“But, leaving cardes, lets go to dice a while,
To passage, treitrippe, hazarde, or mumchance.”
In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5). Sir Toby Belch asks: “Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy bond-slave?” It may be remembered, too, that in “The Scornful Lady” of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii. 1), the Chaplain complains that the Butler had broken his head, and being asked the reason, says, for
“Reproving him at tra-trip, sir, for swearing.”
Some are of opinion that it resembled the game of hopscotch, or Scotch-hop; but this, says Nares,[821] “seems to rest merely upon unauthorized conjecture.”
Troll-my-dame. The game of Troll-madam, still familiar as Bagatelle, was borrowed from the French (Trou-madame). One of its names was Pigeon-holes, because played on a board, at one end of which were a number of arches, like pigeon-holes, into which small balls had to be bowled. In “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 2), it is mentioned by Autolycus, who, in answer to the Clown, says that the manner of fellow that robbed him was one that he had “known to go about with troll-my-dames.” Cotgrave declares it as “the game called Trunkes, or the Hole.”
Trump. This was probably the triumfo of the Italians, and the triomphe of the French—being perhaps of equal antiquity in England with primero. At the latter end of the sixteenth century it was very common among the inferior classes. There is, no doubt, a particular allusion to this game in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 14), where Antony says:
“the queen—
Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine;
Which, whilst it was mine, had annex’d unto’t
A million more, now lost—she, Eros, has
Pack’d cards with Cæsar, and false-play’d my glory
Unto an enemy’s triumph.”
The poet meant to say, that Cleopatra, by collusion, played the great game they were engaged in falsely, so as to sacrifice Antony’s fame to that of his enemy. There is an equivoque between trump and triumph. The game in question bore a very strong resemblance to our modern whist—the only points of dissimilarity being that more or less than four persons might play at trump; that all the cards were not dealt out; and that the dealer had the privilege of discarding some, and taking others in from the stock. In Eliot’s “Fruits for the French,” 1593, it is called “a very common ale-house game in England.”
Wrestling. Of the many allusions that are given by Shakespeare to this pastime, we may quote the phrase “to catch on the hip,” made use of by Shylock in the “Merchant of Venice” (i. 3), who, speaking of Antonio, says,
“If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him”