read

1 Pericles, iv. 6. 68.

2 As You L. iii. 2. 119. Sadler, in his work De procreandis etc. equis
(1587), gives the following account of the false gallop : * Noverit plene equus a
succussatura ad celeriorem paulo progressum, a celeriore ad citatiorem cursum
ascendere, et commutatis vicissitudinibus, a citatiore ad sedatiorem progres-
sum iterum descendere, quoties et quandocumque equiti videbitur, antequam
se vertere ilium doceatis. At, nt clare anglice dicam, my meaning is that
your horse knows thorowly from his trot to rise to his false gallope, from
his false gallope get to a swifter, and then from this swifter to descend again
to his false gallope, and trot againe by turnes when and as oft as the rider
shall thinke good, before you teach him to turne. '

286 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

without regard to rhythm or punctuation. ' This fellow does
not stand upon points/ said Theseus, when Peter Quince had
thus delivered himself of his prologue ; whereupon Lysi-
machus of Athens caps his pun with a better. ' He hath rid
his prologue like a rough colt ; he knows not the stop.' 1 But
the stop artistically performed was a joy for ever. ' What
stop he makes,' men would say, as they gazed with admiration
on the beauteous but false-hearted gallant, bemoaned in A
Lover's Complaint.

'Thirdlie, to advance before, and yerke behinde.' And
inasmuch as this yerking is an artificial development of a
motion to which the horse is by nature occasionally too
prone, Gervase Markham counsels to make your horse ' yerk
out behind, yet so as it may be perceived it is your will, and
not the horse's malice/ as it was on the field of Agincourt
when the wounded steeds of the French

Fret fetlock deep in gore and with wild rage
Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters,
Killing them twice. Hen. V. iv. 7. 82.

The fourth of Blundevill's stages in the courser's progress,
* to turne, readilie, on both hands with single turne and
double turne/ leads up to the fifth, which is ' to make a sure
and readie manege.1 The twenty-nine pages devoted by
Blundevill to the mysteries of single turns, whole turns,
double turns; manage with half rest, with whole rest, or
without rest; and the needful helps and corrections for
these complicated evolutions, are fairly summed up in two
lines already quoted :

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

1 Hen. IV. iv. 1. 109.

We now arrive at the last stage, and the most important,
either in the lists or in warfare ; * sixthlie, to passe a swift
cariere.' There is no term of manage which occurs so often
in Shakespeare as the ' career/ and there is none the original
meaning of which has been more obscured by its popular
use in the language of the present day. In truth, when we

1 Mids. N. Dr. v. 1. 118.

THE CAREER 287

speak of a career, we mean something not only different
from what Shakespeare intends by the word, but its exact
opposite. We mean something that continues for an in-
definite time. He meant something that soon comes to an
abrupt ending. ' When your horse is perfect in the manages
beforesaid, you may then pass a career at your pleasure,
which is to run a horse forthright at his full speed, and then
making him stop quickly, suddenly firm, and close on his
buttock.'1 The length of the career was four or five score
yards at the most.

The essential characteristic of the career, wherein it
differed from the ordinary gallop, was its abrupt ending,
technically known as ' the stop/ by which the horse was
suddenly and firmly thrown upon his haunches. Whenever
Shakespeare uses the word, this stop is present to his mind.
Leontes, skilled, I doubt not, in the stop and in the career,
spoke terms of manage when he marked ' stopping the
career Of laughter with a sigh/ as 'a note infallible Of
breaking honesty.'2

A swift gallop with a sudden stop is not unlike the
humour which led Henry of Monmouth to be a madcap
for once. ' The king hath run bad humours on the knight ;
that's the even of it/ said Nym, when told of Falstaff's
sickness unto death.

Pist. Nym, them hast spoke the right ;

His heart is fracted and corroborate.

Nym. The king is a good king ; but it must be as it may ; he
passes some humours and careers.3 Hen. V. ii. 1. 127.

1 Blundevill. Dr. Schmidt explains the word ' career ' as meaning a race.
According to the Glossary to the Globe edition (1880), 'careire' means 'the
curveting of a horse.' The word had no special significance when so spelled.
According to the Glossary to the edition of 1891 'career' means a ' course run
at full speed.' Dr. Johnson gives, 'a course, a race.' The technical meaning
of the word, as a term of manage, seems to have long since dropped out of
remembrance.

2 Wint. Tale, i. 2. 287. Nearly akin is a stop recorded long ago, as a
note infallible of Dido's breaking honesty,

Incipit e/ari, mediaque in voce resistit.

3 A sudden flash of humour is compared by Benedick to the career of the
manage (Much Ado, ii. 3. 250). This term of manage is used by Bardolph in
speaking of Slender, who having drunk himself out of his five sentences, ' and
being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashiered; and so conclusions passed the

288 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

The king was, as we have seen, a consummate horseman.
He knew that before you venture to pass a swift career,
you should know when and how to stop, and so, in words
already quoted, he warned the Governor of Harfleur of the
consequences of letting loose upon the town an unbridled
soldiery.

What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career ?

Ibid. iii. 3. 22.

When the great horse has passed through the inter-
mediate stages of training, and can pass a swift career, he is,
according to Blundevill, perfect as a horse of service ; that is
to say, fit for war, or for its gentle and joyous image in times
of peace, the tournament. It was in the lists that the
career came into practical use. 'Sir, I shall meet your wit
in the career, an you charge it against me/ said Benedick,
when he would pick a quarrel with Claudio ; — ' in most
profound earnest, and I'll warrant you for the love of
Beatrice.'1

When Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, was about
to fight Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in the lists at Coventry,
the Duchess of Gloucester accepted him as a champion of
her cause :

0, sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast !
Or, if misfortune miss the first career,
Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom,
That they may break his foaming courser's back,
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,
A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford !

Rich. II. i. 2. 47.

careers' (Merry Wives, i. 1. 183). Various commentators have tried to make
sense of these words, but that they are intended for nonsense is suggested by
Blender's next words, ' Ay, you spoke in Latin then too ; but 'tis no matter.*
The technical meaning of the stop, as the end of a swift career, was often
present to Shakespeare's mind. Read in this light, the word ' stop,' common
enough, acquires a new significance ; as when Prince Henry says of a king's
career, 'Even so must I run on, and even so stop' (K. John, v. 7. 67) ; see
also Wint. Tale, ii. 1. 187 ; Cymb. i. 6. 99.
1 Much Ado, v. 1. 134, 198.

THE ABUSE OF THE SPUR 289

There is perhaps a play on the word manage, as well as
an allusion to the lists, in Boyet's answer to Biron, when,
accused of having brought about by contrivance the en-
counter of wit in which the King of Navarre and his lords
were signally defeated by the Princess and her ladies, he
pretends no longer, but straightforwardly admits the im-
peachment :

Boyet. Full merrily

Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.
Biron. Lo, he is tilting straight ! Peace ! I have done.

Love's L. L. v. 2. 481.

' Although the rules before taught,' continues Blundevill,
' do suffice to make a horse of service ; yet if your horse be
light, a stirrer, and nimble of nature, you maie besides these,
for pleasure's sake, teach him manie other proper feates.'
Henry of Monmouth plainly agreed with Gervase Markham
in thinking these ' salts and leaps right pleasant to behold/
when he spoke of bounding his horse for his lady's favours ;
and, as we have learned from A I/over's Complaint, men
would say of the perfect horseman, * what rounds, what
bounds, what course, what stop he makes/

Among these salts and leaps the corvette, or curvet, was
highly esteemed. It was (a certaine continuall pransing
and dansing up and downe still in one place, like a beare at
a stake, and sometimes sidling to and fro, wherein the
horse maketh as though he would faine run, and cannot be
suffered.' * France is a dog hole,' says the braggart Parolles
to Bertram, when he would incite him to the wars, and to
' sustain the bound and high curvet Of Mars's fiery steed/1 an
accomplishment, by the way, which Markham describes as
' not generally used in the wars, yet not utterly useless for
the same.'

Although different ends were aimed at by horsemen in
Tudor times and at the present day, the means which they
employ, their 'aids/ corrections, and cherishings are as un-
changeable as the natures of man and horse. The 'riding
rod/ as the whip is called by Blundevill, and by Philip the
Bastard;2 'the needful bits and curbs';3 the 'terms of

1 All's Well, ii. 3. 299. 2 King John, i. 1. 140.

3 Measure for M. i. 3. 20.
U

290 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

manage'1 by which the horseman chides or encourages his
horse; and the 'filed steel/2 'the spur to prick the sides,'3
have all the same uses now as they had three hundred years
ago ; whence it follows that Shakespeare's hints with regard
to their management are as fresh and useful now as when
they were written.

Take for instance, the spur. You will find in Shake-
speare almost all that is well said by Whyte Melville in a
chapter of his Riding Recollections, entitled The Abuse of the
Spur, to which he has prefixed the words of Hermione,
already quoted.4 We have already, in the pursuit of the
Cotswold hart, witnessed a verification of the old saw ; ' How
fondly dost thou spur a forward horse ! '5 and of the death-
bed prophecy of old John of Gaunt : 'He tires betimes that
spurs too fast betimes/6

But the spur, though often abused, has its necessary use,
and there is a golden mean between Eichard II., with his
sentimental irresolution, and the 'jauncing' rider, whose
spur-galled jade bears on his flanks the marks of needless
severity.7

I was not made a horse ;
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,
Spur-galTd, and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke.

Rich. II. v. 5. 92.

'Most men/ says Whyte Melville, 'stoop forward, and
let their horses' heads go, when engaged in this method of
compulsion, and even if their heels do reach the mark,
by no- means a certainty, gain but little with the rowels
compared to all they lose with the reins/ Precisely after
this fashion

1 1 Hen. IV. ii. 3. 52. 2 Twelfth N. iii. 3. 5. 3 Macbeth, i. 7. 25.
4 Ante, p. 283. 5 Rich. II. iv. 1. 72. 6 Ibid. ii. 1. 36.

7 Thus the Folio. 'Spur-galled' was a word in common use in farriery.

uuo quarto editions, denounced by •.**« ^1*1.^1... ^^ v^~ *.~*™ ~~ ~~ — — ,

corrupt ; and in so doing sacrifices yet another term of art, unappreciated by
surreptitious copyist, but dear to Shakespeare's heart. The attitude of the
editors towards the Folio is well illustrated by their note : ' Though spur-
galled is an extremely probable correction, we adhere to our rule of following
the higher authority whenever it seems to yield a reasonable sense. '

THE USE OF THE SPUR 291

came spurring hard
A gentleman, almost forspent with speed,

who stopping 'to breathe his bloodied horse' and ask the
way to Chester, brought the news of Hotspur's overthrow
and death.

He told me that rebellion had bad luck

And that young Harry Percy's spur was cold,

With that, he gave his able horse the head,

And bending forward struck his armed heels

Against the panting sides of his poor jade

Up to the rowel-head, and starting so

He seemed in running to devour the way,

Staying no longer question. 2 Hen. IV. i. 1. 36.

These words are intended to suggest the reckless riding
of a runaway, spurring his jade after the common fashion
of most riders, and not the noble horsemanship that turns
and winds a fiery Pegasus by the combined action of heel,
rein, hand, and voice. This was the effect produced by the
description on the mind of Lord Bardolph, who dubs the

T*i(if^T* *m

some hilding fellow that had stolen

The horse he rode on, and, upon my life,

Spoke at a venture. Ibid. 57.

' Not one man in ten,' says the writer from whom I have
quoted, 'knows how to spur a horse.' Shakespeare had
observed precisely the same thing in the tilting field, and
noted it as the cause of the failure of a bad rider to get his
lance home, in a direct line, against his adversary's breast, with
the result that, in the language of the tourney, it ' breaks
across.' ' 0, that's a brave man ! ' says Celia of Orlando, in
a mocking vein.

He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths
and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his
lover j as a puisny tilter, that spurs his horse on one side, breaks
his staff like a noble goose. As You L. hi. i. 43.

Shakespeare had considered well a question suggested in
the same chapter: 'Granted then, that the spur may be

292 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

applied advantageously in the school, let us see how far it is
useful on the road, or in the hunting field.' Arcite's horse,
taught in ' school doing, being therein trained, and of kind
manage,' takes fright on the stones of Athens. His rider
gives him the spur, whereat,

pig-like he whines

At the sharp rowel, which he frets at rather
Than any jot obeys. Two Nolle Kinsmen, v. 4.

To that ill-advised spurring, and to the 'boisterous and
rough jadery ' which followed, Arcite owed his death, and, so
far, Shakespeare teaching by example, and Whyte Melville
by precept, are at one as to the dangers which ensue from
careless or unskilful use of the spur.

But Shakespeare shows truer wisdom and deeper insight
when he teaches how the spur may be used as well as abused
on the road, as in the school. His chapter is a short one,
but little can be added to it. Angelo, entrusted by the Duke
with the government of Vienna during his absence, no
sooner takes his seat as deputy, than he puts into force
'strict statutes and most biting laws,' which had for years
lain in desuetude ' for terror, not to use.' Claudio, the first
victim of his seventy, discusses whether

the body public be

A horse whereon the governor doth ride,
Who, newly in the seat, that it may know
He can command, lets it straight feel the spur.

Measure for M. i. 2. 163.

There are horses — and good horses too — who need no
constant application of the spur, but whose whole nature
seems to change according as they bear one like to him
whom Arviragus described as

A rider like myself, who ne'er wore rowel

Nor iron on his heels ! Cymb. iv. 4. 39.

or a master who, having let them know that he can com-
mand, spares further to use the spur.

c Some people tell you they ride by " balance," others by
"grip." I think a man might as well say he played the

THE FIFTY DISEASES 293

fiddle by "finger" or by "ear." Surely in either case a
combination of both is required to sustain the performance
with harmony and success.'1 Shakespeare has expressed the
same idea by two words. Lamond, the gentleman of
Normandy, ' to such wondrous doing brought his horse As
had he been incorpsed and demi-natured With the brave
beast';2 incorpsed, by virtue of the firm grip whereby
he ' grew into his seat ' ; demi-natured, by perfect balance,
adjusting itself to every motion of the horse, with that
complete sympathy of man and beast, of mind and muscle,
on which Shakespeare loves to dwell ; whether it be roan
Barbary rejoicing in his rider's pride, or 'the beast that bears
me, tired with my woe.'3 And the conclusion of the whole
matter, the end towards which the horseman ever strives, is
expressed in one short sentence, put into the mouth of Mark
Antony, 'his corporal motion govern'd by my spirit.'4

IV

FOURTHLIE (AND LASTLY), TO WHAT DISEASES HORSES
BE SUBJECT, TOGETHER WITH THE NAMES OF SUCH
DISEASES, AND THE KIND LIE AND PROPER TERMES,
MEET TO BE USED IN DISCOURSING CONCERNING THE
HORSE AND HIS FURNITURE

4 He's mad,' says Lear's fool, ' that trusts in the tarneness
of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.'5
' 0 stumbling jade,' cries the ruffian in A Yorkshire Tragedy
to his falling horse, ' The spavins overtake thee ! The fifty
diseases stop thee.' 6

Petruchio, according to Gremio, would marry for money

1 Whyte Melville, Riding Recollections. 2 Hamlet, iv. 7. 87.

3 Sonnet L. 4 Jul. Cces. iv. 1. 33. 5 K. Lear, iii. 6. 20.

s As to Shakespeare's authorship of The Yorkshire Tragedy, see note on
the Critical Significance of Shakespeare's Allusions to Field Sports. 'There
is an old book entitled The Fifty Diseases of a Horse, by Gervase Markham.'
So wrote Hazlitt in his edition of the Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare. I have
not been able to verify this reference. There is no mention of this work in
Mr. Huth's Works on Horses and Equitation (1887), nor does it appear in the
six pages of the catalogue of books in the British Museum which are devoted
to Markham.

294 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

' an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head, though she have
as many diseases as two and fifty horses.' l

How many diseases two and fifty horses may be supposed
to share between them can be gathered from the allowance
bestowed upon a single animal. And if the enumeration in
Venus and Adonis of ' what a horse should have ' smacks of
the auctioneer, the following tale of what he should not
have, but often has, is no less suggestive of the veterinary
surgeon.

It was one of Petruchio's strange humours to come to
his wedding, not only 'a very monster in apparel,'2 but
mounted on a ' horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and
stirrups of no kindred; besides possessed with the glanders
and like to mose in the chine ; troubled with the larnpass,
infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with
spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,
stark spoiled with the stagger, begawn with the bots,
swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten ; ne'er legged
before.' 3

This extraordinary catalogue of unsoundnesses is not like
Ben Jonson's sporting terms, copied from a book. It is
unmistakably racy of the stable. If Shakespeare had
learned his farriery from Blundevill, as Jon son copied his
hunting language from The Nolle Arte? he would have
written of mourning, not ' mosing,' of the chine ; a disease
akin to glanders, the name of which is ' borrowed of the

1 Tarn, of Shrew, i. 2. 80. 2 Ibid. iii. 2. 61.

3 Tarn, of Shrew, iii. 2. 49. Never, when contracted to ne'er, is con-
stantly printed in the Folio ' nere,' both in compound words and singly ;
Two Gent. iv. 1. 30 ; Tarn, of Shrew, i. 1. 77 ; Ant. and Cleo. iii. 1. 33, &c.
As the spelling of the Folio must be corrected, I prefer to reject a superfluous
final 'e' with Malone than to introduce a foreign 'a' with the Cambridge
editors, especially as near-legged conveys no distinct meaning, while ne'er-
legged plainly signifies what would be called in stable language 'gone-before.'
It has been suggested that by the term near-legged the dangerous action is
intended that causes a horse, not to stumble, but to hit himself and fall. I
doubt that the word would have been understood by one possessed of
Shakespeare's practical knowledge as suggesting a defect of this kind,
whereas the ' ne'er legged ' horse is bound to stumble, even without the
additional infirmities enumerated in the text.

4 Mr. Gifford comments on this fact in his notes to the hunting scenes in
The Sad ShepJierd. A comparison of these carefully elaborated passages
with Shakespeare's casual allusions to similar topics is not without interest.

THE GIMMAL BIT 295

French tongue, wherein it is called Mortdeschyen, that is to
say, the death of the backe.' l

As to the word 'fashions/ he must have picked it up
from some blacksmith at Stratford. For the proper name
of this troublesome ulcer was ' farcin,' 2 commonly known as
' the farcy, of our ignorant smiths called the fashions.' 3 No
one but an ignorant smith, or one bred in a stable, would
speak of 'the fives.' If he had even a smattering of the
book-learning of farriery, he would have known that the
' vives ' are ' certaine kernels growing under the horse's eare.
. . . The Italians call them vivole.'4 The phrases 'shoulder-
shotten' and 'ne'er legged before' are more suggestive of
the stable than technically correct.

It must likewise have been from some 'ignorant smith*
that he learned to miscall the affection known as stringhalt,
when he made Lord Sands — a homely Englishman, surveying
the capering and grimacing of gallants returned from France,
juggled by her spells into strange mysteries and new
customs, and marvelling at the action of their legs —
exclaim :

One would take it,

That never saw 'em pace before, the spavin

Or springhalt reign'd among 'em.

Hen. VIII. i. 3. 11.

The tradition that Shakespeare, in extremity of need,
turned to horses as a means of earning his bread, and in
some employment connected with their care made a name
which others thought worth pirating, gains some confirma-
tion from the constant and needless occurrence in his plays
of the language of the groom, the farrier, and the horse-
master, and still more from his use of familiar corruptions
and cant phrases current in the stable and in the black-
smith's shop. The tradition is not one of the kind which
invention loves to weave around names great in letters, and
the most philosophical way of accounting for its existence

1 Blundevill. Fitzherbert (Boke of Husbandrie] quotes a French saying,

Morte de longe, et d'eschine
Sont maladies saunce medicine.

2 Blundevill. 3 Markham's Maister-peecc. 4 Blundevill.

296 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

may possibly be to accept it as true. But whether the story
be true or false, the fact remains that Shakespeare's works
are a perfect mine of what our diarist calls ' the kindlie and
proper termes meet to be used in discoursing concerning the
horse and his furniture.'

Spurs, bits and reins are topics common to all writers who
deal in metaphor, and I have not noted the many passages
in which they are so employed by Shakespeare. But from
what other poet or dramatist may we learn how to use aright
these aids to horsemanship ?

There is a certain particularity and distinctness in Shake-
speare's casual mention of the most ordinary ' furniture ' of
the horse. Thus, for example, it is said of the famished
horses of the English army before Agincourt,

in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless.

Hen. V. iv. 2. 49.

What is a gimmal l bit ? And why is it put into the mouths
of the English horses ? The former question has been satis-
factorily answered by Archdeacon Nares.2 ' A bit in which
two parts of links were united as in the gimmal ring/
quoting Coles, Gimmal, annulus gemellus. Blundevill's Four
Chiefest Offices contains plates representing fifty different
bits, some of extraordinary severity. Some are in one piece,
with ports like the modern bit ; others are jointed in the
middle, although used with a curb-chain, somewhat after the
fashion of the modern pelham. These softer gimmal bits
would naturally be used in active service, the severer in-
struments of torture being reserved wherewith to turn and
wind a fiery Pegasus in the exercises of the manage. Shake-
speare knew well that Henry would have none but gimmal
bits for service in the field.

Petruchio's screw, infected with a fair proportion of the
fifty diseases, had 'a half-checked3 bit and a head-stall of

1 ' lymold ' in the Folio. Johnson reads ' gimmal,' and that this
emendation is merely a correction in spelling appears from the passage quoted
in N ares' Glossary. '2 Glossary in verb.

3 The Folio has ' half-chek'd,' altered in the third folio to 'halfe checkt,'
and in the fourth to 'half checkt.' The reading half-cheeked adopted by the
Cambridge editors was first suggested by Singer. There were in use long

THE LANGUAGE OF THE STABLE 297

sheep's leather which, being restrained to keep him from
stumbling,1 hath been often burst, and now repaired with
knots ; one girth six times pieced and a woman's crupper of
velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down
in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread.'2

The crupper3 was necessary in order to keep in its place
the ungainly saddle of the day, and considerable pains were
expended on its ornamentation. The engraving in Turber-
vile's Booke of Falconry, of a great lady taking part with
her attendants in flying the heron, represents an elaborate
and ornate crupper, which may well have been of velure
(velvet) with the owner's name ' fairly set down in studs/

The saddlery of the day was more ornate than that now
in use, and was commonly ornamented with devices in studs.
It is the 'studded bridle' of Adonis' horse that Venus
fastens to a bough, when her favourite would not ' rein his
proud head to the saddle bow';4 and Christopher Sly is
offered, should he be disposed to ride, horses trapped with
' harness studded all with gold and pearl.'6

A complete catalogue of Shakespeare's stable phrases
would be tedious, but not without significance, for surely,
in the whole history of literature, never did tragedies,
comedies, histories and poems furnish such a vocabulary.
He delighted, moreover, in saws and proverbs, racy of the
stable, of which some are in common use, but others are

cheeks and short cheeks * suitable to the proportion of the horse's neck ;
knowing that the long cheek raises up the head, and the short pulls it down '
(The Perfect Horseman, by Lancelot Thetford, 1655). Markham (C'avalarice)
writes of ' the straight cheek broke into two parts. ' The fact that the
editors of the third and fourth folios troubled themselves to alter the spelling,
leaving the word unchanged, suggests that the word half-checked applied to a
bit was then intelligible. It may have been known as the vulgar stable
equivalent of one of the many terms of art enumerated by Blundevill ;
possibly the half-scatch bits, written by Shakespeare as he was in the
habit of pronouncing it, as he wrote 'fashions' for farcin, and 'fives'
for vives. Of certain bits, not so complete as others, ' Grison,' he tells
us, 'calleth them but halfe bits, as the halfe canon, the halfe scatch, the
the halfe cat's foot, etc.' The Globe (1891) reads 'half-checked,' but that
this is a misprint appears from the Glossary; 'half-cheeked adj. ; a half-
cheeked bit was perhaps a bit of which only one part remained.'

1 The horse was ' ne'er legged before,' and therefore in special danger of
stumbling. 2 Tam Oy s^reWf m 2. 57.

3 Com. of Err. i. 2. 56 ; Tam. of Shrew, iv. 1. 84.

4 Ven. and Ad. 14. 37. 5 Tam. of Shrew, Ind. 2. 44.

298 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

peculiar to himself. If Lear's fool had not noted a horse's
abhorrence of any greasy matter, it would never have
occurred to him to say of one devoid of sense : ' 'Twas her
brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his
hay.'1 It is he who noted the madness of trusting in 'a
horse's health/2 and it is to the selfsame fool that we owe,
among many other excellent precepts :

Bide more than thou goest . . .

And thou shalt have more

Than two tens to a score. K. Lear, i. 4. 134.

In Tudor times the beggar on horseback, though not
so frequent a spectacle as at the present day, must have
been quite as entertaining to the well-constituted mind.
The proverb in general use, particular enough as to the
ultimate destination of the equestrian mendicant, takes
no note of his horse. Shakespeare's mind was moved to
pity by the fate of the nobler animal, for the Duke of York
thus addresses the * she- wolf of France ' :

It boots thee not, proud queen,
Unless the adage must be verified
That beggars mounted run their horse to death.

3 Hen. VI. i. 4. 126.

Stray thoughts of horse and stable are for ever recurring
to all sorts of people. To Nym, ' Though patience be a
tired mare, yet she will plod';3 to Dogberry, 'An two men
ride of a horse, one must ride behind ;'4 to Meuenius, when
he exclaims that compared to good news of Marcius, ' the
most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and,
to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-
drench ' ;5 and again, when he says of Marcius, ' He no more
remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse';6
to Enobarbus, when, hearing that Cleopatra would accompany
Antony to the field, he reflects

If we should serve with horse and mares together,

The horse were merely lost ; the mares would bear

A soldier and his horse. Ant. and Cleo. iii. 7. 8.

1 K. Lear, ii. 4. 127. 2 Ibid. iii. 6. 19.

3 Hen. V. ii. 1. 25. 4 Much Ado, iii. 5. 40.

5 Coriol. ii. 1. 127. 8 Ibid. v. 4. 16.

THE HACKNEY 299

To the old groom whom we know as Petruchio's 'ancient,
trusty, pleasant servant Grumio,' and who, when his horses
were called for, was wont to reply with a stable pleasantry,
' Ay, sir, they be ready ; the oats have eaten the horses ; ' 1 to
the Lord Chamberlain, when he tells Lord Sands, 'Your
colt's tooth is not cast yet ' ;2 to Touchstone — ' As the ox
hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb and the falcon her bells,
so man hath his desires' ;3 to Maria, ' My purpose is, indeed,
a horse of that colour ' ;* to Hamlet, when he exclaims,
' let the gall'd jade wince, our withers are un wrung ' ;5 to
Master Ford, ' I will rather trust ... a thief to walk my
ambling gelding than my wife with herself';6 to Moth,
when the tag of the morris-dance song, — ' The hobby-horse
is forgot ' — suggests, 'The hobby-horse is but a colt, and your
love perhaps a hackney ' ;7 to Beatrice, when her gentle-
woman would run on :

Beat. What pace is this that thy tongue keeps ?

Marg. Not a false gallop.8 Much Ado, Hi. 4. 93.

To the Duke of York, when he reminded Northumberland
that the time was when King Kichard would have checked
his insolence — he would, he says, ' shorten you for taking so
the head, your whole head's length ' ;9 to Falstaff, when

1 Tarn, of Shrew, iii. 2. 207. 2 Hen. VIII. 1. 3. 48.

3 As You L. iii. 3. 80. 4 Twelfth N. ii. 3. 181.

5 Hamlet, iii. 2. 253. 6 Merry Wives, ii. 2. 316.

7 Love's L. L. iii. 1. 30. The word ' hackney ' in the diarist's time con-
veyed no suggestion of the kind of action now associated with the name. It
is the same word as the French haqudnee, originally signifying (according to
Littre) cheval ou jument docile et marchant ordinairement a I'amble. The
derivation appears to be uncertain (but see Skeat's Etymological Dictionary).
It was used in the English language, at all events since the time of Chaucer
(Romaunt of the Rose], to denote a small useful nag, of the kind usually em-
ployed on the road. This being the class of horse commonly let out on hire,
the secondary meaning of a hired animal, in common use, became attached to
the word. This is, of course, the suggestion intended to be conveyed by
Moth. The transfer from horse to vehicle was easy, and the phrase 'hackney
coach' is a familiar one. In time the word 'hackney' and its abbreviated
form * hack' came to be employed without reference to the horse, as when we
speak of a hackneyed metaphor, or a hack scribe. The modern use of the
word as descriptive of a class of horse is somewhat akin to its original mean-
ing, with certain ideas superadded in regard to shape and action.

8 For the meaning of this term of art, see ante, p. 285.
8 Rich. II. iii. 8. 12.

300 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

he thus addresses Prince Harry — 'what a plague mean
ye to colt me thus ? ' and to the Prince, when he replies,
'Thou liest; thou art not colted, thou art uncolted';1 to
Brutus, who says of Coriolanus, as of a high-spirited
horse, ' being once chafed, he cannot be rein'd again to tem-
perance';2 to Hortensio when he said of Katherine, 'There
be good fellows in the world,' 'an a man could light on them,
would take her with all faults, and money enough ' ;3 and (I
suspect) to Capulet, when he bids Juliet :

Fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church.

Rom. and Jul. iii. 5. 154.

Posthumus must have had experience of the sudden seizure
to which horseflesh is occasionally subject when he ex-
claimed in his amazement, 'How come these staggers on
me?'4

( Bots on't ' was strong language current at the time,
not, however, in the mouth of fishermen, except at Penta-
polis ;6 and the phrase rises so naturally to the lips of
Proteus of Verona as to suggest a pun on the word boots —
surest evidence of familiarity.6

It is only in the stable that 'a huge hill of flesh,' like
Falstaff, would be known as a 'horse-back-breaker.'7 In-
deed, by the great ungainly saddles of the day (even without
the additional twenty stone contributed by a Falstaff), many
a 'poor jade' like the carrier's horse at Kochester was
' wrung in the withers8 out of all cess,' and the stable boys
(whether Shakespeare's or another's) often heard the injunc-
tion, ' I prithee, Tom, beat Cut's saddle, put a few flocks in
the point.'9

It is not quite clear what Scarus meant, when he called
Cleopatra 'You ribaudred nag of Egypt,'10 nor have com-
mentators thrown much light on the ' arm-gaunt steed '

1 1 Hen. IV. ii. 2. 39. 3 Coriol. iii. 3. 27.

3 Tarn, of Shrew, i. 1. 133. 4 Cymb. v. 5. 233.

5 Pericles, ii. 1. 24. G Two Gent. i. 1. 25.

7 1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 268.

8 See Tit. Andr. iv. 3. 47, and Hamlet, iii. 2. 253.

9 1 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 6. 10 Ant. and Cleo. iii. 10. 10.

SHAKESPEARE'S ALLUSION TO SPORT 301

soberly mounted by Mark Antony, ' who neighed so high,'
according to Alexas,

that what I would have spoke
Was beastly dumb1 by him. Ibid. i. 5. 48.

It is still a matter of uncertainty how the ' garboils ' which
baffled Antony, skilled in the manage of unruly jades, come
to be described as ' uncurbable ' ;

As for my wife,

I would you had her spirit in such another ;
The third of the world is yours ; which with a snaffle
You may pace easy, but not such a wife.
Eno. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go
to wars with the women !

Ant. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,

Made out of her impatience, which not wanted
Shrewdness of policy too, I grieving grant
Did you too much disquiet ; for that you must
But say, I could not help it. Ant. and Oleo. ii. 2. 61.

But whatever be the meaning of these passages, it is clear
that they all had their origin in the stable.

Shakespeare's allusions to horse, hound, hawk and deer
contrast in mere point of frequency with those of any other
writer, in ancient or modern times. Some of these references
are in themselves of an ordinary kind, and only acquire
significance from their frequent occurrence, and from the
circumstance that they are seldom suggested by any neces-
sary action of the drama, but seem to spring forth out of
the abundance of the poet's heart. Others are of a different
character, and especially characteristic of Shakespeare.

The foregoing pages have been written in vain if the
reader has not been helped towards an understanding of
the nature and significance of Shakespeare's allusions to
field sports. But it may be useful, before parting company
with the diarist and his labours, to note the essential ele-
ments of the distinctively Shakespearian allusion.

1 Thus the Folio, intelligible, if somewhat obscure. What Alexas would
have spoken was dumb by reason of the neighing of the beast. The Cambridge
edition reads ' dumb'd,' adopting what seems to be a needless emendation of
Theobald's.

302 THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

I should not account as such any which does not present
one or more of the following characteristics :

I. A secret of woodcraft or horsemanship :

II. An illustration therefrom of human nature and
conduct :

III. A lively image :

IV. A conceit ; or

V. An irrelevance; by which I mean an idea somewhat
out of place with its surroundings.

To illustrate my meaning I select, out of many, six
examples of each of these classes.

I. A secret of woodcraft or horsemanship :

(1) The only sovereign plaster for ' venomed sores ' is
the hound's ' licking of his wound.' 1

(2) Beware of a horse with no white in his face.2

(3) You cannot judge of the quality of the deer by his
horns alone. He may have huge antlers, and yet be a
worthless ' rascal.'3

(4) How to avoid scaring a herd of deer by the noise of
the cross-bow.4

(5) Choose a falcon or tercel for flying at the brook, and
a hawk for the bush.5

(6) If you are tired or out of sorts, so will your horse be
also.6

Under this head range also the many precepts on the
breeding, choosing, riding, and breaking of horses, and on
the manning and training of hawks, collected in these pages,
including an enumeration of the points of a horse and of a
hound; and of a fair number of the fifty diseases known to
the veterinary surgeon.

II. An illustration of human nature and character :

(1) * Hollow men, like horses hot at hand, make gallant
show and promise of their mettle,' but, when the time of
trial comes, they, 'like deceitful jades, sink in the trial.'7

1 Vtn. and Ad. 915 (p. 76).

2 Ant. and Cleo. iii. 2. 51 ; Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 4 (p. 246).

3 As YouL. iii. 3. 56 (p. 228).

4 3 Hen. VI. iii. 1. 5 (p. 227).

6 Trail, and Ores. iii. 2. 55 (p. 202).

6 Sonnet 1. ; Love's L. L. iv. 2. 131 (p. 80).

7 Jul. Cces. iv. 2. 23 (p. 274).

THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 303

(2) Beware of self-asserting impostors, who, like rascal
deer worst in blood to run, push themselves to the front of
the herd, and so deceive the unwary.1

(3) There are men too who, * like coward dogs, most spend
their mouths when what they seem to threaten runs far
before them/ and there are those who need, like Boderigo, to
be trashed for too quick hunting.2

(4) A man may be quick of apprehension, and yet be an
untrustworthy guide ; like a ' hound that runs counter, and
yet draws dry-foot well.'3

(5) There are men and women, as there are horses, who
need bit and spur, while there are others who may truly say
' you may ride's with one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere
with spur we heat an acre.'4

(6) In training youth, as in training horses, avoid the
extremes of severity and of laxity.5 And, above all, do not
begin too young, for 'the colt that's back'd and burden'd,
being young, loseth his pride and never waxeth strong.'6

III. A lively image ; such as :

(1) Queen Margaret's description of Edward and Eichard
as * a brace of greyhounds, having the fearful flying hare in
sight, with fiery eyes, sparkling for very wrath.'7

(2) Talbot's comparision of his few troops surrounded by
the French multitude to 'moody mad and desperate stags,'
who ' turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel, and
make the cowards stand aloof at bay.'8

(3) 'The poor frighted deer that stands at gaze, wildly
determining which way to fly,' apt image of Lucrece, in
mutiny with herself, ' to live or die, which of the twain were
better.'9

(4) Uncontrollable and licentious wickedness is compared
to a runaway horse, which no rein can hold 'when down
the hill he holds his fierce career.'10

(5) War differs as widely from dull, sleepy, lethargic

1 Coriol. i. 1. 161 (p. 229).

2 Hen. V. ii. 4. 68 ; Oth. ii. 1. 312 (pp. 34, 38).

3 Com. of Err. iv. 2. 39 (p. 64).

4 Measure for M. i. 3. 20 ; Wint. Tale, i. 2. 95 (p. 272).

6 Rich. II. ii. 1. 69 (p. 271). 6 Fen and Ad. 419 (p. 271).

7 3 Hen. VL ii. 5. 129 (p. 168). 8 1 Hen. VI. iv. 2. 50 (p. 58).
9 Lucrece, 1149 (p. 32). " Hen. V. iii. 3. 22 (p. 44).

304. THE HORSE IN SHAKESPEARE

peace as a hound who has hit off the scent, and becomes
'spritely walking, audible, and full of vent/ from his
fellow, standing listlessly, at a fault, or hopelessly trying to
pick out a cold scent.1

(6) The barons overawed by Warwick cower like par-
tridges enmewed and terrified by a hawk, and none ' dares
stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells.'2

IV. A conceit, for example :

(1) The Dauphin's valour, according to the Constable of
France, was ' a hooded valour, and when it appears, it will
bate (abate).'3

(2) The elaborate conceits on the words 'pricket' and
' sorel ' in Holof ernes' 'ex temporal epitaph.'4

(3) ' You are over boots in love,' says Proteus to Valentine.
' Pro. Over the boots, nay, give me not the bots (boots).
Vol. No, I'll not, for it boots thee not.'5

(4) The puns on 'an old hare hoar' in which Mercutio
indulged.6

(5) ' He was furnished as a hunter,' said Celia of Orlando.
' Oh, ominous ! ' exclaimed Eosalind, ' he comes to kill my
heart.'7

(6) Lavinia seeking to hide herself was likened by Marcus
Andronicus to a wounded deer, whereupon Titus puns 'It
was my deer (dear).'8

Indeed, puns on words connected with the chase, especially
on the words 'hart' and 'deer,' and conceits in regard to
horns, are almost beyond counting.

V. An irrelevance, often in the form of an anachronism ;
as when :

(1) Lucrece appeals to Tarquin, as to an English sports-
man, to mend his ill aim before his shoot is ended, and spare
a poor unseasonable doe.9

(2) Mark Antony compares Caesar's assassins to hunters,
standing round where the hart was bayed and slain, signed
in his spoil, and crimsoned in his lethe ; that is, blooded
after the fashion of English sportsmen.10

1 Coriol. iv. 5. 237 (p. 52). 2 3 Hen. VI. i. 1. 45 (p. 195).

3 Hen. V. iii. 7. 121 (p. 145). 4 Love's L. L. iv. 2. 58 (p. 224).

5 Two Gent, of Ver. i. 1. 25 (p. 300). 6 Rom. and Jul. ii. 4. 136 (p. 166).

7 As You L. iii. 2. 258 (p. 29). 8 Tit. Andr. iii. 1. 91 (p. 229).

9 Lucrece, 580 (p. 227). 10 Jul Cces. iii. 1. 204 (p. 63).

ILLUSTRATIONS 305

(3) Flavins, when by plucking growing feathers from^
Caesar's wing he would 'make him fly an ordinary pitch/1

(4) And so too Pandarus of TrtFT;- when he says to
Cressida, 'You must be watched ere you be made tame,
must you?'2

(5) The Lord Lucullus pays court to Timon of Athens
after the fashion of Shallow of Gloucestershire, by sending
him two brace of greyhounds, and entreating his company to
hunt with him.3

(6) Demetrius suggests to the mind of Aaron the Moor
recollections of the same county, with its parks and keepers
and deer stealers, when he asks whether he has not 'full
often struck a doe, and borne her cleanly by the keeper's
nose ? '4

The Shakespearian allusion, even when it does not
involve an anachronism, is seldom introduced of set purpose,
to suit the context or situation, and is as often out of season
as in season, in point of dramatic propriety.

1 Ibid. i. 1. 77 (p. 155). a Trail and Ores. iii. 2. 45 (p. 144).

3 Tim. ofAth. i. 2. 193 (p. 233). 4 Tit. Andr. ii. 1. 93 (p. 222).

NOTE I

THE CRITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SHAKESPEARE'S ALLUSIONS
TO FIELD SPORTS

WHEN I began to collect and to arrange the allusions to field
sports and to horses scattered throughout the writings of Shake-
speare, nothing was further from my mind than to enter the field
of criticism. But as my work progressed, I discerned more and
more clearly the true nature of these allusions, how they for the
most part well up spontaneously as from the poet's inmost soul,
and are seldom suggested by the plot or character in hand at the
moment, with which, indeed, they are often out of keeping. And
according as I became better acquainted with the works of his
contemporaries, it was more and more evident that this peculiar
mode of thought does not happen to be shared by other dramatic
writers of his age. Thus the thought was suggested that the
presence or absence of this distinctive note might be of some aid
in distinguishing the workmanship of Shakespeare from that of
certain other dramatists with whom Shakespearian criticism is
mainly concerned. From the admitted writings of Shakespeare
it is never wholly absent. In the admitted works of Fletcher,
Greene, Kyd, or Marlowe, or in certain of the anonymous plays
attributed to Shakespeare, it is never found.

Again, in the course of my work, I found myself in the presence
of certain matters of fact by which an inquiry was suggested. These
facts are that in no single instance has the authority of the Folio
been displaced by the result of my inquiries, and that the know-
ledge thus obtained has often unexpectedly tended to support the
testimony of its editors. I was thus led to investigate the sufficiency
of the reasons which have led critics, almost without exception, to
reject the Folio in favour either of some earlier quarto edition, or
of a certain compound known as the Keceived Text, the result
of the labours of many generations of more or less intelligent
emendators. How far the Text differs from the Folio can be
realised only by those who have been at the pains to compare

306

CRITICAL 307

even so conservative a text as that of the Cambridge Editors with
what was given to the world by Shakespeare's fellows as having
been printed from the ' true original copies.'

Hence this note. Upon certain matters of criticism, meet only
for the decision of experts, I disclaim any right to express an
opinion ; but I would remind the reader that in criticism, as in the
administration of the law, the determination of questions of nicety,
fit only for experts, often depends upon some cardinal matter of
fact, to be determined by weighing testimony and balancing
probabilities. When such an issue is evolved, legal experts stand
aside for a while, until the question of fact has been answered, yea
or nay, by laymen empanelled to decide upon the evidence sub-
mitted to them. Jurors differ widely in intelligence and indepen-
dence, and Courts are accustomed to regard the finding of a jury
upon even a doubtful question of fact with a superstitious rever-
ence never accorded to any other merely human pronouncement.
But speaking generally, I suppose that few thinkers, and fewer
men of practical experience, believe that the administration of
the law would be bettered by the universal substitution of trained
lawyers for those who are now called in from the counting-house
or from the farm to answer questions of fact upon which may
depend the devolution of an estate, or the graver issues of life or
death. It would, I think, be well for criticism if it were possible
to submit broad issues of fact — with proper instructions — to men
of fair intelligence and general culture (for the jury should be a
special one) bound to decide in accordance with evidence ; not in
the technical sense in which the term is understood in Courts of
Justice, but as comprehending (in the words of Bentham) c any
matter of fact, the effect, tendency, or design of which, when
presented to the mind, is to produce a persuasion concerning the
existence of some other matter of fact,' — a philosophical definition
of evidence towards which its legal significance is slowly but
surely gravitating.

But for two remarkable circumstances, Shakespearian criticism
would never have exercised so many minds and filled so many
volumes. One is the fact noted by the editors of the Folio, that
Shakespeare had not ' the fate common with some to be exequtor
to his owne writing.' That the author of Othello and As You Like
It should not have deemed those works worthy of the editorial
care bestowed on Venus and Adonis and Lucrece ; that he used
them simply as a means of making money, and when that purpose
had been served, took no further heed of them; that notwith-
standing the publication and rapid sale of pirated and inaccurate

308 NOTES

copies, he was never moved, during the years of retirement at
Stratford, to take even the initial step of collecting and revising
for publication the manuscripts of his plays; and that, so far as
their author was concerned, they might be stolen, travestied, or
perish altogether; are surely among the strangest facts in the
history of literature. There is the further circumstance that
Shakespeare was not only an original dramatist, but a theatrical
manager, who commenced authorship as Johannes-fac-totum, and
who never hesitated to turn the work of others to profitable use,
rewriting it to a greater or less extent, according as it suited the
purposes of the theatre with which he was connected. Thus it is
that we have not the authority of Shakespeare for the fact of his
authorship of any one of the plays attributed to him, or for the
authenticity of any particular edition. Thus also it is that
Shakespearian criticism is not restricted to recension of a text,
however corrupt, admittedly printed from an authentic manuscript.
It must, before approaching this task, determine questions of no
small difficulty. It must, in the first place, settle the canon
of Shakespeare's works. It must define, as best it can, his share
in each drama admitted to this canon; and it must also decide
between rival claimants to the title of * true original copy.'

THE FOLIO OF 1623

Seven years after Shakespeare's death a volume was published
which, if the professions of its editors may be believed, supplied
to a certain extent the want of an authorised edition. In the
First Folio, John Heminge and Henry Condell, fellow-actors with
Shakespeare, custodians of his manuscripts, and legatees under his
will, gave to the public, under the auspices of Ben Jonson, what
purported to be a complete collection of his works printed from
the true original copies received by them at the hands of the poet.
If this profession be true, it narrows considerably the field of
controversy. Shakespeare's authorship, in whole or in part, of
the thirty-four plays included in the Folio would be conclusively
established, leaving to criticism the task of estimating as best it
could his share in the composition of each individual play. No
doubt would remain as to the edition which represented most
clearly the finished work of the author. This edition would
necessarily form the basis of the text, and criticism would have
occupied itself in correcting manifest errors, and in the emendation
of such passages as were unintelligible or obviously corrupt, by
reference to the less authentic issues, or by conjectural emenda-

CRITICAL 309

tion. On the other hand, if the testimony of the editors of the
Folio is discredited, and if the quartos are admitted as of equal or
greater authority, questions of authorship and of textual criticism
are, so to speak, altogether at large, to be determined without
regard to authority. It is therefore evident that the question of
the authority of the Folio underlies the whole of Shakespearian
criticism.

"Who, then, were the editors of the First Folio, and how far are
they entitled to credit ? These men, Heminge and Condell, were
precise in their statements and in their claims. The plays are
stated on the title page to be 'published according to the True
Originall Copies.' 'We have collected them,' the editors say in
the dedication to the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Mont-
gomery, ' and done an office to the dead to procure his Orphanes
Guardians ; without ambition either of selfe-profit or fame : onely
to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as
was our Shakespeare, by humble offer of his playes to your most
noble patronage.' The claim thus put forward to a close relation-
ship with the author is supported by the evidence of Shakespeare
himself. By his will he left to his 'fellows John Hemynge,
Richard Burbage and Henry Cundell twenty-six shillings and
eight pence apiece to buy them rings.' Richard Burbage, the
celebrated actor, the impersonator of Shakespeare's greatest
characters, died in 1619, and the volume was published in 1623
by the surviving objects of the author's affectionate remembrance,
under the auspices of Ben Jonson. It was he who wrote the lines
introducing to the reader the Droeshout portrait, engraved on
the title page. It was to his genius we owe the noble commenda-
tory verses prefixed to the Folio, of which it is enough to say
that they are not unworthy of their theme.

These editors were not only the trusted friends of Shakespeare,
but, as joint proprietors of the Globe theatre, they were the lawful
holders of his manuscripts. They knew with regard to each play
which copy embodied the author's final workmanship, and had
the best title to be called the true original.'

It is not indeed the custom of those who discredit the Folio to
question the knowledge of its editors. It is their common honesty
and their veracity which are in dispute. 'There is no doubt,'
writes Mr. Spalding (Letter on Authorship of Two Noble Kinsmen),
'but they could at least have enumerated Shakespeare's works
correctly : but their knowledge and their design of profit did not
suit each other.' They must, he points out, be presumed to have
known perfectly what works were, and what were not, Shakespeare's.

310 NOTES

But these men were * unscrupulous and unfair ' in their selection,
their whole conduct 'inspires distrust' and justifies a critic in
throwing the First Folio entirely out of view as a c dishonest '
(and, I would add, a hypocritical) c attempt to put down editions
of about fifteen separate plays of Shakespeare, previously printed
in quarto, which, though in most respects more accurate than their
successors, had evidently been taken for stolen copies.'

Somewhat similar is the language used by the editors of the first
edition of the Cambridge Shakespeare, Mr. W. G. Clarke and
J. Glover. This preface is prefixed to one of the latest and best
editions of Shakespeare's works, the Cambridge Shakespeare of
1893, edited by Mr. William Aldis Wright; but he is not responsible
for language used by his predecessors. The editors of the first edition,
led by the result of critical research to adopt the quartos of several
plays as the true original copies, had to dispose of the assertions of
the editors of the Folio. They do not hesitate to convict them of
suggestio falsi, in conveying to the public the idea that the Folio
was printed from original manuscripts received by them at the
author's hands. This sounds better than the vernacular; — lie.
But there is no use in mincing matters, and if the suggestion of
the editors of the Folio was false in fact, it must have been false
to their knowledge, and their fraudulent puffing of their own
wares, coupled with their 'denunciation of editions which they
knew to be superior to their own,' would, if proved, fully justify
the plainer language used by Mr. Spalding.

Great allowance must be made for speculators in the regions of
criticism, philosophy, antiquity, or theology, who find themselves
face to face with a fact too stubborn to accommodate itself to some
conclusion, the result of lifelong study. The critic who, after
infinite labour and research, has satisfied himself that a quarto is
the true original of Shakespeare's Hamlet, has to deal with the
fact that two intimate friends of the author, possessed of special
means of knowledge, assert the contrary, and that their assertion is
endorsed by some whom it would be scarcely possible to deceive,
and who have no motive to aid or abet in deceiving others. There
are but two courses open to one who finds himself in such a position :
either to reconsider in the light of testimony the conclusion to
which he has been led by a process of reasoning, or to denounce
and discredit the inconvenient witnesses. The former course
was (after the use of some strong language) followed by Mr.
Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbams when his learned identification
of the Prsetorium in his Roman camp at the Kaim of Kinprunes,
the result of long and careful study of castrametation, was inter-

CRITICAL 311

rupted by Edie Ochiltree : ' Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I
mind the bigging o't.' The latter is the ordinary course of
Shakespearian criticism.

That the editors of the Folio failed in their task is well known ;
if, indeed, the term editing can be applied to the process of hand-
ing over to the printer what were probably hastily finished and
ill-written manuscripts, and leaving them to take their chance.
But a careless editor is not necessarily a fraudulent knave, and it
is needful to discriminate. It is not, however, surprising that
the manifold and glaring defects of the Folio should have blinded
the eyes of many generations of critics to the true position of that
edition, and to its claims upon their attention.

These shortcomings are fairly enumerated by Mr. Churton
Collins. His article in the Quarterly Review (July 1892, reprinted
in his Essays and Studies, 1895), is a successful vindication of
Theobald's claim to rank as 'The Person of Shakspearian criti-
cism.' * Words, the restoration of which is obvious, left unsup-
plied ; unfamiliar words transliterated into gibberish ; punctuation
as it pleases chance ; sentences with the subordinate clauses
higgledy-piggledy or upside down ; lines transposed ; verse printed
as prose, and prose as verse ; speeches belonging to one character
given to another ; stage directions incorporated in the text ; actors'
names suddenly substituted for those of the dramatis personce ;
scenes and acts left unindicated or indicated wrongly — all this
and more makes the text of the First Folio one of the most por-
tentous specimens of typography and editing in existence/ All
this is true, but it is beside the question of the honesty of the two
play-actors who had not the wit to call in literary aid in the dis-
charge of a task for which they were incompetent. It does,
however, explain the disfavour with which the Folio was regarded
by critics, in whose eyes those literary enormities assumed gigantic
proportions.

LATER EDITIONS

In the succeeding folio editions of 1632, 1664, and 1685 little
was done to amend the text. A few errors were corrected, and
others were perpetrated. But in the century following the publi-
cation of Eowe's octavo edition in 1709 some of the keenest
intellects of the age devoted their energies to the text of Shake-
speare, and the result of their labours is collected in the well-known
Variorum edition (21 vols.), published in 1821 by James Boswell;
a monumental work, in which is embodied the result of the
labours of Eowe, Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Hamner, Johnson,

312 NOTES

Capell, Steevens, Malone, Monck Mason, and many others of
lesser note.

Of these, by general consent, Pope is the least successful, and
Theobald, the victim of his remorseless satire, the happiest, in
the matter of conjectural emendation. The others may be ranked
as critics in the inverse order of their literary reputation. Differ-
ing widely in other respects, they agreed in operating upon a
certain thing which they treated as the text of Shakespeare.
This they amended with a greater or less degree of success,
sometimes by brilliant and certain conjectures, sometimes by
wild and reckless guesses, and sometimes by collation with the
folios and quartos, classed together as apparently of equal autho-
rity and called the old editions, as compared with the received
text. But I cannot find that the Folio ranked higher with any of
them than as a source from which emendations, more or less
probable, might be drawn.

As might have been expected, the methods of investigation and
criticism current in the nineteenth century brought into promi-
nence the question of the Folio's claim to authority. It would
be impossible within the limits of a note to consider the attitude
with regard to the Folio of the chief modern editors — Collier,
Halliwell, Dyce, Knight, Staunton, Grant White, Prof essor Dowden,
and the Cambridge editors. Suffice it to note that no one would
now venture to edit Shakespeare without regard to the old copies.
Some, indeed, have gone further. The text of Mr. Horace
Howard Furness's monumental Variorum Shakespeare is the first
folio, the spelling of which he retains. Mr. Knight's edition is
founded on the text of the Folio, which, however, he sometimes
needlessly abandons, while at other times he rejects emendations
which are certain and necessary. Mr. Grant White, in his
historical sketch of the text of Shakespeare prefixed to the
edition of his works edited by him (Boston, 1865), writes of
the Folio : ' Indeed, such is the authority given to this volume
by the auspices under which it appeared, that had it been
thoroughly prepared for the press and printed with care there
would have been no appeal from its text ; and editorial labour
upon Shakespeare's plays, except that of an historical or ex-
egetical nature, would have been not only without justification
but without opportunity.'

I pass at once to the preface of the Cambridge editors, taking
it as a fair statement of the creed of modern conservative Shake-
spearian criticism. In their preface to the first edition the editors
plainly state that they accept the Folio only in the absence of an

CRITICAL 313

earlier edition. 'This' [the Folio] 'we have mainly adopted, unless
there exists an earlier edition in quarto, as is the case in more
than one-half of the thirty-six plays.' In a preface to a reprint
of certain quartos they add : * In the great majority of cases where
a previous quarto exists, the quarto and not the folio is our best
authority.' Of the Folio edition of Love's Labour's Lost they
write that it is 'a reprint of this quarto [that of 1598], differing
only in its being divided into Acts, and, as usual, inferior in
accuracy.' Except in the case of King Lear, where they admit a
substantial rivalry between the Folio and an earlier edition, the
quarto is accepted as the higher authority, the Folio being some-
times dismissed with the remark that it is, as usual, inferior in
accuracy, or in other instances accounted for, as being a reprint
of some spurious edition. And ' the most unkindest cut of all ' is,
appropriately enough, dealt in the preface to Julius Ccesar :
' Julius Ccesar was published for the first time in the Folio of
1623. It is more correctly printed than any other play, and may
perhaps have been (as the preface falsely implies that all were)
printed from the original manuscript of the author.'

In short, the authority of the Folio is uniformly rejected, the
assertions of its editors discredited, and it is adopted as the foun-
dation of the text only in the absence of another edition.

The editors, it is true, open a door of escape for the 'setters
forth ' of the Folio : ' It is probable that this deception arose not
from deliberate design on the part of Heminge and Condell —
whom, as having been Shakespeare's friends and fellows, we like
to think of as honourable men — but partly at least from want of
practice in composition, and from the wish rather to write a smart
preface in praise of the book than to state the facts simply and
clearly. Or the preface may have been written by some literary
man in the employment of the publishers, and merely signed by
the two players.'

I have little doubt as to how my imaginary special jurors
would dispose of the suggestion by which it is attempted to
establish the honesty of the editors at the expense of their intelli-
gence, if any literary advocate had the hardihood seriously to
press it on their attention. That the setters forth of so high an
enterprise, in which they had so great an interest — honourable
or corrupt — should have signed dedication or preface without
reading either, could scarcely be believed, even if attested by
respectable witnesses. As a gratuitous hypothesis it is plainly
inadmissible. Besides, the theory must be so far extended as to
free the editors from responsibility for the title page, for it is there

314 NOTES

that they are hopelessly committed to the most damaging asser-
tion | namely, that the plays are ' published according to the True
Originall Copies.' . The theory is specially inapplicable to this
particular dedication and preface, inasmuch as they are obviously
not mere literary flourishes, but plain statements with regard to
matters of a personal nature. The most important of these state-
ments can be traced to the editors, and is certainly not the inven-
tion of their supposed literary man. c His mind and hand,' they
write, ' went together : And what he thought he vttered with that
easinesse that we haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his
papers.' This saying, which was probably current in the profes-
sion, was no doubt specially brought home to Ben Jonson when
he co-operated with Heminge and Condell in the publication of
the Folio. ' I remember,' he wrote many years after, * the players
have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his
writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line '
(Discoveries).

The theory which convicts the editors as knaves is deserving
of more attention than that which lets them escape as fools, who
published without looking at title page or preface. And for this
reason — there have been editors capable of the imposition practised
upon the public according to the former theory ; there never were
men capable of the folly suggested by the latter.

But, after all, why should these men be believed*? What
corrupt or dishonest motive can be attributed to them with
reasonable probability? They profess to have published the
plays of their friend and fellow without ambition of self-profit or
fame. Mr. Halliwell-Phillips (Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare)
points out with some force that in giving unreservedly to the
public valuable literary property of which they were sole pro-
prietors, they made a sacrifice for which the profits on the sale of
the Folio would not compensate them. They were believed by
those who had the best means of forming an opinion as to their
credit, and they succeeded in imposing on the simple guileless
Ben Jonson, who was induced to lend the authority of his great
name to their undertaking.

BEN JONSON AND THE FIRST FOLIO

In truth, I have never been able to discover the part assigned
to Ben Jonson in the literary frauds associated with the name of
Shakespeare. He was too clever and knew too much to be a
dupe. I presume he is included in the indictment as a co-con-

CRITICAL 315

spirator. In order to estimate the value of Ben Jonson's
imprimatur we do well to inquire what manner of man he was
in himself, and what were his relations to his contemporaries.

He was a man of great and varied genius; a scholar, a dramatist,
and a poet. On occasions only too rare, he showed himself capable
of writing English prose in grandeur approaching that of Milton.
He was, in Mr. Swinburne's happy phrase, a giant, but not of the
number of the gods. He was a man of the world, and on familiar
terms with many of his contemporaries. He journeyed into
Scotland to visit Drummond of Hawthornden, who committed to
writing some of his pointed and caustic sayings. He had the rare
good fortune to be on terms of intimacy with two of the greatest
men of his own, or of any age.

If Scotland had furnished this earlier Jonson with another
Boswell, the world would have had a richer entertainment than the
scanty crumbs picked up by Drummond of Hawthornden. But
such as they are, in default of better they are worth preserving.
'At his hither coming Sir Francis Bacon said to him, He loved
not to sie Poesy goe on other feet than poeticall Dactylus and
Spondaeus.' With keen eye he had noted his little mannerisms.
1 My Lord Chancelor of England wringeth his speeches from the
strings of his band.' He had also gauged the immensity of his
genius. It is to Jonson that we owe our only account of Bacon's
manner of speaking, a passage which often does duty as a
commonplace, descriptive of true eloquence. In Bacon's prosperity
Jonson had addressed him, in well-chosen language of poetical
compliment, as one

Whose even thread the fates spin round and full
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool.

But Jonson was not of the race of flatterers (with whom are busy
mockers) who,

like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer.

Troil. and Ores. iii. 3. 78.

It was after Bacon's fall that the spirit of Jonson was touched to
a finer issue, and he wrote these noble words : ' My conceit of his
person was never increased towards him by his place or honours :
but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only
proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one
of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had been

316 NOTES

in many ages. In his adversity I prayed that God would give
him strength ; for greatness he could not want.'

Of Shakespeare, Jonson was in a still greater degree the
companion, the critic, and finally the panegyrist. In their ' wit-
combates' at the Mermaid tavern he held his own. While
Shakespeare was yet alive, a prosperous gentleman, he did not
escape the lash of Ben Jonson's tongue. Jonson was by common
consent a keen and even a censorious critic. He was, according
to Dry den, a most severe judge of himself as of others. If he had
a giant's strength, he was wont to use it 'as a giant.' This is
probably a truer estimate of his character than Drummond's : * a
great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of
others.'

I never could understand why Jonson's criticism of Shakespeare
should have exposed him to stupid attacks, and to the still stupider
defence of an editor and biographer who would have us believe
that Jonson never thought of Shakespeare when he laughed at
servant-monsters, tales, tempests, and such-like drolleries. Why
should not Jonson be allowed to do as his kind 1 It was surely more
to the discredit of some other contemporaries of Shakespeare that
they do not appear to have been conscious of his existence. It
would indeed have been unpardonable if Jonson had nothing more
to say of Shakespeare. But in his declaration ' I loved the man,
and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any ' ;
and in his immortal words,

He was not of an age, but for all time,

we have the true measure of Jonson's estimate, and his carping
criticism is only of importance as indicative of his nature and
habits. . He was scarcely the man who from easy-going good-
fellowship would endorse without inquiry any statement which
the editors were fraudulent enough to put into their preface, or
indolent enough to allow their literary man to write for them. As
to this imaginary literary man, I cannot help thinking that, if he
had any real existence, he would probably have suggested to the
editors the possibility of printers' errors, and the desirability of
preparing for publication copies which were designed for another
and a different purpose.

LEONARD DIGGES

But another name, not wholly unknown, is involved in this
discreditable business :

CRITICAL 317

Shake-spearc, at length thy pious fellows give

The world thy Workes ; thy Workes, by which outline

Thy Tombe, thy name must ; when that stone is rent

And Time dissolues thy Stratford Moniment

Here we aliue shall view thee still.

Thus wrote Leonard Digges. Although his only claim to immor-
tality is his association with the editors of the Folio to which his
verses are prefixed, he was well known at the time, and finds a
place in Wood's Athence. He was the typical man about town
and playgoer of the day. In some further verses in praise of
Shakespeare subsequently printed, he shows keen interest in the
stage, and knowledge of dramatic matters. A man like Digges, of
literary habits and independent means, with a special interest in
the stage and a passionate admirer of Shakespeare, must have been
acquainted with the quarto editions of his plays. It is strange
that he should have associated himself with the dishonest or care-
less publication of inferior copies, commending it to the world as
a collection of the poet's works which it owed ' at length ' to the
pious offices of his fellows.

It seemed needful to collect and summarise the principal facts
connected with the publication of the Folio, before proceeding to
develop and illustrate the statement that the result of the studies
and inquiries undertaken in order to explain the allusions collected
in these pages, has in every instance tended to support its
authority.

It must be admitted that the credit of its editors would be com-
pletely shattered if they were proved to have included in the Folio
any play which was not, in part at least, the work of Shakespeare ;
for this is a matter about which they could not be mistaken ; and
those who believe them guilty of palming upon the public as
works of Shakespeare, printed from his original manuscript, the
compositions of other dramatists, are quite consistent in repudiating
the Folio and denouncing its editors.

Accusations of this kind have been brought against these men,
and with a light heart. In the case indeed of one play, Titus
Andronicus, a verdict of guilty has been brought in with a nearer
approach to unanimity than I have observed in any branch of
literary criticism.

TITUS ANDRONICUS

Johnson could write in 1765, 'All the editors and critics agree
with Mr. Theobald in supposing this play spurious. I see no
reason for differing from them.' And Hallam in 1837, 'Titus

318 NOTES

Andronicus is now by common consent denied to be in any sense
a production of Shakespeare ' (Literature of Europe). It is not
too much to say that in regard to this play there is opposed to the
entire voice of criticism quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omni-
bus, simply the assertion of the editors of the Folio ; for although
Professor Dowden and Gervinus doubt, and Collier and Knight
with some German critics believe, it is plain that neither their
faith nor their scepticism would have been exercised upon this
play had it not been included in the Folio. The case is therefore
an interesting one for the application of the suggested test.

Titus Andronicus was first published under Shakespeare's name
in the Folio of 1623. The quarto edition appeared anonymously.
We can fix approximately the date of its original production.
Bartholomew fair was first acted in 1615. In the Induction Ben
Jonson has his laugh at the 'servant monster' in The Tempest,
the humours of the watch in Much Ado About Nothing, and
generally at ' those that beget tales, tempests, and such-like drol-
leries ' ; and in the humorous Articles of the Fair it is agreed that
* he that will swear that Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays
yet, shall pass unexcepted at here as a man whose judgment shows
it is constant, and has stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty
years.' These words prove that Andronicus was in 1615 classed
with Jeronimo as a familiar example of the old-fashioned bloody
tragedy, in vogue some quarter of a century earlier. Jonson is
not to be understood as fixing the date with accuracy ; but taking
the lowest figure, twenty-five years, Titus Andronicus must have
been before the public since 1589 at latest. If written by Shake-
speare, it was written at the stage of intellectual development which
produced Venus and Adonis and Love's Labour's Lost.

In 1598 Francis Meres published a work entitled Palladis
Tamia^or Wit's Treasury, in which he pronounces that 'Shake-
speare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for
the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his
Errors, his Loue Labors Lost, his Loue Labours Wonne (All's Well),
his Midsummer's Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice : for
tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King
John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet.1 The evidence
afforded by this enumeration of Titus Andronicus with eleven other
plays, all undoubtedly genuine, is thus summarily disposed of by
Mr. Hallam : ' In criticism of all kinds we must acquire a dogged
habit of resisting testimony, when res ipsa per se vociferatur to the
contrary.'

In applying this principle of criticism, somewhat dangerous in

CRITICAL 319

its practical application, it behoves us to listen with the utmost
care to the voice in which res ipsa speaks.

Its accents, no doubt, sound differently in different ears, but
certain notes are unmistakable. It may safely be stated (1) that
scarcely a trace of Shakespeare is apparent in the first act, (2) that
frequent evidences of a different hand become discernible in the
subsequent treatment of the principal characters. Was this the
hand of Shakespeare, the Shakespeare (be it remembered) not of
Hamlet and Lear, but of Venus and Adonis ; the hand of Johannes-
fac-totum in his earliest attempts at dramatic adaptation 1

At the commencement of the second act the attention of the
Shakespearian student is at once arrested by the opening lines of
the speech of Aaron the Moor. His love, Tamora, Queen of the
Goths, has become Empress of Rome.

Advanc'd above pale envy's threatening reach,
As when the golden sun salutes the morn,
And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,
Gallops the Zodiac in his glistering coach,
And overlooks the highest-peering hills.

From this image, borrowed from the dawn, Aaron digresses to
the falconer's art :

Then, Aaron, arm thy heart, and fit thy thoughts,
To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress,
And mount her pitch, whom thou in triumph long
Hast prisoner held.

While Aaron thus soliloquises, the sons of Tamora come upon
the scene, competitors for the love of Lavinia, the ill-starred
daughter of Titus Andronicus. One of them, in justification of
his design upon her, thus appeals to Aaron's personal experience
in woodcraft :

What, hast not thou full often struck a doe,
And borne her cleanly by the keeper's nose ?

Aaron, with imagination full of the incidents of a solemn
hunting of the deer, suggests :

My Lords, a solemn hunting is in hand ;

There will the lovely Roman ladies troop :

The forest walks are wide and spacious ;

And many unfrequented plots there are

Fitted by kind for rape and villany :

Single you thither then this dainty doe,

And strike her home by force, if not by words.— ii. 1. 112.

320 NOTES

The hunting in hand was, as afterwards explained, a 'general
hunting in this forest ' (ii. 3. 59), with running hounds as well as
crossbow and greyhounds. Accordingly, the stage direction, 'A
cry of hounds and "horns winded in a peal,' follow these words of
Andronicus :

Tit. The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey,
The fields are fragrant and the woods are green :
Uncouple here and let us make a bay,
And wake the emperor and his lovely bride
And rouse the prince, and ring a hunter's peal,
That all the court may echo with the noise. — ii. 2. 1.

The Empress Tamora is then invited to see the sport :

Sat. Madam, now shall ye see

Our Roman hunting.

Marc. I have dogs, my lord,

Will rouse the proudest panther in the chase,
And climb the highest promontory top.

Tit. And I have horse will follow where the game
Makes way, and run like swallows o'er the plain.

But the Empress Tamora was intent on other thoughts :

Tarn. My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,
When everything doth make a gleeful boast ?
The birds chant melody on every bush,
The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun,
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
And make a ehequer'd shadow on the ground :
Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit,
And, whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds,
Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns,
As if a double hunt were heard at once,
Let us sit down, and mark their yelping noise ;
And, after conflict, such as was supposed
The wandering prince and Dido once enjoy 'd,
When with a happy storm they were surprised
And curtained with a counsel-keeping cave,
We may each wreathed in the other's arms,
Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber ;
Whiles hounds, and horns, and sweet melodious birds
Be unto us as is a nurse's song
Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep. — ii. 3. 10.

But Aaron, bent on the destruction of the Emperor's brother,
Bassianus, is deaf to her advances; as was Adonis to Venus,
when her imagination suggested the music of the cry :

CRITICAL 321

Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.

Ven. and Ad. 695, see ante, p. 175.

Bassianus appearing on the scene, Aaron departs to mature
his revenge. His parting admonition to Tamora — ' be cross with
him ' — is thus carried out :

Bas. Who have we here ? Rome's royal empress
Unfurnish'd of her well-beseeming troop ?
Or is it Dian, habited like her,
Who hath abandoned her holy groves
To see the general hunting in this forest ?
Tarn. Saucy controller of our private steps !

Had I the power that some say Dian had,
Thy temples should be planted presently
With horns, as was Actaeon's ; and the hounds
Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,
Unmannerly intruder as thou art !

The word 'drive,' puzzling to critics (one of whom suggests
' thrive '), is to this day a technical term of the hunting language,
expressive of the eagerness and spirit of the hound.

'Twere long to tell the dull tale of death and mutilation that
follows, unrelieved, save here and there; as when one tells
Andronicus that his unhappy daughter was found cruelly muti-
lated :

straying in the park,
Seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer
That hath received some unrecuring wound.

and he replies with a play on words, familiar to the ear :

Tit. It was my deer ; and he that wounded her

Hath hurt me more than had he kill'd me dead. — iii. 1. 88.

Or when he gives a lesson in shooting :

Tit. Sir boy, now let me see your archery ;

Look ye draw home enough, and 'tis there straight. — iv. 3. 2.

As the dismal tale progresses these bright spots become fewer
and fewer, and the fifth act relapses into the dulness of the first,
save for an instant when Aaron, with the villain's liking for the
bear-garden, compares himself to

As true a dog as ever fought at head.— v. 1. 102.
The reader of the foregoing pages must have recognised in

322 NOTES

these passages many touches of nature, already selected in these
pages from the undoubted works of Shakespeare, as characteristic
of his handiwork. The general hunting ; the music of the bay ;
the effect of echo mocking the hounds and doubling the chase
(described in almost the same words as in Venus and Adonis);
the ill-timed, but irresistible, pun on the word ' deer ' ; the images
borrowed from country life ; and finally the reminiscence of the
stricken doe often borne cleanly by the keeper's nose : must it not
be said of these, in the words borrowed by Hallam from Lucretius :
res ipsa per se vociferatur ?

It may be asked, what induced Shakespeare to expend his
time upon a ghastly tale of horrors, unredeemed before his touch
by any passages of poetical beauty? Ben Jonson supplies the
answer. It suited the taste of the age. There were old-fashioned
playgoers, even a quarter of a century after its production, who
would swear that it and Jeronimo were the best plays yet. In the
cant of the present d^ay, there was money in it ; and whether we
like it or not, we must admit that this consideration had always
weight in determining Shakespeare's choice.

But there is another question to be asked. If Shakespeare
had no part in the composition, what induced the editors to print
it as his 1 The poorer the play, the less the temptation to foist it
upon the public as Shakespeare's. The deception would be less
likely to succeed, and the danger of discrediting their collection
would be considerable, especially in the case of an old and once
popular piece, the authorship of which was as well known to Ben
Jonson, to Leonard Digges, and to all persons interested in the
drama, as to the editors themselves.

The admission of Titus Andronicus, or of any disputed play,
into the Shakespearian canon decides no more than that Shake-
speare -had sufficient share in its composition to justify an editor
in printing it in a collection of his works. For it must never be
forgotten that Shakespeare was not only an author, but an appro-
priator and adapter of plays, and that he was an adapter before he
was an original author. In regard to this very play an ancient
tradition has been recorded according to which it was the work of
an unknown author, adapted by Shakespeare, and tradition does
not always lie.

SHAKESPEARE'S METHOD OF ADAPTATION

We are fortunately not without means of becoming acquainted
with the method by which he adapted such like plays to his use ;

CRITICAL 323

knowledge which can be turned, as we shall see, to practical
use.

In The Taming of the Shrew we possess an adaptation and
development, undoubtedly by Shakespeare, of an older play which
is, no less certainly, the work of another hand. This latter is
The Taming of a, Shrew published in 1594, and reprinted by the
Shakespeare Society in 1844: an excellent and spirited comedy
by an unknown author, which furnished ready to Shakespeare's
hand the humours of the drunken Sly, and the leading idea and
many of the details of his Katherine and Petruchio scenes.

Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew teems with allusions to
sports, to horses and to their fifty diseases. These allusions are
of two kinds. Some form part of the necessary action of the
play. Of these the rudimentary germs may be found in the
older play, but without the distinctively Shakespearian character-
istics discernible in the ultimate development. Others are
casual, self-suggested and independent of the plot. These latter
are without exception confined to the work that is undoubtedly

Thus, Petruchio's old groom — the 'ancient trusty pleasant
servant' whom we know as Grumio — tells us that his master is
ready to marry for money an old trot, ' though she have as many
diseases as two and fifty horses.' And when asked if the horses
are ready he answers in stable language : ' Ay, Sir, they be ready,
the oats have eaten the horses.' And stable language is not found
only in the mouths of grooms, for we have already noted
Lucentio's : * Sir, give him head, I know he'll prove a jade,' and
Biondello's marvellous catalogue of glanders, windgall, spavins,
staggers, and half a dozen other ills that horse-flesh is heir to.
Petruchio's spaniel Troilus, his exclamation: '0 slow-wing'd turtle!
shall a buzzard take thee 1 ' and the falconer's cry of c Jack, boy !
ho, boy ! ' suggest that Petruchio knew what he was about when
he took in hand to man a haggard. There is also the sporting
talk in Lucentio's house of fowling, coursing, and of the deer at
bay, with Tranio's 'good swift simile, but somewhat currish,'
when he said :

Lucentio slipped me like his greyhound
Which runs himself, and catches for his master. — v. 2. 46-58.

Not a trace of any of these allusions is to be found in the Taming
of a Shrew.

In the old play, as in Shakespeare's revised version, a lord

324 NOTES

returning from hunting discovers Sly lying drunk by the road-
side.

Here breake we off our hunting for to-night ;

Cupple uppe the hounds and let vs hie vs home

And bid the huntsman see them meated well,

For they have all deserved it well to-day.

Shakespeare's version will be found ante, p. 77. Clowder is to
be coupled, but Merryman, the embossed hound, is to be otherwise
treated. In the old play all are to be alike coupled and all deserve
their meat equally well. Shakespeare had ridden — or perhaps
run — home too often with the hounds to be content with such
colourless stuff. He knew well that the master and his huntsmen
would dispute and finally quarrel over the performance of each
particular hound. To him, as to them, a pack did not mean so
many couples of hounds and nothing more. It was an aggregate
of individuals, whose several performances were deserving of as
serious and detailed criticism as the successive speakers in a full-
dress debate in the House of Commons. Silver, the lord observed,
had ' made it good at the hedge corner, in the coldest fault.' Bell-
man, according to the huntsman, had cried upon it at the merest
loss, and twice pick'd out the dullest scent. He was in truth the
better dog. 'Thou art a fool,' rejoins the lord, who had his
particular fancies; 'if Echo were as fleet I would esteem him
worth a dozen such.' A better example could not be found of the
difference between Shakespeare's notion of woodcraft and the
compositions of contemporary dramatists on the rare occasions
when they handled such matters.

In the old play Sly is offered lusty steeds, more swift of pace
than winged Pegasus :

And if your Honour please to hunt the deere
Your hounds stand readie cuppled at the doore,
Who in running will o'ertake the Row
And make the long breathde Tygre broken winded.

This would never do : who ever heard of coupling hounds to be
used in coursing, for this is meant by overtaking in running?
The greyhound in Tudor times had his collar, not his couple. And
what about hawking 1 And so Shakespeare, with the echo of the
bay sounding in his ears, re-wrote, after his fashion, the passage
thus:

Dost thou love hawking ? thou hast hawks will soar
Above the morning lark : or wilt thou hunt ?

CRITICAL 325

Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them,
And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.
First Serv. Say wilt thou course ? Thy greyhounds are as swift
As breathed stags, ay, fleeter than the roe.

The author of the old play, though evidently no sportsman,
knew, as every one of his day knew, that hawks were kept in
mews, and that they were tamed by hunger. It was an obvious
thought to compare the taming of a shrew by starvation to the
discipline of the hawk. And this is the result :

Pie mew her up as men do mew their hawkes,
And make her gentlie come vnto the lure.
Were she as stuborne and as full of strength
As were the Thracian horse Alcides tamde,
That King Egeus fed with flesh of men,
Yet would I pull her downe and make her come,
As hungry hawkes do flie vnto there lure.

Now hawks are mewed up for moulting and not to teach them
to come to the lure. It is in the manning of the haggard falcon,
by watching and by hunger, and not in her mewing or in her
training to the lure, that Shakespeare saw a true analogue to the
taming of the shrew ; so borrowing from the old writer an excellent
idea, badly worked out, he wrote :

My falcon now is sharp and passing empty ;
And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged
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 those kites
That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient.

It has been already noted (ante, p. 149) that this passage
contains no less than ten technical terms of art, and its falconry
is approved as faultless by the latest writer upon the sport.

KING HENRY VI

With the knowledge thus acquired of Shakespeare's method
as an adapter, I approach the question of the authorship of the
three parts of King Henry VI. Passing by the first part, for the
present, I find the second and third parts to be adaptations and
developments of two older plays, which we fortunately possess.

326 NOTES

These are (1) The first part of the Contention betwixt the two
famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster (published in 1594 and
reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1844) upon which the
second part of King Henry VI. is founded; and (2) The True
Tragedie of Richard Duke of York (published and reprinted at
the same dates) which was developed into the third part of
Henry VI.

As regards these plays, the problem is more complicated than
in the case of The Taming of the Shrew, for although the work
which appears for the first time in the edition of 1623 is un-
doubtedly Shakespeare's, opinion is divided as to the authorship
of the earlier plays : Johnson, Steevens, Knight, Schlegel, Tieck,
Ulrici, Delius, Oechelhaiiser, and H. von Friesen being in favour
of Shakespeare's authorship; and Malone, Collier, Dyce, Cour-
tenay, Gervinus, Kreyssig, and the French critics in favour of
Greene's or Marlowe's authorship (Dowden, Shakspere, his Mind
and Art).

A comparison of these old dramas with the plays as printed
in the Folio, discloses precisely the same process as that by which
the comedy of 1594 was transmuted into The Taming of the Shrew.
Certain passages are re- written and become instinct with life and
racy of the soil. Vague or inaccurate allusions become truthful
and striking, and some distinctively Shakespearian touches are
added,

In the First part of the Contention Suffolk compared Duke
Humphrey to a fox who must be killed to save the lamb :

Let him die, in that he is a Foxe,
Lest that in lining he offend vs more.

Here is no hint of the laws of woodcraft which distinguished
vermin- like the fox from beasts of venery to whom fair law is
allowed ; and so it was re-written :

And do not stand on quillets how to slay him :

Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,

Sleeping or waking ; 'tis no matter how

So he be dead. 2 Hen. VI. iii. 1. 257.

It was part of the plot of the original drama that Duke
Humphrey and Cardinal Beaufort should quarrel as they returned
with the King and Queen from hawking. In the First part of the
Contention the Queen has a hawk on her fist :

Queene. My lord, how did your grace like this last flight?
But as I cast her off the wind did rise,

CRITICAL 327

And twas ten to one, old lone had not gone out.
King. How wonderful the Lord's workes are on earth,
Euen in these silly creatures of his hands !
Vncle Qloster, how hie your hawk did sore,
And on a sodaine soust the Partridge downe !
Suffolk. No maruele, if it please your Maiestie,

My Lord Protector's Hawke done towre so well ;
He knowes his maister loues to be aloft.

This was not to Shakespeare's mind. Partridge hawking
might be good sport, but high-flying emulation is best illustrated
by the ' mountey,' when a cast of haggard falcons are flown at the
heron or mallard, and not by the downward swoop of the falcon
on the partridge. And so he re-wrote the passage thus :

Queen. Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook,

I saw not better sport these seven years' day :
Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high ;
And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out.
King. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest !
To see how God in all his creatures works !
Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.
Suffolk. No marvel, an it like your majesty,

My lord protector's hawks do tower so well ;
They know their master loves to be aloft
And bears his thoughts above his falcon's pitch.

Ibid. ii. 1.1.

In The True Tragedy, a scene being laid in a forest, two
keepers enter with bows and arrows, one of whom says to his
fellow :

Keeper. Come, let's take our stands vpon this hill,

And by and by the deere will come this waie.

These dull and lifeless lines sufficed to suggest to the adapter
recollections and images, which were not present to the imagina-
tion of the author. He saw, in his mind's eye, the thickgrown
brake, the covert for the stand ; the laund across which the deer
will come ; the woodman's art in ' culling the principal of all the
deer'; and he wrote the lines printed at p. 226, concluding with
a secret of woodcraft thus imparted :

Sec. Keep. I'll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.
First Keep. That cannot be ; the noise of thy cross-bow
Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.
Here stand we both, and aim we at the best.

3 Hen. VI. iii. 1.1.

328 NOTES

The additions which we find in the Folio are no less character-
istic than the alterations. Among these may be noted Queen
Margaret's comparison of Edward and Richard to

a brace of greyhounds
Having the fearful flying hare in sight,
With fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath.

Ibid. ii. 5. 129.

In another passage, Richard makes use of what we have learned
to be a term of venery (ante, p. 31), when he tells Clifford that
he has ' singled ' him alone, and when he says to Warwick coming
on the scene :

Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase ;

For I myself will hunt this wolf to death. Ibid. ii. 4. 12.

In the old play Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester simply makes
her exit. In the revised version Buckingham remarks :

She's tickled now ; her fume needs no spurs,

She'll gallop far enough to her destruction. 2 Hen. VI. i. 3. 154.

Here we discern the horseman, as we detect the falconer in
King Henry's desire that his wife might be revenged on

that hateful duke,

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 ! 3 Hen. VI. i. 1. 268.

These alterations and additions closely resemble those which
were introduced into The Taming of the Shrew. But when we
compare the Histories in their older form with the play of 1594
upon which that comedy was founded, a difference is at once
perceived. We find in these Histories allusions of the spon-
taneous and self-suggested kind, which we have noticed as con-
stantly occurring in the works of Shakespeare. You will find in
The Taming of a Shrew no such reminiscences as the following :

Neither the king, nor he that loues him best,
The proudest burd that holds vp Lancaster,
Dares stirre a wing, if Warwike shake his bels.

True Tragedie (3 Hen. VI. i. 1. 45).

Cliff. I, I. So strives the Woodcocke with the gin.
North. So doth the Cunnie (Coney) struggle withe the net.

True Tragedie (3 Hen. VI. i. 4. 61).

CRITICAL 329

Who finds the partridge in the puttock's neast,
But will imagine how the bird came there,
Although the kyte soare with vnbloodie beake.

First part of the Contention (2 Hen. VI. iii. 2. 192).

So doues doe pecke the Kauen's piersing tallents.

True Tragedie (3 Hen. VI. i. 4. 41).

These passages, though few in number, are distinctly Shake-
spearian, and unlike the undoubted workmanship of either Greene
or Marlowe. They support the conclusion that Shakespeare had
some part, probably not a large one, in the older dramas, which
he finally revised and altered, thus converting them into the
second and third parts of Henry VI., as printed in the Folio.
This conclusion accords with Greene's oft-quoted denunciation of
Shakespeare, as an 'vpstart crow beautified with our feathers,
that, with his Tygre's heart wrapped in a player's hyde, supposes
hee is able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you;
and beeing an absolute Johannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceit
the onely Shake-scene in a Countrie.' The line here parodied :

0 tiger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide !

occurs not only in 3 Hen. VI. i. 4. 138, but in The True Tragedy.
Greene's denunciation of Shakespeare would have no point unless
he meant to convey that Johannes-fac-totum foisted a ridiculous
line of his own composition into a play which he had stolen. ' His
angry allusion to Shakespeare's plagiarism is best explained,' says
Hallam — I would suggest only explained — ' by supposing that he
was himself concerned in the two old plays which had been con-
verted into the second and third parts of Henry VI.' The
superior workmanship of certain parts of the older Histories, com-
pared with the acknowledged writings of Greene, has led some
critics to assign these plays to Marlowe. But, great though
Marlowe was as poet and master of the English language, he
has left nothing behind him suggestive of capacity to write the
Jack Cade scenes — more Shakespearian than Shakespeare's
undoubted additions to the plays of which they form part.

These historical dramas exhibit precisely the kind of patch-
work which we should expect to find in the earlier handiwork
of Johannes-fac-totum. ' A vast number of early English dramas
once acted with success, but never printed, have entirely perished,
nor is it improbable that there may have been among them some
rifacimcnti by Shakespeare of plays in which Greene and his
friends were largely concerned ' (Dyce, Account of R. Greene and
his Writings).

330 NOTES

The first part of Henry VI, may be shortly dealt with. It was
published as Shakespeare's in the Folio of 1623. No former
edition is known, nor is there in existence any earlier drama from
which it was adapted. Two opinions with regard to its author-
ship deserve consideration. By some it is regarded as in no part
the work of Shakespeare. Others believe that he had some share
in its composition, assigning to him by general consent the scene
in the Temple Garden, and certain portions in which Talbot plays
a part. If these parts are excepted, the play is absolutely barren
of allusions of the kind with which we are dealing. In the
Temple Gardens, however, we seem to meet with an old friend in
the person of "Warwick :

Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch ;

Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth . . .

I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment. — ii. 4. 11.

If Shakespeare had for the purposes of his trilogy of Henry VI.
appropriated an old play, and did in truth alter it in certain
important particulars, the editors of the Folio were certainly
justified in printing it in their collections. Nay, they would be
bound to do so, inasmuch as the History of King Henry VI. would
not otherwise have been presented to their readers in the form in
which Shakespeare would desire them to have it.

KING HENRY VIII.

That Shakespeare had sufficient share in the authorship of
Henry VIII. to justify its inclusion in the Folio is generally
admitted. The portions of the play attributed to him are : Act I.
Scenes 1 & 2 ; Act II. Scenes 3 & 4 ; Act III. Scene 2 (in part) ;
Act V. Scene 1. 'Mr. Spedding and Mr. Hickson (1850) inde-
pendently arrived at identical results as to the division of parts
between Fletcher and Shakespeare. Mr. Fleay (1874) has con-
firmed the conclusions of Mr. Spedding (double endings forming
in this instance his chief test); Professor Ingram has further
confirmed them by his weak-ending test, and Mr. Furnivall by
the stopt-line test ' (Dowden, Shakspere, his Mind and Art).

In the first of these scenes we soon find ourselves in the com-
pany of a sportsman in the person of Norfolk, who, when he
would chide the impetuosity of Buckingham, appeals to his expe-
rience of horsemanship and woodcraft (ante, pp. 37, 43). The lan-
guage is so characteristic of Shakespeare, and of him alone, that
it points to the same conclusion as that to which Dr. Ingrain is

CRITICAL 331

led by the weak-ending, Mr. Spedding by the double-ending, and
Mr. Furnivall by the stopkline test. In Act III. Scene 2, Surrey's
allusion to the sport of daring larks is suggestive. Lord Sands's
comparison of the French courtiers to horses among whom ' the
spavin or springhalt reign'd,' suggests that Shakespeare may
have added some touches to the third scene of the first act.
Otherwise the play is singularly barren in reminiscences of sport
or of horsemanship. Thus the allusion test, while it fully justifies
the inclusion of the play in the Folio, supports the conclusion
that it is, in the main, the work of some dramatist whose mind
was full of other thoughts than those which rose unbidden to the
mind of Shakespeare.

There is not one of the thirty-four plays included in the Folio
which fails to yield specimens of the true Shakespearian allusion.
The veins with which they are intersected are of varying degrees
of richness. But the metal is the same throughout.

For instance, The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been quoted
but seldom, and yet even this play affords evidence that its author
was concerned in the hunting of hares and the keeping of horses.
To none but a sportsman would the simple words ' Kun boy, run ;
run and seek him out' (iii. 1. 189) suggest ' Soho, soho ! ' followed
by the inevitable play on the word hare ; and who but a horse-
master or farrier troubles himself about the bots, or would think of
it as suggested by the phrase ' over boots in love' ? (i. 1. 24).

It would of course be absurd to exclude any well-authenticated
drama from the Shakespearian canon on the ground that it
afforded no evidence of Shakespeare's sporting tastes. But the
fact that no such drama is to be found in the Folio is of some
importance in estimating the value of the test under consideration
in these pages.

PLAYS NOT INCLUDED IN THE FIRST FOLIO

While the authority of the Folio would be seriously shaken if
it were shown that its editors, possessed of full knowledge, had
included in it any spurious play, the same results would not follow
from the establishment of the authenticity of a drama not included
in their edition. If Mr. Spalding had rightly rejected 1 Henry VI.
and Titus Andronicus, he would have been justified in his conclu-
sion : — ' the editors then were unscrupulous and unfair as to the
works which they inserted.' But the fair-minded reader will not,
I think, adopt such a conclusion from the omission of Pericles from
the first Folio and from the addition thereto of Troilue and Gressida

332 NOTES

after the table of contents was printed. In his opinion, the
' whole conduct of these editors inspires distrust, but their unac-
knowledged omission of those two plays deprives them of all claim
to our confidence ' {Letter on Authorship of Two Noble Kinsmen).

There are many conceivable reasons for the omission from the
Folio of a genuine play. One indeed is suggested by Mr. Spalding
himself. The editors may have been unable to procure the manu-
script. Their particularity in adding Troilus and Cressida at the last
moment, and at a sacrifice of the symmetry of their edition, so far
from proving them ' unscrupulous and unfair,' seems rather to
indicate an earnest desire to make their collection as complete as
circumstances would permit. Exclusion from the Folio is certainly
prima facie evidence of non-authenticity. But, in our ignorance
of the circumstances connected with any particular play, it cannot
be pushed so far as to amount to a pronouncement of the editors
upon the authenticity of a piece which may have escaped their
recollection, or, more probably, may have been, at the moment, im-
possible of procurement. Any play, therefore, attributed to Shake-
speare, though not included in the Folio, is a fair subject for the
application of any test by which his workmanship may be
discerned.

Twelve dramas in all, not included in the Folio, have been
either printed under Shakespeare's name, or otherwise attributed
to him. The copies of the third folio, dated 1664, contain seven
plays never before printed in folio, viz. : P&ricles ; The London
Prodigal; Thomas Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle ; The
Puritan Widow; A Yorkshire Tragedy; and Locrine. In 1634
a play entitled The Two Noble Kinsmen was published, and
described as ' written by the memorable Worthies of their Time,
Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare Gent.' In
addition to these, two plays published anonymously, Arden of
Feversham (1592) and Edward III. (1596) have been attributed to
Shakespeare in whole or in part, and it has been suggested that
he is responsible for a play called Fair Em published anonymously
in 1631, and for The Birth of Merlin, printed with the names of
Shakespeare and Kowley in 1662.

PERICLES

Pericles has been long since admitted to the canon by general
consent, and is always printed among Shakespeare's works.
' Whoever reads Pericles with attention ' (Gervinus writes), { readily
finds that all these scenes in which there is any naturalness in the

CRITICAL 333

matter, or in which great passions are developed — especially the
scenes in which Pericles and Marina act — stand forth with striking
power from the poorness of the whole. Shakespeare's hand is here
unmistakable.' Here it is also that we find the indications of
his presence with which we are now concerned. It is Pericles who
announces quite gratuitously so far as the action is concerned — his
intention to mount him

Upon a courser, whose delightful steps

Shall make the gazer joy to see him tread. — ii. 1. 164.

Of Marina it is said to the Lord Lysimachus, by one whose
calling does not suggest familiarity with the language of the
manage :

My lord, she's not paced yet ; you must take some pains to work her
to your manage. iv. 6. 67.

And the parts of the play from which Pericles and Marina are
absent are barren of reminiscences of this kind.

A YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY

A Yorkshire Tragedy was one of four plays acted at the
Globe on the same day under the name of All's One. It was
founded upon a domestic murder recorded in Stowe's Chronicle
(1604). The three other plays produced with it were not,
apparently, thought worthy of publication. But A Yorkshire
Tragedy was entered at Stationers' Hall and printed in 1608,
with Shakespeare's name. * This,' says Mr. Hallam, ' which
would be thought good evidence in most cases, must not
be held conclusive' (Literature of Europe). This most careful
critic expresses no opinion beyond the general statement that
he cannot perceive the hand of Shakespeare in any of the
anonymous tragedies. Mr. Collier, on the other hand, writes:
'The internal evidence, however, of Shakespeare's authorship is
much stronger than the external, and there are some speeches
which could scarcely have proceeded from any other pen'
(History of Dramatic Poetry ; see also Mr. Fleay's Chronicle of
the English Drama). Most critics pronounce against the authen-
ticity of the play; Malone professing himself unable to form a
decided opinion.

Here, then, is an instance in which the test which I have
suggested may be usefully applied, and by the result of the appli-
cation its practical value may be, in some degree, estimated.

334 NOTES

The play consists of a single act. In the first scene a servant
arrives on horseback.

Sam. . . Boy, look you walk my horse with discretion. I have rid
him simply ; I warrant his skin sticks to his back with very heat. If
he should catch cold and get the cough of the lungs, I were well
served, were I not ?

The husband, the chief actor in the ghastly drama, has ruined
himself by gambling. 'That mortgage,' he tells his wife, 'sits
like a snaffle upon mine inheritance, and makes me chew upon
iron.' In his despair he kills his beggared children and stabs his
wife. As he escapes his horse falls.

Hus. O stumbling jade, the spavin overtake thee !
The fifty diseases stop thee !
Oh, I am sorely bruised ! Plague founder thee !
Thou runn'st at ease and pleasure. Heart of chance !
To throw me now, within a flight o' the town,
In such plain even ground too ! 'S foot a man
May dice upon it, and throw away the meadows,
Filthy beast !

Who but Shakespeare would have compared the ruined owner
of a mortgaged estate to a proud horse, fretfully champing and
grinding his teeth upon an iron snaffle 1 In the spavin, and the
fifty diseases of horseflesh, do we not again recognise his Roman
hand 1 ' As many diseases as two and fifty horses ' ; such was the
form this saying took in the mouth of Grumio. Can we wonder
that the author of the stable directions for treatment of the hide-
bound jade first achieved fame in the matter of the care of horses ?
The horse's skin cleaveth fast to his back, says Blundevill, ' when
the horse after some great heat hath beene suffered to stand long
in the~raine or wet weather.' The passages collected by Mr.
Collier are suggestive. So are certain verbal quibbles and
obscurities in this play. But ' the fifty diseases stop thee,' affords
stronger evidence to my mind, and I confess to a considerable
degree of satisfaction when I found that Shakespeare's authorship
of this play is not only evidenced by passages of the kind which
I have quoted, but supported by strong external evidence, and
accepted on other grounds, by high authority. It is easy to
understand why an unimportant one-act piece was either over-
looked by the editors of the Folio, or deliberately excluded from
a collection of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.

CRITICAL 335

TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

That Shakespeare had some part in the composition of The Two
Noble Kinsmen has, since the publication in 1833 of Mr. Spalding's
letter upon the authorship of that play, been generally admitted by
critics, but with gradually increasing reluctance. Mr. Spalding,
who was confident in his opinion when he published his letter in
1833, was less decided in 1840; and in 1847 he wrote, 'The
question of Shakespeare's share in this play is really insoluble'
(Edinburgh Review, July, 1847). In Professor Dowden's words,
'The parts ascribed to him seem to grow less like his work in
thought, feeling, and expression, as we, so to speak, live with
them. The resemblance which at first impressed us so strongly
seems to fade, or if it remains, to be at most something superficial'
(Introduction to Shakespeare). Mr. Hallam also seems to have
yielded a reluctant assent to Mr. Spalding's arguments. But still
the assent has not been withdrawn, and a position held with
varying degrees of confidence by Tennyson, Coleridge, Ingram,
Spalding, Dyce, and Furnivall can scarcely be regarded as in dis-
pute. But an interesting question remains as to the nature and
extent of Shakespeare's part in the work. Were the subject
chosen, the plot devised, and portions of the play written by
Shakespeare in collaboration with Fletcher 1 Or did Shakespeare
operate upon the work of Fletcher, as we have seen him do with
the originals of The Taming of the Shreiv, Titus Andronicus, and
Henry VI., adding bits here and there, sometimes whole scenes,
sometimes stray words or phrases ?

The Two Noble Kinsmen is founded upon The Knight's Tale of
Chaucer. It is a dramatic representation of the well-known story
of Palamon and Arcite, to which is added a poor underplot con-
versant with the love and madness of the jailer's daughter. If it
be in any part Shakespeare's work, it is the only play in which he
was concerned containing nothing in poetic merit equal to several
passages in the original work upon which it is founded. Troilus
and Cressida is an indifferent play, founded upon the greatest of all
poems. And yet we feel that there is something in Ulysses' speeches
to Achilles (Act iii. 3) beyond the powers even of Homer. The
Knight's Tale contains some noble passages. What can be finer,
in its terrible truthfulness, than the line : ' We moste endure, this
is the short and plain ' ? And Arcite's dying speech unites pathos,
nobility of sentiment, and beauty of expression, in no common
degree. There is no passage in The Two Noble Kinsmen comparable
to these, and notwithstanding all the praise that has been bestowed

336 NOTES

on this play, notably by De Quincey, who calls it ' perhaps the
most superb work in the language,' I confess to sharing the feeling
thus expressed by Dr. Ingram : c In reading the (so-called)
Shakespearian part of the play, I do not often find myself in
contact with a mind of the first order' (Sliakespeare Society's
Transactions, Part II.).

But good or bad or indifferent, is any part of the play the
workmanship of Shakespeare 1 Let us see how res ipsa loquitur.
The story is a simple one. The two noble kinsmen, Palamon and
Arcite, are nephews of Creon, Tyrant of Thebes. They become
the prisoners of the hero Theseus, who, interrupting his marriage
festivities with Hippolyta, marches to Thebes in order to avenge
the barbarous treatment by Creon of the bodies of three vanquished
kings, whose widowed queens have moved his pity. Cast into
prison, the kinsmen bewail their fate.

Pal 0, never

Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses

Like proud seas under us !

To our Theban hounds

That shook the aged forest with their echoes
No more now must we hallow.

Two Noble Kinsmen, ii. 2. 17.

Emilia, sister to Hippolyta, walking in the garden, is seen from
the prison window by Palamon, who forthwith falls in love with
her. His example is straightway followed by Arcite, each asserting
his right to win her, if he may. Arcite is set at liberty, at the suit
of Pirithous, but banished the kingdom. He returns in humble
disguise, and attracts the attention of Theseus at some country
games by his skill in wrestling and running. Asked by Theseus
of his conditions and habits, he claims

A little of all noble qualities ;

I could have kept a hawk, and well have holla'd

To a deep cry of dogs. I dare not praise

My feat in horsemanship, yet they that know me

Would say it was my best piece ; last and greatest,

I would be thought a soldier. Ibid. ii. 5. 10.

He has the good fortune to be assigned by Pirithous as servant
to Emilia.

Pir. I'll see you f urnish'd, and because you say

You are a horseman, I must needs entreat you
This afternoon to ride ; but 'tis a rough one.
Arc. I like him better, prince, I shall not then

Freeze in my saddle. Ibid. ii. 5. 44.

CRITICAL 337

Emilia takes strong note of him, and, in his words,

presents me with

A brace of horses ; two such steeds might well
Be by a pair of kings back'd, in a field
That their crown's title tried. Ibid. iii. 1. 19.

Meanwhile, Palamon has broken prison by the aid of the
jailer's daughter, who loves him to distraction. The two noble
kinsmen meet in a forest near Athens, and after some contention
agree that their claims to Emilia must be settled in a mortal
combat. Horns are winded :

Arc. You hear the horns

Enter your musit, lest this match between's

Be crossed or met

Plainly spoken !

Yet pardon me hard language ; when I spur
My horse, I chide him not ; content and anger
In me have but one face. — iii. 1. 96.

(The word * musit, or muset,' used in Venus and Adonis [ante,
p. 174], is thus explained in Nares' Glossary : ( The opening in a
fence or thicket, through which a hare, or other beast of sport, is
accustomed to pass. Muset, French.')

There is some rather tedious by-play — in the course of which
the jailer's daughter goes mad for love of Palamon — only necessary
to be noted, inasmuch as it brings Theseus and his company into
the forest, hunting :

Thes. This way the stag took.

The schoolmaster Gerrold composes a hunting song, as did
Holophernes :

May the stag thou hunt'st stand long,
And thy dogs be swift and strong,
May they kill him without lets,
And the ladies eat his dowsets. — iii. 5. 154.

Thereupon ' wind horns ' and exeunt the company.

(The word ' let ' has been explained, ante, p. 48. The dowsets
(testes) of the deer were esteemed a delicacy. Directions for serv-
ing them are contained in John Russel's Boke of Nurture, circ.
1460.)

Palamon and Arcite meet, and exchange courtesies. Arcite
recalls Palamon's prowess in the field on the day when the three
kings fell.

338 NOTES

I never saw such valour ; when you charg'd
Upon the left wing of the enemy,
I spurr'd hard to come up, and under me
I had a right good horse.

Pal. You had indeed

A bright bay, I remember.— iii. 6. 74.

As they fight, Theseus and his hunting party come up. Dis-
daining to fly, they stand confessed — Palamon and Arcite — and
avow their love for Emilia, who, aided by the entreaties of
Hippolyta and the generous Pirithous, dissuades Theseus, by whom
they had been condemned to death. Finally it is decreed that they
are to go to their own country, and return to Athens in a month,
attended each by three fair knights, and do battle for the hand of
Emilia, who is to be the victor's prize ; the vanquished to lose
his head and all his friends. In the combat Arcite conquers, and
Emilia, who professes herself unable to choose between two so
noble suitors, abides the result. Palamon. has laid his head on
the block when Pirithous enters, and tells the story of Arcite's
death in the speech quoted at p. 247. Arcite lives long enough
to transfer to Palamon the hand and affections of the accommo-
dating Emilia.

If throughout this play we fail to recognise the Shakespeare
of Heaven (to borrow Hallam's phrase), there are many and
certain traces of the Shakespeare of earth ; of Shakespeare the
hunter, the falconer, and, above all, the horseman. Gerrold's
hunting song, 'The Theban hounds that shook the aged forest
with their echo'; Arcite's 'holla to a deep cry of dogs'; his
words to Palamon, ' Enter your musit ' ; Palamon's comparison of
a fiery horse to a proud sea, swelling beneath the rider ; Arcite's
preference of a rough horse — (I shall not then freeze in my
saddle ' ; his explanation why he uses no hard language — ' when
I spur my horse I chide him not ' ; Palamon's recollection of ' the
right good horse ' ridden by his noble kinsman — 'A bright bay, I
remember ' ; — are all suggestive, inasmuch as they are thoroughly
Shakespearian, and utterly unlike the workmanship of Fletcher.
But as evidence of Shakespeare's handiwork their accumulated
force is not greater than that of a single speech put into the mouth
of Pirithous, and quoted at page 247. Critics have found in the
defects as well as the merits of this passage unmistakable evi-
dence of Shakespeare's handiwork. But they have failed to note
its most distinctive characteristics, although the description of the
horse reminded Mr. Spalding, in a general way, of passages in
Venus and Adonis. He thinks the speech bad, but undeniably

CRITICAL 339

the work of Shakespeare. 'The whole manner of it is that of
some of his long and over-laboured descriptions. It is full of
illustration, infelicitous but not weak ; in involvement of sentence
and hardness of phrase — no passage in this play comes so close to
him.' This is all true. Other writers have manifested these
qualities in a greater or less degree, but this speech is different in
kind from any to be found in the works of any dramatist but
Shakespeare. It is the narrative of a tragic event, the catastrophe of
the play, from the point of view not of the dramatist, of the poet, or
of the moralist, but of the practical horseman. The horse ridden
by Arcite was hot — hot as fire. He had a cloud in his face :
Enobarbus, as we have seen, thought a horse the worse for that
(p. 246). Pirithous recalls that ' many will not buy his goodness
with this note,' and, taught by the event, allows their superstition.
The horse was utterly above himself. I cannot attempt by para-
phrasing to spoil the description of the slow progression of a
prancing bean-fed horse :

Trotting the stones of Athens, which the calkins
Did rather tell than trample ; for the horse
Would make his length a mile, if 't pleased his rider
To put pride in him ; as he thus went counting
The flinty pavement, dancing as 'twere to th' music
His own hoofs made.

He is not really frightened at the spark, mark you, but after the
fashion of an over-fresh horse makes some trifling occurrence
the occasion of his misdoing :

Took toy at this, and fell into what disorder
His power could give his will.

Then follows the catastrophe. His rider, knowing him to be
'trained and of kind manage,' essays the discipline of the spur.
But the horse has gone too far. He forgets school-doings. Pig-
like he whines at the sharp rowel, which he frets at rather than
any jot obeys.

Had Arcite been 'disseated' by the 'boisterous and rough
jadery' that followed, or had he slipped off his horse (an opera-
tion not easy with the saddle of the day) no serious harm would
have ensued. But Arcite, like Lamond of Normandy, ' grew into
his seat,' and his horse, plunge he never so wildly, could not

Disroot his rider whence he grew, but that
He kept him 'tween his legs.

Finally, the brute rears, falls back on Arcite, who expires, having
delivered a dying speech.

340 NOTES

The lines of Chaucer which suggested this passage — for subtle
insight into the nature of the horse and secrets of horsemanship,
not to be equalled in the whole of literature — are simply these :

Out of the ground a fury [al} fire] infernal sterte
From Pluto sent, at requeste of Saturne,
For which his hors for fere gan to turne,
And lepte aside and foundred as he lepe ;
And ere that Arcite may take any kepe,
He pight him on the pomel of his hed,
That in the place he lay as he were ded,
His brest to-brosten with his sadel bow.

Whatever we may think of the merits of The Two Noble
Kinsmen, of the description of Arcite's fall it must be said, aut
Shakespeare, aut diabolus.

This and the other passages which I have quoted are found for
the most part in the portions of the play which critics have, on
other grounds, attributed to the hand of Shakespeare. But here
and there isolated passages occur, as they may be found in the
Shakespearian additions to the older editions of The Taming of
the Shrew and Henry VI. They suggest that The Two Noble
Kinsmen, as we now have it, is not the result of collaboration
between Fletcher and Shakespeare, but of a process similar to that
which we have observed in the case of the plays referred to ; appro-
priation, with or without the consent of the original author, and
subsequent alterations and additions.

'No intelligent reader of Locrine, Mucedorus, The London
Prodigal, The Puritan, The Life and Death of Thomas Cromwell,
The History of Sir John Oldcastle, Fair Em, The Birth of Merlin,
can suppose that a single line was contributed to any one of these
plays by Shakespeare. It is conceivable that touches from his
hand may exist in A Yorkshire Tragedy, and even in Arden of
Feversham. But the chance that this is actually the case is
exceedingly small. We may therefore set down King Edward III.
and The Two Nolle Kinsmen as doubtful plays; the rest for
which an idle claim has been made should be named pseudo-
Shakespearian.1

Thus writes Professor Dowden, in his Introduction to Shake-
speare. This passage may well stand as a summary of the result,
not only of the higher criticism, but of the matter-of-fact test
suggested in these pages ; with certain unimportant modifications.
In the case of The Two Noble Kinsmen and A Yorkshire Tragedy
the only doubt of which this test admits is as to the extent of the
part taken by Shakespeare in the composition of these plays.

CRITICAL 341

The admission of Arden of Fever sham into the list of doubtful
plays receives no encouragement whatever. The claims of
Edward III. are distinctly strengthened by the discovery of such
passages as the following :

Edw. What, are the stealing foxes fled and gone,

Before we could uncouple at their heels ?
War. They are, my liege, but, with a cheerful cry,

Hot hounds, and hardy, chase them at the heels.

Fly it a pitch above the soar of praise.

What think'st thou that I did bid thee praise a horse 1

Jemmy, my man, saddle my bonny black.

As when the empty eagle flies,
To satisfy his hungry griping maw.

Thou, like a skittish and untamed colt,
Dost start aside, and strike us with thy heels 1

And reins you with a mild and gentle bit.

Dare a falcon when she's in her flight,
And ever after she'll be haggard -like.

A nimble-jointed jennet
As swift as ever got thou didst bestride.

To die is all as common as to live :

The one in choice, the other holds in chase.

If I could hold dim death but at a bay.

Of the plays rigidly excluded by Professor Dowden, I have
examined Locrine, Tlie Puritan, The Life and Death of Thomas
Cromivell, The History of Sir John Oldcastle, and The Birth of
Merlin. I found them, one and all, barren of results, until I
reached The Birth of Merlin. I had not read very far until I
became conscious of traces, faint and far between, but still notice-
able, of the master's hand in the structure and style of certain
passages. Those passages I refrain from quoting. I deal only
with facts. Even were I disposed to discuss matters of opinion in

342 NOTES

regard to style, I should be warned off by the knowledge that certain
German critics have discovered in Locrine evidences of Shake-
speare's handiwork, even at his best. It is, however, a fact, that
in The Birth of Merlin Cador thus addressed certain astonished
priests : ' Why do you stand at gaze 1 ' (see ante, p. 32) ; that the
words * So ho, boy, so ' (ii. 1), plainly suggest the same idea to a
certain clown as they did to Mercutio (ante, p. 166) ; that Merlin's
name suggests the inevitable pun : ' I do feel a fault of one side ;
either it was that sparrowhawk, or a cast of Merlin's, for I find a
covey of cardecus sprung out of my pocket' (iv. 1), and again,
in the same scene :

Merl. Why ask ye, gentlemen ? My name is Merlin.
Clown. Yes, and a goshawk was his father, for ought we know ;
for I am sure his mother was a windsucker.

(The * windsucker' was the kestrel, or windhover; used as a
form of reproach, Nares' Glossary.)

Moreover, Prince Uter Pendragon thus describes his attack
on a castle :

I have sent

A cry of hounds as violent as hunger
To break his stony walls ; or, if they fail
We'll send in wilafire to dislodge him thence,
Or burn them all with naming violence. iv. 5.

The devil being addressed as ' hell-hound ' asks :

What hound soe'er I be
Fawning and sporting as I would with thee,
Why should I not be strok'd and play'd withal ? v. 1.

And the Prince thus describes his amazement at sight of
Artesia :

For having overtook her ;
As I have seen a forward blood-hound strip
The swifter of the cry, ready to seize
His wished hopes, upon the sudden view,
Struck with astonishment at his arrived prey,
Instead of seizure stands at fearful bay. ii. 1.

These passages are not in the manner of the ordinary Eliza-
bethan playwright, and they suggest the possibility that this play
is one of those in the revision and production of which Shake-
speare may have taken some part. Even if this were so we have
no cause of complaint with the editors of the Folio on the ground
of its exclusion from their collection, for his share in the author-
ship was probably a small one.

CRITICAL 343

The evidence suggested by these pages may not commend itself
to all minds as of the same degree of weight. But, so far as it goes,
it tends in the direction of acquitting Masters Heminge and
Condell of the rank offence of palming upon the public as the work
of Shakespeare productions which they knew to be spurious. If
the general result is to credit the editors of the Folio with an
honest endeavour to make their collection as complete as might
be, the question of their truthfulness in professing to have made
use of the true original copies may be approached without suspicion.
This profession may be challenged, but it is entitled to the respect-
ful hearing commonly accorded to the testimony of a witness, who,
having been assailed as perjured, and subjected to searching
cross-examination, has passed through the ordeal unscathed. If
the editors of the Folio are truth-telling in the matter of the Canon,
there is no reason to suspect them of lying with regard to the
Text.

Now there is one feature which the true original copy of a play
of Shakespeare's could scarcely fail to possess. It may have been
ill-written, and not easily decipherable by printer or copyist. Its
grammar may have been uncertain, its chronology inexact, its
geography faulty, and its metaphors occasionally mixed. But in
the matter of woodcraft, venery, and horsemanship, its language
was beyond all doubt absolutely correct. A term of art misused
in the Folio, and rightly applied in a quarto, would supply a piece
of evidence worthy of being submitted to a literary jury, and an
accumulation of such instances might be the foundation of a high
degree of probability.

It is impossible to cite any such instance. Furthermore,
several passages have been noted in the foregoing pages where
the copyist for a quarto, through ignorance or inattention, appears
to have missed the point of some characteristic allusion preserved
in the Folio. And they contain a greater number of instances,
scarcely less significant, where some word or phrase of the Folio,
condemned by critics as hopelessly corrupt, has been rescued from
the hands of the common emendator ; or where some comparatively
meaningless expression is suddenly clothed with beauty and sig-
nificance in the light thrown upon it by some long-forgotten sport.
Take, for example, in Coriolanus, the serving-man's description
of war as ' spritely walking, audible, and full of vent ' (p. 52). So
long as these words were unintelligible, the copy in which they
appeared might fairly be suspected as unauthentic. But the dis-
covery that * vent ' was a term of art in use among sportsmen at
once converts apparent nonsense into a lively and characteristic

344 NOTES

image. Again, when it is said of Malvolio ' Sowter will cry upon't
for all this, though it be as rank as a fox,' an apparently insensible
speech gains significance when it is brought home to us that Sowter
is not a Leicestershire foxhound, but an Elizabethan running-hound,
in pursuit of the favourite quarry of the day — the hare — foiled by
the rank scent of the vermin fox (p. 48).

For instance, we have seen how completely the gentle crafts of
the falconer and the astringer, with their needful terms of art, have
fallen into oblivion, together with all knowledge of the sex of the
noble falcon, and of the differing nature and habits of the long-
winged falcon and short-winged hawk. A revival of this learning
not only illustrates, but justifies certain obscure passages and
readings. The bating of the estridge or goshawk is an image which
none but a practical astringer would be likely to employ, but it
makes sense out of a passage in the Folio which, as applied by
critics to the ostrich, is unmeaning as it stands, and absurd as
commonly amended (p. 1 50) ; and the recognition of this long-for-
gotten astringer, who bore to the estridge the same relation as the
falconer to the falcon, rescues from excision or emendation the stage
direction, 'Enter a gentle astringer/ clothing it with a special
significance in its application to the Court of France (p. 140).

In the instances in which it has been possible to compare the
readings of the Folio and of a quarto, where a term of art of wood-
craft, falconry, or horsemanship was concerned, I have generally
found the text of the Folio to be more in accordance with the
language of ancient writers upon the mysteries of sport than either
the readings of a quarto or the conjectural alterations of critics.
From the nature of the case these instances could not be expected
to be numerous. The evidence, however, which they afford gains
significance from the circumstance that no single instance to the
contrary has presented itself in the course of my research.

It was by the accumulation of instances in support of the
authenticity of the Folio which was presented by passages collected
with a very different purpose, that I was led to examine the evidence
forthcoming on the one side and on the other. I found the investi-
gation to present a repetition of a very old story, with which judges
are better acquainted than are literary critics, although it is
deserving of equal attention on the part of both. It is the conflict
between, on the one hand, evidence of matters of fact, which I will
call Testimony, and Opinion on the other hand, known in courts of
justice as Expert Evidence. I have already collected some of the
positive testimony in support of the assertions of the editors of the
Folio. Their case depends upon matters of fact ; such as the action

CRITICAL 345

or non-action of the editors and the testimony of their contem-
poraries, viewed in the light of surrounding circumstances, and of
the several degrees of knowledge which the various witnesses
possessed. It is encountered mainly by criticism, that is to say, by
Opinion, or expert evidence.

Now it would be unwise to particularise at one's leisure, in its
application to expert witnesses, the general condemnation passed
by King David in his haste upon mankind generally ; and all
temptation in that direction must be steadily resisted. Expert
evidence is generally worthless, not because the witness forswears
himself, but because the particular matter which he proves — his
individual opinion — is commonly of little value. It is valueless,
because it affords an unsafe foundation for action; and its insecurity
arises from the fact that an equally positive opinion on the other
side is generally obtainable in regard to any really doubtful matter;
that is to say, precisely where trustworthy guidance is needed.

It seems to me that the worthlessness of Opinion as compared
with Testimony is being slowly but surely discovered by critics.
This tendency is sometimes described as a growing preference for
the historical method. The most casual student of the Homeric
question cannot but have observed the rehabilitation of the Testi-
mony of tradition and reputation, and the rejection of the Opinion
of clever experts, whose powers of estimating the value of evidence
may be gauged by the fact that they deem it more in accordance
with probability that Greece should have produced, at about the
same period, some twenty ballad-mongers in genius surpassing the
rest of mankind, than that there should have been one Homer.
The same tendency is discernible in the contest that rages around
the question of the authenticity of the books of the New Testament.
Dr. Salmon, in his Historical Introduction to the New Testament,
notes the successive abandonment by destructive criticism of posi-
tions which were once held to be impregnable, but which, being
based upon expert evidence, proved untenable when assailed by
the force of Testimony and by evidence of positive fact.

Suppose, then, a verdict to be found in support of the testimony
of Masters Heminge and Condell, what ought to be the result,
beyond the vindication of their character for honesty and truthful-
ness 1 Not certainly blind and obstinate adherence to the readings
of the Folio, and summary or indiscriminate rejection of the
quartos.

It must never be forgotten that not one of the copies in the
possession of Heminge and Condell, true original though it may
have been, had been either written or revised by its author with a

346 NOTES

view to publication. These copies were provided and kept for the
use of the theatre. They were, in all probability, revised and
altered from time to time, from considerations, not of literary
perfection, but of theatrical expediency. So long as Shakespeare
was connected with the theatre, changes in his plays were probably
made by him. But in the interval between his retirement about
the year 1600 and the publication of the Folio in 1623, we have no
security that the true originals were unprofaned by other hands.
These considerations explain many things that would otherwise be
unintelligible. Certain of the quartos contain passages, undoubt-
edly Shakespeare's, which are not to be found in the Folio. Where
this is the case, we may reasonably conclude that the stolen manu-
script was surreptitiously copied before the revision of the true
original. Some, at all events, of these passages, even though
excised by Shakespeare himself for acting purposes, would
probably have been restored, had he as the c executor of his own
writings ' revised them for the press. For all such passages the
quartos are our only authority.

Furthermore, the quartos, though denounced by Heminge and
Condell as stolen, surreptitious, maimed and deformed, are not
denied to be copies. The quarto of one play only (King Henry V.)
appears to have been made up from notes taken during the per-
formance at the theatre. The practice of begging, borrowing, or
stealing acting copies of popular dramas appears to have been a
common one. In an old pamphlet by Nash, called Lenten Stuff
with the Prayse of the Red Herring (1599), the author assures us
that in a play of his called The Isle of Dogs, 'foure ads without
his consent or the leaste guesse of his drift or scope were supplied
by the players.' Mr. Farmer, in a note to his Essay on the Learn-
ing of Shakspeare, writes : ' When a poet was connected with a
particular playhouse, he constantly sold his writings to the com-
pany, and it was their interest to keep them from a number of
rivals. A favourite piece, as Hey wood informs us, only got into
print when it was copied by the ear, " for a double sale would
bring on a suspicion of honestie." '

It must be remembered, in favour of the quartos, that the
setters-forth of these editions, however dishonestly the copies may
have been come by, would be led by self-interested motives to
make their edition as perfect as might be ; and that the editors of
the Folio might, in perfect good faith, exaggerate the maiming
and deforming of copies, which they knew to be stolen and surrep-
titious, and which they probably did not go to the trouble of
collating with the true originals.

CRITICAL 347

But there were insuperable difficulties in the way of the
printers of the quartos, strove they never so earnestly after truth-
fulness. The experience of every lawyer tells him how little
reliance can be placed on an uncompared copy of a draft, be it the
original ever so legibly written. Add the elements of haste and
concealment, consequent on the patching together of acting parts
obtained from different players, and the defects of the quartos are
fully accounted for.

I am not without hope that some Shakespearian scholar, fully
equipped for the task, may yet, by judicious use of Folio, of quarto,
and of the labours of countless emendators, give to the world what
will be at once the ideal and the real Shakespeare : the nearest
possible approach to the true original.

The order of its development may be thus tentatively suggested.
Take Mr. Lionel Booth's accurate reprint of the Folio. Trust no
text, received or otherwise, notwithstanding professions of ad-
herence to the Folio. The trail of the quarto is over them all.
Why even in Mr. Grant White's Hamlet, as well as in the Globe
and Cambridge, editions, Lamond, the perfect horseman, grows unto,
not into, his seat (see ante, p. 284). Modernise the spelling, and
correct obvious misprints. Supply, where needful, dramatis
personce, division into acts and scenes, adopting (for convenience)
those in the Globe edition, but restoring certain characteristic stage
directions. Add from the quartos the passages omitted from the
Folio. But include the additions in brackets, thus restoring what
was, in all probability, Shakespeare's handiwork, and, at the same
time, informing the reader of the subsequent excision of the

When so much of the task has been performed, the result will
be a text containing many words wholly unintelligible, and many
passages obviously corrupt. The critic must therefore gird himself
for the needful task of emendation. And here all that he requires
is the possession of two things : a judgment, critical in the
etymological sense of the term, that is to say, capable of discern-
ing ; and a copy of The Cambridge Shakespeare, in the notes to
which he will find an exhaustive collection of various readings and
conjectural emendations.

In the use of these materials he will lay down for his guidance
certain general principles. He will not condemn a passage
because it violates rules of grammar, as they are now observed ;
for Shakespeare's grammar is not our grammar, as the student of
Mr. Abbott's work, so entitled, may learn. Nor will he amend it
because the exuberance of Shakespeare's fancy leads him into a

348 NOTES

confusion of metaphors, which in the case of one of my fellow-
countrymen would be called a bull ; as where Hamlet speaks of
taking up arms against a sea of troubles. If the words are in-
telligible he will let them stand. The fact that they were printed
in the Folio affords a better assurance that they are the very words
written by Shakespeare than any amount of ingenuity on the
part of the emendator. If they make nonsense, and if a quarto
edition exists, he will turn to it; for the copier, though never
so dishonest or surreptitious, may have avoided an error into
which the printer of the Folio has fallen. For example, the King
of Denmark says of the French that they ' ran well on horseback.'
For this unmeaning ' ran ' Theobald read ' can,' and an ingenious
conjecture is converted into certainty when we find c can ' in the
quarto. Again, in the passage quoted (p. 291) descriptive of the
reckless riding of a runaway, the Folio reads thus :

With that, he gave his able horse the head,
And, bending forward, struck his able heels
Against the panting sides of his poor jade.

2 Hen. IV. i. 1. 43.

The repetition of the word 'able' is an obvious error of a kind
not uncommon in writing or copying, into which most of us have
occasionally fallen. But what is the right word ? The answer is
at once supplied by the quarbo, and 'armed' is with absolute
certainty introduced into the text.

But in the greater number of cases a quarto — if there be
one — gives no assistance, and the editor is left to the guidance of
his critical verifying faculty. He must distinguish as best he can
between the reasonably certain and the merely probable emenda-
tion. The former he will unhesitatingly introduce into the text.
The latter, be it never so attractive, must be ruthlessly relegated to
a foot-note — the corrupt portion of the text being either obelised
or printed in italics. In deciding between the certain and the
probable, the trained critical faculty of the expert will have regard
to the general consent of editors ; quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus.

From wanton emendations — by which I mean those introduced
for the purpose of improving sense, not of correcting nonsense —
he will rigidly abstain, be their authors ever so eminent. Of
this class are Pope's correction of ' south ' for ' sound ' in the
lines :

It came o'er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour ;

CRITICAL 349

and Scott's suggested substitution of ' cud ' for * food ' in the
passage :

Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.

Emendations, however, of this class need cause him no care,
for they have been by the Cambridge editors one and all excluded
from the text, and relegated to foot-notes.

He will have more trouble with conjectural readings of another
kind, where the Folio is corrupt and the emendation more or less
plausible. How, for example, ought he to deal with the following
case 1 It may be a shock to the non-critical lover of Shakespeare
to learn that the oft-quoted phrase in Mistress Pistol's account of
the death of Falstaff, 'a' babbled of green fields,' was never
fathered on Shakespeare until the last century, when Theobald,
by a famous emendation, made sense of the Folio's nonsense :
1 his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields.'
The conjecture was brilliant, and the words are so poetical that
they have passed into literature, and are repeated as an isolated
expression, to be treasured for its own sake, apart from any con-
sideration of dramatic propriety. The literary quality of this
phrase, so far from recommending it, seems to tell against its
acceptance as a certain emendation; for the words which we are
accustomed to hear from the lips of Mistress Pistol, formerly
Quickly, are of a more homely, if not of a coarser kind. The
conjecture ' and a' talked of green fields ' (possibly written ' and
a' talke') involves less change, and has the advantage (regarded
as an emendation) of being more in the speaker's ordinary style.
This is a case in which a quarto may be fairly appealed to.

The quarto of King Henry V. was (as has been observed)
printed from notes taken during the performance. This is how
Mrs. Quickly's speech was taken down :

His nose was as sharpe as a pen :
For when I Baw him fumble with the sheetes
And talk of floures, and smile vpo his fingers ends
I knew there was no way but one.

The word 'talk' somehow caught the copyist's ear, and he
mixed it up with the Folio's ' play with flowers.' It is hard to
suppose that such a striking expression as Theobald's — the most
noteworthy in the whole passage — would have altogether eluded
his grasp. Now in this, and in similar cases, the editor, I venture
to suggest, best discharges his duties by obelising or italicising
the corrupt word or passage, and giving the reader in a foot-note
his choice of conjectural emendations. The passages so marked

350 NOTES

would be but few. The text would not be marred, while the
reader would be fairly dealt with. If I quote 'Tibbald' admir-
ingly, I prefer to do so wittingly, having been afforded reasonable
means of discerning between him and Shakespeare.

In this part of the labour there is little in the work of the
Cambridge editors of which even the most conservative of critics
can complain. Had only their labours been expended upon the
true originals, the result would not have fallen short of the
Ideal Shakespeare. There is, unhappily, much virtue in that ' if.'
In the play of Hamlet alone, the Globe edition, founded on the
labours of the Cambridge editors, departs from the Folio in favour
of the quarto in some eighty passages, exclusive of corrections of
spelling and punctuation. The variance in many instances is
unimportant. But to my mind the exact words in which Shake-
speare embodied his greatest thoughts are of even stronger interest
than the precise manner in which his grandfather spelled his
name, or, indeed, than any of the miscellaneous information
collected — in default of better — by the pious labours of many
generations.

Each of the great English Universities has given its name to
an edition of Shakespeare. The Cambridge Shakespeare is
familiar to the readers of these pages. The Oxford Shakespeare
was edited by Mr. Craig, a graduate of the University of Dublin.
Excellent editions both, but one thing they lack — they are neither
of them based upon the Folio. It remains for the University of
Malone and Monck Mason in the last century, and of Ingram and
Dowden in the present, by restoring to the world the True Originals
purged of their original imperfections, to realise in the Dublin
edition the Ideal Shakespeare.

NOTE II

THE AUTHORITY OF THE FIRST FOLIO

I HAVE set forth in this note brief references to the instances noted
in the text in which the authority of the First Folio has been sup-
ported against quarto, critic, or emendator, as the result of an
inquiry into the sports and pastimes which were present to the
mind of the writer. No instance has been found where a contrary
result has followed. These instances are arranged in the order in
which they are noticed in the text, regardless of their relative
significance.

Page 31. Arts-man preambulate, we shall be singled from the
barbarous. Love's L. L. v. 1. 85.

To ' single ' is a term of art, explained in The Noble Arte, prob-
ably unknown to the copyist of the quarto. There is no reason
why the Cambridge editors, and the Globe Shakespeare, should
reject the accurate text of the Folio for the unmeaning singuled of
the quarto.

Page 48. Sowter will cry upon't for all this, though it be as rank as a
fox. Twelfth Night, ii. 5. 130.

Many commentators have applied themselves to this passage,
which Hanmer would amend by substituting be'nt for be. Their
difficulties would have been removed, and an apparently insensible
speech would have gained significance, if they had realised that
Sowter is not a Leicestershire foxhound, but an Elizabethan run-
ning-hound, in pursuit of the favourite quarry of the day — the
hare — foiled by the ' rank ' scent of the vermin fox.

Page 50. You hunt counter; hence avaunt.

2 Hen. IV. i. 2. 100.

The words so printed in the Folio form together a term of art
in venery. This point is missed when the quarto, followed by
the Cambridge editors, prints the words thus : hunt confer.

351

352 NOTES

Page 52. Let me have war, say I ; it exceeds peace as far as day does
night ; its spritely walking, audible and full of vent.

Coriol. iv. 5. 236.

Professor Baynes's discovery that vent was a term of art, signify-
ing scent t at once explained the words spritely walking, audible, as
applied to a hound full of vent, and displaced Pope's emendation,
retained by the Globe and Cambridge editors, spritely, waking.

Page 53. Since he came

With what encounter so un current I
Have strained to appear thus.

Winter's Tale, iii. 2. 49.

If Dr. Johnson and Mr. Collier had understood the meaning of
the word strained as used in The Noble Arte, they would not have
perverted the text of the Folio by reading strayed, or have I been
stained.

Page 63. Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart ;

Here didst thou fall ; and here thy hunters stand
Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy lethe.

Jul Gees. iii. 1. 204.

Theobald and Collier would not have altered the reading of the
Folio to death if they had known what lethe meant to a hunter
at the death of the hart.

Page 80. Imitari is nothing ; so doth the hound his master, the
tired horse his rider. Love's L. L. iv. 2. 129.

The reader of Markham's chapter ' Of Tyred Horses ' could not
have misunderstood Shakespeare's meaning so completely as to read
with Mr. Grant White, 'tired horse, and to have missed, with the
commentators, a favourite idea of the writer.

Page 140. Enter a gentle astringer.

All's Well, v. 1. 7. Stage direction.

Hopelessly corrupt the Folio appeared to critics who did not
know that astringer was a term as well known as falconet* to
Shakespeare and his readers. The more prudent omit the direc-
tion. Rowe's conjecture, ' Enter a gentleman,' is adopted by the
Globe and Cambridge editions. The point of assigning an astringer
of gentle birth to the French Court is explained in the text.

Page 150. All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Bated, like eagles having lately bathed.

1 Hen. VI. iv. i. 98.

This passage, obelised in the Globe edition, was unintelligible so

THE FIRST FOLIO 353

long as it was referred to the ostrich ; the knowledge that the
bating of the estridye, or goshawk, was an idea as familiar to
Shakespeare as was her trainer the Astringer, gentle or simple,
makes it clear.

Page 168. We coted them [the players] on the way, and hither are
they coming. Hamlet, ii. 2. 330. •{

In coursing language a hare outstripping his competitor is said
to have coted him. This, if known, would have rendered it need-
less for emendators to suggest accosted (Rowe), quoted (Capell), or
escoted (Staunton).

Page 170. What wilt thou be

When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case.

Twelfth Night, v. 1. 167.

On thy face was suggested by Sir Frederick Madden ; upon thee
by Knightly. Here the Cambridge editors retain the reading of
the Folio, explaining that they do so on being satisfied that case
was a sportsman's term for skin. (Note XV., ed. 1894.)

Page 171. I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way
first [locking the door]. So now uncape. Merry Wives, iii. 3. 172.

I had satisfaction in ascribing the explanation of this passage to
my kinsman, Mr. Monck Mason, an Irish sportsman as well as a
Shakespearian critic.

Page 195. This outward-sainted deputy

Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head and follies doth enmew
As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil.

Measure for M. iii. 1. 89.

For the enmew of the Folio, Dr. Schmitt and Professor Bay nes
read enew, a correction shown to be unnecessary and inept by a
reference to the use of the term enmew in falconry.

Page 256. And Duncan's horses — a thing most strange and certain —
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race
Turn'd wild in nature. Macbeth, ii. 4. 14.

Theobald, Johnson, and Steevens are at pains to amend the
Folio by reading minions of the race, explained by Steevens to
mean 'the favourite horses on the race-ground/ a labour which
they would have been saved if they had understood the use of the
word 'race' in its application to horses, as the term was under-
stood by Shakespeare in common with the writers on horsemanship
of his day.
2 A

354 NOTES

A similar misunderstanding of the word race would not have
occurred in the following passage :

Then can no horse with my desire keep pace ;

Therefore desire, of perfect'st love being made,

Shall neigh, no dull flesh in his fiery race. Sonnet li.

Malone, followed by the Cambridge editors, isolated by hyphens
the words no dull flesh, missing the point of the passage. Mr.
George Wyndham, in his interesting edition of the Sonnets,
adopts the explanation of this passage which will be found in
the text.

Page 257. The king is come, deal mildly with his youth,

For young hot colts being raged do rage the more.

Richard II. ii. 1. 69.

Eleven emendators have substituted various conjectures for
the word raged; amongst others, rein'd, urg'd, chafd, curb'd.
The quibble on the word rage was lost upon one who did not
understand the old-world application of the word rage to a young
colt.

Page 258. Ay that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of
his horse ; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts
that he can shoe him himself. Merch. of Ven. i. 2. 42.

Pope's sneer would have been justified if Theobald's emendation
of the Folio by reading dolt for colt was a fair specimen of his
work as emendator.

Page 260. Those Time ambles withal.

As you L. I. iii. 2. 329.

Hunter substitutes trot for amble throughout this passage, and
vice versa. The accuracy of the Folio and its significance are made
apparent when the hard trot of the Elizabethan horse is compared
with the easy pace of the amble.

Page 261. Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble
And started, when he look'd upon the Tower.

Rich. III. iii. 4. 86.

There seems to be no reason why the started of the Folio, an
appropriate word, should be rejected by the Globe and Cambridge
editors for the less appropriate startled.

Page 264. Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done.

Rom. and Jul. ii. 4. 73.

A very slight acquaintance with old-world sport would have
saved Grey from amending the Folio by reading wild goat.

THE FIRST FOLIO 355

Page 284. He grew into his seat ;

And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,

As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured

With the brave beast. Hamlet, iv. 7. 86.

The reading of a quarto, unto his seat, followed by the Cam-
bridge edition, was noted in the former edition as an error of a
copyist, incapable of appreciating the vigour and truth of the
original. Mr. Aldis Wright in support of the authorship of this
quarto remarks that it supplies fourteen lines, unquestionably
Shakespeare's (68-81), which were omitted in the Folio, and that
it is admittedly correct in substituting ran for can in line 84, and
two months since for two months hence in line 82. He points out
that "in Shakespeare idiom grow, when used in this metaphorical
sense, is elsewhere always followed by to. So in All's Well, ii. 1. 36,
' I grow to you.' " That the quarto editions are often of value in
correcting errors and supplying defects of the Folio is fully
admitted in the preceding note (pp. 345-350). But here there is
no error calling for correction. Neither, indeed, would there have
been room for correction if unto had been the reading of the Folio,
notwithstanding the temptation presented by a passage in the part
of Two Noble Kinsmen which is generally accepted as the work of
Shakespeare, in which Arcite, preferring a rough horse, gives as
a reason * I shall not then freeze in my saddle ' (v. p. 336), words
which would be naturally written by one who had described a
perfect horseman as growing into his seat.

Page 290. I was not made a horse ;

And yet I bear a burden like an ass,
Spur-galled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke.

Rich. II. v. 5. 92.

The adoption by the Cambridge editors from a quarto of the
reading spurred gall'd is noted in the text as a typical instance of
systematic preference of quarto to Folio, at the price of the sacrifice
of a well-known term of art.

Page 294. Ne'er [neere, F.] legged before.

Tarn, of Shrew, iii. 2. 57.

The Cambridge editors change the neere of the Folio into near,
expressing a different idea from ne'er, and one less likely to occur
to the mind of a horseman.

Page 296. Half-cfoefced bit.

Tarn, of Shrew, iii. 2. 57.

Half-checked, in the Cambridge edition, adopting an emendation
of Singer's. The change is unimportant, and scarcely needed.

356 NOTES

When quoting (at p. 184) Hamlet's words —

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamed of in our philosophy (i. 5. 167) —

I noted a departure from the Folio which was followed by
the Cambridge editors, who read, with the quartos, 'your phil-
osophy.' The words quoted had no direct connection with the
subject of this volume, but I cannot regret the digression, for it
led to a correspondence with Mr. Aldis Wright, in the course of
which he sent me the following note on the passage, which he
permits me to quote : " * Your philosophy' does not mean Horatio's
philosophy, but colloquially ' what you call philosophy,' not any
particular system such as was taught at Wittenburg, and therefore
not our philosophy. For this use of 'your' compare Hamlet
iv. 3. 22, 'Your worm is your only emperor for diet,' and many
other passages."

If ' your ' had been the reading of the Folio, the reasons adduced
by Mr. Aldis Wright would have been conclusive against chang-
ing the word to 'our.' The same observation applies to other
instances noticed in these pages in which the Cambridge and Globe
editors prefer the reading of a quarto. If both Folio and quarto
are of equal authority, the right of private judgment is allowable.
But if the profession of Heminge and Condell is to be believed —
a subject on which something has been said in the preceding
note — authority prevails; and when the text of the Folio makes
sense, its sense must be taken as Shakespeare's sense, although
we may prefer some other. In the instances referred to in this
note, independent evidence derived from contemporary sport is
available, and it is not without significance that in each instance
the result is to uphold the authority of the Folio.

The readers of the preceding note will not infer from the
criticisms referred to in it that the writer undervalues the labours
of the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare. At the same time
he confesses to a desire for the highest attainable degree of certainty
that the words which he reads are the very words of Shakespeare,
and to a belief that this assurance is better supplied by a volume
set forth by trustworthy and well-informed witnesses as " published
according to the true originall copies" than by copies, discredited
by the same witnesses, which the Cambridge editors have chosen
as the foundation of their work.

The latest, and perhaps the wisest words on the conflict between
Folio and quarto are those of the eminent Shakespearian scholar,
Mr. Horace Howard Furness, whose labours have contributed so

THE FIRST FOLIO 357

largely to establish the general authority of the Folio, which he
adopts as the text of his Variorum edition. " Whithersoever we
turn, therefore, in our attempt to penetrate the mystery of the text
of the quartos and of the Folio, we are doomed to be baffled. One
consolation must be that the subject is one of relatively small
importance, and that the excellence of the text must rise or fall
by its own merits, without reference to the source whence it
sprang." (Preface to Love's Labour's Lost. Ed. II., 1906.)

The value of the service rendered by the Cambridge editors by
their general rejection of needless emendations cannot be overstated.
To quote again from Mr. Furness : " There is the echo of a cry,
wrung from long suffering, to be detected in the words of Dr. W.
Aldis Wright, our best living Shakespeare scholar, in the Preface
(page xix.) to his edition of Milton: 'After a considerable ex-
perience I feel justified in saying that in most cases, ignorance and
conceit are the fruitful parents of conjectural emendations.' "

The method of interpretation suggested in this volume, founded
upon a diligent inquiry into the class of ideas present to the
mind of the writer, is, of course, of general application, although
there is no kind of ideas of so frequent and irrelevant occurrence
to the mind of Shakespeare as those of sport and horsemanship.
And by way of illustrating the application of the same method of
interpretation to thoughts arising from a different source, I am
tempted to refer to two famous passages, which have exercised
many minds.

i

No passage in Shakespeare has suffered more at the hands of
eraendators and commentators than the following words of
Juliet :—

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging ; such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.

Rom. and Jul. Hi. 2. 1.

Forty-four suggested emendations of £he word 'runaway's' are
noted in the Cambridge Shakespeare, amongst others : rumour's,
unawares, runagates', Cynthia's, enemies', rude day's, sunny days',

358 NOTES

runabout's, curious, surveyors', and run i' th' ways'. All these
emendations are rejected by the Cambridge editors, who print
the text of the Folio, unobelised. It is plainly not a case for
emendation as regards the reading ' runaways,' for the word is the
same in all the folios, and in the four quarto editions in which
it occurs, differing only in the matter of spelling.

Commentators are equally at ' a cold scent.' Mr. Furness has
contrived in an appendix to his Variorum edition of the play to con-
dense some only of their labours, up to the year 1873, into thirty
large and closely printed pages. They give forth no certain sound,
for amongst possible runaways we find : night, the sun, the moon,
the stars, Phaeton, Cupid, Romeo, and Juliet.

Professor Dowden in a suggestive note appended to his edition
of Romeo and Juliet, (1901), writes: 'I believe the genitive
singular runaway's to be right, and I agree with "VYarburton that
the sun or Phoebus is meant.' He quotes a passage from Barnabe
Rich's Farewell, ' The day to his seeming passed awaye so slowely
that he thought the stately steedes had been tired that drewe the
chariot of the sun and wished that Phseton had been there with
a whippe.'

Of what, then, was Shakespeare thinking when he wrote these
lines 1 Perhaps of Barnabe Rich, but certainly of Marlowe. This
passage has been generally recognised as a reminiscence of the
following lines in Edward the Second :

Gallop apace, bright Phoebus, through the sky
And dusky night, in rusty iron car ;
Between you both shorten the time, I pray,
That I may see that most desired day.

With Marlowe's lines in his mind it would be quite in Shake-
speare's manner to pass on to some kindred idea so rapidly that
both ideas find utterance together; a frequently recurring cause
of obscurity in his writings. The gallop of 'fiery-footed steeds
towards Phoebus' lodging ' would naturally recall certain other
words of Marlowe, in which the selfsame steeds find place — the
more naturally because the passage in which the words occur was
as familiar to playwright and to audience as any in the language.

The opening line of Tamburlaine's speech addressed to the Kings
of Trebizond and Soria, bitted and harnessed to his chariot, certainly
lent themselves to travesty :

Halloa, ye pampered jades of Asia !

What ! can ye draw but twenty miles a day,

And have so proud a chariot at your heels ?

THE FIRST FOLIO 359

This ' ludicrous line ' was (Mr. Sidney Lee writes in Diet. Nat.
Biog.) 'parodied by Pistol, and was long quoted derisively on the
stage and in contemporary literature ' :

Shall pack-horses,

And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia,
Which cannot go but thirty miles a day,
Compare with Csesars and with Cannibals,
And Trojan Greeks ? 2 Henry IV. ii. 4. 177.

It was more to Shakespeare's mind to imitate the beauties than
to parody the occasional extravagances of his beloved Marlowe ;
and when he wrote of Phoebus' steeds he may well have been
haunted by the lines which followed Tamburlaine's bombastic
opening, for to them he owed the suggestion of a fine image which
he made his own and often reproduced :

The horse that guide the golden eye of Heaven,
And blow the morning from their nosterils,
Making their fiery gate above the clouds.

These steeds of ' fiery gate ' are the * fiery-footed steeds' which
Juliet would have whipped by Phaeton, so that his chariot might
be a ' runaway,' with its 'eye ' — the sun — the golden eye of heaven ;
and if this runaway's eye would only wink, or close its ' eyes,' her
prayer would be answered, and cloudy night brought in immediately.

The Folio may be accepted as printed from the true original
copy, but if the author had edited his works with the accuracy
of Jonson or of Bacon, the passage, by the omission of a single
letter, repeated (as often occurs) from the preceding word, would
have read, 'That Run-awaye's Eye may wincke,' and the line
would have been noted as one of the many in which Shakespeare
had borrowed from his master, and made his own, a fine image
which caught his fancy. No instance as early as Tamburlaine
(circ. 1587) of the use of the phrase, 'eye of heaven,' as applied to
the sun, is noted in the New English Dictionary. Shakespeare's
appreciation of Marlowe's image is shown by the frequency with
which he reproduces it. Perhaps the best-known passages are those
in which the following lines occur : —

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

All places that the eye of heaven visits.

Rich. II. i. 3. 275.

Discomfortable cousin ! know'st thou not
That when the searching eye of heaven is hid.

Ibid. iii. 2. 37.

360 NOTES

But there are others : Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 375 ; Titus
Andronicus, ii. 1. 130; Sonnet xviii. 5; Lucrece, 356. (Compare
King John, iii. 1. 79 ; Hamlet, ii. 2. 540 ; Romeo and Juliet,
iii. 5. 19; Lucrece, 1088.)

The greatness of Marlowe and his influence on the work and
life of Shakespeare are being recognised at last. This is due in
great part to Mr. Swinburne. Allusions to other contemporary
writers are to be found in Shakespeare, but from Marlowe he
borrows whole lines. Line 14 in Sonnet xciv. is to be found in
Edward III. Snatches from Marlowe's song, ' Come live with me
and be my love,' are sung by Sir Hugh Evans. Quoting from Hero
and Leander, in the person of Phebe, the line, * Who ever loved that
loved not at first sight,' Shakespeare mournfully addresses his
friend and master as ' dead shepherd,' words of affectionate regret
which have a particular significance if, as would appear from
Harvey's sonnets, the author of Tamburlaine was familiarly known
by the name of his most popular character, the shepherd king.

The Returnefrom Pernassus (1602), a curious medley, scholarly
and witty, was acted by the students of St. John's College,
Cambridge (ed. Arber, 1895), A critical 'censure' of Shakespeare,
with other poets, is delivered by ludicio, but the comedian,
Kempe, disposes summarily of the university playwrights: 'Why
heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, I and Ben
lonson too.' The prosperity of the player, and the penury of the
scholar — the theme of the drama — inspired the outburst of jealousy
quoted at page 244. Furor Poeticm, 'a very terrible roaring muse,
nothing but squibs and fine ierkes,' thus addresses the sun —

You grand-sire Phcebus, with your louely eye,
The firmament's eternall vagabond.

Later on, the sun, under the inspiration of Furor, becomes ' that
one ey'd subsiser of the skie, Don Phoebus"

In a passage inspired by a similar motive, Eobert Greene
travestied certain words of the actor-playwright (ante, p. 329), and
to the envious Cambridge wits it may have seemed a merry squib
to parody Juliet's ' runaway's eye ' by calling the sun, the eternal
vagabond's lovely eye.

ii

In The Tempest, Prospero thus addresses Ferdinand : —

take my daughter : but
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall

THE FIRST FOLIO 36l

To make this contract grow ; but barren hate,

Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew

The union of your bed with weeds so loathly

That you shall hate it both. iv. 1. 15.

These words need no interpretation, for their meaning is plain
and to the minds of many readers, acquainted with the bald facts
of Shakespeare's history, they have been full of sad suggestion,
for they seemed to tell the tragic story of a blighted life.

It is, in the words of Mr. Sidney Lee, dangerous to read into
Shakespeare's dramatic utterances, allusions to his personal experi-
ence ; and it is both dangerous and needless when another explana-
tion is ready to hand.

There was in Shakespeare's hands when he wrote The Tempest a
book upon which, as affecting the thoughts and character of Shake-
speare, much has been written of late. Florio's translation of the
Essayes of Montaigne was certainly open before him when he trans-
cribed from it with verbal exactness certain passages of Gonzalo's
description of his ideal commonwealth (ii. 1. 150). In another
page of the same volume, we read these words : ' Few men have
wedded their sweet hartes, their paramours or mistrises, but have
come home by weeping crosse and erelong repented their bargain.
And even in the other world what an vnquiet life leads Jupiter
with his wife, whom before he had secretly knowen and lovingly
enjoyed ? '

In the lines quoted from The Tempest Florio's version of Mon-
taigne's prose has been transmuted into Shakespeare's golden poetry
— a process of heavenly alchemy, which it would be dangerous
to attribute to a personal interest in the theme.

There is in the British Museum a copy of Florio's Montaigne
bearing Shakespeare's signature. I know that it is now the fashion
to doubt the authenticity of this signature, apparently on general
principles, and without any inquiry into facts. When the volume
was purchased for the British Museum by Sir Frederick Madden,
it was submitted to numerous competent judges, all of whom
expressed a clear opinion in favour of the genuineness of the
signature. This expert evidence proves little more than is obvious
to any discerning eye — that the forgery, if such it be, is an ex-
tremely clever one. When it is compared with the undoubted
signatures of Shakespeare, there is, in the words of Sir F. Madden,
' a sufficient resemblance to warrant the conclusion that they are
by the same hand, although enough variation to preclude the idea
of imitation.'

Passing from expert opinion to evidence of fact, we find the

362 NOTES

volume about the year 1837 in the possession of the Kev. Edward
Patteson, a clergyman in Surrey, who was induced to bring it to
the British Museum for inspection, and ultimately to sell it for a
moderate sum. It. had belonged to Mr. Patteson's father, the Rev.
Edward Patteson, a clergyman in a county adjoining Warwick-
shire, who is known to have shown the volume to his friends
before the year 1780. Neither he nor his son ever attempted to
turn their possession to profitable use. The fine art of Shake-
spearian forgery was then unknown. Ireland was born in 1778.
The discovery of the Collier forgeries was mainly due to the
investigation of Sir F. Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts in the
British Museum, a skilled and critical palaeographer, who made
the Montaigne signature the subject of careful examination in an
interesting pamphlet. The hypothesis of an early forger, of con-
summate skill, acquainted somehow with the character of the
Shakespearian signatures, then little known, and working simply
for love of his art, is so improbable, that I prefer the matter-of-
fact conclusion that a copy of a book which Shakespeare had
in his hands at Stratford when, towards the close of his life, he
wrote The Tempest, was found a few generations later in the
library of a clergyman in an adjoining county.

My attention was directed to the physical appearance of this
volume by an interesting work on the subject, published in 1901,
with the needlessly unattractive title of Shakespeare, not Bacon, by
Mr. Francis Gervais. The Latin sentences and marginal comments
to which the writer calls attention had been examined by Sir F.
Madden, who writes : * I am persuaded that they were added by a
later pen, and in this opinion I have been confirmed by the judg-
ment of other persons versed in the writings of that period.' This
decision is not likely to be questioned. But on turning over the
pages of the book, I observed the occasional occurrence, in ancient
and faded ink, of the kind of mark with which ordinary mortals
are wont to note a passage for future use. These marginal marks
vary in form, and present the appearance of having been made by
different readers, at different times. Opposite the passage which
I have quoted there is a marginal mark clearly discernible, differing
in character from the others, and obviously of great antiquity.
Interesting as are the speculations suggested by the marking of
this passage in a volume which we may well believe to have been
in the hands of Shakespeare when he wrote The Tempest, the
purpose of the present note will be served equally well by any copy
of Florio's Montaigne ; for in it may be found, expressed after the
manner of Montaigne the essayist, the same idea as that which

THE FIRST FOLIO 363

found utterance, after the fashion of Shakespeare the dramatist,
in the words put by him into the mouth of Prospero.

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's latest plays, written after
nearly thirty years of married life, in which were times of separa-
tion, and it may be of error and estrangement. In those bygone
years the poet may well have thought with self-reproach that it had
been better for his wife had she chosen an 'elder than herself,'
for so she might have swayed ' level in her husband's heart.' But
all this was over when The Tempest came to be written in the
peaceful retirement of Stratford; and is it to be believed that Shake-
speare, in the height of fame and fortune, would have exchanged
the full life of London for the dull and somewhat puritanical
society of a country town, and the companionship of an elderly
wife, if 'barren hate, sour-ey'd disdain, and discord ' had made their
union ' so loathly ' that they should hate it both ? Kecent research
has shown the frequency of marriages, irregular but binding, sub-
sequently ratified, and the irregularity, probably, did not weigh so
heavily on the mind of Shakespeare as on the imagination of some
of his biographers. (Shakespeare's Marriage and Departure from
Stratford, J. W. Gray, 1905.)

That Shakespeare when he wrote The Tempest was haunted by
memories of tragic consequences, resulting from an early mistake, is
a theory. That his mind was at that time full of Montaigne is a
fact, and a fact of a kind which may well serve to explain and
illustrate what he wrote.

[Since the foregoing notes were in type two works have been
published which bear witness to the increased value now attached
by Shakespearian scholars to the authority of the First Folio.

One of these is an edition by Charlotte Porter and H. A. Clarke,
with a general introduction by John Churton Collins, M.A., D. LITT.,
in .which the text of the Folio, with the original spelling, is adopted,
with no more than necessary corrections.

The other is a suggestive and interesting volume on Shakespeare
contributed by Professor Kaleigh to the English Men of Letters
series. Of the Folio he writes, "There is no escape from the
Folio ; for twenty of the plays it is our sole authority ; for most
of the remainder it is the best authority that we shall ever know."
I should have been glad to quote in my note on Tempest iv. 1. 15
what he has written of the quiet and happiness of Shakespeare's
closing years at Stratford, when he had " established himself with
his wife and family in peace and prosperity."]

NOTE III

THE BOOK OF SPORT

THE upstart gentleman of the Tudor age, with his innate vul-
garity and his affectation of field sports, afforded a constant topic to
the dramatist and satirist. Then, for the first time, admission to
the ranks of Esquire and Gentleman became easy, or, as Harrison
calls it in his description of England (1577), 'good cheape.' He
tells us how the number of 'gentlemen whose ancestors are not
knowen to come in with William Duke of Normandie ' was con-
stantly swelled by accessions, not only from the professions, but
from the growing class of novi homines. Their ambition to ' be
called master, which is the title that men giue to Esquiers and
gentlemen, and reputed for a gentleman,' was no less keen than
the competition of their representatives of to-day for knighthoods
and baronetcies. To these men the Book of Sport was an abso-
lute necessity. The novus homo (called by the plain-spoken
Master Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses, ' a dunghill gentleman,
or gentleman of the first head '), although he might (in Harrison's
words) ' for monie haue a cote and arnies bestowed vpon him by
heralds,' could never pass muster until he had acquired the shib-
boleth of the class. There is always some recognised outward
and visible sign. At one time it is prowess in arms ; at another
in gallantry ; then it happened to be correct use of the language
of sport. This form of speech, largely founded on Norman
French, was traditional among those of gentle birth. But the
'gentleman of the first head,' who was not to the manner born, and
who had not, like Shakespeare, served an apprenticeship to sport,
and thus gained admission to the mystery, must needs acquire
it by study, like a foreign language. To him the Book of Sport
served as grammar, dictionary, and exercise-book in one. The
task was no trifling one. There was a separate word for every
conceivable act, done by, or to, each beast of venery or of the chase,
and for every incident of sport ; with an endless array of appro-
priate verbs, nouns, and adjectives, the misapplication of any one
of which stamped the offender as no gentleman. You might speak

364

THE BOOK OF SPORT 365

of ' flaying ' a deer -without losing caste, although the correct phrase
was ' take off that deer's skin '; but if the Second Lord in All's Well
had used this word instead of saying ' We'll make you some sport
with the fox ere we case him,' he would have quickly discovered
that it is not for virtues only that men are whipped out of court.

Many of these terms have survived to the present day, and
lingering traces may yet be discerned of the old-world ideas asso-
ciated with them. We still speak of a herd of deer, a bevy of ladies,
a congregation of people, a host of men, a flight of pigeons, a brace
and leash of greyhounds, a couple of hounds, a litter of whelps,
a covey of partridges, a swarm of bees, a cast of hawks, a flight of
swallows, a stud of mares, a drove of cattle, and a flock of sheep.
Few of us are conscious that in so speaking we are correctly using
the gentle terms appropriated by the Boke of St. Allans to the
various 'compaynys of beestys and fowlys.' And even now — so
inveterate are ideas wrought into our blood — while the misuse of
scientific terms suggests nothing more than ignorance, we can hardly
avoid associating the idea of vulgarity with a man who would speak
of a flight of partridges, a flock of grouse, or a pair of hounds.

Such survivals, however, are but faint echoes of the ideas of
our forefathers; and if (as I believe) the Warwickshire gentry of
the day agreed with Jonson and Spenser in applying to their
neighbour the term 'gentle,' I am certain that their verdict was
won rather by his accurate use of the hunting and hawking language
than by a regard to any mental or moral qualities. For Shake-
speare's sporting vocabulary is as accurate and copious as that of
any author of a Book of Sport. In the Index to this volume
(part ii.) the terms of art to be found in Shakespeare's writings re-
lating to field sports and horsemanship are collected, with references
to the pages of the text in which they are explained and illustrated.

Shakespeare never troubled himself about this language, or how
it might be learned, any more than about the vulgar tongue in
which he was brought up. But Ben Jonson's mind was exercised
on the subject. In a Speech according to Horace, he thus formulates
the creed of the old nobility : —

Why are we rich or great, except to show
All licence in our lives ? What need we know
More than to praise a dog or horse ? Or speak
The hawking language ?

The speech that came naturally to the ' Beauchamps and Nevills,
Cliffords, Audleys bold,' was painfully acquired by the

Hodges and those newer men
As Stiles, Dike, Ditchfield, Millar, Crips, and Fen,

366 NOTES

whose accession to the rank of gentry he attributes curiously
enough to the use of guns in lieu of the older and more gentleman-
like methods of warfare ; reminding us of the * certain lord, neat
and trimly dressed/ who so excited the wrath of Harry Hotspur,
and who told him that ' but for these vile guns he would himself
have been a soldier.' (1 Hen. IV. ii. 3. 63.)

' If he can hunt and hawk ' • thus Burton begins his enumera-
tion of the qualities of the would-be gentleman of the day. c Nothing
now so frequent,' he tells us, as hawking ; ' a great art, and many
bookes written of it ' (Anatomy of Melancholy) ; and Bishop Earle
says of his Upstart Knight, ' a hawke hee esteemes the true burden
of Nobilitie.' (Micro-cosmographie.)

How to acquire this great art, and to learn this gentle language,
Ben Jonson tells us by the lips of Master Stephen : —

Stephen. Uncle, afore I go in, can you tell me an we have e'er a book
of the sciences of hawking and hunting, I would fain borrow it.

Knowell. Why, I hope you will not a hawking now, will you 1

Step. No, wusse ; but I'll practise against next year, uncle. I have
bought me a hawk and a hood and bells, and all ; I lack nothing but a
book to keep it by.

Know. 0 most ridiculous !

Step. Nay, look you, now you are angry, uncle ; why you know an
a man have not skill in the hawking and hunting languages nowadays,
I'll not give a rush for him ; they are more studied than the Greek or
the Latin. He is for no gallants company without them.

(Every Man in his Humour, i. 1.)

The earliest treatises in England on the art of venery existed
only in MS., until recent years. Le Art de Venerie by William
Twici, huntsman to Edward II. (circa 1328), written in Norman
French, was printed in 1843 with a translation and with notes by Sir
Henry Dryden, which Mr. Baillie-Grohman describes as * the first
sound^and scholarly remarks on old English hunting we have.' A
full account of this interesting treatise will be found in the Biblio-
graphy appended to The Master of Game.

The Master of Game is for the most part a translation of the
Li vre de Chasse of Count Gaston de Foix, usually known as Gaston
Phoebus, written about 1387. Mr. Baillie-Grohman has printed it
from the Cottonian MS. (circa 1420) with a version from Chaucerian
into modern English, in a sumptuous volume published in 1904.
He prints in italics the additions to the text of Gaston de Foix,
made by the translator for the use of English sportsmen. The
volume contains reproductions in photogravure of the marvellous
illuminations with which the French MS. is adorned, and a

THE BOOK OF SPORT 367

learned and copious commentary which has been often referred to
in the notes to this volume.

The author of The Master of Game was Edward Plantagenet,
son of Edmond of Langley, who was son of Edward III. and
Master of Game to Richard II. Edward was created Earl of
Rutland in 1390 by Richard, who advanced his ' discomfortable
cousin' to the Dukedom of Aumerle or Albernarle (circa 1397).
Edward succeeded to the Dukedom of York in 1402.

He filled several important offices in the reigns of Richard and
Henry, incurring, somehow, for his many treasons and conspiracies,
no heavier penalty than deprivation of the post of * master of our
running dogs called hert hounds' and a short imprisonment in
Pevensey Castle, where he is supposed to have employed his time
in the composition of The Master of Game. He was soon restored
to favour, and appointed by Henry IV. in 1406 to the office of
Master of Game.

The Master of Game was a favourite work. It was frequently
reproduced in MS., no fewer than nineteen extant MSS. having
been found, as the result of the individual researches of the editors,
one of which dates from the seventeenth century. It would
have been strange if a book then popular and accessible had not
become known to a reader so omnivorous as Shakespeare, and so
deeply versed in the mysteries and terminology of sport; and if
by chance the MS. which came into his hands was that noted at
p. 239 of The Master of Game, he would have learned that the
book was 'contreued and made by my lord of Yorke that dyed
at Achincourt the day of the batayle in his souerain lordes
service.'

Shakespeare somehow came to take an interest in the character of
the author. He is first presented to us as Duke of Aumerle, in the
character assigned to him by history, of arch-traitor and conspirator.
The scene is well known in which his father, York, plucks from
his bosom the evidence of a conspiracy to murder the King, and
thus denounces him : —

Treason ! foul treason ! villain ! traitor ! slave !

Richard II., v. 2. 71.

About five years intervened between the composition of Richard
II. and Henry V,, and for some reason or other it came into the
mind of Shakespeare to transform the cowardly traitor Aumerle
into the heroic York ; regardless of history and for no purpose of
dramatic propriety. The Duke of York takes no part in the action
of King Henry V. His request to lead the vaward at Agincourt is

368 NOTES

conveyed in fourteen words (Henry V. iv. 3. 129). We hear of
him again in the midst of the battle :

Exe. The Duke of York commends himself to your majesty.

K. Hen. Lives he, good uncle ? Thrice within this hour
I saw him down ; thrice up again, and fighting ;
From helmet to the spur all blood he was.

Henry V. iv. 6. 3.

I need not quote the lines that follow — a noble picture of
heroic death, associated with which the memory of York will live
for ever.

The Duke of York perished at Agincourt, but not after this
heroic manner. The transition to the prose of history is painful.
' He was one of the few of the victors who perished, "smouldered
to death," if we may accept Leland's authority (Itinerary, I. 4, 5),
by much heat and thronging. (Gesta Henrici V. pp. 47, 50, 58 ;
Le Fevre, pp. 59, 60. Life. Dictionary of National Biography.)

The earliest attempt to teach the hawking and hunting
languages by means of a printed book to those to whom like
Master Stephen they did not come by nature, is to be found in
the Boke of St. Albans. The schoolmaster printer, in his prologue
to the Booke of Hawkyng, included in the same volume with the
curious old metrical treatise on hunting attributed to Dame
Juliana Barnes, or Berners, addresses himself not only to * gentill
men,' but to ' honest persones,' and attributes to them a desire to
' know the gentill termys in communing of theyr hawkys ' ; a
condescension to the vulgar, to which I believe Dame Juliana,
had she been then living, would have been no party. The greater
your accuracy in the use of this language, ' the moore Worshyp
may ye have among all menne.' Between the publication of the
Boke of St. Albans in 1486, and Shakespeare's death in 1616, it
was reprinted in whole or in part, more or less altered, no fewer
than twenty-two times. Meanwhile that most industrious book-
maker, Gervase Markham, had published in 1611 his Country
Contentments, which went through fourteen editions before the close
of the century. The oldest English treatise on Falconry bears
the significant title of The Institution of a Gentleman (1555,
2nd Ed. 1568). 'There is a saying among hunters,' says the
author, ' that he cannot be a gentleman whyche loveth not hawk-
yng and hunting.1 The same idea suggested the title, A lewell
for Gentrie (1614).

When Shakespeare was a boy, George Turbervile, a gentle-
man by birth, and a poet, wrote, or rather edited, The Booke of
Faulconrie (1575, 2nd Ed. 1611), which became the standard

THE BOOK OF SPORT 369

work on the subject, although Symon Latham's Falconry, or The
Falcon's Lure and Cure (1615), and Edmund Bert's Approved
treatise of Hawkes and Hawking (published in 1619, but written
many years earlier) deservedly enjoyed a high reputation. The
Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting was published and bound with
Turbervile's Booke of Faulconrie. The author's name is not
given, and the verses which it contains on various subjects con-
nected with the chase were contributed by George Gascoigne,
better known as the author of a satirical poem called The Steel
Glas (1576). A great part of this work is a translation from the
French of Jacques Du Fouilloux' La Venerie (1561). This book
went through several editions, and was reprinted at Angers, 1844;
but there are in The Noble Arte many extracts from other authors,
and some original matter.

Notwithstanding the fact that The Noble Arte of Venerie is
attributed to Turbervile by Gervase Markham and by Nicholas
Cox, I am disposed from the style of the work, from the
publisher's preface, and from the calling in aid of Gascoigne's
literary skill when it is deemed necessary to drop into poetry, to
judge it to be the work of some hack scribe, inferior in literary
skill as well as in social position to Turbervile, whose spirited
verses on Falconry prefixed to The Booke of Faulconrie are, in
my opinion, superior to the task-work of George Gascoigne. I
find the same opinion expressed by Mr. Baillie-Grohman, who
discusses the question of authorship exhaustively (Master of
Game, Bibliography).

The first book on fishing published in England was Dame
Juliana Berners' Treatyse of fysshinge wyth an angle, printed
by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496. It was followed by Leonard
Mascall's Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line (1590);
Taverner's Certain experiments concerning Fish and Fruite, 1600;
and The Secrets of Angling, by J. D. [John Dennys],

Meanwhile the horse had come in for a full share of attention.
I extract from Mr. Huth's Index to wwks on Horses and Equita-
tion, the dates of works published during the lifetime of Shake-
speare. The foivre chiefyst offices belonging to Horsemanshippe,
by Thomas Blundevill (1565, 1580, 1597, 1609); A plaine and
easie way to remedie a Horse that is foundered in his feete, by
Nicholas Malbie (1576, 1583, 1594); Remedies for Dyseases in
Horses, by the same author (1576, 1583, 1594); The Art of
Hiding, by John Astley (1584); The Schools of Horsemanship,
by Christopher Clifford (1585); De procreandis, eligendis,
frcenandis et tractandis Eguis (a curious work), by Richard Sadler

370 NOTES

(1587); A Discourse of Horsemanshippe, by Gervase Markham
(1593); How to chuse, ride, traine and dyet both hunting and
running horses, by Gervase Markham (1596, 1599, 1606);
Cavalerice, or the English Horseman, by Gervase Markham (1607,
1616); and by the same author, A Cure for all diseases in Horses
(1610, 1616), Country Contentments (including a Treatise on
horses) (1611), and Markham's Maistre-Peece, a treatise on
farriery, published in 1615, which went through many editions,
the tenth being dated 1688; The Perfection of Horsemanship, by
Nicholas Morgan (1609) ; A very perfect discourse (on the horse),
by L. W. C. (1610).

Mr. Har ting's Bibliotheca Accipitraria is a complete catalogue
of books, ancient and modern, relating to Falconry. A valuable
Bibliography will be found appended to The Master of Game.

No wonder that Burton exclaims at the ' world of bookes,' not
alone on arts and sciences, but on 'riding of horses, fencing,
swimming, gardening, planting, great tomes of husbandry, cookery,
faulconry, hunting, fishing, fowling, and with exquisite pictures
of all sports, games, and what not ? '

The truth is that these old books of sport as a rule deserved the
estimation in which they were held, in so far as (unlike the philo-
sophical works of the day) they were founded, not on theory and
authority, but upon fact, and upon an honest and thorough, if
unscientific, interrogation of nature. Francis Bacon could have
taught observers of the hare, of the falcon, and of the hound,
little beyond the names of the processes which they were uncon-
sciously applying. And so this part of their work is as fresh and
useful now as on the day when it was written ; birds and beasts
having changed their natures even less than mankind since the
days of Elizabeth.

Then came Puritanism, Civil War, and the Commonwealth, and
if the Book of Sport was mentioned, the name suggested Sabba-
tarianism rather than field sport. After the Restoration, the
would-be gentleman was no longer a sham sportsman, but a real
blackguard, and he needed no book to teach him how to live up to
his profession. Nor did field sports during any part of the
eighteenth century attract the attention of any section of the
book-buying public. Peter Beckford published his celebrated
Thoughts on Hunting in 1781, in which he expresses his surprise
at the lack of books on his favourite sport, at a time when the
press teemed with works of all sorts and kinds. But the Will
Wimbles and Squire Westerns of the eighteenth century would
have scorned the aid of books, and as to men of letters and their

THE BOOK OF SPORT 371

readers, their ignorance of the hunting and hawking language may
be gauged by the fact that the author of Spectator No. 116 makes
Sir Koger de Coverley hunt the hare with ' stop-hounds ' in the
month of July.

And so from the death of Shakespeare until the beginning of
the present century but few books were printed on sporting
subjects, and those few were, for the most part, reproductions
of older books, either altogether or in substance; as were the
compilations of Nicholas Cox (1674) and Richard Blome (1686).
Izaak Walton's immortal Compleat Angler, and Somerville's Chase,
belong rather to literature than to sport, and Beckford's Thoughts
on Hunting is probably the only Book of Sport, of the first rank,
published during this period, extending over nearly two centuries.

Had Peter Beckford lived now, he would have no reason to
complain of either the quantity or the quality of the sporting
literature of the day. But I have already travelled wide enough
from William Silence and his diary, and I must not be led so far
afield as to discuss the sporting literature of recent years, even if
it were possible in the compass of a note to do justice to the
painstaking labour, scientific observation of nature, enthusiasm,
and literary skill by which it is distinguished.

NOTE IV

SHAKESPEARE ON ANGLING

THE fishing near Stratford is thus described in the truthful pages
of the Angler's Diary : ' On Avon, pike, bream, roach, perch, chub,
dace, carp.' Some distance off, ' running through Charlecote Park,
Dene joins on the left bank.' This, however, was the 'peculiar
river ' of Sir Thomas Lucy, and if the youth of Stratford would
take trout from its waters, they must needs resort to less noble
methods than honest angling. That these practices were in vogue
at the time appears from Gervase Markham's Countrey Farms
(1616), in which he says that 'the Trouts which are a kind of
Salmon are taken with the hand, hauing betaken themselves into
their holes.' These irregular methods of taking trout — in which
Shakespeare shows some interest — must exercise a strange fascina-
tion over minds of the higher order of creative genius. For John
Bunyan, apologising for giving to the world a production which his
graver advisers condemned to the flames, betrays his familiarity
with them when he writes :

Yet Fish there be, that neither Hook nor Line
Nor Snare nor Net, nor Engine can make thine ;
They must be grop't for, and be tickled too,
Or they will not be catch't what e're you do.

The Eev. Henry N. Ellacombe, author of The Plant-lore and
Garden-craft of Shakespeare, collected allusions to angling, rivers
and fish in articles entitled Shakespeare as an Angler. (Anti-
quary, vol. iv., 1881. See also the Gentleman's Magazine, Jan.
1895.) The references to angling collected in these interesting
papers seem to me to be of an ordinary kind (see ante, pp. 163-165),
and to present none of the features of the distinctively Shake-
spearian allusion ; as when Claudio says : ' Bait the hook well ;
this fish will bite,' and Hamlet (with many others) uses the words
' angle ' and c bait ' in a metaphorical sense. I have no doubt that
Shakespeare understood angling, according to the use of anglers
of his day, as he understood everything else appertaining to the

372

SHAKESPEARE ON ANGLING 373

country life by which he was surrounded. But if he had heen a
true lover of the sport, his frequent references to rivers and fish
would surely have betrayed him. It has been noticed that Izaak
Walton, whose Compleat Angler (1653) is full of quotations from
English poets, never mentions Shakespeare. It may be that he
opened the Folio of 1623, and his eye lighting on the sentiment
quoted from Much Ado (at p. 70), he could read no further.

NOTE V

THE BEAR GARDEN

FOREIGNERS have remarked on the fondness of the English people
for bear-baiting and kindred pursuits, and attributed it to the
inborn ferocity of the race. Erasmus noted ' the many herds of
bears maintained in this country for the purpose of baiting'
(Adagia). Hentzner (1598) writes of the bear-garden at Bankside
as ' another place, built in the form of a Theatre, which serves for
the baiting of Bulls and Bears. They are fastened behind, and
then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great
risk to the dogs from the horns of the one and the teeth of the
other, and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot ;
fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those which
are wounded or tired.' He adds a description of the favourite
sport of whipping a blinded bear, which the reader may well be
spared. Sunday was the favourite day for such sports.

And yet every Sunday

They surely will spend
One penny or two

The bearward's living to mend. — CROWLEY.

Nor was the taste for these amusements confined to the base
and unlettered rabble. Sir John Davies in his Epigrams tells us
how

Publius student at the Common Law
Oft leaves his books, and for his recreation
To Paris Garden doth himself withdraw,
Where he is ravished with such delectation
As down among the bears and dogs he goes.

Thirteen bears were provided for a great baiting before the
Queen in 1575, of which Laneham says, 'it was a sport very
pleasant to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his
enemies' approach ; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his
advantage, and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid
his assaults ; if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in
another to get free ; that if he were taken once, then by what

374

THE BEAR GARDEN 375

shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and
tumbling he would work and wind himself from them ; and when
he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and
the slaver hanging about his physiognomy.'

Bear-baiting and kindred sports survived — as Sir Hudibras
found — the assaults of Puritanism, and so lately as 1709 Steele
wrote in the Tatler (No. 134) : ' Some French writers have repre-
sented this diversion of the common people much to our disadvan-
tage, and imputed it to a natural fierceness and cruelty of temper,
as they do some other entertainments peculiar to our nation. I
mean those elegant diversions of bull-baiting and prize-fighting,
with the like ingenious recreation of the bear-garden. I wish I
knew how to answer this reproach which is cast upon us, and
excuse the death of so many innocent cocks, bulls, dogs, as have
been set together by the ears or died an untimely death, only to
make us sport.'

NOTE VI

SIR THOMAS MORE ON FIELD SPORTS

THE Utopians condemned both hunting and hawking, relegating
the former to butchers, as the lowest, vilest, and most abject part
of a craft to which they were used to appoint their bondsmen.
But the Thomas More of everyday life was no Utopian. He was
a strange compound of consistency and inconsistency. Rather
than desert his principles at the bidding of a bloody and ungrate-
ful tyrant, he cheerfully laid down on the block the wisest and
wittiest head in Christendom. But neither the principles for
which he died, nor the practice in which he lived, had aught in
common with the universal religious toleration of the Utopians, of
whom, indeed, the most and the wisest part are represented as pure
Theists, worshipping as God and Father of all a certain unknown
power, diffused throughout the whole world, everlasting, incom-
prehensible, inexplicable, and above the reach of the wit of man.
4 At multo maxima pars, eademque longe prudentior, nihil horum,
sed unum quoddam numen putant, incognitum, seternum, im-
mensum, inexplicabile, quod supra mentis humanae captum sit,
per mundum hunc universum, virtute, non mole diffusum ; hunc
parentem vocant.' I know no sadder picture of human nature,
even in men * quibus arte benigna E meliore luto finxit prsecordia
Titan,' than is presented by More the Chancellor, in contrast with
More the author of Utopia; and in the face of his graver incon-
sistencies, I find it easy to imagine the author of Utopia bestriding
his lusty steed, and cheering on his hounds : not the less easy
because I learn from his life by his great-grandson that there was
a tradition in the family connecting it somehow with the Irish
race of More. It may be fanciful to call in aid of this tradition of
Celtic origin certain qualities of More, such as his light-hearted-
ness in face of the gravest events ; but I do not feel bound alto-
gether to discredit it. There are some traditions the existence of
which can best be accounted for by the hypothesis of their truth,
and among these may fairly be included the Irish descent of an
English Lord Chancellor.

376

SIR THOMAS MORE ON FIELD SPORTS 377

Erasmus, whose remarks on the breaking-up of the hart are
quoted at page 62, was, during his stay in England, the friend
and companion of More, to whom he dedicated Morice Encomium,
the title of which embodies a play upon the name More. He
thus writes to his friend Faustus Anderlin at Paris, giving a
description of some of his English experiences (I quote from
Mr. Froude's Life and Letters of Erasmus) : ' Your friend
Erasmus gets on well in England. He can make a show in
the hunting field. He is a fair horseman, and understands how
to make his way ' (Ep. Ixv).

NOTE VII

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

THOSE who desire information as to this curious phase of
sixteenth-century life will find a full account of the vagrant
fraternities and their different orders in the books by Awdeley
and Harman quoted above, the reprinting of which, with excellent
notes, is one of the many services rendered to students of the
Shakespearian age by the New Shakespere Society. The subject
of vagabondage is also dealt with by Harrison in the chapter
of his Description of England, entitled Of Provision made for the
Poore (1577), (also reprinted by the New Shakespere Society),
but most of his information is derived from Harman. An account
of the ' strict statutes and most biting laws,' directed against this
social evil, is given by Mr. Froude (History of England, ch. i.)
in order to dissipate what he calls a foolish dream — the senti-
mental opinion that the increase of poverty, and the consequent
enactment of the Poor Laws, was the result of the suppression
of the religious houses. Sturdy vagrancy certainly co -existed
with these establishments, not only in England, but on the
continent. In the Liber Vagatorum, written about 1509, and
reprinted with a preface by Martin Luther in 1528, more than
twenty different ways are pointed out whereby men are cheated
and fooled by vagabonds of various kinds. The records of the
trials at Basle in 1475, and the description of beggars in The Ship
of Fools (1500), tell the same tale. The number of vagrants
certainly increased greatly between the reign of Henry VIII. and
the establishment of the poor law. This fact is variously accounted
for. The ' huge nomber of Beggers and Vacaboundes ' in England
is attributed in Kobert Hitchcok's Pollitique Plait (1580) to 'the
pouerty that is and doth remane in the shire tounes and market
tounes.' Harrison (book 2, chap. 11) appears to think that the
laws against vagrants and rogues might be better executed,
although 'there is not one yeare commonlie wherein three
hundred or foure hundred of them are not devoured and eaten

378

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS 379

up by the gallowes in one place and other.' I do not find this
increase of vagrancy anywhere attributed by contemporary opinion
to the suppression of the religious houses. Mr. Ribton Turner's
History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, and the valuable and interest-
ing work edited by the late Mr. H. D. Traill, entitled Social
England (vol. iii.), contain much information in regard to this
matter.

NOTE VIII

SHAKESPEARE AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE

A CONSIDERABLE body of evidence has been collected bearing
upon the question of Shakespeare's connection with Gloucester-
shire. In a note to Mr. Huntley's Glossary of the Cotswold Dialect
may be found the statement (which I submitted to a practical test)
that Woodmancote is still known to the common people as Womcot
or Woncot, and Stinchcombe Hill as ' the Hill ' (see ante, p. 85).
From this note, and from Mr. Blunt (Dursley and its Neighbour-
hood), we learn that a family named Shakespeare formerly lived
in the neighbourhood, and that parish registers have been searched
with success. James Shakespeare was buried at Bisley on
March 13, 1570. Edward, son of John and Margery Shake-
speare, was baptised at Beverston on September 19, 1619. The
parish register of Dursley records that Thomas Shakespeare,
weaver, was married to Joan Turner on March 3, 1677-8, and
contains entries of the baptism of their children. It appears
from the Churchwardens' Kegister that there was in Dursley in
1704, a mason, named John Shakespeare, a Thomas Shakespeare
in 1747, and that Betty Shakespeare received poor's money from
1747 to 1754. Some of this family, Mr. Huntley tells us, 'still
(1848) exist as small freeholders in the adjoining parish of
Newington Bagpath, and claim kindred with the poet.' A
physician, he adds, named Dr. Burnett, who died at an advanced
age, had a vivid remembrance of the tradition that Shakespeare
once dwelt in Dursley, and of a spot in a neighbouring wood
called ' Shakespeare's walk.' He thus concludes : ' The portion
of Shakespeare's life which has always been involved in obscurity
is the interval between his removal from Warwickshire and his
arrival in London, and this period, we think, was probably spent
in a retreat among his kindred at Dursley in Gloucestershire.'

Mr. P. W. Phillimore, in an article entitled ' Shakespeare and
Gloucestershire ' (The Antiquary, vol. iv.), mentions, as the result
of similar researches, that a branch of the Hathaway family was
also settled in Gloucestershire. He suggests that Shakespeare's

380

SHAKESPEARE AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE 381

'marriage in 1582 with Anne Hathaway, who was so much his
senior, may have offended his Stratford friends, and compelled
him to take refuge with his, and his wife's kindred in Gloucester-
shire, some time between that date and his removal to London.'

Shakespeare has given evidence of his familiarity not only with
the games, hut with the husbandry of Cotswold. We read in
Marshall's Rural Economy of Cotswold (1796), that the wheat
grown in Cotswold ' is principally red lammas.' In some districts
it was usual ' to begin sowing the first wet weather in August.' It
is there noted that * the Cotswold Hills are in a manner proverbial
for the early sowing of wheat. August and September are the
principal months.' ' Shall we sow the headland with wheat ? '
asks Davy of Justice Shallow, who replies, 'With red wheat,
Davy.' (2 Hen. IV. v. i. 15.) This was said at a season of the
year when the interval between supper and bedtime might best be
spent in the orchard, which would scarcely be later than the
month of August. When Shakespeare writes of Severn he
affords evidence of local knowledge and observation which is
absent from his references to Thames or Wye. He has in his
mind 'gentle Severn's sedgy bank' (1 Hen. IV. i. 3. 98),
'swift Severn's flood' (ib. 103), and 'sandy-bottomed Severn'
(ib. iii. 1. 66).

The connection of the families of Vizard, or Yisor, with Woncot,
and of Perkes, or Purchas, with the Hill, is noted in the text
(ante, p. 84). 'Clement Perkes, filius Johannis de Fladbury,'
whose birth in 1568 is recorded in the register of the parish of
Fladbury (Dursley and its Neighbourhood), was a native of the
same county, and may have had a kinsman and namesake on the
Hill. ' On Stinchcombe Hill there is the site of a house wherein
a family named " Purchase " or " Perkis " once lived, and it is
reasonable to conclude that Perkis of Stinchcombe Hill is identical
with " Clement Perkes of the Hill." ' (Dursley and Us Neighbour-
hood.) The connection of the Perkeses with the Hill, as of the
Visors with Woncot, continued up to the present century. A con-
tributor to Notes and Queries (Fifth Series, vol. xii. p. 159)
mentions that the following notice appeared in the obituary of the
Gentleman's Magazine (vol. ii. 1812): 'At Margate in his 75th
year, J. Purchas, Esq., of Stinchcombe Hill, near Dursley,
Gloucestershire. '

A curious note appeared in the same periodical (Notes and
Queries, Fourth Series, vol. iv. p. 359), the writer of which
professes to have found mention of ' Squeal of Cotsall ' among
some manuscript entries in a folio copy of Sir Walter Raleigh's

382 NOTES

History of the World (1614) 'containing many marginalia of a
most miscellaneous character.' The authenticity of this entry is
more than doubtful. The name Squele is of the same order as
Shallow, Slender, and Silence. If such a name has been actually in
use in Gloucestershire, the fact could hardly have escaped notice.

Mr. Phillimore, in the article already quoted, writes : c All who
are acquainted with the glorious view from the top of Stinchcombe
Hill will acknowledge that Shakespeare's allusion to the " castle "
is an accurate one, even at the present day.' I have already
quoted a description of the castle, which I received from a horse-
man on the Hill ; some mute inglorious Shakespeare, for aught I
know (p. 85 n.).

Mr. Blunt (Dursley and its Neighbourhood) illustrates the pro-
gress of puritanism in Dursley by extracts from the Churchwardens'
Register. In 1566 there were paid 'to a man of Sadburie for xiij
Sacks of Lyme to whyt lyme the church iiij8 viijd,' and in the
same year twelve more sacks were procured from the ' Lyme brener
of Sadburie ' ' at xiij a sack.' The large expenditure on ' glassing '
suggests that the painted glass windows in the fine old church had
been broken, and white glass ones substituted. The Rev. George
Savage, Rector of Dursley from 1575 to 1602, was a man of some
note. According to Mr. Blunt he was ' a member of the High
Court of Commissioners, and in 1580 was appointed Commissary
for his metropolitan visitation by Archbishop Whitgift.' From
the large sums paid by the churchwardens for the destruction of
foxes, I conclude that no inhabitant of Gloucestershire who hap-
pened to meet a fox would ' stand on quillets how to slay him.'
(See ante, p. 172.)

The passages in this volume relating to Shakespeare's connection
with Gloucestershire will be found at pp. 6, 82-86, 103-115.

Since the publication of the former edition an interesting work
appeared entitled A Ootswold Village, or Country Life and Pur-
suits in Gloucestershire, by the late Mr. J. Arthur Gibbs. This book
is referred to at page 116, where it is noted that the author
adopts and quotes from chapter ix. of this work, as representing in
some degree a Cotswold village of three hundred years ago.
Mr. Gibbs introduces on the scene a belated traveller, mounted
on an Irish hobby, who is easily recognised, for he discourses on
the sports and pastimes of Cotswold in the very words of Shake-
speare. This volume presents a delightful picture of a district
upon the inhabitants of which, Mr. Gibbs informs us, it is
beginning to dawn that they are more or less connected with the
great poet of Stratford-on-Avon.

SHAKESPEARE AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE 383

Another work of interest relating to the same district is The
Last Records of a Cotswold Community, being the Weston sub-
edge field account book for the final twenty-six years of the Famous
Cotswold Games, hitherto unpublished, and now edited with a study
on the old time sports of Campden and the village community of
Weston, by C. K. Ashbee. This book is referred to (p. 192 n.) as
illustrating a passage in the text descriptive of the unenclosed
common field, divided by baulks, and suitable for the sport of
falconry. The author, referring to these pages, and to Shake-
speare's allusions to sport, adds, ' There is no doubt he knew about
Campden, for Justice Shallow, on the assumption that he ever
existed, was probably a Campden Justice.'

NOTE IX

THE LANGUAGE OF FALCONRY

MANY traces of the hawking language, in addition to those
explained and illustrated in the foregoing pages, may be found
scattered through the works of Shakespeare.

(1) When Hamlet (iii. iv. 92) speaks of an Unseamed bed' he
uses a term of art. ' Ensayme of an hawke is the grece,' says the
Boke of St. Allans.

(2) The falconer purges his hawk from this grease by what were
known as castings — fur or feathers given to her together with her
food — a process to which reference is made when Isabella, huddling
hawking metaphor on metaphor with impossible conveyance, says
of Angelo,

This outward-sainted deputy
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i5 the head and follies doth enmew
As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil ;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.

The meaning of the word ' enmew ' has been already explained
(p. 195).

(3) Professor Baynes, writing in an article in the Edinburgh
Review, October, 1872 (reprinted with other essays, under the
title Shakespeare Studies), suggested that Gloucester, when he
said to the Bishop of Winchester,

I'll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal's hat,
If thou proceed in this thy insolence,

1 Hen. VI. i. 3. 36,

had in his mind the mode then in use of capturing wild hawks by
means of a net thrown as a canvas. He quotes from the Mirrour
for Magistrates :

That restless I, much like the hunted hare,
Or as the canvist kite, doth fear the snare ;

384

THE LANGUAGE OF FALCONRY 385

and explains the passage as expressive of Gloucester's ' determina-
tion to trap and seize the arrogant churchman if he persisted in
his violent courses.' But the use of this word by Mistress Tear-
sheet (2 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 243), where she says to Falstaff, 'I'll
canvass thee between a pair of sheets,' read in connection with the
passage cited by Steevens from The Cruel Brother (1630), Til
sift and winnow him in an old hat,' suggests a different meaning
as being at least equally probable.

(4) Mr. Dyce, in his Glossary, explains the expression, ' Mail'd
up in shame,' applied to herself by the Duchess of Gloucester
(2 Hen. VI. ii. 4. 31), as meaning wrapped up in shame, as a hawk
is in a cloth : quoting from R. Holmes, Academy of Armory and
Blazon, ' Mail a hawk is to wrap her up in a handkerchief or other
cloth, that she may not be able to stir her wings or to struggle.'
The expression ' Mail you like a hawk ' occurs in Beaumont and
Fletcher's Philaster (Act v. s. 4).

(5) Professor Baynes, in the article already quoted, notices the
use of the word * gouts ' in the dagger scene in Macbeth.

I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. Macbeth, ii. 1. 45.

' Gout ' is a technical term in falconry, applied to the little knob-
like swellings or indurated drops, which (Turbervile tells us) rise
up at diverse times upon the feet of hawks. It is more probable,
however, that the word is here used in its original meaning.

(6) When Henry IV. thus addressed his son, he probably
borrowed a phrase from the hawking language :

God pardon thee ! yet let me wonder, Harry,
At thy affections, which do hold a wing
Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.

1 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 29.

(7) So did Katherine in the following wit-combat :

Pet. Should be ! should— buzz !

Kath. Well ta'en, and like a buzzard.

Pet. 0 slow- winged turtle ! shall a buzzard take thee 1

Tarn, of Shrew, ii. 1. 206.

And Lear, when he exclaimed, ' 0, well-flown bird ? ' (iv. 6. 32).

(8) lago thus spoke of Roderigo :

Thus do I ever make my fool my purse ;
For I my own gain'd knowledge should profane,
If I would time expend with such a snipe,
But for my sport and profit Othello, i. 3. 389.

2 c

386 NOTES

The full significance of these words became apparent on reading
a passage in Colonel T. Thornton's Sporting Tour (recently edited
by Sir Herbert Maxwell), in which he gives an account of the
time expended in an effort to take a single snipe, with a tercel and
a falcon ; his bag, for the day, comprising twenty-two moor-game
and one snipe. lago's expression was possibly a proverbial one,
expressive of expenditure of time and labour, with a dispropor-
tionate result.

(9) The phrase ' to check ' signified, in falconry, the action of
the hawk when she ' forsakes her proper game to fly at pies, crows,
or the like, crossing her in her flight ' (Gentleman4 }s Recreations,
N. Cox). Metaphorically, it was applied to casual, random, or
intermittent action, as distinguished from a sustained and deliber-
ate effort. Thus in the passage from Twelfth Night, quoted in
the text (ante, p. 149), Olivia contrasts 'a wise man's art' with
the * kind of wit' displayed by the random jester, who must needs,
like the untrained hawk, 'check at every feather that comes
before his eye,' instead of selecting a legitimate object of pursuit,
and steadily following it to the end.

Dr. Johnson suggested c not like the haggard,' instead of the
reading of the Folio. The change is slight, and it is supported by
high authority. I think, however, that the Cambridge editors
have rightly excluded it from the number of necessary corrections.
For the rapid change of subjects implied by the use of the word
( check ' does not seem to be inconsistent with the observation of
persons, moods and times, inculcated on him who would success-
fully play the fool.

This idea, borrowed from falconry, was present to the mind of
the King when he said of Hamlet :

If he be now return'd

As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit now ripe in my device,
Under the which he cannot choose but fall.

Hamlet, iv. 7. 61.

The readings of the quartos afford a good illustration of the
treatment which such-like phrases meet with at the hands of the
copyists, three of them reading c as liking not his voyage.'

(10) The difficulty of acquiring a knowledge of the hawking
language by study of even the best modern authorities is well
illustrated by the following exposition of the term ' falcon-gentle,'
extracted from that vast storehouse of information — usually

THE LANGUAGE OF FALCONRY 387

accurate — the New English Dictionary, now happily within
measurable distance of completion. 'Falcon-gentle, a name
applied to the female and young of the goshawk, 1393, Gower,
Conf. iii. 147. As a gentil-falcon soreth. 1486, Bk. St. Albans.
There is a hawken gentill and a tercell gentell.' The reader of
the foregoing pages will have learned that the falcon-gentle is the
female of the peregrine, not of the goshawk (which latter does
not soar, as Gower well knew), and that her male is the tercel-
gentle, as set forth in the Boke of St. Albans.

[Since the publication of the former edition the editor of the New
English Dictionary prefixed to the fourth volume the following
emendation : ' Falcon-gentle — The falcon-gentle is the female of
the peregrine, not of the goshawk . . . and her male is the
tercel-gentle. (D. H. Madden, Diary of Master William Silence,
1897, p. 376.)']

(11) The following is the passage from Fletcher's sequel to
The Taming of the Shrew (referred to ante} p. 149), in which
Maria avenges her sex by taming the tamer.

Hang these tame-hearted eyasses that no sooner

See the lure out, and hear their husband's holla,

But cry like kites upon 'em. The free haggard

(Which is that woman that hath wing, and knows it

Spirit and plume) will make a hundred checks

To show her freedom, sail in every air,

And look out every pleasure, not regarding

Lure nor quarry till her pitch command

What she desires ; making her founder'd keeper

Be glad to fling out trains, and golden ones,

To take her down again. (Act i. s. 2.)

This lavish display of the hawking language naturally calls
forth the remark : * You're learned, sister.' * The Comedy,' Mr.
Weber observes, is 'avowedly an imitation and continuation of
Shakspeare's Taming of a Shrew (sic).' It is significant of the
taste of the age that Shakespeare's comedy was acted at court
(1633) before the King and Queen and 'likt,' while 'Fletcher's
sequel was presented two days after and "very well likt," by the
royal spectators.' Thus Mr. Weber, in his edition of Beaumont
and Fletcher. According to Mr. Fleay (Chronicle of the English
Drama) Shakespeare's play was ' not liked.'

(12) According to the strict grammatical construction of the
following passage, the pronoun 'his' is referable to the noun
1 falcon ' :

388 NOTES

This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade,
Which, like a falcon towering in the skies,
Coucheth the fowl below with his wing's shade,
Whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies :
So under his insulting falchion lies

Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
With trembling fear, as fowl hears falcon's bells.

Lucrece, 505.

I have already referred to Mr. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar
as evidence of the truth that Shakespeare's grammar is not our
grammar. Tarquin is the idea present to the writer's mind, and
all pronouns suggested by this idea are masculine. It seems there-
fore unnecessary to read { her ' for ' his ' in the third line.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

[Index of Words and Phrases, pp. 393-398]

Angling, Shakespeare's references to,

163, 368
Annalia Dubrensia, 165, 169, 174,

264

Assembly, the, 12

Astringer, derivation of the word, 139
Flew the short- winged hawk, 139-
141

Bacon, on field sports, 214-215, 265
His poetry, 28

His relations with Ben Jonson, 315
Banked Curtal, 73, 80
Bear-baiting, a popular pastime, 190,

369

Shakespeare's views on, 181-190
Black ousel, meaning of, 15
Blundevill (The four chief est offices),
81, 241, 249, 251, 254, 256, 259,
266, 287, 288, 289, 294, 295
Boke of St. Albans, 25, 110, 132,
141, 150

Cambridge Edition of Shakespeare,

31, 52, 150, 184, 307, 310
Collins, Mr. Churton, 311, 363
Cotswold

Famed for coursing, 165

Games on, 165

Horseraces on, 264

"A Cotswold Village," 116

"Last records of a Cotswold

Community," 192
Courting, 165-169

Incidents of, 166-168
The hare-finder, 166
The greyhounds in the slips,

167

The cote, 168
The kill, 168
The judging, 168

Coursing (continued)

The laws of the leash, 168
Cotswold, famed for, 165, 166

Cross-bow, use of, 229, 235

Cry. See Hounds.

Deer, numerous in Arden, 163

Deer-stealing, a venial offence,

221, 228

Rife in Gloucestershire, 221
Fallow, how named, 234
Rascal deer, 54, 58, 228
Red, how named at various ages,

18

Shooting, with crossbow and
greyhounds, 221-238
Inferior to hunting, 221
Often referred to by Shake-
speare, 241

Chief incidents of, 225-239
The driving of the deer, 235
The quarry, 236
The woodman's reward, 237
The bribe-buck, 230
Hunting, with hounds ; see

Hunting

Dog. Shakespeare on the, 132
Dowden, Professor, 158, 183, 249

Expert evidence, in criticism, 357

Falcon, the female peregrine, 138, 387
Incorrectly referred to as male,

217, 387
See Hawk.
Falconry, illustrations of, 188-156,

190-208, 210-220
A flight at the heron, 205-207
A hawk for the bush, 153, 203
Flying at the brook, 163, 207

390

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

[Index of Words and
Falconry (continued)

Terms of, explained, 132, 138,

140, 144, 154, 155, 194-199
The hawking language, 209-220,
384-398
Generally misapplied, 209-

216, 220

How it may be acquired, 220
Now a dead language, 216
See Hawk and Astringer.
Fallow-deer. See Deer.
Fletcher, referred to, 149, 211, 213, 387
Fox, regarded as vermin, 170, 172
A treacherous pet, 131
His ' case,' 170
Hunting of, 79, 170-172

Not highly regarded, 169
Traces of, in Shakespeare,

171

Unkennelled, 25, 171
See Hunting.

Furness, Mr. H. Horace, Variorum
edition by, 312-356

Gloucestershire, Shakespeare's con-
nection,with, 83-86, 117, 380-
383

Group of characters connected
with, 6, 84, 103-115

Hare. See Hunting.
Hart, meaning of the word, 18
Hart royal, 18
Hunting of. See Hunting.
Harting, Mr. J. E., 132, 138, 139,
141,148,151,153,155,219
Hawk, .various kinds of, 138, 149, 156
The longwinged hawks, 138, 203
The falcon and tercel-gentle,

138, 155, 377
The hohby, 151
The merlin, 151

The shortwinged hawks, 152, 203
A hawk for the bush, 153,

203
The estridge or goshawk,

141, 150

The tercel, 152, 202
The sparrow-hawk, 152, 203
The eyess musket, 151
Certain other kinds, 151
Imping, 154

Phrases at pp. 393-398 J
Hawk (continued)

Training the hawk, 143, 145
Manning the haggard, 144,

149
The haggard and the eyess,

142
The unreclaimed haggard,

143, 192
Seeling, 155
Watching tame, 144
Worthless hawks, 153
The kestrel, 153, 204
The puttock, 154, 204
See Falconry and Astringer.
Henry V., Shakespeare's favourite

character, 281

A consummate horseman, 282
Horse, the, in Shakespeare, 243, 301
Adonis' horse, 249
Roan Barbary, 251
Preference for a roan, 251, 282
A cloud in the face, 246, 248,

339
Classified in accordance with the

elements, 251, 256
Diseases of, 293, 300

Shakespeare's category of, 294
His use of stable language,

296-301

Feeding of, 266-269
Mart for, at Smithfield, 245
Training of, 269-273
The ambler, 259
The best breeds in the North,

253

The courser, 244
The coal-black horse, 247
The dancing horse, 73
The footcloth horse, 245, 261
The great horse, 258, 262
The hackney, 299
The hunting nag, 262
The pack-horse, 263
The fill horse, 263
The running-horse, 263
The trotting-horse, 262
Various breeds in use, 250

The Barbary horse, 250-252,

262

The Galloway nag, 55
The High Almain, 42, 250,
258

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

391

[Index of Words and
Horse (continued)

The Flanders mare, 40
The Neapolitan horse, 258
The English horse, 55, 253,

255
The Irish hobby, 42, 55, 250,

260
Miscellaneous references to, 297,

301
Horsemanship, general references to,

71, 277-281, 290-3
Manage, exercises of the, 284-
289

Pacing the horse, 285
The false gallop, 286
The career, 286-9
The curvet, 289
The stop, 283
The turn, 286
The yerk, 286
The bit, 289, 296
Use and abuse of the spur, 247,

279, 290-92

Aids, 271, 283, 279, 289
Horse-race, at the Cotswold games,

264

Ignored by Shakespeare, 264-5
Hounds, various kinds of, 79
After the chase, 76

Discussion of their merits,

77

Remedy for wounds, 76
At a bay, 58-60
Hunting counter, 50, 64
Relays, vauntlays, and allays,

29

Selected for their cry, 23
Shakespeare's catalogue of, 50,

51

Theseus' hounds and the old
Exmoor pack, 78

Slow in pursuit, 47
The babbler, 36, 52
The bawler, 36, 52
The over-topping hound, 37

Should be trashed, 37
The beagle, 79, 180
The Ham-hound, 20, 64
The running-hound, 46, 79
See Hunting.

Holy-ale, incidents of a, 118-128,
176-192

Phrases at pp. 393-398]

Hunting of the hart, 11-65
"At force," 22
Harbouring, 17-22
Unharbouring, 31-34
Chasing, 41-56
A check, 48-53
At a bay, 57-60
Breaking-up, 61-65
Of the hare, highly esteemed,

173

With beagles, 173
Description of, 174
Various other chases, 79, 170
A general hunting, 224
A solemn hunting, 224
The huntsman, 19, 49, 91

Ireland, celebrated for hawks, 152
The Irish hobby, 42, 55

Jonson, Ben, his connection with

Shakespeare, 38, 214, 314
Allusions to sports and horse-
manship, 214, 294
On hawking, 214

La Venerie (Jacques du Fouilloux),
13, 20, 31, 37, 62, 191

Lee, Mr. Sidney, his life of Shake-
speare, 7, 84

Liam-hound, how employed, 20, 64

Markham, Gervase, 22, 23, 25, 33,
37, 55, 64, 65, 73, 75, 80, 153,
200, 243, 246, 247, 251, 253, 257,
258, 260, 263, 267, 286, 290, 293,
295, 297

Mason, Eight Hon. J. MoncJc, 65, 171

Master of Game, 13, 49, 51, 59, 64,
91, 173, 219, 235, 237

Monsters, popular interest in, 120

Montaigne, 361-363

More, Sir Thomas, 27, 62, 272
On field sports, 27, 61, 370

Neapolitans, famous for horses and

horsemanship, 258
New English Dictionary, 32, 49, 58,
244

Error as to " falcon-gentle "
corrected by editor, 386

392

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

[Index of Words and

Noble Arte of Venerie, 12, 17, 21,
25, 29, 31, 36, 43, 52, 53, 54, 61,
62, 64, 79, 97, 191, 222, 294

Raleigh, Professor, 363

Ridgway, Professor William, on the

thoroughbred horse, 250
"Runaway's eyes," 357-360

Shallow, Master Robert, referred to,

1-4, 90-102
Identification of, with Sir

Thomas Lucy, 103-115
Sidney, Sir Philip, on field sports,

211
Slender, Abraham, 15, 30, 34, 110,

193

Spenser on field sports, 211
Shakespeare, what is known of his

life, 7

Never edited his plays, 307
Questions as to text and canon,

308

Method of adaptation, 322-325
His allusions to sport and horses,

9, 213, 301
Certain characteristics

noted, 302-305
Not found in other play-
wrights, 212, 306
Suggest a test of author-
ship, 213, 319

Authorship of plays in the
Folio :

King Henry VI., 325-330
King Henry VIII. , 330
Titus Andronicus, 317-322
Authorship of "doubtful plays,"
331-342
Pericles, 332

Phrases at pp. 393-398]
Shakespeare (continued)

A Yorkshire Tragedy, 333
Two Noble Kinsmen, 335-

341

Arden of Faversham, 341
Edward III., 341
The Birth of Merlin, 341
Other doubtful plays, 341
The Folio of 1623, 308-350

Defects of this edition, 311
The professions of the

editors, 309

Question of its authority
discussed, 308-316, 343-
350
Testimony of Ben Jonson,

314-316
Prefatory verses by Leonard

Digges, 316

Instances in which the

authority of Folio appears

supported, 351-357

Work of subsequent editors, 311

Their attitude towards the

Folio, 312

The use of the quartos, 357-359
An ideal edition, 359-362
Sport, books of, 211, 368-371
Swift, his love of horses, 280
Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, not trust-
worthy, 218, 255

Toils, use of, in hunting, 22, 32
Turbervile (Booke of Faulconrie), 13,
140-142, 153, 154, 191, 297

Wagers, riding, 275
Wild-goose Chase, 276
Wright, Mr. Aldis, 184, 219, 310,
355-356

INDEX

OF WORDS AND PHRASES RELATING TO FIELD SPORTS, HORSES, OB

HORSEMANSHIP, USED BY SHAKESPEARE AND EXPLAINED

OR ILLUSTRATED IN THE FOREGOING PAGES

WOODCEAFT

BABBLER, 36
Bawler, 36
Bay, 57-60, 341
Beagle, 79, 173
Blench, 32

* Bloody as the hunter,' 63
Brach, 21, 51, 90

' Break the pale,' 226
Bribe-buck, 230
Browse, 18
Buck, 228, 234
Burrow, 26

CAPE, 171
Case, 170, 353

* Cheer with horn,' 78
'Cold fault, '48, 175
'Cold scent, '48
Coney, 26
Counter, 50, 64
Covert, 227
Crossbow, 227

Cry, 23, 336, 341, 342

'Cry havoc,' 33

' Cry upon the trail,' 36, 48

' DEEP-MOUTHED brach,' 77
Deer, names of, 11, 18, 25, 163,

230

Dewlap, 78
Doe, 225, 222
Dog-fox, 159
Doubles, 174
Dowsets, 337
'Drawdryfoot,'64
Drive, 321

222,

EMBOSS, 54, 77

'FALSE trail, '50
Fault, 48, 175
' Fill up the cry,' 47
Flap-mouthed, 60
Flewed, 78
Forester, 17, 232
Fox, 131, 170-172
'Full of vent, '52

'GAME is up, the,' 32
'Gaze, stand at,' 32, 342
' General hunting,' 224, 320

HARBOUK, 25

Hare, hunting, 172-175

'Hark, hark! '49

Hart, 18

Haunch, 230

' Have in the wind,' 31

Havoc, 33

Herd, 255

Hind, 18

'Hold at bay, '59

' Hold in,' 53

Hold in chase, 54, 341

' Holla'd to,' 78, 336

Hounds, 48, 78, 320

« Hunt-counter,' 50, 351

' Hunters' peal,' 320

'Hunts up,' 34, 97, 224

' IN blood,' 58, 59, 228
' In the wind,' 31

393

394

INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES

•KEEP thicket,' 34
' Keeper's fee,' 65
Kennel, 26, 177
Kennelled, 60

LAUND, 226
'Leash'din,' 167
' Let,' 48
'Let slip,' 167
Lethe, 63, 352
Lodge, 26
Lym, 21

'MAKE a bay,' 320
'Match'd in mouth,' 23, 78
'Mettle of pasture, '22
'Morto' the deer, '49, 57
' Muddy -mettled rascal,' 59
Musits, 74, 337

' N'ER out,' 53

OPEN, 36
Overrunning, 37
Overtopping, 37, 38

PALE, 226
Parked, 226
Pricket, 224
' Putting on,' 38

QUARRY, 57, 64, 197, 236
* Quick-hunting, ' 38

RANK, 48
Rascal, 58, 228
Recheat, 49
'Recover the wind,' 32
Roe, 81, 229
Rouse, 26

[Index of Subjects at pp. 389-392]

* Royal Hart,' 18

'SETTING on,' 49, 175

Single, 31, 351

' So-ho,' 166, 342

'Solemn hunting,' 224, 319

Sorel, 224

' Spend their mouths,' 35, 60, 175

Stag, 18

' Stall the deer,' 227

Stand, 226

Start, 261

'Stop pursuit,' 35

' Stop this way,' 171

Strain, 53, 352

'THE game is up,' 32
'There it goes, '49
Thicket, 34, 226
' To him,' 42, 175
' To kennel,' 90
Toil, 22, 224
Trail, 21
Trash, 35, 37, 77
True-bred, 53
'Turn head,' 35

UNCAPE, 171
Uncouple, 17, 171
Unkennel, 26

VELVET, 230
Vent, 52, 343, 352

WARRENEH, 222
' Wat,' 97, 175
Wind, 31, 52
'Wind, in the,' 31
'Wind, recover the,' 32
Woodman, 225, 227, 237

FALCONRY

Aery, 142

Astringer, 139, 141, 344, 352

BATE, 145, 150, 352

' Bate and beat,' 154, 218, 325

Bells, 194

'Brook, flying at,' 163, 201
Buzzard, 153

CANVASS, 384
Cast, 384
Check, 143, 386

INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES

395

Cloy, 132

'Come bird, come,' 197

Couch, 378

'Coward and kestrel, '153

DARE, 152, 353

Disedge, 196

'Down the wind,' 192, 205

EMPTY, 149, 192, 196, 341
Enmew, 195, 353, 384
Enseam, 384
Estridge, 139, 150, 152
Eyas-musket, 151, 203
Eyass, 141, 142, 145, 387

FALCON, 138, 149, 203, 216, 341, 388
'Falcon as the tercel,' 202
Falconer, 139, 163, 202, 203
'Foot, to, '196
'French falconers,' 140

'Go out, '192
Gorged, 149, 192, 196
Gouts, 385

HAGGARD, 142, 149, 192, 341

Handling, 144, 149

Handsaw, 206

Hawk, 139-140

'Hawk for the bush,' 139, 153, 203

' Hawking eye,' 205

Hillo ! 197

Hist! 197

'Ho boy!' 197

'Hold a wing,' 385

Hood, 136, 145

IMP, 154
JESSES, 138, 143

KESTREL, 153, 203
Kite, 153, 204

[Index of Subjects at pp.

LURE, 149, 198, 325

MAIL, 385
Man, 147, 149
Mew, 138, 154
'Mew up,' 138, 325
'Mount her pitch,' 194, 206
Musket, 151, 213

PITCH, 155, 193-197, 327, 341

Place, 193

Point, 196

'Pride of place,' 193

Prune, 132

'Put up the fowl, '197

Puttock, 154, 204

ROUSE, to, 25

SEEL, 155

Sharp, 149, 192

' Snipe, expend time with a,' 385-386

Soar, 197

Souse, 196, 204

Spaniel, 192-193

Staniel, 153

Stoop, 149, 196, 203

' Stoop as to foot,' 196

Swoop, 195

TERCEL, 152

Tercel-gentle, 141, 151, 198, 387

Tire, 196

Tower, 196

Train, 198

UNMANNED, 145

' WATCH tame,' 144
'Well flown,' 385
' Well ta'en,' 385
' Whistle off,' 143, 192

AIDS, 271, 283
'Air and fire, '251
Ambler, 259, 354
'Ambling gelding,' 260, 299

HOKSES AND HORSEMANSHIP

Armgaunt, 300

BACKED, 271

Barbary horse, 250, 252, 262

396

INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES

{Index of Subjects at pp. 389-392]

Barley broth, 267, 282

' Bean -fed horse,' 267

* Bear the head,' 276

Bit, 270, 289, 296

Bots, 267, 294, 300

'Bottle of hay,' 266

Bounds, 257, 284

Breathed, unbreathed, 45, 54, 170,

277

' Bright bay,' 338
Buttock, 249

1 CA ha ! ' 272

Calkins, 257

Career, 44, 286-289

' Cloud in the face,' 246, 339

Colt, 255, 258, 271, 354

'Colt's tooth,' 299

'Commanding rein,' 273

Continuer, 54, 277

Courser, 244

Crest, 249

Crop-ear, 282

Crupper, 297

Curb, 248, 289

Curtal, 261

Curvet, 257, 279, 289

' DANCING horse,' 73, 80
Disseat, 248, 339
Drench, 282
' Dry oats,' 266

' EAB.TH and water,' 251
Elements, 251

• FALL the crest, '274

'False gallop,' 285, 299

Fashions (farcy), 294

Fetlock, 249, 286

' Fifty diseases,' 293, 334

Fill-horse, 263

'Fire and air, '251, 256

Fives (vives), 294

Footcloth, 245

1 Footcloth horse,' 261

'Forced gait,' 82

' Forward horse,' 44, 279

Founder, 334

'Full-hot horse,' 43
Furniture, 261

' GALLED jade,' 299

' Galloway nag,' 48, 55

Garboils, 301

Gelding, 260, 299

' Gimmal bit,' 268, 297

Girth, 248

'Give the head,' 272, 291

Glanders, 294

'Groom of the stable,' 280

HACKNEY, 299

< Half-checked bit,' 296, 355

Harness, 297

Headstall, 296

Heat, 272

Hide, 67, 249

' High feeding,' 268

Hobby, 299

Holla, 272

Horseback-breaker, 300

Horse-drench, 298

' Hot at hand,' 274

' Hot colts,' 271

'Hot condition, '255, 268

JADE, 269, 276, 277
Jadery, 248
' Jade's trick,' 52, 276
Jauncing, 290
Jennet of Spaine, 250

' KIND manage,' 247, 339
LAMPASS, 294

MANAGE, 267-270, 271, 279, 284-293

Measures, 80

Mettle, 283

' Mose (mourn) in the chine,' 294

NAG, 42, 82, 300

Neapolitan, 250, 258

' Ne'er legged before,' 294, 297, 355

PACE, 270, 285, 301
Paced, 285

INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES

397

Pack-horse, 263, 269
Pack-saddle, 263
Palfrey, 252
Pastern, 251
Point (of saddle), 263
Points, 259
Post-horse, 263
Provender, 266

RACE, 255, 268, 353
Rage, 256, 271, 277, 354
' Rayed with the yellows,' 294
Rein, 273, 276, 278
'Reins well, '73
'Ribaudred nag,' 300
Riding rod, '289
Roan, 248, 251, 280
Round-hoofed, 289
Rounds, 283
Rowel, 247, 292
Rowel-head, 291

SADDLE, 297
Saddle-bow, 297
School-doing, 292
Seat, 284, 355
Self-mettle, 278
Shock, 258
Shorten, 299
Shoulder-shotten, 294
'Shuffling nag,' 82, 283
Smithfield, 245
Snaffle, 301, 334
4 Soiled horse,' 267
Spavin, 293, 294, 295, 334
Springhalt (stringhalt), 295
Spur, 247, 272, 279, 290-292

[Index of Subjects at pp. 389-392]

Spur-galled, 290, 355

Staggers, 294, 300

'Stand, I say,' 272

Start, 261, 354

'Stop, the, '266, 285-288

Studded bridle, 297

Stumble, 278, 297

'Surreined jades,' 267, 282

' Swayed in the back,' 294

'Sweet hay,' 266

' Switch and spurs,' 264

'TAKE the head,' 299
'Take the rein, '278
' Terms of manage,' 271, 279
'Tired horse, '80, 282, 352
Trammel, 259, 285
'Trot hard, '260
Trotting-horse, 261-262
Turn, 257, 281

' UNBACKED colts,' 257
Uncurbable, 301
Unwrung, 299

VIVBS (fives), 294, 295

WAGERS, 265
Wild-goose chase, 264, 354
'Wind, to,' 266, 286
Windgalls, 294
'With all faults,' 300
Withers, 263, 299, 300
Wrung, 263, 300

YELLOWS, 294
Yerk, 286

COURSING, ANGLING, FOWLING, ETC.

ANGLING, 70, 163, 164, 372

BAIT, 170, 372
Bat-fowling, 199
Bear-baiting, 187-190, 374
Bird-bolt, 199
Birding-piece, 199

Brace (of greyhounds), 233

CARP, 164
Cote, 168, 353

DACE, 164

398 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES

[Index of Subject
FOWLER, 199

s at pp. 389-392]

PIKE, 164

'GAME'S afoot,' 167
Greyhound, 166, 167, 168
Groping (for trout), 372
Gudgeon, 164

HARE-FINDER, 166

SLIPS, 167
Snap, 164
'So-ho,'166
Springe, 199
'Stalk on,' 199
'Stalking-horse,' 199
Stone-bow, 199
' Strain upon the start,' 167

LEASH, 167, 229
4 Let slip,' 167
Liine-twigs, 199

TICKLING (trout), 372
Trout, 372

'OUTRUN on Cotsall,' 166

'UNCAPE,' 171, 353
'Ungrown fry,' 164

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The diary of Master William
Silence New ed«

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