[5] In a preceding chapter we are told that it was a rule for "all of a form to name who is the best of their form, and who is the best next him."
[Part IV.]
GAMES AND SPORTS
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: