“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time;
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye.”
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), Hero, speaking of Beatrice, says that:
“her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock.”
And Othello (iii. 3), mistrusting Desdemona, and likening her to a hawk, exclaims:
“if I do prove her haggard,—
I’d whistle her off.”[227]
The word “check” alluded to above was a term in falconry applied to a hawk when she forsook her proper game and followed some other of inferior kind that crossed her in her flight[228]—being mentioned again in “Hamlet” (iv. 7), where the king says:
“If he be now return’d
As checking at his voyage.”[229]
Another common expression used in falconry is “tower,” applied to certain hawks, etc., which tower aloft, soar spirally to a height in the air, and thence swoop upon their prey. In “Macbeth” (ii. 4) we read of
“A falcon, towering in her pride of place;”
in “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 1) Suffolk says,