FOWLING.
There are many allusions to fowling in Shakespeare's works. He had evidently seen a good deal of it, probably in his boyhood, whether he had had actual experience in it or not.
In As You Like It (v. 4. 111) the Duke says of Touchstone, who combined much philosophy with his professional foolery, "He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit." And in Much Ado About Nothing (ii. 3. 95), when Don Pedro and his companions are talking about Benedick, whom they know to be hid within hearing, Claudio says: "Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits"; that is, go on with the practical joke, for the victim does not suspect it.
The stalking-horse, originally, was a horse trained for the purpose and covered with trappings, so as to conceal the sportsman from the game. It was particularly useful to the archer by enabling him to approach the birds, without being seen by them, near enough to reach them with his arrows. As it was not always convenient to use a real horse for this purpose, the fowler had recourse to an artificial one, made of stuffed canvas and painted like a horse, but light enough to be moved with one hand. Hence stalking-horse came to be used figuratively for anything put forward to conceal a more important object, or to mask one's real intention. Thus an old writer describes a hypocrite as one "that makes religion his stalking-horse."
In the Midsummer-Night's Dream (iii, 2. 20) Puck, describing the fright of the clowns when Bottom makes his appearance with the ass's head on his shoulders, says:—
"Anon his Thisbe must be answered,
And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So at his sight away his fellows fly."
In 1 Henry IV. (iv. 2. 21) Falstaff says that his recruits are "such as fear the report of a caliver [musket] worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck." And in Much Ado (ii. 1. 209) Benedick says of Claudio, who runs away from his friend's bantering: "Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges"; that is, he will go and brood over his vexation in solitude.
In The Tempest (ii. 1. 85) we have an allusion to "bat-fowling," a method of fowling by night in which the birds were started from their nests and stupefied by a sudden blaze of light from torches. Gervase Markham, a contemporary of Shakespeare, in his Hunger's Prevention, or the Whole Arte of Fowling, says: "I think meet to proceed to Bat-fowling, which is likewise a nighty taking of all sorts of great and small birds, which rest not on the earth, but on shrubs, tall bushes, hawthorn trees, and other trees, and may fitly and most conveniently be used in all woody, rough, and bushy countries, but not in the champaign," or open country. He then goes on to explain how it is carried on. Some of the sportsmen have torches to start the birds, while others are armed with "long poles, very rough and bushy at the upper ends," with which they beat down the birds bewildered by the light and capture them.