BOYISH GAMES
Young William may have found life at the Henley Street house and at the Grammar School rather dull, but there was no lack of diversion and recreation out of doors. Household comforts and attractions were meagre enough in those days, but holidays were frequent, and rural sports and pastimes for young and old were many and varied. We may be sure that Shakespeare enjoyed these to the full. His writings abound in allusions to them which were doubtless reminiscences of his own boyhood.
Many of the children's games to which he refers are familiar to small folk now, especially in the rural districts. Hide-and-seek, for example—also known as "hoop-and-hide" and "harry-racket"—is probably the play that Hamlet had in mind when he exclaimed (iv. 2. 33), "Hide, fox, and after." Blind-man's-buff is also alluded to by Hamlet when, chiding his mother for preferring his uncle to his father, he asks:
"What devil was 't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind."
A dictionary of Shakespeare's time couples this name for the pastime with the one that has survived: "The Hoodwinke play, or hoodmanblinde, in some places called the blindmanbuf." Hamlet's question is evidently suggested by the practice of making the "blind man" guess whom he has caught—as Greek and Roman boys did when they played the game.
In the grave-digging scene (v. 1. 100) Hamlet asks: "Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggats with them?" This refers to the throwing of loggats or loggets—small logs, or sticks of wood much like "Indian clubs"—at a stake, the player coming nearest to it being the winner.
In a poem of 1611 we find loggats in a list of games with sundry others that are still in vogue:—
"To wrastle, play at stooleball, or to runne,
To pich the Barre, or to shoote off a Gunne,
To play at Loggets, Nine-holes, or Ten-pinnes;
To try it out at Foot-ball by the shinnes."
HIDE-AND-SEEK
Stool-ball, commonly played by girls and women, sometimes in company with boys or men, is to this day a village pastime in some parts of England. It is essentially a lighter kind of cricket, but is more ancient than that game.
Pitching the bar was an athletic exercise still common in Scotland. Scott alludes to it in The Lady of the Lake, iv. 559:—
"Now, if thou strik'st her but one blow,
I'll pitch thee from the cliff as far
As ever peasant pitch'd a bar!"
And again, in the account of the sports at Stirling Castle, v. 647:—
"Their arms the brawny yeomen bare
To hurl the massive bar in air."
A poet of the 16th century tells us that to throw "the stone, the bar, or the plummet" is a commendable exercise for kings and princes; and, according to the old chroniclers, it was a favorite diversion with Henry VIII. after his accession to the throne.
Nine-holes, a game in which nine holes were made in a board or in the ground at which small balls were rolled, is among the rustic sports enumerated by Drayton in the Poly-Olbion.
There were many ball-games besides stool-ball in the days of Elizabeth, from the simple hand-ball, which Homer represents the princess of Corcyra as playing with her maidens, to more complicated exercises, among which we can recognize the germ of the later "rounders," out of which our Yankee base-ball has been developed.
The term base, as denoting a starting-point or goal, occurs in the name of other than ball-games, especially in "prisoners' base"—sometimes "prisoners' bars," or "prison-bars"—which was popular long before Shakespeare was born. It is played by two sides, who occupy opposite bases, or "homes." Any player running out from his base is chased by the opposite party, and if caught is made a prisoner. It belongs to a class of old games, one of the most popular of which was called "barley-break."
Originally, this was played by three couples, male and female; one couple was stationed in "hell" or the space between the two goals, and tried to catch the others as they ran across. It is thus described by Sir Philip Sidney in the Arcadia:—
"Then couples three be straight allotted there;
They of both ends the middle two do fly;
The two that in mid-space, Hell called, were
Must strive, with waiting foot and watching eye,
To catch of them, and them to Hell to bear,
That they, as well as they, may Hell supply."
Later it came to be played by any number of young people, of either sex or both, with one person in "hell" at the start. The game was kept up until all had been captured and brought into this Inferno. In this form, under the name of "Lill-lill"—which was the signal cry of the person between the goals for beginning the sport—it was played by schoolboys in eastern Massachusetts fifty years ago.
Barley-break is often alluded to by the dramatists and lyrists of Shakespeare's day, and complete poems were written upon it by Suckling, Herrick, and others. Shakespeare does not mention it, though he has several references to prisoners' base; as in Cymbeline (v. 3. 20):—
"lads more like to run
The country base than to commit such slaughter."
To "bid a base," or "the base," was a common phrase for challenging to a game of this kind, and we often find it used figuratively; as in Venus and Adonis, 303, in the spirited description of the horse, which, like many other passages, shows Shakespeare's interest in the animal:—
"Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather;
To bid the wind a base he now prepares,
And whether he run or fly they know not whether,
For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,
Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings."
In the Two Gentlemen of Verona (i. 2. 97), Lucetta says to Julia, with a pun upon the phrase: "Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus."
Drayton, in the Poly-Olbion, includes this game with others that have been described above: "At hood-wink, barley-brake, at tick [that is, tag], or prison-base"; and Spenser in the Shepherd's Calendar (October) refers to it among rustic pastimes: "In rymes, in ridles, and in bydding base."
Foot-ball is mentioned by Shakespeare in the Comedy of Errors (ii. 1. 82), where Dromio of Ephesus says to his mistress Adriana, who has been chiding him:—
"Am I so round with you as you with me,
That like a foot-ball you do spurn me thus?
You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither;
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather."
In Lear (i. 4. 95), Oswald says to Kent, "I'll not be struck, my lord!" and Kent replies, "Nor tripped neither, you base foot-ball player."
The game was popular with the common people of England at least as early as the reign of Edward III., for in 1349 it was prohibited by royal edict—not, apparently, from any particular objection to the game in itself, but because it was believed to interfere with the popular interest in archery.
The sport was, however, a rough one then as now. Alexander Barclay, who died in 1552, in one of his Eclogues, tells how
"The sturdie plowman, lustie, strong, and bold,
Overcometh the winter with driving the foote-ball,
Forgetting labour and many a grievous fall."
Edmund Waller, in the next century, writes:—
"As when a sort [company] of lusty shepherds try
Their force at foot-ball; care of victory
Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast,
That their encounter seems too rough for jest."
King James I., in his Basilicon—a set of rules for the nurture and conduct of Henry, Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent to the throne—says:—
"Certainly bodily exercises and games are very commendable, as well for banishing of idleness, the mother of all vice, as for making the body able and durable for travell, which is very necessarie for a king. But from this court I debarre all rough and violent exercises; as the foote-ball, meeter for lameing than making able the users thereof; likewise such tumbling tricks as only serve for comedians and balladines [theatrical dancers] to win their bread with; but the exercises that I would have you to use, although but moderately, not making a craft of them, are, running, leaping, wrestling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the caitch, or tenise, archery, palle-malle, and such like other fair and pleasant field-games."
Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1660, mentions foot-ball among the "common recreations of country folks," as distinguished from the "disports of greater men," or those higher in rank.
In Romeo and Juliet (i. 4. 41) Mercutio says to Romeo, "If thou art Dun, we'll draw thee from the mire"—that is, of love. This is an allusion to a rural game which seems to have been a favorite for several centuries, and to which scores of references, literal and figurative, are to be found in writers of all classes.
In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (16936) we read:—
"Ther gan our hoste for to jape and play,
And sayde, 'sires, what? Dun is in the myre;'"
Bishop Butler, more than three hundred years later, writes: "they mean to leave reformation, like Dun in the mire."
Gifford, in his notes on Ben Jonson's Masque of Christmas, tells us (in 1816) that he himself had "often played at this game." He describes it substantially as follows: A log of wood called "Dun the cart-horse" is brought into the middle of the room, and some one cries, "Dun is stuck in the mire." Two of the players try, with or without ropes, to drag it out, but, pretending to be unable to do so, call for help. Others come forward, and make awkward attempts to draw out the log, which they manage, if possible, to drop upon a companion's toes, causing "much honest mirth."
It is remarkable that so simple a diversion could have been popular with generation after generation of British young folk, and that they should apparently recall it with so much interest in later years. Verily, our forefathers in the old country were easily amused.
In Antony and Cleopatra (iii. 13. 91) we find an allusion to another game equally simple—if, indeed, it be not too simple to be called a game. Antony says:—
"Authority melts from me; of late, when I cried 'Ho!'
Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth
And cry 'Your will?'"
A "muss" was merely a scramble for small coins or other things thrown down to be taken by those who could seize them. Ben Jonson, in The Magnetic Lady (iv. 1), says:—
"The moneys rattle not, nor are they thrown
To make a muss yet 'mong the gamesome suitors";
In the same author's Bartholomew Fair (iv. 1), when the costard-monger's basket of pears is overturned, Cokes begins to scramble for them, crying, "Ods so! a muss, a muss, a muss, a muss!"
Dryden, in the prologue to Widow Ranter, says:—
"Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down
But there's a muss of more than half the town."
This is the origin of the modern colloquial or slang use of muss.
"Handy-dandy" was a childish play in which something was shaken between the two hands, and a guess made as to the hand in which it remained. It is alluded to in Lear (iv. 6. 157): "See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?" The game is very ancient, being mentioned by Aristotle, Plato, and other Greek writers.
In the Midsummer-Night's Dream (ii. 2. 98) Titania, lamenting the results of the quarrel with Oberon, says:—
"The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable."
The "nine men's morris" was a Warwickshire game which is still kept up among the rural population of the county. It is played on three squares, one within another, with lines uniting the angles and the middle of the sides; the opponents having each nine "men," which are moved somewhat as in draughts, or checkers.
In the country the squares were often cut in the green turf, the sides of the outer one being sometimes three or four yards long. In towns, they were chalked upon the pavement. It was also played indoors upon a board.
A woodcut of 1520 represents two monkeys engaged at it. It was sometimes called "nine men's merrils," from merelles, the old French name for the "men," or counters, with which it was played.
"MORRIS" BOARD
The "quaint mazes" in Titania's speech, according to the best English critics, refer to a game known as "running the figure of eight."
Space would fail to describe other boyish games of the time, even those mentioned in the writings of Shakespeare; and I need not say anything of leap-frog, trundling-hoop, battledore and shuttle-cock, seesaw—sometimes called "riding the wild mare"—tops, and many other pastimes in perennial favor with boys.
Mulcaster, the head-master of Merchant-Taylors School in London (see [page 106] above), in a book printed in 1581, enumerates as suitable exercises for boys: "indoors, dancing, wrestling, fencing, the top and scourge [whip-top]; outdoor, walking, running, leaping, swimming, riding, hunting, shooting, and playing at the ball—hand-ball, tennis, foot-ball, arm-ball." William doubtless had experience in most of these, swimming in the Avon among them.