One of the most referenced sports in the plays of William Shakespeare is that of falconry. From hoodwinked to wrapped around your little finger, many of the colloquialisms we use to describe human relationships today can be attributed to Shakespeare, who learned them from the sport of falconry.

Falconry is the sport that takes large birds of prey, like falcons or hawks, and catches food which is kept on the table. It was not only a popular sport among nobles during Shakespeare’s lifetime, but it was also a strategic way to hunt and make sure food was provided for families that ate what the hawk would catch.

Falconry is still practiced today and our guide into the famous Elizabethan sport is the Join Director of the British Archives of Falconry, David Horobin.

David has had a lifelong passion for falconry and it’s cultural heritage.His back ground in literature and history helped him complete an undergraduate dissertation on the symbolism of falconry in late and medieval English literature, published as Falconry in Literature. Since then he has researched and published numerous titles on Shakespeare, Simon Latham, and contributed to or edited articles on many aspects of falconry and it’s English national heritage.

He joins us today to help us get to know falconry as a sport and exactly how the bard knew so much about it when he wrote about the sport in his plays.