His quails ever beat mine, inhoop’d, at odds.[127]
Thersites speaks thus slightingly of a great warrior:
Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as ear-wax.[128]
In both these quotations the reference seems to be to a practice of training quails to fight after the manner of cock-fighting.
The allusions to the LAPWING indicate that the dramatist was acquainted with some of the characteristics of the bird. The tactics of the male bird to entice a passer-by away from his nest are expressed in the line
Far from her nest the lapwing cries away.[129]
When the plot is laid to get Beatrice to accept Benedick as her lover, and the plotters see her “couched in the woodbine coverture,” Hero urges:
Now begin;
For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.[130]