“Twenty crowns!
I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound,
But twenty times so much upon my wife.”
Taming of the Shrew, Act v. Sc. 2.
THE KESTREL.
In two instances only does Shakespeare allude to a particular species of hawk. These are the Kestrel and Sparrowhawk.
When Malvolio, in Twelfth Night (Act ii. Sc. 5), finds the letter which Maria has purposely dropt in his path, Sir Toby Belch, looking on from ambush, exclaims, in sporting terms:—
“And with what wing the stanniel checks at it!”
Here stanniel is a corruption of standgale, a name for the kestrel hawk, and Malvolio is said to “check at” the letter, just as a kestrel hovers over a mouse or other object which has suddenly attracted its attention.
It is true that the reading of the folios here is stallion; but the word wing, and the falconers’ term checks, abundantly prove that a bird must be meant. Sir Thomas Hanmer, therefore, proposed this correction, which all subsequent editors have received as justifiable.