Playing Cards and Popular Culture in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg

Gaming the Stage

“…The implications INTRODUCTION of this difference are especially evident when we think about a matter like cheating-so often a source of conflict in the dramas, as it is in games. 45 If friendship, courtship, and marriage are approached predominantly as affective bonds, then cheating is an ethical affront and a sign of betrayal of the bond. But if these relationships are thought about as games of information, cheating constitutes a manipulation of an inherent imbalance in knowledge between parties.…”

“…Even when chess was accepted by ecclesiastical canons, tables was still considered unlawful until the end of the fifteenth century, when its players were finally given some reprieve throughout much of Europe on the condition that they did not play for big stakes and that they were of a high enough status; apprentices and university students were still prohibited from tables. 45 In England, a series of laws about gameplay evinced a similar consensus that games were acceptable under particular circumstances of play. In 1541-2, when England's Henry VIII issued his famous statute requiring the king's subjects aged 7-60 to practice longbow, he also laid out several key policies regarding sitting pastimes.…”

“…42 Nor do I aim to offer further evidence for the play's anti-Catholicism. 43 For though Protestant Reformers used playing cards to spread their religious ideas-as is attested by a 1603 German deck of educational cards that teach biblical history 44 and by Luther's own use of the card game as spiritual metaphor on at least three occasions 45 -many Protestant preachers also criticized card play, and, as discussed in Chapter 1, royalist writers with more conservative religious views were just as quick to use cards as witty metaphors for their cause. 46 As well, Catholics were as eager as Protestants to find pedagogical value in card play.…”

“…Rainham Down was an open countryside around the town of Rainham, a place defined only in relation to other places: it was on the road from Rochester to Faversham. 45 But this plot fails because Master Cheiny and his men happen to come upon Arden and escort him out of harm's way. Rainham Down may well be a "place wellfitting" murder, but place is not enough; if Arden is like a blot or homo vagans, then the lucky arrival of Lord Cheiny and his "men" and their capacity to cover Arden as he wanders protect this blot from capture.…”

“…44 Prior readers have failed to see how chess does political work in the play because, by approaching chess primarily as a symbol, they oversim-plify the game and our understanding of its ideological effects. 45 For instance, chess (with its two opposing sides, grid lines, and set rules for movement) has been viewed as a game about absolute distinctions and clear regulations, which contrasts with politics-a "game" played best by those who work around rules and who do not blindly follow authorities. 46 Yet early modern chess was anything but rigid in practice, partly because it was a betting game, and increasingly so in this period.…”