‘Mr Staunton has evidently edited the works of the great dramatist in a very loose way. If this were not the case, we should have had somewhere in the bulky volume some notice of the chess life of Shakespeare. That he must have possessed a large knowledge of the game is evident from the hastiest perusal of his divine writings. He speaks in Winter’s Tale of an “unkind mate” – and what chessplayer, who has been suddenly and ruthlessly mated at a moment when victory seemed about to perch upon his banner, does not know what that means? In some Morphic Evans, when towards the close of the encounter, the Amazonian queen, the militant bishop and the gallant knight bear bravely down upon the unlucky opposing king, what better describes the terminating struggle than the “warlike mate” mention in Henry VI? In the same play we find an allusion to an “unknown mate” or a mate given by one skilled in the written theories of chess. When, in King Lear, the renowned playwright speaks of “one self-mate” he unfortunately neglected to tell us to what particular suicidal problem he refers. How naturally Antipholus of Syracuse, in the Comedy of Errors, apparently wrought up into an insane excitement by the disastrous result of a combat on the sable and silver field of chess, exclaims that he is “not mad, but mated”. In a pretty punning way, in another play, Elinor accuses Constance of wishing Arthur to be King, in order that she may “be a queen and check the world”. Leontes of Sicily found that the “loss of his most precious Queen” was a thing to be “lamented”, as many men have done in these later times. The expression of Suffolk, “My King! tush! that’s a wooden thing!” shows what the material of chessmen was in the elder period of English chess history. In King John we discover a sort of proverbial reference to a close and crowded game in the comparison, “To lie like pawns, locked up”. In The Taming of the Shrew Katharine says, “I pray you sir, is it your will,To make a stale of me amongst these mates?”And we might multiply quotations to prove how intimately the dramatist understood the nature of the game and its cultivators. We have had volumes on Shakespeare as a lawyer, and Shakespeare as a moralist. Pray, Mr Commentator Staunton, will you give us a tome on Shakespeare as a chessplayer?’Would like some input about this little article.
‘Mr Staunton has evidently edited the works of the great dramatist in a very loose way. If this were not the case, we should have had somewhere in the bulky volume some notice of the chess life of Shakespeare. That he must have possessed a large knowledge of the game is evident from the hastiest perusal of his divine writings. He speaks in Winter’s Tale of an “unkind mate” – and what chessplayer, who has been suddenly and ruthlessly mated at a moment when victory seemed about to perch upon his banner, does not know what that means? In some Morphic Evans, when towards the close of the encounter, the Amazonian queen, the militant bishop and the gallant knight bear bravely down upon the unlucky opposing king, what better describes the terminating struggle than the “warlike mate” mention in Henry VI? In the same play we find an allusion to an “unknown mate” or a mate given by one skilled in the written theories of chess. When, in King Lear, the renowned playwright speaks of “one self-mate” he unfortunately neglected to tell us to what particular suicidal problem he refers. How naturally Antipholus of Syracuse, in the Comedy of Errors, apparently wrought up into an insane excitement by the disastrous result of a combat on the sable and silver field of chess, exclaims that he is “not mad, but mated”. In a pretty punning way, in another play, Elinor accuses Constance of wishing Arthur to be King, in order that she may “be a queen and check the world”. Leontes of Sicily found that the “loss of his most precious Queen” was a thing to be “lamented”, as many men have done in these later times. The expression of Suffolk, “My King! tush! that’s a wooden thing!” shows what the material of chessmen was in the elder period of English chess history. In King John we discover a sort of proverbial reference to a close and crowded game in the comparison, “To lie like pawns, locked up”. In The Taming of the Shrew Katharine says,
“I pray you sir, is it your will,To make a stale of me amongst these mates?”
And we might multiply quotations to prove how intimately the dramatist understood the nature of the game and its cultivators. We have had volumes on Shakespeare as a lawyer, and Shakespeare as a moralist. Pray, Mr Commentator Staunton, will you give us a tome on Shakespeare as a chessplayer?’
Would like some input about this little article.
Thanks for the Chess Monthly article.
Don't forget Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess in the Tempest -
http://sbchess.sinfree.net/chessex1.html for the text and a 1871 painting of the scene by Lucy Madox Brown.
And don't forget all the chess quotes in Shakespeare.
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/shakes.htm
(okay, taken out of context)
'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war'...
a game anyone?
I can't help but notice the board is set up wrong in this picture:
http://sbchess.sinfree.net/Abriza.jpg
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