When the Chief Justice says to Falstaff (_2 Henry IV._ i. 2. 255), "Fare you well; commend me to my cousin Westmoreland," the fat knight mutters, "If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle." The allusion is to a cruel sport which is said to have been common with Warwickshire boys. A toad was put on one end of a short board placed across a small log, and the other end was then struck with a bat, thus throwing the creature high in the air. This was called _filliping_ the toad. A _three-man beetle_ was a heavy rammer with three handles used in driving piles, requiring three men to wield it. Such a beetle would evidently be needed for filliping a weight like Falstaff's. 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:-- "Darest thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies." In _As You Like It_ (ii 1. 21) the banished Duke in the Forest of Arden laments the necessity of killing deer for food:-- "_Duke S._ Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confines with forked heads Have their round haunches gor'd.