‘Strange Cunning’ in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess

RICHARD A. DAVIES & ALAN R. YOUNG 'Strange Cunning' in Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess Early criticism of Middleton's A Game at Chess (1624) has been largely concerned with elucidation of the topical satire,l and, although the literary aspects of the play have received more attention of late,2 the full implications of the work's irony have still to be worked out. Before attempting to analyze Middleton's complex use of irony in A Game at Chess, it is first necessary to discuss the nature of his central metaphor. When Middleton chose to make a chess game the structural and thematic basis of a play, he knew that he was using a metaphor that for his contemporaries would have rich and varied connotations. Arthur Saul in The Famous Game of Chesseplay (1614) refers to it as 'of all other games ... the worthiest that ever was devised' and claims that so excellent a game is 'much esteemed of by the Nobility and Gentry of this our Kingdome' (Sig. A 2V). James Rowbothum in the 1562 translation of Damiano's treatise on chess refers to it as a 'kingly pastime' (sig. A IV) and Charles Cotton in The Compleat Gamester (1674) calls it 'a Royal Game' (p 51) twice referring to it as 'this noble Game' (pp 66,79),3 while, long before, Elyot in The Governor (1531) had recommended it to members of the English ruling classes as a game which could sharpen the intellect and offer lessons in virtue and widsom.4 Chess was felt to be a particularly appropriate pastime for the nobility and royalty since playing the game was considered an exercise conducive to moral virtue and wisdom. Consequently when Middleton has Error in the Induction to A Game at Chess refer to the 'noblest game of all, a game at chess' (Induction, 1. 42), he merely states a familiar commonplace, though its ironic significance here, as we shall see, is basic to our understanding of the play. Chess was also commonly associated with Death, the great leveller. A stained-glass window in St Andrew's Church, Norwich, for example, shows Death calling upon a bishop. The window includes the motif of a chess board as an indication that a man's rank in life is of no consequence when life ends.5 The same idea appears in the earliest of the medieval chess moralities, the Innocent Morality (mid-13th century), and recurs throughout the middle ages.6 Later the same connotation can be found in the important collections of emblems published by William de la Perriere and Giles Corrozet in Paris in 1539 and 1540 respectively. Both writers set out to illustrate the proverb 'La fin nous faict tous egaulx.' La Perriere's UTQ, Volume XLV, Number 3, Spring 1976 'STRANGE CUNNING' 237 emblem depicts two men playing chess and in the poem which follows he states that, though the chess king may take precedence over his subjects during the game, at the end all are put into the bag 'sans difference.'7 Corrozet makes a similar point below his illustration, saying that, when the chess pieces are finally put into the bag, no attention is paid to order or degree. In Marston's Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600) one finds the same basic idea: And after death like Chesmen having stood In play for Bishops, some for Knights, and Pawnes, We all together shall be tumbled up, into one bagge ... [sig. B II] Both la Perriere and Corrozet, in making the analogy between chess and life, refer to 'Ie jeu de vie,' which appears to be the strongest connotation carried by the image of a chess game. We find the idea in the Innocent Morality and other medieval chess moralities.8 A good example can be found in Jacobus de Cessolis's popular Libro di Giuoco di Scacchi, which was published in an English translation by Caxton in 1476 and 1483. In Cessolis's treatise, as in so many chess moralities, the chess pieces are all presented as representative of the various ranks and vocations of human society. That the same idea was current in the seventeenth century can be seen from Richard...