To make her come, and know her keeper’s call,
That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites
That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient.
She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not.”
Taming of the Shrew, Act iv. Sc. 1.
The word “stoop,” sometimes written “stoup” (Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” Book I. Canto XI. 18), and “swoop” (Macbeth, “at one fell swoop”), signifies a rapid descent on the “quarry.” It occurs again in Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 1:—
“And though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing.”
THE CADGE.