Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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dress of the hawk consisted of a close-fitting hood of leather or velvet, enriched with needlework, and surmounted with a tuft of colored feathers, for use as well as ornament, inasmuch as they assisted the hand in removing the hood when the birds for the hawk’s attack came in sight. Thus in “Henry V.” (iii. 7), the Constable of France, referring to the valor of the Dauphin, says, “’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.”234 And again, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 2), Juliet says:

      “Hood my unmann’d235 blood, bating in my cheeks.”

      The “jesses” were two short straps of leather or silk, which were fastened to each leg of a hawk, to which was attached a swivel, from which depended the leash or strap which the falconer236 twisted round his hand. Othello (iii. 3) says:

      “Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings.”

      We find several allusions to the training of hawks.237 They were usually trained by being kept from sleep, it having been customary for the falconers to sit up by turns and “watch” the hawk, and keep it from sleeping, sometimes for three successive nights. Desdemona, in “Othello” (iii. 3), says:

      “my lord shall never rest;

      I’ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience;

      His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;

      I’ll intermingle everything he does

      With Cassio’s suit.”

      So, in Cartwright’s “Lady Errant” (ii. 2):

      “We’ll keep you as they do hawks,

      Watching until you leave your wildness.”

      In “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), where Page says, the allusion is, says Staunton, to this method employed to tame or “reclaim” hawks.

      “Nay, do not fly: I think we have watch’d you now,”

      Again, in “Othello” (iii. 3),238 Iago exclaims:

      “She that, so young, could give out such a seeming,

      To seel her father’s eyes up close as oak;”

      in allusion to the practice of seeling a hawk, or sewing up her eyelids, by running a fine thread through them, in order to make her tractable and endure the hood of which we have already spoken.239 King Henry (“2 Henry IV.” iii. 1), in his soliloquy on sleep, says:

      “Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

      Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains

      In cradle of the rude imperious surge.”

      In Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (I. vii. 23), we read:

      “Mine eyes no more on vanity shall feed,

      But sealed up with death, shall have their deadly meed.”

      It was a common notion that if a dove was let loose with its eyes so closed it would fly straight upwards, continuing to mount till it fell down through mere exhaustion.240

      In “Cymbeline” (iii. 4), Imogen, referring to Posthumus, says:

      “I grieve myself

      To think, when thou shalt be disedged by her

      That now thou tir’st on,” —

      this passage containing two metaphorical expressions from falconry. A bird was said to be disedged when the keenness of its appetite was taken away by tiring, or feeding upon some tough or hard substance given to it for that purpose. In “3 Henry VI.” (i. 1), the king says:

      “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.”

      In “Timon of Athens” (iii. 6), one of the lords says: “Upon that were my thoughts tiring, when we encountered.”

      In “Venus and Adonis,” too, we find a further allusion:

      “Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,

      Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone,” etc.

      Among other allusions to the hawk may be mentioned one in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 1):

      “This outward-sainted deputy,

      Whose settled visage and deliberate word

      Nips youth i’ the head, and follies doth emmew,

      As falcon doth the fowl”

      – the word “emmew” signifying the place where hawks were shut up during the time they moulted. In “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 4), Lady Capulet says of Juliet:

      “To-night she’s mew’d up to her heaviness;”

      and in “Taming of the Shrew” (i. 1), Gremio, speaking of Bianca to Signor Baptista, says: “Why will you mew her?”

      When the wing or tail feathers of a hawk were dropped, forced out, or broken, by any accident, it was usual to supply or repair as many as were deficient or damaged, an operation called “to imp241 a hawk.” Thus, in “Richard II.” (ii. 1), Northumberland says:

      “If, then, we shall shake off our slavish yoke,

      Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing.”

      So Massinger, in his “Renegado” (v. 8), makes Asambeg say:

      “strive to imp

      New feathers to the broken wings of time.”

      Hawking was sometimes called birding.242 In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 3) Master Page says: “I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast; after, we’ll a-birding together, I have a fine hawk for the bush.” In the same play (iii. 5) Dame Quickly, speaking of Mistress Ford, says: “Her husband goes this morning a-birding;” and Mistress Ford says (iv. 2): “He’s a-birding, sweet Sir John.” The word hawk, says Mr. Harting, is invariably used by Shakespeare in its generic sense; and in only two instances does he allude to a particular species. These are the kestrel and sparrow-hawk. In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5) Sir Toby Belch, speaking of Malvolio, as he finds the letter which Maria has purposely dropped in his path, says:

      “And with what wing the staniel243 checks at it”

      – staniel being a corruption of stangdall, a name for the kestrel hawk.244 “Gouts” is the technical term for the spots on some parts of the plumage of a hawk, and perhaps Shakespeare uses the word in allusion to a phrase in heraldry. Macbeth (ii. 1), speaking of the dagger, says:

      “I see thee still,

      And

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