Games and Gaming in Early Modern Drama: Stakes and Hazards (Early Modern Literature in History)

"Stakes and Hazards brilliantly uncovers the role of games and gaming in early modern drama. Examining the implications of dice, cards, tables, and chess, and adopting a taxonomic and contextualized approach, Baird identifies the significances of the gamester figure, wonderfully demonstrating how cultures of play illuminate the period's projections and perils." - -Professor Mark Thornton Burnett, Queen's University Belfast, UK. This book is a close taxonomic study of the pivotal role of games in early modern drama. The presence of the game motif has often been noticed, but this study, the most comprehensive of its kind, shows how games operate in more complex ways than simple metaphor and can be syntheses of emblem and dramatic device. Drawing on seventeenth-century treatises, including Francis Willughby's Book of Games, which only became available in print in 2003, and divided into chapters on Dice, Cards, Tables (Backgammon), and Chess, the book brings back into focus the symbolism and divinatory origins of games. The work of more than ten dramatists is analysed, from the Shakespeare and Middleton canon to rarer plays such as The Spanish Curate, The Two Angry Women of Abington and The Cittie Gallant. Games and theatre share common ground in terms of performance, deceit, plotting, risk and chance, and the early modern playhouse provided apt conditions for vicarious play. From the romantic chase to the financial gamble, and in legal contest and war, the twenty-first century is still engaging the game. With its extensive appendices, the book will appeal to readers interested in period games and those teaching or studying early modern drama, including theatre producers, and awareness of the vocabulary of period games will allow further references to be understood in non-dramatic texts Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 Abbreviations and Conventions 9 Capitalisation 9 Spelling 9 List of Figures 10 Chapter 1: Introduction 12 References 27 Chapter 2: Games in Early Modern Culture 31 Games and Money 33 Games and Their Symbolism 38 Games and the Court 48 Games and Drama: An Overview 54 A Metaphoric Classification of Games 64 References 79 Chapter 3: DICE: The Roll/Role of Chance and Luck 85 Cheating Law in Michaelmas Term 87 Throwing Dubblets and The Wise-woman of Hogsdon 98 ‘Blind Can Judge no Colours’ in The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda 105 References 120 Chapter 4: CARDS: Face Cards, Rules and Secrecy 125 Trump ‘Amongst the Vulgar’ in Gammer Gurton’s Needle 127 Three of a Kind in Greene’s Tu Quoque and Gleek 129 The House of Cards in A Woman Killed with Kindness 135 ‘Rivalship’ and ‘Friendship’ in Your Five Gallants 155 References 165 Chapter 5: TABLES: Backgammon and Race Games between the Sexes 170 Boards and Bodies—The Roaring Girl and Blurt, Master Constable 171 The Twenty-four Hours of The Two Angry Women of Abington 179 ‘Fortune My Foe’ in Arden of Faversham 192 References 207 Chapter 6: CHESS: War, Harmony, Sex and Politics 212 ‘Foul Play’ and ‘Fair Play’ in The Tempest 214 ‘Vengeance Met Vengeance in a Set Match’—Women Beware Women 220 ‘Can ye Play at Chesse Sir?’—The Spanish Curate 232 ‘Here’s a Strange Game Indeed’—A Game at Chess 236 References 252 Chapter 7: Conclusion 257 References 265 Appendix A: Inset Games 268 Appendix B: Game References by Dramatist (those with ‘inset’ games in bold) 273 Index 279