Chasing Geese: on the Trail of Fourteen British-Published Copies of the Royal Pastime of Cupid, Or Entertaining Game of the Snake∗
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Chasing Geese: on the trail of fourteen British-published copies of The Royal Pastime of Cupid, or Entertaining Game of the Snake∗ Eddie Duggan SFHEA, University of Suffolk Introduction The Royal Pastime of Cupid, or Entertaining Game of the Snake is a variant of The Game of the Goose, also known as The Royal Game of the Goose. The Game of the Goose was a popular game across Europe from the early seventeenth century until the nineteenth century. It is widely accepted as the basic model of the simple board game in which players throw dice to race their single piece around the board.1 Like The Game of the Goose, The Royal Pastime of Cupid is a race-game played on a spiral track of 63 spaces or “squares”. It is a game of pure chance and no strategy or skill is involved in moving the pieces around the board. The aim of the game is to be the first to land on square 63. Players pay a stake into a pool or “kitty” at the start of the game; some hazard squares require the player to pay an additional stake into the pool. Some squares are favourable and advance the player’s piece, while others present hazards, such as making a player miss a turn or two, or move to a particular square, or start again, or remain on the hazard square ∗The author is grateful to the editor and the reviewer for very helpful and detailed referee’s notes which have been of great benefit to the present paper. 1See, for example: Bell, R. C. (1979) Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Revised edition: two volumes bound as one. New York. Dover. vol. i, pp. 14–16; Parlett, D. (1999) The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford University Press. pp. 88 and 95–98; Goodfellow, C. (2008) How We Played: Games From Childhood Past. Stroud. The History Press. pp. 44–45; Seville, A. (2016) The Royal Game of the Goose: 400 Years of Printed Board Games. New York. The Grolier Club. pp. 11–12 and passim. Board Game Studies Journal 13, pp. 111–158 DOI 10.2478/bgs-2019-0006 112 Chasing Geese until another player’s piece lands on the same square. For example, “He that throws upon 5 where the Bridge is, must pay passage, that is, lay down as much as he staked at the first, and so he must go forward to rest onthe Chair at 12, till all the rest have played once about” as stated in Rule 4 of Laurie and Whittle’s 1794 edition of The Royal Pastime of Cupid, while a player of the Game of the Goose landing on the bridge space (square 6 in Goose) must similarly “pay a stake for his passage over the bridge and go to Number 12”, according to the rules printed on the edition of The Royal and Entertaining Game of The Goose published by James Lumsden and Son c. 1810.2 While the two games are similar, there are also several significant dif- ferences between them. Some of the main differences are visual: the spiral track in the Cupid game is represented as a coiled serpent and the favourable squares are inhabited with a Cupid figure rather than a goose. The track in the Cupid game turns clockwise, while the Goose track spirals anticlock- wise. The two games also have a different orientation: the Cupid board has a landscape layout while the earliest Goose designs were set in a portrait format. The rules of the Goose game, typically shown as twelve numbered paragraphs, are conventionally placed in the centre of the game board whilst the twelve rules of the Cupid game are arranged around the outside of the track. Another key difference between Goose games and Cupid games is thatin The Game of the Goose the number nine is significant, while in The Royal Pastime of Cupid the number seven is significant. That is to say, in Goose games, a goose appears on squares 5, 9, 14, 18, 23, 27, 32, 36, 41, 45, 50, 54 and 59. These are in two sequences, one starting on square 5, the other on square 9. In Cupid games, a Cupid appears in a single sequence on every seventh square: 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49 and 56.3 The goose or Cupid square 2The Royal Pastime of Cupid, or Entertaining Game of the Snake. Pub- lished 12 May 1794 by Laurie & Whittle, No. 53 Fleet Street, London. John Johnson Collection: Games Folder (5). Digital Bodleian. Available online: <https://allegro.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/johnson/006839>. The Royal and Entertaining Game of the Goose. James Lumsden and Son, Glasgow. c. 1800–1820. British Museum 1893,0331.131. Available online: <http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_ details.aspx?objectId=1428434&partId=1&searchText=game+snake&page=1>. 3A Cupid figure also appears in space 18, which is a hazard square. Here,Cupid appears as a statue on a dais, perhaps in a temple and, according to Rule 5, the player who lands here must pay a stake into the kitty (“pay beveridge” in the British editions) and miss two turns. The term “pay beveridge” or “pay beverage” refers to a custom by which someone wearing new clothes for the first time can be inveigled into paying a fine “either in money, drink or kisses” Wright. J., ed. (1898) The English Dialect Board Game Studies Journal 13, pp. 111–158 DOI 10.2478/bgs-2019-0006 Eddie Duggan 113 is favourable in that a player whose turn ends with his piece landing on a such a square advances his piece by the value of the throw that led to him landing on the square.4 These early printed board games are ephemeral objects which, unless carefully stored, are likely to be lost or discarded. Indeed, one of the oldest board games in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Museum of Childhood collection is a hand-drawn goose game, dating from about 1800, preserved for posterity perhaps by dint of an earlier owner’s inclination to mount the sheet on a wooden board.5 Other early printed board games might be preserved in a collector’s portfolio of prints, as is the case with two of the earliest known examples to be considered below (c. 1690–1700): one in the George Clarke Print Collection, the other in a collection known as The Bute Broadsides. However, the majority of early printed games have long been discarded or lost, doubtless due to the fragility and ephemeral nature of a sheet of paper, or because they have simply been worn out from use. Fourteen distinct examples of The Royal Pastime of Cupid issued by British-based printers or publishers are known to the author (See Table 1). This paper, based on presentations to the annual colloquium of the Interna- tional Board Game Studies Association at the University of Copenhagen in May 2017 and at the Benaki Museum Annex, Athens, in April 2018, offers a survey of these (all extant bar one, the location of which is now unknown), with suggestions for revised publication dates for several examples.6 While Dictionary being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years. London. Henry Frowde. vol. 1. p. 255. Available online <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.13022/page/n279>. Bailey offers “To pay BEVERAGE [phrase] to give a treat of wine, drink & co. upon wearing a new suit of cloths” [sic]. See Bailey, N. (1730) Dictionarium Britannicum or a more Compleat Universal Etymological English Dictionary. Printed for T. Cox at the Lamb under the Royal Exchange. London. However, the corresponding text related to landing on space 18 in both the Veuve Petit and Pieter de Jode editions, discussed in the Historical Background section of the present paper, makes no mention of clothing, but refers to paying feudal duty & giving loyalty and homage to Cupid; the Visscher edition makes a similar statement paying Cupid his “Leen-recht”. 4Unless the piece is travelling backwards on the track following an “overthrow” at the winning square, in which case the piece won’t advance toward space 63, but will move further away from the finish. 5See The Game of the Goose (1790–1810) Victorian and Albert Museum MISC.292- 1981. Available online: <https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O25991/the-game-of-the- goose-board-game-unknown/>. 6Duggan, E. (2017) Chasing Geese: The Royal Pastime of Cupid or entertain- ing Game of the Snake. Presentation to XX Annual International Board Game Studies Colloquium, University of Copenhagen. 17–20 May 2017. Available online: <https://www.academia.edu/32979744/Chasing_Geese_The_Royal_Pastime_of_ Board Game Studies Journal 13, pp. 111–158 DOI 10.2478/bgs-2019-0006 114 Chasing Geese the focus of this paper is on British-published editions, it should be stated The Royal Pastime of Cupid appears to be of French origin. The earliest known French edition, Le Jeu Royal de Cupidon, autrement appelléle passe- temps d’Amour (Fig. 1) was published in Paris, ca. 1640 (but probably printed from an earlier block), while a Spanish language edition, El Juego Real de Cupido, Otramente Llamado el Passa Tiempo de Amor, with a sim- ilar design and iconography, was published in Antwerp, c. 1620 (Fig. 2). The central design in both these editions shows three couples in an enclosed garden. Another edition, with a different design, which is copied in the ear- liest British-published editions, has the title Het Nieuw Slange Spel, anders genaemt Koninclycke Tytkorting van Cupio (Fig.