OTHER CRUEL SPORTS.
When the Chief Justice says to Falstaff (2 Henry IV. i. 2. 255), "Fare you well; commend me to my cousin Westmoreland," the fat knight mutters, "If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle." The allusion is to a cruel sport which is said to have been common with Warwickshire boys. A toad was put on one end of a short board placed across a small log, and the other end was then struck with a bat, thus throwing the creature high in the air. This was called filliping the toad. A three-man beetle was a heavy rammer with three handles used in driving piles, requiring three men to wield it. Such a beetle would evidently be needed for filliping a weight like Falstaff's.
Falstaff alludes to another piece of boyish cruelty to animals in The Merry Wives of Windsor (v. 1.26) when he says, after the cudgelling he has received from Ford, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what 'twas to be beaten till lately." The young barbarians of Shakespeare's time thought it fine sport to pull the feathers from a live goose. If they sometimes got whipped for it, we may suppose that it was solely for the mischief done to private property. When their elders were fond of bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and other brutal amusements, the boys would hardly be punished for torturing a domestic animal unless its value was lessened by the ill-treatment.
Whether Shakespeare in his boyhood was guilty of thoughtless cruelty like this, as boys are apt to be even nowadays, we cannot say; but later in life he recognized its wantonness, and more than once reproved the brutality of children of larger growth in their sports and amusements.
In Lear (iv. 1. 38) Gloster says bitterly:—
"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport."
In the same play (iv. 7. 36) Cordelia, referring to the unnatural conduct of Goneril in turning her old father out of doors in the storm, exclaims:—
"Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire!"
The poet did not forget that even an insect may suffer pain. In Measure for Measure (iii. 1. 79) Isabella says to her brother:—
"Darest thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies."
In As You Like It (ii 1. 21) the banished Duke in the Forest of Arden laments the necessity of killing deer for food:—
"Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor'd.
1 Lord. Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
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 hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Cours'd 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."
The sympathy of the Duke and the First Lord for the "poor dappled fools" is sincere, but that of Jaques, as we understand when we come to know him better, is mere sentimental affectation. We may be sure that the Duke rather than Jaques represents the feeling of Shakespeare himself for the unfortunate creatures.
In another part of the same play (i. 2) the poet, through the mouth of Touchstone, the philosophic Fool, gives a sly rap at people who find amusement in brutal games. Le Beau, a courtier who is really a kind-hearted fellow, as his conduct elsewhere proves, meeting Rosalind and Celia, tells them that they have just "lost much fine sport," that is, as he explains, some "good wrestling." They ask him to "tell the manner of it," and he says:—
"There comes an old man and his three sons,—three proper young men of excellent growth and presence. The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the duke's wrestler; which Charles in a moment threw him, and broke three of his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him: so he served the second, and so the third. Yonder they lie; the poor old man, their father, making such pitiful dole over them that all the beholders take his part with weeping.
Rosalind. Alas!
Touchstone. But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?
Le Beau. Why, this that I speak of.
Touchstone. Thus men may grow wiser every day! It is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies.
Celia. Or I, I promise thee."
Wrestling, by the bye, was a common exercise with the rural youth in the time of Elizabeth, and no doubt the smaller boys often tried their hand at it.