In the country the squares were often cut in the green turf, the sides of the outer one being sometimes three or four yards long. In towns, they were chalked upon the pavement. It was also played indoors upon a board.
A woodcut of 1520 represents two monkeys engaged at it. It was sometimes called "nine men's merrils," from merelles, the old French name for the "men," or counters, with which it was played.
"MORRIS" BOARD
The "quaint mazes" in Titania's speech, according to the best English critics, refer to a game known as "running the figure of eight."
Space would fail to describe other boyish games of the time, even those mentioned in the writings of Shakespeare; and I need not say anything of leap-frog, trundling-hoop, battledore and shuttle-cock, seesaw—sometimes called "riding the wild mare"—tops, and many other pastimes in perennial favor with boys.
Mulcaster, the head-master of Merchant-Taylors School in London (see [page 106] above), in a book printed in 1581, enumerates as suitable exercises for boys: "indoors, dancing, wrestling, fencing, the top and scourge [whip-top]; outdoor, walking, running, leaping, swimming, riding, hunting, shooting, and playing at the ball—hand-ball, tennis, foot-ball, arm-ball." William doubtless had experience in most of these, swimming in the Avon among them.
SWIMMING AND FISHING.
The spirited description of Ferdinand swimming (The Tempest, ii. 1. 113–121) could have been written only by one well skilled in the art:—