n of
Elizabeth.[764] Fitzstephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II.,
notices it among the summer pastimes of the London youth; and the
repeated statutes, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century,
enforcing the use of the bow, generally ordered the leisure time upon
holidays to be passed in its exercise.[765] Shakespeare seems to have
been intimately acquainted with the numerous terms connected with
archery, many of which we find scattered throughout his plays. Thus, in
"Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 1), Maria uses the expression, "Wide o' the
bow hand," a term which signified a good deal to the left of the mark.

[764] See Drake's "Shakespeare and His Times," vol. ii. pp.
178-181.

[765] Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1870, vol. ii. p. 290.

The "clout" was the nail or pin of the target, and "from the passages,"
says Dyce,[766] "which I happen to recollect in our early writers, I
should say that the clout, or pin, stood in the centre of the inner
circle of the butts, which circle, being painted white, was called the
white; that, to 'hit the white' was a considerable feat, but that to
'hit or cleave the clout or pin' was a much greater one, though, no
doubt, the expressions were occasionally used to signify the same thing,
viz., to hit the mark." In "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 1), Costard says
of Boyet:

"Indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout;"

and, in "2 Henry IV." (iii. 2), Shallow says of old Double: "He would
have clapped i' the clout at twelve score"--that is, he would have hit
the clout at twelve-score yards. And "King Lear" (iv. 6) employs the
phrase "i' the clout, i' the clout: hewgh!"

[766] "Glossary," p. 84.

In "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4), where Mercutio relates how Romeo is "shot
thorough the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with
the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft," the metaphor, of course, is from
archery.

The term "loose" was the technical one for the discharging of an arrow,
and occurs in "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2).

According to Capell,[767] the words of Bottom, in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (i. 2), "hold, or cut bow-strings," were a proverbial phrase, and
alluded to archery. "When a party was made at butts, assurance of
meeting was given in the words of that phrase, the sense of the person
using them being that he would 'hold' or keep promise, or they might
'cut his bow-strings,' demolish him for an archer." Whether, adds Dyce,
"this