The kids are back to school in their quest for higher knowledge, and it remains our challenge to keep up with them. To help you meet that challenge, Foxhunting Life offers up a little Shakespeare.
In Act IV, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus prepares to impress Hyppolita with his hounds. She, having hunted with Hercules, however, gives Theseus a hard act to follow!
Theseus
Go, one of you, find out the forester;
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go—
Dispatch, I say, and find the forester—
We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain’s top
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
Hyppolita
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear
With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem’d all one mutual cry; I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Theseus
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp’d like Thessalian bulls,
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheered with horn
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly;
Judge when you hear—
Posted September 9, 2011