What follows respecting the etymology of the word may not appear quite so correct. Mr. Steevens cites the MS. Mayster of game, in which the old English term querre is used for the square spot wherein the dead game was deposited. It is simply the French carré, but not, as Mr. Steevens conceived, the origin of quarry. It is necessary to state that quarry not only signified the game that was killed, but, in falconry, the bird that was pursued or sought after. The same term is used to express the flight of the hawk after its prey. In these senses it is probable that the word has been formed from the French querir, to seek after, and that the game sought after would be called in that language querie, whence our English quarrie, the old and correct orthography. The more modern French term in falconry for pursuing the game is charrier. See René François, Essay des merveilles de nature, 1626, 4to, p. 48.
It is conceived therefore that in both the passages in Shakspeare quarry signifies the spot or square in which the heaps of dead game were placed. Not so in the quotation from Massinger's Guardian; for there quarry is evidently the bird pursued to death.
ACT V.
Scene 5. Page 570.
Macb. The way to dusty death.
Perhaps no quotation can be better calculated to show the propriety of this epithet than the following grand lines in The vision of Pierce Plowman, a work which Shakspeare might have seen:
"Death came drivynge after, and all to dust pashed
Kynges and kaysers, knightes and popes."
Scriptural language and a passage in the burial service might have likewise suggested the epithet.