Archery. In Shakespeare’s day this was a very popular diversion, and the “Knights of Prince Arthur’s Round Table” was a society of archers instituted by Henry VIII., and encouraged in the reign of Elizabeth.[764] Fitzstephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II., notices it among the summer pastimes of the London youth; and the repeated statutes, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, enforcing the use of the bow, generally ordered the leisure time upon holidays to be passed in its exercise.[765] Shakespeare seems to have been intimately acquainted with the numerous terms connected with archery, many of which we find scattered throughout his plays. Thus, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 1), Maria uses the expression, “Wide o’ the bow hand,” a term which signified a good deal to the left of the mark.
The “clout” was the nail or pin of the target, and “from the passages,” says Dyce,[766] “which I happen to recollect in our early writers, I should say that the clout, or pin, stood in the centre of the inner circle of the butts, which circle, being painted white, was called the white; that, to ‘hit the white’ was a considerable feat, but that to ‘hit or cleave the clout or pin’ was a much greater one, though, no doubt, the expressions were occasionally used to signify the same thing, viz., to hit the mark.” In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 1), Costard says of Boyet:
“Indeed, a’ must shoot nearer, or he’ll ne’er hit the clout;”
and, in “2 Henry IV.” (iii. 2), Shallow says of old Double: “He would have clapped i’ the clout at twelve score”—that is, he would have hit the clout at twelve-score yards. And “King Lear” (iv. 6) employs the phrase “i’ the clout, i’ the clout: hewgh!”
In “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4), where Mercutio relates how Romeo is “shot thorough the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft,” the metaphor, of course, is from archery.
The term “loose” was the technical one for the discharging of an arrow, and occurs in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2).
According to Capell,[767] the words of Bottom, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (i. 2), “hold, or cut bow-strings,” were a proverbial phrase, and alluded to archery. “When a party was made at butts, assurance of meeting was given in the words of that phrase, the sense of the person using them being that he would ‘hold’ or keep promise, or they might ‘cut his bow-strings,’ demolish him for an archer.” Whether, adds Dyce, “this be the true explanation of the phrase, I am unable to determine.”
All hid, all hid. Biron, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3), no doubt means the game well-known as hide-and-seek, “All hid, all hid; an old infant play.” The following note, however, in Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary,” has been adduced to show that he may possibly mean blind-man’s-buff: “Clignemasset. The childish play called Hodman-blind [i. e., blind-man’s-buff], Harrie-racket, or Are you all hid.”
Backgammon. The old name for this game was “Tables,” as in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
“This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice.”