Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 4.
The rustic, although entrusted with a bow and arrows, was not expected to have much skill in archery, and
Roger Ascham, in his “Toxophilus,” when speaking of a clumsy archer, has a similar comparison to that in the passage just quoted:—“Another coureth downe and layeth out his buttockes, as though hee should shoote at crowes.”
“We must not make a scare-crow of the law,
Setting it up to fear[66] the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.”
Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 1.
Lord Talbot relates that, when a prisoner in France, he was exhibited publicly in the market-place:—
“Here, said they, is the terror of the French,