Bo-peep. This nursery amusement, which consisted in peeping from behind something, and crying “Bo!” is referred to by the Fool in “King Lear” (i. 4): “That such a king should play bo-peep.” In Sherwood’s Dictionary it is defined, “Jeu d’enfant; ou (plustost) des nourrices aux petits enfans; se cachans le visage et puis se monstrant.” Minsheu’s derivation of bo-peep, from the noise which chickens make when they come out of the shell, is, says Douce,[778] more whimsical than just.
Bowls. Frequent allusions occur to this game, which seems to have been a popular pastime in olden times. The small ball, now called the jack, at which the players aim, was sometimes termed the “mistress.” In “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 2), Pandarus says: “So, so; rub[779] on, and kiss the mistress.” A bowl that kisses the jack, or mistress, is in the most advantageous position; hence “to kiss the jack” served to denote a state of great advantage. Thus, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 1), Cloten exclaims, “Was there ever man had such luck! when I kissed the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away! I had a hundred pound on’t.” There is another allusion to this game, according to Staunton, in “King John” (ii. 1): “on the outward eye of fickle France”—the aperture on one side which contains the bias or weight that inclines the bowl in running from a direct course, being sometimes called the eye.
A further reference to this game occurs in the following dialogue in “Richard II.” (iii. 4):
“Queen. What sport shall we devise here in this garden,
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
1 Lady. Madam, we’ll play at bowls.
Queen.’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs,
And that my fortune runs against the bias”
—the bias, as stated above, being a weight inserted in one side of a bowl, in order to give it a particular inclination in bowling. “To run against the bias,” therefore, became a proverb. Thus, to quote another instance, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 5) Petruchio says:
“Well, forward, forward! thus the bowl should run,
And not unluckily against the bias.”
And in “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 5), the term “bias-cheek” is used to denote a cheek swelling out like the bias of a bowl.[780]
Cards. Some of the old terms connected with card-playing are curious, a few of which are alluded to by Shakespeare. Thus, in “King Lear” (v. 1), Edmund says: