THE LANGUAGE OF THE STABLE

309 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';' and Christopher Sly is offered, should he be disposed to ride, horses trapped with 'harness studded all with gold and pearl.''

2

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 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.' It is he who noted the madness of trusting in ‘a horse's health,' and it is to the selfsame fool that we owe, among many other excellent precepts:

3

Ride 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':

Ven. and Ad. 14, 37.

3 K. Lear, ii. 4. 127.

2 Tam. of Shrew, Ind. 2. 44.
Ibid. iii. 6. 19.

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 ';' to Dogberry, 'An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind; "2 to Menenius, 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 '; 3 and again, when he says of Marcius, 'He no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse';' 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.

6

Ant. and Cleo. iii. 7. 8.

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; '5 to the Lord Chamberlain, when he tells Lord Sands, Your colt's tooth is not cast yet'; to Touchstone-'As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires'; 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 unwrung'; to Master Ford, 'I will rather trust . . . a thief to walk my ambling gelding than my wife with herself'; 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

1 Hen. V. ii. 1. 25.

3 Coriol. ii. 1. 127.

Tam. of Shrew, iii. 2. 207.

As You L. iii. 3. 80.

• Hamlet, iii. 2. 253.

8

10

love perhaps a hackney';' to Beatrice, when her gentlewoman would run on :

Beat. What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?
Marg. Not a false gallop.'

Much Ado, iii. 4. 93.

3

To the Duke of York, when he reminded Northumberland
that the time was when King Richard would have checked
his insolence he would, he says, 'shorten you for taking
so the head, your whole head's length'; to Falstaff, when
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'; to
Brutus, who says of Coriolanus, as of a high spirited
horse, being once chafed, he cannot be rein'd again to tem-
perance'; 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'; 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.

6

Rom. and Jul. iii. 5. 154.

Posthumus must have had experience of the sudden seizure to which horseflesh is occasionally subject when he

Love's L. L. iii. 1. 30. The word hackney' in the diarist's time conveyed no suggestion of the kind of action now associated with the name. It is the same word as the French haquénee, originally signifying (according to Littré) cheval ou jument docile et marchant ordinairement à l'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 employed 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 meaning, with certain ideas superadded in regard to shape and action.

2 For the meaning of this term of art, see ante, p. 296.

3 Rich. II. iii. 3. 12.

Coriol. iii. 3. 27.

41 Hen. IV. ii. 2. 39.

Tam. of Shrew, i. 1. 133.

exclaimed in his amazement, 'How come these staggers on me?'1

'Bots on't' was strong language current at the time, not, however, in the mouth of fishermen, except at Pentapolis; and the phrase rises so naturally to the lips of Proteus of Verona as to suggest a pun on the word bootssurest evidence of familiarity.3

It is only in the stable that a huge hill of flesh,' like Falstaff, would be known as a horse-back-breaker.' Indeed, 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 Rochester was 'wrung in the withers out of all cess,' and the stable boys (whether Shakespeare's or another's) often heard the injunction, 'I prithee, Tom, beat Cut's saddle, put a few flocks in the point.' "

5

It is not quite clear what Scarus meant, when he called Cleopatra' You ribaudred nag of Egypt,'' nor have commentators thrown much light on the 'arm-gaunt steed' soberly mounted by Mark Antony, 'who neighed so high,' according to Alexas,

that what I would have spoke Was beastly dumb by him.

8

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.

1 Cymb. v. 5. 233.

3 Two Gent. i. 1. 25.

2 Pericles, ii. 1. 24.

1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 268.

See Tit. Andr. iv. 3. 47, and Hamlet, iii. 2. 253. 61 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 6.

Ant. and Cleo. iii. 10. 10.

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.

SHAKESPEARE'S ALLUSION TO SPORT

313

Eno. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to wars with the women!

Ant. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Cæsar,

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 Cleo. 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 necessary 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 elements of the distinctively Shakespearian allusion.

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: