Re: CHESS IN THE TEMPEST: The King Never Dies.
Spam Scone
> ________________________________________________________
>
> Greenblatt writes that James I, whose mother Mary Queen
> of Scots and father Lord Darnley had nasty deaths for royal
> reasons, had an incapacitating fear of being assassinated.
>
> Greenblatt asserts that the theme of kingly succession in
> Macbeth was the author's way of reassuring the necrophobic
> James I that 'the king never dies.'
>
> How the Stratford burgher found the time and opportunity
> in the midst of his numerous unscrupulous professional
> pursuits to psychoanalyse the king, Greenblatt doesn't say.
That's what writers do, Elizabeth.
> Greenblatt doesn't specifically address the chess scene
> in The Tempest but we can extrapolate from Greenblatt's
> remarks that the reference to the English law of succession--
> 'the king never dies,' symbolized in the chess game played
> by pairs of royal heirs---Miranda/Elizabeth Suart and
> Fernando/Frederick V was intended to reassure the
> skittish Stuart king who might or might not--he was a nitwit--
> perceive that in the marriage of his royal offspring 'the
> king never dies.'
The word "checkmate" allegedly derives from the Persian "shah-mat" -
often translated as "The king is dead", but "helpless" or "defeated"
is closer to the meaning. Phil will, I hope, pardon me for
volunteering my source, The Oxford Companion to Chess, p.75.
Regardless, it's a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly, to read all
this Freud into a stage direction.
> There's much more symbolism in chess game in The Tempest
> but 'immortality' is one element.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Elizabeth
Chess One
> > in The Tempest but we can extrapolate from Greenblatt's
> > remarks that the reference to the English law of succession--
> > 'the king never dies,' symbolized in the chess game played
> > by pairs of royal heirs---Miranda/Elizabeth Suart and
> > Fernando/Frederick V was intended to reassure the
> > skittish Stuart king who might or might not--he was a nitwit--
> > perceive that in the marriage of his royal offspring 'the
> > king never dies.'
>
> The word "checkmate" allegedly derives from the Persian "shah-mat" -
> often translated as "The king is dead", but "helpless" or "defeated"
> is closer to the meaning. Phil will, I hope, pardon me for
> volunteering my source, The Oxford Companion to Chess, p.75.
>
> Regardless, it's a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly, to read all
> this Freud into a stage direction.
I agree with Neil! These references alone are too reaching and general in
nature to contain much specificity*.
To step away from the specific text and look at chess in Elizabeth/early
Jacobean times:-
Chessic conditions of the time, (say 1560-1650): why there is not much
published, nor even rules unified for the game, is no particular mystery -
there were certainly texts, though not published ones! As available texts on
chess, the most prominent would be Tarsia's Lopez in 1584 and a later
re-edition of Damiano in 1606 (publ. in Bologna).
Rather than from a published chess text, a fellow called Polerio commented
in his notebooks on the difficulty of keeping chess play secret <g> among
'master' players of the time - however, he continues - the interesting
qualification is that only rich people could afford monograph editions of
new and viable ideas, in contradistinction to what was published
commercially which contained nothing new.
* But there are additional notes to this subject: I will make another post
containing a summary of Chess, Shakespeare and The Tempest, written by a
chess historian Richard Eales in 1985. These references also address some
particular problems with the mention of chess, problems drawn from earlier
references, even from Parzival (c.1200-1215) and which are of a literary
nature.
Cordially, Phil Innes
Spam Scone
> > > Greenblatt doesn't specifically address the chess scene
> > > in The Tempest but we can extrapolate from Greenblatt's
> > > remarks that the reference to the English law of succession--
> > > 'the king never dies,' symbolized in the chess game played
> > > by pairs of royal heirs---Miranda/Elizabeth Suart and
> > > Fernando/Frederick V was intended to reassure the
> > > skittish Stuart king who might or might not--he was a nitwit--
> > > perceive that in the marriage of his royal offspring 'the
> > > king never dies.'
> >
> > The word "checkmate" allegedly derives from the Persian "shah-mat" -
> > often translated as "The king is dead", but "helpless" or "defeated"
> > is closer to the meaning. Phil will, I hope, pardon me for
> > volunteering my source, The Oxford Companion to Chess, p.75.
> >
> > Regardless, it's a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly, to read all
> > this Freud into a stage direction.
>
> I agree with Neil! These references alone are too reaching and general in
> nature to contain much specificity*.
>
> To step away from the specific text and look at chess in Elizabeth/early
> Jacobean times:-
>
> Chessic conditions of the time, (say 1560-1650): why there is not much
> published, nor even rules unified for the game, is no particular mystery -
> there were certainly texts, though not published ones!
Published chess books:
Lucena -1490s
Vicent -1490s
Damiano -1512
Ruy Lopez -1561
Gianuto -1597
Salvio -1604
Greco -1656
Caxton published the first chess book in English.
Chess One
> > > this Freud into a stage direction.
> >
> > I agree with Neil! These references alone are too reaching and general
in
> > nature to contain much specificity*.
> >
> > To step away from the specific text and look at chess in Elizabeth/early
> > Jacobean times:-
> >
> > Chessic conditions of the time, (say 1560-1650): why there is not much
> > published, nor even rules unified for the game, is no particular
mystery -
> > there were certainly texts, though not published ones!
>
> Published chess books:
> Lucena -1490s
> Vicent -1490s
> Damiano -1512
> Ruy Lopez -1561
> Gianuto -1597
> Salvio -1604
> Greco -1656
> Caxton published the first chess book in English.
Sure, and some say it was Caxton's first publication.
But these 7 titles over 160 years is hardly prolific output, and much of
their content is common, and oriented to learners.
There are perhaps another dozen publications; Wilcox, eg, in 1581 wrote in
/A Game for Gamesters/ 'why, I pray you, should there not be as great
recreation in the Game of Chestes, the Philosopher's Game, and such like,
which in all men's judgements, are counted lawful, as in the Cards and
Dice?'
Here is an indication that the game is not very popular, or socially
acceptable.
Chess material for the serious player did exist, but was very scarce, and
was 'administered' by roving masters of the game who of course made much
more money by consulting on its secrets than by sale of mere paper. This
material was not the material printed in books of the time.
Phil Innes
Spam Scone
> > > > Regardless, it's a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly, to read all
> > > > this Freud into a stage direction.
> > >
> > > I agree with Neil! These references alone are too reaching and general
> in
> > > nature to contain much specificity*.
> > >
> > > To step away from the specific text and look at chess in Elizabeth/early
> > > Jacobean times:-
> > >
> > > Chessic conditions of the time, (say 1560-1650): why there is not much
> > > published, nor even rules unified for the game, is no particular
> mystery -
> > > there were certainly texts, though not published ones!
> >
> > Published chess books:
> > Lucena -1490s
> > Vicent -1490s
> > Damiano -1512
> > Ruy Lopez -1561
> > Gianuto -1597
> > Salvio -1604
> > Greco -1656
> > Caxton published the first chess book in English.
>
> Sure, and some say it was Caxton's first publication.
Citation?
> But these 7 titles over 160 years is hardly prolific output, and much of
> their content is common, and oriented to learners.
"Chessic conditions of the time, (say 1560-1650): why there is not much
published, nor even rules unified for the game, is no particular
mystery - there were certainly texts, though not published ones!" -Phil Innes.
Pardon me for addressing what you wrote.
> There are perhaps another dozen publications; Wilcox, eg, in 1581 wrote in
> /A Game for Gamesters/ 'why, I pray you, should there not be as great
> recreation in the Game of Chestes, the Philosopher's Game, and such like,
> which in all men's judgements, are counted lawful, as in the Cards and
> Dice?'
>
> Here is an indication that the game is not very popular, or socially
> acceptable.
At least in Wilcox's opinion. I'd rather not take the word of one writer.
> Chess material for the serious player did exist, but was very scarce, and
> was 'administered' by roving masters of the game who of course made much
> more money by consulting on its secrets than by sale of mere paper. This
> material was not the material printed in books of the time.
Agreed. Greco's work wasn't published until after his death.
Chess One
> > > Caxton published the first chess book in English.
> >
> > Sure, and some say it was Caxton's first publication.
>
> Citation?
Caxton actually took a very old version of a title, Liber de Moribus [a
collation, some 80 MSS parts have been found], from 2 seperate French
versions made between 1347 and 1350 by Jean Ferron and Jean de Vignay (1347
and 1350).
Before these were translated to English they received versions to: Italian,
Dutch, Swedish, Catalan, Spanish and 'the Scots Dialect'. <lol>
Caxton put the books into English following a version by Jean de Vernay and
published it twice, first at Bruges 1474/5, and at London in about 1483.
[This material above is from Eales.]
The US full Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 1902 edition/Akron [written mostly
1897-99!] has an entry on Caxton's publishing, and the editors could not
then determine if the chess title was the first he published, rather than a
bible, since presumably the bible had no exact provenance which definitively
placed it earlier than 1474.
> > But these 7 titles over 160 years is hardly prolific output, and much of
> > their content is common, and oriented to learners.
>
> "Chessic conditions of the time, (say 1560-1650): why there is not much
> published, nor even rules unified for the game, is no particular
> mystery - there were certainly texts, though not published ones!" -Phil
Innes.
>
> Pardon me for addressing what you wrote.
I am only saying that published material on chess was sometimnes several
hundred years old, and did not contain recent accounts of the /development/
of chess play - and additionally, these books substantially duplicated each
other.
> > There are perhaps another dozen publications; Wilcox, eg, in 1581 wrote
in
> > /A Game for Gamesters/ 'why, I pray you, should there not be as great
> > recreation in the Game of Chestes, the Philosopher's Game, and such
like,
> > which in all men's judgements, are counted lawful, as in the Cards and
> > Dice?'
> >
> > Here is an indication that the game is not very popular, or socially
> > acceptable.
>
> At least in Wilcox's opinion. I'd rather not take the word of one writer.
Yes. There is another section on specifically Elizabethan chess activity
which I offered to write Elizabeth, and will do so.
The immediate point I made to her was that literary records of chess had a
life of their own via the romantic writings of preceeding centuries, and was
not necessarily contiguous with developments in the playing of chess.
Therefore, her extraction which mentions chess is not necessarily wrong, but
needs some care in this instance.
> > Chess material for the serious player did exist, but was very scarce,
and
> > was 'administered' by roving masters of the game who of course made much
> > more money by consulting on its secrets than by sale of mere paper. This
> > material was not the material printed in books of the time.
>
> Agreed. Greco's work wasn't published until after his death.
I'll try to summarise Eales in another post, somewhat pre-Greco - but just
in passing he notes that Greco was born 1600 in Rome, but his earliest
surviving manuscripts are 1619/20, and
//show that he was then very dependent on Lopez and what he had been
able to pick up of unpublished works from the previous generation. They also
show that he was an uneducated man barely able to write grammatical
Italian//
He first went to London in 1623. He disappeared mysteriously and is believed
to have gone to the West Indies and uncertainly died there in 1630. Eales
adds:-
// Throughout his brief career Greco copied, and sold, his manuscripts
wherever he went, and they grew progressively longer, until they reached
their fullest surviving form in those specimens written at Paris in 1624 and
1625.//
Phil Innes
Chess One
Elizabethan chess continued [following notes on Greco, and some differences
between MSS and 'books'] after outlining a literary tradition of chess
references contrasted with those which might be of use to strong players of
the game.
Greco's influence on European chess was very great in the long term - as
Neil Brennan points out; his work was published after his death [in 1630?]
and from about 1650 when his works were published in a more favorable social
climate for the study of the game.
His earlier works [of about 1617-22] were of stark contrast to other more
discursive works of the period, and made scant concession to the weaker
player, and sometimes had no introduction at all, but proceeded to launch
into pages and pages of opening lines with only occasional explanatory
comments - and these in his own hand and in Italian. Only some 20 of these
manuscripts now survive.
----------
Any chess material which influenced British Elizabethan's would have been
otherwise, and not been of any technical worth as Greco, rather works on the
'genteel pursuit', as such, Horatio Gianutio's /Libro nel quale si tratta
della Maniera di giocar/ a Scacchi/, published in Turin in 1597, was typical
of the genre of 'polite' chess books, with a discussion of only a few
openings, and illustrated by games played at odds.
Tracing other sources of chess books is difficult, and almost entirely
limited to Spanish and Italian authors, and then only in their native
languages.
-----------
Below are significant figures in chess sketched from early and late C16th
Italy.
Damiano continued in the tradition of Lucena's /Arte de Axedrez/ [1496/1497]
a title never reprinted and with a small audience, with his own more
successful /Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi/, Rome 1512,
reprinted 1518 and 1524, plus 4 more undated editions, to total 8 editions
in 50 years. Estimate were that Lucena produced 200-300 books in toto, and
Damiano some 400-500 per edition.
Damiano's book was first translated to French in 1560 by Claude Gruget, and
to English in 1562, reprinted 1569, with dedications to Ioangeorgio
Caesarino, and containing 72 woodcuts, illustrating problems [chess
exercises], and with only 2 exceptions repeated Lucena.
Damiano's work thus held the field in the first half of the C16th, with
minor works also in existence by the mathematician Luca Pacioli [a friend of
Leonardo da Vinci], and Giordarno Cardano [1501-1576] the doctor and pseudo
scientist who developed the origins of probability theory out of his study
and practice of gambling. Neither title seems to have had wide circulation,
and hardly at all in Northern Europe.
The French and English editions of Damiano both actually left out all the
studies and problems, leaving a truncated 'courtesy book'. In Spain and
Italy there was growing dissatisfaction with the scope of Damiano and so we
enter chess development in the later half of the C16th, and activities
surrounding the influential chess player and priest, Ruy Lopez.
----------
Giulio Cesare Polerior was an author who followed his mentor Leonardo to
Rome, and wrote there. Earlier Leonardo had been defeated by Ruy Lopez [as
early as 1560?], and a tradition and a rivalry was established. The Italian
champion resolved to go to Spain where he discovered that 'there were very
famous players who were honoured and rewarded, not only by some of the
nobles, but by the king himself, who took considerable pleasure in the
game'.
In 1574 and 1575 they each made the journey to Madrid and each of them
defeated Lopez and was well rewarded by King Philip II, before going on to
Portugal, where they played before King Sebastian.
Carrera reproduces the text of a letter or recommendation dated August 22
1575, which Boi claimed had been issued to him by the King of Spain.
These two Italian champions, Boi and Leonardo, became relatively famous as
colourful characters, as reported by Salvio and Carrera; tales of rich
patrons and fabulous rewards, dangerous journeys, jealous rivals and heroic
deeds.
The result was something which could stand up to the most eventful of
renaissance memoirs, or the /nouvelle/ of contemporary fiction. Both players
were said to have been captured by pirates, but to have secured their
liberty by playing chess with the chiefs of their captors. Boi also
contrived to play chess against the Turks while riding on horseback,
regardless of the fact that no Turk would have played European chess at this
date, even on foot.
Leonardo for his part was credited with a secret love affair in Genoa, which
ended tragically in the lady's death. Finally, and inevitably, both men died
at the hands of poisoners, through jealousy of their gifts.
----------
Any knowledge of this sort of chess in England was likely entirely based on
these courtly and adventurous anecdotes and 'nouvelles' [anticipating Dumas!
however, 'the novel' was itself novel, and a departure from medieval
'romances'] rather than from specialists or experts at playing the game, any
such Spanish or Italian technical developments as there were.
And therefore I expect such mentions as the author makes to be of this
'nouvelle' type [also spelled novelle], rather than from particular
technical knowledge of play granted him by any early auteur of the game.
The Author of the Works was not alone in rendering chess to drama, and
Carrera (1573-1647) was a Sicilian historian and antiquarian rather than a
serious chess player. His Il Gioco degli Scacchi, published in Sicily in
1617 was a very large book, but like his other works it was a rambly
compendium; a product of methodological compilation, but containing little
in the way of original chessic ideas.
Whereas Salvio (c. 1570-1640) was a better player and who wrote much more
compactly - which he betrayed in 1612, by an excess of literary pretension,
and published La Scaccaide, 'a tragedy drawn from the invention of the game
of chess'.
---------
Any reader who suspects a deeper knowledge of the playing of chess than is
immediately evident in the Work might assume some knowledge of Italian
language therefore, or if some combination of its play and court history,
might well assume that the author had both Italian and Spanish language
sufficent to read whatever scant material was extant at the time.
All other chess material seems resolutely to have been literary references
from romance literature 1200-1600, possible incremented by simple
observations of players and followers of the time.
Phil Innes