Falstaff alludes to another piece of boyish cruelty to animals in The Merry Wives of Windsor (v. 1.26) when he says, after the cudgelling he has received from Ford, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what 'twas to be beaten till lately." The young barbarians of Shakespeare's time thought it fine sport to pull the feathers from a live goose. If they sometimes got whipped for it, we may suppose that it was solely for the mischief done to private property. When their elders were fond of bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and other brutal amusements, the boys would hardly be punished for torturing a domestic animal unless its value was lessened by the ill-treatment.
Whether Shakespeare in his boyhood was guilty of thoughtless cruelty like this, as boys are apt to be even nowadays, we cannot say; but later in life he recognized its wantonness, and more than once reproved the brutality of children of larger growth in their sports and amusements.
In Lear (iv. 1. 38) Gloster says bitterly:—
"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport."
In the same play (iv. 7. 36) Cordelia, referring to the unnatural conduct of Goneril in turning her old father out of doors in the storm, exclaims:—
"Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire!"
The poet did not forget that even an insect may suffer pain. In Measure for Measure (iii. 1. 79) Isabella says to her brother:—