That they, as well as they, may Hell supply."
Later it came to be played by any number of young people, of either sex or both, with one person in "hell" at the start. The game was kept up until all had been captured and brought into this Inferno. In this form, under the name of "Lill-lill"—which was the signal cry of the person between the goals for beginning the sport—it was played by schoolboys in eastern Massachusetts fifty years ago.
Barley-break is often alluded to by the dramatists and lyrists of Shakespeare's day, and complete poems were written upon it by Suckling, Herrick, and others. Shakespeare does not mention it, though he has several references to prisoners' base; as in Cymbeline (v. 3. 20):—
"lads more like to run
The country base than to commit such slaughter."
To "bid a base," or "the base," was a common phrase for challenging to a game of this kind, and we often find it used figuratively; as in Venus and Adonis, 303, in the spirited description of the horse, which, like many other passages, shows Shakespeare's interest in the animal:—
"Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather;
To bid the wind a base he now prepares,
And whether he run or fly they know not whether,