I after him do after him wish too,
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolved from my hive,
To give some labourers room.”
The noble art and sport of Falconry were long the recreation, and, at times, the eager pursuit of men of high birth or position. Various notices, collected by Dr. Nathan Drake, in Shakespeare and his Times (vol. i. pp. 255–272), show that Falconry was—
“During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, the most prevalent and fashionable of all amusements;... it descended from the nobility to the gentry and wealthy yeomanry, and no man could then have the smallest pretension to the character of a gentleman who kept not a cast of hawks.”
From joining in this amusement, or from frequently witnessing it, Shakespeare gained his knowledge of the sport and of the technical terms employed in it. We do not even suppose that our pictorial illustration supplied him with suggestions, and we offer it merely to show that Emblem writers, as well as others, found in falconry the source of many a poetical expression.[[158]] The Italian we quote from, Giovio’s “Sententiose Imprese” (Lyons, 1562, p. 41), makes it a mark “of the true nobility;” but by adding, “So more important things give place,” implies that it was wrong to let mere amusement occupy the time for serious affairs.
DELLA VERA.
NOBILTÀ.