Tming of the Srew

# There are very few horses worth noting in the Shakespearean canon. There are plenty of horses, of course -- the plays are littered with them. But not many are singled out for attention. One recalls Richard III's memorably unavailable horse (V.iv.7), Richard II's much-mourned "roan Barbary" (V.v.78-94) -- Bolingbroke helped himself to Richard's favourite horse as well as his crown -- and the gift to Timon of "Four milk-white horses, trapp'd in silver" (I.ii.179-80). There is also Adonis' "trampling courser" which is rather more interested in Venus' "breeding jennet" than Adonis is in Venus. This is a splendid beast:

Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:

Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back. (295-300)

This horse does indeed have everything, which is more than can be said for his master. There are only two other horses worthy of mention. One is the Dauphin's "beast for Perseus" in Henry V. The Dauphin does not descend to anything so base as mere description; his horse can be expressed only through the hyperbole of "pure air and fire . . . the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him"; and "When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it" (III.vii.15.25). Alas, this most significant of horses, this "prince of palfreys," fit for "a sovereign's sovereign to ride on," worthy recipient of the sonnets his master addresses to him, is a mere palfrey: "a saddle-horse, as distinguished from a war-horse, esp. a small saddle-horse for ladies" (OED). So much for the Dauphin's prowess in battle. Much space is given to this fatuous dialogue in the French camp, a necessary (patriotic) reassurance for the Elizabethan censor, possibly concerned