Pageants and school-feastes, beares and puppet-plaies.[168:B]
"Every palace," continues Burton, "every city almost, hath his peculiar walks, cloysters, terraces, groves, theatres, pageants, games, and several recreations[168:C];" and we purpose, in this chapter, giving some account of the leading articles thus enumerated, but more particularly of the stage, as being peculiarly connected with the design and texture of our work.
As the principal object, therefore, of the present discussion, will be the amusements usually appropriated to the capital; those which it has in common with the country shall be first enumerated, though in a more superficial way.
Of these, card-playing seems to have been as universal in the days of Elizabeth, as in modern times, and carried on, too, with the same ruinous consequences to property and morals; for though Stowe tells us, when commemorating the customs of London, that "from All-Hallows eve to the day following Candlemas-day, there was, among other sports, playing at cards for counters, nails, and points, in every house, more for pastime than for gain," yet we learn from contemporary satirists, from Gosson, Stubbes, and Northbrooke[169:A], that all ranks, and especially the upper classes, were incurably addicted to gaming in the pursuit of this amusement, which they considered equally as seductive and pernicious as dice.
The games at cards peculiar to this period, and now obsolete, are, 1. Primero, supposed to be the most ancient game of cards in England. It was very fashionable in the age of Shakspeare, who represents Henry the Eighth playing "at primero with the duke of Suffolk[169:B];" and Falstaff exclaiming in the Merry Wives of Windsor, "I never prospered since I foreswore myself at primero."[169:C]
The mode of playing this curious game is thus described by Mr. Strutt, from Mr. Barrington's papers upon card-playing, in the eighth volume of the Archæologia:—"Each player had four cards dealt to him one by one, the seven was the highest card in point of number that he could avail himself of, which counted for twenty-one, the six counted for sixteen, the five for fifteen, and the ace for the same, but the two, the three, and the four, for their respective points only. The knave of hearts was commonly fixed upon for the quinola, which the
player might make what card or suit he thought proper; if the cards were of different suits, the highest number won the primero, if they were all of one colour he that held them won the flush."[170:A]
2. Trump, nearly coeval in point of antiquity with primero, and introduced in Gammer Gurton's Needle, a comedy, first acted in 1561, where Dame Chat, addressing Diccon, says,—
"We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fyre;"[170:B]
and we learn from Decker that, in 1612, it was much in vogue:—"To speake," he remarks, "of all the sleights used by card-players in all sorts of games would but weary you that are to read, and bee but a thanklesse and unpleasing labour for me to set them down. Omitting, therefore the deceipts practised (even in the fayrest and most civill companies) at Primero, Saint Maw, Trump, and such like games, I will, &c."[170:C]