To bate in this passage means to flutter or beat the wings, as striving to fly away, and is metaphorically used in the following address of Juliet to the night:
———————— "Come, civil night,——
Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle."[271:B]
The same tragedy furnishes us with another obligation to falconry, where the love-sick maiden recalls Romeo in these terms:
"Hist! Romeo, hist!——O, for a falconer's voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again."[271:C]
Falstaff's page in the Merry Wives of Windsor is appositely compared to the eyas-musket, an unfledged hawk of the smallest species:
"Mrs. Ford. How now, my eyas-musket? What news with you?"[271:D]
Eyas-musket, remarks Mr. Steevens, is the same as infant Lilliputian, and he subjoins an illustrative passage from Spenser: