Alarum and cry within, 'Fly, fly, fly,' Jul. Cæs. 55; Alarum afar off, as at a seafight, Ant. 410.
Out of the 72 cases in the stage directions, 70 mean a call to battle by drums. There are only two exceptions, where the Alarum is identified with trumpets, H. 6. B. 23, 92, and Troil. 45, 112, 117.
Skeat gives the original of the term as 'all'arme' (Ital.) a war cry of the time of the Crusades. For the form of the word, he compares arum (arm) and koren (corn).
'Alarum' in the text.
The word is used 13 times in the text of Shakespeare; and in 6 of these it refers to drums, as in the stage directions H. 6. A. 12, 18, 14, 99, 21, 42; R. 3, 11, 7; Cor. 22, 76; H. 5. 46, 35.
But in two of the remaining examples, alarum is distinctly said to be trumpets, H. 6. B. 23, 93 and 52, 3; while other more extended meanings are found—e.g., in Venus and Adonis, l. 700, where it refers to the noise of the dogs hunting the hare; in Macbeth 23, 75 and 55, 51, where alarum is used of a Bell; also in Lucrece, 433, of Tarquin's 'drumming heart' 'giving the hot charge,' and Othello 23, 27, of Desdemona's voice, which Iago says is 'an alarum to love.'
