[401] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. viii. p. 421
The practice is again alluded to in "Julius Cæsar" (iii. 1):
"here thy hunters stand, Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe."
Old Turbervile gives us the details of this custom: "Our order is, that the prince, or chief, if so please them, do alight, and take assay of the deer, with a sharp knife, the which is done in this manner--the deer being laid upon his back, the prince, chief, or such as they do appoint, comes to it, and the chief huntsman, kneeling if it be a prince, doth hold the deer by the forefoot, whilst the prince, or chief, do cut a slit drawn along the brisket of the deer."
In "Antony and Cleopatra" (v. 2), where Cæsar, speaking of Cleopatra's death, says:
"bravest at the last, She levell'd at our purposes, and, being royal, Took her own way"--
there is possibly an allusion to the _hart royal_, which had the privilege of roaming unmolested, and of taking its own way to its lair.
Shooting with the cross-bow at deer was an amusement of great ladies. Buildings with flat roofs, called stands, partly concealed by bushes, were erected in the parks for the purpose. Hence the following dialogue in "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 1):
"_Princess._ Then forester, my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in?
_Forester._ Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice; A stand where you may make the fairest shoot."
Among the hunting terms to which Shakespeare refers may be mentioned the following:
"To draw" meant to trace the steps of the game, as in "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 2):
"A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well."
The term "to run counter" was to mistake the course of the game, or to turn and pursue the backward trail.
The "recheat" denoted certain notes sounded on the horn, properly and more usually employed to recall the dogs from a wrong scent. It is used in "Much Ado About Nothing" (i. 1): "I will have a recheat winded in my forehead." We may compare Drayton's "Polyolbion" (xiii.):
"Recheating with his horn, which then the hunter cheers."
The phrase "to recover the wind of me," used by Hamlet (iii. 2), is borrowed from hunting, and means to get the animal pursued to run with the wind, that it may not scent the toil or its pursuers. Again, when Falstaff, in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), speaks of "fat rascals," he alludes to the phrase of the forest--"rascall," says Puttenham, "being properly the hunting term given to a young deer leane and out of season."