False play: Shakespeare and chess

Shakespeare Quarterly

Volumn 55, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 50-70

  Poole, William ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61149155367     PISSN: 00373222     EISSN: 15383555     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/shq.2004.0055     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. r] are on chess)
2. r
3. Quotations from Tfce Tempest follow Tfce Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, prep. Charlton Hinman, 2d ed. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1996) and are cited by Hinman's through-line numbers. Quotations from other works of Shakespeare follow The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G, Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974)
4. See Frank Kermode, ed, The Tempest (London: Methuen, 1954), 122-23
5. And Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, eds., The Tempest (Walton-on-Thames, UK: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1999), 274
6. See Brian Loughrey and Neil Taylor, "Ferdinand and Miranda at Chess," Shakespeare Survey 35 (1982): 113-18
7. Margaret Jones-Davies,"FÉchiquier et Médée: Deux Points de Controverse dans The Tempest," Études Anglaises 46 (1993): 447-51, esp. 448; translations from this and all subsequent non-English-language sources are my own
8. See particularly Stephen Orgel's shrewd remarks in his 1987 Oxford edition (29-30, 197)
9. Gary Schmidgall, "The Discovery at Chess in The Tempest," English Language Notes 23.4 (1986): 11-16, esp. 12
10. See H.J.R. Murray, A History of Chess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 434-37
11. See The Oxford English Dictionary, prep. J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, 2d ed., 20 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), sv'"play," v., II, 10. c.
12. Helena M. Gamer, "The Earliest Evidence of Chess in Western Literature: The Einsiedeln Verses," Speculum 29 (1954): 734-50, esp. 741-42
13. r. This is a translation of Damiano da Odemira, Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de le partite (Rome, 1512)
14. Caxton, trans., The Game and Playe of the Chesse (London, 1474), §1.2
15. Catherine Van Buuren, éd., The Buke of the Chess (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1997), 11. 105-10 (from Asloan MS 16500, a miscellany dating c. 1515, in the National Library of Scotland)
16. v]
17. r]
18. [William Cartwright], The Game at Chesse. A metaphoricall discourse shelving the present estate of this Kingdome (London, 1643), sig. A21'. If this pamphlet uses chess for Parliamentarian propaganda, the opposite is true of Biochimo's The Royall Game of Chesse-Play, trans. Francis Beale (London, 1656), a Royalist publication featuring a lavish frontispiece of the martyrd king, thereby associated with the chess piece whose death signals the end of the game
19. v)
20. r (I am grateful to Dr. Gavin Alexander for the Dallington identification). The complete text of the Cinquième Livre was published in 1564; Rabelais's authorship is sometimes questioned
21. v]
22. See N. W. Bawcutt, "New Light on Middleton's Knowledge of Chess," Notes & Queries 34 (1987): 301-2
23. r]
24. v]
25. v
26. Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 329-46, esp. 338 (11. 618-20)
27. Chaucer, Duchess, 338 (11. 626, 633, 637, 643, 644, 650, and 653)
28. See also The Tale of Beryn, ed. F.J. Furnivall and W. G. Stone (London: Oxford UP, 1909), 50ff (11. 1609ff)
29. On Chaucer see Margaret Connolly, "Chaucer and Chess," Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 40-44. No one, though, has offered an entirely convincing explanation of Chaucer's puzzling "ferses twelve" (Book of the Duchess, 339 [1. 723])
30. Damian, quoted here from Murray, who reproduces the Latin text: "venatus, aucupium, alearum insuper furie, uel scachorum" (414)
31. C. W. Grocock, ed. and trans., The Ruodlieh (Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci; Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris and Phillips, 1985), 58-61, esp. 58
32. The English Works of Wyclif, Hitherto Unprinted, ed. F. D. Matthew (London: Early English Text Society, 1880), 168; Murray supplies other examples (441n)
33. v
34. And Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621], ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York: New York Review Books, 2001), 2:82
35. James Balmford, A Short and Plaine Dialogve Concerning the vnlawfulnes of playing at Cards or Tables, or any other game consisting in chance (London, 1593)
36. John Philpot, A Prospective-Glasse for Gamesters (London, 1646)
37. r
38. r-v. Wilson's "the Philosophers game" is not a sobriquet for chess but by this point the name for rhythomachy. See Lever, which is a loose translation of Claude de Bossière, Nobilissimus et Antiquissimus Ludus Pythagoreus, qui Rythmomachia Nominatur (Paris, 1556)
39. r]
40. v]. For an overview of the various attitudes to lots in this period, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971), 118-24
41. r
42. Baldessar Castillo, The Courtier of Count Baldessar Castillo, trans. Thomas Hoby (London, 1588) [Italian/French/English trilingual edition], Appendix, "A briefe rehearsall of the chiefe conditions and qualities required in a Courtier,"
43. William Fulke, hoe est, Astrologorum ludus (London, 1571)
44. Sive, Ludus Geometricus (London, 1578). Fulke is better known for his anti-Catholic writings
45. Thomas Browne, Religio Medic in Sir Thomas Browne: The Major Works, ed. C. A. Patricks (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1977), 57-161, esp. 86
46. r
47. r]
48. See Juan Huarte, Examen de los Ingenios para las Scienzias (Baeza, 1575)
49. v]
50. v]
51. v
52. r]. Beating one's opponent with rather than on the board is common in the tradition; the most spectacular example is afforded by Prince Louis, future Louis VI of France, to Henry Beauclerk of England, son of William the Conqueror: "Henry wan so much at Chesse of Louis, the Kings eldest son, as hee growing into Choller, called him the sonne of a Bastard, and threw the Chesse in his face
53. r]). Henry Watson's much-reprinted Valentine and Orson tells how Valentine rides to a court after battle where King Brandiffer and King Lucar are playing chess
54. For a general catalogue of bad behavior over chess, see Michael rox and Richard James, The Complete Chess Addict (London: Faber, 1987), 151-61
55. r. 73 Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde in The Riverside Chaucer, 471-585, esp. 499 (l. 2:754)
56. See Loughrey and Taylor, "Middletons Chess Strategies in Women Beware Women" Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 24 (1984): 342-54
57. T. H. Howard-Hill, "The Unique Eye-Witness Report of Middletons A Game at Chess" Review of English Studies 42 (1991): 168-78
58. And A. R. Braunmuller,"'To the Globe I Rowed': John Holies sees A Game at Chess" ELR 20 (1990): 340-56
59. r
60. r
61. r]