And in “As You Like It” (iii. 3),[234] Touchstone says, “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires.” The object of these bells was to lead the falconer to the hawk when in a wood or out of sight. In Heywood’s play entitled “A Woman Killed with Kindness,” 1617, is a hawking scene, containing a striking allusion to the hawk’s bells. The dress of the hawk consisted of a close-fitting hood of leather or velvet, enriched with needlework, and surmounted with a tuft of colored feathers, for use as well as ornament, inasmuch as they assisted the hand in removing the hood when the birds for the hawk’s attack came in sight. Thus in “Henry V.” (iii. 7), the Constable of France, referring to the valor of the Dauphin, says, “’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.”[235] And again, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 2), Juliet says:
“Hood my unmann’d[236] blood, bating in my cheeks.”
The “jesses” were two short straps of leather or silk, which were fastened to each leg of a hawk, to which was attached a swivel, from which depended the leash or strap which the falconer[237] twisted round his hand. Othello (iii. 3) says:
“Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings.”
We find several allusions to the training of hawks.[238] They were usually trained by being kept from sleep, it having been customary for the falconers to sit up by turns and “watch” the hawk, and keep it from sleeping, sometimes for three successive nights. Desdemona, in “Othello” (iii. 3), says:
“my lord shall never rest;
I’ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;
I’ll intermingle everything he does
With Cassio’s suit.”
So, in Cartwright’s “Lady Errant” (ii. 2):
“We’ll keep you as they do hawks,
Watching until you leave your wildness.”
In “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), where Page says,
“Nay, do not fly: I think we have watch’d you now,”