In The Tempest (ii. 1. 85) we have an allusion to "bat-fowling," a method of fowling by night in which the birds were started from their nests and stupefied by a sudden blaze of light from torches. Gervase Markham, a contemporary of Shakespeare, in his Hunger's Prevention, or the Whole Arte of Fowling, says: "I think meet to proceed to Bat-fowling, which is likewise a nighty taking of all sorts of great and small birds, which rest not on the earth, but on shrubs, tall bushes, hawthorn trees, and other trees, and may fitly and most conveniently be used in all woody, rough, and bushy countries, but not in the champaign," or open country. He then goes on to explain how it is carried on. Some of the sportsmen have torches to start the birds, while others are armed with "long poles, very rough and bushy at the upper ends," with which they beat down the birds bewildered by the light and capture them.
HAWKING.
Hawking, or falconry, the art of training and flying hawks for the purpose of catching other birds, was a sport generally limited to the nobility; but Shakespeare's many allusions to it show that he was very familiar with all its forms and its technicalities. He doubtless saw a good deal of it in his boyhood rambles in the neighborhood of Stratford.
The practice of hawking declined with the improvement in muskets, which afforded a readier and surer method of procuring game, with an equal degree of out-of-door exercise. As the expense of training and keeping hawks was very great, it is no wonder that the gun soon superseded the bird with sportsmen. The change, indeed, was surprisingly rapid. Hentzner, in his Itinerary, written in 1598, tells us that hawking was then the general sport of the English nobility; and most of the best treatises upon this subject were written about that time; but in the latter part of the next century the art was almost unknown.
Shakespeare knew all the different kinds of hawks. He refers several times to the haggard, or wild hawk. In Much Ado (iii. 1. 36) Hero says of Beatrice:—
"I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock."
In The Taming of the Shrew (iv. 1. 196) Petruchio employs the same figure with reference to Katharina:—
"Another way I have to man my haggard,
To make her come and know her keeper's call";