“Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day.”
In Drayton’s “Polyolbion” (xiii.) it is used:
“No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave,
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring,
But hunts-up to the morn the feather’d sylvans sing.”
In Shakespeare’s day it was customary to hunt as well after dinner as before, hence, in “Timon of Athens” (ii. 2), Timon says:
“So soon as dinner’s done, we’ll forth again.”
The word “embossed” was applied to a deer when foaming at the mouth from fatigue. In “Taming of the Shrew” (Ind. scene 1) we read: “the poor cur is embossed,” and in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 13):
“the boar of Thessaly
Was never so emboss’d.”
It was usual to call a pack of hounds “a cry,” from the French meute de chiens. The term is humorously applied to any troop or company of players, as by Hamlet (iii. 2), who speaks of “a fellowship in a cry of players.” In “Coriolanus” (iv. 6) Menenius says,
“You have made
Good work, you and your cry.”
Antony, in “Julius Cæsar” (iii. 1), alludes to the technical phrase to “let slip a dog,” employed in hunting the hart. This consisted in releasing the hounds from the leash or slip of leather by which they were held in hand until it was judged proper to let them pursue the animal chased.[403] In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 3) Northumberland tells Hotspur: