In Roxburgh and Aberdeen, as we learn from Jamieson’s “Scottish Dictionary,” a hare is termed “a bawd,”
and the knowledge of this fact enables us to understand the dialogue in Romeo and Juliet, which would otherwise be unintelligible:—
“Mercutio. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!
Romeo. What hast thou found?
Mercutio. No hare, sir.”
Act ii. Sc. 4.
That coursing was in vogue in Shakespeare’s day, and practised in the same way as at present, we may infer from such expressions as “a good hare-finder” (Much Ado, Act i. Sc. 1), “Holla me like a hare” (Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 8), and “I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start” (Henry V. Act iii. Sc. 1).
Rabbits were taken, and no doubt poached, in the same way then as now; for we read of the coney[19] “that you see dwell where she is kindled” (As You Like It, Act iii. Sc. 2) struggling “in the net.” (Henry VI. Part III. Act i. Sc. 4.)
The Brock[20] or Badger (Twelfth Night, Act ii. Sc. 5);
the Wild Cat who “sleeps by day” (Merch. of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 5, and Pericles, Act iii. Intro.); “the quarrelous Weasel” (Cymbeline, Act iii. Sc. 4, and Henry IV. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 3); “the Dormouse of little valour” (Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. 1); “the joiner Squirrel” (Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 4), whose habit of hoarding appears to have been well known to Shakespeare (Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act iv. Sc. 2); and “the blind Mole,” who “casts copp’d hills towards heaven” (Pericles, Act i. Sc. 1);[21]—all these are mentioned in their turn, while the Bat “with leathern wing,”[22] “the venom Toad,” “the thorny Hedgehog,”[23] “the Adder blue,” and the “spotted Snake with double tongue,” are all called in most aptly by way of simile or metaphor.