If we should compare a young lady nowadays to a falcon or a hawk, she would hardly take it as a compliment; and this very simile has been criticised by a writer who evidently did not understand it. He says: "We would rather be excused from wedding a lady of that ravenous class. This simile, we fear, was predictive of sharp nails after marriage." He forgets, or does not know, that this was written when, as we have learned, the art of hawking was in vogue. The trained falcons were as gentle and docile as any dove. They were domestic pets, and high-born ladies especially took delight in them. Shakespeare in his 91st Sonnet says:-- "Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force, Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill, Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse. * * * * * Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost, Of more delight than hawks or horses be, And, having thee, of all men's pride I boast." And in _Much Ado_ (iii. 4. 54) when Beatrice sighs, Margaret asks: "For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?" Commentators on Shakespeare, like the critic quoted above, have sometimes erred in their interpretation of a passage because they did not understand the fact or usage upon which a figure or allusion was founded. THEATRICAL ENTERTAINMENTS. When the players came to town I suspect that no Stratford boy was more delighted than William. John Shakespeare, like his fellows in the town council, seems to have been a lover of the drama. When he was bailiff in 1569 he granted licenses for performances of the Queen's and the Earl of Worcester's companies. [Illustration: ITINERANT PLAYERS IN A COUNTRY HALL] The Queen's company received nine shillings and the Earl's twelvepence for their first entertainments, to which the public were admitted free. They doubtless gave others afterwards for which an entrance fee was charged. Did John Shakespeare take the five-year-old William to see them act? He may have done so, for we know that in the city of Gloucester (only thirty miles from Stratford) a man took his little boy, born in the same year with Shakespeare, to a free dramatic performance similarly provided by the corporation. In his autobiography, written in his old age, the person tells how he went to the show with his father and stood between his legs as he sat upon one of the benches. The play was one of the "moralities" then in vogue, and the good man's quaint description of it is worth quoting as giving an idea of those curious dramas:--