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,