Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift 9789048544837

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Games and War in Early Modern English Literature

Cultures of Play, 1300‒1700 Cultures of Play, 1300‒1700 provides a forum for investigating the full scope of medieval and early modern play, from toys and games to dramatic performances, from etiquette manuals and literary texts to bulls and tractates, from jousting to duels, and from education to early scientific investigation. Inspired by the foundational work of Johan Huizinga as well as later contributions by Roger Caillois, Eugen Fink, and Bernard Suits, this series publishes monographs and essay collections that address the ludic aspects of premodern life. The accent of this series falls on cultural practices that have thus far eluded traditional disciplinary models. Our goal is to make legible modes of thought and action that until recently seemed untraceable, thereby shaping the growing scholarly discourses on playfulness both past and present. Series editors: Bret Rothstein (Chair), Indiana University, Bloomington; Alessandro Arcangeli, Università di Verona; Christina Normore, Northwestern University

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature From Shakespeare to Swift

Edited by Holly Faith Nelson and Jim Daems

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Valentin de Boulogne, Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (c. 1615-20). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group. Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 801 0 e-isbn 978 90 4854 483 7 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463728010 nur 685 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

In memory of Bryn Frederick Hutchinson (1998-2016), who embraced the joy of play and discovery in all aspects of the game of life and lived life to the fullest with pleasure and wit. Mors nos non disiungit.

Contents Acknowledgements 9 The Interplay of Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: An Introduction 11 Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson

1. ‘Can this cock-pit hold the vasty fields of France?’Cock-Fighting and the Representation of War in Shakespeare’s Henry V

23

2. Game Over: Play and War in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

39

Louise Fang

Sean Lawrence

3. Thomas Morton’s Maypole: Revels, War Games, and Transatlantic Conflict 55 Jim Daems

4. Milton’s Epic Games: War and Recreation in Paradise Lost

73

5. Ciphers and Gaming for Pleasure and War

95

David Currell

Katherine Ellison

6. Virtual Reality, Role Play, and World-Building in Margaret Cavendish’s Literary War Games

117

7. Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance

139

Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker

Karol Cooper

8. War and Games in Swift’s Battle of the Books and Gulliver’s Travels

161

9. Time-Servers, Turncoats, and the Hostile Reprint: Considering the Conflict of a Paper War

179

Lori A. Davis Perry

Jeffrey Galbraith

Index 201

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Erika Gaffney for initially inspiring in us a desire to write about games and play in the early modern period and for joining us on the journey to theorize the ways in which the discourses and practices of games and war intersect in early modern literary and, more broadly, cultural artefacts. We wish to thank the contributors to this volume, all of whom were willing to colour outside the lines in (re)defining and broadening the concepts of ‘war games’ or ‘games of war’ in order to explore the many ways that the terms and concepts of war and play inform and resonate with each other in the early modern imagination. We would like to recognize the library staff at the Norma Marion Alloway Library, particularly Ken Pearson and Sharon Vose, and the Wellington and Madeleine Spence Memorial Library, particularly Susan Oxford, whose unmatched expertise on securing material from other libraries played a critical role in the production of this volume, and Qinqin Zhang, who provided helpful guidance on the connections between early modern and contemporary gaming practices. We are very grateful to Dr. Sharon Alker, who has discussed with us over the years the literary works that emerged out of war in early modern Britain and was a collaborator on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant that helped to support the research out of which this volume emerged. Finally, Holly Faith Nelson would like to thank Russell, Caleb, and Faith Nelson, and Clyde Henderson, for their enduring love, support, and sacrifice. This volume is dedicated to the memory of a remarkable young man, the musician, filmmaker, bird-lover, and loyal friend Bryn Frederick Hutchinson. H.F.N. and J.D.



The Interplay of Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: An Introduction Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson

The association of warfare and games has a long history. The phrase ‘war game’ was coined in 1728 by A.B. Granville to refer to a military simulation, with Granville describing ‘the “war-game” table, on which the present Emperor, when Grand-duke, used to play’.1 However, war games or the games of war, including military reenactments, date back to ancient times, as Helen Lovatt explains in Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the ‘Thebaid’. While Lovatt insightfully studies ‘the relationship between games and war’ in one classical text, there are very few studies of the intersection of these two concepts and the discourses that surround them in the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.2 Though there are a wide spectrum of books and articles on war and literature in general in early modern England as well as a number of studies on the mediation of medieval and early modern warfare in contemporary video games, this collection of essays carves out a new conceptual path by examining the ways in which the language of games and warfare inform and illuminate each other in the early modern cultural imagination. The essays herein explore how warfare and games are mapped onto each other in aesthetically and ideologically significant ways in early modern poetry, drama, prose fiction, and prose non-fiction. In so doing, their authors address the terms ‘war games’ or ‘games of war’ in the broadest possible sense, which frees them to uncover the more complex and abstract, rather than purely concrete, interplay of war and games in the imaginations of early modern writers. In theorizing the relations between war and games in works from Shakespeare’s

1 A.B. Granville, St. Petersburgh: A Journey of Travels to and from that Capital, 2 vols. (London: H. Colburn, 1828), II.75, quoted in the OED, online ed., sv. ‘war-game’ (n). 2 Helen Lovatt, Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the ‘Thebaid’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 257.

Nelson, H.F. and J. Daems (eds.), Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789463728010_intro

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Henry V through Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the contributors to this volume also draw on recent historical and theoretical work on war games. In the past decade, two monographs and a collection of essays have been published that are useful in establishing the nature and significance of the interplay of games and warfare in early modern literature: Philipp von Hilgers’s War Games: A History of War on Paper (2008; 2012 English translation), Martin van Creveld’s Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (2013), and Pat Harrigan and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum’s 59-chapter Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming (2016). All three volumes attempt to rework the definition of war games and to consider how the practice of war-gaming evolved over time and across various media. Von Hilgers tends to emphasize the continuity between wars and games, explaining in his study of war games in a German context that the ‘game turns out to be a site from which’ related ‘military and mathematical practices first arise, even before concrete [military] applications are able to justify them’.3 He is inclined to locate war games and war on a single spectrum. Though also exploring the inextricable intersection of games and war in his historical survey of war games, and recognizing some overlap between war games and war, van Creveld underscores the ‘clear separation between war games and “real warfare”’ since the former are characterized, to his mind, by their artificiality and he designates encounters within them as, by definition, ‘unreal’.4 For van Creveld, war games are marked by their intention of limiting or preventing the very violence that defines ‘real’ war. However, despite these differences in emphases, both historians view strategy as the critical element of war games, with von Hilgers highlighting the development of strategy games we play on boards or through various video-gaming platforms from the medieval period through the twentieth century, and van Creveld exploring the role of strategy—defined as the ‘interplay between’ opponents, whether individuals or teams, that requires ‘trying to detect, predict, interfere with, and obstruct’ the strategy of the adversary—in the war games of hunter-gatherers through video gamers.5 While von Hilgers and van Creveld provide useful starting points in mapping out the interplay of wars and games in both material and theoretical terms, Pat Harrigan and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum’s collection is especially relevant to our current collection of essays because of the liberality of its definition and treatment of the war game, partly due to the fact that the contributors to their collection engage in research in a wide range of disciplines or work in a range of related professions or fields. This multidimensional approach to the subject allows for ‘a richer and 3 Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), xi. 4 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4. 5 Van Creveld, Wargames, 3.

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more granular set of perspectives on war-gaming’s past, present, and future’, as the volume’s editors argue.6 However, it also allows for a broadening of the definition of war game, including, for example, the notion that literature is a vehicle or vessel of war-gaming, an atypical claim, but perhaps explicable given that Kirschenbaum is himself an English scholar, whereas the historians von Hilgers and van Creveld are inclined to conceive of war games in more familiar terms. All the essays in this current collection engage to some extent with aspects of war-gaming as theorized in the monographs of van Creveld or von Hilgers, given the important contribution of these works to the field, and all share Harrigan and Kirschenbaum’s openness to the role played by literature in mediating or constituting war games. In drawing on these works, however, our contributors do not necessarily affirm them in the whole. This is the case, for example, with the problematic analysis of sex and gender in relation to war games put forth by van Creveld. Early on in his monograph, van Creveld writes, ‘in all that concerns wargames women are a separate species’, later dedicating an entire chapter to issuing what might be viewed as questionable claims about the relation of biological sex, gender, and war games. These include the assertion that, while males enjoy ‘playing games that involve fighting’, women prefer games that allow them ‘to socialize, interact with one another, and reach some kind of desirable outcome’.7 The evidence offered up in support of such claims consists of a patchwork of biological, psychological, and social theories along with anecdotes from friends or colleagues; yet van Creveld is comfortable concluding that males and females appear ‘to come from different planets’ in terms of their response to war games.8 The essay in this volume on Margaret Cavendish offers up an alternative way of reading the relation of gender and games of war. The many intersections of games and war discussed in what follows would, in some cases, be far too wide and, in others, far too specific from van Creveld’s perspective to be considered war games. He accuses nearly ‘all modern workers in the field’ of misdefining war games because they either apply ‘the term’ too liberally ‘to any kind of mock adversarial engagement without regard to whether what is simulated is war, or politics, or economics, or whatever’ or too strictly to ‘the kind of games played by opposing individuals or teams in some kind of room’.9 Like most ‘modern workers in the field’, our contributors also operate within an understanding of war games or games of war in both very broad and very specific terms—though not necessarily deviating from van Creveld’s definition in the same 6 Pat Harrigan and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, editors’ introduction to Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), xvi. 7 Van Creveld, Wargames, 2, 285. 8 Van Creveld, Wargames, 320. 9 Van Creveld, Wargames, 5-6.

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manner he describes in the passage quoted above. They explore the significant intersections between games and war that occur in both obvious and unpredictable ways in early modern works, though the figuration of romantic love as a type of merry combat is sidestepped or troubled since this trope has been discussed at length in studies of, for example, courtship and conduct literature.10 That the contributors find in early modern English literature the subtle and varied interweaving of the discourses of games and warfare is unsurprising when we consider that during our period of study the British actively participated in, and / or were deeply invested in the outcome of the Thirty Years’ War, two Anglo-Spanish Wars, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Irish Confederate Wars, three AngloDutch Wars, the Monmouth Rebellion, the Nine Years’ War, the Jacobite risings, and the War of the Spanish Succession. The early modern cultural imagination and practices, therefore, were deeply rooted in all things military. In fact, some of the essays in this volume highlight that simulated war games cannot be so tidily separated from politics, economics, or other socio-cultural issues. The Accession Day Tilts during Elizabeth I’s reign, for example, were both a ritualized war game (a single combat of champions) and a political event in which, through the revival of chivalric tourneys, courtiers could jockey for status and influence. They were, as Roy Strong argues, ‘a marriage of the arts in the service of Elizabethan statecraft’.11 This combination, Strong concludes, allowed the monarch ‘to surround the actualities of present-day politics with the sanctions of historical myth and legend’.12 The Accession Day Tilts no doubt influenced the literary representation of jousts in the work of two of the greatest Elizabethan poets—Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene (1596) and Sir Philip Sidney in The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1590). But we should also note the critical nature of those representations by these poets and the advocacy of a more militant stance than Elizabeth I pursued on the Continent, particularly in Spenser’s jousting and Christian knights. This expansionist, nationalist vision is also present in William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599), albeit without the militant 10 Some recent analyses of love, war, and games that go back to courtly love include Tison Pugh, ‘Christian Revelation and the Cruel Game of Courtly Love in Troilus and Criseyde’, The Chaucer Review 39, no. 4 (2005): 379-401; Cynthia N. Nazarian, Love’s Wounds: Violence and the Politics of Poetry in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016); and Chapter 2 (‘Playing with the Devil: The Pleasures and Dangers of Sex and Play’) of Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). For an extended reading of the influence of military technology on chivalric romance, see Sheila J. Nayar, ‘Arms or the Man I: Gunpowder Technology and the Early Modern Romance’, Studies in Philology 114, no. 3 (2017): 517-560, and ‘Arms or the Man II: Epic, Romance, and Ordinance in Seventeenth-Century England’, Studies in Philology 115, no. 2 (2018): 343-395. 11 Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 129. 12 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 161.

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Protestant vision of Spenser and Sidney. As Louise Fang argues here in ‘“Can this cock-pit hold the vasty fields of France?” Cock-Fighting and the Representation of War in Shakespeare’s Henry V’, the Chorus draws on the ‘sport’ of cock-fighting to represent Henry’s war with France. In contemporary sources, fighting cocks were often represented as ‘knights’ fighting to the death in single, joust-like combat. Henry V, then, makes use of the analogy to capture the violent spectacle of warfare which the players cannot simulate effectively in the ‘wooden O’ of the Globe Theatre. Fang concludes that the dramatic cock-fighting analogy works to unify two popular pastimes that brought together significant cross-sections of the population in order to construct a vision of national unity. With the accession of James VI to the English throne, however, the court gradually eliminated jousting, as the new king fancied himself ‘Rex Pacificus:’ James VI / I’s ‘distaste for conflict, signified almost immediately by overtures of peace to Spain upon taking the throne, prompted those who preferred militaristic solutions to look to Henry as a more apt champion of their political program’.13 In this scenario, ‘Henry served as the natural heir to Eliza, an aggressive, consciously militant, Protestant leader who would restore England to the glorious days of his godmother’.14 This sentiment finds literary representation in Ben Jonson’s Prince Henry’s Barriers (1610), a text consisting of speeches made by the Lady of the Lake and Merlin at a ritualized combat on foot in Whitehall in which Henry took part. With Henry’s untimely death in 1612, James VI / I’s desire to remain out of Continental conflicts largely predominated, even under considerable pressure as the Thirty Years’ War broke out in the latter years of his reign. But this did not end literary mixes of gaming and warfare. James VI / I’s negotiations to marry Charles, Prince of Wales to the Spanish Infanta aroused widespread concern, and this found a popular outlet in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624), which ran at the Globe Theatre for nine performances before it was suppressed because of its political content. In the play, the White King represents James VI / I and the Black King represents Philip IV of Spain—the other pieces represent various British and Spanish court and ecclesiastical figures—and ‘Checque-Mate [is] given to vertues Foes’, the Spanish.15 Not surprisingly, during the civil wars, gaming and warfare play a prominent role in the literature of the period. Chess figuratively represents the differences between Charles I and Parliament in William Cartwright’s The Game at Chesse. A Metaphorical discourse shewing the present estate of this Kingdome (1642). The tract asserts that chess was invented by ‘Xerxes, King of Persia, many yeeres before 13 Richard Badenhausen, ‘Disarming the Infant Warrior: Prince Henry, King James and the Chivalric Revival’, Papers on Language and Literature 31, no. 1 (1995): 21. 14 Badenhausen, ‘Disarming the Infant Warrior’, 22. 15 Thomas Middleton, Prologue, A Game at Chesse ([London], 1625), sig. A2.

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the nativity of our Saviour, to avoid idlenesse among his souldiers’.16 Charles I and his ecclesiastical and Cavalier supporters are represented by the black pieces, which signify ‘justly and aptly his Maiesties [Army], which both produced so many blacke and bloody effects in this Kingdome’.17 The tract specifically mentions the early battle at Edgehill as a ‘game’.18 While Middleton’s use of chess as a political analogy turns on the strategy of courtly and international intrigue, Cartwright’s turns on bloody conflict. However, a rule-bound board game, unlike cock-fighting, attempts to impose some limits on the ‘bloody effects’ of the king’s Cavaliers and counsellors. As both van Creveld and von Hilgers note, war games are designed to do precisely this. Yet, as Sean Lawrence demonstrates in ‘Game Over: Play and War in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida’ in this volume, rules and boundaries cannot always effectively contain the potential for violent excess in war. Focusing on Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1602), Lawrence argues that the play’s violence gradually spirals out of control, unhinged from its original justification, leading to the horrible spectacle of Troy’s destruction, which the audience, but not the characters, know will happen. Cavaliers, however, would also make, at times, surprising analogies between games and war. Richard Lovelace’s ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Warres’ (1649), for example, draws on chivalric notions of warfare that allows for ‘a distancing of the real horrors of battles like Marston Moor and Naseby. In place of the shattered limbs, the gaping gashes, the festering bullet-wounds, pillaging of the dead, and communal graves Lovelace offers a version of war as tourney’.19 But the poem also more subtly represents war as a game. The speaker’s argument for constancy to Lucasta—based on performing first, his higher duty to his monarch as a precondition of his love for her—is distanced further from the realities of war in the poem’s second stanza: True; a new Mistresse now I chase, The first Foe in the Field; And with a stronger Faith imbrace A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.20 16 William Cartwright, The Game at Chesse. A Metaphorical discourse shewing the present estate of this Kingdome (London: Printed for Thomas Johnson, 1642). 17 Cartwright, The Game at Chesse, 4. 18 Cartwright, The Game at Chesse, 7. 19 Thomas Corns, ‘Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling and Richard Lovelace’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, ed. Thomas Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 214. 20 Richard Lovelace, ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Warres’, in Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. (London: Printed by Tho. Harper, 1649), 3.

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The poem evokes gaming here in another clever way. The word ‘mistress’ is meant in a conventional sense, as the beloved of the male speaker, but also denotes a higher deified figure. This elevates the mistress to a position somewhat analogous to the higher political ideal that the Cavalier serves as a ‘pure light’, and also works to sublimate the speaker’s love beyond the purely physical. Another meaning is, however, implied that equates this chivalric battle to gaming: a ‘mistress’ is another name for the jack in the game of bowls.21 Again, the motivation for the analogies to both chivalric notions of warfare and bowling is a claim that stresses rules and boundaries on violence. While Cartwright’s and Lovelace’s gaming analogies aim to accomplish this end, those of the Puritan John Milton in Paradise Lost (1667/1674), as David Currell argues here in ‘Milton’s Epic Games: War and Recreation in Paradise Lost’, are more complex. They reveal both an awareness of the self-destructive nature of civil war and the possibility of a regenerative aftermath. Milton recognizes the principle of war-gaming in the cosmos itself, leading him to imagine that through civil destruction comes the possibility for civil reconstruction. Milton’s awareness is, therefore, more nuanced in its gaming analogies than either Cartwright’s or Lovelace’s, but it is still dependent, as Currell notes, upon God as an ‘umpire’ imposing boundaries in the warring cosmos, while guaranteeing the possibility of civil renewal. Milton’s wider corpus provides a means by which to illuminate the approaches taken to war and games by the remaining contributors to this collection. In ‘Of Education’ (1644), for example, Milton uses military discipline and war games in an argument that asserts, ‘The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright’.22 The notion is, in some respects, an extension of Spenser’s use of war games in The Fairie Queene to represent militant Protestantism’s temporal and spiritual battles. Milton’s curriculum in ‘Of Education’ works towards fashioning the ‘true warfaring Christian’ of Areopagitica (1644) who ‘sallies out’ to confront his ‘adversary’.23 This, in turn, motivates Milton’s personification of Truth as a warrior that ‘grapple[s] with Falsehood’ in single combat, as well as the militant author who rallies reason strategically in the ‘wars of Truth’ fought out in what Sharon Achinstein argues is an emergent public sphere.24

21 Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘mistress’ (n.IV.13.) 22 John Milton, ‘On Education’, in Major Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 227. 23 John Milton, Areopagitica, in John Milton: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 247-248. 24 Milton, Areopagitica, 269; Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

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Francis Barker notes that what Milton values ‘in the practice of knowledge […] is not so much the knowledge itself but its deployment’.25 Several contributors to this collection consider the ‘deployment’ of knowledge in relation to war and games in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century print culture, which rapidly expanded between the reigns of James VI / I and George I. Jim Daems argues in ‘Thomas Morton’s Maypole: Revels, War Games, and Transatlantic Conflict’ that the conflict between Ma-re Mount and the Plymouth Plantation can best be understood as an extension of the paper battles resulting from Puritan reactions to James VI / I’s Declaration of Sports and Charles I’s 1633 reissue. In ‘War and Games in The Battle of the Books and Gulliver’s Travels’, Lori A. Davis Perry theorizes that Jonathan Swift satirizes war-gaming in order to demonstrate the limitations of the transferal of the knowledge gained by gaming into the real world of either warfare or politics. Yet, from at least the time that press censorship lapsed in the mid-seventeenth century, the public sphere was the site of textual battles. Some of these battles operated within strictly literary contexts, such as the conflict continued by Flecknoe’s successor Shadwell in John Dryden’s ‘MacFlecknoe’ (1678), who vows ‘[t]hat he till death true dullness would maintain, / And in his father’s right and realm’s defence / Ne’er to have peace with wit nor truce with sense’,26 through Alexander Pope’s Dunciad in Four Books (1742). Other paper wars were played out with much higher real-life stakes. In ‘Time-Servers, Turncoats, and the Hostile Reprint: Considering the Conflict of a Paper War’, Jeffrey Galbraith focuses on some key characteristics of how that war deployed its forces while being consciously aware of the real-world possibility of violent conflict. As he explains, ‘The paper war exists at a point between the ideal of irenic conversation and the harm of physical violence, while continually threatening to devolve into the latter’. Galbraith demonstrates that the ‘time-server’, a player of political games whose allegiance turns on a dime, operates as a critical figure in the paper wars, revealing and intensifying anxiety about the instability of identity and the volatility of political and, by extension, military life. While the reader is invited to invest in the conflict in both Davis Perry’s and Galbraith’s analysis of paper wars in late Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain, Katherine Ellison’s contribution to this collection, ‘Ciphers and Gaming for Pleasure and War’, demonstrates how readers were constructed as active participants in it through ciphering handbooks. Initially developed as a means to transmit strategic instructions secretly in political or warring contexts, ciphering, as Ellison shows, 25 Francis Barker, ‘In the Wars of Truth’, in The Culture of Violence: Essays on Tragedy and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 97. 26 John Dryden, Selected Poetry and Prose of John Dryden, ed. Earl Miner (New York: Random House, 1985), 114-117.

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could in itself be a playful and pleasurable intellectual pursuit for the reader. This awareness resonates with Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker’s contribution to the collection, ‘Virtual Reality, Role Play, and World-Building in Margaret Cavendish’s Literary War Games’, which focuses on the pleasure of ‘cerebral war games’ in the writings of Cavendish, who playfully simulates military conflict in a number of works to ‘take on and overcome the warring gamesters that she could not combat in real life’. In their reading of selected Cavendish texts as literary war games, Nelson and Alker further propose that Cavendish, writing in Restoration England in the aftermath of the civil wars, appears to deploy aesthetic strategies that anticipate features of contemporary video war games. Although Karol Cooper’s essay in this collection, ‘Dice, Jesting, and the “Pleasing Delusion” of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance’, does not associate historical and contemporary games of war, it does reveal Behn’s exposure of and resistance to the promotion of ‘sexual violence as a diverting game of social warfare’ in the sex intrigue comedy. Cooper demonstrates how Behn’s handling of cuckolding plots on the Restoration stage critically interrogates that subgenre. In doing so, Behn also deconstructs the martial language so familiar in early modern literary discourses of love that go back to, at least, the introduction of Petrarchanism to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey that have the male lover besieging his beloved’s ‘fort’. Cooper’s interrogation of this form of ‘social warfare’ also calls to mind Behn’s engagement with Restoration libertinism and the socio-political theories of Thomas Hobbes, notably the Hobbesian conception of the ‘miserable condition of Warre’ that men strive to escape by creating commonwealths.27 The libertine’s drive to satisfy his desires cannot be impeded by either the concept of rationality at the expense of the senses or by social conventions or laws. As Klaas Tindemans argues, libertinism is a ‘“particular school” testing the concept of the “state of nature”’, and Behn’s work provides a proto-feminist test of that concept.28 The chapters by Nelson and Alker and Cooper clearly complicate van Creveld’s view on the subject of women and the games of war, an important critical step given the serious implications of van Creveld’s theory. Discussing Johan Huizinga’s theory of games, van Creveld writes, ‘play and games represent the real source from which all human culture, everything beautiful, true and good, springs’, taking note of Huizinga’s belief that ‘a game is an activity characterized above all by the fact that it creates its own little world’.29 If all things in ‘human culture’ that are ‘beautiful, 27 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988), 135. 28 Klaas Tindemans, ‘Nature, Desire, and the Law: On Libertinism and Early Modern Legal Theory’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 12, no. 2 (2012): 135. 29 Van Creveld, Wargames, 1.

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true and good’ become linked to war-gaming in his book, then, for van Creveld, women play little to no positive role in ‘human culture’. Without a doubt, women in the early modern period clearly engaged in forms of gaming that we suggest should be seen as types of ‘war games’, which involve, as Nelson and Alker show in relation to Cavendish’s ‘cerebral gaming’, the generation of their ‘own little world[s]’. An awareness of the prevalence of the interplay of war and games in early modern literature broadens our understanding of these terms—a conceptual link made even in an explicitly political document such as James VI / I’s Declaration of Sports and Charles I’s reissue that recognize that ‘lawful’ sports ‘make their [the king’s subjects’] bodies more able for Warre, when Wee or Our Successours shall haue occasion to vse them’.30 While the obvious intention here relates to physical exercise preparing subjects’ bodies for war, the notion that all sports (or, at least lawful ones) are a sort of war game poses a significant challenge to van Creveld’s definition of the term. The Declaration also suggests that participating in sports not only for recreation but also pleasure prepares the king’s subjects for war. Van Creveld generally overlooks pleasure in analysing war games (beyond noting an audience’s pleasure) because he closely associates them with the real-world consequences of violent conflict. Yet even Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim’s reconstruction of the Siege of Namur in Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, though ultimately motivated by Uncle Toby’s trauma, is pleasurable for the participants. As the essays collected here make clear, the authors and works examined often either emerge from a context of warfare or can be seen as partaking in socio-cultural conflicts that lead to war, but there is a pleasure involved for both audience and participants in the games.

Works Cited Achinstein, Sharon. Milton and the Revolutionary Reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Badenhausen, Richard. ‘Disarming the Infant Warrior: Prince Henry, King James and the Chivalric Revival’. Papers on Language and Literature 31, no. 1 (1995): 20-37. Barker, Francis. ‘In the Wars of Truth’. In The Culture of Violence: Essays on Tragedy and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Cartwright, William. The Game at Chesse. A Metaphorical Discourse Shewing the Present Estate of this Kingdome. London: Printed for Thomas Johnson, 1642.

30 James VI / I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, concerning lawfull Sports to be used (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618), 4-5.

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Corns, Thomas. ‘Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling and Richard Lovelace’. In The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, edited by Thomas Corns, 200-220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Dryden, John. Selected Poetry and Prose of John Dryden. Edited by Earl Miner. New York: Random House, 1985. Granville, A.B. St. Petersburgh: A Journal of Travels to and from that Capital. 2 vols. London: H. Colburn, 1828. Harrigan, Pat, and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, eds. Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by C.B. Macpherson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. James I. The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, concerning lawfull Sports to be used. London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618. Lovatt, Helen. Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the ‘Thebaid’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Lovelace, Richard. ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Warres’. In Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. London: Printed by Tho. Harper, 1649. Milton, John. Areopagitica. In Major Works, edited by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, 236-273. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. ——. ‘On Education’. In Major Works, edited by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, 226-236. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Nayar, Sheila J. ‘Arms or the Man I: Gunpowder Technology and the Early Modern Romance’. Studies in Philology 114, no. 3 (2017): 517-560. ——. ‘Arms or the Man II: Epic, Romance, and Ordinance in Seventeenth-Century England’. Studies in Philology 115, no. 2 (2018): 343-395. Nazarian, Cynthia N. Love’s Wounds: Violence and the Politics of Poetry in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Pugh, Tison. ‘Christian Revelation and the Cruel Game of Courtly Love in Troilus and Criseyde’. The Chaucer Review 39, no. 4 (2005): 379-401. Ruggiero, Guido. Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977. Tindemans, Klaas. ‘Nature, Desire, and the Law: On Libertinism and Early Modern Legal Theory’. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 12, no. 2 (2012): 133-145. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

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Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson

About the authors Holly Faith Nelson, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of English at Trinity Western University. She has published widely on British literature of the seventeenth and long eighteenth centuries, including essays on Lithgow, Shakespeare, Vaughan, Cavendish, Conway, Behn, Defoe, Cowper, Burns, and Hogg. She has co-edited eight volumes, most recently Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Daniel Defoe (2014) and is currently completing a monograph with Sharon Alker on the literary representation of siege warfare in the early modern period. Jim Daems, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of English at the University College of the North in Thompson, MB. He has published articles on early modern literature and contemporary popular culture, notably on John Milton, Edmund Spenser, William Bradford, Harry Potter, Brokeback Mountain, and the television series Sleepy Hollow. He co-edited Eikon Basilike (2005) with Holly Faith Nelson, edited a collection of essays on RuPaul’s Drag Race (2014), and authored Seventeenth Century Literature and Culture (2006) and ‘A Warr So Desperate’: John Milton and Some Contemporaries on the Irish Rebellion (2012).

1.

‘Can this cock-pit hold the vasty fields of France?’Cock-Fighting and the Representation of War in Shakespeare’s Henry V Louise Fang Abstract This chapter argues that the Chorus’s allusion to cock-fighting in the Prologue of William Shakespeare’s Henry V establishes both an epic and an intensely nationalist tone. It immediately prompts the audience to anticipate a bloody fight to the death that transcends the physical limits of simulation upon the stage. The cock-fighting allusion is particularly apt for these purposes because of contemporary views of the ‘sport’ as both a heroic conflict between its adversaries and as a communal activity that cuts across socio-economic lines in the Elizabethan period. Keywords: animal symbolism in Shakespeare; Elizabethan pastimes; idealization of war in Shakespeare; Shakespeare and early modern popular culture

As Gregory M. Colón Semenza has underlined, when Shakespeare employs sports metaphors to describe battles and conflicts in his works, particularly in his history plays, they often serve to expose, if implicitly, the futility of war.1 Although this is especially striking in the plays from the first tetralogy, the cock-fighting 1 In ‘Sport, War, and Contest in Shakespeare’s Henry VI’, Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2001): 1251, Gregory M. Colón Semenza writes: ‘Whereas sport had been justified since antiquity for providing soldiers with the physical training they would require in battle, its utilitarian function waned with the English military’s gradual adaptation of firearms during the Renaissance. As a result, sports were increasingly condemned as idle and superfluous phenomena […]. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, sport figures as a metaphor for war itself, also condemnable as a result of the historical shift from the politics of chivalric idealism to the “politics of reality”. Throughout the trilogy, Shakespeare indicts modern warfare as a mere sport for ambitious and corrupt nobles.’

Nelson, H.F. and J. Daems (eds.), Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789463728010_ch01

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metaphor in the Prologue of Henry V strikes a very different chord. The at first self-deprecatory and apologetic trope of the theatrical stage as a ‘cockpit’,2 whose dimensions cannot possibly represent the bloody battles of the Hundred Years’ War truthfully, is extended in the same passage when both countries are implicitly likened to two fighting animals: Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.3

As we shall see, this extended metaphor resonates deeply with the practice and symbolism of cock-fighting in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. It is also crucial in shaping the audience’s dramatic experience. According to Gina Bloom, games on the early modern stage invited playgoers to work by way of phenomenological analogy through their experience of spectatorship in the theatre, reminding them that the theatre, like a game, is an interactive medium that demands cognitive, emotional, and embodied engagement from its participants. 4

Over the course of this chapter, I will argue that conjuring up the image of cockfighting at the beginning of the play is, in fact, a way to shore up the epic tone of the Chorus’s Prologue and fuel a nationalist sentiment amongst the audience. This tone is all the more relevant as the Prologue was a moment in which the playwright sought to secure the audience’s approval of his work during a first performance, as Tiffany Stern has argued.5 First, I will analyse how the seemingly derogatory reference to cock-fighting in this context calls to mind the image of a vivid and violent conflict that was familiar to many members of Shakespeare’s audience, thereby lending a helping hand to the spectators in ‘minding true things by what 2 The following definition found in Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurus Linguae Romanae & Britannicae (London: n.p., 1578) gives an idea of the small dimensions of a cockpit in Shakespeare’s time: ‘Cauea, caueae. A caue or darke place in the ground: a cage or coupe for birdes: a denne for beasts: a place to behold playes lyke a cockefight: a companie of people gathered for that purpose: euery place listed or rayled in.’ 3 William Shakespeare, Henry V, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 1.0.19-1.0.22. Subsequent references to the play will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses by act, scene, and line number. The ‘0’ in certain references refers to the Prologue. 4 Gina Bloom, ‘Games’, in Early Modern Theatricality, ed. Henry S. Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 193. 5 Tiffany Stern, ‘“A small-beer health to his second day”: Playwrights, Prologues, and First Performances in the Early Modern Theater’, Studies in Philology 101, no. 2 (2004): 172-199.

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their mock’ries be’ (4.0.53). Second, I will demonstrate that this sports metaphor also unexpectedly hints at an idealized conception of war that implicitly validates the eponymous character’s decision to wage war against France. Third, I will introduce early modern narratives of cockfights to reveal the communal, rather than the individualistic, dimension of these spectacular sports events and, by extension, acts of war. This three-step analysis should lead to the conclusion that this sport or, more broadly speaking, gaming metaphor sets an epic tone in Henry V that is instrumental in paving the way for the heroic narrative of Agincourt that is about to unfold on stage. The Chorus’s rhetorical question ‘Can this cock-pit hold the vasty fields of France?’ (1.0.11-1.0.12) may seem particularly self-deprecatory at first, especially as it echoes other apologetic remarks throughout the play. The Prologue itself abounds with disparaging descriptions of the stage. The famous ‘wooden O’ (1.0.13) is described as an ‘unworthy scaffold’ (1.0.10) on which to represent such a glorious subject. The subject matter—the Hundred Years’ War—and its means of representation—the stage—are repeatedly mentioned in separate lines as if to highlight the distance between them and to suggest that the lines themselves are unable to ‘cram’ in all the soldiers of this conflict. Later in the play, the Chorus repeatedly asks the audience to supply the imagination necessary to make up for the lack of material resources offered by the stage.6 At the very end of the play, the Chorus’s epilogue again draws our attention to the limitations of the stage in representing the military figures and actions associated with the Hundred Years’ War: Thus far with rough and all-unable pen, Our bending author hath pursued the story, In little room confining mighty men, Mangling by starts the full course of their glory. (Epilogue, 1-4)

War, it seems, cannot be reduced to the constraints and limitations of a ludic framework, be it the theatre, or a cockpit, an idea that is also suggested in Troilus and Cressida as demonstrated by Sean Lawrence in the present volume. Paradoxically, the insistence on the paucity of the props and the limits of the stage we find in Henry V tends to magnify the extent of the conflict that is about to be enacted by suggesting that any image would fail to provide a realistic rendering of its actions. And yet, Shakespeare extends the metaphor of cock-fighting in the 6 At the beginning of Act 3, for instance, the ‘once more’ stresses the importance of the audience’s imagination in the different shifts that occur on stage: ‘Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies. / In motion of no less celerity / Than that of thought’ (3.0.1-3.0.3).

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Prologue as France and England are animalized as cocks engaged in a fully-fledged showdown (1.0.19-1.0.22). Although the comparison is not made explicit, Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen note in the RSC edition of the play,7 that ‘abutting’, meaning ‘adjoining’, may also bring to mind the term ‘butting’, and suggest two animals fighting each other.8 Moreover, the adjective ‘high’ used in these lines clearly points to the proud attitude notoriously displayed by fighting cocks.9 ‘Everie cocke is proud’, according to an epigram by John Heywood.10 Gervase Markham, a prolific animal husbandry enthusiast, gave a similar portrayal of the animal, which he described as ‘proude, valiant, and apt to fight’.11 Its ‘scorning valour’ could spark the most fervent admiration amongst their spectators, according to George Wilson in his popular work The Commendation of Cockes, and Cock-fighting which was published in 1607.12 Later in the play, Pistol prolongs the identification of Henry V to a proud cock when he calls the king ‘a bawcock’, a term of endearment derived from the French ‘beau coq’:13 The king’s a bawcock, and a heart of gold, A lad of life, an imp of fame, Of parents good, of fist most valiant. I kiss his dirty shoe and from heartstring I love the lovely bully. (4.1.45-4.1.49)

The ‘high and uprearèd abutting fronts’ mentioned in the Prologue, and which have sometimes been construed as a reference to the cliffs of Dover and Calais, could therefore as easily be interpreted as two fighting-cocks engaged in battle, especially as their main action also consisted in rising and colliding with each

7 William Shakespeare, Henry V, ed. Bate and Rasmussen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2010), 26n21. 8 The Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘butting’ (n.2), suggests the following definition for the term: ‘The action of thrusting or striking violently with the head or horns’. 9 Gaston Duchet-Suchaux and Michel Pastoureau describe the ambivalent symbolism of the cock in the Middle Ages, which could be seen as both a vain and filthy animal, and as a proud and brave bird (Le Bestiaire médiéval: Dictionnaire historique et bibliographique [Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 2002], 56). 10 ‘Of the proude Cock. xlii.’ ‘Euery cocke is proude on his owne dounghyll / The hen is proude inough there marke who wyll’ (John Heywood, Two Hundred Epigrammes, vpon Two Hundred Prouerbes [London: T. Berthelet, 1555], sig. E1r). 11 Gervase Markham, Markhams Methode or Epitome (London: Printed by T.S., for Roger Jackson, 1616), 55. 12 George Wilson, The Commendation of Cockes, and Cock-fighting (London: Printed for Henrie Tomes, 1607), sig. D3r. This work went through no less than ten editions from 1607 to 1655. 13 By contrast, Pistol himself is only compared to a ‘turkey-cock’ by Gower and Fluellen after the battle of Agincourt (5.1.14-5.1.16).

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other as we can see from the very detailed descriptions in Gervase Markham’s Country Contentments.14 Cock-fighting was renowned and appreciated for the violent show it provided its spectators. The different accounts we can gather from the period all mention the wounds to which the animals were subjected as well as the fact that they often fought to the death. The following litany of injuries in George Wilson’s text testifies to the ferocity displayed in these fights: a Cocke called Tarlecon […] which Cocke having there fought many battels, with mighty and fierce Adversaries: and being both wearied with long fighting, and also verie hardly matched, at the length he had his eyes both of them beaten out of his head, his spurres broken off, and his bill brused, and rigorously rent from off his face, so that their remained no hope of him, but that he should bee instantly killed.15

Likewise, the lawyer Thomas Nash ascribed part of his admiration for the animal to the fact that cocks sometimes received ‘as many wounds as Caesar did in the Senate-house’,16 and Robert Parsons also alludes to the fierceness of cockfighting in 1609 in the wake of the fiery controversies sparked by the Gunpowder Plot: ‘I haue heard of some Cockes of the game that when they were so pricked and wounded by their aduersaries in fight, as both their heads did runne with gore bloud, and both their eyes almost out, yet with any least pause giuen them, they would crow in the cockpit in signe of courage.’ 17 The violence of this sport was such that it sometimes triggered criticism or even outright condemnation. This is the case in Joseph Hall’s Occasional Meditations, in which the author argues that cockfights are only to be seen as yet another sign of man’s postlapsarian state of never-ending strife: How fell these Creatures out? Whence grew this so bloudy combate? Heere was neyther old grudge, nor present iniurie. What then is the quarrell? Surely nothing but that which should rather vnite, and reconcile them; one common Nature; they are both of one feather. I doe not see eyther of them flye vpon Creatures of different kinds; but whiles they haue peace with all others, they are at warre with 14 Here is an example of the type of actions that were to be seen during a cock-fighting match: ‘[H]e riseth hitteth, and draweth blood of his adversary, guilding (as they tearme it) his spurres in blood’ (Gervase Markham, Country Contentments [London: Printed by Nicholas Okes, for John Harison, 1631], 104). 15 Wilson, Commendation of Cockes, sig. D4r . 16 Thomas Nash, Quaternio (London: Printed by John Dawson, 1633), 48. 17 Robert Parsons, A Quiet and Sober Reckoning with M. Thomas Morton (London: n.p., 1609), 110.

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themselues; the very sight of each other was sufficient prouocation. If this bee the offence, why doth not each of them fall out with himselfe, since hee hates, and reuenges in another, the being of that same which himselfe is? Since Mans sin brought Debate into the World, nature is become a great quarreler.18

William Perkins, another Calvinist theologian, also disliked the ‘Antipathie and crueltie, which one beast sheweth to another’, displayed during cockfights, which he construed as ‘the fruit of our rebellion against God’.19 Yet we find no trace of such indictment of the sport on theological or any other grounds in Shakespeare’s plays, or at least not in Henry V. In the Prologue, the reference to cockfighting very likely suggests the violence of the conflict that is about to be played out on stage with inadequate representational means. The sport metaphor evinces this impression all the more efficiently as the blood sport it calls to mind brings us a step closer to genuine fighting. Contrary to animal play, which, according to Martin van Creveld, can be defined in part by the resumption of peaceful relations between the opponents after the match,20 cockfights in Shakespeare’s day often ended with the death of one of the animals, as is made very clear from the anecdotes we find in Wilson’s Commendation of Cockes, and Cock-fighting and other comparable accounts.21 The finality of the outcome of this sport stood in sharp contrast to the end results of jousts and tournaments which were moving further and further away from their initially military functions. In line with earlier research conclusions by Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, Georges Vigarello, and Thomas Zotz both recently underlined the diminishing violence displayed during jousts in early modern Europe.22 According to Zotz, ‘tournaments became increasingly distant from war, and came to be linked with festive occasions’.23 By contrast, even though spectators who bet on the animals considered the spectacle of the cockfight a ‘sport’ and a ‘pastime’, it was in itself a real fight, not a simulation of war provided by players on the stage. Early modern descriptions of the fights, such as the ones we have previously quoted, testify to 18 Joseph Hall, Occasional Meditations (London: Printed by W.S., for Nath. Butter, 1631), 59-63. 19 William Perkins, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience Distinguished into Three Bookes ([Cambridge]: Printed by John Legat, 1606), 589. 20 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 12. 21 According to Thomas Nash, a fighting cock will ‘rather dye than cry, or yeeld to a crowing and insulting enemy’ (Quaternio, 48). 22 Eric Dunning and Norbert Elias, Quest for Excitement, Sports and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (1986; rpt. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993); Georges Vigarello, ed., Histoire du corps, tome I. De la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2005); Thomas Zotz, ‘Jousts in the Middle Ages’, in War and Games, ed. T.J. Cornell and T.B. Allen (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2002), 91-100. 23 T.J. Cornell and T.B. Allen, eds., introduction to War and Games, 6.

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the highly visual dimension of the cruelty displayed in these spectacles of violence. Therefore, just as blood sports adopted increasingly theatrical methods throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,24 conversely, the mention of a cockfight at the beginning of Henry V can be construed as a way to bring the audience closer to the brutal reality of genuine violence and bloodshed.25 The image conveyed by the cock-fighting metaphor is not only particularly vivid, it also carries conceptions of war and space that, in a way, justify Henry’s decision to wage war against France. The analogy between the battlefields of the Hundred Years’ War and a cockpit is evocative of the medieval conceptions of the world as a limited space. It is reminiscent of the mappa mundi whose circular form was similar to both that of the cockpits and that of the theatrical stage. The ‘girdle of these walls’ (1.0.19) hinted at a ‘closed world’ rather than the ‘infinite universe’ of Renaissance humanism.26 In such a confined and limited space, any form of fight is de facto perceived as a defensive one. As we can see from accounts of early modern cockfights, no specific reason was needed to start the fight between the two animals: ‘the very sight of each other was sufficient prouocation’, Joseph Hall remarks.27 The territorial claims of Henry are all the more crucial as the compressed world represented on stage heightens the impression of the enemy’s unwanted and inauspicious proximity. The closed space suggested by the cockpit and mirrored by the circularity of the stage was all the more likely to evince an amplified sense of threat as the play’s nationalistic tone could bring to mind the not-so-distant memory of the Spanish Armada. Furthermore, the cockfight was permeated with markedly chivalrous values. The cock itself was considered to be the ‘Knight of the birds’, as we can see from Thomas Nash’s text, in which the animal is said to be comparable in valour and courage to Hector or Ajax.28 Shakespeare was aware of this symbolism, as he mocks the distinctly unchivalrous Cloten’s self-description as a fighting cock in Cymbeline.29 24 Heather F. Philips argues that ‘[t]his is the paradox at the heart of early modern animal-baiting: despite the inherent untheatricality of bloodsports—in the sense that the violence put on show in the baiting-ring was never feigned—early modern witnesses more often than not responded to animal-baiting as if it were a theatrical performance, and the “staging” of baiting itself appears to have supported such responses’ (‘Of Beasts and Men: Animal Bloodsports in Early Modern England’ [PhD diss., Tufts University, 2013], 24-25). 25 In fact, a few years later, the very term ‘cockpit’ came to mean a place of conflict according to the Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘cockpit’ (n.2 fig.), which dates such an occurrence back to 1612: ‘A place where a contest is fought out. 1612 T. Adams Gallants Burden f. 10 Behold France made a Cock-pitte for massacres, by the vnciuill ciuill warres thereof.’ 26 Alexandre Koyré, Du Monde clos à l’univers infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). 27 Hall, Occasional Meditations, 59-63. 28 Nash, Quaternio, 48. 29 ‘CLOTEN […] I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match’ (Cymbeline, 2.1.20-2.1.21).

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Aligning the Hundred Years’ War with a cockfight in the opening lines of Henry V brings the conflict closer to a form of fighting that was deemed bloody and yet just and fair as, according to Wilson, ‘in this pleasant exercise there is no collusion, deceit, fraude, or cozening tollerated, nor any used (as in most other games, and pastimes customarily there is)’.30 Gervase Markham concurs with this view as he also describes this sport as being ‘voide of couzenage and deceite’.31 Of course, enemies of the sport like Philip Stubbes strongly disagreed.32 Cockfights were often likened to a form of chivalrous duel or ‘a single Combate’ to the death.33 This duel heralds and mirrors the very structure of the play which strongly relies on the antagonistic opposition of the young king of England, whom Pistol later calls a ‘bawkcock’ as we have seen, to the dauphin of France. Despite the fact that Henry has already expressed his intention to wage war against France,34 his reaction to the dauphin’s gift of tennis balls in Act 1, Scene 2 presents the war as a proportionate response to the offence of the dauphin: We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler That all the courts of France will be disturbed With chases. (1.2.259-66)

The war is presented in the same terms as those of a chivalrous duel, a combat whose principles were more aptly represented by cock-fighting than any other pastime in Shakespeare’s day. The tenacious fighting of the cocks of the game stands in sharp contrast to the recreational jousting in the French camp referenced in Act 3, Scene 8, for instance, which has often been thought to level thinly veiled criticism at 30 Wilson, Commendation of Cockes, sig. C3v. 31 Markham, Country Contentments, 103. 32 Philip Stubbes presents a very different image of cock-fighting which he describes as a pastime ‘where nothing is used but swearing, deceit, fraud, collusion, cosenage, scolding railing, co[n]vitious talking, fighting, brawling, quarrelling, drinking [,] whoring, & which is worst of al[l] robbing one another of their goods, & that not by direct, but indirect means & atte[m]pts’ (The Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Margaret Jane Kidnie [Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in conjunction with Renaissance English Text Society, 2002], 247). 33 Thomas Nash refers to the cockfight in this way in Quaternio, 48. 34 ‘KING HARRY. Now are we well resolved, and by God’s help / And yours, the noble sinews of our power, / France being ours we’ll bend it to our awe, / Or break it all to pieces’ (1.2.222-1.2.225).

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the futility of these mock combats.35 All these elements contribute to paving the way for the fabricated and idealized image of a just and fair war embodied by the opposition of two knights in a single combat. The image of cock-fighting, a single combat between two animals comparable in courage to two heroic knights, also puts aside the more strategic aspects of the war which would have been brought out by a game like chess for instance, which was another recreation commonly used as a metaphor for international conflicts. The metaphor of cock-fighting is, therefore, in keeping with the rest of the play, which never truly shows or explains the tactical decisions of the king of England.36 However, cock-fighting was not understood in the Renaissance as simply the expression of the competing interests of two individuals engaged in conflict; quite the contrary. As Jennifer Feather has underlined, this type of combat could have a highly communal value: ‘Premodern notions of combat, because of their peculiar relationship to the body, produce a self-understanding that involves interdependence of individuals on each other rather than the modern self that exalts the victor as a subject and vanquished as object’.37 In his seminal work on Balinese cockfights, Clifford Geertz highlights that such sporting events could acquire a highly symbolic meaning mirroring society’s hierarchies and norms: The cocks may be surrogates for their owners’ personalities, animal mirrors of psychic form, but the cockf ight is—or more exactly, deliberately is made to be—a simulation of the social matrix, the involved system of crosscutting, overlapping, highly corporate groups—villages, kin-groups, irrigation societies, temple congregations, ‘castes’—in which its devotees live.38

Thomas Hamill took up this analysis and applied it to early modern English society and culture through a close reading of Wilson’s 1607 text, which, according to him, reveals the deeply rooted processes of communal identification that were at work 35 Gisèle Venet argues that the stars on the Constable’s armour are in fact a topical allusion to the armour the Duke of Cumberland wore for a joust and therefore creates a contrast between this form of frivolous fighting and the actual battles in which Essex took part at the time that the play was performed (William Shakespeare, Œuvres complètes: Histoires II, ed. Jean-Michel Déprats and Gisèle Venet, [Paris: Gallimard, 2008], 1646). 36 The absence of the famous longbow archers especially testifies to this absence of strategic details: ‘Shakespeare’s forgetting of the archers does seem deliberate and is certainly conspicuous. Andrew Gurr argues that it is “not an accidental omission”, especially given the emphasis placed upon the tactical ability of Henry in both Holinshed and The Famous Victories’ (Evelyn Tribble, ‘Where are the Archers in Shakespeare?’ ELH 82, no. 3 [2015]: 807). 37 Jennifer Feather, Writing Combat and the Self in Early Modern English Literature: The Pen and the Sword (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 16. 38 Clifford Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, Daedalus 101, no. 1 (1972): 17-18.

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in early modern English cockfights as well.39 In the case of this sports or gaming metaphor that we find in Shakespeare’s text, the identification is a national one. The very popularity of the sport itself points to its national significance as its appeal transcended such categories as socio-economic station, confessional stance, and age group. In his Survay of London, for instance, John Stow describes cock-fighting as a common children’s pastime at Shrovetide, revealing the sport’s attraction for children: ‘Every peace also at Shrovetuseday that we may beginne with children sports, seeing we al have beene children) the schoole boyes do bring cockes of the game to their Mayster, and all the forenoone they delight themselves to cock-fighting: after dinner all the youthes goe into the fields, to play at the ball.’ 40 Yet Roger Ascham tells the readers of The Scholemaster that he still enjoys spending ‘soch tyme in writyng of trifles, as the schole of shoting, the Cockpitte’, in his old age. 41 Wilson, mentioning the cockpits built during the reign of Henry VIII, insists on their wide-ranging popularity (which probably echoed the social diversity of Shakespeare’s audience as well): ‘To which Cocke-pits resorted, both Dukes, Earles, Lords, Knights, Gentlemen, and Yeomen, there to recreate and delight themselves with Cocke-fighting’. 42 Unlike hawking, cock-fighting, as it was much less expensive—or ‘chargeable’ 43 to use Wilson’s term—was not a distinctly and exclusively aristocratic pastime. This may partly account for Shakespeare’s choice to express the individual rivalries and ambitions of the court of Henry VI in Henry VI, Part 2 through a hawking scene, 44 and, on the other hand, to use a cock-fighting metaphor describing the Hundred Years’ War in order to enhance a feeling of national unity at the beginning of Henry V. This image draws on the inclusive processes at work in most early modern sports that have been highlighted by Angela Schattner: Sports consolidated group identities, be it in parish or village communities, the community of the royal court, student or craftsmen communities. This 39 In ‘Cockf ighting as a Cultural Allegory in Early Modern England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39, no. 2 (2009): 383, Thomas A. Hamill explains, ‘What I do hope to accomplish, however, in reading Wilson and Geertz concurrently as Renaissance stories is a better understanding of how sport works or is used as metaphor, as allegory that at once accesses and reveals—and, perhaps, occludes—social systems.’ 40 John Stow, A Survay of London (London: Imprinted by John Wolfe, 1598), 68. 41 Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (London: Printed by John Daye, 1570), 20. 42 Wilson, Commendation of Cockes, 10. 43 Wilson writes, ‘yet Cockes afford us farre more pleasure, than Hawkes can, though Hawkes be ten times more chargeable, and troublesome, and require ten times more attendance, than our Cockes doe’ (Commendation of Cockes, 9). 44 In Act 2, Scene 1, hawking serves as a metaphor for Gloucester’s thirst for power: ‘SUFFOLK My Lord Protector’s hawks do tower so well; / They know their master loves to be aloft, / And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch’ (Henry VI, Part 2, ed. René Weis [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997], 2.1.10-2.1.12).

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consolidation could be created by the inclusion of large parts of communities across status and gender or by social exclusion of large parts of society and were primarily organised over the constitution of space, e.g., the inclusiveness of the churchyard or the exclusiveness of royal tennis courts. 45

From this perspective, the image of cock-fighting in the Prologue to Henry V also echoes the action of the play, in which we witness the unification of a country comprised of different regions, all represented by the different characters present at the battle of Agincourt: Gower, the Englishman; Fluellen, the Welshman; Macmorris, the Irishman; and Jamy, the Scotsman. The identification of cock and country is furthermore evidenced by the double meaning of the phrase ‘high uprearèd and abutting fronts’ which could gesture toward the borders of both countries as well as the two fighting cocks. 46 The fact that this metaphor occurs at the very beginning of the play is also highly significant for helping to raise the audience’s expectation for a heroic narrative. In his treatise on the sport, Wilson tells his readers how Themistocles used a cockfight as an invigorating preamble to an actual battle. The spectacle was supposed to inspire the soldiers as shown by an imagined exhortation in which Themistocles highlights the exemplary value of a cockfight: I thought it not amiss but rather most necessarie, to present unto your publicke view the fierce fight, and cruell combate of these two (late undaunted, but now dead) Cockes, that the sight of the courage which they shewed in this quarrell, might pierce into your hearts, and make a deepe impression in your discreet considerations, that thereby you might be the more enboldened and encouraged, than you could have beene by all the words of comfort that I can relate, or by all the examples of former accidents that may be repeated. 47

The preparatory dimension of cockfights for battle was sometimes seen in an even more practical light and some fighting methods were thought to derive directly from the observation of fighting cocks. 48 Very much like Themistocles’s speech in 45 Rebekka von Mallinckrodt and Angela Schattner, Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture: New Perspectives on the History of Sports and Motion (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 84-85. 46 Moreover, the cock had already been used as a national symbol by the time Shakespeare wrote Henry V as has been underlined in Duchet-Suchaux and Pastoureau’s Le Bestiaire médiéval, 59, and as we can see from the following definition taken from The Dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knight (London: Thomae Bertheleti, 1538): ‘Gallus, a cocke, a Frencheman, a prieste of Cybeles, callyd the mother of the goddess[s]’. 47 Wilson, Commendation of Cockes, sig. B2r-v. 48 In a fencing treatise, for instance—G.A.’s Pallas Armata. The Gentlemans Armorie (London: Printed by J.D., for John Williams, 1639)—the ‘cavere’ is said to derive directly from cock-fighting: ‘[F]or Camillo

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Wilson’s text, in Shakespeare’s Henry V, the allusion to cock-fighting serves as a way to intensify the Chorus’s Prologue and turn it into a martial exhortation to war. From this perspective, the Prologue’s address to the audience could be likened to Henry V’s harangues to his troops throughout the play. It is designed to awaken the same passionate reactions of admiration that cockfights triggered amongst their spectators. Cock-fighting was also thought to serve or, at least, to have served divinatory purposes. The issue of a cockfight could be interpreted as an omen about the battle itself, as is shown by the story of the defeat of Mark Antony’s cocks against those of Caesar, which was derived from Plutarch and which Wilson also mentions in his text. 49 Shakespeare must have been aware of this anecdote as he included it in Antony and Cleopatra. As the eponymous Roman general recollects the soothsayer’s predictions and the issue of these cockfights, he foresees his forthcoming downfall:  Be it art or hap, He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him, And in our sports my better cunning faints Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds. His cocks do win the battle still of mine When it is all to nought, and his quails ever Beat mine, inhooped, at odds.50

Unlike this use of the trope in Antony and Cleopatra, the figure of cock-fighting in Henry V bears no tragic undertones but acts as a heroic fatum instead, preparing the audience for the glorious deeds of the Hundred Years’ War. In fact, at the beginning of Act 4, it is once again the image of cocks that heralds the impending battle of Agincourt, its crow likened to the ominous and fatidic tolling of a clock: ‘The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll’ (4.0.15). Cockfights themselves were perceived as types of heroic narratives. The stories we find in Wilson often follow the same pattern: a cock is sorely beaten but unexpectedly rises at the last minute and defeats his opponent against all odds, thus Agrippo […] seeing two Cockes combat together, and observing, how when one of the Cockes leaped up to strike the other with his claw, the other seeing him come leaping at him went quite under him on the other side, conceived that he might make use of this in his Art’ (22-23). 49 In Commendation of Cockes, Wilson notes, ‘doe but looke into Plutarchs Bookes, called the lives of the Romanes, and you shall find in the story of M. Antonius, that the Soothsayers counselled him to beware & take heede of Caesar, because his Cockes did alwayes loose the day, when they fought with Caesars’ (sig. Bv). 50 William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 2.3.30-2.3.36.

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demonstrating the animal’s courage and his perseverance in the face of adversity. Such is the issue of the story of Tarlecon we mentioned earlier. We find another instance of this narrative pattern a little later in the text: There was a cocke about Shrove-tide last, which in the cocke-pit in the cittie of Norwich, fought with a stronge, and a stout adversarie, untill such time as both his eyes were beaten out, his head sore wounded, and shrewdly battered, and all his bodie most pitifully brused, and then with the sudden astonishment of a sound blow, wich from his cruell adversarie he received, being beaten downe, and lying for dead, not stirring any whit, nor seeming otherwise (to the beholders) tha[n] to be starke dead, he suddenly started by, contrary to all their expectations, (when there was offered twenty shillings, yea, twenty pounds to be layd to one, that there was no breath remayning in his bodie and closed with his adversarie, at whom he stroke most violent blowes, and never gave over, untill (to the amazement of all the spectators) hee had most valiantly slaine him.51

This sudden reversal of fortune—which provoked the ‘amazement of all the spectators’—is also reminiscent of the issue of the cockfights mentioned by Antony in Antony and Cleopatra and in the Prologue in Henry V, in which the unlikeliness of the English victory is emphasized on the eve of battle: WARWICK. Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand. EXETER. There’s five to one. Besides, they all are fresh. SALISBURY. God’s arm strike with us! ’Tis a fearful odds. (Henry V, 4.3.3-4.3.5)

In the enemy camp, the French are betting on their opponents’ defeat just as Shakespeare’s audience would have bet passionately on the issue of a cockfight: ‘RAMBURES Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?’ (3.7.84). By likening the forthcoming representation of war to a cockfight, the Chorus’s Prologue thereby underlines the epic dimension of the narrative of the Hundred Years’ War and the heroic qualities of its participants. To conclude, the cock-fighting metaphor we find in the opening lines of Henry V is crucial to the epic and belligerent tone of the Chorus’s Prologue. The highly visual and spectacular dimension of this pastime gives additional momentum to the dramatic representation of the battle of Agincourt despite the material limitations of the stage. Far from a value-neutral trope, the symbolism of the cockfight at the time is evocative of an idealized chivalrous and heroic image of war. The choice of this particular sports metaphor is also highly significant as cock-fighting was one 51 Wilson, Commendation of Cockes, sig. D3r.

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of the most popular sports of the day and one that could be afforded by most, if not all, members of Elizabethan society. Unlike other famous sports of Shakespeare’s day, cock-fighting as it is used metaphorically in these lines, could create a sense of togetherness and hereby echo the national unity that Henry’s harangues aim at throughout the play. Invoking the heavily charged metaphor of the cockfight to depict the battle of Agincourt, therefore, makes a substantial contribution to shaping the audience’s expectations about the representation of the war that is about to unfold on stage. Of course, several passages from the play seem to call this glorified image of war into doubt. However, the use of this metaphor in the opening lines of the play shows the persistence of the idealized image of war evinced by some sports, notably mock single combat (between animals or humans), an image that was questioned in other forms of sport, like jousting for instance, whose associations had, by then, grown increasingly distant from the warlike qualities that had initially contributed to validate them as ‘honest pastimes’.

Works Cited Ascham, Roger. The Scholemaster. London: Printed by John Daye, 1570. Bloom, Gina. ‘Games.’ In Early Modern Theatricality, edited by Henry S. Turner, 189-211. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Colón Semenza, Gregory. ‘Sport, War, and Contest in Shakespeare’s Henry VI’. Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2001): 1251-1272. Cooper, Thomas. Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae. London: n.p., 1578. The Dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knight. London: Thomae Bertheleti, 1538. Duchet-Suchaux, Gaston, and Michel Pastoureau. Le Bestiaire médiéval: Dictionnaire historique et bibliographique. Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 2002. Dunning, Eric, and Norbert Elias. Quest for Excitement, Sports and Leisure in the Civilizing Process. Reprint. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993. Feather, Jennifer. Writing Combat and the Self in Early Modern English Literature: The Pen and the Sword. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. G.A. Pallas Armata. The Gentlemans Armorie. London: Printed by J.D., for John Williams, 1639. Geertz, Clifford. ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’. Daedalus 101, no.1, (1972): 1-37. Hall, Joseph. Occasional Meditations. London: Printed by W.S., for Nath. Butter, 1631. Hamill, Thomas A. ‘Cockfighting as a Cultural Allegory in Early Modern England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39, no. 2 (2009): 375-406. Heywood, John. Two Hundred Epigrammes, vpon Two Hundred Prouerbes, 2nd ed. [London: T. Berthelet, 1555.] Koyré, Alexandre. Du Monde clos à l’univers infini. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

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Markham, Gervase. Country Contentments. London: Printed by Nicholas Okes, for John Harison, 1631. Nash, Thomas. Quaternio. London: Printed by John Dawson, 1633. Parsons, Robert. A Quiet and Sober Reckoning with M. Thomas Morton. London: n.p., 1609. Perkins, William. The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience Distinguished into Three Bookes. [Cambridge]: Printed by John Legat, 1606. Philips, Heather F. ‘Of Beasts and Men: Animal Bloodsports in Early Modern England’. PhD diss., Tufts University, 2013. Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. Edited by Michael Neill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ———. Henry V. Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2010. ———. Henry V. Edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. ———. Henry VI, Part 2. Edited by René Weis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. ———. Œuvres complètes: Histoires II. Edited by Jean-Michel Déprats and Gisèle Venet. Paris: Gallimard, 2008. Stern, Tiffany, ‘A small-beer health to his second day’: Playwrights, Prologues, and First Performances in the Early Modern Theater’. Studies in Philology 101, no. 2 (2004): 172-199. Stow, John. A Survay of London. London: Imprinted by John Wolfe, 1598. Stubbes, Philip. The Anatomie of Abuses. Edited by Margaret Jane Kidnie. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance English Text Society, 2002. Tribble, Evelyn. ‘Where are the Archers in Shakespeare?’ ELH 82, no. 3 (2015): 789-814. Vigarello, Georges, ed. Histoire du corps, tome I. De la Renaissance aux Lumières. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2005. Von Mallinckrodt, Rebekka, and Angela Schattner. Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture: New Perspectives on the History of Sports and Motion. London: Routledge, 2016. Wilson, George. The Commendation of Cockes, and Cock-Fighting. London: Printed for Henrie Tomes, 1607. Zotz, Thomas. ‘Jousts in the Middle Ages’. In War and Games, edited by T. J. Cornell and T. B. Allen, 91-100.Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2002.

About the author Louise Fang is currently completing a Ph.D. in English literature on the representation of games and play in Shakespeare under the supervision of Prof. Line Cottegnies at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). Since 2017, she has also served as a research and teaching assistant at Le Mans Université.

2.

Game Over: Play and War in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida Sean Lawrence

Abstract Traditionally, William Shakespeare’s fools have been seen as part of a longer theatrical tradition in which the fool’s play is contrasted with the seriousness of the political world and the devastation of war. However, this chapter argues that because Troilus and Cressida portrays a world that is destined to be destroyed by total war (which audience members recognize), Thersites embraces war in all of its viciousness. Although Thersites mocks any legitimate notion of a casus belli, a sentiment shared by other characters in Troilus and Cressida, violence cannot be prevented or even alleviated by play. Keywords: Shakespeare and the carnivalesque; Shakespeare and the Trojan War; Classical literature and Shakespeare; early modern masculinity and heroism

The past half century has been very kind to Shakespeare’s clowns. They have become figures of subversion in the work of two east-European critics, Mikhail Bakhtin and Jan Kott, both of whom continue to enjoy extraordinary influence in the Anglophone world. Such an understanding of clowns draws on the belief that play must be understood in opposition to the seriousness of the official world and, in particular, to war. This belief can be traced to Plato’s declaration in his Laws that ‘in war there is neither play nor culture worthy the name’.1 Johan Huizinga cites Plato on this point both at the beginning and end of Homo Ludens. More recently, Martin van Creveld cites Huizinga at the beginning of Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes.2 In Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, however, the paradigmatic clown 1 Plato, The Laws, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 7.803d. 2 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 19 and 212; Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4.

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proves vicious, while games of love and chivalry prove helpless to halt the fictive world’s descent into total war. Games take place, at best, in parentheses. The title characters’ erotic relationship, the gallantry of knights meeting for tournaments, the battles pursued so lackadaisically as to make truce indistinguishable from war are all swept aside by a movement to extreme violence and the inevitable destruction of Troy. Throughout Shakespeare’s tragedy, the supposed opposition of play and war proves false. Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World elevates clowns from the trivial role of providing so-called ‘comic relief’ to ‘the constant, accredited representatives of the carnival spirit in everyday life’. The carnival itself Bakhtin understands as ‘the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter. It is a festive life’.3 Bakhtin contrasts this second life with ‘official life’, expressed in ‘official feasts’, which themselves ‘asserted all that was stable, unchanging, perennial: the existing hierarchy, the existing religious, political and moral values, norms and prohibitions’. 4 Michael Holquist, writing the introduction to the English translation, argues that ‘Bakhtin’s carnival, surely the most productive concept in this book, is not only not an impediment to revolutionary change, it is revolution itself’.5 The carnival, and hence the clown, stands over and against the official world. Bakhtin could not have influenced Kott directly because even the original Russian publication of his work did not significantly precede Kott’s Shakespeare, Our Contemporary. Moreover, the absurdism of Samuel Beckett also influences Kott, as shown by the title of his chapter ‘King Lear or Endgame’, as does the existentialist drama of Jean-Paul Sartre, which Kott translated into Polish. Nevertheless, he deploys a similar vocabulary and evinces a similar view of clowns to Bakhtin. Some of these views may simply have been ubiquitous in eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth century. Kott quotes Leszek Kołakowski, ‘In every era the jester’s philosophy exposes as doubtful what seems most unshakable, reveals the contradiction in what appears obvious and incontrovertible, derides common sense and reads sense into the absurd.’ 6 In Kott’s reading of Troilus and Cressida, ‘Only the bitter fool Thersites is free of all illusions.’ 7 Several characters remark on the absurdity of fighting over Helen; Thersites insists on it, reducing the entire Greek camp to ‘those

3 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), 8. 4 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 9. 5 Michael Holquist, introduction to Rabelais and His World, xviii. 6 Jan Kott, Shakespeare, our Contemporary, trans. Boreslaw Taborski (London: Methuen and Company, 1967), 165. 7 Kott, Shakespeare, our Contemporary, 82.

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that war for a placket’ (2.3.18),8 and ‘the argument’ to ‘a whore and a cuckold—a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon!’ (2.3.68-2.3.70). Seeing Menelaus and Paris fighting near the end, he remarks, ‘The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it’ (5.7.9). A few lines earlier, he cheers both Troilus and Diomedes: ‘Hold thy whore, Grecian! Now for thy whore, Trojan!’ (5.4.22-5.4.23). Thersites, especially, derides official beliefs. He might, if we follow Holquist, be considered revolutionary. The sorts of official beliefs which Thersites derides find their strongest expression in Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’, by which he means hierarchy (1.3.80-1.3.136), precisely that which, Bakhtin claims, is overturned by carnival: ‘The suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of particular significance.’ 9 Ulysses describes the joking of Achilles and Patroclus as particularly anti-hierarchical, parodying the military leadership. To add insult to verbal injury, even their acting is incompetent: ‘That’s done, as near as the extremest ends / Of parallels’ (1.3.1661.3.167). By playfully subverting hierarchies, Achilles and Patroclus work against the war effort, as Bakhtin and Kott would both expect. Their satirical closet drama does not, however, work towards peace. Patroclus and Achilles ‘esteem no act / But that of hand’ (1.3.198-1.3.199). They still praise violence, only not its organization. Indeed, among the speeches of the generals which they parody is ‘speech for truce’ (1.3.181). Kott concludes his treatment of the play by declaring that ‘Thersites is right. But what of that? Thersites is himself vile’.10 He expresses greater hatred when alone than when playing the role of a recognized fool. ‘He beats me, and I rail at him’, Thersites says of Ajax. ‘Would it were otherwise—that I could beat him, while he railed at me’ (2.3.2-2.3.4). As soon as Achilles exits the stage, Thersites remarks, ‘I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance’ (3.3.305-3.3.306). There is nothing here of the redemptive or even the effective. Before we meet him, we hear of ‘rank Thersites’ who never speaks ‘music, wit, and oracle’ (1.3.72-1.3.73). The most he manages with his raillery is to elicit a physical assault from Ajax. Indeed, satire has little effect in the Greek camp in general. Achilles satirizes the generals, but only squanders his position of importance without improving them. Neither Achilles nor Ajax even recognize themselves in the satire of others. More broadly, satire, especially as represented by Thersites, lacks the redemptive force which carnival is supposed to produce. One wonders, in fact, why Thersites even remains in the Greek camp. Beaten by Ajax, he protests, ‘I serve thee not’, then adds, ‘I serve here voluntary’ (2.1.90, 2.1.92). 8 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, ed. Kenneth Muir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 2.3.18. Subsequent references to the play will be to this edition of the text and will be given in parentheses by act, scene, and line number. 9 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 10. 10 Kott, Shakespeare, our Contemporary, 83.

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Indeed, he promises to ‘keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools’ (2.2.115-2.2.116), but he returns in the next scene, having apparently joined Achilles’s faction, as its official fool. ‘He is a privileged man’, Achilles specifies (2.3.54). One wonders, however, not why Thersites fails to leave the service of Achilles or Ajax, but why he does not leave the Greek camp altogether. As a volunteer he ought, in principle, to be able to go home. He certainly does not fight, though he does go into battle. He seems to remain as a sort of war tourist, enjoying the suffering he witnesses and the contempt he cultivates for everyone around him. Thersites’s very presence is an act of malice. The clown may be rebellious, but this does not make him a pacifist. The playfulness—the game—which he represents does not stand over and against war. Perhaps because Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote both The Complaint of Peace and such playful works as The Praise of Folly, we tend to assume a correspondence between pacifism and play in the early modern period. I argue here that Troilus and Cressida proves this assumption false, though it must be added that play does not oppose war in Shakespeare’s other dramas either. Falstaff, perhaps the most famous of Shakespeare’s jokers, undermines the very concept of honour, reducing it to ‘a mere scutcheon’.11 On the other hand, his dismissive view of military virtues leaves him free to lead ‘my ragamuffins where they are pepper’d’ without compunction.12 Harold Bloom notoriously claims that ‘Falstaff betrays and harms no one’ but Bloom is obviously wrong, in what Ron Rosenbaum called ‘a CliffNotes-level failure’.13 Falstaff does harm the soldiers under his command; he just lacks the courage to inflict harm in a fair fight. Neither Falstaff’s nor Thersites’s cowardice ought to be confused with pacifism. More broadly, playfulness does not inspire peace or, arguably, even violence. In Troilus and Cressida, all of the games of love, chivalric combat, and insult fail to obtain any consistent relationship to violence, and, in the end, are swept up in what René Girard calls an ‘escalation towards extremes’.14 The war may function as play for a time, but the gratuity of play yields to the gratuity of violence, without either containing the other. Both van Creveld and Huizinga insist upon the independence of play and contrast it with the dependence of war on political considerations. ‘[W]hereas war only makes sense to the extent that it is the continuation of politics’, van Creveld writes, ‘the very existence of games depends on that not being the case. Games, in other words, 11 William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, ed. David Bevington (Oxford: Oxford, 1987), 5.1.139. 12 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, ed. Bevington, 5.1.139 and 5.3.35-5.3.36. 13 Ron Rosenbaum, The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups (New York: Random House, 2006), 404. 14 René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, trans. Mary Baker (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 219n1. The first footnote to the first chapter contains a discussion of this phrase, and its translation from the French montée aux extrêmes.

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even those that incorporate political factors, possess a certain kind of autonomy that war does not have and cannot have’.15 This autonomy exerts itself in a delimited field; hence, games ‘are subject to certain highly artificial limits’.16 Huizinga himself declares that ‘all students lay stress on the disinterestedness of play’ and further that ‘[a]ll play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course’.17 According to Huizinga and, following him, van Creveld, games enjoy an independence proceeding from their delimitation within a metaphorical playground, and allowing them to assume a character of disinterestedness. In Troilus and Cressida, however, warfare also shows a certain disinterest in its independence from political considerations. Perhaps, to respond to van Creveld, the war in Shakespeare’s tragedy makes no sense. Everyone notices what we should now call a lack of proportionality between the war being fought—especially in the play’s murderous fifth act—and the offence given. The armed Prologue waxes bathetic in his statement of the casus belli: ‘The ravished Helen, Menelaus’s queen, / With wanton Paris sleeps—and that’s the quarrel’ (Prologue, 9-10). In his and the play’s first scene, Troilus protests, ‘I cannot fight upon this argument: / It is too starved a subject for my sword’ (1.1.90-1.1.91). Everyone continues fighting anyway, and Troilus forgets his stated pacifism within 25 lines, exiting the scene to ‘the sport abroad’ (1.1.113). A lack of a proper casus belli provides occasion for sarcasm, but not a reason actually to stop fighting. Not only does the war seem to lack sufficient cause, but also all the ‘highly artificial limits’ to combat are overturned as the drama unfolds. As anyone who has read the player’s speech from Hamlet—or practically anything else in the Western canon—knows, the war and Troy itself are destined to end in a bloodbath. Cassandra forcibly reminds those who somehow forget the fate hanging over her city that Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilium stand; Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all. Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen and a woe! Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go. (2.2.108-2.2.111)

Troilus immediately dismisses her words as ‘brainsick raptures’ (2.2.121). She appears once more, to prophesy the death of Hector, only to be ignored again, this time by the very man she is trying to save (5.3.89-5.3.90). Indeed, Cassandra may constitute Shakespeare’s most spectacular and frustratingly powerless female character. In 15 Van Creveld, Wargames, 4 (emphasis in the original). 16 Van Creveld, Wargames, 4. 17 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 9 and 10 (emphasis in the original).

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any case, efforts to attenuate war with play among doomed characters, in a doomed city, conducting doomed love affairs, can only furnish temporary escape. Van Creveld, as he describes war games from across cultures and times, notes again and again the risk of pretend fighting, of war as game, becoming real fighting. In mock warfare, he argues, ‘the danger of escalation was always present’.18 It ‘might escape control and turn into the real thing or something very close to it. The damage to participants and bystanders alike could be considerable’.19 He describes a practice of mock battle among the Mae, a New Guinea culture, but also a 1969 war between Honduras and El Salvador following a soccer match.20 In Troilus and Cressida, war escapes the constraints of play. It also escapes the constraints of Shakespeare’s play: the war will continue after the curtain falls, and we all know how it must end. Van Creveld’s argument that politics ought to delimit war does not directly reference Carl von Clausewitz, but only because no citation is necessary. It is common knowledge, at least among van Creveld’s readers, that the Prussian general describes war as ‘a continuation of political intercourse, carried on by other means’.21 Late in his life, Girard became fascinated with Clausewitz, but considered that in his efforts to delimit warfare, the latter betrayed his insight into the reciprocal nature of conflict and the resultant tendency towards extremes: ‘Clausewitz is thus trying in his revised text to imagine war as contained by politics, but it is clear that war regains the upper hand, so to speak’.22 Girard argues that Clausewitz ‘suddenly put his finger on an aspect of reality that is absolutely irrational. Then he retreated and tried to shut his eyes’.23 Girard asks rhetorically whether politics would ‘follow in war’s footsteps’ and gives examples from Napoleon onwards of efforts to achieve peace which nevertheless escalated war.24 Both Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault, apparently independently, reverse Clausewitz’s dictum, turning politics into the product of war, continued by other means.25 Schmitt goes so far as to effectively eliminate the casus belli. A people, he argues in The Concept of the Political, is forged by its willingness to fight for something.26 This ‘something’, moreover, shows itself more or less arbitrary, not deriving its importance from ‘the morally good, 18 Van Creveld, Wargames, 118. 19 Van Creveld, Wargames, 118. 20 Van Creveld, Wargames, 36. 21 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1882), trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 99. 22 Girard, Battling to the End, 8. 23 Girard, Battling to the End, xii. 24 Girard, Battling to the End, 9. 25 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 33-34; Michel Foucault, Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), 64. 26 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 33.

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aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable’.27 Summarizing Schmitt’s idea of politics, James Mensch argues that ‘[b]oth the friend and enemy, ally and opponent, as empty of content, are defined by whatever situation happens to obtain’.28 The ostensible object of contention, Schmitt argues, gains its importance simply from the fact that a people is willing to fight over it. To a number of thinkers, ostensible objects do not delimit war. On the contrary, war endows its objects with value. They echo the speech of Shakespeare’s Troilus before the Trojan council. Though he earlier claims sarcastically that ‘Helen must needs be fair, / When with your blood you daily paint her thus’ (1.1.88-1.1.89), Troilus nevertheless argues here for her importance as an object of contention: Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships And turned crowned kings to merchants. (2.2.80-2.2.82)

Troilus acknowledges Helen’s beauty, ‘whose youth and freshness / Wrinkles Apollo’s and makes stale the morning’ (2.2.77-2.2.78). His reference to ‘a thousand ships’, however, recalls Faustus’s praise of a demonic facsimile of the same character in Christopher Marlowe’s play: ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ 29 The Marlovian intertext foreshadows how Helen will, as Cassandra predicts a few lines later, burn Troy. Faustus’s Helen, for her part, seduces him into eternal damnation. Troilus’s line, moreover, refers equally to Marlowe’s source in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, where Hermes shows Helen’s skull to Menippus in the underworld. ‘And for this a thousand ships carried warriors from every part of Greece; Greeks and barbarians were slain, and cities made desolate’, Menippus remarks, incredulous.30 ‘Strange’, he notes, ‘that the Greeks could not realize what it was for which they laboured; how short-lived, how soon to fade’, before he also takes his place among the dead.31 In Shakespeare’s play, as in Lucian’s satire, Helen’s beauty reveals itself as subject to mortality and loss. Hector argues in the Trojan council that Helen is ‘not worth what she doth cost / The keeping’ (2.2.50-2.2.51). Diomedes agrees, complaining of her cost in human 27 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 27. 28 James R. Mensch, ‘Violence and Existence: An Examination of Carl Schmitt’s Philosophy’, Continental Philosophy Review 50 (2017): 251. 29 Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. Michael H. Keefer (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1995), 5.1.91-5.1.92. 30 Lucian, The Works of Lucian of Samosata, trans. H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 137-138. 31 Lucian, The Works of Lucian of Samosata, trans. Fowler and Fowler, vol. 1, 138.

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lives (4.1.70-4.1.76). In reply, Paris merely accuses Diomedes of undervaluing ‘the thing that you desire to buy’ (4.1.77), assigning her a value in exchange rather than an inherent value or, as Hector puts it earlier, ‘wherein ’tis precious of itself’ (2.2.54). Paris’s servant describes Helen as ‘the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love’s invisible soul’ (3.1.30-3.1.32), but his hyperbole only leads Pandarus to confuse her with Cressida. In any case, no woman—never mind a Jacobean boy actor—could possibly live up to such praise. In his The Theatre of Envy, written long before he began work on Clausewitz, Girard ascribes the importance of the play’s Helen to mimetic desire: ‘The only reason the Greeks want her back is because the Trojans want to keep her. The only reason the Trojans keep her is because the Greeks want her back’.32 In sum, the beauty of Helen’s face does not launch ships in this play. On the contrary, as Troilus recognizes first sarcastically and then seriously, her face is beautified by the ships launched. Hector challenges the Greeks by declaring that ‘[h]e hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer, / Than ever Greek did compass in his arms’ (1.3.271-1.3.272). Given that he angrily dismisses Andromache on the one occasion when she appears on stage, it is hard to credit his hyperbolic flourish (5.3.77-5.3.78). Nestor’s response that he ‘will tell [Hector] that my lady / Was fairer than his grandam, and as chaste / As may be in the world’ (1.3.294-1.3.296), is, Susan Snyder protests, ‘ludicrous’.33 The Greeks otherwise ignore the courtly pretense of the challenge, deferring the question of whom Hector will fight to a lottery and then rigging that lottery, thereby placing the choice of champion at two further levels of removal from the gallantry of defending a lady’s charms (1.3.369-1.3.371). Reading the challenge to the illiterate Ajax, Achilles breaks off before the reference to the champion’s lady: ‘and such a one that dare / Maintain—I know not what. ’Tis trash. Farewell’ (2.1.122-2.1.123). The Greeks nevertheless preserve all the ludic aspects of the challenge, feasting Hector and offering him ‘the welcome of a noble foe’ (1.3.305). At the duel, they offer Hector his choice of terms and consent to end the fight almost immediately, despite Ajax’s protest that he is ‘not warm yet’ (4.5.118). The game of the tournament exists regardless of the woman at stake, who is forgotten almost immediately. Much the same could be said of the entire Trojan War. Some time ago, Una Ellis-Fermor noted that the play searches unsuccessfully for absolute values.34 Instead of being founded on a casus belli—the rape of Helen, the love of Cressida, the will of the gods, some unspoken economic competition, whatever—the play’s violence maintains itself independent of any justifiable motive. 32 René Girard, A Theater of Envy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 123. 33 Susan Snyder, ‘Ourselves Alone: The Challenge to Single Combat in Shakespeare’, SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 20, no. 2 (1980): 212. 34 Snyder, ‘Ourselves Alone’, 210.

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Rules, Huizinga argues, rescue war, like any other game, from degenerating into unlimited violence. Such a degeneration nevertheless constitutes a standing threat. Writing between the two world wars, Huizinga notes that when even one belligerent ‘denies the binding character of international law’ the play element vanishes, and ‘[s]ociety then sinks down to the level of the barbaric, and original violence retakes its ancient rights’.35 Huizinga’s words may serve as a summary of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Political considerations have very little importance to the conflict when the play opens; by the end, even concern for the internal rules of chivalry has evaporated. In his earlier work, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Huizinga discovers the play element in culture by exploring how late medievals pursued the dream of a beautiful life which, he argues, ‘aims at ennobling life itself with beauty and fills communal life with play and forms’.36 He returns to this theme in Homo Ludens, noting that [b]loody violence cannot be caught to any great extent in truly noble form; hence the game can only be fully experienced and enjoyed as a social and aesthetic fiction. That is why the spirit of society ever again seeks escape in fair imaginings of the life heroic, which is played out in the ideal sphere of honour, virtue, and beauty.37

Though Shakespeare’s play ostensibly takes place in antiquity, the characters live out the practices of love and honour as a beautiful but fragile game, a temporary escape from bloody violence. One might blame the ludic for failing to contain violence, but its role all along has been at most to provide ‘fair imaginings of the life heroic’. Whereas Huizinga describes medievals as unselfconscious in their escapism, Shakespeare, writing in the early modern period, makes painfully obvious the disjunction between the characters’ actions and the ideals which they claim. Love and war are related as objects of play, as Troilus shows in his first lines: ‘Why should I war without the walls of Troy / That find such cruel battle here within?’ (1.1.2-1.1.3). He proceeds to compare his weakness in love to the Greeks’ strength in war (1.1.7-1.1.12). The next scene begins with a representation of war as a spectator sport. Hecuba and Helen have, we are told, gone ‘[u]p to the eastern tower, / Whose height commands as subject all the vale, / To see the battle’ (1.2.2-1.2.3). This may seem callous, except that the battle produces surprisingly little bloodshed. Hector ‘was moved’ to wrath (1.2.5), taking it out on his wife and his armourer, but by the 35 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 101. 36 Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 39. 37 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 101.

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shame of being ‘struck down’ by Ajax (1.2.33), not by the death of a friend, as Achilles will be at the end of the play. As the soldiers return, Pandarus cheers each, like an athlete entering a stadium, and remarks, ‘what hacks are on [Hector’s] helmet’ that ‘there’s no jesting; there’s laying on’ (1.2.196). The atmosphere, however, actually is that of a jest. We hear, for instance, that Paris is ‘not hurt’ and that Troilus’s ‘sword is bloodied’ (1.2.220). As a theatrical device, these seriatim descriptions introduce most of the Trojan male characters. In addition, however, Pandarus’s praise presents the war as a game, without serious losses, or at least with none sufficiently serious as to distract Cressida from her uncle’s vicarious flirtation. For his part, Hector spares his opponents on the grounds of ‘fair play’ (5.3.43). Nestor describes seeing Hector, ‘When thou hast hung thy advancèd sword i’th’ air, / Not letting it decline on the declined’ (4.5.188-4.5.189). We see him offer a respite to Achilles who responds, ‘I do disdain thy courtesy’ (5.6.15). This is shortly before Hector chases down a Greek warrior for his armour: ‘Wilt thou not, beast, abide? / Why then, fly on; I’ll hunt thee for thy hide’ (5.6.30-5.6.31).38 Hector fails to show himself a chivalrous knight consistently, but he always shows that he views war as a game. Van Creveld notes the similarities between hunting and warfare. Hector, like the Trobriand Islanders whom van Creveld cites, views warfare as a superior sort of hunting.39 To Hector, even this markedly one-sided encounter qualifies as sport, though, to the Greek soldier, it presents all the seriousness of death. At least to the winners, the war maintains the character of a dangerous game, rather than the existential struggle which Schmitt finds at the root of politics. This lack of seriousness, however, should not be mistaken for pacifism, as Hector’s playfulness expresses itself in murderous violence. Agamemnon and Nestor complain that the war malingers without result. Nevertheless, true to the conception of war as an end in itself, they consider that their failure thus far—‘after seven years’ siege yet Troy walls stand’ (1.3.11)—renders the challenge greater and more glorious, ‘the protractive trials of great Jove / To find persistive constancy in men’ (1.3.18-1.3.20). Aeneas, as herald, enters to deliver Hector’s challenge. Apparently, in spite of his much-admired hacked shield and rage at being floored by Ajax, he has ‘in this dull and long-continued truce / […] resty grown’ (1.3.258-1.3.259). In response, he sends what he calls ‘a roisting challenge’ to the Greeks in hopes that this will ‘strike amazement to their drowsy spirits’ (2.2.207, 2.2.209). As mentioned earlier, the actual duel ends practically before it has begun. On both sides, careful considerations hedge the tournament: the Greeks do not send forward Achilles, their best warrior, so, ‘If [Ajax] fail, / Yet go we under our opinion still / That we have better men’ (1.3.377-1.3.379). Aeneas reports, ‘This Ajax is half made of Hector’s blood’; he is, therefore, provided with a reason to avoid 38 ‘Pelting wars’, indeed. 39 Van Creveld, Wargames, 9-10.

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even the possibility of defeat (4.5.83). The challenge does not return the war to its proper level of violence so much as further attenuate it by interruption. Achilles exchanges threats with Hector, and Hector invites him to return to battle because ‘[w]e have had pelting wars since you refused / The Grecians’ cause’ (4.5.266-4.5.267). Hector’s complaint to Achilles provides yet another demonstration of how, while clearly belligerents, both sides view the war as a sort of game. Van Creveld notes that ‘in particular, sieges, which were often long and boring, were enlivened by tournaments. Both sides would agree to temporarily put their hostility aside and have a little fun instead.’ 40 This is precisely what happens here. The duel neither exacerbates the war nor attenuates it, but merely interrupts it. The characters also pursue romantic love as a sort of game. The premise of Hector’s challenge may soon be forgotten, but it depends on identifying the role of a knight with that of a lover: ‘may that soldier a mere recreant prove’, says Agamemnon, ‘[t]hat means not, hath not, or is not, in love’ (1.3.283-1.3.284). This love is pursued in keeping with specific, if unspoken, rules. Achilles refuses to admit his love for Polyxena, but serves her before his commitment to his comrades in arms or even to his own reputation: ‘Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay; / My major vow is here; this I’ll obey’ (5.1.42-5.1.43). Troilus has less reason to be secretive. Opprobrium might attach to a traitor’s daughter, but we see no other evidence of it and, unlike Achilles, Troilus is not sleeping with the enemy. Moreover, his affair with Cressida seems the worst-kept secret in the besieged city. When Pandarus approaches Paris to make Troilus’s excuses at dinner, the latter has no difficulty in guessing with whom Troilus will spend the evening: ‘I’ll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida’ (3.1.82). Pandarus demurs, but Paris, on his way to fetch Cressida and deliver her to the Greeks, declares, ‘I constantly do think—/ Or rather, call my thought a certain knowledge—/ My brother Troilus lodges there tonight’ (4.1.41-4.1.43). Aeneas, in response, notes that ‘Troilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece / Than Cressid borne from Troy’ (4.1.47-4.1.48). Troilus and Cressida keep their affair secret, both unnecessarily and unsuccessfully, but in so doing, they maintain one of the rules of their private game, delimiting it from the world of warfare around them, and turning Cressida’s bed into a ‘playground’, in Huizinga’s sense of the word. One might ask why Troilus does not object to Cressida’s exile, but only Cressida herself suggests that she might not leave, with the stirring declaration that I have forgot my father; I know no touch of consanguinity; No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me As the sweet Troilus. (4.2.94-4.2.97) 40 Van Creveld, Wargames, 112.

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Her claim of fidelity appears ironic in light of later events and a literary reputation that precedes her, but more importantly it expresses a unique view. Troilus accepts with tragic fatalism that ‘my achievements mock me!’ (4.2.68). Paris shrugs, ‘There is no help; / The bitter disposition of the time / Will have it so’ (4.1.48-4.1.51). Pandarus asks, ‘Is’t possible? No sooner got but lost?’ (4.2.73), but he never really questions its necessity, never mind its possibility. Indeed, he shows himself reprehensibly concerned with Troilus over his niece: ‘Would thou hadst ne’er been born! I knew thou wouldst be his death’, he wails, before even explaining the situation (4.2.83-4.2.84). Partly this striking unanimity of the characters, all agreeing that Cressida must leave, answers a necessity of the plot: in order to follow the story as received, Shakespeare would have to arrange for Cressida’s exile. It also, however, shows a rigid adherence to the rules which Troilus, especially, has adopted and according to which love is secret. Girard goes so far as to accuse Troilus of wanting Cressida gone, bored, as apparently men usually are, of a lover immediately upon consummation.41 ‘You men will never tarry’ says Cressida as Troilus acts to preserve their secrecy (4.2.16). Romeo’s secrecy has more reason, but it does not stop him from marrying Juliet. Troilus draws upon liturgical imagery not to marry but to sacrifice Cressida: I’ll bring her to the Grecian presently: And to his hand when I deliver her, Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus A priest, there off’ring to it his own heart. (4.2.6-4.2.9)

In offering to sacrifice his love (or rather, his lover), Troilus maintains his metadramatic role as a man abandoned and betrayed. By honouring the decision of ‘Priam and the general state of Troy’ (4.2.66), Troilus maintains the rules of the political game in which he finds himself. By not attacking Diomedes, he maintains the rules of the game of diplomacy. ‘Let me be privileged by my place and message’, Diomedes asks, ‘To be a speaker free’ (4.4.128-4.4.129). More importantly, by maintaining secrecy, Troilus maintains the rules of the game of love. Planning to reunite with Cressida in the midst of the enemy camp, he assumes the role of her knight. ‘O, you shall be exposed, my lord’, says Cressida, ‘to dangers / As infinite as imminent!’ (4.4.66-4.4.67). For Troilus, however, this is the very attraction of his new situation: ‘I’ll grow friend to danger’ (4.4.69). His fear, he specifies, is not for Cressida’s fidelity, but for his own ability to play the game: In this I do not call your faith in question So mainly as my merit. I cannot sing, 41 Girard, A Theater of Envy, 129.

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Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk, Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all, To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant[.] (4.4.82-4.4.87)

Troilus surrenders Cressida for the same reason that he maintains a strict but unnecessary and unsuccessful secrecy around their affair. In both cases, he maintains the rules of the game of love. The rules of love, like those of war, may provide a temporary escape from violence, but they do not seriously break with it any more than Thersites’s playfulness essays pacifism. As already noted, Troilus casts off his arms in his first lines, then takes them up again by the end of the scene. Paris wishes to fight ‘but my Nell would not have it so’ (3.2.128-3.2.129) and a letter from his lover’s mother holds Achilles back from battle. Nevertheless, both Paris and Achilles do return to battle, only later, and neither even considers a permanent retirement from the practice of arms. One might see Troilus as driven by jealousy to fight Diomedes, but, within a few scenes of meeting his rival on the battlefield, he tells his nemesis to ‘pay the life thou ow’st me for my horse’, his girlfriend apparently having been forgotten (5.6.7). Even before Cressida’s betrayal, Ulysses, on the strength of Aeneas’s report, says that Troilus ‘in heat of action / Is more vindicative than jealous love’ (4.5.106-4.5.107). Troilus does not need an actual experience of jealousy to inspire his vindictiveness. Love does not contradict violence in the play; arguably, it does not even inspire violence. By the final act of the play, all efforts to keep Hector from the field have failed but all efforts to draw Achilles into battle—Hector’s invitation, Ulysses’s manipulation—have also failed. Thersites notes that Ajax, his pride swollen by the false praise of his generals, has also withdrawn, ‘whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion’ (5.4.14-5.4.16). The resulting battle certainly is barbaric, no longer restrained even by strategic considerations and marked by premeditated murder. Personal antipathy drives the violence, which tends to extremes in that every injury becomes reciprocal or, Girard would doubtless say, mimetic. Achilles’s gang of Myrmidons hacks down the unarmed Hector, then their leader personally desecrates Hector’s corpse. For their part, the Trojans introduce a weapon of mass destruction in the form of ‘the dreadful sagittary’ (5.5.14). Insanity seems to possess the combatants: Troilus ‘hath done today / Mad and fantastic execution’ (5.5.37-5.5.38), including killing a friend of Ajax, who thus ‘foams at mouth’ (5.5.36). Reacting to the loss of Patroclus, Achilles arms, but in this play unlike in the Iliad, Hector is not credited with killing Patroclus, though Achilles calls him ‘thou boy-queller’ (5.5.45). The concerns of love seem neither to constrain nor even to inspire the violence exploding onstage. They may provide

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an initial motive for some escalation, but the escalation obeys an inertial force of its own, a tendency towards extremes. In sum, games may serve as respites in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, but they offer no real opposition to the violence of armed conflict. Violence can be pursued as a game or not, and remains violence regardless. The drama starts with the war between Greeks and Trojans mitigated into a game, pursued for low or even irrelevant stakes. One might say that play, at this point, is war pursued by other means, just as the bitter taunts of Thersites are injuries inflicted by means other than physical violence. At the end of the play, a Clausewitzian understanding of war as governed by political considerations yields to a Clausewitzian total war, and all thought of war as a game is abandoned. Nevertheless, the war maintains play’s gratuity, lacking an external motive that would explain or justify it. Play offers no practical alternative to war, but more to the point, it fails to offer an alternative even in principle. Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida invalidates the conflation of play and pacifism.

Works Cited Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by H. Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. Foucault, Michel. Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980. Girard, René. Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre. Translated by Mary Baker. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010. ———. A Theater of Envy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Holquist, Michael. Introduction to Rabelais and His World, by Mikhail Bakhtin. Translated by H. Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Translated by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ———. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Kott, Jan. Shakespeare, our Contemporary. Translated by Boreslaw Taborski. London: Methuen and Company, 1967. Lucian. The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Translated by H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Edited by Michael H. Keefer. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1995. Mensch, James R. ‘Violence and Existence: An Examination of Carl Schmitt’s Philosophy’. Continental Philosophy Review 50 (2017): 249-268.

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Rosenbaum, Ron. The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups. New York: Random House, 2006. Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Translated by George Schwab. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976. Shakespeare, William. Henry IV, Part 1. Edited by David Bevington. Oxford: Oxford, 1987. ———. Troilus and Cressida. Edited by Kenneth Muir. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Snyder, Susan. ‘Ourselves Alone: The Challenge to Single Combat in Shakespeare’. SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 20, no. 2 (1980): 201-216. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Von Clausewitz, Carl. On War (1882). Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

About the author Sean Lawrence, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, where he also serves as Associate Head. He is the author of Forgiving the Gift: The Philosophy of Generosity in Shakespeare and Marlowe (2012). His recent work centres on the question of peace in Shakespeare and is informed by twentieth-century continental philosophy.

3.

Thomas Morton’s Maypole: Revels, War Games, and Transatlantic Conflict Jim Daems

Abstract One of the stated purposes of James I’s 1618 Declaration and Charles I’s Book of Sports was to prepare subjects for war through the physical exercise provided by ‘lawfull’ sports and recreations. These activities were also conceived as a form of spiritual warfare, initially against Catholicism and increasingly against Puritan opposition. This chapter argues that these purposes are evident in Thomas Morton’s account of the Ma-re Mount Maypole in New English Canaan. By reading the Maypole as the central symbol of the tract, Daems demonstrates that the relationship between sports and war played a significant role in transatlantic conflict between Puritans and Royalists. Keywords: William Bradford and the Plymouth Plantation; Indigenous peoples in early modern literature; North America in early modern literature; fur trade in early modern literature

Although Puritan opposition to popular and Church of England festivities developed during the reign of Elizabeth I, James I’s The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, concerning Lawfull Sports to be used (1618), which expanded his 1617 Lancashire declaration throughout the realm, polarized the debate. Charles I’s reissue of his father’s declaration in 1633, commonly referred to as The Book of Sports, significantly exacerbated the opposition. James I’s Declaration legitimized a number of popular festivities, Holy Day festivities, and sports that had been hindered by ‘Puritanes & precise people’.1 These activities included dancing, archery, ‘May-Games, Whitson Ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting vp of May-poles and 1 James I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, concerning lawfull Sports to be used (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618), 2.

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other sports therewith vsed, so as the same be had in due and conuenient time, without impediment or neglect of diuine Seruice’.2 Although initially intended to further the conversion of ‘Popish Recusants’ to the Church of England, the Declaration notes that the realm ‘is much infested’ with ‘Papists and Puritanes’,3 a coupling which, in itself, must have angered Puritans. However, as Gregory M. Colón Semenza has argued, James I’s declaration was essentially conservative in nature, and its distinctions between ‘lawful’ and ‘unlawful’ sports were reassertions of the Church’s position. When reissued, The Book of Sports furthered the ideological aims of Charles I and Archbishop William Laud to strengthen allegiance to the monarch and the Church of England by regulating popular festivities. This, as Leah Marcus argues, ‘sacramentalized’ ‘lawful’ sports: ‘The old pastimes were a way of taking the Church out into the world and molding the countryside into an image of ecclesiastical order; they become an extension of sacred space.’ 4 Puritan ire was expressed in a plethora of sermons and pamphlets. Henry Burton, for example, argues in A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted (2nd ed. 1636) that the publication of the Book of Sports ‘set open the floudgates to this presumptuous Sinne of Sabbath-breaking’ and provides numerous examples of God striking down Sabbath-breakers engaged in sports.5 These sentiments would continue to be expressed in much more significant documents of the 1640s, including the Root and Branch Petition (1640) and A Directory for the Publique Worship of God (1643), culminating in the parliamentary order of 5 May 1643 that ordered The Book of Sports to be burned by the common hangman. Yet, as Semenza points out, ‘To the extent that a civil war resulted in part from the reissuance of the Book of Sports in 1633, it was a war founded upon fiction.’ 6 Opponents claimed that the Book of Sports ‘openly encouraged all sports’.7 We see this in Burton’s text. Example 21, from 1634, recounts, ‘At Baunton in Dorcetshire some being at bowles on the Lords day, one slinging his bowle at his fellow-bowler, hit him on the eare, so as the bloud issued forth at the other eare, whereof he shortly died. The Murtherer fled.’ 8 Bowling is, 2 James I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration, 7. 3 James I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration, 2-3. 4 Leah Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 5. 5 Henry Burton, A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted, Or A Collection of sundry memorable examples of Gods judgements upon Sabbath-breakers, and other like Libertines, in their unlawfull Sports, happening within the Realme of England, in the compass only of two yeares last past, since the Booke was published, worthy to be knowne and considered of all men, especially such, who are guilty of the sinne or Arch-patrons thereof, 2nd ed. (London: n.p. 1636), A3v. 6 Gregory M. Colón Semenza, Sports, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2003), 114. 7 Semenza, Sports, Politics, and Literature, 114. 8 Burton, A Divine Tragedie, 6.

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of course, excluded from ‘lawful’ sports, at least amongst the ‘meaner sort of people’, in The Book of Sports.9 Evident in this conflict is what we may term a form of spiritual warfare through games and festivities that cannot entirely be disentangled from the developing conflict over political authority that ultimately culminated in the civil wars. James I’s Declaration itself textually establishes the terms of that conflict by stressing two benefits of ‘lawfull’ sports and recreations, one spiritual and the other physical: The one, the hindering of the conuersion of many, whom their Priests will take occasion hereby to vexe, perswading them that no honest mirth or recreation is lawfull or tollerable in Our Religion, which cannot but breed a great discontentment in Our peoples hearts, especially of such as are peraduenture vpon the point of turning; The other inconuenience is, that this prohibition barreth the common and meaner sort of people from vsing such exercises as may make their bodies more able for Warre, when Wee or Our Successours shall haue occasion to vse them. And in place thereof sets vp filthy tiplings and drunkennesse, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their Alehouses.10

In this chapter, I will explore this connection between war and games, or ‘lawfull’ sports and recreations. On a temporal level, sports and recreations create social cohesion and physically prepare individual bodies for war, and, on a spiritual level, sports and recreations are a form of spiritual warfare against, initially, Catholicism and increasingly against Puritan opposition. Figuratively, Thomas Morton’s Ma-re Mount Maypole, raised on 1 May 1627, itself becomes a sort of battle standard that polarizes, rallies, and mobilizes opposing political-religious affiliations in the New England colonies. Although Morton’s account of the Maypole constitutes a small part of New English Canaan, it is ‘the central symbol of the book’.11 Its significance as a deliberate provocation to the Separatists of New England is clear in William Bradford’s denunciation of it in Of Plymouth Plantation. The first version of Morton’s tract was entered in the Stationers’ Register just months before Charles I’s Book of Sports, and the second edition was published in the middle of the Pequot War in 1637. The tract, then, cannot be separated from the charged context of the initial reaction to The Book of Sports in the Stuart kingdoms and the developing conflict between colonizer and colonized in New England. While Morton’s Maypole and revels obviously served a practical function in terms of establishing trade networks 9 Charles I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, Concerning lawfull Sports to bee vsed (London: Robert Barker, 1633), 12. 10 James I, The Kings Maiesties Declaration, 4-5. 11 Robert D. Arner, ‘Pastoral Celebration and Satire in Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan,”’ Criticism 16, no. 3 (1974): 219.

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with the Indigenous peoples of New England in order to challenge the Puritans’ attempt to monopolize these, its function is also in line with the two stated aims of the Declaration and The Book of Sports—to convert ‘Salvage’ people and to instill a loyalty patterned on monarchical and ecclesiastical order through ‘sacramentalized’ revels in order to combat the Separatists of New England. Morton’s higher goal of bringing Church of England doctrine to the Indigenous peoples of New England, then, is in accord with James’s Declaration and with Charles’s and Laud’s policies. In addition, New English Canaan shares the intent of the Council of New England, which, in 1622, asserted that its purpose was ‘to aduance the Crosse of Christ in Heathen parts, and to display his banner in the head of his Armie against infernall spirits, which haue so long kept those poore distressed creatures (the inhabitants of those parts) in bondage’.12 Certainly, this claim is meant to cover the crass economic motives behind colonialism, but Morton uses the spiritual intentions of the Declaration and of the Council to attack the Separatists on precisely those grounds—that the harshness of Puritan doctrine has not only failed to convert the ‘Heathens’; it also casts the Separatists as an oppressive force of ‘infernall spirits’ that impose a new form of spiritual ‘bondage’ on the Indigenous peoples. This reveals the political machinations behind Morton’s presence and actions in both New England and England. Morton’s patron, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, had ‘maneuvered in English high society to become a sponsor of colonial expeditions and a shareholder in the Plymouth Company. In 1607, Gorges secured a charter for a colony near southern Maine—however, from the outset, he had his sights set on more’, and he viewed both the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies as obstacles to his personal aspirations.13 Gorges’s relationship with Laud furthered his aspirations, and he also recognized the usefulness of Morton as both a lawyer and a polemicist with firsthand experience of New England. When the Separatists first sent Morton back to England for punishment following the Maypole episode at Ma-re Mount, Gorges personally intervened and sent Morton back to New England in 1629 as his agent. When the Separatists again arrested Morton and returned him to England the next year, Gorges once again intervened and likely encouraged Morton to write New English Canaan. When Laud was elevated to Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, Morton served his Commission for Foreign Plantations as a lawyer.14 Through the Commission, Gorges would eventually get the Massachusetts 12 Council of New England, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, A Briefe Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England: And Svndry Accidents Therein Occvrring (London: Printed by John Haviland, for William Bladen, 1622). 13 Joseph A. Dwyer III, ‘Reconsidering “Mine Host”: Thomas Morton’s Legal Threat to the New England Colonies’, The New England Journal of History 70, no. 2 (2014): 31. 14 Daniel B. Shea, ‘“Our Professed Old Adversary”: Thomas Morton and the Naming of New England’, Early American Literature 23, no. 1 (1988): 64.

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Bay’s charter revoked, but, by that time, the political situation in the three kingdoms was moving towards the civil wars, preventing him from acting on it. The political machinations in England clearly demonstrate, as Joseph A. Dwyer III argues, ‘the deeper legal and territorial menace’ that Morton’s presence in New England, his relationship with Gorges, his work on the Commission for Foreign Plantations, and his New English Canaan posed for the Separatists.15 There is a larger, more complex strategy designed to undermine the Separatist colonies than is sometimes noted by scholars who focus on Morton and his Ma-re Mount Maypole as an eccentricity. The whole Maypole incident is a strategic mobilization of political, legal, and cultural resources. In this way, Morton’s use of May Game revels becomes an elaborate war game in both its physical and textual manifestations. Strategy is, as Martin van Creveld asserts, the key element of war games—the interplay of thinking through not only one’s own objectives, but the possible reactions that this may provoke in one’s opponents. Morton’s 1627 Maypole was an attempt to undermine the economic foundation of the Separatist colonies by monopolizing trade with the Indigenous peoples, and the publication of New English Canaan is the textual extension of that conflict. On both levels, the Ma-re Mount Maypole functions as a sign akin to a battle standard. Philipp von Hilgers notes that the use of ‘signa’ on the battlefield as a means of imposing some sense of control over the chaos of battle can be traced back to the Romans. ‘Signa’, then, ‘made the battle and combat legible; they regulated beginning, middle, and end. They were no longer separable from the war that they waged. […] The battle was no longer waged merely with signs but over signs.’ 16 Indeed, as von Hilgers discusses the development of war games on paper at the time of the Crusades, he concludes, ‘From that point on, signs gained an autonomy of previously unknown magnitude.’ 17 This is marked by the increasing significance that accrues to battle standards and their capture in both warfare and, symbolically, in war games. The Maypole comes to operate as such a sign from the time of James I’s Declaration—sports and festivities are not ‘separable from the war that they waged’, a battle ‘no longer waged merely with signs but over signs’. As Matt Cohen argues, Morton’s Maypole functioned as a communications device both in itself and along with the allegorical poems that Morton attached to it. Thus, Morton constructs the Maypole into an emblematic device by joining figure (pole) and motto (poems) along the lines argued in Thomas Blount’s translation of Henri Estienne’s The Art of Making Devises (1648), in which this type of ‘perfect’ device consisting of figure and motto is traced back in England to the time of Henry 15 Dwyer, ‘Reconsidering “Mine Host”’, 20. 16 Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 9. 17 Von Hilgers, 9.

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VIII. With the Ma-re Mount Maypole’s destruction, or, keeping with the battle standard notion, capture, over a year later, Morton mythopoetically reconstructs it in New English Canaan to carry on his conflict against the Puritans, now within the charged context created by Charles I’s Book of Sports and the later Pequot War. The significance of the Ma-re Mount revels in 1627 and Morton’s account in New English Canaan is clear if we briefly consider a work published in the years between the first and second editions of Morton’s tract: the poetry anthology Annalia Dvbrensia. Vpon the yeerely celebration of Mr. Robert Dovers Olimpick Games vpon Cotsworlds-Hills (1636). As a work, the anthology, Semenza argues, actively engages with the controversy surrounding The Book of Sports by embracing paganism, sports, and mythopoesis, the contributing poets ‘us[ing] the past to render illegitimate various aspects of their present’.18 In the face of the Puritan threat to both popular ‘lawful’ sports and literary culture, the poets collected in the Annalia Dvbrensia conflate ‘poetic and athletic competition’.19 Dover is represented in Matthew Walbancke’s dedicatory epistle as ‘an Hero of this our Age’ in reviving the games begun by Hercules which ‘are now utterly abandoned, and their memorie almost extinguish’t’.20 The evocation of Hercules can be read as constructing Dover into a hero that wars with the figurative monsters of Puritan opposition to sports, and ultimately to the king’s and the Church’s authority. This is the transformation of The Book of Sports’s twofold intent—transformed to combat Puritanism and to prepare the king’s subjects physically for war. Indeed, many of the poems in the Annalia Dvbrensia make analogies between various sports and war readiness. John Dover, for example, writes in ‘To His Mvch Honovred Vncle Mr. Robert Dover’, the young men wrastle. And throw the sledge, and spurne the heavy barre As did the Romanes in the field of warre.21

In ‘To My Kind Cosen, and Noble Friend, Mr. Robert Dover’, John Stratford notes that when the Greeks allowed their games to lapse, they descended ‘To ease, to Lust, from Lust, / to Luxury’ and were conquered.22 The benefit of Dover’s games to both Church and monarch is stressed in Ben Jonson’s ‘Epigram to my Ioviall Good Friedd [sic], Mr. Robert Dover’: 18 Semenza, Sports, Politics, and Literature, 117. 19 Semenza, Sports, Politics, and Literature, 129. 20 Matthew Walbancke, Annalia Dvbrensia. Vpon the yeerely celebration of Mr. Robert Dovers Olimpick Games vpon Cotsworlds-Hills (London: Printed by Robert Raworth, for Mathewe Walbancke, 1636), sig. A2. 21 Walbancke, Annalia Dvbrensia, sig. D2r. 22 Walbancke, Annalia Dvbrensia, sig. G2r.

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[sports] advance, true Love, and neighbourhood And doe both Church, and Common-wealth the good, In spite of Hipocrites, who are the worst Of Subjects; Let such envie, till they burst.23

Jonson’s lines echo Edmund Reeve’s defence of The Book of Sports in The Commvnion Booke Catechisme Expounded (1636) which asserts ‘an unutterable conservation of unity & godly love’ through sports and festivities.24 Dover’s games transform ‘Arcadia to our Cotswold-hills’,25 and this is commensurate with Morton’s introduction of ‘Revels, & merriment after the old English custome’ into New England.26 Morton’s use of revels reflects his ‘likely home region, Devon’, which was well-known ‘for its adherence to old English folk customs, Anglo-Catholic ritual, and “good hospitality”’,27 and results in a community carefully and deliberately structured in opposition to the Plymouth Plantation with Morton, as ‘Mine Host’, serving as a New World, Herculean Dover. The Ma-re Mount revels exercise the inhabitants spiritually and physically to combat Separatist colonial expansion and economic domination. In The Third Booke. Containing a description of the People that are planted there, what remarkable Accidents have happened there, since they were setled, what Tenents they hould, together with the practice of their Church, Morton reveals a similar linkage of king, Church of England, and sports by transposing ‘old English custome’ to New England. Throughout New English Canaan, the authority of the king and Church validate Morton’s intent,28 which is apparent in the work’s dedication to the Privy Council. Book Three is particularly fascinating in this regard. In the first two books of New English Canaan, Morton performs an ethnography of the Indigenous inhabitants and provides a description of the landscape. Book Three is an ironic inversion of this which contrasts the humanity of the Indigenous people with the incivility and 23 Walbancke, Annalia Dvbrensia, sig. D2v. 24 Edmund Reeve, The Commvnion book catechisme expounded according to Gods holy Word, and the established doctrine of the Church. Written for the furtherance of youth and ignorant persons, in the understanding of the grounds and principles of the Christian religion. Wherein, besides the continued explanation of the points expressed in the catechisme, there are delivered sundry matters very profitable to be considered: whereof some are mentioned in the index afore the worke, 2nd ed. (London: Printed by M.F. for Humphrey Mosley, 1636), 104. 25 Walbancke, Annalia Dvbrensia, sig. B3v. 26 Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, or New Canaan. Containing an Abstract of New England. Composed in Three Bookes (London: Printed for Charles Greene, 1637[?]; hand-dated 1632/3), 132. 27 Daniel Walden, ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”: Morton’s New English Canaan and Atlantic Trade’, Early American Literature 48, no. 2 (2013): 327; William Heath, ‘Thomas Morton: From Merry Old England to New England’, Journal of American Studies 41, no. 1 (2007): 136-137, as quoted in Walden, 327. 28 Shea, ‘“Our Professed Old Adversary”’, 55.

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hypocrisy of the Puritans. Book Three’s chapter headings, such as ‘CHAP. XXVI. Of the Charity of the Separtists’ and ‘CHAP. XXVIII. Of their Policy in publik Iustice’, deliberately parallel Book One’s chapter headings like, ‘CHAP. V. Of their Religion’ and ‘CHAP. VI. Of the practise of their Church’, in order to compose what may be called a New World ethnography of religious dissent. In doing so, Morton blames the Plymouth colonists, in particular, for creating and perpetuating the stereotype that the ‘[s]alvages are a dangerous people, subtill, secreat, and mischievous, and that it is dangerous to live separated, but rather together, and so be under their Lee, that none might trade for Beaver, but at their pleasure’.29 He recognizes that the stereotype is created and manipulated by the Plymouth colonists to further their economic influence, as well as to control further colonial activity in the area. Ultimately, those stereotypes would motivate the Pequot War. The Puritans’ Indigenous stereotype is a sort of bogeyman because, as Morton adds, ‘I have found the Massachussets [sic] Indian more full of humanity, then the Christians & haue had much better quarter with them’.30 Indeed, in order to counter the negative stereotype created by the Puritans, Morton recounts how the Plymouth colonists came to Wessaguscus and, under cover of a feast, slaughtered the Indigenous people that they invited, prompting the Indigenous people to start to refer to the English as ‘Wotawquenange’, which translates to ‘stabbers or Cutthroates’.31 The Maypole at Ma-re Mount allows Morton, as ‘Mine Host’, to create a sacramentalized, festive space, inclusive of the Indigenous peoples, that counters this Puritan stereotype with an Old English, aristocratic sense of ‘hospitality’ designed to exclude, specifically, those that have separated themselves from it, the Separatists of Plymouth Plantation in particular. The festive Maypole is a sign of aristocratic order and Church of England doctrine. Morton states that the Puritans’ anger develops, because mine host was a man that indeavoured to advaunce the dignity of the Church of England; which they (on the contrary part) would laboure to vilifie; with uncivile termes: enveying against the sacred booke of common prayer, and mine host that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family, as a practise of piety.32

While the passage again asserts Morton’s view of the incivility of the Separatists, it is also noteworthy in how it contributes to constructing ‘his family’ (a union of Indigenous and English) and in making the possible pun on ‘laudable’ (also noted by Cohen) which, given his use of literary form in Book Three, is likely. Laud was 29 Morton, New English Canaan, 113-114. 30 Morton, New English Canaan, 114. 31 Morton, New English Canaan, 111-112. 32 Morton, New English Canaan, 138.

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Bishop of Bath and Wells when Morton raised his Maypole in 1627 and had been Archbishop of Canterbury for three years when Morton published his 1637 version of New English Canaan. Morton also served as a solicitor on Laud’s Board of Lords Commissioners for the Plantations. The link between the Church of England and the Maypole as battle standard is explicit in the passage recounting its being raised at Ma-re Mount: The Inhabitants of Pasonagessit (having translated the name of their habitation from that ancient Salvage name to Ma-re Mount, and being resolved to have the new name confirmed for a memorial to after ages) did devise amongst themselves to have it performed in a solemne manner with Revels, & merriment after the old English custome: prepared to sett up a Maypole upon the festivall day of Philip and Iacob; & therefore brewed a barrell of excellent beare, & provided a case of bottles to be spent, with other good cheare, for all commers of that day. […] And upon May-day they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drumes, gunnes, pistols, and other fitting instruments, for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of Salvages, that came thether of purpose to see the manner of our Revels. A goodly pine tree of 80. foote longe, was reared up, with a peare of buckshorns nayled one [sic], somewhat neare unto the top of it: where it stood as a faire sea marke for directions; how to finde out the way to mine Hoste of Ma-re Mount. And because it should more fully appeare to what end it was placed there, they had a poem in readines made, which was fixed to the Maypole, to shew the new name confirmed upon that plantation.33

Morton’s colonial settlement will be permanently marked and bound together by festivity, as the Maypole is intended to remain standing beyond the day’s revels. It marks the site as a trading post for both English ships and Indigenous peoples and as a mustering point to combat the Separatists. As Walden argues, ‘Ma-re’ comes from the Latin Mare (sea), so that the Maypole sits on a ‘hill by the sea’ which points to the connection between Morton’s colonial goal and Atlantic trade.34 In order to accomplish this end, Morton also uses the revels to represent himself as the head of a ‘family’ inclusive of the Indigenous people on which this trade is dependent, drawing further authority from the Book of Common Prayer. The construction of a ‘family’ consisting of the indentured servants to which Morton had granted freedom remaining with him at Ma-re Mount, a fact that Bradford uses to associate the revels with lower-class transgression, and the Indigenous people drew not only on the Book of Common Prayer, but also on aristocratic 33 Morton, New English Canaan, 132. 34 Walden, ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”’, 316.

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hierarchy. Walden argues that Morton’s revels cleverly impose this hierarchy on the settlement: ‘To simulate the power that would lie in his hands as a manor lord at the top of the labour hierarchy of the English countryside, Morton exploited the superficial social egalitarianism of the May Day revels, extending the festivities as a means of solidifying his own social position.’ 35 The construction of this ‘family’ and its aristocratic and church underpinnings, as well as the crossing of ethnic lines, was particularly troubling to the Puritans on both a spiritual and temporal level. As Richard Slotkin notes, for New World Puritans, ‘Both the Indian and the English prelate threatened […their] community with destruction; both tempted men to leave godly for ungodly ways more pleasing to the flesh. Dissolution rather than renewal faced the Puritan community if it fell under the spell of either.’ 36 The threat was a significant one, either drawing Puritans away from God through sensual delights or, should they resist that temptation, through possible armed conflict (although Morton never suggests that this is his aim). We can, then, make sense of the Puritan attack on Morton and his Maypole, which Bradford associates with pagan frenzy: They allso set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practises. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or ye beasly [sic] practises of ye madd Bacchinalians.37

The Maypole is an ungodly, disorderly marker of all Morton’s transgressions in the New World—most frighteningly from Bradford’s perspective is precisely the inclusive nature of Morton and his men with Indigenous women and the purported arming of Indigenous men with firearms. The ‘disorderly trading’ of arms with the Indigenous peoples was expressly forbidden in a 1622 proclamation by James I and a 1630 proclamation by Charles I because of the threat it posed to the nascent New England colonies.38 These proclamations were focused on primarily self-serving colonial activity that threatened the long-term survival and development of the colonies. Morton is at pains, however, in New English Canaan to assert a devout and loyal colonial model while strategically provoking the Separatists in order to 35 Walden, ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”’, 325-326. 36 Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1660-1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 41. 37 William Bradford, Bradford’s History ‘Of Plimoth Plantation’ (Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 1898), 346. 38 James I, A Proclamation prohibiting interloping and disorderly trading to New England in America (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1622).

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accomplish ultimately Gorges’s goal of having the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies’ charters revoked. Another obvious provocation included in the raising of the Maypole is the ‘peare of buckshorns’ nailed near the top of a Priapic 80-foot pole. This addition mocks the Puritans as colonial cuckolds and relies on the common feminization of colonial land and virile male colonizers. In this way, the cuckold image points to what Karol Cooper discusses elsewhere in this volume—a link between warlike commercial strategies and sex. Indeed, the poem ‘Rise Oedipus’ that is read and attached to the pole when it is raised explicitly develops this connection. The poem, Morton tells us, was ‘Enigmatically composed’ and ‘pusseled the Separatists’, while ‘the whole company of the Revellers at Ma-re Mount, knew […] the true sence and exposition of’ it.39 The allusive and allegorical nature of the poem is another example of Morton’s aristocratic bias and relates to a point that critics have long noted—the masque-like elements of New English Canaan, a form with which he was familiar from his time at Gray’s Inn and in which he ‘acquired his mythic vocabulary and developed his rhetorical powers in the practice of making “emblems” of the people and events at hand’. 40 In other words, the revellers only knew the meaning through the explication, which is modelled on an aristocratic-prelatical hierarchy of instruction as opposed to the Puritan model of individual interpretation / conscience, ensuring that the Maypole ceremony achieves the spiritual and temporal purpose of James I’s Declaration and Charles I’s Book of Sports. As Jack Dempsey observes, the complicated allegory of the poem turns on a central pair of trinities. First, ‘Rise Oedipus’ calls on three male, classical healers: Oedipus, ‘forms’ of Proteus, and Esculapius. These are all figures who healed epidemics through various means. Both Dempsey and Edith Murphy note that these healers are invoked in relation to the plague and disease that had been introduced by colonial contact and had decimated the Indigenous population of the area. Morton may have intended his revels to evoke a healing ceremony to strengthen the relationship between Ma-re Mount colonizer and colonized. This goal is furthered in the second trinity of ‘Rise Oedipus’ that draws on the feminization of the colonial landscape and subsumes the Indigenous women who took part in the revels: New England as ‘attractive “nymph” […], as widow […], and as mother’.41 This representation is commensurate with Morton’s verse prologue to New English Canaan, which portrays the land as attractive and desirous (nymph); devastated by plague, as a widow whose ‘fruitful womb / Not being enjoy’d, is like 39 Morton, New English Canaan, 133, 137. 40 Jack Dempsey, ‘Reading the Revels: The Riddle of May Day in New English Canaan’, Early American Literature 34, no. 3 (1999): 284, 286. 41 Dempsey, ‘Reading the Revels’, 289.

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a glorious tomb’; and, finally, transformed into a fruitful mother by the healing presence of the revels, ‘Like a fair virgin, longing to be sped, / And meete her lover in a Nuptiall bed’. 42 This paradisal construct of a benevolent English presence that will reinvigorate the fruitfulness of the land is dependent upon ‘the same “magical extraction of the curse of labour” that Raymond Williams discovers at work in the pastoral country-house poems of Jonson and Carew’. 43 This naturalized form of labour—reinvigorating both the fruitfulness of the land and Indigenous women through a mythical healing—means, as Michelle Burnham argues, that ‘[l]ike aristocratic landowners in England, the colonial landowner can live in pastoral leisure, free from labour, collecting profits from trade in place of rents’.44 This Golden Age pastoral transforms the landscape to a pre-lapsarian condition—pre-Puritan contact—a process diametrically opposed to the Puritans’ notion of corrupt, fallen nature in being characterized, in Morton’s tract, by ‘the aristocratic hierarchy that sanctioned and lorded over the May Day bacchanal’.45 Morton, then, symbolically cuckolds the Puritans by constructing ‘his own pastoral colonial economy as a (re) productive alternative to the Puritans’ “fruitless labor”’,46 a lack of virility that has made New England’s womb a tomb. This process is explicitly marked in Morton’s explication of ‘Rise Oedipus’ as a mustering of suitors around a battle standard. However, we must be aware that, while Morton does favourably contrast the humanity of the Indigenous peoples with the behaviour of the Puritans, he does consistently refer to them as ‘Salvages’. And, although Dempsey sees much compassion in Morton’s account of the Indigenous peoples, Morton does praise the plague through which ‘the wondrous wisdome and love of God, is shewne, by sending to the place his Minister [the plague], to sweepe away by heapes the Salvages’ to clear the way for a virile colonization that will again impregnate New England’s ‘fruitful womb’. 47 Morton’s compassion is limited to the survivors who will provide the necessary labour for his manorial colony. As Murphy argues, the paradox of praising God for bringing the plague that killed as much as 90 percent of the Indigenous population and praising their humanity is resolved by Morton’s colonial ambition—‘the wondrous wisdom and love of God’ is shown to the colony of Ma-re Mount in the fact that He has spared enough Indigenous people ‘to share their excellent abilities as husbandmen of the land and to help English settlers to

42 Morton, New English Canaan, 10. 43 Michelle Burnham, ‘Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics in Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan’, Early American Literature 41, no. 3 (2006): 413. 44 Burnham, ‘Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics’, 421. 45 Walden, ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”’, 315. 46 Burnham, ‘Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics’, 424. 47 Morton, New English Canaan, 15.

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exploit its resources’. 48 Morton and his men will exploit Indigenous husbandry in order, again, to make the land a fruitful colony, as opposed to the cuckolded Puritans who separate themselves not only from the ‘old English’ values that he holds, but also from the Indigenous population. The Maypole symbolizes the consummation of Morton’s colonial vision. For Bradford, the Maypole symbolizes the whore Flora, a standard Puritan critique of the sexual transgressions that they associated with May Day revels. We can take the more extensive account of Flora by the author of the later broadsheet ‘The May-poles Motto’ (1661) as exemplary: Moreover it is credibly reported, that an old whore called Flora, sometimes inhabiting at Rome, who had at her door a long Pole with a Motto on it, for a signe to invite her lovers, and that she having by the filthiness of her fornication gained much money in her life-time, did at her death, as a Legacy, give vast sums of money unto Maids or Virgins (so called) yearly upon May day, to solemnize her Feast or Funeral by this signal testimony of a May-pole, which Priests and people adore in remembrance of the old whore, or Monument, to preserve her memorial, which hath been practised in an ignorant zeal and lewdness, by them who are the off-spring of that Mother of Harlots, mentioned Rev. 17. and that be under the Prince of the Ayr’s dominion.

The affective language of Popish adoration, another key component of Puritan iconoclasm, can be read as a direct attack on The Book of Sports’ affective logic—that preventing ‘lawful’ sports and pastimes will alienate ‘Our peoples hearts’, hindering the aims of the Church of England to convert Popish subjects and the aim of making the king’s subjects fit for war. The reading of Flora’s emblematic device, tied to the Whore of Babylon in the ‘Motto’, highlights the function of the Maypole as a transgressive invitation to ungodly colonial sexual activity, which similarly motivates Bradford’s allusion. Transgressive sexuality is not legitimately fruitful for Bradford, but even the pole itself points to this unfruitfulness. In his attack on Maypoles in The Day of Hearing (1600), Huw Roberts argues that ‘God crowneth the yeare with his blessings, and satisfieth every tree with moisture, making it to be greene and pleasaunt, and to bee fruitfull after his kinde. But vaine and gracelesse men destroy the most flourishing trees, and sette them vp to bee drye and vnfruitfull like themselves’. 49 For Roberts, 48 Edith Murphy, ‘“A Rich Widow, Now to be Tane Up or Laid Down”: Solving the Riddle of Thomas Morton’s “Rise Oedipeus”’, The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 4 (1996): 760. 49 Huw Roberts, The Day of Hearing: or, six lectvres vpon the latter part of the thirde chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrewes of the time and meanes that God hath appointed for man to come to the knowledge of his truth, that they may be saved from his wrath. The summary pointes of every one of which lectures are set

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cutting down the tree that becomes the Maypole is a ‘fruitless’ destruction of God’s creation and a transgression of ‘kind’. Roberts’s recourse to Old Testament exclusion rhetoric through the notion of ‘kinds’ on a sexual or ‘fruitful’ level is suggestive of the New England Puritans’ concerns with miscegenation implied by Bradford’s ‘worse practices’ that occurred during the drinking and cavorting of the revels. A clear conflict over the Maypole as sign is evident, as are broadly defined camps that fought a paper war, and more, by rallying their expositions around it. Possession or capture of the Maypole signifies a victory of one worldview over another and asserts the correctness of one explication of it over another. But, once again, the Puritan reading of Maypoles and transgressive sexuality is deliberately provoked by Morton in another song written for the Ma-re Mount revels. Morton recounts, ‘There was likewise a merry song made, which (to make their Revells more fashionable) was sung with a Corus, every man bearing his part; which they performed in a daunce, hand in hand about the Maypole, whiles one of the Company sung, and filled out the good liquor like gammedes and Jupiter’.50 The transgressive sexual allusion to Ganymede in what is, essentially, a statement of male bonding between Morton’s men and the Indigenous men that take part in the revels is but one more frightening spectre of how the Puritans themselves may slip into sexual excess, a problem that arose for Bradford to deal with in the Plymouth Plantation in 1642. For Morton, however, the sexual energies of the revels are bounded by the monarchs’ declarations on sports and an adherence to Church of England doctrine. The textual games here involve each side strategically manoeuvring for position as they attempt to overlay their ideals on the New World terrain. While renaming the landscape as symbolic of possession is, in itself, part of the colonial process (which is an issue beyond the scope of this chapter), the transposition of Pasonagessit to Ma-re Mount by Morton and Ma-re Mount to Merry Mount and Mount Dagon in Bradford’s text is significant in this context. The semantic move transforms Morton’s Golden Age paganism into a symbol of ‘Old Testament Israel’s most dangerous antagonists’, the Philistines.51 Dagon allows Bradford to encapsulate his critique of sexual licence, as Dagon was a fertility god, and the result of that sexual licence through representations of Dagon as half-man and half-fish. As Walden argues,

downe immediately after the Epistle dedicatory. Herevnto is adioyned a sermon against fleshly lusts, & against certaine mischevious May-games which are the fruit thereof (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1600), n.p. 50 Morton, New English Canaan, 134. 51 Walden, ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”’, 325.

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This iconography carries a twofold significance: on the one hand, the hybridity that Dagon embodies points to the possibility for interracial European-Amerindian offspring, a problematic persona for Separatist ideology. […] On the other hand, the half-man-half-fish Dagon must call to mind the maritime mythology of merfolk […] almost always understood to portend doom for those who encountered them.52

It is only this threat of portending doom that emerges from Bradford’s analogy that explains the Puritans’ mobilization against Ma-re Mount and its Maypole, as well as their very determined, lifelong persecution of Morton’s textual and legal efforts to attack the Separatist colonists. Yet, all of Morton’s attempts to transpose the Puritan threat through revels and the use of literary techniques to exclude the Separatists from Canaan end in his own expulsion. Morton appears to have underestimated the Puritan colonizers’ willingness to up the stakes from his provocative war games to actual warfare. His portrayal of the Separatists, who are not bounded by the limits established by monarchical and ecclesiastical order, cannot be magically written on the ‘terrain of a Bible Commonwealth’.53 Morton’s writing of the Puritans as anti-masquers and mock-heroic figures—of Miles Standish as Captain Shrimp, for example, who leads the ‘Nine Worthies of Canaan’ against Ma-re Mount—is a compensatory textual move once he is banished from Canaan that represents ‘the Separatists as inept performers of an illegitimate class / status identity’.54 Similarly, his introduction of revels on May Day 1627 is exemplary of the conservative intentions of both James I’s Declaration and Charles I’s Book of Sports, and stands in contrast to the class transgressions of the Puritans in New England, ‘whereby [with] the help of Beaver, and the command of a servant or two’ they advance themselves ‘to the title of a gentleman’.55 While their illegitimacy, as well as their hypocrisy, shine through in Morton’s text, ‘Mine Host’s’ defeat by characters such as Captain Shrimp equally shine upon Morton’s strategic failure outside of the textual realm to exercise his Ma-re Mount ‘family’ spiritually and physically for war. But most telling in this paper war is the mobilization by the Separatists against the Maypole which, by the time of the 1637 publication of New English Canaan, manifests itself in the genocidal Pequot War that would set the tone of American history, a rejection of ‘Morton’s method of familiarity […] that tended as if inexorably to the Indian wars of the seventeenth century’.56 52 Walden, ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”’, 325. 53 Shea, ‘“Our Professed Old Adversary”’, 57. 54 Burnham, ‘Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics’, 406. 55 Morton, New English Canaan, 167-168. 56 Michael Zuckerman, ‘Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount’, New England Quarterly 50 (1977): 271.

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Works Cited Arner, Robert D. ‘Pastoral Celebration and Satire in Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan”’. Criticism 16, no. 3 (1974): 217-231. Bradford, William. Bradford’s History ‘Of Plimoth Plantation’ (1630-1651). Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 1898. Burnham, Michelle. ‘Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics in Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan’. Early American Literature 41, no. 3 (2006): 405-428. Burton, Henry. A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted, Or A Collection of sundry memorable examples of Gods judgements upon Sabbath-breakers, and other like Libertines, in their unlawfull Sports, happening within the Realme of England, in the compass only of two yeares last past, since the Booke was published, worthy to be knowne and considered of all men, especially such, who are guilty of the sinne or Arch-patrons thereof. London: n.p., 1636. Charles I. The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, Concerning lawfull Sports to bee vsed. London: Robert Barker, 1633. Council of New England. ‘Epistle Dedicatory’. A Briefe Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England: And Svndry Accidents Therein Occvrring. London: Printed by John Haviland, for William Bladen, 1622. Dempsey, Jack. ‘Reading the Revels: The Riddle of May Day in New English Canaan’. Early American Literature 34, no. 3 (1999): 283-313. Dwyer, Joseph A. ‘Reconsidering “Mine Host”: Thomas Morton’s Legal Threat to the New England Colonies’. The New England Journal of History 70, no. 2 (2014): 20-44. Heath, William. ‘Thomas Morton: From Merry Old England to New England’. Journal of American Studies 41, no. 1 (2007): 135-168 James I. The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, Concerning lawfull Sports to be vsed. London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618. ——. A Proclamation prohibiting interloping and disorderly trading to New England in America. London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1622. Marcus, Leah. The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan, or New Canaan. Containing an Abstract of New England. Composed in Three Bookes. London: Printed for Charles Greene, 1637 [?]. [Handdated 1632 / 33]. Murphy, Edith. ‘“A Rich Widow, Now to be Tane Up or Laid Down”: Solving the Riddle of Thomas Morton’s “Rise Oedipeus”’. The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 4 (1996): 755-768. Reeve, Edmund. The Communion Book Catechisme Expounded, According to Gods holy Word, and the established Doctrine of the Church. 2nd ed. London: Printed by M. F., for Humphrey Mosley, 1636.

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Roberts, Huw. The Day of Hearing: or, six lectvres vpon the latter part of the thirde chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrewes of the time and meanes that God hath appointed for man to come to the knowledge of his truth, that they may be saved from his wrath. The summary pointes of every one of which lectures are set downe immediately after the Epistle dedicatory. Herevnto is adioyned a sermon against fleshly lusts, & against certaine mischevious May-games which are the fruit thereof. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1600. Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. Sports, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2003. Shea, Daniel B. ‘“Our Professed Old Adversary”: Thomas Morton and the Naming of New England’. Early American Literature 23, no. 1 (1988): 52-69. Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1660-1860. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Walbancke, Matthew. Annalia Dvbrensia. Vpon the yeerely celebration of Mr. Robert Dovers Olimpick Games vpon Cotsworlds-Hills. London: Printed by Robert Raworth, for Mathewe Walbancke, 1636. Walden, Daniel. ‘“The Very Hydra of the Time”: Morton’s New English Canaan and Atlantic Trade’. Early American Literature 48, no. 2 (2013): 315-336. Zuckerman, Michael. ‘Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount’. New England Quarterly 50 (1977): 255-277.

About the author Jim Daems, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of English at the University College of the North in Thompson, MB. He has published articles on early modern literature and contemporary popular culture, notably on John Milton, Edmund Spenser, William Bradford, Harry Potter, Brokeback Mountain, and the television series Sleepy Hollow. He co-edited Eikon Basilike (2005) with Holly Faith Nelson, edited a collection of essays on RuPaul’s Drag Race (2014), and authored Seventeenth Century Literature and Culture (2006) and ‘A Warr So Desperate’: John Milton and Some Contemporaries on the Irish Rebellion (2012).

4. Milton’s Epic Games: War and Recreation in Paradise Lost David Currell

Abstract The epic tradition, upon which Milton relies in Paradise Lost, raises a number of issues in portraying a war in Heaven: angels, fallen or not, are immortal; the fallen angels cannot possibly defeat God; and their penchant for games tends to pull the War in Heaven from epic into mock heroic. Similarly, Satan’s encounter with Gabriel is not like the tragic and heroic encounter of characters such as Achilles and Hector because God forestalls that possibility. This chapter argues through a close analysis of classical allusion in Paradise Lost that, in representing the War in Heaven, Milton suggests that it is neither fully game nor fully war as God presides over both recreation and decreation. Keywords: Milton and Lucretius; epic conventions; Milton and intertextuality; Milton’s God

Immediately before Milton’s God turns the course of the War in Heaven, Raphael presents the state of play for his human audience as follows: ‘war seemed a civil game / To this uproar’.1 This chapter is in part an extended exegesis of this pivotal clause that concatenates four concepts central to the poetics of Paradise Lost: war, civil war in particular, games, and the relation of seeming. It is a complex textual and intertextual moment.2 Raphael, accommodating his account of celestial events to human apprehension, evokes the ostensibly legible domain of terrestrial warfare but unmoors it rhetorically. In fact, Raphael’s narration is Adam and Eve’s 1 John Milton, Paradise Lost, in The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 6.667-6.668. Subsequent references to Paradise Lost will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses by book and line number. 2 For a consonant exegesis of 6.667-6.668, see N.K. Sugimura, ‘Matter of Glorious Trial’: Spiritual and Material Substance in ‘Paradise Lost’ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 200-201.

Nelson, H.F. and J. Daems (eds.), Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789463728010_ch04

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introduction to the concept of war: war will dominate much of Michael’s presentation to Adam in the final books, but it is not part of their prelapsarian experience. The intensification of destruction and horror implied by ‘war seemed a civil game / To this uproar’ challenges not only the innocent imaginations of the Edenic pair, but also the historical imagination of the poem’s readers: compared to the uproar of the War in Heaven, the catastrophe of human warfare appears a polite interlude. This characteristically Miltonic tripartite comparison disorients with its play of scale, like Satan’s spear (1.292-1.294) or the universe seen ‘in bigness as a star / Of smallest magnitude close by the moon’ (2.1052-2.1053). But the ‘civil game’ figure dizzies with involution as well as scale: the placement of the loaded term ‘civil’ worries the rhetorical structure, the more so for containing an allusion to the famous comparative by which Lucan announces his epic theme as bella […] plus quam civilia (‘war worse than civil’).3 Milton’s ‘civil’ can be read as an especially subtle species of transferred epithet: a civil game is decorous and sociable; civil war (the lived experience of Milton and his first readership) the most anarchic and anathematized kind of social destruction. Lucan’s proem compares the collapse of Rome to the dissolution of the cosmos and laws of nature (Bellum civile 1.72-1.80) and Milton’s War in Heaven—the primal civil war fomented when Satan ‘breaks union’ (5.612)—features comparable imagery of universal destruction. This strain of Miltonic imagery, however, is not primarily related to Stoic ekpyrosis or to Lucan’s tragic vision. Its generically complex character is in part a product of its deeper rootedness in the Epicurean physics of Lucretius’s didactic epic De rerum natura, yoked—not without strain, or even paradox—to a Christian poetics of regeneration. By reading Milton’s military imagery in his descriptions of chaos and of the War in Heaven in the light of his patterns of allusion to epic games, the literary difficulty of Book 6 emerges as an index of Milton’s representation of the cosmos as war game, where destructive potential is also the potential for re-creation. The genre and tone of the War in Heaven remain live critical issues: did Milton aim at sublimity or mock-heroic, and did he hit or miss his mark?4 The protagonists’ 3 Lucan, The Civil War, translated by J.D. Duff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 1.1. Subsequent classical texts and translations are cited parenthetically from the Loeb Classical Library editions. The echo of Bellum civile is also noted by David Norbrook in his discussion of Milton’s allusions to Lucan in Paradise Lost: Writing the English Republic: Poetry Rhetoric and Politics 1627-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 449. 4 The mock-heroic interpretation was advanced influentially by Arnold Stein in Answerable Style: Essays on ‘Paradise Lost’ (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1953), 17-37. On the early reception of the episode as both serious and sublime heroic writing and also a resource for mock-heroic writers, see, respectively, Nicholas von Maltzahn, ‘The War in Heaven and the Miltonic Sublime’, in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan Houston and Steven Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 154-179; and Anthony Welch, ‘Paradise Lost and English Mock Heroic’, in Milton in the Long Restoration, ed. Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

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mortality is the precondition for the kind of glory memorialized in classical epic; a war of immortals erases the genre’s essential dialectic between the limits of lifespan and the eternity of song, a structural problem about which Milton is thoroughly selfconscious: ‘deeds of eternal fame / Were done, but infinite’ (6.240-6.241). Moreover, half the infinite deeds are of ‘elect / Angels contented with their fame in Heav’n’ who ‘Seek not the praise of men’ (6.374-6.376), while the ‘glory […]Vainglorious’ of Satan’s rebels is only to be recounted under erasure (6.383-6.384). For Claude Rawson, the combatants’ immortality is what makes Paradise Lost the ‘immediate progenitor of mock-heroic’, and Milton’s solution to the problem of representing a mode of martial heroism that his epic was designed to discredit changes literary history: ‘the formula of the battle without killing became an essential pattern of the mock-heroic canon from Boileau’s Le Lutrin (1674) to Pope’s Dunciad (1728-43)’.5 As Pope has it in The Rape of the Lock (1714): ‘Like Gods they fight, nor dread a mortal Wound’, a line which follows a more direct allusion to Paradise Lost during the game of ombre: one of Belinda’s guardian sylphs is caught in the scissors, ‘But Airy Substance soon unites again’,6 in imitation of Michael cleaving Satan with ‘discontinuous wound […] but th’ ethereal substance closed / Not long divisible’ (6.329-6.331). But non-fatal contention features already in Homeric epic. In Iliad 23, the funeral games for Patroclus, military skills are channelled into the civility of athletic contest, inaugurating an epic convention that Milton further adapts, while Iliad 21 features a theomachy (war among gods) which is an occasion for diegetic laughter. Zeus sits on Olympus and laughs at the other gods’ strife (21.388-21.390): ‘Among the gods, with nothing at stake, theomachy is but a parody’ of epic war.7 When, in anticipation of the War in Heaven, the Son tells the ‘smiling’ Father (5.718), ‘thou thy foes / Justly hast in derision, and secure / Laugh’st at their vain designs and tumults vain’, the phrasing is deepened by Biblical resonance, but

2016), 465-482. John Leonard, Faithful Labourers: A Reception History of ‘Paradise Lost’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) aims to arrest the critical pendulum by acknowledging local comic effects but no overall agenda on Milton’s part intentionally to ridicule epic war (301-303). In Milton and Homer: ‘Written to Aftertimes’ (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2011), Gregory Machacek argues that epic and mock-epic strains cooperate rhetorically in Milton’s composition of a ‘negative or admonitory exemplum’ (60). Machecek’s intertextual readings are valuable for understanding the episode’s relationship to martial values; my own combine attention to further Latin and Homeric sources to build a more abstract sense of ‘war’ as a cosmic and ludic force in Paradise Lost. 5 Claude Rawson, ‘Mock-Heroic and English Poetry’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Epic, ed. Catherine Bates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 167-192, quoting 171. 6 Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), 5.44 and 3.152. 7 Pramit Chaudhuri, The War with God: Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 27.

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may also cue a mock-heroic interpretation glancing back to Homer (5.735-5.737).8 Milton had predecessors ancient and modern, however, for whom angelomachy furnished an environment thoroughly consonant, or perceived to be so, with the military sublime.9 The War in Heaven presents neither recreation (civil game) nor decreation (civil war) purely; there is practically a competition between deflation and inflation. This is the primal, violent disintegration of God’s polity, but not Belial’s speeches alone are ‘gamesome’ in its representation (6.620). Book 6 falls, moreover, at the centre of a poem that makes careful references to epic and historical varieties of war game in order to make sense of cosmic and moral action in the wake of the War in Heaven. If the ludic denotes action or speech ‘set against some sort of reality’,10 then in Paradise Lost the dialectic implicit in setting games against war through a contrastive yoking is especially intense. Victory and loss (the business of wars and games alike) are signalled from the very title, but their ‘reality’ within the poem proves to be perspectival.11 Classical presences within the argument of the Book 9 proem help begin to illustrate this point. The ‘races and games’ of the proem (9.33) recall Milton’s capping of the muster of devils in Hell with a reference to ‘all who since, baptized or infidel, / Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, / Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond’ (1.582-1.584). ‘Jousted’ takes these wars further in the direction of ‘civil game’, while the geographical terms commingle Ariosto’s Orlando and Tasso’s Rinaldo with crusaders and Saracens.12 The devils’ muster and review prove no more than a war game—military 8 The Biblical intertext is Psalm 2: ‘he who in Heaven doth dwell / Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them’ (8-9 in Milton’s verse translation). The rebels’ indulgence in derision (6.600-6.608, 6.628-6.633) is itself part of their exposure as parodic gods. See also Paul Rovang, ‘Milton’s War in Heaven as Apocalyptic Drama: “Thy Foes Justly Hast in Derision”’, Milton Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1994): 28-35; and Susanne Rupp, ‘Milton’s Laughing God’, in A History of English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond, ed. Manfred Pfister (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), 47-55. 9 On the tradition, see Stella Purce Revard, The War in Heaven (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980). In Tobias Gregory’s framing: ‘readers of less sophisticated hexaemeral narratives evidently did not find it absurd for Michael and Lucifer to slug it out for several contested rounds’ (From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006], 43). 10 On the etymology of ludus / ludo (‘game’ / ‘play’), see Helen Lovatt, Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the ‘Thebaid’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4-8, quoting 4. 11 Satan’s angels lose a war and humanity loses Eden (1.4). Satan expects to enjoy the latter as his victory: Sin announces, ‘Thine now is all this world, thy virtue hath won’ (10.372) having called Satan’s ruinous deeds ‘trophies’ (10.355). But Sin’s phrasing recalls the poet’s grateful return to a ‘world […] Won from the void and formless infinite’ by God’s creating Word (3.11-3.12). The common phrasing reflects the speakers’ common passage through chaos; as my argument will show, this is a crucial element in the theme. 12 The full context (1.571-1.589) adds to these the combatants of the gigantomachy, Thebaid, Iliad, and Arthurian romance in order to belittle all as no more substantive ‘than that small infantry / Warred on by cranes’—pygmies whose own provenance is a Homeric simile (Iliad 3.1-3.9); see Welch, ‘English Mock Heroic’, 466-468.

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manoeuvres devolve first into a counsel (albeit Pandemonium’s hall is ‘like a covered field, where champions bold / Wont ride in armed […] To mortal combat or career with lance’ [1.763-766]), and ultimately into actual races and games (2.528-2.546) that recall the elaborate epic tradition of Iliad 23, Aeneid 5, and Thebaid 6. These games are also in the background of the averted duel between Gabriel and Satan at the close of Book 4. Unlike Achilles and Hector or Aeneas and Turnus, however, Gabriel and Satan do not fight to the death: they join a parallel tradition of averted duels within Homeric and Statian epic games. Even so, and reversing the direction of the Iliad’s figuration by negation, Milton uses the mock duel to evoke a ‘horrid fray’ (4.996) of ‘elements’ (4.993), connecting this moment to the War in Heaven and to his Lucretian chaos. Martin van Creveld’s consideration of Homeric duels within his expansive survey of the game-form he calls ‘combat of champions’ (bringing under this rubric real, rule-bound, and fictive single combats from the second millennium BCE on) highlights the usefulness of the concept ‘war game’ in approaching the mythological, historical, and literary range of Milton’s references.13 For van Creveld, the overriding criterion for this concept is the presence of strategy (the interplay of competing intentions) in combination with one or both of the limiting elements pretence (simulation) and formalization (rule-boundedness).14 The three Iliadic combats that, for van Creveld, fulfil these criteria include the duel of Menelaus and Paris, designed to resolve the entire war by direct combat between the interested principals (Iliad 3.15-3.380); the challenge of Hector met by Aias (7.54-7.312); and the prematurely settled fight in armour between Aias and Diomedes at the funeral games for Patroclus (23.798-23.825). The ludic dimension of these episodes lies more in formalization than pretence (fatality is not precluded), but before any mortal blow is dealt, a spectating agency interrupts each encounter: Aphrodite, the heralds as night falls, and the fearful Achaean audience. In seeming contrast, the decisive duel between Achilles and Hector represents the real tragic apex of the Iliad, and while it adheres to some kind of formality (for example, in its sequence of weapons), it is the least bounded contest of Iliadic champions: Achilles is transhumanized by rage, fighting a river to reach the encounter, manifesting as a flame or rising sun, and victorious by the aid of Athene. In defining his own tragic turn against classical epic precedent, Milton makes a 13 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 38-53; see especially 43-46. Milton’s own interest in the history of war games is registered in the first entry under ‘Gymnastica’ (athletic games) in his Commonplace Book, fol. 240, which refers to a section of Nicephorus Gregoras’s Historia describing a Byzantine Olympic revival and the forms of duelling devised for it. See John Milton, ‘Commonplace Book’, ed. and trans. Ruth Mohl, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), 1:488-1:489. 14 Van Creveld, Wargames, 3-5.

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specific part of this episode a laconic synecdoche for the entire Iliad: ‘the wrath / Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued / Thrice fugitive about Troy wall’ (9.14-9.16). This corresponds precisely to Iliad 22.157-22.166: τῇ ῥα παραδραμέτην φεύγων ὃ δ᾽ ὄπισθε διώκων: πρόσθε μὲν ἐσθλὸς ἔφευγε, δίωκε δέ μιν μέγ᾽ ἀμείνων καρπαλίμως, ἐπεὶ οὐχ ἱερήϊον οὐδὲ βοείην ἀρνύσθην, ἅ τε ποσσὶν ἀέθλια γίγνεται ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ περὶ ψυχῆς θέον Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο. ὡς δ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἀεθλοφόροι περὶ τέρματα μώνυχες ἵπποι ῥίμφα μάλα τρωχῶσι: τὸ δὲ μέγα κεῖται ἄεθλον ἢ τρίπος ἠὲ γυνὴ ἀνδρὸς κατατεθνηῶτος: ὣς τὼ τρὶς Πριάμοιο πόλιν πέρι δινηθήτην καρπαλίμοισι πόδεσσι (In front a good man fled, but one far better pursued him swiftly; for it was not for beast of sacrifice or for bull’s hide that they strove, such as are men’s prizes for swiftness of foot, but it was for the life of horse-taming Hector that they ran. And as single-hoofed horses that are winners of prizes gallop lightly about the turning points, and some great prize is set out, a tripod perhaps or a woman, in honour of a warrior who has been killed, so these two circled thrice with swift feet about the city of Priam[.])

Like Milton’s abbreviation, the Homeric original begins by presenting ‘Achilles on his foe pursued’ and ends with the duo ‘thrice fugitive about Troy wall’ (9.14-9.16). Milton sweeps past, but perhaps implicitly sweeps in, the famous simile that likens (while denying that it likens) the crisis of Hector’s life and the Trojan War to a game. Not for prizes is this race run, but for a life. War seemed a civil game—but was deadly serious. The Homeric structure is simpler than the involuted escalation of ‘war seemed a civil game / To this uproar’; it may still influence that moment at a great remove, but it leaves its most direct trace within the Book 9 proem itself, in Milton’s abjuration of  races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds; Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament[.] (9.33-9.37)

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These gaudy aristocratic entertainments, the amusements of kings and sultans, are the devils’ work—literally so, as the extended, classicizing description of epic games in Book 2 has shown: Part on the plain, or in the air sublime Upon the wing, or in swift race contend, As at th’ Olympian Games or Pythian fields; Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form. As when to warn proud cities war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds, before each van Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms From either end of heav’n the welkin burns. Others with vast Typhoean rage more fell Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar. (2.528-2.541)

Raphael, narrating the War in Heaven, contrasts the strangeness of angelomachy with Heaven’s proper, familiar ‘festivals of joy and love’ (6.94); the quoted passage shows the warmongers’ fallen entrapment within ‘races and games […] joust and tournament’. Milton is learned in his handling of material he claims reluctance to emulate. His reference to the Olympian and Pythian games recalls the aetiological dimension of Aeneid 5.545-5.603 (supposed origin of the Roman lusus Troiae) and Thebaid 6.1-6.18 (supposed origin of the Greek Nemean games), but the most significant allusions are internal to Paradise Lost: read in light of the War in Heaven, the language of ‘airy knights’ and ‘feats of arms’ recalls in prospect (so to speak) the first day of battle, as the rent rocks and hills shadow the ‘uproar’ (6.668) of the second.15 Is the association of the devils’ races and games with classical epic straightforwardly damning? Gabriel’s security detail is similarly occupied when Uriel arrives to warn of Satan’s approach to Eden:

15 ‘Cyclical repetition’—both literal circular movement (chariot circuit, whirlwind) and repetition compulsion—links all the pastimes pursued by the devils awaiting Satan’s return to Hell; see David Quint, Inside ‘Paradise Lost’: Reading the Designs of Milton’s Epic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 53.

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Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat Chief of th’ angelic guards, awaiting night; About him exercised heroic games Th’ unarmèd youth of Heav’n, but nigh at hand Celestial armory, shields, helms, and spears, Hung high with diamond flaming, and with gold. (4.549-4.554)

Alerted, Gabriel later sends his cherubim ‘armed / To their night watches in warlike parade’ (4.779-4.780), but the recollection of the parading devils (1.544ff) which this brings with it compounds the problem of the initial parallel. As Alastair Fowler comments on ‘unarmèd’ at 4.552: ‘Contrast the devils’ aggressive games […] Or do the arms laid aside indicate unguarded carelessness[?]’ 16 Both ‘warlike parade’ and ‘unarmèd’ recreation are made to seem questionable; as N.K. Sugimura observes, ‘The poetry creates the awkward sense that these good angels are doomed to failure’.17 Sugimura adduces Spenser’s Faerie Queene 2.12.80.1-2.12.80.2 and Herodotus’s Histories 7.206-7.209 as possible influences.18 The depiction of Achilles’s Myrmidons in the Homeric catalogue, engaging in beach sports while their warhorses graze unharnassed, may be another (Iliad 2.773-2.777). Also relevant, given the course of Milton’s Book 4, are the athletic contests on Phaeacia described in Odyssey 8. The ‘heroic games’ exercised by Milton’s ‘unarmèd youth of Heav’n’ are not elaborated, but suggest the sprinting, leaping, and throwing of the Homeric νέοι πολλοί τε καὶ ἐσθλοί (‘many noble youths’, 8.110). Of course, the games of Iliad 23 or Paradise Lost Book 2 are not all conducted in arms, while the Phaeacians box and wrestle as well as race—Fowler’s distinction cannot be a hard and fast one. Milton’s transition between song and games at 2.546-2.547 also recalls the Homeric locus, as performances by Demodocus precede and follow the Phaeacian’s games. In fact, this alternation is determined by Alcinous’s reading of Odysseus’s mood: Demodocus first sings νεῖκος Ὀδυσσῆος καὶ Πηλεΐδεω Ἀχιλῆος […] ἄριστοι Ἀχαιῶν (‘the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles, son of Peleus […] the best of the Achaeans’, 8.75-8.78), until the Phaeacian king notices his guest’s tears. His proposal to begin 16 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd ed. (Harlow: Longman, 1998), 253. 17 Sugimura, ‘Matter of Glorious Trial’, 172. Francis C. Blessington squares the moral circle of the angelic factions’ common pastime as follows: ‘The loyal angels often resemble their disobedient counterparts, as when both groups indulge in epic games […]. It is not the classical convention that is evil—games are the necessary practice for war—but the orientation of the spirit: towards God or towards the self’ (‘Paradise Lost’ and the Classical Epic [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979], 36). 18 Sugimura, ‘Matter of Glorious Trial’, 172-173. Herodotus gives an account of the unarmed, exercising Spartans observed by Persian scouts before Thermopylae. A significant additional detail: the Spartans were few in number because the Olympic games were proceeding at the same time (7.206).

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the athletic games renews the festive atmosphere while unwittingly reintroducing the theme of Odysseus as striving competitor: the Phaeacian youth dare to challenge the still anonymous stranger, impressed by his physique: οὐδέ τι ἥβης / δεύεται, ἀλλὰ κακοῖσι συνέρρηκται πολέεσσιν (‘In no wise does he lack aught of the strength of youth, but he has been broken by many troubles’, 8.136-8.137). Euryalos, companion of the Phaeacian prince, provokes Odysseus’s anger by questioning his status and aptitude. Odysseus returns the insult, refers to his former achievements, makes a qualified assertion of preeminence among his people, and completes a prodigious discus throw. After inviting challengers in any category of the games, including the warlike bowshot or spear cast, there is a moment of silent suspension (8.234), broken by the courtly Alcinous’s pivot back to musical entertainments. This summary of the action of Odyssey 8 is intended to highlight parallels with the end of Book 4 of Paradise Lost: the ruined but still formidable Satan, would-be best of the angels but initially unrecognized by the junior angels who apprehend him, exchanges insults with Gabriel in a late reflux of the Odyssean typology most evident in Book 2.19 But Milton’s resolution of the moment of suspense (occupied by the famous plowman simile) moves away from the Odyssey to a different epic topos that is also deliberately deployed throughout the poem. Let us return to the apparent reference to authentic war within the description of the games in Hell. The line ‘As when to warn proud cities war appears’ (2.533) introduces a simile: this is not a shift from game to ‘real’ war but a poetic description of a thunderstorm, although ‘proud cities’ are invited to interpret its threatening signification as prolepsis. The devils’ games are execrably violent and evoke war, but that martial evocation, channelled as it is through a meteorological simile, evokes in turn a quite different part of the epic tradition: Principio tonitru quatiuntur caerula caeli propterea quia concurrunt sublime volantes aetheriae nubes contra pugnantibu’ ventis. (De rerum natura 6.96-6.98) (In the first place, the blue sky is shaken with thunder, because flying clouds rush together high in the ether when winds fight against each other.)

Milton is not directly alluding to Lucretius at 2.528-2.541, although storm, volcano (‘Typhoean rage’ is in part a volcanic poeticism), and whirlwind are phenomena

19 These echoes reinforce the centrality of the Phaeacian episode to Books 4 through 8 of Paradise Lost, as argued by Quint, Inside ‘Paradise Lost’, 180-182 and 272-273.

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Lucretius repeatedly treats.20 But the ‘war’ of these Miltonic ‘armies’ resembles Lucretius’s pugnae in that both mediate a representation of nature rather than unfold a military narrative. Milton’s allusions to a warlike storm prepares for the directly Lucretian description of chaos that follows in Book 2 of Paradise Lost: the ‘airy knights’ are avatars of the ‘champions fierce’ that a reader is perhaps subtly cued to read with less moral perturbation than their ‘endless wars’ might otherwise elicit (2.898, 2.897).21 Reversion to this chaos is precisely the prospect opened by the critical passage in Book 6:  war seemed a civil game To this uproar; horrid confusion heaped Upon confusion rose: and now all Heav’n Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread, Had not th’ almighty Father where he sits Shrined in his sanctuary of Heav’n secure, Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen This tumult, and permitted all, advised: That his great purpose he might so fulfill[.] (6.667-6.675)

20 Many recent studies help to illuminate the depth and breadth of Milton’s allusive relationship with Lucretius, including Philip Hardie, ‘The Presence of Lucretius in Paradise Lost’, Milton Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1995): 13-24, updated in Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 264-279; John Leonard, ‘Milton, Lucretius and the “Void Profound of Inessential Night”’, in Living Texts: Interpreting Milton, ed. Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2000), 198-217; David Quint, ‘Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost’, Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 847-881; Katherine Calloway, ‘Milton’s Lucretian Anxiety Revisited’, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 32, no. 3 (2009): 79-97; David Norbrook, ‘Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, and the Lucretian Sublime’, in The Art of the Sublime, ed. Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (Tate Research Publication, 2013), www.tate.org.uk/art/ researchpublications/the-sublime/david-norbrook-milton-lucy-hutchinson-and-the-lucretian-sublime-r1138669; William Poole, ‘Lucretianism and Some Seventeenth-Century Theories of Human Origin’, in Lucretius and the Early Modern, ed. David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 191-199; Jessie Hock, ‘“The Mind Is Its Own Place”: Lucretian Moral Philosophy in Paradise Lost’, in Milton’s Modernities: Poetry, Philosophy, and History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, ed. Feisal G. Mohamed and Patrick Fadely (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 67-84; and Kalina Allendorf, ‘Lucretian Subversion: Animal Speech and Misplaced Wonder in Paradise Lost 9.549-66’, Milton Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2018): 42-46. 21 Note too the collocation of ‘wind’ and ‘sport’ in Belial’s vision of the rebels as ‘the sport and prey / Of racking whirlwinds’ (2.181-182) and the friars’ paraphernalia as ‘the sport of winds’ in the Paradise of Fools (3.493). Fallen matter becomes the plaything of windstorms that the poem figures as combative.

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This is not the first reference to God as strategist. At several points, Milton represents God in a way that fulfils the criteria of boundedness or limitation in van Creveld’s definition of war games, as at 6.227-6.229: ‘Had not th’ Eternal King omnipotent / From his stronghold of Heav’n high overruled / And limited their might’. This is the ‘ruling’ of a ‘King’, but also of an umpire, and Satan infers that the War in Heaven is iteratively replayable—‘if one day, why not eternal days?’ (6.424)—the next day will bring a rematch and perhaps another outcome. Even as the Son spectacularly disproves this, he ‘checked / His thunder in mid-volley, for he meant / Not to destroy’ his opponents (6.853-6.855), fueling Satan’s ongoing delusion regarding ‘eternal war’ (1.121) and William Empson’s judgment that God does not play fair.22 Could the outcome have been otherwise? Both passages just quoted from Book 6 are framed as epic counterfactual locutions (‘a would have happened had not b happened’), frequent in the battle scenes of the Iliad and its early modern imitators, especially during Patroclus’s funeral games (see 23.154-23.155, 23.382-23.384, 23.490-23.491, 23.540-23.542, 23.733-23.734).23 Philipp von Hilgers links the intellectual history of theodicy and counterfactual military history (crucial to the development of war games) through Leibniz; the War in Heaven illustrates how they already coincide in Milton.24 Milton relies on the locution again at the climax of Gabriel’s confrontation with Satan:  now dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of Heav’n perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn With violence of this conflict, had not soon Th’ Eternal to prevent such horrid fray 22 William Empson, Milton’s God (1961; rev. ed., London: Chatto and Windus, 1965), 47. 23 See Bruce Louden, ‘Milton and the Appropriation of an Epic Technique’, Classical and Modern Literature 16, no. 4 (1996): 325-340; and Jessica Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 316-322. 24 ‘Leibniz—who, with his theodicy, opened up a space for the conception of other possible worlds so as to identify the best of them—is also the inventor of counterfactual military historiography’ (Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012], 28). See in this connection Matthew Kirschenbaum’s discussion of the construction of granular alternative battle narratives among war-gaming communities in ‘War Stories: Board Wargames and (Vast) Procedural Narratives’, in Third Person, ed. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardip-Fruin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 357-371. Kirschenbaum quotes an example generated by an English civil war game, This Accursed Civil War (GMT Games, 2002) (367-368). Another GMT title, Unhappy King Charles (2008), invites the counterfactual of a monarch happy with the outcome of the First Civil War, and defines conditions whereby the royalist player can achieve such felicity.

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Hung forth in Heav’n his golden scales[.] (4.990-4.997)

Another alternative future of atomic ruin is projected: ‘the starry cope / Of Heav’n perhaps, or all the elements / At least had gone to wrack’, just as during the War in Heaven ‘all Heav’n / Had gone to wrack’ but for God’s intervention. 25 There is to be no replay of the War in Heaven, yet there is a replaying of imagery in the paired counterfactuals. A subjunctive, possible disturbance is definitively negated, grammatically and narratively, but not without highlighting once again Milton’s reliance upon the cosmic and atomic imagery of Lucretius’s De rerum natura. Milton’s God is as mindful of the Lucretian summa rerum in Book 6 (‘sum of things’ / ‘universe’) as of the Lucretian elementa in Book 4 (‘elements’ / ‘atoms’). This intertext and its bridging of these perspectives feature in my conclusion. Meanwhile, the Homeric-Virgilian scales hung forth at 4.997 do not decide between the lives of heroes but between parting and fight, civility and violence, war game and war.26 While the imagery of the scales evokes the climactic and fatal duels of Iliad 22 and Aeneid 12, the narrative actually follows the trope of the interrupted play-fights between Diomedes and Aias at Iliad 23.798-23.825 (in which the Achaean spectators stop the bout, fearful for Aias), and especially between Polynices and Agreus at Thebaid 6.911-6.923: Sunt et qui nudo subeant concurrere ferro: iamque aderant instructi armis Epidaurius Agreus et nondum Fatis Dircaeus agentibus exul. dux vetat Iasides: […] tum generum, ne laudis egens, iubet ardua necti tempora Thebanumque ingenti voce citari uictorem: dirae recinebant omina Parcae. (Some too come forward to fight with the naked sword. Already Epidaurian Agreus and the Dircaean exile, whose doom is not yet upon him, stood in arms. 25 The recollection (or, within the narrative sequence, anticipation) of the War in Heaven is intensified by the lexical connections to the moment when ‘under f iery cope’ the angels join battle, ‘the least of whom could wield / These elements, and arm him with the force / Of all their regions’, and threaten to ‘disturb’ Heaven (6.215-6.225). In each instance, significantly, the alternative future projected is not so much Satan as winner but the wrecking of the cosmic gameboard. 26 Gabriel’s persistent flyting of Satan as he purports to spell out the star sign (4.1006-4.1013) suggests some more Miltonic irony at the expense of the loyal champion as well as the loser: ‘He rose to Satan’s bait and has some lingering desire to fight it out, angel to angel’ (Quint, Inside, 141).

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The royal scion of Iasus forbids […]. Then he orders that his son-in-law’s tall temples be wreathed, lest he go short of glory, and that he be proclaimed victor in stentorian tone: Theban. The fell Parcae echoed back the omen.)

Two hotheads risk acting against fate but are kept in check before any blow is exchanged and an omen is provided in confirmation. This motif is as relevant to Satan’s (and Gabriel’s) intention to resuscitate war in Heaven as the epic duels they imagine themselves recreating. Milton’s archangels are given an unambiguous omen, its interpretation underwritten by epic tradition and the hand of God. Statius’s Adrastus (Iasides), exercised by the risk of civil games becoming civil war, tell his allies servate animos avidumque furorem / sanguinis adversi (‘Keep your high hearts and mad greed for adversary blood’), but elicits a bad omen. His role as master of ceremonies and arbiter of the games was traditional in epic, and had its analogue in the editor (‘producer’) of Roman games.27 Virgil’s Aeneas is a normative exemplar throughout the epic games of Aeneid 5; without asserting a positive trace upon Milton’s War in Heaven, it is still worth drawing attention to how this father, before the contests end (pater Aeneas nondum certamine misso [545]), gives word for his son to show himself in arms (sese ostendat in armis, 550). The result—a mythic aetion for the festival of lusus Troiae, elevated and magnified by Virgil’s patron Augustus—is an intricate equestrian choreography that preserves its character as military exercise (pugnae […] simulacra, 585) and game of war (proelia ludo, 593). I shall return to the elevated perspective that appreciatively apprehends such mazy motions in their entirety; to prepare for this, it is important to juxtapose God as adjudicator between Gabriel and Satan and editor of the War in Heaven with the other figures that Milton sets up as ‘umpire’ and ‘arbiter’.28 Ironically above it all in a referee’s chair, personified Chaos keeps his domain chaotic by himself pursuing a balance of power strategy that expresses the opposite aim to Achilles’s as he presides over the games of Iliad 23:29 27 See Lovatt, Statius, 80, and, for a negative assessment of Adrastus’s fulfillment of the role, 294-295. Statius brings his account of Adrastus’s games into rhetorical proximity with (civil) war also at Thebaid 6.457: bella geri ferro levius, bella horrida, credas (‘You would think war was a-waging, cruel war, only without steel’). 28 In addition to its application to Chaos, discussed in the text, the word ‘umpire’ is also used by Milton’s God in announcing his placement of ‘My umpire conscience’ in humankind (3.195). The common word underlines the thematic contrast between conscience and Chaos that complements the primary contrast between God and Chaos as characters. God places conscience more as invitation than as agent, a divine faculty that a person may either ‘hear’ (3.195) or ‘neglect’ (3.199) according to their moral disposition, and so achieve a definitive position within an organized eternity, beyond the mortal fray. 29 Achilles’s management of prizes and praises such that ‘nobody’s status is damaged by the preeminence of a winner’ helps Patroclus’s funeral games perform a socially integrative function among the Achaeans

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 Chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray By which he reigns; next him high arbiter Chance governs all. (2.907-2.910)

‘Fray’ is a key term; we last saw God averting it by parting Gabriel and Satan (4.996), and the only additional instance in Paradise Lost comes during Adam’s horrific vision of battle on the plains, yet even there it is influenced by the terminology of war games: ‘a bloody fray; / With cruel tournament’ (11.651-11.652). In Book 2, the infinite abyss is represented to us as a perpetual combat of champions:  where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce Strive here for mast’ry, and to battle bring Their embryon atoms; they around the flag Of each his faction, in their several clans, Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow, Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands Of Barca or Cyrene’s torrid soil, Levied to side with warring winds, and poise Their lighter wings. (2.894-2.906)

Editors and critics have enumerated and debated the borrowings and resonances from De rerum natura across these and subsequent lines.30 In Paradise Lost, which uses elemental uproar to signify God’s disturbance, and posits Chaos as an umpire who embroils and God as a judge who prevents fray, the very representation of matter as a battleground appears to be itself a battleground between different cosmic ideations. There is, however, a second axis of Lucretian influence within this passage. In Epicurean philosophy, ethics ranks above (though it rests upon) physics. Jessie Hock has recently connected Satan’s gaze into chaos, the ‘[i]llimitable ocean without bound’ (2.892), to Lucretius’s modelling of Epicurean ataxaria (‘mental security’) through images of serene spectatorship, most vividly of the

(George deForest Lord, Heroic Mockery: Variations on Epic Themes from Homer to Joyce [Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1977], 34). 30 See citations in note 20, above.

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spectator secure on solid ground witnessing a storm-tossed vessel at De rerum natura 2.1-2.4:31 Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas, sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est. (Pleasant it is, when on the great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation: not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant.)

Lucretius’s continuation in lines 2.5-2.10 is of equal interest: suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, despicere unde queas alios passimque videre errare [.] (Pleasant it is also to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in the peril. But nothing is more delightful than to possess lofty sanctuaries [templa] serene, well fortified by the teachings of the wise, whence you may look down upon others and behold them all astray[.])

Navigation, battle, and contemplation: the Lucretian viewpoints track the activities of the idle devils, as well as (what Hock demonstrates) Satan’s voyage, cogitations, and imperial design.32 But there is also a hierarchy of terms: Lucretius’s third observer 31 Hock, ‘Lucretian Moral Philosophy’, 70-73. See also John T. Hamilton, Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 101-105 on ataxaria as a form of ‘security’ (se-curus, ‘absence from care’) that assimilates the Epicurean sage to Lucretius’s remote, impassive divinities. (To adapt Longinus on Homer, Lucretius makes his gods philosophers and his philosophers gods.) Hamilton detects tensions within Lucretius’s poem regarding the moral desirability of such human transcendence, and Hock argues that Satan’s apparent striving for Epicurean ataxaria in and out of Milton’s Lucretian Chaos ‘throws into relief the postlapsarian ethics of moderation Michael preaches to Adam in the final books’ (74). 32 At 2.555-2.569, Hell’s vocational philosophers appear to be Stoics (‘fate’, ‘fortune’, ‘Passion and apathy [Stoic apatheia], and glory and shame’, ‘stubborn patience’), but perhaps Epicurean devils are to be found

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and that observer’s direct contemplative pleasure is the privileged example.33 Satan survives shipwreck and becomes a parody of the inviolable philosopher, whereas God has already, as we have seen, sat for a Lucretian portrait:  th’ almighty Father where he sits Shrined in his sanctuary of Heav’n secure, Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen This tumult[.] (6.671-6.674)

‘Sanctuaries’ in Rouse’s translation of Lucretius’s templa is, presumably, fortuitous, but the icon of philosophical security coincides between Christian and Epicurean poet. John Rumrich asserts that Milton only describes chaos in terms of war ‘when his narrative tracks Satan or his children’.34 John Leonard, demurring, adduces Milton’s verbal echoes of Lucretius to restore atomic siege and storm as part of the reality of chaos.35 Milton’s balancing act between providential creation and chaotic physics as the guarantor of free will organizes many enduring cruces in the criticism of Paradise Lost. The subtle presence within the poem of a literary history of epic games, however, creates the further possibility of a Lucretian perspective upon Lucretian atomic violence: a God who, in contrast to the Homeric Zeus looking down on the Troad or Milton’s own Satan looking into chaos, apprehends not a destructive war but a re-creative war game.36 Epic games become the privileged topos for traversing the space of epic tradition from destructive military heroism to creative Epicurean physics. They prepare for the fatal contests of war both diegetically and thematically yet also figure the ludic materiality that underwrites creation. De rerum natura 2.323-2.332 is the crucial final intertext:

among the sojourners to Lethe, ‘whereof who drinks […] Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain’ (2.584-2.586). 33 On the ‘priamel’ structure of the passage as revealing Lucretius’s preference for the third position (qualif ied as nil dulcius […] quam rather than simply suave), see Sydnor Roy, ‘Homeric Concerns: A Metapoetic Reading of Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.1-19’, Classical Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2013): 780-784 (782). 34 John P. Rumrich, Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 124. 35 Leonard, ‘Milton, Lucretius, and “The Void Profound of Unessential Night”’, 202-205. 36 For Michael Lieb, ‘re-creation’ is the dialectical goal of Milton’s parturition imagery (The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth and Regeneration in ‘Paradise Lost’ [Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973], 203); for Regina Schwartz, ‘re-creation’ is the fruit of properly commemorative ritual (Remembering and Repeating: On Milton’s Theology and Poetics [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993], 91-92). Although my endgame gambit echoes their interpretations, I do intend to trouble these semantics given the place of war games as a dominant mode of ‘recreation’ inherited from classical epic narrative.

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praeterea magnae legiones cum loca cursu camporum complent belli simulacra cientes, fulgor ubi ad caelum se tollit totaque circum aere renidescit tellus subterque virum vi excitur pedibus sonitus clamoreque montes icti reiectant voces ad sidera mundi et circumvolitant equites mediosque repente tramittunt valido quatientes impete campos— et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor. (Besides, when great legions cover the outspread plains in their manoeuvres, evoking war in mimicry, and the sheen rises to the sky and all the country around flashes back the brilliancy of bronze, and beneath, the ground quakes, resounding with the mighty tramp of men’s feet, and the mountains, stricken by the clamour, throw back the sounds to the stars of heaven, and horsemen gallop around and suddenly course through the midst of the plains, shaking them with their mighty rush, yet there is a place on the high mountains, from which they seem to stand still, and to be a brightness at rest upon a plain.)

Human war games may shake mountains (angelomachy and gigantomachy may even rend and weaponize them), but sufficient elevation offers a sublime view of chaos as fixity.37 This is not to extort an Augustan lusus Troiae from De rerum natura; as the expression belli simulacra emphasizes at 2.41 even more strongly than at 2.324, to the philosopher the violence is ludicrous (ridicula [… ] ludibriaque, 2.47); only to the unphilosophical does it evoke (or palliate) the fear of hurt and death. Between the first belli simulacra and the second, Lucretius models how to correct one’s perception. A mortalist materialist can see motes in a sunbeam velut aeterno certamine proelia pugnas / edere turmatim certantia nec dare pausam, conciliis et discidiis exercita crebris (‘as it were in everlasting conflict struggling, 37 In Iliad 22, which sits between Zeus’s amused survey of the theomachy (Book 21) and the Achaeans’ mass spectatorship of the funeral games (Book 23), the gods watch the ‘thrice fugitive’ Hector run not for a prize but for a mortal life. Line 22.166, the last of the quotation provided above, concludes ‘and all the gods gazed on them’ (θεοὶ δ᾽ ἐς πάντες ὁρῶντο). Yet overemphasis on a sublime God above it all risks a self-inversion to which the dual reception of the War in Heaven bears witness. Schwartz draws attention to the militarism of Raphael’s account of creation at 7.192-7.203 and 7.211-7.215 but interprets the scene as showing that ‘the conflict—and with it the machinery of martial epic—is completely deflated. The Son has no worthy foe’ (30-31). In spite of etymology, Satan is not an adversary, so that when Schwartz proceeds from this moment in Paradise Lost to the risk that Christian theology presents ‘salvation history as a game’ (35), it is precisely as a game of solitaire.

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fighting, battling in troops without any pause, driven about with frequent meetings [conciliis] and partings’, 2.118-2.120; emphasis added), and correctly posit the underlying dynamism of the primordia rerum (‘first-beginnings of things’, i.e. atoms). The fray of human or divine warfare is truly horrific to both poets.38 But Milton’s Satan, ‘amidst the noise / Of endless wars’ (2.896-2.897), mistakes vehicle and tenor; to a fit reader, Lucretius’s and Milton’s common metaphors ultimately serve to make legible the play of matter. Uriel says that at creation ‘wild uproar / Stood ruled’ (3.710-3.711). We have seen that ‘uproar’ functions as a key word at just those points where cosmic war seems about to break the game; ‘ruled’ keeps the game alive, and subtly sustains the dense imagistic and verbal texture Milton weaves of allusions to epic war games. The God who ‘half his strength […] put not forth’ in the War in Heaven (6.853) is the same who can ‘retire, / And put not forth […] goodness’ (7.170-7.171) into chaos unless he is good and ready—for recreation.

Works Cited Allendorf, Kalina. ‘Lucretian Subversion: Animal Speech and Misplaced Wonder in Paradise Lost 9.549-66’. Milton Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2018): 42-46. Blessington, Francis C. ‘Paradise Lost’ and the Classical Epic. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Calloway, Katherine. ‘Milton’s Lucretian Anxiety Revisited’. Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 32, no. 3 (2009): 79-97. Chaudhuri, Pramit. The War with God: Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Empson, William. Milton’s God. 1961. 2nd ed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1965. Gregory, Tobias. From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006. Hamilton, John T. Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Hardie, Philip. Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ———. ‘The Presence of Lucretius in Paradise Lost’. Milton Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1995): 13-24.

38 For a reading of Lucretius as an anti-war poet and De rerum natura as an epic committed to civil peace, see Stephen Harrison, ‘Epicurean Subversion? Lucretius’s First Proem and Contemporary Roman Culture’, in Lucretius and the Early Modern, ed. David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 29-43.

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Harrison, Stephen. ‘Epicurean Subversion? Lucretius’s First Proem and Contemporary Roman Culture’. In Lucretius and the Early Modern, edited by David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie, 29-43. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Hock, Jessie. ‘“The Mind Is Its Own Place”: Lucretian Moral Philosophy in Paradise Lost’. In Milton’s Modernities: Poetry, Philosophy, and History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, edited by Feisal G. Mohamed and Patrick Fadely, 67-84. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017. Homer. The Iliad. Translated by A.T. Murray. Revised by William F. Wyatt. Loeb Classical Library. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann,1999. Kirschenbaum, Matthew. ‘War Stories: Board Wargames and (Vast) Procedural Narratives’. In Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardip-Fruin, 357-371. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. Leonard, John. Faithful Labourers: A Reception History of ‘Paradise Lost’, 1667-1970. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. ‘Milton, Lucretius and the “Void Profound of Inessential Night”’. In Living Texts: Interpreting Milton, edited by Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham, 198-217. Selins­ grove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2000. Lieb, Michael. The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth and Regeneration in ‘Paradise Lost’. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973. Lord, George deForest. Heroic Mockery: Variations on Epic Themes from Homer to Joyce. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1977. Louden, Bruce. ‘Milton and the Appropriation of an Epic Technique’. Classical and Modern Literature 16, no. 4 (1996): 325-340. Lovatt, Helen. Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the ‘Thebaid’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Lucan. The Civil War. Translated by J.D. Duff. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. Translated by W.H.D. Rouse. Revised by Martin F. Smith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Machacek, Gregory. Milton and Homer: ‘Written to Aftertimes’. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2011. Milton, John. ‘Commonplace Book.’ Edited and translated by Ruth Mohl. In Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 1, edited by Don M. Wolfe et al., 344-513. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953. ———. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. New York: Modern Library, 2007. ———. Paradise Lost. Edited by Alastair Fowler. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman, 1998. Norbrook, David. ‘Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, and the Lucretian Sublime’. In The Art of the Sublime. Edited by Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding. Tate Research Publication, 2013. w w w.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/

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david-norbrook-milton-lucy-hutchinson-and-the-lucretian-sublime-r1138669 [accessed 27 March 2019]. ———. Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics 1627-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Poole, William. ‘Lucretianism and Some Seventeenth-Century Theories of Human Origin’. In Lucretius and the Early Modern, edited by David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie, 191-199. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pope, Alexander. The Poems of Alexander Pope. Edited by John Butt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963. Quint, David. ‘Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost’. Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 847-881. ———. Inside ‘Paradise Lost’: Reading the Designs in Milton’s Epic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Rawson, Claude. ‘Mock-Heroic and English Poetry’. In The Cambridge Companion to the Epic, edited by Catherine Bates, 167-192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Revard, Stella Purce. The War in Heaven. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Rovang, Paul. ‘Milton’s War in Heaven as Apocalyptic Drama: “Thy Foes Justly Hast in Derision”’. Milton Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1994): 28-35. Roy, Sydnor. ‘Homeric Concerns: A Metapoetic Reading of Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.1-19’. Classical Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2013): 780-784. Rumrich, John P. Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rupp, Susanne. ‘Milton’s Laughing God’. In A History of English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond, edited by Manfred Pfister, 47-55. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Schwartz, Regina M. Remembering and Repeating: On Milton’s Theology and Poetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Statius. Thebaid, Books 1-7. Edited and Translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Stein, Arnold. Answerable Style: Essays on ‘Paradise Lost’. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1953. Sugimura, N. K. ‘Matter of Glorious Trial’: Spiritual and Material Substance in ‘Paradise Lost’. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-6. Translated by H.R. Fairclough. Revised by G.P. Good. Loeb Classical Library. Revised Edition with New Introduction. Cambridge, M.A: Harvard University Press, 1999. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

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Von Maltzahn, Nicholas. ‘The War in Heaven and the Miltonic Sublime’. In A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, edited by Alan Houston and Steven Pincus, 154-179. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Welch, Anthony. ‘Paradise Lost and English Mock Heroic’. In Milton in the Long Restoration, edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro, 465-482. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Wolfe, Jessica. Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

About the author David Currell, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of English at the American University of Beirut, where he teaches early modern poetry and drama. His work, largely in the field of reception studies, has appeared in journals including Critical Survey and Shakespeare Survey, and in collections including Critical Insights: Macbeth and Fall Narratives. He is co-editor of Digital Milton (2018) and Reading Milton through Islam (a special issue of English Studies, 2015).

5.

Ciphers and Gaming for Pleasure and War Katherine Ellison Abstract While ciphering was a critical communications necessity during the civil wars, and continued to play a vital role in secret political correspondence, the publication of cryptography manuals in the early modern period also made it a pleasurable pastime. The multiple editions of such books signal the genre’s popularity. This chapter argues that cryptography has not been given its due in the cultural history of gaming. It demonstrates that cryptography, as a popular pastime, served as an intellectual, but more importantly, a patriotic game. This would contribute to further innovation in ciphering and deciphering applicable to the political world (during times of war and peace), therefore revealing the interplay between the serious world of politics and that of gaming. Keywords: chess in England; early modern print culture; early modern pastimes in England; early modern how-to manuals

For Gustavus Selenus, as well as for later seventeenth-century political activists and Royal Society members John Wilkins, John Wallis, and Samuel Morland, cryptography was at once a communicational necessity during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and their aftermath and a playful personal game of wits. Selenus, Wilkins, and Morland, along with Noah Bridges and John Falconer, authored instructional manuals to share their methods for creating unbreakable messages and deciphering complex, polyalphabetic, and even multimodal ciphers, and they were motivated by political and military advancement as well as individual academic curiosity and a love of mental challenge. Wallis’s papers, edited by John Davys in 1737 as An Essay on the Art of Decyphering, characterize the genre’s approach to cryptography with the term vaga Venatio (‘rambling hunt’): ‘[W]e sometimes start the Game, where we little expected to find it; but when that is once done, we are sufficiently recompenc’d by the Pleasure we take in the Pursuit.’ 1 These print handbooks, which 1 Wallis did not publish his papers, but he deposited them in the Bodleian Library, and they were later compiled and edited by Davys. Davys writes an extensive introduction and also annotates the ciphered Nelson, H.F. and J. Daems (eds.), Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789463728010_ch05

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sold enough copies to warrant multiple editions, help everyday readers protect national and personal security as citizen-spies by promoting cryptography as an intellectually pleasurable game.2 The importance of cryptography to military success may be intuitive for twentyfirst-century readers; since World War I and the publicized, well-documented roles of intelligence organizations like the Military Intelligence Division (MID), Bletchley Park, and organizations like the National Security Agency (NSA), ciphering and deciphering have become accepted necessities for national security. Countless histories report the ways in which modern wars have pivoted upon secret communication and the sophistication of a nation’s military cryptography capabilities. This is not to say that cryptography was not already recognized as a wartime strategy before the twentieth century: cryptography had certainly been in use for centuries, and, as Wilkins outlines in Mercury; or, the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), had been typical military and diplomatic practice well before the seventeenth century. To many readers of his manual, who would have not yet lived through the turmoil of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, however, examples of the discipline’s impact would have been eye-opening. He summarizes a wider number of biblical authors and historians who described cryptographic practices than any previous chronicler of the field, reaching back to figures such as Democritus, Polybius, Herodotus, Julius Africanus, Philo Mechanicus, Vegetius, and Frontinus as well as more contemporary cryptographers like Selenus. Wilkins’s Mercury was also the first manual printed in English and accessible to the general public. He acknowledges that his wide readership had generally not been privy to the role that secret information had played in the wars that defined their histories. Drawing from his extensive readings, Wilkins finds that ‘the Ignorance of Secret and Swift Conveyances, hath often proved Fatal, not only to the Ruin of particular persons, but also of whole Armies and Kingdoms’.3 Finally, Wilkins also draws from wartime correspondence for his technical demonstrations. At the beginning of one early lesson, Wilkins uses two examples. In the first, the message is written in boustrephedon from the upper

letters that Wallis saved: John Davys, An Essay on the Art of Decyphering. In which is inserted a Discourse of Dr. Wallis. Now first publish’d from his Original Manuscript in the Publick Library at Oxford (London: L. Gilliver and J. Clarke, 1737), ii. 2 John Wilkins’s Mercury; or, the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), for example, was published again in 1694, 1695, and 1707, each time with corrections and modifications to suggest that its material continued to be engaged with as mistakes and new methods were discovered by readers. John Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta: Or the Art of Secret Information Disclosed without a Key (1685) had a sequel, Rules for Explaining and Decyphering All Manner of Secret Writing, Plain and Demonstrative (1692). 3 Wilkins, Mercury; or, The Secret and Swift Messenger (London: J. Norton for John Maynard and Timothy Wilkins, 1641), 9; all subsequent references are to the first (1641) edition unless otherwise noted.

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right-hand corner down, then alternating from bottom to top and top to bottom, moving left, to reveal the solution in italics below: e i l p p u f y d e

r e f h a n d f p e

f t u o h t i w e g

d o u t t h e f i e

l o h o t e l b a e

e e l f w i h s n a v c l t r l s e n g a o n f t o e b m a

l I t s h t o d c n

t h e p e s t i l e

The pestilence doth still increase amongst us, we shall not b[e] able to hold out the siege without fresh and speedy supply.4

In another demonstration, a similar alternation of both letters and lines, but from left to right, allows the reader to move from the problem to the following solution: Teoliraelmsfmfesplvoweutel H f u d e s r a l o t a i h d, u p y s r e m s y i d The Souldiers are almost famished, supply us, or we must yield.5

Wilkins does not explain how he has collected this correspondence or establish whether these are authentic artefacts from recent wars. Their succinctness and urgency, however, set the tone for his instruction: cryptography, even in its simplest forms as the rearrangement of letters on the page, can mediate life-or-death emergencies. Wilkins draws from military history and demonstrates, through technical examples, that his manual will be useful to ‘Statesmen and Souldiers’, but his audience also includes readers who are neither diplomatic nor combat strategists.6 Anonymous manuals, like G.B.’s Rarities: or the Incomparable Curiosities in Secret Writing (1665), similarly promote the use of cryptography for political gain but also 4 Wilkins, Mercury, 66. 5 Wilkins, Mercury, 67. 6 Wilkins, Mercury, 8.

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emphasize pleasure (and even romance) in their subtitles: ‘By which Ministers of State may manage the Intrigues of Court and grand Concerns of Princes, the Ladies communicate their Amours, and every ordinary person (onely capable of legible Writing) may order his private affairs with all imaginable safety and secrecy’.7 Deciphering is presented as an inviting game of strategy and cunning, and the rising popularity of cryptography, and the more publicized use of it militarily, demonstrates the increased importance of intelligence and coding in play as well as in warfare. Selenus, in Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae Libri IX (1624), notes that readers may question his sharing of these secrets with those who would use the methods against him in war.8 He notes that the wartime adaptation of any otherwise innocent tool is always possible, but ciphering could just as easily be seen as an instrument of love as of war, since its use to compose love letters is well documented. Martin van Creveld distinguishes war games by their engagement in chance, physical skill, and strategy.9 Cryptography tests all three. As I outline in this chapter, gaming in cryptography instruction also inspired innovation, and the rhetorical campaign to make calculation and the instruction of calculation fashionable established both cryptography and gaming as intellectually productive, and even potentially patriotic, exercises.10 The cryptography manual is one of many genres of the seventeenth century that celebrated, taught, and even textually simulated gaming. It is significant, I argue, that cryptography was explained in print instructional manuals. Philipp von Hilgers notes that it was in print, and specifically in the form of the book, that playing and gaming found the technical and material ‘fields of action and signs’ and a platform from which to thrive, both conceptually and objectively, as objects.11 The genre of the cryptography textbook has not been explicitly described as part of the long cultural tradition of gaming,

7 G.B., Rarities: or the Incomparable Curiosities in Secret Writing (London: J. G. for Nathaniel Brook, 1665). 8 Gustavus Selenus, Cryptomenytices et Cryptographie (Luneburg: Johann and Heinrich Stern, 1624), trans. John William Henry Walden, c. 1900, 10-11 (George Fabyan Collection, Library of Congress). References to Cryptomenytics are from Walden’s English translation, which is unpublished and not dated. 9 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 10 Davys makes clear in the first lines of the Essay on the Art of Decyphering that his only motive is to serve his country. Later, as he works through Wallis’s papers with the reader, he notes that ‘our Nation has produced a few good Decypherers, and I wish, there may be continued a Succession of them. It is not necessary, that there should be many at the same Time; but it may happen, that one shall perform, what another cannot, or that one shall be a useful Check upon the other’ (33). 11 Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 12.

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but it is a logical historical pairing given the amateur appeal of ciphering and deciphering, and coding and decoding, for leisure.12 The history of cryptography is punctuated by moments in which gaming helped define and even develop new security strategies in ciphering and deciphering, and ciphering and deciphering, in turn, helped define gaming. Most well-known is the case of Johannes Trithemius’s (alias for Johann Heidenberg) circulated 1499 manuscript, Steganographia. Written in three books not printed until 1606, Steganographia included a section written entirely in cipher.13 Trithemius’s encryption—and his instruction that the final step in deciphering involves summoning an angel to deliver the message—rhetorically positioned cryptography as a game and even as a dark art, in the process making readers question the practical use of cryptography in war and politics. Readers suspicious of Trithemius, in other words, assumed that cryptography was nothing more than an elaborate means of toying with an audience. Selenus’s goal in Cryptomenytices is actually to prove that the third book of Trithemius’s Steganographia was in fact a working cipher and not an occult incantation. Steganographia is thus perhaps the most famous cryptographic game. Selenus notes that ‘by this system of obscure figures the author himself further contemplated a genuine intellectual puzzle for the benefit of the learned, who, when once they have grasped Ariadne’s trusty clew of thread, make this art their own’.14 Trithemius, he summarizes, was playing a game with readers, it is true, but he was doing so in order to separate the learned from the unlearned. This test enraged some, like Girolamo Cardano,15 who Selenus notes ‘attacks Trithemius with the greatest bitterness and with a vehemence that ill befits a man of letters, ridiculing, among other things, this whole system of Polygraphy, and proclaiming the author a shameless impostor, if ever there was one, because, forsooth, he chose to put forth his own invention in allegorical disguise’.16 Selenus believes that Cardano’s issue with Trithemius is that by presenting his teaching allegorically, he gamified cryptography. As we are now aware because of the work of Thomas Ernst and Jim Reeds, Trithemius was indeed working strategically, writing for more than one audience: those who could solve the third section would learn a cutting-edge 12 The term ‘cipher’ is here used to refer to communication that requires a series of steps and instructions to solve. A key is, ideally, memorized or indicated through a sign, whereas a code has a codebook that lists corresponding terms. Ciphers require calculation and problem-solving in a way that codes, with their predetermined meanings (that King Charles II is represented by a hawk, for example) do not. 13 Johannes Trithemius, Steganographia: ars per occultam scripturam (Frankfurt: Matthäus Becker, 1606). 14 Selenus, Cryptomenytices, 83-84. 15 He is also known as Jérôme Cardan, credited with the Cardan grille and author of De Subtilitate rerum in 1550. 16 Selenus, Cryptomenytices, 241.

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communication method for military and political use, and those who could not decipher it would discount cryptography as harmless or even meaningless.17 Under the guise of play, Trithemius publicly delivered a serious new technology. Trithemius’s third book was in fact successfully deciphered by Selenus, but Selenus then encrypted his own solution, causing readers to once again assume that it was a hoax. Again in 1676, Wolfgang Ernst Heidel boasted of solving the third book, but he also ciphered his own solution. Cryptography thus functions not only as a game but as a continuous, serialized game over time that can be taken up by each new generation. It was not until 1996 and 1998 that Ernst and Reeds, working without one another’s knowledge, finally deciphered Steganographia and showed their work without disguising it (in the process proving that Selenus and Heidel had been correct); Trithemius’s challenge entertained readers for almost exactly five centuries. Solving the puzzle required a committed interaction with the text and its rules, a simulation in which the player followed each step, noticed the pieces and sections of the puzzle, and took seriously the instruction. As van Creveld notes, war games are simulations and must engage players with tasks that are ‘neither too easy nor impossibly hard’.18 Cryptography instruction, too, relies upon simulations—readers must work alongside the author, paying attention to lessons and observing the print text for clues—with progressing levels of difficulty to teach the crafts of ciphering and deciphering. To invite readers into the game, print manuals first emphasize the intrigue and performativity of ciphering and deciphering. In Cryptomenysis, Falconer notes that he dabbles in cryptography because of the ‘Novelty of the Thing’.19 He pursues it as a series of trials, and as he masters each level, he gains confidence and the desire to share it with political colleagues like Charles, Earl of Middleton, to whom the edition is dedicated. Falconer is clear that cryptography is always a performance: he cites the backlash against Trithemius as an example, noting that Trithemius was politically motivated—he was providing a disguised secret communication method for a prince—and expertly playing a role. Those who interpreted his work as occult and failed to see his true purpose also fell into roles, so that the entire exchange was one grand ‘comedy’.20 In Falconer’s challenges within his own text, readers even imagine roles for themselves: ‘Discoverers’ and ‘Confederates’ meet

17 Thomas Ernst, Schwarzweisse Magie. Der Schlussel zum dritten Buch der Steganographia des Trithemius (Amsterdam: Rodopi Bv Editions, 1996); Jim Reeds, ‘Solved: The Ciphers in Book III of Trithemius’s Steganographia’, Cryptologiaci 22, no. 4 (1998): 291-317. 18 Van Creveld, Wargames, 2. 19 Falconer, ‘To the Reader’, Cryptomenysis Patefacta: Or the Art of Secret Information Disclosed without a Key (London: Daniel Brown, 1685). 20 Falconer, introduction to Cryptomenysis.

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mind-to-mind on the page to outwit one another.21 Whether one supports or resists the current regime determines who is on what side of that equation. Political interests informed but did not solely drive Falconer and contemporary cryptographers, including Wilkins. Falconer’s appeal to Middleton identifies him as a Royalist, and as Cryptomenysis may have been written much earlier than it was published, in the late 1640s or early 1650s, it is possible that he feared publishing it under the Protectorate. I have noted, in other publications, that Falconer appears to be disdainful of the major role that cryptography had played in bringing down the regime he supported.22 Yet, he recognizes its use and the necessity that all political and civilian readers understand it. More information is available about Wilkins’s manoeuvring: Wilkins had subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643 and was apparently part of Charles I’s close intelligence circle. However, he served Oliver Cromwell in 1649, marrying Cromwell’s sister, Robina French née Cromwell, in 1656, and then he seamlessly joined Charles II, submitting to the Act of Uniformity.23 Wilkins downplays his political strategy and frames his manual as a product of his intellectual curiosity. He had been reading Francis Godwin’s Nuncius Inanimatus (1629), which described a hypothetical telegraph system.24 Wilkins is fascinated by Godwin’s declaration that he has invented a linguistic method to ‘discourse with a Friend, though he were in a close Dungeon, in a besieged City, or a hundred miles off’.25 Driven to verify whether Godwin could be correct, Wilkins ‘attained mine own ends’ and masters the language.26 The impetus for what is hailed as the first English cryptography manual, then, is Wilkins’s own simulation of Godwin’s instruction, which he then translates for a less learned reader to share the method more widely. Exhilarated by his ability to learn an ancient practice that he at first thinks is mysterious, he writes Mercury to distil the information from his extensive studies and efficiently pass his learning onto the everyday citizen without the time or leisure to read Aristotle, Polybius, Julius Africanus, Frontinus, Isaac Casaubon, Johannes Walchius, Vessius, and the many others who make up his bibliography. In a sense, this is a guiding characteristic of games: they compartmentalize complex practices as a series of rules and steps, and the beginning levels are simple enough to be challenging yet require industry, concentration, and 21 Falconer, Cryptomenysis, 14. 22 Katherine Ellison, A Cultural History of Early Modern English Cryptography Manuals (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 84. 23 Barbara J. Shapiro, John Wilkins, 1614-1672: An Intellectual Biography (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 3. 24 Francis Godwin, Nuncius Inanimatus (London: n. p., 1629); see also William Poole, ‘Nuncius Inanimatus. Seventeenth-Century Telegraphy: The Schemes of Francis Godwin and Henry Reynolds’, The Seventeenth Century 21, no. 1 (2006): 45-72. 25 Wilkins, ‘To the Reader’, Mercury. 26 Wilkins, ‘To the Reader’, Mercury.

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stamina. Those who progress past the first lessons, or levels, move through the manuals to more complex methods. As has been widely understood within game theory, that progress through levels is psychologically thrilling, even potentially addictive. As psychologists such as Belinda C. Goodwin, Matthew Browne, Matthew Rockloff, Natalie Loxton, and others have established, games create pleasure by activating the human reward drive. Wilkins presents himself as a student, and one without any particular talent, who has easily mastered the craft and is now passing it onto his readers. He also surveys the past to prove that learning the craft has undeniable rewards: the more one understands cryptography, the more one will realize that secret communication has been the unnoticed agent of change in many of the most influential battles, political scandals, and even biblical events in history. From King Demaratus of Sparta, who sent a tablet to magistrates on which the letters were covered with wax, to Laurentius Medices, who put his epistles in pieces of bread, cryptographic practices have changed history. Knowledge of these practices creates a new kind of seeing, a clarity of vision as one looks to the past and the present. Wilkins emphasizes that readers should look more closely at historical events to locate the invisible agents, to notice when uncelebrated figures were responsible for feats that well-known, aristocratic, or royal figures were given credit for to build myths. Wilkins also narrates military history as itself a series of mental games. The challenges are not only pleasing to solve in the present, but they also link the reader to an ancestral lineage and allow a kind of simulation of history, much like a re-creation of a battle. Wilkins draws readers into that lineage by establishing cryptography’s learnability with practice and diligence. Working through his manual, then, is not only intellectually exciting and rewarding, as a challenging skill is mastered, but it also connects the personal to the political and even international, the local to the global, the present to the past. Cryptography instruction offers a level of structure that guides the reader yet allows creativity and independence. The manuals are sequenced as many contemporary reference works were, offering ways to jump to the necessary information quickly and easily so that ‘the coherence in this case is that of the reader’s narrative, not the author’s’.27 Falconer notes that there are only three main conditions for a cipher: that it be unsuspicious, difficult to decipher if suspected, and mobile. Beyond that, the rules can vary widely depending upon the medium of the communication. The conventions of print and of the book as object, beginning to be standardized but still changing and quite flexible during the seventeenth century, provided the perfect platforms for Falconer’s lessons. The book, in particular, is like a game board upon which readers can test their observational skills. Books have parts: a front and 27 Stephen Orgel, ‘Afterword: Records of Culture’, in Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 285.

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back cover, a spine, page edges, front and back matter, and appendices. The layout of each page follows rules that even beginning readers would have internalized, from the relative size of the block of print on the page to the width of margins, the variations of typography, the existence and location of page numbers, and the order of a text’s sections. Ciphering is the exploitation of those textual conventions, whether in book form or in a personal letter, invoice, etc. Cryptographers stressed that conventions create blind spots; when readers are trained to look in one space for meaning, they miss information that may be in spaces that are not conventionally supposed to hold meaning. Wilkins provides examples of ink smudges and dots that could easily be overlooked between the lines of a text or within an image. He mentions writing on the edges of pages so that messages are only revealed when the book is examined from a particular angle. Falconer describes letters that reveal secret communication when folded. These messages are successful because they are unsuspicious and mobile, as his rules dictate, yet they are also open challenges to the emerging rules of literacy that guide readers of his generation. Some of Falconer’s examples require readers to open their field of vision to notice how conventions might be exploited to send secret messages. Other examples, some historical and by authors as well-known as Julius Caesar, require and emphasize calculation. The demonstration of calculation is key in the manuals and foregrounds strategy as central. Most display long problems and elaborate charts so that readers can work alongside the author. Morland, in A New Method of Cryptography, Humbly presented to The Most Serene Majesty of Charles the II (1666), one of the most politically active of the discipline’s developers, also emphasizes calculation in his manual.28 ‘An Example or two will clear all Doubts’, he begins, ‘Let A. and B. be Two Correspondents’.29 He stresses how mathematically foolproof his methods are, and he demonstrates awareness that following the instructions satisfies a kind of pleasure for the reader: ‘Examples edifie the Reader much better than bare Words’, he writes.30 This edification is only for the reader who studiously follows his direction. Those who seek shortcuts or believe they can figure his calculations without faithful attention to his directions will be entrapped by the sheer magnitude of his complex thinking. He asks that the reader imagine a ‘cryptograph-Analyst’ who has knowledge of even a few of the steps in decryption. ‘I leave the Ingenious Reader to Judge’, he writes, ‘whether the rolling of Sicyphus his Stone up the Hill, be not a Labour as likely to succeed as His?’ 31

28 Morland allied with Charles I, then with Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate, and then with Charles II. 29 Samuel Morland, A New Method of Cryptography (London: n.p., 1666), 1. 30 Morland, A New Method of Cryptography, 4. 31 Morland, A New Method of Cryptography, 8. Certainly, Morland’s dramatization of cryptography is in part a rhetorical strategy to solidify his position within the new court of Charles II.

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Directly written to the restored King, New Method is a boastful advertisement of Morland’s superiority as a cipherer and decipherer. He also seeks investment in his technological devices. In this way, cryptography sparked technical innovation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries just as it did during the early twentieth century, when devices like the German Enigma machine were designed. Von Hilgers emphasizes that games, especially ones that combine chance and skill, inspire invention.32 However, von Hilgers notes that the incredible machines drawn in seventeenth-century diagrams using sophisticated new geometric and algebraic methods were virtual only; the machines were never built and in fact could not exist in the real world of force and energy.33 This may be true of fantastic machines drawn by, for example, Athanasius Kircher, but there existed many other mechanical inventions that were in fact built and used. Von Hilgers’s argument that ‘no new machines were actually designed in this time period’ is simply not true.34 Morland built a number of machines, including the one he diagrams in detail in New Method, the Machina Cyclologica Cryptographica. This device consisted of a series of interlocking wheels that could be manipulated by a stylus, called a digital index, worn on the finger. It had touchscreen capability, as it was manipulated by swiping the fingers across the surface. The machine was not only built and worked, but it sold well and was fashionable. Ads appeared in popular-culture magazines like the April 1668 issue of the London Gazette. Samuel Pepys and Robert Hooke both wrote about the popularity of Morland’s handheld machines in their diaries but dismissed them as pretty but useless trends, indicating that merchants, but not the scientific or intellectual community, may have been the main consumers.35 Morland employed master clockmakers, including Humphry Adamson, Henri Sutton, and Samuel Knibb, to engineer ornate models in brass, gilt, gold, and other precious metals, also suggesting that he was targeting consumers with buying power and practical need rather than colleagues in the Royal Society. Later devices like the Enigma were possible only because of Morland’s machines. Morland was handsomely rewarded for his talents: Charles II and Cosimo III de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, were both impressed by the devices, and he earned a position in the central London post office, where he opened the city’s correspondence to detect threats against the crown and other potential acts of treason. 32 Von Hilgers, War Games, 29. 33 Von Hilgers, War Games, 14. 34 Von Hilgers, War Games, 12. 35 In his 14 March 1667 / 1668 entry, Pepys mentions that Edward Mountagu, Lord Hinchingbroke, had brought his Morland calculator to their dinner. He notes that it is ‘very pretty, but not very useful’ (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, vol. 8 [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000], 115); Robert Hooke, The Diary of Robert Hooke, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672-1680: Transcribed from the Original in the Possession of the Corporation of the City of London (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1935), 216.

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Morland stresses that readers who do not follow his directions exactly, and who attempt to guess his method, will be sunk in ‘Steganographical Quicksands’; however, his directions are in fact difficult to follow and at times too obscure to verify.36 What is particularly interesting about his demonstrations, and about textbook examples across the genre, is that some do not provide the information necessary for the reader to solve them fully and so require guessing and speculation.37 Davys goes so far as to say that guessing is the foundation of deciphering; specialists may use disciplinary jargon and insist that cryptanalysis requires only exact calculation, but all decryption begins with guesses and hunches. In his preface, Davys explains that ‘I have forborn to use the Terms Science and Demonstration, or if, instead of Rules and Methods, I have chosen to say Guesses and Steps; these are the Results of the best Judgment I am able to form from the Nature of the Thing treated of ’.38 ‘We proceed with our Guesses’, Davys continues, ‘donec quid certi constat, as our great Master expresses himself, or as he elsewhere says, till we shall happen upon something, that we may conclude for Truth’.39 In addition to examples with missing instructions, manuals also include errors. Errors are so frequent that they become a convention of the genre. In a later edition of Cryptomenysis, for example, Falconer advises the reader that a demonstration on page 21 contains an error in the counter-table used to explain the decryption. The cipher and its plaintext read: Y pb vdgrts id ztte ixt Hdafytgh idcb wofr rihm obr rihm rxfh dfaawi fd zc efpi gtww cpfzwe ez cqn Nwuxg bynnmrtg. qibc. I am forced to keep the Soldiers upon hard duty and hard diet: Supply us, or they will revolt to the Enemy speedily. Hast.40

This cipher is written with alphabetic substitution according to a key phrase— ‘Policy’s Preheminence’—in which each line of the message is deciphered by a 36 Morland, New Method, 8. 37 I discuss these misdirections and errors in more detail in previous publications. See Katherine Ellison, ‘Cryptogrammatophoria: The Romance and Novelty of Losing Readers in Code’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 20, no. 3 (2008): 287-311 and ‘“Millions of Millions of Distinct Orders”: Multimodality in Seventeenth-Century Cryptography Manuals’, Book History 14 (2011): 1-24. 38 Davys, Essay, i-ii. 39 Davys, Essay, ii. 40 Falconer, Cryptomenysis, 20.

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different alphabetic sequence. In the first line, for example, A-Z aligns with a second alphabet that begins with the letter P, the second line begins with the letter O, the third with L, etc. It is not a complex method, but Falconer provides the full table with ‘POLICYSPREHEMINENCE’ written vertically down the side with each alphabet following. Since Falconer’s manual is first and foremost a deciphering textbook and not an instruction manual in ciphering, as Wilkins’s was, he then notes that, without the key, it is simple enough to solve each line individually if one can locate anomalies that decipherers commonly use to isolate letter pairings. The Y in the first place of the first line, for instance, would logically refer to the pronoun I or perhaps the article A, so testing the Y as aligned with an I on a corresponding alphabet would allow a decipherer to recreate the second line of his key that begins with P. If one does not have access to the formal method, then, one could use a series of informed guesses to decrypt this message. Falconer then provides a counter-table to illustrate this, but it clearly has mistakes: Abcdefghiklmnopqrstuwxyz L m n o p q r s t u w x y z a b c d e f g h i k 41

First, the U should be a V, but more importantly, the order of the alphabets has been switched. The Y should be listed under the I, not the I under the Y, as it is here. The decipherer must be careful to always keep the top key alphabet the plaintext solution alphabet. Falconer notes a correction to this mistake in his ‘To the Reader’ in later printings, and unidentified readers have also written the new alphabet by hand in the margins of some of the copies: Abcdefghiklmnopqrstvwxyz Pqrstvwxyzabcdefghiklmno

An incorrect counter-table is no small error, though it is certainly probable that this was simply a matter of becoming entangled in one’s own example, hastily writing down a solution with reverse correspondence. That steps can be so easily reversed is itself, however, part of the appeal of the game. Intention aside, incomplete instructions and the frequent appearance of error in the seventeenth-century manuals become conventions in themselves, and both authors and readers anticipate that misdirection and error will test them. Falconer does acknowledge, in his prefatory material, that mistakes may occur in the manual because of the complexity of the deciphering process. The result of this emerging expectation of error is that some readers become more engaged in the instruction, and finding and correcting 41 Falconer, Cryptomenysis, 21.

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mistakes becomes part of the challenge. Again, I want to emphasize that I am not arguing intention but rather consequence: errors kept readers interested and physically involved in the problem-solving process, as evidenced by reader marginalia. Cryptographers who boasted, like Morland, that no one could match their skill inspired competition as much as admiration. There is also textual evidence that reader attempts to correct the errors reached far beyond the seventeenth and even into the twentieth century, and now with current scholarship, to the present. 42 Errors that either continue or emerge across editions of a seventeenth-century manual contribute to the genre’s unique ability to encourage gaming intertextually and through time. It is common for one cryptography author to reference an error in another cryptography author’s manual, or in a respected manual of the past, and then publicly correct it, only to also then introduce errors that contemporary or later authors will discover. Falconer does this with his own manual when he adds prefatory matter with corrections. G.B.’s Rarities provides another example; G.B. describes a cipher that appears in an unnamed previous manual, which is most likely Noah Bridges’s Stenographie and Cryptographie (1659), but without, he finds, adequate instruction: ‘Under this Cypher I found the Example set down, but no Directions thereon, nor could I possibly find out the contrivement till I met with the Authors Directions in the Second Edition of the following Tracts, as I formerly hinted.’ 43 Rarities is arguably Stenographie’s sequel, a reflective critique of Bridges’s methods and narrative structure. 44 Rarities also engages openly with Wilkins’s Mercury. G.B. mentions here that Bridges may have had yet another 42 John Matthews Manly, Chair of the Department of English at the University of Chicago and Riverbank consultant, documented several errors in Wilkins’s Mercury. In a letter dated 2 February 1917 from Captain J.A. Powell to Manly, Powell introduces Manly to Wilkins’s text and muses that Manly might be interested in the errors and some ‘suspicious’ woodcuts and tailpieces. Manly studies the manual for approximately a week and then reports to Colonel George Fabyan (billionaire founder of Riverbank Laboratories) that, indeed, there are numerous errors, though he does not, at that time, engage in speculation about their meaning. What is most interesting to Manly is the way in which the print history of a manual can both spotlight and hide errors that may or may not have been intentional tests of the reader’s skill. Looking at later editions of Mercury, Manly notes in his letter to Fabyan, ‘I find that my edition of 1802 repeats these errors, adds some of a similar nature, and has got many which have arisen by carelessness and ignorance in regard to the references in the margins’ (J.A. Powell to John Matthews Manly, Chicago, 2 February 1917; John Matthews Manly to Colonel George Fabyan, Chicago, 9 February 1917). 43 G. B., Rarities, 12. 44 Noah Bridges, Stenographie and Cryptographie: or, The Arts of Short and Secret Writing (London: J.G. for the Author, 1659). It has been assumed, in encyclopedia entries on the two texts, that Bridges authored both Stenographie and Rarities, but the writing styles of the two are different, and Rarities at times seems to respond harshly to Stenographie’s author and methods. The assumption of Bridges’s authorship seems to be due to the fact that the two manuals are bound together in the Bodleian Library copy. It is clear from viewing the binding, however, that they were combined much later. This binding further indicates that readers were actively engaging with the texts and searching for connections between them.

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sequel, a second edition that provides directions omitted in the first edition. This intertextuality, which is certainly common across pedagogical genres of the period, provides a particularly rich platform for gaming. W.K. Wimsatt would note, in a 1966 instructional manual on chess, his favourite pastime, that ‘there would be no game-playing without mistakes’. 45 I have established in previous publications on early modern cryptography that one goal of the English practitioners—Wilkins, Morland, Bridges, and Falconer in particular—was to disassociate cryptography from the occult arts with which it had been categorized prior to the seventeenth century. Trithemius’s game with readers had not helped the discipline’s reputation as a legitimate, working academic pursuit, though that was admittedly not his interest. Wilkins, in particular, published Mercury to authorize cryptography as historically, mathematically, linguistically, politically, and even economically valuable, arguing that public understanding of secret communication could lead to the development of more efficient trade languages and global knowledge-sharing for the benefit of England. At the same time that this disassociation needed to happen, Wilkins and his colleagues also understood that the occult drew audiences. Magic, the dark arts, and subjects like alchemy and sorcery sold publications. Similarly, they also understood that gaming interested audiences. Handbooks on gaming, like Charles Cotton’s The compleat Gamester (1676), were profitable. Cryptographers needed to walk a fine line between appealing to existing markets—consumers interested in games and looking for new strategies to increase their competitiveness—and maintaining the moral and intellectual status of cryptography as a legitimate academic discipline. They were able to do this by modelling conventions already familiar in chess and gamester manuals yet rhetorically emphasizing the intellectual rigor of ciphering and deciphering as a necessary, productive mental exercise. The most notable relationship between cryptography and existing and popular games of skill and strategy was with chess. Selenus, for example, had authored the first German instructional text on chess, Das Schach- oder Königsspiel (1616), before he published Cryptomenytices. Selenus’s directions were elaborate; he used a numeric chess notational system that aligned with his steganographic and cryptographic interests.46 Chess and cryptography also shared a reputation as productive, mentally stimulating games that countered the ‘unlawfull’ play of gambling, dice, cards, and the like. In the 1597 Ludus Scacchiae: Chesse-play, the anonymous G.B. (not the same G.B. who authored Rarities) notes that play is in itself not a sinful activity so long 45 W.K. Wimsatt, How to Compose Chess Problems and Why: A Christmas Book (New Haven: W.K. Wimsatt, 1966), 56. Wimsatt’s manual was printed privately for friends and is referenced at length in Lawrence Lipking, ‘Chess Minds and Critical Moves’, New Literary History 34, no. 1 (2003): 155-80. 46 Today, Selenus’s most visible contribution to chess may be the elaborate floral designs he developed for chess pieces, referred to through the nineteenth century as Selenus, Garden, or Tulip patterns.

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as the game ‘breedeth in the players, a certaine study, wit, pollicie, forecast and memorie, not only in the play thereof, but also in actions of publike gouernment, both in peace and warre’. 47 Ciphering and deciphering were also praised for developing these same intellectual qualities: studiousness, wit, creativity, self-regulation, the ability to follow rules and policies, and skill in prediction through probability and memory. Chess would become increasingly popular in England alongside the recreational learning of cryptography and, like cryptography, chess was promoted as a popular test of wit and strategy from the late sixteenth through the late seventeenth century. Chess had of course experienced more public development than cryptography, which was largely kept private, and chess already had a rich history in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, as outlined in Harold Murray’s foundational 1913 work, The History of Chess. Murray notes that there had also always been a close relationship between chess and war, and there are numerous stories of military officers who played chess to sharpen their strategy. In 1718, English Admiral Byng, for example, challenged the leading Italian player, D. Scipione del Grotto. Byng lost that match. 48 This was not surprising to most: in Italy, chess was taught in academies and was already considered a necessary test of mental prowess, whereas little formal instruction existed in England. English chess players of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were largely self-taught and depended upon the growing number of printed instructional manuals that had begun appearing since the late sixteenth century. This publication boom had the same consequences for chess in England as cryptography manuals. Both would experience a peak in interest by the 1680s, following a few decades of book and pamphlet publishing in the fields. That publication trend then declined until the 1730s. Falconer’s 1685 Cryptomenysis and 1692 sequel, Rules for Explaining and Decyphering, were among the last of the popular manuals until John Davys would publish the notes of famous cryptographer Wallis in 1737. Falconer’s manuals are reluctant pedagogies that appear to dampen interest in the field; Falconer was disillusioned with the significant role that crypt­ analysis had played in the downfall of Charles I and saw in cryptography a morally questionable discipline with too much political influence. Similarly, chess also began to be questioned on moral grounds. On 16 April 1680, A Letter from a Minister to his Friend, Concerning the Game of Chesse provided ten reasons why readers should refrain from playing. The published letter is a condemnation of games in general and notes that playing chess wastes time, distracts the mind from religion, is addictive and thus harms one’s self-discipline and control, causes players to break

47 G. B., ‘To the Reader greeting’, in Ludus Scacchiae: Chesse-play (London: H. Jackson, 1597), sig. A2. 48 Harold James Ruthven Murray, A History of Chess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 838.

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vows and promises, is a preoccupation, costs money, and is ‘altogether needless and unnecessary’. Further, quoting the Christian Directive, the author writes: I know not One person of an Hundred, or of many Hundred, that needeth any Game at all, there are such variety of better Exercises at hand to recreate them. And it is a sin to idle away any time which we can better improve. I confess my own nature was as much addicted to playfulness as most, and my judgment alloweth so much Recreation as is needful to my Health and Labour, and no more; but for all that, I find no need of any Game to recreate me. When my mind needs Recreation, I have variety of recreating Books, and Friends, and business to do; that when my body needeth it, the hardest labour that I can bear, is my best Recreation; Walking is instead of Games and Sports, as profitable to my body and more to my mind. 49

Such moral condemnations seem to have diminished some audience excitement for chess, though another factor was the costliness of elaborate chess sets like the one designed by Selenus. Some English citizens were aware, too, that Charles I was an avid chess player; Murray reports that Charles I was playing chess when he was delivered a message, perhaps ciphered, that the Scots had surrendered him to Parliament in 1647.50 This image of the king idly playing chess as the nation crumbled, his defeat sealed, may have provided an example for moralists. As with cryptography, four decades would pass before the next manual on chess would be published and the game would resume popularity in England. Phillip Stamma, a chess master and champion, published Noble Game of Chess (Essai sur le jeu des Echecs) in France in 1737, the same year as Davys’s work on Wallis. An improved English translation appeared in 1745. These textbooks, as well as more affordable set designs and the encouragement of public play in coffee houses, inspired a wider English embrace of chess through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ciphers and chess problems would appear side by side in popular weekly papers, for example, through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Timothy David Harding notes that puzzles with graphic features, such as diagrams, notation, and keys, not only engaged reader participation in the periodicals but were also visually appealing.51 Crossword puzzles, too, catch the eye and break up the monotony of expositional text. 49 A Letter from a Minister to his Friend, Concerning the Game of Chesse (London: Printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1680). 50 Murray, History, 839. 51 Timothy David Harding, ‘Kings and Queens at Home: A Short History of the Chess Column in Nineteenth-Century English Periodicals’, Victorian Periodicals Review 42, no. 4 (2009): 360.

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Davys’s Essay was part of an upsurge in cryptography’s popularity during the 1730s, and the way in which Davys framed Wallis’s papers emphasizes the leisurely appeal of deciphering as a game of intelligence. Indeed, as Christopher Goodey has noted in his work on the history of intelligence as it was socially constructed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as measurable, material, and malleable, manuals for both cryptography and chess stressed that the mind can be improved by mental exercise. Davys notes that he tries hard not to reveal too many of Wallis’s methods ‘because it breaks in upon Dr. Wallis’s Design, who left it as an Exercise and Trial of Skill to future Decypherers’. ‘But if no body else will try his Skill upon it’, Davys continues, ‘how would it answer the Doctor’s Design, or what other good Purpose would it serve, to let it lie any longer in that Condition of Obscurity, in which it was left?’ 52 The Essay is structured as a series of challenges, Davys speaking directly to the reader and encouraging competition, and what makes the stakes particularly rewarding is that the ciphered letters were actual correspondence during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Readers are thus involved in a kind of re-enactment of those conflicts of their nation’s notorious past. Manuals published in inaccessible Latin, like David Arnold Conradus’s Cryptographia Denudata (1739), would be re-published in English by popular forums like the Gentleman’s Magazine. The Gentleman’s Magazine made Conradus’s deciphering manual available for wide public consumption in 1742 as ‘Cryptographia Denudata. The Art of Deciphering deduced from Principles, and explained by Examples in the German, Dutch, Latin, English, French, Italian, and Greek Languages’.53 This text claims that no other manuals on deciphering had ever been published, which of course was not accurate. A footnote added by the Gentleman’s Magazine editors acknowledged work by Porta and Wallis, but no mention is made of Trithemius, Selenus, Wilkins, Morland, Falconer, Bridges, etc. Readers without access to those earlier manuals of the seventeenth century certainly seem to have been interested in Davys’s tribute to Wallis and in puzzles and instruction published as Gentleman’s Magazine selections. Circulated in coffee houses and other public meeting spaces, the puzzles created a community network. Both chess and cryptography were connected as mental sports performed, largely, by aristocratic men—by wits—in public spaces.54 Whereas chess was as popular with the lower and working classes as with aristocrats and court culture in European countries like Italy, in England 52 Davys, Essay, 31. 53 David Arnold Conradus, Cryptographia Denudata, sive ars deciferandi quae occulte scripta sunt in quocunque linguarum genere, praecipue in Germanica, Batava, Latina, Anglica, Gallica, Italica, Graeca (Leiden: Lugd. Batav. ap. Phil Bonk, 1739); Conradus, ‘Cryptographia Denudata’, Gentleman’s Magazine 12 (March 1742): 133-135. 54 This is not to say that women did not also engage in ciphering and deciphering, militarily, for political alliance and gain, and domestically. Davys even mentions that only a woman could solve one of the ciphers

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chess had been predominantly enjoyed by the nobility and gentry. As noted, England lacked the dedicated chess academies that were popular in Europe, so self-taught play by the leisure classes, and by military men and politicians, took place at home and in communal spaces like coffee shops and meeting houses. Just as chess and cryptography shared rhetorical appeal, wit was also described and defined in similar terms and was an associated quality for cryptographers because it required speed of thought, the ability to make connections where others may not see them, and a talent for articulating truths through language that were accessible to some but not others.55 Like cryptography, wit creates in-groups and out-groups, and the determining factor is not so much education or economic status but practised mental quickness. Edward F. Hulme, author of the foundational late nineteenth-century cryptography history, Cryptography; or the History, Principles, and Practice of Cipher-Writing (1898) would note that: ‘This love of the mysterious, this delight in setting one’s wits to work to excel others or to save oneself from checkmate, is one great influence the more in the fascination that cipher-writing has undoubtedly at all times possessed.’ 56 As Hulme observes, drawing this connection between ciphering, chess, and wit, cryptography became an attractive exercise for those who wanted to improve their minds; solving a cipher, for later seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century readers in particular, was a leisurely way to train one’s brain to be both swift and deep thinking—able to solve a complex problem with concentrated hard work. The more practice codes one solved, the quicker the mind could become. René Descartes notes in his unfinished treatise on the ‘Rules for the Direction of the Ingenium’ that speed is only cognitively possible through practice.57 The manuals sequence that practice and emphasize the studious hard work, and occasional genius, necessary to solve ciphers, redefining intellectual advancement as simultaneously computational as well as creative and attentive to multimodal observation. As von Hilgers notes, ‘of all centuries, it was the seventeenth—which engendered reason and assembled mathematics into a discipline from the obscure semiotic practices of secret societies and the in Wallis’s papers: ‘the same was afterwards deciphered by a very ingenious Woman, who is capable of becoming a great Proficient in the Art, as I also know several others of her Sex to be’ (34). 55 Goodey notes the not coincidental, simultaneous rise of cryptography and wit as well. See C.F. Goodey, A History of Intelligence and ‘Intellectual Disability’: The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 56. 56 Edward F. Hulme, Cryptography; or the History, Principles, and Practice of Cipher-Writing (London: Ward, Lock and Co. Ltd., 1898), 15. 57 Such assumptions about cognition were not unchallenged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of course. Giambattista da Monte counters the contemporary emphasis on wit and speed to argue that depth of learning, not quickness, determines (or exemplifies) intelligence. Richard Baxter’s concept of the Protestant ethic of time would emphasize the moral value of saving time, and recreations like chess, deciphering, and even wit were characterized as temporally wasteful.

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semiotic regimes of ideal states—that found in games an epistemic reservoir’.58 Cryptography emerged from the shadows of occult secret societies during this period, capitalizing upon the popularity of gaming and the growing reputation of mathematics, to introduce new ways of thinking about communication and to lay the groundwork for the future of computing.

Works Cited Bridges, Noah. Stenographie and Cryptographie: or, The Arts of Short and Secret Writing. London: J.G. for the Author, 1659. Conradus, David Arnold. Cryptographia Denudata, sive ars deciferandi quae occulte scripta sunt in quocunque linguarum genere, praecipue in Germanica, Batava, Latina, Anglica, Gallica, Italica, Graeca. Leiden: Lugd. Batav. ap. Phil Bonk, 1739. ———. ‘Cryptographia Denudata’. Gentleman’s Magazine 12 (1742): 133-135. Davys, John. An Essay on the Art of Decyphering. In which is inserted a Discourse of Dr. Wallis. Now first publish’d from his Original Manuscript in the Publick Library at Oxford. London: L. Gilliver and J. Clarke, 1737. Ellison, Katherine. ‘Cryptogrammatophoria: The Romance and Novelty of Losing Readers in Code’. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 20, no. 3 (2008): 287-311. ———. A Cultural History of Early Modern English Cryptography Manuals. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. ———. ‘“Millions of Millions of Distinct Orders”: Multimodality in Seventeenth-Century Cryptography Manuals’. Book History 14 (2011): 1-24. Ernst, Thomas. Schwarzweisse Magie. Der Schlussel zum dritten Buch der Steganographia des Trithemius. Amsterdam: Rodopi Bv Editions, 1996. Falconer, John. Cryptomenysis Patefacta: Or the Art of Secret Information Disclosed without a Key. London: Daniel Brown, 1685. G.B. Ludus Scacchiae: Chesse-play. London: H. Jackson, 1597. G.B. Rarities: or the Incomparable Curiosities in Secret Writing. London: J.G. for Nathaniel Brook, 1665. Godwin, Francis. Nuncius Inanimatus. London: n.p., 1629. Goodey, C.F. A History of Intelligence and ‘Intellectual Disability’: The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. Harding, Timothy David. ‘Kings and Queens at Home: A Short History of the Chess Column in Nineteenth-Century English Periodicals’. Victorian Periodicals Review 42, no. 4 (2009): 359-391.

58 Von Hilgers, War Games, 11.

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Hooke, Robert. The Diary of Robert Hooke, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672-1680: Transcribed from the Original in the Possession of the Corporation of the City of London. New York: Taylor & Francis, 1935. Hulme, Edward F. Cryptography; or the History, Principles, and Practice of Cipher-Writing. London: Ward, Lock and Co. Ltd., 1898. A Letter from a Minister to his Friend, Concerning the Game of Chesse. London: Printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1680. Lipking, Lawrence. ‘Chess Minds and Critical Moves’. New Literary History 34, no. 1 (2003): 155-180. Morland, Samuel. A New Method of Cryptography. London: n.p., 1666. Murray, Harold James Ruthven. A History of Chess. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913. Orgel, Stephen. ‘Afterword: Records of Culture’. In Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, edited by Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, 282-289. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews. Vol. 8. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Poole, William. ‘Nuncius Inanimatus. Seventeenth-Century Telegraphy: The Schemes of Francis Godwin and Henry Reynolds’. The Seventeenth Century 21, no. 1 (2006): 45-72. Powell, J.A. J.A. Powell to John Matthews Manly. Chicago, 2 February 1917. Reeds, Jim. ‘Solved: The Ciphers in Book III of Trithemius’s Steganographia’. Cryptologia 22, no. 4 (1998): 291-317. Selenus, Gustavus. Cryptomenytices et Cryptographie (1624). Translated by John William Henry Walden, c. 1900. George Fabyan Collection, Library of Congress. ———. Das Schach- oder Königsspiel. Leipzig: 1616. Shapiro, Barbara J. John Wilkins, 1614-1672: An Intellectual Biography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969. Trithemius, Johannes. Steganographia: ars per occultam scripturam. Frankfurt: Matthäus Becker, 1606. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Wilkins, John. Mercury; or, The Secret and Swift Messenger. London: J. Norton for John Maynard and Timothy Wilkins, 1641. Wimsatt, W.K. How to Compose Chess Problems and Why: A Christmas Book. New Haven, CT: W.K. Wimsatt, 1966.

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About the author Katherine Ellison, Ph.D., is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of English at Illinois State University. She is the author of the monographs Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-Century Literature (2006) and A Cultural History of Early Modern English Cryptography Manuals (2017), and the co-editor of Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Daniel Defoe (2014) and A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers: Cryptography and the History of Literacy (2017).

6. Virtual Reality, Role Play, and WorldBuilding in Margaret Cavendish’s Literary War Games Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker Abstract Margaret Cavendish repeatedly creates alternative or virtual worlds at war in which she participates as a military agent through her avatars; in so doing, Cavendish works through the trauma of her own experience of civil war. While Cavendish was critical of many contemporary tabletop and physical games, she embraced cerebral gameplay in such a way as to produce literary war games that anticipate key aspects of Role Playing Games (RPGs). The nature and operation of the military avatars in her ‘thought experiments’ challenge existing theories on the history of women and war-gaming. Keywords: Cavendish’s The Blazing World; Cavendish’s Bell in Campo; game theory and early modern literature; Cavendish and cerebral gaming

At the conclusion of her Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Margaret Cavendish inserts the brief philosophical musings of her husband, William Cavendish, under the title ‘His Excellency The Lord Marquis of Newcastle His Opinion concerning the Ground of Natural Philosophy’. William prefaces his thoughts with the claim that the field of natural philosophy is characterized by little more than guess-work, allowing anyone to contribute: Since now it is A-la-mode to Write of Natural Philosophy, and I know, no body Knows what is the Cause of any thing, and since they are all but Guessers, not Knowing, it gives every Man room to Think what he likes, and so I mean to Set up for my self, and Play at this Philosophical Game […] with-out Patching or Stealing from any Body.1 1 William Newcastle, ‘His Excellency The Lord Marquis of Newcastle His Opinion concerning the Ground of Natural Philosophy’, in Philosophical and Physical Opinions, by Margaret Cavendish (London: Printed by William Wilson, 1663), 459. The signif icance of this passage was f irst discussed by Sylvia

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Margaret Cavendish is as inclined as her husband to dedicate herself to such mental guessing games or what we might call ‘cerebral gaming’. And for Cavendish, as Sylvia Bowerbank, Lisa T. Sarasohn, and Anne M. Thell (among others) have shown, it is perfectly acceptable to merge fanciful imaginings and rational theoretical work in playing such games.2 Maura Smyth has recently explored in Women Writing Fancy Cavendish’s awareness of the ‘power’ of ‘fancy’, or mental gameplay, to grant her ‘a world-making capacity’, given that fancy was understood at the time as ‘the process, and the faculty, of forming mental representations of things not present to the senses’.3 Yet the worlds she creates and populates with her avatars—‘stand-ins’ for Cavendish ‘within gamespace’—often seem inextricably tied in some measure to real life, warfare in particular making a regular appearance in her alternative worlds. 4 In generating virtual worlds—defined in this chapter as ‘non-actual’ rather than ‘simulated by computer technology’—in which her avatars strategize about and respond to imagined warfare, Cavendish anticipates role-playing war games.5 In so doing, she also gestures toward an alternative path taken by early modern women in relation to war games, one that understands war-gaming in broader terms as ‘conflict or military simulations’, which John Peterson likens to ‘thought experiments’.6 Working with this broader definition allows us to revisit and challenge Martin van Creveld’s claim in Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes that women, for the most part, avoid participating in war-gaming.7 Bowerbank in ‘The Spider’s Delight: Margaret Cavendish and the “Female” Imagination’, English Literary Renaissance 14, no. 3 (1984): 406, and later considered at greater length by Lisa Sarasohn in The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and Fancy during the Scientific Revolution (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2010), 21. 2 Sylvia Bowerbank, ‘The Spider’s Delight’; Lisa T. Sarasohn, The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish; and Anne Thell, ‘The Power of Transport, the Transport of Power: Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World’, Women’s Studies 37, no. 5 (2008): 441-463. 3 Maura Smyth, Women Writing Fancy: Authorship from 1611-1812 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 119; Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘fancy’ (n.4a). 4 Jessica Aldred, ‘Characters’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 356. 5 For some time, Cavendish scholars have relied on the word ‘avatar’ to describe the way that Cavendish inserts herself into her works given that a number of her characters are versions of her self / selves (at least as she fashions her self / selves in her prose non-fiction). 6 Henry Lowood, ‘War Engines: Wargames as Systems from the Tabletop to the Computer’, in Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming, ed. Pat Harrigan and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 83; John Peterson, ‘A Game out of all Proportions: How a Hobby Miniaturized War’, in Zones of Control, ed. Harrigan and Kirschenbaum, 3. 7 See Chapter 7: ‘The Female of the Species’, in Martin van Creveld’s Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 270-307. Sadly, while it is helpful that van Creveld attempts to theorize the relationship between biological sex, gender, and war-gaming, we find his methodology and conclusions unconvincing.

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Margaret Cavendish was not a great admirer of traditional games as she regularly relates in her Sociable Letters. In these letters, to a real or imagined friend, Cavendish repeatedly associates a number of tabletop games with gaming and, by extension, with vice. It might seem rather surprising to find a suspicion of games on both moral and economic grounds in the works of an anti-Puritan Restoration aristocrat, but Cavendish’s self-described unworldly upbringing, as she recounts in ‘A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life’, leads to her discomfort with a range of physical and tabletop games as a form of recreation.8 Cavendish addresses games most extensively in Letter 101 in her epistolary volume, presenting four major arguments against a number of games, including tennis, chess, cards, and dice: that the losses associated with betting on games often leads to poverty, most notably of members of the nobility who game ‘out of Covetousness, and not for Pastime or Exercise’; that physical games like tennis damage players because they ‘Wast[e] […] Vital Spirits through much Sweating and Weaken […] Nerves by Overstraining’; that many tabletop games are also physically unhealthy, but from bodily underuse rather than overuse, as evidenced by the fact that when players rise from the table post-game ‘their Limbs are Stiff, Numb, and Insensible, for want of Use’; and that games such as ‘Cards and Chess’ require complex calculation and analysis, inducing too much mental stress to be considered truly recreational.9 In ‘A True Relation’, Cavendish also distances herself and her family from games when explaining that, during her youth, her mother provided the funds for her daughters’ ‘breeding, honest pleasures, and harmless delights’, which do not appear to have included traditional games.10 She recalls that her brothers, likewise, ‘neither had […] skill or did use to play, for ought’ she knew ‘at Cards or Dice, or the like Games, nor given to any vice, as I did know’.11 The ‘harmless recreations’ or ‘pastimes’ of her adult sisters, she recounts, involved riding ‘in their Coaches’, visiting ‘the Spring-garden, Hide-park, and the like places’, and listening to music and dining ‘in Barges upon the Water’.12 While Cavendish also engaged in some of these activities, she is drawn far more to imaginative forms of play: the game

8 This was also a self-conscious rhetorical strategy used by a number of Royalists after the Restoration to place themselves on the moral high ground, given that puritan Parliamentarians had often positioned themselves as the godly party. 9 Margaret Cavendish, Sociable Letters, ed. James Fitzmaurice (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2004), 154-155. On Cavendish’s conceptualization of games in Sociable Letters, see also Letters 21, 33, and 63. 10 Margaret Cavendish, ‘A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life’, in The Lives of William Cavendishe, Duke of Newcastle, and of his wife, Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, ed. Mark Antony Lower (London: John Russell Smith, 1872), 269-270. 11 Cavendish, ‘A True Relation’, 274. 12 Cavendish, ‘A True Relation’, 276.

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of world-building.13 Her most appealing form of recreation, therefore, is mental re-creation. This type of play is endorsed in Cavendish’s closet drama Youths Glory, and Deaths Banquet, in which Sir Thomas Father Love defends imaginative play as a form of sport in the opening scene: MOTHER LOVE. Husband, you have a strange nature, that having but one child […] and this your childe a daughter; that you should breed her so strictly, as to give her no time for recreation […] but keeps [sic] her as a Prisoner, and makes [sic] her a slave to her book, and your tedious moral discourses, when other children have Play-fellows, and toyes to sport and passe their time withal. FATHER LOVE. Good wife be content, doth not she play when she reads books of Poetry, and can there be […] pleasanter Play-fellows than the Muses […]; Or have prettier toyes to sport withall, than fancie, and hath not she liberty so many hours in the day, as children have to play in.14

While Mother Lady Love is not persuaded by her husband’s rhetoric, his opinion echoes Cavendish’s own perspective on educating young women as expressed in her non-fictional writings. That Cavendish would create virtual worlds at war or peaceful worlds disrupted by war in playing with the ‘pretty toys’ of her imagination is to be expected for a number of reasons: she had recently lived through civil wars that had brutal consequences for her families of origin and marriage; her husband, whom she deeply admired, served as a captain general of Charles I’s northern forces during the first civil war, which she detailed in her biography of him; and she routinely associated military enterprises with the heroism and fame with which she herself sought to be affiliated, since ‘Fames [sic] that is gotten in the Wars, sound louder then those that are gotten in Peace’.15 In truth, Cavendish addresses military matters in a great many of her writings, including her collections of poetry, plays, prose fiction, and prose non-fiction. A representative sample includes: ‘A Dialogue between a Bountifull Knight, and a Castle ruin’d in War’, ‘A Dialogue betwixt Peace, and War’, ‘The War of those Spirits’, ‘An Epistle to Souldiers’, ‘The Fort, or Castle of Hope’, ‘Doubts Assault, and Hopes Defence’, ‘A Battle between Courage, and Prudence’, ‘A Description of the Battle in Fight’, ‘A Battle between Honour and Dishonour’, 13 On the subject of early modern imaginative world-building across the disciplines, see World-Building and the Early Modern Imagination, ed. Allison B. Kavey (New York: Palgrave, 2010). 14 Margaret Cavendish, Playes (London: Printed by A. Warren, for John Martyn, James Allestry, and Tho. Dicas, 1662), 123. 15 Margaret Cavendish, The World’s Olio (London, 1655), 2; however, Cavendish does add that this is because war is so disruptive to society. Regardless, fame is critical for Cavendish, who believes that ‘those men that die in oblivion, are beasts by nature’, and so fame through war is appealing (World’s Olio, 2).

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‘A Battle between King Oberon, and the Pygmees’, and ‘An Elegy on my Brother, kill’d in these unhappy Warres’ in Poems, and Fancies (1653); ‘What makes Fame speak loudest’, ‘The Cause of Rebellion’, ‘Of Wars in general’, ‘Of an Army’, ‘Of the losse in Battles’, ‘The Situation for wars safety’, ‘The hazards of War’, ‘Of a civil War’, ‘Of forraign War’, ‘Of rash Commanders’, ‘Of being armed’, ‘Of a General, and a Colonel, and an Army’, and ‘Of the Power of the Sword’ in The World’s Olio (1655); approximately 30 orations on war in Parts 1 through 3 of Orations of Diverse Sorts (1662); Cavendish’s plays Bell in Campo, Sociable Companions, Love’s Adventures, and Lady Contemplation in Playes (1662; 1668); The Description of a New World called The Blazing World appended to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666); and ‘A Description of Constancy’ and ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’ in Nature’s Pictures (1671).16 Cavendish reveals in these and other works an interest in all aspects of war, from political philosophy and military strategy and tactics across combat zones to the soldierly experience of battle, the impact of war on civilians, the economic predicament of soldiers post-war, and military rituals and discursive practices.17 Increasingly, scholarly attention is being paid to Cavendish as a war writer, especially given the remarkable number of works in which she negotiates the landscape of war in literal and figurative ways. Alexandra Bennett, Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker, Vimala C. Pasupathi, Brenda Josephine Liddy, and, most notably, the Canadian philosopher Joanne H. Wright, for example, have theorized the significance of war in Cavendish’s works from a range of perspectives, all detailing her fascination with, commentary on, or impulse to imaginatively intervene in, military affairs.18 Cavendish reflects on the nature and operation of war in complex 16 References to war appear more subtly in her writings on natural philosophy as well. As a case in point, in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, ed. Eileen O’Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), brief references to war are made here and there to depict the operation of Cavendish’s mind or to read nature through the trope of war; see pages 23 (‘war in my mind’), 34 (‘contrary and opposite actions are not always at war’), 41-42 (ideas might ‘bec[o]me much heated, and fearing they would, at last, cause a faction, or civil war, amongst all the rational parts’), 81 (‘for if there be factions amongst the parts of an animal body, then straight there arises a civil war’), 119 (‘But some may say, If nature be but one body, and the infinite parts are all united into that same body; how comes it that there is such an opposition, strife and war, betwixt the parts of nature?’), 199 (‘there is a perpetual opposition and war between the parts of nature, where one sometimes gets the better of the other, and overpowers it either by force or sleight’), and 232 (‘But you may say, How is it possible that there can be a peaceable and orderly government, where there are so many contrary or opposite actions; for contraries make war, not peace’). 17 It is not the purpose of this essay to analyse Cavendish’s treatment of war per se in her body of works but rather to consider the intersection of war and games / gameplay in her writing. For scholarship detailing the treatment of war in her works in general, see note 18. 18 See, for instance, Alexandra Bennett’s ‘Margaret Cavendish and the Theatre of War’, In-between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism 9, nos. 1 and 2 (2000): 263-273; Vimala C. Pasupathi’s ‘Old Playwrights, Old Soldiers, New Martial Subjects: The Cavendishes and the Drama of Soldiery’, in Cavendish and

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and sometimes competing ways, as Wright has argued, revealing her ambivalence toward the subject. There is certainly some truth in Wright’s claim that Cavendish does, at times, expose ‘the brutality as well as the futility of conflict’, undermining ‘the much celebrated and time-worn notion of the honourable military death’ in order to ‘include a new emphasis on women’s specialized, but unrecognized, knowledge of military affairs and the experience of war’.19 Nevertheless, Cavendish is also prone elsewhere to celebrate martial strategies, practices, and outcomes, even revelling in the violence of war in certain of her imaginative works, adapting her thought experiments on war as genre, subject matter, and occasion demand. In her willingness to embrace the brutal realities and moral complexity of war—with armies, as she says, ‘rais’d in my braine’ that ‘fought in my fancy’—Cavendish reflects the wider practice in early modern war literature of tempering heroic sentiment with realism or even skepticism.20 Because of the solemnity with which she often addresses the subject of war, Cavendish seldom explicitly compares warfare and play inasmuch as she rarely, if ever, appears to use the term ‘game’ in relation to martial activity. However, in ‘Of a civil War’ in The World’s Olio, she does make the connection between warfare and tabletop games when she compares civil wars to card play. When the cards are out of order, reshuffled by gamester factions, chaos ensues: [B]ut civil wars may be compared to a pair of cards, which when they are made up in order, every several sute is by it self, as from one, two, and three, and soe to the tenth card, which is like the commons in several degrees, in order, and the coate cards by themselves which are the Nobles; but factions, which are like gamesters when they play, setting life at the stake shuffle them together, intermixing the Nobles and Commons, where loyalty is shuffled from the crown, duty from Parents, tendernesse from children, fidelity from Masters, contingencies from Shakespeare: Interconnections (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 121-146 and ‘New Model Armies: Recontextualizing the Camp in Margaret Cavendish’s Bell in Campo’, ELH 78 (2011): 657-685; Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker’s ‘Memory, Monuments, and Melancholy Genius in Margaret Cavendish’s Bell in Campo’, Eighteenth Century Fiction 21, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 13-35 and ‘Science Fiction in the Shadow of War: Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World’, in Travel Narratives, the New Science, and Literary Discourse, 1569-1750, ed. Judy A. Hayden (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 103-121; Brenda Josephine Liddy’s Women’s War Drama in England in the Seventeenth Century (Amherst, MA: Cambria Press, 2008); and Joanne Wright’s ‘Not Just Dutiful Wives and Besotted Ladies: Epistemic Agency in the War Writing of Brilliana Harley and Margaret Cavendish’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2009): 1-26 and ‘Questioning Gender, War, and “the Old Lie”: The Military Expertise of Margaret Cavendish’, in The History of British Women’s Writing, 1610-1690, ed. Mihoko Suzuki, vol. 3 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 254-269. 19 Wright, ‘Questioning Gender, War, and “the Old Lie”’, 254. 20 Margaret Cavendish, ‘An Epistle to Souldiers’, in Poems, and Fancies (London: Printed by T.R., for J. Martin, and J. Allestrye, 1653), 167.

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husbands and wives, truth from friends, from justice innocency, charity from misery; Chance playes, and fortune draws the stakes.21

Civil war, therefore, is analogous, for Cavendish, to a high risk, life-or-death card game whose outcome is wholly unpredictable, put as it is in the hands of fate by treacherous gamesters.22 As a woman, and one living largely in exile between 1644 and 1660, Cavendish had little opportunity to physically intervene in, challenge, or halt the action of such warring gamesters and was simply forced to endure the destabilizing consequences of their actions. Such endurance, however, had its own creative force. When discussing Cavendish’s stoic philosophy, David Cunning stresses Cavendish’s belief that, when our desires cannot be fulfilled in this world, we can take ‘an alternative and supplementary’ route ‘to fulfillment’: ‘enter[ing] into imaginary worlds in which we are able to fulfil our desires, and in which the recalcitrance of the plenum [matter-f illed space] cannot play as much of a role’.23 Cunning asserts that, for Cavendish, humans ‘are very different from non-human animals’ in that ‘the internal motions of our mental life are very active, and we have the wherewithal to harness these to craft worlds in which things unfold exactly as we please’.24 Ongoing mental pleasure is the motive for and result of producing and participating in such ‘imaginary worlds’, as is the case for most cerebral gameplay; but part of that pleasure in a number of Cavendish’s works is the ability to take on and overcome the warring gamesters that she could not combat in real life. In reflecting on Cavendish’s vision of imaginative play and pleasure, Cunning draws our attention to her play Lady Contemplation, in which the relation between mental gameplay and warfare is briefly thematized when the titular character, one of Cavendish’s avatars, engages in martial role play via her imagination. We witness the unmarried Lady Contemplation—simulating the imaginative play of Cavendish—conjure up another life for herself in which she rescues her captured 21 Margaret Cavendish, The World’s Olio (London, 1655), 55. 22 Cavendish also links war with play, in the form of theatrical performance, in The Female Academy, in Playes (London, 1662), 669-670, when Lady Speaker declares, ‘[T]here are only two Theatres […] the one is of War, the other of Peace; the Theatre of Warr is the Field, and the Battels they fight, are the Plays they Act, and the Souldiers are the Tragedanis [sic] […] the Genius that belongs to the Theatre of Warr is Valour’ (Act 4, Scene 22). However, Lady Speaker follows this statement by differentiating the theatre of war which is ‘real’ from the ‘feigned’ productions of ‘Poetical Theatre’, arguing that women should speak of ‘Scenes’ rather than ‘Battels’ as ‘Warr is’ not a fit subject for them. However, despite such assertions, Cavendish frequently writes on such subject matter, perhaps because she conceives of herself as a ‘singular’ woman. 23 David Cunning, Cavendish (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 253. In physics, the plenum is defined as ‘a space completely filled with matter; spec. the whole of space regarded as being so filled’ (Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘plenum’ [n.1a]). 24 Cunning, Cavendish, 253.

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general husband and wins the battle by assuming his command, inspiring his troops through compelling speech acts and combat strategies, and outmanoeuvring the enemy before her playful thought experiment is rudely interrupted. That Cavendish would choose to depict this, and other, mental simulations of warfare in a dramatic context, albeit as closet dramas, is perhaps predictable given that theatres operated in early modern Britain, as they do now, as ‘ludic locations par excellence, with the words “game” and “play”, “gamehouse” and “playhouse” […] used interchangeably well into the sixteenth century’ and beyond; as Glynne Wickham notes, for example, in the 1613 contract between the theatre manager Philip Henslowe and the builder of the Hope theatre, the would-be structure is referred to as ‘this Gamehouse or Playhouse’.25 What is perhaps unusual, however, is Cavendish’s need to play different versions of the same role-playing game repeatedly in her drama and elsewhere, although as Christopher Hanson notes, ‘almost all games and the pleasures associated with their play are reliant upon the mechanic of repetition and replay’.26 The reformulation of the game in a different work or different genre can bring with it not only a sense of familiarity, but also one of ritual, as the traumatic experience of war is re-staged in imagined space.27 Cavendish is caught up with the basic narrative structure of this mental game: the nation is at war; the adored and / or admired male military leader is at risk, as are his forces; and a remarkable woman, gifted in military and political strategy, miraculously steps forward as the replacement military leader to perform a series of military operations successfully, thereby saving the general and his men and effecting military victory. This literary war game is developed more fully than it is in Lady Contemplation in a number of other plays and prose works, most pointedly in the plays Bell in Campo and Love’s Adventures, and the proto-science-fiction narrative The Blazing World; these three works will be the focus of the remainder of this chapter. The imaginative war-gaming we find in Bell in Campo, Love’s Adventures, and The Blazing World involves what we might call a single-player role-playing game that foreshadows the creator’s role in world-building digital worlds, like the now somewhat dated, but recently reconceived, Second Life, whose motto ‘Your World. 25 Joachim Frenk, ‘Games’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Andrew Hadf ield, Matthew Dimmock, and Abigail Shinn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 221-233. The inset quotation is taken from Louis Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 19. Glynne Wickham, Shakespeare’s Dramatic Heritage: Collected Studies in Mediaeval, Tudor and Shakespearean Drama (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 133. 26 Christopher Hanson, ‘Repetition’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Wolf and Perron, 204. 27 Alison Gazzard and Alan Peacock, ‘Repetition and Ritual Logic in Video Games’, Games and Culture 6, no. 6 (2011): 499-512.

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Your Imagination’ echoes Cavendish’s advice to readers of the Blazing World: that they ‘may create worlds of their own, and govern themselves as they please’, if they do not want to be subjects in her alternative world.28 The playful thought experiments in conflict simulation in these works grant Cavendish the opportunity to design combat zones, produce her army, plot their movement and tactics, and participate in this game of her own making through role play, via one or two avatars. In specific, the ‘literary war games’ in these three works simulate the military operations of two kingdoms at war, govern role play by their own set of explicit or implicit rules, involve ‘some kind of thrill’ that results from ‘confronting danger’, and require well-informed military strategy to win, which sometimes involves moving through levels of difficulty.29 Conflict lies at their core, hardly surprising when we consider that ‘conflict is central to games and gaming’, especially war-gaming.30 In Bell in Campo, Cavendish establishes early on that war is not only a man’s game, insisting that women can play it as well as, if not better than, their male counterparts. In the dialogue among the four gentleman in Act 1, Scene 4 of Part 1, Cavendish resurrects the common arguments against women participating in war, only for the fourth gentleman to argue persuasively, using historical precedent, that women have been and should continue to be both observers and active, even heroic, agents in the game of war: ‘besides, there have been many women that have not only been spectators, but actors, leading armies, and directing battles with good success, and there have been so many of these heroicks, as it would be tedious at this time to recount’.31 Women want to play at war in Bell in Campo and insist on doing so, regardless of the source of opposition to their inclusion. To play the game of war she has created in Bell in Campo, Cavendish engages in role play through the protagonist Lady Victoria, the wife of a General, who is commonly read as one of Cavendish’s two avatars.32 Cavendish may be inclined to create multiple avatars for herself in this and other texts because such an option may 28 Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World, in Political Writings, ed. Susan James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 109. For a brief discussion on Second Life and its digital offspring, see Rachel Metz, ‘Second Life is Back for a Third Life, This Time in Virtual Reality’, MIT Technology Review, 27 January 2017, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603422. 29 Van Creveld, Wargames, 1-2. 30 Marko Siitonen, ‘Conflict’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Wolf and Perron, 166-172. 31 Margaret Cavendish, Bell in Campo, in ‘Bell in Campo’ and ‘The Sociable Companions’, ed. Alexandra G. Bennett (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 40. 32 For a discussion of the complex nature of identity when considering the relationship of the game player and her avatars, which is relevant to Cavendish’s tendency to split her identity across several avatars in her works or on occasion to fuse these avatars together, see Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, and Michael Arnold, ‘Avatars, Characters, Players and Users: Multiple Identities at / in Play’, Proceedings of the 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, ed. Vivienne Farrell et. al. (New York: ACM, 2012), 68-71.

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‘hold [more] promise for play, resistance, and alternative production, even within a context normatively bound by hegemonic gender stereotyping’, as Jennifer Jenson et al. argue.33 The characters of the martial heroine Lady Victoria and the mourning war widow Madam Jantil allow Cavendish to act ‘as if’ she ‘were someone else, somewhere else, in imaginary bodies, worlds, or identities’, while still retaining at least part of her own identity.34 Cavendish’s husband, after all, had been a general before their marriage, and Cavendish, like Madam Jantil, did deeply mourn the loss of a beloved male military relative (her brother, Sir Charles Lucas) killed in war, erecting textual monuments in his memory. After Lady Victoria’s husband insists on the removal of the army wives from the potential combat zone, she assumes the role of ‘generaless’ and sets out for the heroic women the fifteen rules of the war game, rules which relate to military attire, preparation, codes, and practices. By adopting these rules, the females become legitimate players in the field of war. With the rules of play in place, Lady Victoria and her female army can enter the fray, after arranging themselves ‘into a warlike body’.35 In giving an account of the female army’s military actions, the obstacles and losses they overcome, their negotiation of military intelligence, and their eventual success in war, Cavendish ‘test[s] the validity’ of her own ‘war plan or operational concept’, an essential element of war games.36 She also tracks the ‘series of “interesting decisions”’—which Sid Meier sees as the core of game design—made by Lady Victoria when faced with a range of options, including retreating after military losses and re-mobilizing in order to continue to ‘fight valiantly’ on the ‘field of war’.37 Lady Victoria’s motivation in making particular martial decisions is outlined in her inspirational heroic speeches and briefer conversations. When the female army succeed at the ‘first level’ of the game by saving the male army from imprisonment and death when they are overwhelmed by the army of Faction, they are permitted to move on to the ‘second level’: they are invited by the military men to play the game of war with them, and the men admit (if in a rather condescending fashion) the military superiority of the female players, since the women’s army exhibit superior tactical planning and skill at physical combat on the battlefield. In winning the game, 33 Jennifer Jenson, et al, ‘Playing with Ourselves: Multiplicity and Identity in Online Gaming’, Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 5 (2015): 876. 34 Andrew Burn, ‘Role-Playing’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Wolf and Perron, 241. 35 Cavendish, Bell in Campo, 57 (Part 1, Act 3, Scene 13). 36 Jake Graham, ‘The Analytic Decision Game’, in Innovative Practices in Teaching Information Sciences and Technology: Experience Reports and Reflections, ed. John M. Carroll (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 99. 37 Richard Rouse III, ‘Chapter 2: Interview Sid Meier’, in Game Design: Theory and Practice (Sudbury, MA: Wordware Publishing, 2005), quoted in Richard Rouse III, ‘Game Design’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Wolf and Perron, 83; Cavendish, Bell in Campo, 81, 86 (Part 2, Act 1, Scene 3; Part 2, Act 2, Scene 5).

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Lady Victoria and her ‘Noble Heroickesses’ win what Cavendish herself wishes to win: public recognition and fame along with domestic liberty.38 While unlike Lady Victoria, Madam Jantil, Cavendish’s second avatar, does not play the war game, she does play the cultural game of war memorialization, as we have argued elsewhere, in her role as ‘generative female playwright and performer’ who speaks of national loss, stages ‘grieving rituals’ for her nation, and erects a funeral monument.39 In the literary war game in Love’s Adventures, Cavendish decides to customize a different kind of avatar: a cross-dressing noblewoman (Lady Oliphant) who disguises herself as the pageboy Affectionata to be near the Lord General, Lord Singularity, with whom she fell in love at a distance by virtue of his reputation.40 She is eventually adopted by the Lord General and becomes his adored ‘son.’ In this thought experiment, Cavendish need not underline the many military rules of the game for her avatar to follow, as she does in Bell in Campo, since in ‘becoming male’, at least temporarily, Lady Oliphant can simply play the game of war, with the Turks in this instance, as any male soldier would, just as, in modern video war games, ‘many female players’ choose to pass ‘as males online to avoid the anti-female gaming culture’.41 In this case, ‘maleness becomes the default identity’, even if Affectionata is not seen as fully male given her youth and size, Lord Singularity cautioning her, ‘Why, the very weight of thy Arms will sink thee down’. 42 However, through her ‘vigorous spirits’, Affectionata single-handedly decimates the Turks attacking her beloved: ‘when the General was surrounded with the Turks, this adopted Son of his flew about like lightning, and made such a massacre of the Turks, as they lay as thick upon the ground, as if they had been mushrooms’. 43 When Affectionata beats all the other soldiers at their game, saving the General, who would have ‘been taken Prisoner, if his Son had not rescued him’, she receives, like Lady Victoria, recognition and, thereafter, fame and is made ‘Lieutenant-General of the whole Armie, and one of the Council of War’. 44 This success on the first level 38 Cavendish, Bell in Campo, 81 (Part 2, Act 1, Scene 3). 39 Nelson and Alker, ‘Memory, Monuments, and Melancholy Genius’, 15, 35. 40 Mihoko Suzuki, ‘Gender, the Political Subject, and Dramatic Authorship: Margaret Cavendish’s Loves Adventures and the Shakespearean Example’, in Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections, ed. Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 103-120. 41 Lisa Nakamura, ‘Race and Identity in Digital Media’, Media and Society, ed. James Curran, 5th ed. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010), 339. 42 Nakamura, ‘Race and Identity in Digital Media’, 339; in making such claims, Nakamura refers to N. Yee’s research on gender and games in ‘Maps of Digital Desires: Exploring the Topography of Gender and Play in Online Games’, in Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 83-96. 43 Margaret Cavendish, Loves Adventures, in The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays, ed. Anne Shaver (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 73, 76 (Part 2, Act 2, Scenes 9 and 12). 44 Cavendish, Loves Adventures, 76-77 (Part 2, Act 2, Scene 12).

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of play, therefore, allows her to move on to the next level, which entails gaining entrance to the inner sanctum of military operations to prove her mastery of the ‘Discipline of War’, which, as Lord Singularity says, she miraculously displayed at ‘the Council of War’ without having been ‘bred to’ or educated in the discipline. 45 The male politicians and soldiers in this ludic work are little more than witnesses to Affectionata’s physical and epistemological gameplay: they are ‘amaze[d] […] with wonder’ and so ‘astonish[ed] […] that they grew dumb’. 46 Hers is the ‘high score’ on the leaderboard, as it were, of the game of war, and draws the very public recognition and admiration that Cavendish so longed for herself. Having won the game, Affectionata, like Lady Victoria, leaves off fighting, eventually resumes her female identity, and marries Lord Singularity. It is the literary war game in The Blazing World, perhaps, that most anticipates the online war-gaming of our own age, since in this work of proto-science fiction Cavendish undertakes more innovative and systematic world-building and plays more radically with the operation of bodies in time and space. In describing Cavendish’s innovation in world-building, Mark J.P. Wolf explains, The Blazing-World is the first world […] to feature characters who build their own imaginary worlds […]. [T]he […] [Duchess] visits the Blazing-World, meets its Empress, and the two begin creating their own imaginary worlds, discuss world-building, examine each other’s worlds, and, in a later section, discuss the Primary World in relation to their secondary worlds. Because some of these activities take place within the Blazing-World itself, this is also an example of nested worlds. 47

These ‘nested worlds’ are enriched and complicated further, Miriam Wallraven suggests, by Cavendish’s willingness to combine ‘scientific theory and fictional speculation’ in their creation ‘in order to develop a new kind of corporeal space-time’, ‘which includes rich perceptual feedback for all sensual modalities, unrestricted mobility, and interaction with the environment’—finally leading to the creation of her very own ‘virtual reality’. 48 Wallraven believes that, in her treatment of disembodied subjects—travelling souls or spirits that can move across space and time—in The Blazing World and several short stories, Cavendish also gestures 45 Cavendish, Loves Adventures, 83 (Part 2, Act 3, Scene 15). 46 Cavendish, Loves Adventures, 76, 83 (Part 2, Act 2, Scene 12; Part 2, Act 3, Scene 15). 47 Mark J.P. Wolf, ‘Appendix: Worlds Apart: Toward a Canon of Imaginary Worlds’, in Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 351. 48 Miriam Wallraven, ‘“My Spirits long to wander in the Air…”: Spirits and Souls in Margaret Cavendish’s Fiction between Early Modern Philosophy and Cyber Theory’, Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 14 (2004), http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-14/ wallspir.html.

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towards transhumanism or ‘an enhanced kind of humanity’ for which virtual reality more readily allows. 49 In creating the Blazing World, Cavendish focuses on the politics of peace. In this world—over which the protagonist from ‘EFSI’ or ‘E’ becomes Empress after a harrowing escape from abduction—‘all the people lived in a peaceful society, united tranquillity, and religious conformity’.50 Cavendish explains in ‘The Epilogue to the Reader’ that she consciously elected to make her ‘Blazing World, a peaceable world’ rather than one ‘full of factions, divisions, and wars’ because ‘she esteem[s] peace before war’.51 However, Cavendish cannot help but weave into her story of this utopian world detailed accounts of, and journeys to, other worlds in which war is the norm. She initially does so as a foil through which to venerate the utopian Blazing World: the soul of the ‘Duchess of Newcastle’, invited to the Blazing World to assist the Empress in producing a Cabbala, takes the Empress’s soul to her world of faction and intestine war, which is contrasted with the peaceable Blazing World. However, Cavendish also introduces, in the third part of her story, an expansive literary war game—a power fantasy of sorts by which her two avatars, the Empress and the ‘Duchess of Newcastle’, work within the rules of the multi-leveled game. When Cavendish asserts that the third part of The Blazing World is merely ‘fantastical’, such ‘fancy’ remains deeply rooted in the ‘philosophical observations’ to which the fictional narrative is appended: Observations on Experimental Philosophy (1666; 1668).52 That Cavendish’s war game must be circumscribed in some way by philosophical rules governing matter and motion—rather than the traditional rules of war followed by the female army in Bell in Campo—is evident when the Empress and Emperor discuss the possibility of employing immaterial spirits or zombie fighters as their army in the game against the enemies of EFSI / E, which is under attack. In a thought experiment of pure fancy, adding such players to the game would not be an issue. However, Cavendish makes the Empress ‘play by the rules’ of her natural philosophy; hence, when preparing for combat, the Empress explains to the Emperor that ‘immaterial spirits cannot fight, nor make trenches, fortifications, and the like’ and neither can they use dead bodies as their ‘vehicles’ in ‘all the actions of war’, as he proposes, because it is logically impossible: ‘yet it is not possible to get so many dead and undissolved bodies in one nation; and for transporting them out of other nations it would be a thing of great difficulty and improbability’.53 49 Wallraven, ‘“My Spirits long to wander in the Air”’. 50 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 76. 51 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 109. 52 Cavendish, ‘To the Reader’, in The Blazing World, 6, 5. 53 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 90.

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For Cavendish, the rules of the war game demand strategic military thinking that allows the players to overcome such material obstacles. Therefore, even if the world she has created is peopled with fantastical hybrid beings—half human, half animal—it must operate according to its own internal logic which players must master. This is not to say that Cavendish wishes her avatars to engage in complex proto-scientific or mathematical calculation in their military strategizing, as was common in other types of war games of the period, such as the ‘Newly Invented Great King’s Game’ (1664) by Cavendish’s contemporary Christoph Weickmann;54 as noted earlier, for Cavendish, a game is not recreational if it ‘require[s] more Study than Arithmetick, or Logick, or any other Science that sets the Brain awork’ since ‘there is little Recreation in the Labour of the Mind, as in the Labour of the Body’.55 However, the Empress still relies on rational thought in working out her military plan, which the Emperor recognizes even when she censures his initial suggestions on inspiriting dead bodies: ‘You speak reason’, he says, before recognizing that he is ill equipped to advise her on playing the game of war.56 The authoritative male figure in The Blazing World is then replaced with none other than Cavendish’s second avatar, the soul of the ‘Duchess of Newcastle’, allowing this military game to be played and won by two singular women. It may initially seem odd that Cavendish merges the two avatars into one when the souls of the Empress and Duchess jointly inhabit the Empress’s body during the war and therein engage in strategic gameplay. However, Cavendish’s impulse to compress two virtual versions of herself within one flesh via these avatars, both of whom play the war game, is not wholly surprising. In some of her philosophical writings, Cavendish was known to divide her mind into two parts, ‘the minor part’ and ‘the major part’, and then have the two parts of her mind engage in dialogue in the search for truth in the realm of natural philosophy. In much the same way, in the literary war game in The Blazing World, the two parts of Cavendish’s virtual self engage in active dialogue, with the strategic objective, in this case, of winning the war by employing a series of technical military tactics in two distinct environments: on the sea via naval warfare, the first level of the game, and then in town and country via aerial attack and mining, the second level. In playing the game, the Duchess and Empress not only ‘plan the moves’ of the Empress’s military forces well in advance—which includes intelligence and reconnaissance operations—but also ‘detect, predict, interfere with, and obstruct those 54 On the ‘Newly Invented Great King’s Game’, see Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 19-28. Lori A. Davis Perry briefly discusses the relevance of the game to the writings of Jonathan Swift in this volume. 55 Cavendish, Sociable Letters, 155. 56 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 91.

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of the opponent[s]’, a critical feature of a war game, according to van Creveld.57 For example, when they are in their ‘war room’ of two, they anticipate that, if they send ‘a few ships to transport some of the bird-, worm-, and bear-men’, ‘[t]hey will soon be destroyed, for a musket will destroy numbers of birds at one shot’ and therefore decide to manufacture and send submarines instead; when confronted by the fact that their submarines cannot be properly armed with cannons or ‘other instruments of war’, and that the enemy may therefore board and seize the gold vessels when they surface, the Duchess advises the use of fire-stones (which ignite when wet) as weapons in a naval context to ‘set’ all of the enemy’s wooden ships ‘on fire’ to prevent them from approaching her submarines while, simultaneously, providing a light source during combat; and, in the face of their military disadvantages, they also devise complex deception plans to mislead enemy forces by making their ships appear ‘to swim of themselves, without any help or assistance’.58 These are but three of the military manoeuvres devised by the Empress and Duchess in anticipation of enemy tactics, which result in the enemy’s entire fleet being set alight and later blown up, and eventually leaving EFSI’s / E’s king as the ‘absolute master of the seas’, the conclusion of the first level of the game.59 The second level occurs in a different environment in which new ‘tasks […] must be accomplished before players can advance’.60 These tasks involve destroying the homes (and in one case rendering barren the countryside) of nations who refuse to pay tribute to the King of EFSI / E. The same weapon, the fire-stone, is used, but, in this case, the Empress deploys the bird-men to place these hazardous devices on the top of the homes, while the worm-men mine under the homes to place the fire-stones beneath them, ensuring the conflagration of the towns and cities when it rains or, in one instance, when the supports of the homes are ‘watered by a flowing tide’.61 The outcome for succeeding at this level of the game is that EFSI / E, the Empress’s homeland, is ‘made […] the absolute monarchy of all that world’, peace is restored to that nation, and the Empress, in which the Duchess’s soul resides, is worshipped and adored by her ‘countrymen’.62 As in all of Cavendish’s literary war games, the women players outwit and outplay their male counterparts and are publicly venerated for their success. Cavendish here, as elsewhere, plays at war to imagine wresting power from the treacherous gamesters who had destabilized her ‘real life’, and in the process reshuffles the deck of cards along the way to restore the social order. 57 Van Creveld, War Games, 3. 58 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 92, 93, 94. 59 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 98. 60 Marc Laidlaw, ‘The Egos at Id’, Wired, 4, no. 8 (1996): 122, www.wired.com/1996/08/id/, quoted in Martin Picard, ‘Levels’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Wolf and Perron, 99. 61 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 100. 62 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 100, 101.

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If we broaden our definition of war games to include ‘thought experiments’ that feature ‘conflict or military simulations’, then it is quite possible to conceive of Margaret Cavendish and other early modern women writers as war-gamers.63 Esther MacCallum-Stewart has recently argued that ‘there is a long-standing tradition of war games told through the medium of storytelling’, referring to the stories of the Brontë sisters that emerged out of their games with toy soldiers. She concludes that ‘wargame, wargame narrative, and narratives that contain wargames overlap’.64 We suggest that authors like Cavendish can and do play war games in and through works of literature. In the three works briefly surveyed in this study, Cavendish produces virtual worlds at war or worlds that are disrupted by war, thereby simulating conflict zones; engages in strategic military role play via avatars who master a series of martial tasks at various levels of difficulty through intelligence gathering, deception plans, and tactical manoeuvres that anticipate and thwart opponent’s moves; and receives public recognition, even adoration, for winning the game (vicariously through her avatars). Whereas van Creveld is inclined to dismiss or marginalize women as war-gamers, in an essentialist fashion, we propose that women’s significant role in war games might have been overlooked because it occurs in media not always associated with war-gaming, including works of literature. Pasupathi has argued of Cavendish’s military writing, ‘Thus raising literary armies in her head’, Cavendish ‘transforms herself into a captain in charge of levying and mustering troops and establishes the power of her own imagination as equal to immediacy of a soldier’s experiential knowledge. She insists upon her own worthiness for writing about military subjects without martial subjectivity’.65 While we agree with much of Pasupathi’s astute reading of Cavendish’s martial drama, we would argue that Cavendish, in fact, gains ‘martial subjectivity’ by playing the games of war via avatars in some of her plays and prose fiction. She accomplishes this end, we believe, by using techniques that anticipate to some degree the features of contemporary video war games, which is to be expected when we consider that online war games evolved from earlier forms of the genre. By reframing dramatic and prose narratives as games in this chapter, we place emphasis on the imagined activity that takes place at the heart of Cavendish’s war-gaming. Games are participatory; players do not merely view a world or intake the narrative trajectory of a character’s life, they engage in it. The philosophical nature of Cavendish’s literary war games, particularly in The Blazing World, with its 63 Lowood, ‘War Engines’, 83; Peterson, ‘A Game out of all Proportions’, 3. 64 Esther MacCallum-Stewart, ‘Wargaming (as) Literature’, in Zones of Control, ed. Harrigan and Kirschenbaum, 558. 65 Pasupathi, ‘Old Playwrights’, 134.

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close attention to the merging of imagined identities, assessment of the intricacy of strategy, and representation of bodies outside the text—such as ‘honest Margaret Newcastle’—entering the text, creates a game space that invites readers to become gamers of sorts.66 In the epilogue to The Blazing World, as earlier noted, Cavendish declares, ‘if any should like the world I have made, and be willing to be my subjects, they may imagine themselves such, and they are such, I mean, in their minds, fancies or imaginations; but if they cannot endure to be subjects, they may create worlds of their own’.67 Not only do the avatars Cavendish imagines become military subjects, but readers of the Blazing World can likewise immerse themselves in her martial worlds, becoming fully participatory subjects. Or they can invent their own. No mere readers these, but collaborators in game space.

Works Cited Aldred, Jessica. ‘Characters’. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Wolf and Perron, 355-363. Bennett, Alexandra. ‘Margaret Cavendish and the Theatre of War’. In-between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism 9, no. 1 and 2 (2000): 263-273. Bloom, Gina. ‘Games’. In Early Modern Theatricality, edited by Henry S. Turner, 189-211. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bowerbank, Sylvia. ‘The Spider’s Delight: Margaret Cavendish and the “Female” Imagination’, English Literary Renaissance 14, no. 3 (1984): 392-408. Burn, Andrew. ‘Role-Playing’. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Wolf and Perron, 241-250. Carter, Marcus, Martin Gibbs, and Michael Arnold. ‘Avatars, Characters, Players and Users: Multiple Identities at / in Play’. In Proceedings of the 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, edited by Vivienne Farrell et al., 68-71. New York: ACM, 2012. Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. ‘Bell in Campo’ and ‘The Sociable Companions’. Edited by Alexandra G. Bennett. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002. ——. The Blazing World. In Political Writings, edited by Susan James, 23-120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ——. Loves Adventures. In The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays. Edited by Anne Shaver. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. ——. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. Edited by Eileen O’Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 66 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 109. 67 Cavendish, The Blazing World, 109. We would like to thank Caleb Nelson for sharing his expertise on video war games.

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——. Orations of Diverse Sorts. London, n.p., 1662. ——. Philosophical and Physical Opinions. London: Printed by William Wilson, 1663. ——. Playes. London: Printed by A. Warren, for John Martyn, James Allestry, and Tho. Dicas, 1662. ——. Poems, and Fancies. London: Printed by T.R., for J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1653. ——. Sociable Letters. Edited by James Fitzmaurice. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2004. ——. ‘A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life’. In The Lives of William Cavendishe, Duke of Newcastle, and of his wife, Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. Edited by Mark Antony Lower. London: John Russell Smith, 1872. ——. The World’s Olio. London: Printed for J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655. Cavendish, William, Duke of Newcastle. ‘His Excellency The Lord Marquis of Newcastle His Opinion concerning the Ground of Natural Philosophy’. In Philosophical and Physical Opinions by Margaret Cavendish, 459-464. Cunning, David. Cavendish. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. Frenk, Joachim. ‘Games’. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England, edited by Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock, and Abigail Shinn, 221-233. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Gazzard, Alison, and Alan Peacock, ‘Repetition and Ritual Logic in Video Games’. Games and Culture 6, no. 6 (2011): 499-512. Graham, Jake. ‘The Analytic Decision Game’. In Innovative Practices in Teaching Information Sciences and Technology: Experience Reports and Reflections, edited by John M. Carroll, 97-116. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. Hanson, Christopher. ‘Repetition’. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Wolf and Perron, 204-210. Harrigan, Pat, and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, eds. Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Jenson, Jennifer, et al. ‘Playing with Ourselves: Multiplicity and Identity in Online Gaming’. Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 5 (2015): 860-879. Kavey, Allison B., ed. World-Building and the Early Modern Imagination. New York: Palgrave 2010. Laidlaw, Marc. ‘The Egos at Id’. Wired 4, no. 8 (1996): 122-127, 186-189. https://www.wired. com/1996/08/id/ [accessed 27 March 2019]. Liddy, Brenda Josephine. Women’s War Drama in England in the Seventeenth Century. Amherst, MA: Cambria Press, 2008. Lowood, Henry. ‘War Engines: Wargames as Systems from the Tabletop to the Computer’. In Zones of Control, edited by Harrigan and Kirschenbaum, 83-105. MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. ‘“Play Up and Play the Game!” The Narrative of War Games’. In The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century British and American War Literature, edited by Adam Piette and Mark Rawlinson, 544-552. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

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———. ‘Wargaming (as) Literature’. In Zones of Control, edited by Harrigan and Kirschenbaum, 555-572. Metz, Rachel. ‘Second Life is Back for a Third Life, This Time in Virtual Reality’. MIT Technology Review, 27 January 2017. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603422/. [accessed 27 March 2019]. Montrose, Louis. The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Nakamura, Lisa. ‘Race and Identity in Digital Media’. In Media and Society, edited by James Curran, 5th ed., 336-347. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. Nelson, Holly Faith, and Sharon Alker. ‘Memory, Monuments, and Melancholy Genius in Margaret Cavendish’s Bell in Campo’. Eighteenth Century Fiction 21, no. 1 (2008): 13-35. ——. ‘Science Fiction in the Shadow of War: Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World’. In Travel Narratives, the New Science, and Literary Discourse, 1569-1750, edited by Judy A. Hayden, 103-121. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012. Pasupathi, Vimala C. ‘New Model Armies: Recontextualizing the Camp in Margaret Cavendish’s Bell in Campo’. ELH 78 (2011): 657-685. ——. ‘Old Playwrights, Old Soldiers, New Martial Subjects: The Cavendishes and the Drama of Soldiery’. In Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections, edited by Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice, 121-146. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Peterson, Jon. ‘A Game out of all Proportions: How a Hobby Miniaturized War’. In Zones of Control, edited by Harrigan and Kirschenbaum, 3-32. Picard, Martin. ‘Levels’. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Wolf and Perron, 99-106. Rouse, Richard. ‘Game Design’. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Wolf and Perron, 83-90. ——. ‘Interview Sid Meier’. In Game Design: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. Sudbury, MA: Wordware Publishing, 2010. Sarasohn, Lisa. The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and Fancy during the Scientific Revolution. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2010. Siitonen, Marko. ‘Conflict’. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Wolf and Perron, 166-172. Smyth, Maura. Women Writing Fancy: Authorship from 1611-1812. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Stabile, Carol. ‘“I Will Own You”: Accountability in Massively Multiplayer Online Games’. Television and New Media 15, no. 1 (2014): 43-57. Suzuki, Mihoko. ‘Gender, the Political Subject, and Dramatic Authorship: Margaret Cavendish’s Loves Adventures and the Shakespearean Example’. In Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections, edited by Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice, 103-120. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

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Thell, Anne M. ‘The Power of Transport, the Transport of Power: Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World’. Women’s Studies 37, no. 5 (2008): 441-463. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Wallraven, Miriam ‘“My Spirits long to wander in the Air…”: Spirits and Souls in Margaret Cavendish’s Fiction between Early Modern Philosophy and Cyber Theory’. Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 14 (2004): 10.1-27. https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-14/wallspir. html [accessed 27 March 2019]. Wickham, Glynne. Shakespeare’s Dramatic Heritage: Collected Studies in Mediaeval, Tudor and Shakespearean Drama. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Wolf, Mark J.P. ‘Appendix: Worlds Apart: Toward a Canon of Imaginary Worlds’. In Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf, 348-362. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Wolf, Mark J.P., and Bernard Perron, eds. The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Wright, Joanne. ‘Not Just Dutiful Wives and Besotted Ladies: Epistemic Agency in the War Writing of Brilliana Harley and Margaret Cavendish’. Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2009): 1-26. ——. ‘Questioning Gender, War, and “the Old Lie”: The Military Expertise of Margaret Cavendish’. In The History of British Women’s Writing, 1610-1690, edited by Mihoko Suzuki, vol. 3, 254-269. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Yee, N. ‘Maps of Digital Desires: Exploring the Topography of Gender and Play in Online Games’. In Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming, edited by Yasmin B. Kafai, Carrie Heeter, and Jill Denner, 83-96. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.

About the authors Holly Faith Nelson, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of English at Trinity Western University. She has published widely on British literature of the seventeenth and long eighteenth centuries, including essays on Lithgow, Shakespeare, Vaughan, Cavendish, Conway, Behn, Defoe, Cowper, Burns, and Hogg. She has co-edited eight volumes, most recently Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Daniel Defoe (2014) and is currently completing a monograph with Sharon Alker on the literary representation of siege warfare in the early modern period.

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Sharon Alker, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, has published widely on Scottish literature, notably on the works of William Lithgow, Tobias Smollett, Robert Burns, James Hogg, John Galt, and Mary Brunton, as well as on the works of Margaret Cavendish, Daniel Defoe, and Maria Edgeworth. She has co-edited two essay collections on Hogg and Burns. She and Holly Faith Nelson are currently completing a monograph on the representation of siege warfare in early modern literature.

7.

Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance Karol Cooper

Abstract The dice game in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance transforms the play into a jest on the sex intrigue comedy as a genre. It thereby critiques the conventional transformation of sexual violence into a war game. This chapter argues that Behn highlights the complex forces that can lead to female infidelity by tying together the larger contexts of martial tropes in the game of love with the violence of masculinity, both sexual and economic. Keywords: martial tropes and love in literature; Restoration drama; cuckoldry in early modern drama; sexuality and emergent capitalism

In the climactic scene of Aphra Behn’s sex intrigue comedy, The Luckey Chance, or an Alderman’s Bargain (1686), the worried old alderman Sir Cautious Fulbank, frustrated over losing £100 in a dice game to the ‘young Stallion’ Gayman,1 commits to a game-changing idea — he answers Gayman’s next wager of £300 by agreeing to use as his stakes a night of sex with his wife: SIR CAUTIOUS. […] Sir, I wish I had any thing but ready Money to stake […] GAYMAN. You have Moveables, Sir, Goods—Commodities—— SIR CAUTIOUS. […] but if I had any thing that were worth nothing——

1 Aphra Behn, The Luckey Chance, in vol. 7 of The Works of Aphra Behn: The Plays, 1682-1696, ed. Janet Todd (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1996), 4.1.121-4.1.122. Subsequent references to the play will be cited by act, scene, and line numbers parenthetically in the text. References to Behn’s prologue and preface will be given by line number. References to Todd’s editorial notes will be given by page number.

Nelson, H.F. and J. Daems (eds.), Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789463728010_ch07

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GAYMAN. You wou’d venture it,——I thank you, Sir,——I wou’d your Lady were worth nothing—— SIR CAUTIOUS. Why, so, Sir? GAYMAN. Then I wou’d set all this against that Nothing. (4.1.363-4.1.371)

Sir Cautious suspects his opponent has already been pursuing his wife, but neither man is aware that, just the previous night, it was Lady Julia Fulbank who had her servants lure the nearly bankrupt Gayman to her darkened bedroom, offering him gold she had stolen from her husband’s counting house. Sir Cautious thinks his opponent is a Mr. Wastall, the name Gayman assumed when he mortgaged and then miraculously reclaimed his property from Sir Cautious—paying him with the proceeds he received the night before from Julia. Gayman, a young and well bred, sexually adroit man of wit, is the sort of rake who critiques society’s grosser hypocrisies and pleasurable pursuits, even as he revels in them. His name, a combination of ‘gay’ and ‘man’, or ‘game’ and ‘man’, signifies how essential merrymaking and gaming are to his manhood, whether conducted at the tables or in bed. In contrast to his public persona as a spendthrift gambler, his private expressions to himself, and to Julia, indicate a reverence for the Platonic nothing of soulful love, and a willingness to spend his fortune buying presents for his mistress. The contradictions of his character appear in the dice-game scene. Giving up cash winnings for a chance to spend the night with the woman he loves could be seen as admirable, but his delectation over her body, and the insinuated nothing of her vagina (449n367), are no less crude than Sir Cautious’s obsession with money: SIR CAUTIOUS. Hum, my Wife against three hundred pounds? What All my Wife Sir? GAYMAN. All your Wife [?] Why Sir, some part of her wou’d serve my turn. SIR CAUTIOUS. Hum——my Wife——why, if I shou’d lose, he cou’d not have the Impudence to take her——Aside GAYMAN. Well, I find you are not for the Bargain, and so I put up— SIR CAUTIOUS. Hold Sir—why so hasty——my Wife? no—put up your Money Sir——what lose my Wife, for three hundred Pounds!—— GAYMAN. Lose her, Sir——why, she shall be never the worse for my wearing Sir——[…] what say you to a Night? [. . .] SIR CAUTIOUS. Hum——a Night!—three hundred pounds for a Night! why what a lavish Whore-master’s this: we take Money to marry our Wives, but very seldom part with ’em, and by the Bargain get Money [Aside]—for a Night say you?——gad if I shou’d take the Rogue at his word, ’twou’d be a pure Jest. Aside. (4.1.374-4.1.390)

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The play’s complex weave of lies, sexual infidelity, disguise, and manipulated desires typifies the sexual intrigue genre, and the dice game reifies the main theme of its subgenre, the cuckold comedy. On that field, men both compete against, and bargain with one another in a contest to secure sexual domination. Each man seeks to dominate individually, one man over another, and collectively, all men over all women, using money and women’s bodies as stakes and units of scoring. Women may try their hands at playing against the men and against one another, but their victories, which come in the form of affairs or marriages, tend to revise rather than vanquish the terms of their subjugation. Further, they must first prove, by their beauty, wit, birth, and virtue, worthy to serve as the spoils for men’s victories before they can claim any of their own. What distinguishes The Luckey Chance, and what the dice game highlights, is the extent to which the competitors, both the men in the visible dice game, and the women in the shadow game of bedchamber trickery, will advance deeper into the game, not so much to best their opponents, but to outrun the game’s emotional consequences. By the end, when they have practised and endured the sexual violence and intimate deceits required in the game of warlike love, the players learn they can neither stave off their emotions through the seeming diversion of gaming, nor count on a lucky chance to free them from the relentless cycle of retributive schemes that are euphemistically termed jests in the intrigue comedy. The last of Behn’s original plays staged in her lifetime, The Luckey Chance is situated in the period after the cold wars of Restoration sexual libertinism and before the duty-bound restraint of the sentimental comedy of the early 1700s. At a time when a discourse of moral sentiment had not yet gained currency, and when feelings usually meant physical, rather than psychological sensations, Behn encoded her characters’ psychic disturbances in words like soul, passion, heart, loss, grief, anger, and shame. For example, some version of the word ‘loss’ is mentioned 31 times, compared to just five mentions of ‘winning’. All the mentions of loss are connected to men’s activities, and to their feelings of instability and social disorientation due to losing possessions (women, money, and other property), missing a sexual liaison, or losing their sense of self-possession. In an earlier scene with Julia, Gayman confesses, and excuses his night of prostitution because he hoped the money would supply him with the ‘means to conquer you’ (4.1.89). He sees no irony in the similarity between himself and Sir Cautious, who used his money for the same purpose: to overpower the woman he loves, rather than meet her on equal terms of affection. Gayman uses chivalric language to tune up his favorite image of himself as a man who uses wealth purely as a means of signifying his lack of interest in it: Were I the Lord of all the Universe, I am so lost in Love,

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For one dear Night to clasp you in my Arms, I’d lavish all that World—then die with Joy. (4.1.91-4.1.94)

Gayman is lost in a gambler’s version of love, where intimacy is realized through an act of economic power, then provides a killing rush of euphoria when attained. In what he intends to be a wooing metaphor, he portrays sex as a single, lethal experience for which he would cash in all his possessions to purchase. He appears incapable of imagining love as the free consummation of their mutual desires. The compliment fails to distract Julia from being upset that he embarked on sex-for-hire the previous night with a ‘Carcase […] lean, and rough’ (he is not aware that it was, in fact, Julia herself) (4.1.83-4.1.84). She played the trick to get closer to Gayman, and to avoid feeling the bitter isolation within her transactional marriage to Sir Cautious, but now she feels even more mistrustful of her lover. Speaking aside, she assures herself that Gayman is lying about the experience of sleeping with a shriveled old woman. Even in the dark, he would have known that ‘nothing is more distant than I from such a Monster—yet this angers me’ (4.1.85-4.1.86). Gayman sees she is upset (‘walking in a fret’, according to the stage directions) and for a moment, he withdraws from his gaming to acknowledge her feelings: ‘I knew you would be angry when you heard it’ (4.1.96). In the play’s final scene, Gayman at last experiences his share of negative feeling at having been duped by playing the cuckold games: ‘I cou’d kill my self with Shame and Anger!’ he erupts, when he finds out he prostituted himself to Julia, and not a stranger, the night before (5.2.392). Further evidence of the games’ emotional impact are the numerous episodes of weeping called for in the stage directions. With the exception of Gayman, five of the six lead characters are described as weeping at least once, with Sir Cautious and his brother cuckold in-the-making, Sir Feeble, making the biggest display of their losses in their final scene. ‘She’s gone—she’s gone—she’s gone’, weeps Sir Feeble, when he finds his young bride has run off with her lover (5.2.317). ‘Ay, Ay, she’s gone, she’s gone indeed’, repeats Sir Cautious, breaking down in tears over Julia’s vow to abandon their marriage bed after discovering that he acted as her pimp (5.2.318). The prominence given to the demonstration of emotional pain as a side effect of sexual gamesmanship may have been intended by Behn as a check upon the audience’s uncomplicated enjoyment of the cruel excesses that served as the staples of cuckold humour. The play’s prologue, spoken by Thomas Jevon, the actor who played Sir Cautious’s oblivious nephew Bearjest, promised the play would show the audience something different than what they were used to seeing. Behn hints they may not be entirely pleased with the results. True, they had ‘with Old Plays […] long been cloy’d’ (Prologue, 1), and like Jevon’s character, proved they could bear the jests those plays delivered, perhaps without feeling their implications. But the

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audience’s desire for novelty has become a compulsion. Like a person who cannot remain constant to a partner, they end up replacing one ‘drunken Sot’ of a mistress, or one ‘self-admiring Ass’ of a lover with another: ‘How briskly dear Variety you pursue; / Nay though for worse ye change, ye will have New’ (Prologue, 7, 10, 3-4). The stage, however, has run out of its stock of fools to mock: We’re forc’t at last to rob, (which is great pity, Though ’tis a never-foiling Bank) the City. We show you one to day intirely new, And of all Jests, none relish like the true. (Prologue, 39-42)

In this chapter, I will argue that Behn’s true jest—the exposure and dramatic centring of the emotional repercussions experienced by Gayman, Julia, and Sir Cautious as a result of their participation in the cuckolding game—reveals the hidden stakes that the typical cuckolding comedy glosses over, or refuses to portray, for fear of damaging the comedic tone. Through her jest, Behn expands the representative range of the genre, and uses the characters’ displays of emotion to highlight for the audience a system of relational obligation and accountability that erodes the established theatrical image of marital infidelity and sexual violence as diverting games of social warfare. In The Luckey Chance, Behn shows her frustration with the limits of the genre and with the audience’s limited understanding of the intimately violent kind of social gamesmanship it perpetuated. To set up her jest, Behn opens the play by establishing Gayman’s sense of a grudge against ‘the faithless Julia’ (1.1.73). He explains his situation to his friend Belmour, another social combat veteran, who has recently returned from a period of banishment for duelling, or what he calls ‘fairly killing in my own Defence’ (1.1.6). Belmour is enraged to learn that he and Gayman are both cast-off lovers of two young and beautiful women who have chosen to marry wealthy, older men: GAYMAN. Why your Mistress Leticia—your contracted Wife, is this Morning to be married to old Sir Feeble Fainwou’d, induc’d to’t, I suppose by the great Joynture he makes her, and the Improbability of your ever gaining Pardon for your high Duel. (1.1.98-1.1.101)

Gayman assures Belmour that even though Sir Feeble holds the status of ‘Knight, and Alderman, here o’th’ City’, he is nonetheless impotent, for ‘neither Youth nor Beauty can grind his Dugion to an Edge’ (1.1.89, 1.1.91-1.1.92). He tries to soothe Belmour by reminding him that he shares his plight: ‘You know my Julia——Play’d me e’en such another Prank as your false one is going to play you […] I storm’d, and rav’d and swore, as thou wilt now, and to as little purpose. There was but one Way

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left, and that was Cuckolding him’ (1.1.117-1.1.121). Because he views love as a war game, Gayman’s view of the field of play affords him no other choice. He believes that sexual revenge against his rival should always be the next mission after speech and expensive presents fail to establish loving bonds, including sexual intimacy, between a man and a married woman. Gayman’s focus on using the dice game to stage a battle with Sir Cautious to win sex with Julia, instead of persisting in building consensual relations with her directly, can be viewed as an example of what Martin van Creveld describes as the limitations of war games’ applicability to real life. First, there is the frequent lack of realism that may lead to the wrong actions being taken and the wrong lessons learnt; second, the danger, which a perceived lack of realism can only enhance, that players will become more interested in winning the game than in using it to gain a better understanding of real war; and, third, the near impossibility of simulating the full stress that participating in real-life war involves.2

In a world in which love itself is under attack by the forces of war and commerce, Gayman will be no better off in the ‘real war’—that is, the struggle to establish the non-violent, soulful grounds for what is referred to in one of the play’s songs as love’s ‘just Desire’—if he cares only about shaming Sir Cautious (3.1.212). Hurting the older man is the object of the social war game, but not the object of the real war of soul versus capital. In War Games: A History of War on Paper, Philipp von Hilgers takes note of the games’ semiotic aspects, through which the meaning of war is made legible and actionable: ‘To the extent that the battlefield no longer constitutes the tactical basis of war, but rather an increasingly detached level of symbolic configurations, to maintain distance from the battlefield is the very meaning of waging war’.3 The dice game, which Gayman might have used to prove to Julia the extent of her husband’s disregard for her rights, has become not a tool for showing the contrast between his and Sir Cautious’s values, but a method for maintaining distance from Julia, and of equating the values of all three, since each member of the triangle has demonstrated that they believe sex is something that can be bought and consumed, with or without the partner’s consent. Ultimately, the game will prove of little use in preparing Gayman for the emotional stresses to come, when the time arrives for him to collect his winnings, and Julia berates him for dishonouring her just so that he could call her husband a cuckold. 2 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 314. 3 Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 117.

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This sort of debate over the power of the word cuckold is reminiscent of instances in other plays from the period in which characters reflect on the power of words to construct and enforce, or alter and excuse, codes of sexual conduct. A ‘gathering momentum towards social refinement’ in the late seventeenth and early eigh­ teenth centuries caused a ‘widening gulf between “genteel” and “vulgar” modes of expression’. 4 For example, ‘on the later seventeenth-century stage, and in the literature of cuckoldry more generally, the terms “gallantry” and “gallant” were coming to have more specific associations with conjugal infidelity’.5 A maid in Edward Ravenscroft’s The London Cuckolds (1682) comments on the transformation of harsher terms like whore, pimp, and cuckold-maker, into the more acceptable-sounding terms of mistress, friend, and gallant.6 Behn satirized these kinds of linguistic pretensions in The Luckey Chance, when Gayman devolves the sequence back to its roots, reminding Belmour of the role he played with Leticia during Belmour’s banishment: ‘Now I being the Confident in your Amours, the Jack-go-between—the civil Pimp or so—you left her in charge with me at your Departure’ (1.1.104-1.1.106). While the trend towards the ‘“glamorisation” of extra-marital sex’ 7 lent an air of sophistication to the gallant fornicators, their partners, and helpers, it did not lead to a similar refurbishment of the cuckold, whose title stayed the same. Accordingly, he remained an untouchable figure of scorn, someone who might be cast out from his former society for fear that his status was contagious, or that he would depress the company with his sad condition. In The Politick Whore: Or, The Conceited Cuckold, a farce published in 1680 and attributed to Robert Davenport, Sir Cornelius, the cuckold of the title, ignorant that his own wife has been cheating on him, refuses to host his friend in his home, because he believes him to be a cuckold. His servant entreats him to have some empathy for the man, as ‘he’s so melancholly [sic] since his Wife and he are parted’. Sir Cornelius tells him, ‘I’le have no Cuckold sup in my House to Night.’ The servant is not surprised, and recalls his master’s policy: ‘Why, your Worship was ever as good as your word, keep the Cuckolds out of doors, and lay a Cloth for my Lord in the Arbour.’ 8 In one of Behn’s earlier comedies, Sir Patient Fancy (1678), the titular character seeks to avoid the melancholy of being a cuckold by avoiding the title. At the conclusion, he vows to divorce his wife so that he can ‘turn Spark’ since ‘they lead the

4 David M. Turner, Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex, and Civility in England, 1660-1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 35-36. 5 Turner, Fashioning Adultery, 38. 6 Turner, Fashioning Adultery, 36. 7 Turner, Fashioning Adultery, 40. 8 [Robert Davenport], The Politick Whore: Or, The Conceited Cuckold, in The Muse of New-Market, Or, Mirth and Drollery (London: Printed for Dan. Browne, Dan. Major, and James Vade, 1680), 53.

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merriest lives’.9 His final couplet celebrates the accomplishment of a self-willed identity: ‘I wish all civil Cuckolds in the Nation, / Would take Example by my Reformation.’ 10 Sir Cautious, stirred by the frenzy of gambling (‘I was bewitch’d’, he marvels, feeling the addictive properties of the dice [4.1.337-4.1.338]), similarly empowers himself to reject the shaming mechanism of the cuckold label, intended to rouse men to police their wives’ freedoms so they can establish their own reputations as effectual patriarchs. His transformation of the label of cuckold, from something to be feared into something to be monetized to the economic advantage of the cuckold, marks a radical departure from the attitude he expressed earlier in the play, when he agreed with Sir Feeble’s advisement to ‘keep a Wife ignorant’, by keeping her home, and away from ‘Christnings […] and Gossipings’, and other ‘Schools’, where ‘we poor Cuckolds are anatomiz’d’ (2.2.114, 2.2.116-2.2.117, 2.2.125). He believed then that the typical round of feminine social events, and the sort of probative speech they fostered, made women capable of pulling apart the inner workings of the most respectable men of the country. Such an unsettling of the nation’s masculine foundations could prove to be the foundation for women’s infidelity: ‘Ay, ay, this Grievance ought to be redrest Sir Feeble, the grave and sober Part o’ the Nation are hereby ridicul’d,——Ay, and cuckol[d]’d too, for aught I know’ (2.2.127-2.2.129). He suspects that a woman’s homosocial speech alone, and not her bodily intimacy with a lover, could be capable directly or indirectly of turning an otherwise respectable man into a cuckold. He empowers a woman with the ability to invade and dissect the corpus, not of the man himself, but the linguistic abstraction of man-as-signifier of potency and control. With the focus on her penetrative language, and the damage it could do, he omits altogether the necessity for a woman to have intercourse with another man for her husband to suffer a decline in status. Thus, women as a group become his enemy. Gripped by the magical powers of gaming, Sir Cautious comes to realize that, if the grievance of being a cuckold is no longer a grievance, but a commodity of meaning that accompanies the act of illicit sex between a wife and her lover, such meaning would thereby be owned by the husband, regardless of what is said about him in the schools of discoursing women. If the ‘mystical dimension of gambling encompasses altered states of consciousness and dissociation’,11 Sir Cautious, perhaps in the dissociative state of the bewitched gambler, separates from the identity of cuckold, a crucial move that allows him to use the dice game to reconfigure his 9 Aphra Behn, Sir Patient Fancy, in vol. 6 of The Works of Aphra Behn: The Plays, 1678-1682, ed. Janet Todd (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1996), 5.1.735-5.1.736. 10 Behn, Sir Patient Fancy, 5.1.739-5.1.740. 11 Per Binde, ‘Gambling and Religion: Histories of Concord and Conflict’, Journal of Gambling Issues 20 (2007): 152.

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relations with his young enemy Gayman, temporarily making him an ally in the war against his wife and her schools of discourse. Behn certainly shows that the women are in a bind, first, for feeling they have no choice but to agree to marry the rich, older men who pressure them, and second, for having few outlets where they can safely express their thoughts, feelings, and desires. However, she also paints a detailed picture of the difficulties of the men, whose attachment to their powerful positions keeps them from establishing fully consensual relations with women, who, as a result, come to equate men’s excessive displays of power with their masculinity. When faced with a choice of attempting to dominate or relate to his wife, Sir Cautious agonizes over the potential loss of control he would experience if he were to allow her the freedom to decide if and how she might have an affair with Gayman. In the final scene between the two of them, prior to his sneaking Gayman into her bedroom to claim his winnings, Sir Cautious asks Julia ‘if I shou’d be good-natur’d and give thee leave to love discreetly?’ (5.2.118-5.2.119), meaning, if he were to turn a blind eye to her affairs, would she protect him from public scorn? She answers, ‘I’d do’t without your leave Sir […] love as I ought, love Honestly’ (5.2.120-5.2.122). Sir Cautious guesses that she is thinking of her ‘first Love Gayman?’ She replies, ‘I’ll not deny that Truth, tho even to you’ (5.2.130). Yet, for all her valuing of the truth, she is disgusted at the thought that he would grant her leave to cuckold him: ‘There is but one Way Sir to make me hate you; And that wou’d be tame Suffering’ (5.2.137-5.2.138). She is most familiar with a more demonstratively masculine type of suffering (the type that leads men to exact a pre-emptive kind of revenge on women, which is precisely what he is about to do) and commands him to ‘leave this fond Discourse’ (5.2.140). Behn pressures the genre to accommodate representations of pain, only to show that, where the game requires individuals to stay wedded to the norms of gender performance in order to win, the liminal space offered by the game cannot become the stage for a revolution in intimate relating. As witty as he is, Gayman’s understanding of his desire for Julia is narrowed by his collusion with his potential cuckold, which he can only see as a stroke of romantic genius. The song performed prior to Gayman’s first entry into Julia’s bedroom assumes ignorance on his part, and advises the lover to be aware of the complex power of love: Oh! Love, that stronger art than Wine, Pleasing Delusion, Witchery divine, Want to be priz’d above all Wealth, Disease that has more Joys than Health. Tho we blaspheme thee in our Pain, And of thy Tyranny complain, We all are better’d by thy Reign.

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What Reason never can bestow We to this useful Passion owe. (3.1.190-3.1.198)

Gayman is led across the stage by Julia’s costumed servants, who play the roles of a devil, an old woman, nymphs, and shepherds. He believes he is about to sell himself to a stranger, and wishes the ‘soft Preparation’ of the masque was not delusional witchery intended to make the transaction of sex-for-money go more smoothly, but a prelude to the ‘dear Embraces’ of his beloved Julia: ‘What different Motions wou’d surround my Soul’, compared to those that ‘perplex it now’ (3.1.215-3.1.218). While Gayman struggles with the unpleasant tumult of feelings his gaming has brought to his soul, to Sir Cautious, the ‘pure Jest’, or transgressive turnabout, of pimping his wife to avoid losing money, appears as a stroke of economic genius that will replace the shame of his cuckoldom and Julia’s potential rape with the satisfaction of financial savings. Sir Feeble views the matter with alarm, and thinks Sir Cautious would be mad to agree to the stakes. Sir Cautious, already feeling triumphant, scoffs at the warning: ‘a Cuckold—why, ’tis a Word—an empty Sound— ’tis Breath—’tis Air—’tis nothing—but three hundred pounds—Lord, what will not three hundred pounds do! You may chance to be a Cuckold for nothing Sir’ (4.1.396-4.1.398). As Sir Cautious imagines, the jest in its pure form would exemplify the performative linguistic genre to which it belongs, one that permits the most extreme of cruelties, so long as they are humorous and can be calculated as recompense for abuse. In his eyes, the jest is a fitting model for the co-modification of his wife, and its corollary, his masculine reputation. By taking Gayman at his word, in order to divest himself of the shameful experience of the word cuckold, Sir Cautious’s jest conflates abuse and recompense in the single act of declaring his stakes. If he loses, his abuse of his wife’s body will be paid for by her enjoyment of illicit sex with a man he worries will become her lover anyway. At the same time, her abuse of his honour will be paid for by her unwitting participation in that same act. Julia witnesses the dice game, but without awareness that her husband has offered her body as payment. When she asks him, ‘What are you playing for?’ Sir Cautious lies and says, ‘Nothing, nothing—but a Trial of Skill between on Old man and a Young—and your Ladyship is to be Judge’ (4.1.422-4.1.424). After the fatal toss, when Gayman throws the precise combination of two sixes he needs to reach the winning score of 31, beating Sir Cautious’s 30 by a single point, Lady Fulbank asks her husband, ‘How now? What’s the Matter you look so like an Ass, what have you lost?’ (4.1.435-4.1.437). Sir Cautious avoids telling her that he has bargained away their reputations, and says he has lost only ‘A Bauble—a Bauble […] a small parcel of Ware that lay dead upon my hands, Sweet-heart’ (4.1.442-4.1.443). He admits his distress comes from not getting all of his money back from Gayman: ‘’tis not for

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what I’ve lost——but because I have not won’ (4.1.437-4.1.438). The cash he did not win troubles him far more, because, as Gayman suggested, the loss of Julia is the loss of nothing, for she ‘lay dead’ without love for him. The Luckey Chance is unusual for placing a wife’s body as stakes, but not unusual in the incorporation of a dice game. Games like cards and dice show up from time to time in plays of the period, a logical piece of stage business for playwrights representing a society known for its gaming pastimes. Charles II’s illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth, for example, when only fifteen years old was already ‘trying to keep up with court hedonism’, despite the fact that ‘at the gaming tables […] he always had more enthusiasm than ability’.12 Even when losing, persons of rank understood the importance of maintaining their sense of humour, as that too was part of gaming culture.13 In contrast to Gayman’s mask of urbanity, Sir Cautious’s mixture of anxiety over losing, and a desire to show domination, derive from the contradictory expectations placed upon powerful men, and sometimes women, to play and to bet, often above the legal types and amounts. Further, they should lose cheerfully or win graciously while doing so—all without making extreme alterations to their financial situations or their relationships. According to An Act against deceitfull disorderly and excessive Gameing, instituted in 1664 under Charles II (who perhaps was concerned with curbing the very excesses for which he was the figurehead), both of Behn’s gamesters transgress the boundaries. Gayman’s betting of £300 exceeds the act’s £100 per-bet limit, and Sir Cautious’s staking his wife violates its prohibition against bets made ‘other than with and for ready money’.14 The act intended to prevent what should be ‘innocent and moderate Recreations’ for the upper ranks of society from becoming ‘constant Trades or Callings to gaine a liveing, or make unlawfull Advantage thereby’.15 An earlier act of 1541 had banned ‘people who were dependent on waged work and the poor in general from playing at cards, dice and other games’.16 That left the 1664 act to admonish the privileged for committing the crime, not of gaming (a ritual that reified the transactional, risky nature of social life), but of becoming so immersed in gaming that they would risk losing land and other resources meant to serve as the foundation of their status, and which ought to be obtained through 12 Anna Keay, The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2016), 71. 13 Keay, The Last Royal Rebel, 71. 14 A. Luders et al., ed. The Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (London: Printed by command of His Majesty King George the Third in pursuance of an address of the House of Commons of Great Britain, 1810-1828), vol. 5, 523. 15 Luders et al., ed., The Statutes of the Realm, vol. 5, 523. 16 Nicholas Tosney, ‘Legacies of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Gaming in Modern Attitudes Towards Gambling’, Community, Work & Family 13, no. 3 (2010): 351.

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some hierarchically gradual and time-honoured means, in contrast to the sudden reversals of fortune that occurred during games. The 1664 act proclaims: by the immoderate use of [games,] many mischeifes and inconveniencies doe arise and are dayly found to the maintaining and encourageing of sundry idle loose and disorderly persons in their dishonest lewd and dissolute course of life, And to the circumventing deceiveing cousening and debauching of many of the younger sort both of the Nobility and Gentry and others to the losse of their pretious time and the […] ruine of their Estates and Fortunes and withdrawing them from noble and laudable Imployments and Exercises.17

Behn’s comedy affords few ‘noble and laudable Imployments and Exercises’. The two knights view the office of alderman as a nominal obligation, important only insofar as it enables them to claim their spoils, whether sensual or financial, on the playing field of sexual combat. Sir Cautious is never seen deliberating governmental matters, but uses his position to increase the scope of his interests into prostitution. Sir Feeble deliberates whether he is more aroused by the call to put down a rebellion (‘each man shoulder his Musket, and advance his Pike’ [3.1.148-3.1.149]), or the opportunity to have sex with his young bride on their wedding night (‘I’ll not lose this Night to save the Nation’ [3.1.131]). The dice game suggests that military warfare and sexual gaming are not two separate spheres, but different versions, or stages, of the same type of practice. In both instances, solemn pretenses to ideology, whether romantic, marital, or national, are exposed as coverings for the determination to gain, or regain, possession of resources by using a system of allied violence to topple those individuals who presently possess them. When Gayman swaps places with Sir Cautious in Julia’s bed in order to claim his winnings, Julia discovers his identity, and names him an ‘unkind […] false Deceiver’ (5.2.225-5.2.226). Gayman protests, ‘I only seiz’d my Right of Love’, indicating the degree to which his actions as a lover are driven by the dictates of the war game (5.2.230). Beating Sir Cautious was a rehearsal for overcoming Julia, but it was also a battle he won that gave him access to her as real-world spoils for that game-rehearsed victory. Behn cleverly deploys the dice game as both a rehearsal for men’s war against women, as well as a stage of in-fighting between men, the settlement of which will always result in a woman’s transformation into ‘Moveables […] Goods—Commodities’ (4.1.365). By having not just the cuckold, but all three opposing players, Sir Cautious, Gayman, and Julia, endure a share of horror over their mutual exploitation, Behn completes her jest upon the intrigue comedy and its audience. In the preface to the printed version, she chides the juvenile pettiness of an audience that would 17 Luders et al., ed., The Statutes of the Realm, 523.

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study her language, not to understand its true implications, but only to catch any sex-related jokes, and accuse her of lewdness—a crime made all the worse because committed by a woman writer. They ‘will in spight of Sense wrest a double Entendre from every thing, lying upon the Catch for a Jest or a Quibble’ (Preface, 22-23). The parley surrounding the dice game supplied them with just the sort of jest they delighted in, but its scale reached beyond the comeuppance of a cuckold. Behn urged the audience to look at the play in its entirety, to notice how quickly claims of love succumbed to the terms of their violent metaphors. In his analysis of early modern English jest-books, Derek Brewer calls the jest, a verbal mini-art form designed to produce laughter. It is in origin oral, spoken to an in-group, hence in prose, concerned with the accidents and stresses of ordinary life. It is a brief narrative of some piquant reversal or incongruity or smart reply embodying such, appealing to a large group of people of similar tastes. It is a part therefore of the more general culture of humour in a society, and is to some extent an index of what is there thought to be funny.18

The jest was also one of ‘the favored genres’ for the enduringly popular cuckolding plot, which, aside from its entertainment value, offered the formal benefit of streamlining a tale, since ‘[o]ne of the seductions of horn logic was its power to make short work of complex and contested narratives’.19 However, Behn’s more intricate jesting embraces the complex reality of the intertwining psychological, social, commercial, political, martial, and linguistic forces that give rise to a woman’s marital infidelity. Further, her play offers a ‘piquant reversal or incongruity’ upon the cuckolding jest by daring, rather sympathetically, to represent the shame felt by the people involved. In contrast to Behn’s aims, the normal cuckolding jests avoided political explanations as well as emotional depth, and accepted current arrangements as the necessary grounds for their humour. A book of jests collected by Humphrey Crouch and printed in 1687, the year after The Luckey Chance was first staged, contains nearly 100 pages of 217 jests, homely proverbs ranging from brief puns of two or three sentences, to somewhat longer ironic and, at times, cryptically humorous narratives. Of the 44 jests dealing with marriage, thirteen allude to the wife’s infidelity, or mention cuckolding outright: ‘One ask’d a Gentleman if he’d venture any thing at the Lottery this Fair, and what he won, his Wife shou’d have 18 Derek Brewer, ‘Prose Jest-Books Mainly in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries in England’, in A Cultural History of Humour: From Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Polity Press; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 90. 19 Pamela Allen Brown, Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 86.

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for her fairing? No, says the Gentleman, for there’s not one in forty has any luck but Cuckolds; which his sweet Wife hearing, said, Dear Husband, Pray venture, for I’m sure you’ll have good luck’.20 Because the jest’s brevity prevents the cuckold from making a comeback strike once the punchline has been delivered, the ‘sweet Wife’ has the last word—a privilege denied Lady Fulbank by dramatic convention, which dictates that Sir Cautious, as the presiding male, speak the last lines of the play. Among the early modern jests that champion the woman’s perspective, some of them ‘signal means for the social control of male violence, while others mock the pernicious ideal of the patient wife’.21 Although they held those subversive possibilities of meaning, jests were categorized as linguistic games. Because of their mimetic nature, whether embedded in drama or collected in jest-books, they did not appear to intervene directly in injustice. The prevalence of jests, and the thoughtful commentaries made upon them by Shakespeare, Burton, Pepys, Johnson, and others, are indicative of ‘a society which recognized the inevitability of pain, with a myriad of ways of adjusting to it rather than abolishing it’.22 The prevalence of cuckolding jests indicates their centrality as a humorous adjustment to the pains wrought by men’s practice of holding property in the bodies of their wives. Rather than stage ways to end the practice entirely, cuckolding jests promote revenge against only the most jealous and possessive of husbands. If women are oppressed, they may look to the jests for recommendations on how they can adjust to their mistreatment by having affairs with other men. The jests never suggest that men who abuse their wives by attempting to inhibit their freedom are criminals. Rather, they promote a habit of reading cuckoldry as a legitimate signifier of a man’s inability to establish himself as an effectively masculine economic agent. In the cuckolding jest, a husband is bested by his opponents (his wife and the ‘Whore-master’), not because he tried to hold his wife as property, but because he was ineffectual in doing so. The cuckolding jest portrays a man’s attempt to control his wife as a counterproductive method for achieving the sort of control he ought to have, since, in all probability, his jealousy and surveillance will only incite her towards infidelity. Rather than recommending that women use one form of intimate deceit to combat another, Behn questions the romantic tradition that represents love in militaristic terms. She embellishes two of the play’s mating scenes with songs that push traditional romantic figures of warlike love, but she undercuts their conceits. The song preceding Sir Feeble’s undressing on his wedding night is sung from the perspective of a man who celebrates and chastises a woman’s ‘conqu’ring 20 Humphrey Crouch, England’s Jests Refin’d and Improv’d (London: Printed for John Harris, 1687), 22. 21 Brown, Better a Shrew, 31. 22 Brewer, ‘Prose Jest-Books’, 106.

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Charms’, around which he, the favored lover, will ‘maintain the Fort of Love’ (3.1.2, 3.1.6). Despite the ‘Spoyls of broken hearts’ she has won, he begs, ‘suffer now your Cruelty to cease, / And to a fruitless War prefer a Peace’, as if all the agency belonged to her—even when the surrounding action shows that it clearly does not (3.1.9, 3.1.11-3.1.12). In the case of Sir Feeble’s young bride Leticia, the only peace she could hope for would be found in death, and she confides to Sir Feeble’s daughter Diana that, far from enjoying the spoils of the ‘fine Play-things’ or jewels he has given her, she would sooner climb into her ‘[g]rave’ than her husband’s bed (1.3.44; 3.1.103). In fact, it is Sir Feeble who has taken Leticia as the spoils of his victory in the marital marketplace, and, when presenting her with the jewels, he makes plain that, while they are made of genuine materials—‘as true as my Heart’—they are not offered as spoils she has gained by her romantic conquest of him (1.3.49). They are an emotional weapon to aid his literal conquest of her unwilling body. As he hands them to her, he demands brusquely, ‘More of your Love, and less of your Ceremony’ (1.3.52). In the most extensive critical reading of The Luckey Chance to date, Nancy Copeland concludes that, ‘after all the intriguing’, Sir Cautious’s ‘values triumph, having infected the relationship between Julia and Gayman’.23 I would argue that Sir Cautious’s values are not in conflict with Gayman’s and Julia’s, because the two lovers exist from the outset in a state of unquestioned dependency upon the older man’s political and economic power. This is the main reason their wars with one another can only be games and jests—scripted conflicts with agreed-upon terms—and not revolutionary upheavals in their relations. Gayman, a faded soldier who earlier traipsed across the stage with ‘an old Campaign coat tyed about him’, has humorously bemoaned his own exhaustion and near extinction throughout the play, despite his youth. His equipage of warfare, perhaps worn on one side or another in the quelled Monmouth Rebellion of the previous year, has, like the rest of his wardrobe, ‘dwind’ld dayly’ (2.1.75). Now, his ‘very Badg of Manhood’s gone too’, says his landlady about his sword, ‘which will sell for nothing but old Iron’ (2.1.78, 2.1.81-2.1.82). Associated with a once-superior type of organic filth—from the ‘dirty Acres’ (1.2.98) he mortgaged to collaterize his love for Julia to the ‘Pissburn’d shammy Breeches’ (2.1.77) which are all that remain from the once ‘good Cloths’ (2.1.74) he pawned—he compares his social inertia to that of a ‘winter Fly, hoping for some blest Sun-shine to warm me into Life again, and make me hover my flagging Wings’ (1.1.137-1.1.139). Sir Cautious becomes the sunlight for Gayman’s resurgence as a gamester in the new war of commercial sex. In its animalistic imagery, Gayman’s fly metaphor works in tandem with Sir Cautious’s breeding-based epithets for him of stallion 23 Nancy Copeland, Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre: Women’s Comedy and the Theatre (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 77.

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and ‘young handsom Dog’ (2.2.207-2.2.208). The images attest to what Gayman calls the ‘beastly Shifts’ (2.1.133) he has sunk to in pawning his clothes, mortgaging his estate, and, finally, having to ‘deal in the black Art’ (2.1.26) as his servant puts it, of prostitution-cum-devilry to cajole his landlady with wine, flattery, dances, and kissing. The fly image appears again in an accusation made by Sir Cautious’s nephew Bearjest. He suspects that Gayman’s good fortune with the dice derives from a supernatural source: ‘The Rogue has damn’d Luck sure, he has got a Fly’ (meaning, ‘a familiar spirit to help him’) (4.1.350; 449n350). The fly also echoes an image from ‘The Character of a Gamester’, as described by Charles Cotton in 1674: ‘No man puts his brain to more use than he; for his life is a daily invention, and each meal a new stratagem, and like a flie will boldly sup at every mans cup […]. Men shun him at length as they do an Infection, and having […] hung on as long as he could, at last drops off.’ 24 Cotton’s description of a gambling addict withholds the pity Gayman lavishes on himself, and comports to some extent with the more fantastically devilish character sketched of him to Sir Cautious by Bearjest and his friend Noysey, in the lead-up to their dice game: SIR CAUTIOUS. Do you know this Wastall Sir [?]—— To Noysey [. . .] NOYSEY. Ay poor Fellow——he’s sometimes up and sometimes down, as the Dice favour him […] a most dangerous Fellow——he cullys in your Prentices and Cashiers to play——which ruins so many o’th’ young Fry i’th’City—— SIR CAUTIOUS. Hum——does he so […] NOYSEY. Then he keeps a private Press, and prints your Amsterdam and Leyden Libels. SIR CAUTIOUS. Ay and makes ’em too I’ll warrant him; a dangerous Fellow—— NOYSEY. Sometimes he begs for a lame Souldier with a wooden Leg. BEARJEST. Sometimes as a blind Man sells Switches in New-market Road. NOYSEY. At other times he runs the Country like a Gipsey—tells Fortunes and robs Hedges, when he’s out of Linnen. SIR CAUTIOUS. Tells Fortunes too——nay I thought he dealt with the Devil […] otherwise he could never have redeem’d his Land. Aside. (4.1.163, 4.1.167, 4.1.177-4.1.192)

The far-ranging accusations of devilry elevate Gayman to the level of scourge, making him accountable for every manner of vice, predation, and political disturbance plaguing the country. However, without realizing it, Sir Cautious has included himself in the circle of devilry, since he has been funding of late Gayman’s 24 Charles Cotton, The Compleat Gamester (London: Printed by A. M., for R. Cutler, 1674), 22.

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comeback as a gamester. By the end of the play, Sir Cautious redeems, and indebts, Gayman completely by reordering his will. He proclaims, in front of everyone, ‘if I dye Sir——I bequeath my Lady to you——with my whole Estate’ (5.2.386-5.2.387). Despite the terrifying caveat of ‘if’, Gayman thanks him, and asks Julia, ‘do you consent?’ She answers, ‘No sir—you do not like me’, referencing his earlier show of distaste towards his unknown feminine benefactor, whom he kept claiming must have been old and ugly if she needed to pay him for sex and not reveal her identity (5.2.390). Gayman extends a courtesy to Lady Fulbank by inquiring about her consent, but she has, by this time, already forsworn her husband’s bed upon learning of his role in using her as Gayman’s winnings. Critics have noted that the two women characters are some of Behn’s least enterprising due to how little influence they have on the outcome of the plot. Belmour directs Leticia to ‘Feign […] nice Virgin-Cautions all the Day’, to forestall Sir Feeble, ‘Then trust at Night to my Conduct to preserve thee’ (2.2.72-2.2.73). They succeed in fleeing together, but can only go to Lady Fulbank, Leticia’s sole friend of influence, for aid, and so wind up onstage at the end with Sir Cautious, Gayman, Lady Fulbank, and the minor characters: Sir Feeble’s daughter Diana, her new husband Bredwell, Sir Cautious’s dispossessed heir Bearjest, and his new-but-unwanted wife Pert. In what is meant to be an authoritative summing up, Sir Cautious commiserates with Sir Feeble. The allies had earlier called one another ‘good Brother’, but now, I find Sir Feeble we were a Couple of old Fools indeed, to think at our Age to couzen two lusty young Fellows of their Mistresses; ’tis no wonder that both the Men and the Women have been too hard for us, we are not fit Matches for either, that’s the truth on’t. (5.2.406-5.2.410)

The games of warlike love have reached their end. The two older men have shed copious tears over their emotional losses, but, in terms of status, or their ‘Moveables […], Goods [and] Commodities’, they have not definitively lost anything. Sir Feeble never attained sexual or marital possession of Leticia, so he did not lose her to Belmour (4.1.36). Sir Cautious is still married to Julia, and all the money he gave to Gayman (from the loan he made him against his property, to the £500 Julia stole for his sake, to the money he lost at dice) has already returned, or likely will in the near future return back to his household in one form or another, either as cash, or as gifts to Julia. Sir Cautious and Sir Feeble set themselves up as marks—at first unwittingly, but by the end, with full paternal intent—in order to redirect the energies of Gayman and Belmour, energies that would otherwise be spent by the younger men in their own violent dissipation. For society to function peacefully, the violent young men on its margins, the superannuated gentlemen-soldiers-turneddevils and prostitutes like Gayman, or duellists like Belmour, must be brought into

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line.25 Further, by using the women as payment, the older men cash out the spoils or targets for the intrigue game, so that they can reposition the younger men as the next generation of city soldiers, controlled by their will and resources. In the play’s final couplet, Sir Cautious reinstates what has become a not-sopleasing delusional metaphor of love-as-war: ‘That Warrior needs must to his Rival yield, / Who comes with blunted Weapons to the Field’ (5.2.411-5.2.412). Because of the questioning of the play’s conventions brought on by Behn’s jesting, there are some key changes to the figure. Gayman and Sir Cautious, the two opponents, have begun to revise how they relate to Julia, because the dice game and its aftereffects caused them to reconsider the meanings of the most important terms in the cuckolding plot: lover and cuckold. Gayman began the play by taking it for granted that his placement in the triangle between Julia and Sir Cautious meant that Sir Cautious could only be understood as ‘my destin’d Cuckold’, which dictated that he, as the lover, would see both husband and wife as the destined targets for his sexual violence (1.1.149). As Ann Marie Stewart points out in her reading of the second bedroom scene, Julia ‘does not recognize Gayman before having sex, and therefore does not consent to sex with him. His action in effect can be considered rape’.26 Twice during their scene of confrontation after she discovers his identity, Julia points out that Gayman’s trick amounts to a use of force. She asks, weeping, ‘what have you made me do?’ and wonders why his love for her necessitated that he ‘make’ her ‘a base Prostitute’ (5.2.225, 5.2.233). Although this is precisely what her love (and money) enticed him to become the night before, her trick is labelled as an ‘innocent Intrigue’, as her procurer Bredwell calls it, because Gayman at least knew he was about to perform sex for money (3.1.267). Bredwell insists at the end, in front of Sir Cautious and the entire company, that he ‘feigned a danger near—just as you got to Bed’ (5.2.395-5.2.396) that prevented full-on intercourse from occurring. Yet the two were physically intimate enough for the kind of touching and embracing that Julia thought sufficient for Gayman to experience the youthful feel of her body, and not the ‘wooden Ladles’ he lied about earlier (5.2.391). When Sir Feeble arrives unexpectedly at Sir Cautious’s front door during the time Gayman is lodged 25 Markku Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness, and Honour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 202, 217. Belmour’s duelling not only enhances his personality as a dashing romantic, but also confirms him as a warlike outlaw. Despite a 1654 ordinance against it, duelling ‘became more frequent after 1660’, and, by the time more serious efforts at reform were undertaken in the early 1700s, duelling was understood as a ‘problem […] more guileful than an ordinary infringement of the law. What made dueling particularly iniquitous was that it was undermining the entire social and political structure of the English polity’ (202). And, because it was a product of an ‘aristocratic and gentlemanly culture’, there was concern that it could ‘open the door to anarchy or at least pose a serious threat to the hierarchical society’ (217). 26 Ann Marie Stewart, The Ravishing Restoration: Aphra Behn, Violence, and Comedy (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2010), 84.

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in Julia’s bedroom, Bredwell must spirit Gayman away without him being seen by the two old men, and, just as important, without Gayman discovering that it was Julia with whom he had just been intimate, for that would ‘betray all and spoil the Jest’—which here refers to the sort of manipulation called for by the intrigue comedy (3.1.336). Julia claims in the final scene that she was within her rights to induce him to prostitute himself because of the ‘Design’ she had of ‘trying his Constancy’, while maintaining her honour (5.2.394). In Bredwell’s view, keeping the partner’s identity hidden makes sex a jest upon the male prostitute, but for the female, finding out one has become a prostitute for the person one loves makes sex ‘shameful […] barbarous’ and ‘cruel’ (5.2.264, 5.2.266-5.2.267)—just like the compulsory sex required by what she termed ‘forc’d Marriages’ like hers (1.2.31). Gayman does not entirely agree that the jest upon him was harmless, and, in his last words directed to Julia, calls her ‘Cruel Tormenter’ and declares, ‘I cou’d kill my self with Shame and Anger’ (5.2.392). When Julia had first discovered that it was he who lay in bed with her, Gayman had argued that she should understand his cheat as the logical effect of his part in the game of warlike love: GAYMAN. Can you be angry Julia! Because I only seiz’d my right of Love. […] You are an innocent Adulteress. It was the feeble husband you enjoy’d […] Till my Excess of Love—betray’d the Cheat. (5.2.229-5.2.230, 5.2.237-5.2.238, 5.2.242)

Sir Cautious, standing by, overhears their speech, then discloses his presence when Julia vows ‘to separate for ever from this Bed’ (5.2.274). Tormented by the implications, he begs her to reconsider, and misrepresents his prostituting her to Gayman as ‘an innocent Design’ to find out if he was the one who had stolen his gold. It is only in the next scene, when Sir Feeble enters, frantic after being frightened by Belmour in the guise of a ghost, that Sir Cautious, and Sir Feeble as well, join together in penitential tears and admit their guilt. The traumatic lesson of the jest has pushed them to cease their fight for the moment. The two at last begin to reconsider what their roles might be if they were to step outside of the terms of the jest, and try to understand how an ‘Excess of Love’, rather than standing for overly exuberant illicit sex with an alienated partner, could instead provide a non-violent alternative to the base means of war. Behn makes the point that, so long as the cuckolding game is played by men with women as the stakes, the pain of the cuckolding jest must be borne not only by the husband, but by all three members of the triangle. For

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the three gamesters in the final act, what began for Sir Cautious as a pure jest of becoming a pimp and cuckold at the same time, has become a semi-tragic tableau filled with tears, shame, and recriminations.

Works Cited Behn, Aphra. The Luckey Chance. In The Plays, 1682-1696, vol. 7 of The Works of Aphra Behn. Edited by Janet Todd. 7 vols. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1996. ——. Sir Patient Fancy. In The Plays, 1678-1682, vol. 6 of The Works of Aphra Behn. Edited by Janet Todd. 7 vols. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1996. Binde, Per. ‘Gambling and Religion: Histories of Concord and Conflict’. Journal of Gambling Issues 20 (2007): 145-165. Brewer, Derek. ‘Prose Jest-Books Mainly in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries in England’. In A Cultural History of Humour from Antiquity to the Present Day, edited by Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 90-111. Cambridge: Polity Press; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997. Brown, Pamela Allen. Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Copeland, Nancy. Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre: Women’s Comedy and the Theatre. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Cotton, Charles. The Compleat Gamester. London: Printed by A. M., for R. Cutler, 1674. Crouch, Humphrey. England’s Jests Refin’d and Improv’d. London: Printed for John Harris, 1687. [Davenport, Robert.] The Politick Whore: Or, The Conceited Cuckold. In The Muse of NewMarket, Or, Mirth and Drollery, 41-61. London: Printed for Dan. Browne, Dan. Major, and James Vade, 1680. Keay, Anna. The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2016. Luders, A., et al., ed. The Statutes of the Realm. 11 vols. London: Printed by command of His Majesty King George the Third in pursuance of an address of the House of Commons of Great Britain, 1810-1828. Peltonen, Markku. The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness, and Honour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Stewart, Ann Marie. The Ravishing Restoration: Aphra Behn, Violence, and Comedy. Selins­ grove: Susquehanna University Press, 2010. Tosney, Nicholas. ‘Legacies of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Gaming in Modern Attitudes Towards Gambling’. Community, Work & Family 13, no. 3 (2010): 349-364. Turner, David M. Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex, and Civility in England, 1660-1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

About the author Karol Cooper, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Oswego. She has published essays on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British drama and the eighteenth-century British novel, including on the works of Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Aphra Behn, and Eliza Haywood. Her research focuses on the politics of soul rhetoric and critical theories of race, gender, and the novel.

8. War and Games in Swift’s Battle of the Books and Gulliver’s Travels Lori A. Davis Perry

Abstract Swift’s work demonstrates an extensive critique of the efficacy of war, war games, and politics. His satires often portray the ineffectual preparation for war provided by war-gaming and interrogate the orthodox belief in the socio-political correlation between military prowess and political stability. This chapter argues that, in The Battle of the Books and Gulliver’s Travels, Swift systematically dismantles the abstract reasoning of war-gaming. He relentlessly critiques, in particular, the philosophical and linguistic abstractions of Leibniz, Descartes, Bacon, and the Royal Society by revealing the consequences of accepting games as factual scenarios rather than theoretical models, an error that results in the physical and moral depredations of actual warfare. Keywords: language machines in early modern literature; early modern science and language; early modern scientific method; Ancients and Moderns debate

In the Second Voyage of Gulliver’s Travels, a curious exchange takes place when the giant king of Brobdingnag quizzes Gulliver on the habits of his countrymen, alluding to the dangerous pastime of ‘Gaming’, a question that mirrors widespread British concerns about the economic and social costs of gambling across the kingdom. However, the conventional moral stance of the question misleads Jonathan Swift’s readers, for Gulliver replies with a jeremiad against political violence, revolution, and war: He was perfectly astonished with the historical Account I gave him of our Affairs during the last Century; protesting it was only an Heap of Conspiracies, Rebellions, Murders, Massacres, Revolutions, Banishments; the very worst Effect that Avarice, Faction, Hypocrisy, Perfidiousness, Cruelty, Rage, Madness, Hatred, Envy, Lust, Malice, and Ambition could produce.1 1 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, ed. Christopher Fox (New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 131-132.

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Swift’s rhetorical shift from gaming to seventeenth-century wars reveals his disdain for traditional correlations between war games, military success, and political leadership. His satires of war-gaming in The Battle of the Books (1697/1704) and Gulliver’s Travels (1725) expose flaws in game design, the limitations of war games for preparing leaders of real wars, and the logical fallacy of valuing military success amongst those charged with maintaining political stability. Intellectual gaming in general, and war-gaming in particular, requires an abstract semiotic reasoning, in which sign and signified develop increasingly symbolic relationships. While all mammals engage in mock combat as a form of play, only humans engage in abstract games of war in which symbolic relationships are accorded equal meaning and value to actual combat scenarios. Swift the satirist was keenly aware of the potential for upsetting these symbolic relationships, and his satirical effectiveness frequently stems from an astute recognition that he moved within a world in which artificially rationalized and self-constructed perceptions were mistakenly perceived as factual, rather than working models subject to debate, revealing what Kenneth Burke has termed ‘symbolic action’. Burke defined human beings specifically as the ‘symbol-using animal’; thus, only human beings can move beyond combat sports into conceptualized games of war.2 As Burke points out, ‘much of what we mean by “reality” has been built up for us through nothing but our symbol systems’.3 ‘Take away our books’ he writes, ‘and what little do we know about history, biography, even something so “down to earth” as the relative position of the continents?’ 4 The implications can be disorienting, for, regardless of what we believe to be reality, we live our lives within a set of ‘symbol systems’.5 As Burke notes, ‘doubtless that’s one reason why, though man is typically the symbol-using animal, he clings to a kind of naïve verbal realism that refuses to realize the full extent of the role played by symbolicity in his notions of reality’.6 Swift’s mode of satire relies extensively upon exposing the symbolic nature of knowledge, creating absurdly logical models which explode under the weight of their own fallacies. War, standing armies, and the gaming nature of both are particular targets; Swift exposes the symbolic systems related to games of war as less stable, useful, accurate, or desirable than commonly supposed, deconstructing the symbolic nature of early modern war-gaming, and satirically reversing the role of the concrete or literal with the abstract or symbolic in both The Battle of the Books and Gulliver’s Travels. 2 Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1966), 5. 3 Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 5. 4 Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 5. 5 Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 5. 6 Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 5.

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Advances in symbology related to mathematics provide the impetus to Swift’s satirical attacks, as developments in mathematics since the eleventh century had stimulated advancements in military gaming. In one of the oldest of these mathematical games, the Battle of Numbers, numbers themselves became the game pieces, freely moving in three-dimensional space horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, with no limits upon their arrangements, creating a mathematical game that focuses not on quantity, but numerology. Philipp von Hilgers claims that the Battle of Numbers represents a semiotic turn in gaming, as ‘“Caracteres” […] implies the dissolution of the strict separation between written numerals on the one hand and the operationality […] of the instrumentarians on the other hand. From that point on, numerals achieve autonomy in the course of abiding traditions of writing’.7 Nearly simultaneously, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, European military signs—flags, insignia, heraldic devices—gain physical meaning beyond the symbolic, and to capture the flag becomes the act of capturing the organization it represents. As a result, the Battle of Numbers becomes not simply a game, but a game of war, creating a new and lasting relationship between the military and clerical orders of power which was played out in competitive tournaments between monasteries. Games, of course, differ from reality in that they create their own worlds, which may or may not mirror reality. One of Swift’s earliest satirical treatments of war as a game appears in The Battle of the Books, which applies the game-like quality of the Battle of Numbers. However, instead of shifting from signifier to sign, as the Battle of Numbers shifts from clerical order to numerical representative, Swift creates ever-increasing layers of signs that turn the signifiers themselves into abstractions, and thus the satirical battle evades both physical and conceptual resolution. Instead of preparing one side to ‘win’ a conflict, The Battle of the Books creates an absurd war game that serves no purpose at all. The notice from ‘The Bookseller to the Reader’ published with The Battle of the Books, points out that an intellectual quarrel concerning the relative value of the Ancients and Moderns had broken out between Sir William Temple, William Wotton, Dr. Richard Bentley, and Charles Boyle (later Earl of Orrery) in 1697, the latest skirmish in a long-standing conflict in the early modern era. Temple, a distinguished elder statesmen and Swift’s mentor, had published his essay Of Ancient and Modern Learning in 1690, praising ancient learning as superior to the modern, citing the Epistles of Phalaris and Aesop’s Fables specifically as examples of the oldest and most admirable literature.8 Boyle came to his defence, while Wotton and Bentley 7 Philipp von Hilgers, War Games: A History of War on Paper, trans. Ross Benjamin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 7. 8 Sir William Temple, ‘Of Ancient and Modern Learning’ and ‘On Poetry’, ed. J. E. Spingarn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 34-35.

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opposed his positions by marshalling expert modern scholarship. In the midst of the conflict, Swift wrote and circulated his satire, A Full and True Account of the Battel Fought last Friday, Between the Antient and the Modern Books in St. James’s Library.9 Temple’s position had not been that the Ancients were innately superior to Moderns due to their age, but that no Modern who was their equal happened to exist yet, though he recognized the importance of René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes and the quality of Bernard de Fontenelle’s poetry.10 Yet Temple’s argument remained narrow-minded and uninformed of significant advancements in natural philosophy that were already altering perceptions and realities, inviting a barbed response. Temple claimed that ‘the oldest Books we have are still in their kind the best’.11 Yet Bentley demonstrated through textual scholarship not only that these were not the oldest texts, but that they could not be attributed to their presumed authors either.12 The skirmish offered Swift the opportunity to defend his mentor Temple, but, as John Tinkler has pointed out, how was Swift to accept the challenge without falling into the same intellectual traps?13 Swift chose a brilliantly unconventional approach, for, instead of focusing on the personalities involved, or even the textual arguments, he altered the definitions at the heart of the dispute and in doing so exposed the moral fissures in conventional ideas of war and games. The allegorical emblem of the books rallying their forces against each other, complete with military formations of Bowmen, Dragoons, Light-Horse, heavy-armed Foot, Mercenaries, Engineers, and Ensigns, recalls Milton’s precept in Areopagitica (1644) that ‘Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a viol the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them’.14 The Battle of the Books, therefore, becomes a deadly serious allegorical combat game between real spirits incarnate, in which the medieval presumption of justice will prevail: the victors will be declared the most ‘right’, and victory will thus confer moral, ethical, and cultural superiority. Moreover, the battle will continue the ancient tradition of combat sports as ‘an expression of aristocratic culture’,15 for 9 Roberta A. Greenberg and William B. Piper, eds., The Writings of Jonathan Swift (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1973), 373-396. 10 Temple, Of Ancient and Modern Learning, 1, 25. 11 Temple, Of Ancient and Modern Learning, 34. 12 Richard Bentley, Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides and the Fables of Aesop (London: Printed by J. Leake, for Peter Buck, 1697). 13 John F. Tinkler, ‘The Splitting of Humanism: Bentley, Swift, and the English Battle of the Books’, Journal of the History of Ideas 49, no. 3 (1988): 453-472. 14 John Milton, Areopagitica, in The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flanagan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 999. 15 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 17.

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The Battle pits traditional gentlemen against upstarts. Of course, the enactment of a stylized battle that presupposes a ‘might makes right’ model of victory had long been exploded. So the satirical battle reverses the purpose for which war games existed: instead of predicting victory based upon training, it divorces victory from training altogether. Swift thus creates a ‘nothing fight’, a ceremonial battle in which the terms and place of violence are agreed in advance, and in which, for most societies, ‘the number of injured was much larger than the number of dead’.16 The purpose of these battles, found throughout the world, is to fight—but not to annihilate—the enemy, and to use the collective memory of the encounter to solidify a cultural or tribal identity. Swift’s ‘nothing fight’ is designed not to annihilate the claims of the moderns but to solidify the intellectual tribal claims of those who were allied by temperament or principle with Temple’s position. Thus, the ‘great battle’ of the books reduces the intellectual conflict to a pseudo-war game—part serious conflict, part ceremonial dance—in which the layers of symbolic action can be pulled apart to reveal nothing ‘real’ at all. Of course, the attacks against Temple were not merely personal—he had made several critical errors which Swift recognized. Rather than defend Temple’s errors along with his person, Swift’s mock-epic battle reveals the fluid nature of signs, as he deftly redefines Ancient and Modern. Richard Ramsey points out that, while Temple and his critics ‘had used the terms Ancient and Modern in a chronological sense—“old” and “new”—Swift alters the presumed definitions to mean “worthy of lasting” and “ephemeral”’.17 As Ramsay notes, Swift ‘does not diffuse his point by mentioning recent examples of greatness’.18 Instead, he ‘tacitly distinguish[es] three kinds of Ancients: 1) the great Greeks and Romans, 2) modern admirers and defenders of these temporal Ancients, […] and 3) those born in any age whose achievements are great enough to last with those of the temporal Ancients, and who are thus on an equal footing with them’.19 Swift’s redefinition allows him to avoid the personal elements of the original battle, and create a literary battle instead. However, the Battle is notable not simply for the rhetorical skill with which Swift defends his patron while simultaneously granting intellectual vigour to a number of Moderns. It also peels away the layers of symbolic language—often taken for reality—that cloak the entire argument, the reason it must remain ultimately unresolved. The books are allegorical figures which fight one another over the constructs of a metaphor (the Ancients’ houses impede the view of the Moderns, 16 Van Creveld, Wargames, 31. 17 Richard N. Ramsay, ‘Swift’s Strategy in The Battle of the Books’, Papers on Language and Literature 20, no. 4 (1984), 383. 18 Ramsey, ‘Swift’s Strategy’, 386. 19 Ramsay, ‘Swift’s Strategy’, 386.

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who insist that they be torn down), in a battle that is recounted by a fictionalized version of a historically dubious character Aesop, related through a fictionalized ‘found manuscript’ with equally artificial empty spaces and syntactical breaks where the imagined manuscript has suffered textual damage—all of which is aimed at textual scholarship which claims actual authority from actual texts. The parody of antiquarians engaged in battle creates the impression that the antiquarian enterprise itself is rooted in symbolic relationships and artificial constructions of reality. Swift’s battle exposes the symbolic abyss not only of the antiquarian mind, but of mock battles—and by extension actual battles—as a human endeavour in general. And far from preparing scholars (or gentlemen) for real conflicts, the Battle emphasizes the waste of time this appears to be. Inserted into the beast fable of the spider and the bee, we find the bee’s exasperation at the entire enterprise: ‘For the Bee grown impatient at so much loss of Time, fled strait away to a bed of Roses, without looking for a Reply; and left the Spider like an Orator, collected in himself, and just prepared to burst out’.20 Swift’s parodies and critiques of war-gaming culminate in the tour de force of Gulliver’s Travels. A delightfully absurd construction appears in Gulliver’s third voyage, where we find the great machine in the Academy of Lagado. As he tours the oddball academy, Gulliver is introduced to a ‘Project for improving speculative Knowledge by practical and mechanical Operations’.21 The guide explains, ‘Every one knew how laborious the usual Method is of attaining to Arts and Sciences; whereas by his Contrivance, the most ignorant Person at a reasonable Charge, and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry, Politicks, Law, Mathematics and Theology, without the least Assistance from Genius or Study’.22 The ‘Engine’ is a 24-foot frame in the middle of the room, filled with small bits of wood the size of dice, linked together with thin wires, covered with pieces of paper on which all the words in the local language appear ‘without any Order’.23 The pupils spin the handles, the dice spin and reveal new words, the students read the words out loud, and scribes record the broken sentences. The Professor will ‘piece together’ the sentences into another Folio and ‘out of those rich Materials’ will ‘give the World a compleat Body of all Arts and Sciences’.24 The Professor has been consumed with this project since his youth and has ‘emptied the whole Vocabulary into his Frame, and made the strictest Computation of the general Proportion there is in Books between the Numbers of Particles, Nouns, and Verbs, and other Parts of Speech’.25 20 Swift, Writings, 383. 21 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 173. 22 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 173. 23 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 175. 24 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 175. 25 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 175.

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The engine parodies the quest of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for a language machine that could test philosophical truths. However, it also includes an amalgam of satiric properties that target not only Leibniz, but Descartes, Sir Francis Bacon, and the Royal Society. Moreover, critics have not yet noted the relationship between Swift’s language machine and his critique of war-gaming. Thus, we must reconsider the interrelated symbology of words and numbers that the engine represents. In short, the semiotics of the language engine are rooted in the same mathematical relationships that were being developed to support modern war-gaming among the military and political classes. As von Hilgers has noted, seventeenth-century intellectuals ‘assembled mathematics into a discipline from the obscure semiotic practices of secret societies and the semiotic regimes of ideal states’ and discovered the ‘epistemic reservoir’ of games.26 The ensuing development of war games owed its origins to the algebra of François Viète and Descartes, who ‘managed to reduce geometrical figures to calculations with letters’.27 More importantly, however, Leibniz led the way in discovering in games a new playing field of knowledge, as Leibniz ‘had pursued the systematic decomposition of words, which had likewise revealed a basic operational element in letters’ in the ars combinatorial.28 It was then the task of the ars in­ veniendi and the ars iuicandi ‘to subject to a calculus not only the consistency of the decomposition of existing words and geometric images, but also the process of their new creations. In the final analysis, every establishment of truth thus amounted to the proof of a flawless calculation’.29 The traditional separation between visual representation and mathematic functions was dissolved, thus allowing pictorial relations to be converted into letter relations. Von Hilgers points out that ‘it also—by circumventing the descriptive and symbol-free prepositions and argumentations of the Greeks—enabled new pictorial and representational procedures to emerge from pure letter relations’.30 Indeed, Leibniz anticipates that algebra can eliminate the intermediary forms of figurative and perspectivist representations altogether, building machines straight from paper alone. He reduces thinking, therefore, to the experience of something ‘which is perceivable with the senses and which, as it were, mechanically leads the mind, so that even the dumbest can follow it’, so ‘the truth can be reproduced and as if with a machine printed and captured on a piece of paper’.31

26 27 28 29 30 31

Von Hilgers, War Games, 11. Von Hilgers, War Games, 12. Von Hilgers, War Games, 12. Von Hilgers, War Games, 12. Von Hilgers, War Games, 13-14. Quoted in von Hilgers, War Games, 14.

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Leibniz’s Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (Dissertation on the Art of Combinations, 1666, 1690) was well known in philosophical circles, and was primarily concerned with the alphabet of human thought attributed to Descartes, who had argued that all truths can be expressed as combinations of concepts, which can then be deconstructed into simple ideas for analysis. Seeking out all the subjects and predicates of any particular subject would then yield useful material for intellectual invention. Leibniz, adopting the term complexions in lieu of combinations, created a mathematical formula to express the relationships: n r

=

n–1 n–1 + r r–1

In short, Hobbes’s argument that all reasoning is simple calculation becomes a literal mathematical supposition, as Leibniz acknowledged.32 ‘Thomas Hobbes’, he writes, ‘everywhere a profound examiner of principles, rightly stated that everything done by our mind is a computation.’ 33 For Leibniz, the reduction of ideas to mathematical relationships is the first step toward a perfect universal language, the Characteristica Universalis, which would provide the most direct representation of ideas as well as a calculus for philosophical reasoning. In addition to Descartes and Leibniz, Bacon was equally dissatisfied with the imprecision of traditional languages in the pursuit of validating mathematical, philosophical, or scientific truths. Bacon questioned the relationship between words and reality, matter and meaning, sign and signified, arguing that the only way to avoid the ‘Idols’ that distort and corrupt ideas was to alter the methods of language altogether. In The Advancement of Learning (1605), he proposed that the language of science could close the gap by freeing philosophers from the slavery of words.34 In the fragment Temporis Partus Masculus (1602-1603?) his narrator explains that a young man can free himself from the slavery of language by uniting ‘with things themselves in a chaste, holy, and legal wedlock’.35 In his call to unite things and their words, Bacon echoes Galileo Galilei’s The Assayer, for Galileo accuses his 32 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (London: Printed for Andrew Crook, 1651); the revised Latin edition of Leviathan was published in Amsterdam in 1668. 33 C.I. Gerhardt, ed., On the Art of Combinations (1666), in Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7 vols. (Berlin: Weidman, 1875-1890), vol. 5. sect. 64, para. 3. 34 See James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, eds., The Works of Sir Francis Bacon, 15 vols. (London: Longmans, 1887-1901). 35 English translation in Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Essay on Its Development from 1603 to 1609 with New Translations of Fundamental Texts (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964); Latin in The Works of Sir Francis Bacon, 3:538-3:539.

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opponent Sarsi of being enthralled not by the book of nature, but by written words which inadequately reflect it: Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.36

Bacon proposes to close the gap between symbol and symbolized, and thus free the mind from the idols of language, through the empirical method. Remarkably, the language machine conflates both rationalist and empiricist methods of creating philosophical truths. As Gulliver’s guide explains, ‘Every one knew how laborious the usual Method is of attaining to Arts and Sciences.’ 37 His allusion to method clearly implicates Bacon, for the empirical method celebrated by Bacon and his adherents was one of the greatest innovations in the new philosophy advocated by the Royal Society. At the same time, the machine just as clearly falls within the rationalistic, system-building adherents of Descartes. Swift’s satirical machine collapses the distinctions between Cartesian, Leibnizian, and Baconian methods, conflating conflicting philosophical claims. Both method and system work to create mechanized ‘knowledge’ that contravenes all claims of scientific validity, as it can be neither duplicated nor tested, and certainly cannot form the basis of any future intellectual discoveries. The productions of the machine recall the Bee’s critique of the Spider’s work in The Battle of the Books: [I]f one may judge of the great Genius or Inventions of the Moderns, by what they have produced, you will hardly have Countenance to bear you out in the boasting of either. Erect your Schemes with as much Method and Skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but Dirt, spun out of your own Entrails (the Guts of Modern Brains), the Edifice will conclude at last in a Cobweb.38

As a project designed specifically ‘for improving speculative Knowledge by practical and mechanical Operations’, it recalls Leibniz’s model of thinking as a means of 36 Antonio Favaro, ed., Le opere di Galileo Galilei, by Galileo Galilei, 20 vols. (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1890-1909), 6:232, translated and quoted in Lawrence Lipking, What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 25-26. 37 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 173. 38 Swift, Writings, 383.

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‘mechanically lead[ing] the mind’, as well as his conception of reproducing truth ‘with a machine printed and captured on a piece of paper’. The mathematical relationship between the parts of speech, indicated by Leibniz’s formula, reappears when the professor claims that ‘he had emptied the whole Vocabulary into his Frame, and made the strictest Computation of the general Proportion there is in Books between the Numbers of Particles, Nouns, and Verbs, and other Parts of Speech’.39 Moreover, the ‘School of Languages’ that Gulliver immediately visits continues the project to its most absurd conclusions, for the first project aims ‘to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles; because in Reality all things imaginable are but Nouns’. 40 The second project moves a logical step further, for it is ‘a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever’. 41 Rather than deal with the necessary intellectual chasm between sign and signified, between words and the things they represent, the projectors propose to replace words with things in the most literal sense: [S]ince Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on […]. [M]any of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the new Scheme of expressing themselves by Things; which hath only this Inconvenience attending it; that if a Man’s Business be very great, and of various Kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater Bundle of Things upon his Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him. 42

The parodic attack on Bacon and Leibniz concludes with Gulliver’s explanation that this invention was intended to ‘serve as an universal Language to be understood in all civilized Nations’, 43 thereby reducing all abstractions, ideas, feelings, and complexities of human interaction to a collection of ‘things’ to be exchanged. Words have been reduced to signs, which can be used to randomly generate a form of ‘knowledge’ on a machine, a system of absurdity in which the sign and signifier are equally empty of intellectual meaning. Swift has satirically erased the difference between writing and calculation, between numbers and their linguistic meaning, as Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz had attempted with more solemn intent. But the bits of wood are the size of dice, for this machine is a form of gaming. And, by the seventeenth century, words and numbers had become interchangeable signs in systems of war-gaming. As von Hilgers has pointed out, ‘Fortification and theater 39 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 175. 40 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 175-176. 41 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 176. 42 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 176. 43 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 176.

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buildings, firearms and fireworks, or mathematics and games are skills that find representation in the very same books’ that had established the new mathematical structures of mimesis.44 Swift himself had characterized war as ‘that mad game the world loves to play’, specifically a game of dice, in his ‘Ode to Sir William Temple’: War! that mad game the world so loves to play, And for it does so dearly pay: For though with loss or victory a while Fortune the gamesters does beguile, Yet, at the last, the box sweeps all away. 45

It was no great stretch to move from the ancient figurative phrase ‘the game of war’ to the literal enactment of war as a game played with interchangeable signs and random spins. If a war game can be reduced to a game of chance that produces ridiculously empty and random ‘knowledge’, the flawed nature of the game itself reflects the flawed reasoning that presupposes games of war, or war as a game, can produce political leaders best fit to serve their country’s needs for peace, prosperity, and moral probity. Swift was certainly undercutting the general trend of the eighteenth century, which increasingly viewed war, whether enacted as a ‘great game’ between national powers or ‘practiced’ through games, as a reliable form of leadership training. For instance, Christoph Weickmann claimed that his ‘Newly Invented Great King’s Game’ (1664) could train government councillors and military officers for the realities of war and politics ‘without great effort and the reading of many books’, 46 a phrase that positively invites a Swiftian parody. Weickmann’s figurative king is surrounded primarily by figures of government, while military officers appear in the lower strata. Instead of a traditional war game, the King’s Game focuses on the internal political dynamics of a kingdom, as ambitious figures vie for power and influence. The game is designed to practise modern statecraft, using war as a tool to gain advantages. Von Hilgers points out that ‘The King’s game does not stage a hostile power that threatens to break in from outside. It shows a battle that has turned inward’. 47 The confluence of extensive, multinational wars—justified through shifting alliances and with devastating consequences—and the mathematical conflation of words and numbers, linguistics and calculations, established an irresistible impulse to channel every intellectual or scientific theory into war and gaming. 44 45 46 47

Von Hilgers, War Games, 11. Jonathan Swift, The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, vol. 7 (London, 1757), 271. Quoted in von Hilgers, War Games, 21. Von Hilgers, War Games, 24.

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Certainly, Swift was convinced of the danger posed by ‘systems’ and the impulse to leverage those systems toward violent political ends. He was also disturbed by the new concept of military training as a full-time profession rather than a traditional, limited response in time of war. The standing army, still novel in early eighteenth-century Britain, troubled not only Swift, but anti-Walpole Tories in general. Perhaps most dangerous in Swift’s mind, figures such as Daniel Defoe were embracing the new militarist reality in which a professional military force was replacing the traditional local militias, and war was being reconceived as a normal state of political affairs. Defoe wrote, ‘War is no longer an Accident, but a Trade, and they that will be anything in it, must serve a long Apprenticeship to it’. 48 He also called for an academy to train military officers in the improved arts and sciences of war. 49 In other words, the education of military officers would be modernized and systematized. As Robert C. Gordon points out, Swift consistently attacks systems throughout his satires as dangerously prone to violence: ‘System in a great variety of its manifestations was suspect. Any highly methodical attempt to deal with reality, metaphysical, political or technological, usually indicated a degree of Caesarism, actual or potential, and silliness was no guarantor of innocence.’ 50 Gordon argues that, in Swift’s satires, system inevitably gives rise to a desire to conquer. Significantly, Swift’s ineffective yet violent Emperor in Laputa surrounds himself with the same system-committed figures of Weickmann’s game—those responsible for speaking in nonsensical languages of science. In addition, the projects in the multiple academies throughout the boundaries of Balnibarbi do not exist as harmless pursuits: In these Colleges, the Professors contrive new Rules and Methods of Agriculture and Building, and new Instruments and Tools for all Trades and Manufactures […]. The only Inconvenience is, that none of these Projects are yet brought to Perfection; and in the mean time, the whole Country lies miserably waste, the Houses in ruins, and the People without Food or Cloaths. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are Fifty Times more violently bent upon prosecuting their Schemes, driven equally by Hope and Despair.51

In short, the kingdom resembles a ravaged war zone, and the violence done to the people through such projects continues unabated. 48 Daniel Defoe, A Brief Reply to the History of Standing Armies in England (London: n.p., 1698), 103. 49 Defoe, A Brief Reply, 133-134. 50 Robert C. Gordon, ‘Jonathan Swift and the Art of Modern War’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1980): 192. 51 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 169.

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Earlier failures to notice the language machine’s relationship with war-gaming arises from several critical traditions. For instance, Swift’s university education has led critics to uncover classical sources. Irvin Ehrenpreis draws direct parallels between Swift’s machine and Plato’s ‘proposition’ in Theatetus ‘that the first elements of which all material things consist, are unknowable’ inasmuch as we can ‘perceive and name them’ but not define them; yet, once these first elements are combined into complex elements, they become more accessible to us, ‘we can both name them and give an account of them’.52 As Ehrenpreis notes, The word which Plato used for elements, also meant letters of the alphabet; and Francis Cornford has said that this passage may be the first occurrence of στοιχειον ‘as applied to the elements of physical things.’ The word which Plato uses for a complex thing composed of elements—συλλαβή—normally meant, as it does in English, several letters forming a syllable.53

Ehrenpreis traces the linguistic movement from Plato to Aristotle, who uses the imagery in his Metaphysics (v. 3) where ‘he also introduces a further reference of the term στοιχειον to the atom. Aquinas repeats these ideas in his commentary on Book One of Aristotle’s Physics (1.1.5). We thus have an intellectual tradition implicit in imagery which links letters and syllables with atoms, elements, and things’.54 Ehrenpreis argues that the most significant connection between Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and Aquinas’s symbolism and that of Swift is that Lucretius relies on the same symbology in his defence of Epicureanism. He notes that Swift studied Lucretius carefully, was familiar with De rerum natura, and was familiar with Richard Bentley’s famous arguments against Epicureanism in his Boyle Lectures of 1692. Most significant to Ehrenpreis’s analysis is Bentley’s attack of Epicurus in his fifth lecture through the now familiar imagery: ‘To attribute such admirable structures to blind fortune or chance, is no less than to suppose, that, if innumerable figures of the twenty-four letters be cast abroad at random, they might constitute in due order the whole Aeneis of Virgil or the Annales of Ennius.’ 55 Ehrenpreis thus concludes that the ‘pattern by this time was cliché, and one finds writers like Leibniz, [Ralph] Cudworth, and [John] Locke casually adopting it’.56 While Ehrenpreis’s source texts are unassailable, his assumption that Swift constructed a satirical engine built solely on a cliché is not entirely persuasive, for Swift frequently parodies, reconstructs, or overturns conventional tropes. As Robert 52 53 54 55 56

Irvin Ehrenpreis, ‘Four of Swift’s Sources’, Modern Language Notes 70, no. 2 (1955): 98. Ehrenpreis, ‘Four of Swift’s Sources’, 98. Ehrenpreis, ‘Four of Swift’s Sources’, 98. Ehrenpreis, ‘Four of Swift’s Sources’, 100. Ehrenpreis, ‘Four of Swift’s Sources’, 100.

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Phiddian argues, ‘[t]he hostility of Swiftian parody towards its pre-textual materials, towards its readers, and towards itself is palpable’.57 Moreover, ‘all parody refunctions pre-existing text(s) and / or discourse(s), so it can be said that these verbal structures are called to the readers’ minds and then placed under erasure’.58 In The Battle of the Books, Swift felt free to redefine well-established terms or conventional expectations at will. Indeed, the beast fable of the spider and the bee within The Battle reverses conventional associations of the emblematic Bee and Spider. For nearly 100 years, as Roberta Sarfatt Borkat demonstrated, the ‘bee traditionally represented the “Moderns”, specifically the followers of Bacon, symbolizing the flattering contrast between themselves and the proud, lazy, cobweb-spinning spider’, which they conceived of as pejorative figure of scholasticism.59 Indeed, ‘by the early eighteenth century, the bee had become a favorite emblem of universality, “taste”, industry, and worthwhile creation in either ancient or modern individuals. In particular, the English “Moderns” felt that the bee epitomized their innovations in science and in scholarly method’.60 It had become a cliché to associate the Moderns with the Bee and scholasticists with the Spider. Yet Swift reverses the established emblem, creating ‘subversive implications’ by instead linking the Moderns to the proud, ungentlemanly behaviour of the spider.61 While Borkat examines only The Battle of the Books, the emblem of Spider and Bee also appears in Gulliver’s Travels; but Swift alters the meaning once again, not by reversing conventions but by conflating them. A projector in the Academy of Lagado develops a new ‘Method for building Houses, by beginning at the Roof, and working downwards to the Foundation’, modelling his scheme on ‘those two prudent Insects the Bee and the Spider’.62 Therefore, Swift was likely working against cliché by associating his machine, not with ancient writers, but with new philosophers. The language machine, also a gaming machine, now begins to resemble something more like a war game. Based on the output of the machine, there seems little likelihood that such a game will improve the future options of Balnibarbi. Instead, the more time spent engaged with this machine, the less prepared Balnibarbi will be for the real challenges of governance. Swift consistently rejects implied historical connections between war and leadership, and, instead of relying upon games to teach leadership, his war games expose shallow and unethical thinking about both war and leadership. In Gulliver’s third voyage, the game of war proceeds 57 Robert Phiddian, Swift’s Parody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 8. 58 Phiddian, Swift’s Parody, 13. 59 Roberta F. Sarfatt Borkat, ‘The Spider and the Bee: Jonathan Swift’s Reversal of Tradition in The Battle of the Books’, Eighteenth-Century Life 3, no. 2 (1976), 44. 60 Borkat, ‘The Spider and the Bee’, 44. 61 Borkat, ‘The Spider and the Bee’, 46. 62 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 171.

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from absurdities in language, signs, and calculations, but a more hopeful picture emerges in the second voyage. Here, responsible leaders are not made through wars; instead, they are appalled by war, and, by extension, they reject the assumption that games of war—whether war games or constructions of actual war as a great game—form the foundation of civic wisdom and leadership. The king’s rectitude appears early in their encounter, for when Gulliver, attempting to ingratiate himself, offers to teach the king the many uses of gunpowder, he recoils: The King was struck with Horror at the Description I had given on those terrible Engines, and the Proposal I had made. He was amazed how so impotent and groveling an Insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman Ideas, and in so familiar a Manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the Scenes of Blood and Desolation, which I had painted as the common Effects of those destructive Machines; whereof he said, some evil Genius, Enemy to Mankind, must have been the first contriver.63

Gulliver attributes the king’s response to ‘the miserable Effects of a confined Education’,64 yet the educational programme of Brobdingnag illuminates the source of the problems in Balnibarbi, for the giants eschew exactly the types of systems—and their machines—that have led so many foolish projectors astray: The Learning of this People is very Defective; consisting only in Morality, History, Poetry and Mathematicks; where they must be allowed to excel. But, the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in Life; to the Improvement of Agriculture and all mechanical Arts; so that among us it would be little esteemed. And as to Ideas, Entities, Abstractions and Transcendentals, I could never drive the least Conception into their Heads.65

The Brobdingnagian treatment of language also reveals none of the new philosophy’s linguistic concerns, for ‘they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary Words, or using various Expressions’.66 In short, words are not reduced to mathematical relationships, the gaps between sign and signifier do not concern them, and we see none of the damaging effects so common in Balnibarbi.

63 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 134. 64 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 135. 65 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 135. 66 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 136.

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Swift thus inverts the conventions of war and games, exposing links between gaming and war as unethical and politically unscrupulous, a system of thought that leads to a physically devastated nation and a morally confused population. He develops to absurd lengths the logical fallacy of treating war as a game—or relying upon games to resolve serious conflicts—in the Academy’s machine and language projects. Only the king of Brobdingnag recognizes the fatuity of Gulliver’s wars and silences the entire enterprise. In the end, the ‘mad game of war’ appears as a form of actual madness, and the corruption of language and thought represented by the projector’s machine becomes the symptom of a larger ethical problem in civic leadership. With the roll of the ‘dice’, the machine creates a vacuous system that is complicit in the destruction of a people.

Works Cited Bacon, Sir Francis. The Works of Sir Francis Bacon. Edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. 15 vols. London: Longmans, 1887-1901. Bentley, Richard. Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides and the Fables of Aesop. London: Printed by J. Leake, for Peter Buck, 1697. Borkat, Roberta F. Sarfatt. ‘The Spider and the Bee: Jonathan Swift’s Reversal of Tradition in The Battle of the Books’. Eighteenth-Century Life 3, no. 2 (1976): 44-46. Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966. Defoe, Daniel. A Brief Reply to the History of Standing Armies in England. London: n.p., 1698. Ehrenpreis, Irvin. ‘Four of Swift’s Sources’. Modern Language Notes 70, no. 2 (1955): 95-100. Farrington, Benjamin. The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Essay on Its Development from 1603 to 1609 with New Translations of Fundamental Texts. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964. Favaro, Antonio, ed. Le opere di Galileo Galilei, by Galileo Galilei. 20 vols. Florence: G. Barbèra, 1890-1909. Gordon, Robert C. ‘Jonathan Swift and the Art of Modern War’. Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1980): 187-202. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. London: Printed for Andrew Crook, 1651. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. On the Art of Combinations (1666). In Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edited by C.I. Gerhardt. 7 vols. Berlin: Weidman, 1875-1890. Lipking, Lawrence. What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cornell University Press, 2014.

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Milton, John. Areopagitica. In The Riverside Milton, edited by Roy Flanagan, 987-1024. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. Phiddian, Robert. Swift’s Parody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Ramsay, Richard N. ‘Swift’s Strategy in The Battle of the Books’. Papers on Language and Literature 20, no. 4 (1984): 382-389. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. Edited by Christopher Fox. New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995. ———. The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift. Vol. 7. London, 1757. ———. The Writings of Jonathan Swift. Edited by Roberta A. Greenberg and William B. Piper. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1973. Temple, Sir William. ‘Of Ancient and Modern Learning’ and ‘On Poetry’. Edited by J.E. Spingarn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Tinkler, John F. ‘The Splitting of Humanism: Bentley, Swift, and the English Battle of the Books’. Journal of the History of Ideas 49, no. 3 (1988): 453-472. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Von Hilgers, Philipp. War Games: A History of War on Paper. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

About the author Lori A. Davis Perry, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at the United States Air Force Academy (Colorado), having previously worked as an Intelligence Officer for the Air Force. Her research interests and publications are in the areas of women’s writing, the literature of war, and the intersection of science and religion.

9. Time-Servers, Turncoats, and the Hostile Reprint: Considering the Conflict of a Paper War Jeffrey Galbraith

Abstract The cultural memory of the civil wars loomed large in Stuart England during the Restoration, the Exclusion Crisis, and the Glorious Revolution through to the Hanoverian succession. Paper wars played a key role by stoking fears in a politically partisan way. This chapter argues that one key political tool in the paper wars was the reprinting of tracts from earlier in the century in order to expose the true colours of political gamesters, time-servers (notably turncoats and Vicars of Bray) who were perceived as threatening the stability of the nation. The hostile reprint recontextualized the spectres of the past in order to address ongoing political crises which might devolve into physical violence. Keywords: early modern print culture; early modern public sphere; Allegiance Controversy; political loyalty in Stuart England

Does a paper war have real casualties, or is it only play-fighting? For writers in late seventeenth-century England, from the Restoration of 1660 to the Hanoverian succession of 1714, this was an active question. The recent civil wars continued to loom large in the public imagination, and the emergence of Whig and Tory political parties in the 1680s made printed texts a battleground of sorts. The texts of broadsheets, pamphlets, and other printed ephemera kept the civil wars alive in virtual form, as partisan writers adopted idioms associated with Roundhead and Royalist and printers reissued work from earlier in the century. This virtual war kept pace with ongoing military conflict in the wars with the Dutch Republic (1665-1667, 1672-1674) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). Contentious claims in print resembled a kind of weaponry, reminiscent of the use of propaganda for rousing the public to take up arms.

Nelson, H.F. and J. Daems (eds.), Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789463728010_ch09

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The term ‘paper war’ denotes an event that occurs when the contest to influence public opinion through the medium of print leads to the proliferation of pamphlets and other textual materials. The back-and-forth of competing pamphlets gave paper form to this contest, and periodic lapses in the licensing acts served as an accelerant. Notable among such events were the Exclusion Crisis of the early 1680s and the Sacheverell Controversy of 1710-1711. In a broader sense, ‘paper war’ also serves to denote partisan exchange more broadly, as indicated by the anonymous writer of A Vindication of Dr. Henry Sacheverell (1710), when he remarked: ‘I have no desire to enter into a Paper War with so Weak and Trifling an Adversary’. Whereas the partisan use of print represented the democratic expansion of public conversation, contemporaries remained uncertain about the relation between print and war. Writers who commented on political divisions identified the publication of ‘Party-names’ as contributing to the breakdown of traditional communication. The labels ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ were party names, as were ‘trimmers’, ‘low churchmen’, and ‘high-flyers’. In The True Character of a Churchman (1702), clergyman Richard West remarked on the harm inflicted by the use of such names, lamenting that it ‘not only disturbs human Conversation, and many times deprives us of the most useful and desirable Friendships, but imposes upon the Government too [… by] excluding such as are best qualified to serve God, their King, and their Country, both in Church and State’.1 As the work of historian Mark Knights has shown, there is ample evidence to support West’s perception. Partisanship disrupted society by interfering with the agreement between name and person, word and thing, leading to what many perceived in terms of a crisis of representation.2 In The Tatler, Joseph Addison observed that party names ‘are like Words of Battle, that have nothing to do with their original Signification, but are only given out to keep a Body of Men together, and to let them know Friends from Enemies’.3 These writers identify a danger that is different from the more traditional—and legally actionable—dangers of blasphemy and seditious libel, suggesting a confusion regarding partisan debate. How should we understand the disturbances caused by the contest of print? How dangerous is this danger?4 1 The True Character of a Church-Man, Shewing the False Pretences to That Name: Together with The Character of a Low Church-Man Drawn in Answer to It. With Remarks. (London, 1702), 1. 2 Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Knights attends to the way in which language functioned ‘as a tool in political conflict’ (48). As Paul Halliday explains, the study of ‘partisan politics’ must go beyond earlier studies of ‘anachronistically conceived political parties’, where ‘party’ consists of a full-fledged leadership, central organization, and a roster of members’ (Paul D. Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England’s Towns, 1650-1730 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 11). 3 Joseph Addison, No. 220, 5 September 1710, The Tatler, ed. Donald F. Bond, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 152. 4 On the subject of misrepresentation in political culture, see also Rebecca Bullard, The Politics of Disclosure, 1674-1725: Secret History Narratives (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009); Kate Loveman, Reading

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The paper war exists at a point between the ideal of irenic conversation and the harm of physical violence, while continually threatening to devolve into the latter. As Kirk Wetters notes in The Opinion System, although the exchange of views served as a means of conflict resolution, the fact of continuing disagreement threatened ‘to unravel into civil unrest and […] civil war’.5 Recent work on the war game is instructive for understanding the muddled relation between ‘paper’ and ‘war’. As Martin van Creveld explains, the war game is a contest which, ‘while clearly separated from “real” warfare […], nevertheless simulates some key aspects of the latter’, adding, ‘The more aspects a game simulates, and the more accurate the simulation, the closer to real-life warfare it is.’ 6 The proximity of a game to ‘real-life warfare’ is helpful in explaining the anxieties evoked by partisanship in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The tone and techniques of partisan exchange rehearsed a mode of divisiveness that was all too familiar to those who had lived through the upheavals of mid-century. According to van Creveld, games differ from war because they have ‘some way of signaling that the encounter is “unreal”’ and, second, because they keep to ‘a set of formal, often written rules’.7 On these criteria, we might say that the partisan use of print suffered from a problem of ‘signalling’. For many, the distinction between war and its simulation lacked definition. If the paper war differed from the historical violence which it resembled, the frame that distinguished one from the other, demarcating conversation from physical harm, struck many as too difficult to discern or, alternately, as too fragile to hold. While some objected that the partisan use of print often bore too much resemblance to war, others objected that not all of the players in this game seemed willing to heed the ‘set of formal, often written rules’ that van Creveld lists as the second criterion for distinguishing games from war. The present essay focuses on one such player in the figure of the time-server. The time-server was someone who refused to maintain a continuous identity through time, owing to the fact that he continually ‘adapt[ed] his or her conduct or views to suit prevailing circumstances’.8 In the common depiction, the time-server held his beliefs and opinions loosely, as in the form of garments that could be easily altered or removed to keep in step Fictions, 1660-1740: Deception in English Literary and Political Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); and Brian Cowan, ‘The Spin Doctor: Sacheverell’s Trial Speech and Political Performance in the Divided Society’, Parliamentary History 31, no. 1 (2012): 28-46. 5 Kirk Wetters, The Opinion System: Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 125. 6 Martin van Creveld, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4, 5. 7 Van Creveld, Wargames, 4. 8 Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘time-server’ (n).

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with political change. The satirist Samuel Butler described the time-server as a man who ‘used every Morning to put on his Cloaths by the Weather-Glass’.9 The circulation of such depictions suggests that firmly holding to authentic beliefs should be normative in partisan politics. The time-server flaunted this norm, reducing politics to the equivalent of playing a role. If politics simulated a real-life war, the time-server exploited simulation in ways that threatened the game. The following sections survey the role-playing of the time-server in the f igures of the turncoat and the famous Vicar of Bray, before turning to the practice of the ‘hostile reprint’.

The Danger of Changing One’s Clothes The time-server appears with frequency in popular political culture during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. His appearance in multiple paper wars can be read as a symptom of the historical situation in which English men and women found themselves after the changes wrought by the civil wars of mid-century and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Such changes made it difficult for public figures not to experience some form of alienation from their earlier selves. The adaptation and evolution of one’s belief was common, perhaps even necessary, with literary writers, office-holders, and clergy often coming to hold multiple and seemingly contradictory commitments.10 At the same time, the consistency of a person’s public identity had begun to draw increased attention, no matter that few were capable of demonstrating that they had maintained an identical ideological position through time. That one had shifted or changed his commitments was a charge to which almost everyone was susceptible. And so, in partisan exchanges, the accusation that someone was guilty of time-serving functioned as a hostile tactic, useful for casting aspersions on an enemy. This use of the time-server demonstrates that, although print played a key role in the process of disseminating information, it also easily lent itself to manipulation. Print publication served the purposes of falsehood as well as accuracy. Party writers were quick to create negative portrayals of their enemies and idealized portraits of their friends. This kind of misrepresentation, as Mark Knights observes, ‘increased the importance of print wars’, because it

9 Samuel Butler, Characters, ed. Charles W. Daves (Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1970). For an earlier study of turncoats, see Andrew Hopper, Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 10 See John Ferris, ‘Off icial Members in the Commons, 1660-1690: A Study in Multiple Loyalties’, in Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 279-304.

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created uncertainties about truth that required correctives.11 Print thus gave birth to print in a seemingly continuous cycle. The existence of the time-server heightened the danger of lying and misrepresentation. As such, he became a focus of attention in the advice literature that appeared during election years. The value of maintaining one’s commitment or beliefs featured prominently in this literature, which claimed to help voters determine the credibility of party members. Writers ‘addressed the voters directly, imagining readers to be electors’, or imagining readers, at least, as having the ability to influence those who could vote.12 Broadside ballads and pamphlets cried down the clergyman or party writer whose recent claims did not show a strong enough resemblance to their past declarations. Such texts examined the credibility of public figures, and prompted readers to consider whether an individual would remain the same in the future. Having altered their principles in the past, what prevented them from doing so again? How could they be trusted to remain the same person, as it were? The broadsheet The Turncoats (1710) provides an example of how writers and printers deployed the time-server in this way, taking aim at statesmen and clergymen during the reign of Queen Anne.13 Bibliographic information identifies The Turncoats as an attack on, among others, the nonconformist Samuel Palmer, who had recently switched his allegiance to the High Tories.14 Although he is not mentioned in the text, The Turncoats makes an example of those like Palmer, perhaps in order to shore up group identity or to purge other time-servers from the ‘true’ supporters of the High Tory party. Comprised of a satirical poem and an engraved illustration across the top half of the page, the broadsheet draws attention to the infiltration of this enemy into a number of partisan and religious groups. The engraving shows a tailor’s shop where several men have come to make their coats reversible, that they might keep in step with political change. The illustration represents graphically the reversible garment signified by the name ‘turncoat’, as the tailor brings out his tape to ‘take the length of your Conscience’.15 The men visiting the tailor hope to gain ideological dexterity. One man has the tailor examine the cassock that he is wearing, a garment which identifies him as one of the Church of England clergy. He inquires, ‘Can’t you make 11 Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 244. 12 Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 167. 13 The controversy in question here concerns the publication of Sacheverell’s sermon ‘The Perils of False Brethren’ and his subsequent impeachment by the Whigs for sedition in the spring of 1710. 14 The Houghton Library description of the broadsheet reads, ‘A satire on the Non-juror Charles Leslie, and the conformist Samuel Palmer; pro-Sacheverell, showing the dangers of “false brethren” like Palmer, who exchanges his Presbyterian cloak for a High-Church gown’. 15 The Turncoats (Printed and sold by Wm Pennock in Pannier Alley in Pater Noster Row, [1710]). Subsequent references to this work will be to this edition.

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this Gown into a Cloak upon Occasion?’ Another man also finds the gown too restricting, commanding, ‘Let my Gown be lin’d with a cloak to turn at pleasure’. Just off-centre in the engraving, an open door reveals the entrance of a tailor’s apprentice onto the scene, who sums up the lot of them. Alluding to the proverbial turncoat clergyman, he observes, ‘My Master’s Customers are Vicars of Bray’. The Vicar of Bray will be considered at length in the next section, but it is sufficient here to note that time-serving could be applied to several different ideological positions. The poem that accompanies the engraving refers to the ‘Subtil, Wily, Scrupulous Dissenter’ and the ‘Wily Statesman’ whom ‘Interest […] did convince, / To be of th’ same Religion with his Prince’. The reference to Bray seems particularly apposite to the traditional attack on clergy of the established church: The Priests that always Right Divine do boast, Usually turn’d to what was Uppermost; And rather than they’d lose a Benefice, They’d be of Several Notions in a Trice.

The phrase ‘in a Trice’ conveys the sense that the time-server’s beliefs change ‘at a single pluck or pull; hence, in an instant; instantly, forthwith; without delay’.16 The lack of continuity is here figured as the performance of a dizzying temporal sequence. The devotion to self-interest demands the continual succession of his allegiances. The time-server is a figure of abundance, attesting to the malleability of identity and the difficulty of reading the surfaces of the body. Although many individuals who were accused of time-serving likely had good reasons for changing their affiliations, the significance of such accusations went beyond issues of motive. Publications like The Turncoats derive a good deal of their import from the questions they pose regarding identity. What responsibility does a person bear to his earlier self? In what does identity-as-continuity consist for a public figure? What effect does politics have on maintaining an identical relation to oneself through time? Depictions such as The Turncoats suggest that the time-server becomes alienated from himself in the act of playing one role after another, offering the observer only a trompe l’oeil of substance. The striving after ambition, signalled by one’s entrance onto the field of party politics, results in the emptiness of self. Such an interpretation helps to explain why depictions of the time-server appear frequently in heated partisan times. The accusation of time-serving worked both as a means of taking down one’s opponent and as a sign of cultural anxiety about the injurious effects of politics on individual identity.

16 Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘trice’ (n.2).

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For some observers, the time-server continued to raise the spectre of war. Sir Roger L’Estrange offers one example of such views in his Fables of Aesop, and Other Eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflections (1699). Notorious during the Restoration as licensor of the press, L’Estrange focused on time-servers in the pages of his partisan journal Observator in the early 1680s, where he took specific aim at the character of the ‘trimmer’. Trimming, as the persona of the Observator explained, originally referred to the practice of keeping a boat straight while rowing: ‘When a Vessell does not Row Even, they’l cry, Trimm the Boat: And so when One side is Lower than t’other, ’tis our way to Lean to the Upper side: And still to make the Best of Things.’ 17 Guided by expedience rather than principle, the trimmer was a politician who could not be trusted to maintain a strong commitment. For L’Estrange, the trimmer was offensive because a right view of politics should admit no moderation. One had to choose a side and be either for or against. According to this logic, the trimmer’s refusal to take a strong stance meant that he was guilty of ‘temporizing’, or merely ‘adopt[ing] some course for the time or occasion; hence, to adapt oneself or conform to the time and circumstances; to “trim”’.18 When William and Mary replaced James II at the Revolution of 1688 / 1689, L’Estrange refused to transfer his allegiance to the new monarchs. Exiled from public life, he continued to comment on political matters through the more indirect means of translation. His edition of the Fables is notable for the way the time-serving politician reappears in allegorical form, transferred to the arena of military conflict. Represented in the form of hybrid animals, the trimmer appears in the kind of life-or-death situation that calls for clear demarcations between friend and enemy. In one particular fable, L’Estrange situates a deceptive ‘Time-serving’ bat in the midst of a war between the rival armies of the birds and the beasts.19 The bat has features of both birds and beasts, meaning that he could join either side. But he waits to identify himself as one or the other until he is certain which side will win.20 When it appears that the beasts will emerge victorious, the bat identifies 17 Sir Roger L’Estrange, Observator, vol. 1, no. 240, 13 November 1682. The Observator enforced singleminded, consistent, and legible commitment to the Tory party. Mark N. Brown explains that the attack on the trimmer was ‘an implicit warning to Tories and Anglicans, who did not wholeheartedly go along with quo warrantos purges of Whigs from corporations, suppression of conventicles, or prosecution of Protestant Dissenters’ (‘Trimmers and Moderates in the Reign of Charles II’, Huntington Library Quarterly 37, no. 4 [1974]: 316). 18 Oxford English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. ‘temporize’ (v). 19 Sir Roger L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop, and Other Eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflections, 3rd ed. (London: Printed for R. Sare, B. Tock, M. Gillyflower, A. J. Churchil, G. Sawbridge, and H. Hindmarsh, 1699), 43. L’Estrange drew his fables from the royalist John Ogilby, who published an edition of Aesop in 1651. 20 See also the character of the Epicaene Bat, ‘A Trimmer between both Parties’, in Thomas D’Urfey’s comic opera Wonders of the Sun, or, The Kingdom of the Birds (1706).

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himself as one of the beasts. As soon as he makes this declaration, however, the birds unexpectedly ‘Rally’d their Broken Troops, and carry’d the Day’.21 Thinking quickly, the bat shifts his allegiance to the victors, pointing out that his wings actually mean that he is a bird. But the birds are wise to this trick and will not overlook this breach of principle. The bat is labelled a ‘Deserter’; he is ‘Stript, Banish’d, and finally Condemn’d never to see Day-light again’.22 The fable represents L’Estrange’s continuing insistence that politics is best waged as a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. We might also read the fable as conveying resentment toward those of his contemporaries whose reputations survived the Revolution in such a way that they could remain active in public life. The shift of context from a tailor’s shop to the field of battle is worth pursuing in a different direction as well. Considered alongside The Turncoats, L’Estrange’s fable helps us to see the time-server’s garments in a different light. Whereas the broadsheet figured those garments as cloaks and gowns, L’Estrange puts us in mind of a soldier’s uniform, setting up an instructive contrast. Whereas the turncoat embraces the freedom to take up a seemingly endless number of roles, those who participate in a military conflict must put on the uniform of their commitment. War is necessarily limiting, forcing ideological closure. Soldiers raise the standard for a particular side, and the marks of their commitments live on well beyond the ceasefire. In Restoration England, the effects of the civil wars remained evident in the form of scars on buildings and on the landscape as well as in the form of soldiers who had lost limbs.23 Time-serving, as L’Estrange’s fable makes clear, is an attempt to skirt the sacrifice required by commitment. The person who continually changes his mind evades the kind of identification that could lead him to become a casualty of war.

The Playful Vicar of Bray The Vicar of Bray allows us to pursue the ambiguities of the paper war further. He is a time-server whose actions are linked to religious belief and even, at the extreme, to political treason. References to the time-serving vicar took their source from the proverb, ‘The Vicar of Bray will be Vicar of Bray still’. Traceable to the sixteenth century, the proverb referred to a clergyman famous for having kept his vicarage through the alterations in state religion that attended the succession of monarchs 21 L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop, 42. 22 L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop, 42. 23 Diane Purkiss writes, ‘For years afterward, the London streets were full of one-legged beggars’, continuing, ‘Cities and castles were razed to the ground’ (The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain [New York: Basic Books, 2006], 3).

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after the death of Henry VIII. In The History of the Worthies of England (1662), Thomas Fuller explains, ‘under King Henry the Eighth, King Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, [the vicar] was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant again’. In this background account, when Bray was accused of being a turncoat, his response was precise and to the point: ‘Not so, said he; for I always kept my principle, which is this, to live and die the Vicar of Bray.’ 24 The vicar’s humorous justification of his inconsistency signals an early reaction to the secularizing effects of the Reformation in England. Absolute monarchy based its view of allegiance on the model of the feudal servant, who was loyal to the person of the sovereign no matter his beliefs. During the reign of Henry VIII, the Act of Royal Supremacy in 1534 made political loyalty a specifically Christian duty, shifting godly submission from the Pope to the English monarch. Bray’s political submission, however, was no spiritual act of the heart. The vicar cared nothing for the details of monarchical succession, only for the continuity of his living as a clergyman. He was loyal only to the ‘principle’ of his own preservation, which in this account is no principle at all. Bray’s commitment was a speech act that merely satisfied the conditions of allegiance. The vicar was Erastian in submission, subordinating his ecclesiastical beliefs to the temporal power. For him, politics becomes a species of play, no more than a game. References to Bray heighten the ambiguity of the paper war by intensifying the rapidity with which the time-server alters his commitment. These references also introduce questions regarding the break between the present and the past associated with modernity. In The Turncoats, the tailor’s apprentice compared politicians to the vicar, saying ‘My Master’s Customers are Vicars of Bray’. But the vicar is no ordinary turncoat. Whereas the changing beliefs of the turncoat take the form of garments, the Vicar of Bray’s shifting involves different time periods, foregrounding the succession of political changes that took place throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. In this, Bray poses a broader, more general question regarding England’s relation to its not-so-distant past. The norm of firmly holding to one’s commitment encounters the problem of modernity: In what ways should the past carry into the present? How should one regard the past while embracing the present? The Vicar of Bray begins to appear in ballad form after the Revolution of 1688 / 1689, in a development that suggests the growing emphasis on maintaining a firm commitment. In the 1690s, the ballads substitute for the Tudors the unstable succession of rulers from Charles I, through Cromwell, to the Restoration. 24 Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, ed. J. Nicholls (London: Rivington, 1811), 1.79, quoted in Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 697 (V40).

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Eighteenth-century versions adapt the vicar to keep up with continuing change, beginning with Charles II and ending with the accession of the Hanoverian George I in 1714. With its origins in the religious and political transformations of the sixteenth century, the proverb provided a template for understanding the difficulties of remaining the same person through time. In ballad form, the vicar remains an amiable figure whose élan for turning commands a certain admiration. Upon the accession of Catholic James II, the vicar, in The Vicar of Bray, claims, ‘The Church of Rome, I found would fit / Full well my Constitution’ (17-18).25 Later, however, ‘When William, our Deliverer came, / To heal the Nation’s Greivance’, the vicar confesses that he ‘turn’d the Cat in Pan again, / And swore to him Allegiance’ (24-25). As in the proverb, this Bray remains true only to himself. He boasts, ‘For in my Faith, and Loyalty, / I never once will faulter’ (53-54), and thus provides a paradoxical stability through instability. The vicar’s commitment is bounded only by the sentiment expressed in the ballad’s refrain: And this is Law, I will maintain Unto my Dying Day, sir, That whatsoer King shall Reign I will be Vicar of Bray Sir! (9-12)

If Bray’s self-interest vitiates any claim to continuous identity, leaving him no self to preserve, his exuberance elicits a grudging admiration. One cannot help but smile at his determination. The ballad, like the proverb, continues to question the way in which the vicar too easily discards his earlier commitment. Such is the lesson of the ballad The Religious Turncoat, Or, a Late Jacobite Divine turned Williamite (1693), which employs the template of the vicar’s turning without mentioning the notorious priest by name.26 The subtitle raises the issue of how a clergyman could abjure his oath to one king in order to serve another. In this, the ballad contributes to the paper war known as the ‘Allegiance Controversy’ (1689-1694). After the Revolution, the Convention Parliament decreed that all office-holders were obligated to swear a new oath of loyalty to William and Mary. In his bibliographic survey of the controversy, Mark 25 The ballad was included in the British Musical Miscellany, or The Delightful Grove, vol. 1 (London: Printed for and sold by I. Walsh, 1734), 30-31, lines 17-18. References to this ballad are to this edition and will be cited by line numbers parenthetically in the text. 26 The ballad marks a crucial stage in the evolution of the proverb to popular song. According to the editor, ‘This famous song that is still current dates from Hanoverian days, but had its prototype in a broadside ballad of 1693 entitled The Religious Turncoat’ (Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714, vol. 5: 1688-1697, ed. William J. Cameron [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971], 245-251 [251n113]).

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Goldie notes that relatively few office-holders refused to abjure their previous oath of loyalty to James II. Almost all chose to transfer their support to the new monarchs. However, while ‘the expediential grounds for doing so were clear, the philosophical grounds [were] less so’.27 What bound subjects to keep their oaths if they had already forsworn the one they made to James? In scores of publications—at one point, they appeared at a rate of three per week—prominent clerics and politicians attempted to establish a clearer understanding of the relations among loyalty, continuity, and selfhood, seeking to articulate the grounds on which an oath of loyalty could be abjured. The Vicar of Bray remains an unacknowledged participant in the Allegiance Controversy, providing a humorous counter to the erudite and often abstruse arguments typically on offer. The ballad suggests that the clergyman’s abjuration is evidence that his word cannot be trusted, no matter the rationale on which it is based. Like Bray, the ballad’s speaker is a Church of England clergyman who changes his principles with each new monarch. Though on the side of Cromwell during the civil wars, he sided with the ‘King’s Religion’ at the Restoration: ‘I Cog’d and Flatter’d like the rest, / Till I had got Preferment’ (15-16).28 Though he converted to Catholicism during the reign of James II, he now swears to ‘Preach up King Williams Right, / [and] Pray for his Foes Confusion’ (45-46). True to this pattern, he announces that this commitment will only hold ‘Till another Revolution’ (48). The ballad adapts the template to malign Tory supporters of the Stuart monarch who forswore their allegiance at the Revolution. It is clear from the Allegiance Controversy that many arguments could be made in favour of abjuring one’s allegiance to James II. The Religious Turncoat appears to cast doubt, however, on the motives of those who changed their tack after having publicly supported James in the past, mocking clergymen for their facile subjection to the current regime. At the same time, the ballad draws attention to the epistemological difficulty of reading a person’s commitments correctly. For the religious turncoat, commitment has become a set of gestures. According to the song’s chorus, he ‘is a Cunning Man’ and ‘Prays for any King to gain / The Peoples Approbation’. This turncoat uses public prayer for the sovereign to deceive. He thus resembles an actor or ‘player’ who has become proficient in his craft. 27 Mark Goldie, ‘The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1980): 476. 28 The Religious Turncoat, or, A Late Jacobite Divine Turn’d Williamite. Tune of, London is a Fine Town (London, 1693). References to this ballad are to this edition and will be cited by line number parenthetically in the text (excluding the chorus). As an intermediary between the proverb and the eighteenth-century ballad, this version begins with the civil wars, as the priest declares: ‘I Lov’d no King in Forty One’. The ballad also appears as ‘The Religious Turncoat: or, The Trimming Parson’, in Edward Ward, The Third Volume, Consisting of Poems on Divers Subjects. By the Author of the London Spy (London, 1706).

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The religious turncoat shares many characteristics with the time-server in A Trimmers Confession of Faith; or, The True Principles of A Jack of Both-Sides (1694). The new ballad makes explicit what is implied in the former by focusing on the time-server’s proficiency in acting out commitments, through words and gestures, that he does not actually hold. The ballad takes a ‘Jack’, or Jacobite, as its subject, in reference to those who remained loyal to the exiled James II, who fled to France at the Revolution, where he resided at Saint-Germaine-en-Laye until his death in 1701. The prospect that James, or his heirs, might mount an invasion from France remained a palpable threat throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, until the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. In this reference to Jacobitism, A Trimmers Confession of Faith recasts the Vicar of Bray as an actor who magnifies the difficulty of inferring ‘true’ principles from false.29 This ‘Jack’ is an unstable figure, who calls out to all those ‘[w]ho can in a Breath Pray, Dissemble and Swear’ (3), explaining: ‘I’m sometimes a Rebel, and sometimes a Saint, / I sometimes can Swear, and at other times Cant; / There’s nothing but Grace (I thank God) that I want’ (9-11). The ballad claims to represent a public figure, perhaps a politician or clergyman, who secretly harbours a rival attachment to the exiled James II—thus intensifying the epistemological problem associated with time-serving. Although the traditional depiction of the turncoat is clothed with metaphorical garments, the ‘Jack of Both-Sides’ has no need of the tailor’s shop. Instead, he has mastered a repertoire of gestures capable of representing affiliation with different political groups. The specific danger of this skill is the ability to alternate between the representation of commitment to William and the exiled James II. The time-server claims a deft command of the behaviour that defines those loyal to William as well as the behaviour that marks those still secretly loyal to James. He explains, ‘Of gracious King William I am a great lover, / Yet I side with a Party that prays for Another; / I drink the King’s Health, take it one way or t’other’ (17-19). He explains: ‘The Times are so ticklish, I vow and profess, / I know not which Party or Cause to embrace; / I’ll be sure to side with those that are least in distress’ (41-43). Despite the threat posed by the Jacobite’s ability to manipulate appearances, the ballad concludes on an apparently humorous note: ‘There’s some for the Devil, and some for the Pope; / And I am for any thing, but for a Rope’ (50-51). The amiable timeserving clergyman appears in drastically different form here. The ballad calls to mind L’Estrange’s ‘deceptive Time-serving Bat’, indicating how the game of politics can take on much higher stakes than are involved in switching from one party to another. This Vicar of Bray figure is aware that treason is punishable by death. If 29 A Trimmer’s Confession of Faith; or, The True Principles of A Jack of Both-Sides. Tune of, ‘Which no Body can deny’ (London, 1694). References to this ballad are to this edition and will be cited by line number parenthetically in the text.

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the turncoat manifests anxiety about the way in which commitments can quickly change, the vicar represents an extreme form of time-serving, whose association with treason threatens the very existence of the political game. The Vicar of Bray’s appearance in ballad form shows how clergy of the established church came under particular scrutiny in this regard. An example is William Sherlock, a Tory clergyman who initially refused to swear the new oath of loyalty to William and Mary when required by the Convention Parliament. Sherlock chose to suffer the consequences of becoming a ‘non-juror’, which included losing his living. Sherlock had publicly defended the Tory doctrine of passive obedience during the paper war that attended the Exclusion Crisis of the early 1680s, interpreting the bill of exclusion against James, Duke of York, as an act of resistance against hereditary monarchy. Sherlock maintained this position at the Revolution, arguing that he could not transfer his allegiance to the new monarchs because his previous oath to James II remained binding. In the treatise The Case of Allegiance Due (1690), however, Sherlock suddenly announces a profound change in thinking.30 Despite his questions about the legitimacy of the Revolution, Sherlock interprets William’s victory over James’s forces at the recent Battle of the Boyne as a sign that Providence now sanctioned submission to the new monarchs. Sherlock provided philosophical, legal, and theological reasons for this interpretation, and the new government rewarded him handsomely for his efforts. Sherlock’s change of mind, and its public consequences, is an example of the difficulties facing Tories who contemplated whether to compromise with the new regime.31 The arguments of The Case of Allegiance Due were attacked both by Whigs who supported the new monarchs and by non-jurors who remained steadfast in their refusal. Both sides sought to expose Sherlock as a time-server. The non-juror Jeremy Collier, in The Case for Allegiance Considered (1691), accused Sherlock of betraying his integrity. Collier argued that Sherlock ought to have petitioned God that he might ‘stand firm against Interest, and Noise, and Numbers and be neither bribed nor frightened out of his Duty’.32 Whig supporters also expressed doubts about Sherlock’s change of mind. The poet Thomas D’Urfey, in The Weasel Uncas’d, or the In and Outside of a Priest drawn to the Life (1690), recalled for his readers how strongly Sherlock had endorsed his previous view. Sherlock had previously tried ‘by Scripture and Reason, / To prove Non-Resistance always in season, / And its opposite Doctrine no less than 30 William Sherlock, The Case of Allegiance Due to Soveraign Powers Stated and Resolved (London: W. Rogers, 1691). 31 For an account of the ideological dilemma in which Tories found themselves, see Toni Bowers, Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 32 Jeremy Collier, Dr. Sherlock’s Case of Allegiance Considered with some Remarks upon his Vindication (London: n.p., 1691), sig. A2.

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Treason’.33 The doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance, one of the tenets of Stuart royalism to which Sherlock subscribed, could not condone opposition against the divinely instituted monarch. That Sherlock discarded this doctrine proved to D’Urfey that the clergyman was ruled by self-interest, much like the crafty weasel found in Aesop’s Fables. The poet concluded: ‘That Famous old Priest, the Vicar of Bray, / Who in all Change of Times knew how to obey, / Was an Ass to the Weasel, if I may so say.’ 34 Sherlock’s embrace of the Revolution settlement meant that he had become a different person, as it were, or had lost the self that he wished to preserve. The Vicar of Bray continued to surface in times of political controversy, offering writers a means of objecting to the shifting currents of public opinion. Such is one of its uses in the paper war that resulted from Dr. Henry Sacheverell’s fiery sermon The Perils of False Brethren, delivered at St. Paul’s Cathedral in November 1709. In the sermon, Sacheverell sought to expose the dangers of time-serving and other forms of deception among Whigs and Dissenters, whom he labelled ‘false brethren’. When the House of Lords impeached Sacheverell for sedition, the controversy and subsequent trial flooded London with pamphlets, broadsides, and poems both for and against the priest’s views.35 Time-serving remained a key issue in the press, as an accusation that could be wielded against almost anyone.36 In the doggerel poem ‘The Time-Server’, a supporter of Sacheverell likened one of his opponents to a weather vane: ‘Yet, Weather-Cock like, with the Wind he will change.’ 37 The effects of the paper war continued through the general elections in the fall of 1710, when Addison made his remark in the Tatler that party names ‘are like Words of Battle’. 33 Thomas D’Urfey, The Weasel Uncas’d, or the In and Outside of a Priest drawn to the Life (London: n.p., 1690), lines 41-43. 34 D’Urfey, The Weasel Uncas’d, lines 113-115. 35 More than 500 titles produced as a result of the sermon and the trial are cited by F.F. Madan in A Critical Bibliography of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, ed. W.A. Speck (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Libraries, 1978). The standard discussions of the trial include Abbe Scudé, The Sacheverell Affair (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939) and Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London: Eyre Metheun, 1973). For a recent assessment, see W.A Speck, ‘The Current State of Sacheverell Scholarship’, Parliamentary History 31, no. 1 (2012): 16-27. 36 ‘Deluge’ is a word used by Madan, who describes how ‘[t]he affair of Dr. Sacheverell occupied the greater part of a session of parliament, caused indescribable enthusiasm accompanied by popular riots, and in the words of a great contemporary historian, for three weeks “took up all men’s thoughts” so that “all other business was at a stand”. The great wave of feeling soon wholly passed, but in passing it deluged our libraries with a flood of the worst-printed books that English literature has known’ (Madan, A Critical Bibliography of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, 3). 37 ‘The Time-Server’, in Whig and Tory: or, Wit on Both Sides, Being a Collection of State Poems, upon All Remarkable Occurrences, from the Change of the Ministry, to this Time: by the Most Eminent Hands of Both Parties, 2nd ed. (London, 1713), 31, line 6. One Dr. Burgis reportedly described Sacheverell as ‘the High-Flown Weather-Bell’ (quoted in Scudé, The Sacheverell Affair, 62-63). The metaphor of the weather vane was common in polemical texts.

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Although Addison avoided direct reference to the controversy surrounding Sacheverell, evidence of the paper war is apparent in the way he draws on the Vicar of Bray to critique the general hunger for political news. Addison mocks the interest so many people have taken in party politics by describing their use of an instrument he calls the ‘Ecclesiastical Thermometer’ or ‘Weather Glass’. The instrument serves as a means of tracking the thoughts of the populace, providing an up-to-the-minute ability to track the rapid changes of opinion: ‘indeed it is almost incredible to conceive how the Glass […] will fall by the Breath of a Multitude, crying, Popery; or on the contrary, how it will rise when the same Multitude […] cry out in the same Breath, The Church is in Danger’.38 The figure which Addison associates with this instrument is the time-serving Vicar of Bray: The Church Thermometer which I am now to treat of is supposed to have been invented in the Reign of Henry the Eighth, about the Time when that Religious Prince put some to Death for owning the Pope’s Supremacy, and others for denying Transubstantiation. I do not find, however, any great Use made of this Instrument till it fell into the Hands of a learned and vigilant Priest or Minister, (for he frequently wrote himself both one and the other) who was some Time Vicar of Bray.39

The Vicar of Bray is a malleable figure in the period, and his appearance in the Tatler attests to his continuing use as an emblem of instability. The vicar also makes a brief appearance in a mock petition addressed to Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, a Whig clergyman active in producing pamphlets against Sacheverell. The mock petition includes the signatories who have gathered to praise Hoadly’s work in opposing The Perils of False Brethren. In addition to ‘Tim Mutable, an Any-thing-arian’ and ‘Jo Cant, a rigid Presbyterian’, these signatories include one ‘Frank Bray, a true time-serving Preacher’. 40

The Hostile Reprint The accusation of time-serving was a useful tactic in the paper wars that dominated popular political culture. The failure to demonstrate a continuous identity could be employed in partisan politics as a means of securing group identity, and it could be useful in raising alarm about the threat of conspiracy. As we have seen, the 38 The Tatler, ed. Bond, vol. 3, 150-151. 39 The Tatler, ed. Bond, vol. 3, 148. 40 The poem appears in the miscellany Whig and Tory, or, Wit on Both Sides.

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Vicar of Bray offers a convenient lens for examining this phenomenon, adding to the metaphors that could stand in for beliefs by extending beyond the turncoat’s garments to include the gestures characteristic of an actor. Our inquiry into the conflict of the paper war would not be complete, however, without examining how individual publications could themselves stand in for their authors. That is, the printed text could itself function as a representation of belief similar to the turncoat’s cloak. This becomes apparent in the case of the ‘hostile reprint’, which revived a writer’s previously published work by reissuing it in different form, often with a new or altered title page. The reprint forced the individual to explain his relation to his own past beliefs. It functioned as a way of questioning the writer’s consistency, suggesting that he lacked integrity or that he did not actually affirm the position he claimed to hold. 41 Drawn from dedications, party pamphlets, and loyal addresses, many of these previously printed texts derived their significance from the fact that they had been published before the Revolution of 1688 / 1689. In this, we see how the fixity of print could migrate as a false, detached version of the person described. The reprint functioned as a synecdoche that substituted an artefact for a living being. The practice also shows how print was well-suited for maintaining the past in the present, a fact owing partly to the economics of publishing in the period. As William St. Clair has noted in his study of the book trade, old texts represented a good source of income after 1660. Printers were allowed to reprint such texts even when, as in the case of pre-Reformation religious works, they ‘were officially declared to be invalid and untrue’. 42 The practice of reprinting was a common occurrence during the Allegiance Controversy and in the Sacheverell paper war. 43 These paper wars often saw the reprinting of entire texts as well as excerpts and portions from other publications. When printers and publishers reprinted these published works, they exploited the depersonalization that the medium of print made possible. 44 41 The term ‘hostile reprint’ is used as a descriptor in the records of the Folger Shakespeare Library. It appears in the card catalogue in the entry for ‘Kennett, White, Bp of Peterborough, 1660-1728. An argument in defence of passive obedience […]—London: Printed for John Morphew, near Stationer’s Hall, 1711’. The card reads ‘a hostile reprint, with a few minor changes, of the preface from Kennett’s translation of Pliny, 1686, which was entitled “An address of thanks to a good prince, presented in the panegyrick of Pliny, upon Trajan, the best of Roman emperors”. Intended to prove Kennett a turncoat from his former loyalist views. Extracts from this preface had been published in 1704 under the title “White against Kennett, or Dr. Kennet’s panegyrick upon the late King James”’. 42 William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 77, 79. 43 The playwright Susannah Centlivre referred to the practice of reissuing an old book with a new title as ‘quacking Titles’, in her farce The Gotham Election (London: Printed and Sold by S. Keimer, 1715). 44 Here I am thinking of ‘the dialectic of personal identity and its alienability’ that attends print publication. As Michael McKeon explains, print separates the text both from its author and the conditions of its

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The example on which I briefly wish to focus concerns the moderate cleric White Kennett, who abandoned his Royalist principles at the Revolution and rose in the ranks of the Whig clergy. 45 Evidence of his erstwhile principles, however, continued to exist in the form of An Address of Thanks to a Good Prince (1685), Kennett’s translation of Pliny the Younger, which he had published with his own preface on the virtues of allegiance to the absolute monarch James II. The translation first appeared as a hostile reprint in 1704, after Kennett preached the sermon A Compassionate Enquiry into the Causes of the Civil War on the anniversary of Charles I’s martyrdom. In his sermon, Kennett countered the trend practised among the Tory, High Church clergy, of harking back to the theology of the Restoration Church of England. Kennett was a moderate in political and ecclesiastical affairs, and he saw no point in returning to the ideological battles of the Restoration. Reaction to his sermon was swift and enduring. ‘The reputation of the sermon branded Kennett for the rest of his life’, according to Bennett, leading to the charge that the priest was ‘an unscrupulous Latitudinarian turncoat’. 46 The trade publisher John Nutt contributed to the charge of time-serving by reprinting the preface of Kennett’s An Address of Thanks. The title of the reprint announces the hostile goal: White against Kennet: or, Dr. Kennet’s Panegyrick upon the Late King James (1704). The subtitle acknowledges the original year of publication, describing the work as ‘an EXTRACT of several Passages from his Preface to an Address of Thanks to a good Prince: Presented in the Panegyrick of Pliny upon Trajan. Printed in the Year 1686’. The reprint, however, alters the text to create something new. The publisher has brought the earlier work into the present by framing the translation as a panegyric upon the ‘late’ king, merging the original occasion for writing with the event of James’s death in 1701. The effect of bringing the historical text into the present is not only to suggest that Kennett betrayed his earlier self. The charge of inconsistency raises the possibility that Kennett might harbour Jacobite views. The reprint creates a work of fiction, as it were, so that Kennett is both for and against the Whigs who have rewarded him. White against Kennet compresses time, condensing the decades into a single moment. Kennett is again the victim of the hostile reprint during the Sacheverell controversy. The paper war resulting from Sacheverell’s trial led to a spike in the practice inception, serving to ‘disembed communication from personal interaction’. At the same time, such texts ‘enter into a fetishizing public circulation’ that can lead to a radical refashioning: ‘Print’s depersonalization of the texts it puts into circulation only invites the licentious personalization of their objects’ (Michael McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005], 88). 45 Kennett’s life and work has been extensively documented by the historian G.V. Bennett (White Kennett 1660-1728, Bishop of Peterborough: A Study in the Political and Ecclesiastical History of the Early Eighteenth Century [London: SPCK, 1957]). 46 Bennett, White Kennett, 93.

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of reprinting, with anonymous defences of the Tory priest pillaging from and often simply repackaging publications from as far back as the sixteenth century. 47 This second hostile reprint is prompted by a Latin sermon preached by Kennett to open Convocation on 25 November 1710. According to Kennett’s biographer, a ‘hostile translation’ of the sermon appeared on 12 February 1711, which ‘impl[ied] that Kennett was lukewarm in his commitment to episcopacy and the Royal Supremacy’. 48 Joining in the attack, the trade publisher John Morphew quickly issued another hostile reprint of Kennett’s 1686 preface to the translation of Pliny, which his biographer remarks was intended to serve as ‘a sign of [Kennett’s] apostasy’. 49 The title of the reprint gestured toward the recent Sacheverell controversy, but this time the title made no mention of the earlier date of publication, simply reading: An Argument in Defence of Passive Obedience, in opposition to all manner of Tenets advanc’d by several pretended Fathers of the Church and other Eminent Writers on the side of Resistance to the Supreme Power. The new title page implied that Kennett, though once a defender of royalist political theology, had bowed to expedience. In this, his own words from the preface served to indict him. In one of the excerpts printed in the hostile pamphlet, Kennett remarks There is indeed one odd kind of Virtue in Trajan which we care not should be honoured with Imitation, and that is his wheedling of the Mobile by several little less than sneaking Insinuations, which betray a too violent ambition of being Popular, […] which, however specious and alluring, tastes of a low Soul, and unhinges all Government, makes Obedience and Submission precarious.50

One imagines that those responsible for producing the hostile reprint found a particular irony in reprinting this excerpt. The accusation of time-serving is bolstered by the fact that, at one time, Kennett himself recognized the negative effect that ambition could have on character. Though an emperor, Trajan did not act like the ‘Master of his Subjects’; rather, he is remembered for ‘wheedling’, or flattering, the crowd. Kennett’s enemies saw him in a similar light, as a clergyman who had changed to please those in power. Kennett, too, it is implied, was guilty of harbouring ‘a low Soul’. 47 Several of these publications cited the biblical injunction to obey the civil authority in Romans 13 which Sacheverell had cited in The Perils of False Brethren. The pamphlet The Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Nonresistance, as Established in the Church of England (January 1710), offered an exhaustive argument from authority. The straightforwardly titled Collections of Passages Referr’d to by Dr. Henry Sacheverell in his Answer to the Articles of his Impeachment (March 1710) included passages lifted from the sermons of renowned clergymen, including the sixteenth-century divines Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley. 48 Bennett, White Kennett, 116. 49 Bennett, White Kennett, 116. 50 Kennett, An Argument in Defence of Passive Obedience (London: Printed for John Morphew, 1711), 5.

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The hostile reprint has shown how the accusation of time-serving could become fetishized, circulated as a means of impugning the credibility of a public figure. For White Kennett, the translation An Address of Thanks becomes detached from its historical context, appearing as a ghostly accompaniment to the priest’s continuing involvement in public controversy. The reprint reminds readers of Kennett’s willingness to yield to ideological change. In this, the hostile reprint possesses a curious solidity. Its materiality owes to the malleability of print, and yet publication gives it a ghostly presence as the past returned to haunt its author. The hostile reprint in this way adds to the ambiguity that characterizes the conflict of the paper war.

Conclusion This essay has argued that the time-server provides an important vantage point for understanding the conflict of the paper war. The accusation of time-serving functions as a way of drawing attention to individual public figures in order to question their trustworthiness, while raising a number of questions about the nature of commitment: How does commitment to political beliefs compare to the commitment of enlisting for battle? How does it compare to the commitment of religious belief? At the same time, the frequent printed references to the time-server suggest anxiety about the rules that separated partisan exchange from the harm of real-life war. The time-server exploits appearances in ways that threaten the game of politics. That is, he plays roles that serve his own interests, and these roles can come uncomfortably close to treason. Lastly, the practice of reprinting adds a rich complexity to our understanding of the paper war, as the hostile reprint calls for thinking further about the medium in which the war was conducted. During the period we are examining, it is worth noting, as a subject for future research, that paper wars are able to keep the past alive in material form. If modernity is commonly understood as marking a rupture with the past, freeing the individual from earlier times, the hostile reprint refuses to acknowledge any such rupture. The figure of the time-server challenges the simple assumption that the past no longer matters. In the game of the paper war, the past remains at play.

Works Cited Bond, Donald F., ed. The Tatler. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Bowers, Toni. Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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The British Musical Miscellany, or The Delightful Grove. Vol. 1. London: Printed for and sold by I. Walsh, 1734. Brown, Mark N. ‘Trimmers and Moderates in the Reign of Charles II’. Huntington Library Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1974): 311-336. Bullard, Rebecca. The Politics of Disclosure, 1674-1725: Secret History Narratives. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009. Butler, Samuel. Characters. Edited by Charles W. Daves. Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1970. Cameron, William J., ed. Vol. 5: 1688-1697 of Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714. 7 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963-1975. Centlivre, Susannah. The Gotham Election, A Farce. London: Printed and sold by S. Keimer, 1715. Collier, Jeremy. Dr. Sherlock’s Case of Allegiance Considered with some Remarks upon his Vindication. London: n.p. 1691. Cowan, Brian. ‘The Spin Doctor: Sacheverell’s Trial Speech and Political Performance in the Divided Society’. Parliamentary History 31, no. 1 (2012): 28-46. D’Urfey, Thomas. The Weasel Uncas’d, or the In and Outside of a Priest drawn to the Life. London: n.p., 1690. ——. Wonders of the Sun, or, The Kingdom of the Birds. London: Printed by Jacob Tonson, 1706. Ferris, John. ‘Official Members in the Commons, 1660-1690: A Study in Multiple Loyalties’. In Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf, 279-304. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Fuller, Thomas. The History of the Worthies of England. Edited by J. Nicholls. Vol. 1. London: Rivington. 1811. Goldie, Mark. ‘The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument: An Essay and an Annotated Bibliography of Pamphlets in the Allegiance Controversy’. Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1980): 473-564. Halliday, Paul D. Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England’s Towns, 1650-1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Holmes, Geoffrey. The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell. London: Eyre Metheun, 1973. Hopper, Andrew. Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Kennett, White. An Argument in Defence of Passive Obedience. London: Printed for John Morphew, 1711. Knights, Mark. Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart England: Partisanship and Political Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. L’Estrange, Roger. Fables of Aesop, and Other Eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflections. 3rd ed. London: Printed for R. Sare, B. Tock, M. Gillyflower, A.J. Churchil, G. Sawbridge, and H. Hindmarsh, 1699. ——. The Observator, vol. 1, no. 240, 13 November 1682.

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Loveman, Kate. Reading Fictions, 1660-1740: Deception in English Literary and Political Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Madan, F.F. A Critical Bibliography of Dr. Henry Sacheverell. Edited by W.A. Speck. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Libraries, 1978. McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Purkiss, Diane. The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain. New York: Basic Books, 2006. The Religious Turncoat, or, A Late Jacobite Divine turn’d Williamite. Tune of, London is a Fine Town. London: Printed for Rich. Kell, 1693. ‘The Religious Turncoat: or, The Trimming Parson’. In The Third Volume, Consisting of Poems on Divers Subjects. Edited by Edward Ward. London: Printed and sold by B. Bragg, 1706. Sacheverell, Henry. The Character of a Low-Church-Man: Drawn in an Answer to The True Character of a Church-Man. London: n.p., 1702. Scudé, Abbe. The Sacheverell Affair. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939. Sherlock, William. The Case of Allegiance Due to Soveraign Powers Stated and Resolved. London: W. Rogers, 1691. Speck, W.A. ‘The Current State of Sacheverell Scholarship’. Parliamentary History 31, no. 1 (2012): 16-27. St. Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Tilley, Morris Palmer. A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1966. ‘The Time-Server’. In Whig and Tory: or, Wit on Both Sides, Being a Collection of State Poems, upon All Remarkable Occurrences, from the Change of the Ministry, to this Time, 2nd ed. London: Printed for E. Curll, 1713. A Trimmer’s Confession of Faith: Or, The True Principles of A Jack of Both-Sides. Tune of, ‘Which no Body can deny’. London: Printed for R. Kell, 1694. The True Character of a Church-Man, Shewing the False Pretences to That Name: Together with The Character of a Low Church-Man Drawn in Answer to It. London: Printed for A. Baldwin, 1702. The Turncoats. Printed and sold by Wm Pennock in Pannier Alley in Pater Noster Row, [1710]. Van Creveld, Martin. Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Wetters, Kirk. The Opinion System: Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Whig and Tory, or, Wit on Both Sides: Being a Collection of State Poems, upon All Remarkable Occurrences: From the Change of the Ministry to This Time. 2nd ed. London: Printed for E. Curll, 1713.

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Jeffrey Galbr aith

About the author Jeffrey Galbraith, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. He has published essays on Dryden, Swift, Sacheverell, and the drama of the Restoration and early eighteenth century. He is currently working on a book project titled ‘Restoring Obedience in English Literature: Prayers, Tears, and the Post-Secular, 1660-1750’.

Index Accession Day Tilts 14 Achinstein, Sharon 17 Act against deceitfull disorderly and excessive Gameing (1664) 149 Act of Royal Supremacy (1534) 187 Act of Uniformity (1662) 101 Addison, Joseph 180, 192, 193 Aeneid See Virgil Aesop 163, 166, 185-186, 192 Aldred, Jessica 118 Alker, Sharon 19, 20, 22, 117-137 Allegiance Controversy (1689-1694) 179, 188-189, 194 allegory 32, 65 Allen, T.B. 28 Allendorf, Kalina 82 alliances 111, 171 Ancients vs. Moderns 163-165 Anglo-Dutch Wars 14, 179 animal metaphors or analogies 23-37, 166, 169, 174, 185-186 Annalia Dvbrensia 60-61 anti-Puritanism 55-71, 119 archery 55 Aristotle 101, 173 Arner, Robert D. 57 Arnold, Michael 125 Ascham, Roger 32 avatars 82, 117, 118, 123, 125, 129, 130, 132, 133 Bacon, Sir Francis 161, 167-170, 174 Badenhausen, Richard 15 Bakhtin, Mikhail 4, 39-41 ballads and / or broadsheets 183, 186-191 Barker, Francis 18 Battle of Agincourt 26, 33-36 Battle of Culloden 190 Battle of Edgehill 16 Battle of Marston Moor 16 Battle of Naseby 16 Battle of Numbers 163 Battle of the Books See Swift, Jonathan Battle of the Boyne 191 Behn, Aphra 19, 139-159 Luckey Chance, The 139-158 Sir Patient Fancy 145-146 Bennett, Alexandra 121 Bentley, Richard 163-164, 173 Bible 69, 75-76, 96, 102, 196 Binde, Per 146 Blessington, Francis C. 80 Bloom, Gina 24 Bloom, Harold 42

Book of Sports See Declaration of Sports, The (1618 and 1633) Borkat, Roberta F. Sarfatt 174 Bowerbank, Sylvia 118 Bowers, Toni 191 bowling (game of bowls) 17, 56 Boyle, Charles, Earl of Orrery 163 Bradford, William 57, 63-64, 67-69 Brewer, Derek 151 Bridges, Noah 95, 107-108, 111 Brown, Mark N. 185 Brown, Pamela Allen 151 Bullard, Rebecca 180 Burke, Kenneth 162 Burn, Andrew 126 Burnham, Michelle 66, 69 Burton, Henry 56 Butler, Samuel 182 calculation 98-99, 103, 105, 119, 130, 167-168, 170, 171, 175. See also mathematics card games 108, 119, 122, 131, 149 carnival 40-41 Calloway, Katherine 82 Cameron, William J. 188 Cardano, Girolamo (Jérôme Cardan) 99 Carter, Marcus 125 Cartwright, William 15-17 Cassandra 43, 45 casus belli 39, 43-45 Catholicism 55, 57, 61, 188, 189 Cavaliers 16-17. See also Royalists Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle 13, 19-20, 117-137 Bell in Campo 117, 121, 124-127, 129 Blazing World, The 128-131 Lady Contemplation 121, 123, 124 Love’s Adventures 121, 124, 127-128 Nature’s Pictures 121 Observations upon Experimental Philosophy 121 Orations of Diverse Sorts 121 Philosophical and Physical Opinions 117 Poems, and Fancies 121, 122 Sociable Letters 119, 130 ‘True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life, A’ 119 World’s Olio, The 120, 121, 122, 123 Youths Glory, and Deaths Banquet 120 Cavendish, William, Duke of Newcastle 117 Centlivre, Susannah 194 cerebral or mental war games 19-20, 117, 118, 123-133 Charles I 15-16, 18, 20, 55-57, 60, 64, 65, 69, 103, 109, 110, 120, 187, 195

202 

Games and War in Early Modern English Liter ature

Charles II 99, 101, 103, 104, 149, 188 Chaudhuri, Pramit 75 Chess 15-16, 31, 95, 108-112, 119 chivalry 40, 47 Church of England 55-56, 58, 61-63, 67-68, 183, 189, 195 ciphers 18, 95-115 civil wars (British) 15, 19, 57, 59, 95, 120, 122, 179, 182, 186, 189 class 63, 69 clown, the 39-42, 51 cock-fighting 15, 23-36 cockpit 24-25, 27, 29, 32 codes 99, 112, 126, Cohen, Matt 59, 62 Collier, Jeremy 191 colonization 57-59, 64-69 commerce 65, 144, 151, 153. See also economics / socio-economics Conradus, David Arnold 111 Convention Parliament 188, 191 Cooper, Karol 19, 139-159 Cooper, Thomas 24 Copeland, Nancy 153 Cornell, T.J. 28 Corns, Thomas 16 Cosimo III de’ Medici 104 cosmos 17, 74 Cotton, Charles 154 Cowan, Brian 181 Cromwell, Oliver 101, 103, 187, 189 Crouch, Humphrey 151-152 cryptography 95-113 cuckoldry 139-158 Cunning, David 123 Currell, David 17, 73-93 Daems, Jim 11-22, 55-71 Dagon 68-69 dancing 55, 64, 154, 165 Davys, John 95-96, 98, 105, 109-111 De rerum natura See Lucretius Declaration of Sports (1618; 1633) 18, 20, 55-58, 60-61, 65, 67, 69 Defoe, Daniel 172 Dempsey, Jack 65-66 Descartes, René 112, 161, 164, 167-170 dice 34, 108, 119, 139-158 Dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knight, The 33 Directory for the Publique Worship of God, A 56 Dissenters 185, 192 Dover, John 60 Dover, Robert 60-61 drama 23-36, 39-52, 120, 123-128, 139-158 Duchet-Suchaux, Gaston 26, 33 duelling 30, 46, 48, 49, 77, 84, 85, 143, 155-156 Dunning, Eric 28 D’Urfey, Thomas 185, 191-192 Dwyer, Joseph A., III 58-59

economics / socio-economics 13, 14, 23, 32, 45, 46, 58-59, 61-62, 108, 112, 119, 121, 139, 142, 146, 148, 152, 153, 161, 194. See also commerce Ehrenpreis, Irvin 173 Elias, Norbert 28 Elizabeth I 14, 55, 187 Ellis-Fermor, Una 46 Ellison, Katherine 18-19, 95-115 Empson, William 83 epic, the 17, 23-25, 35, 51, 73-93 Epicureanism 74, 86-88, 173 Erasmus of Rotterdam 42 Ernst, Thomas 99-100 Estienne, Henri 59 ethics / morality 40, 44, 64, 66-68, 76, 80, 82, 85-87, 108-110, 112, 119, 122, 141, 145, 161, 164, 171, 174-176, 187 Exclusion Crisis 179, 180, 191 Fables 164, 166, 174, 185-186, 192 Faerie Queene, The See Spenser, Edmund Falconer, John 95-96, 100-103, 105-109, 111 fancy 118, 122, 129 Fang, Louise 15, 23-37 Farrington, Benjamin 168 Favaro, Antonio 169 feasts 40, 46, 62, 64, 67 Feather, Jennifer 31 fencing 33 Ferris, John 182 festivities 40, 55-57, 59, 61-64, 79, 81, 85 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de 164 Foucault, Michel 44 Fowler, Alastair 80 France 15, 23, 25-26, 29-30, 110, 190 French, Robina (née Cromwell) 101 Frenk, Joachim 124 Full and True Account of the Battel Fought last Friday, A (The Battle of the Books) See Swift, Jonathan Fuller, Thomas 187 Galbraith, Jeffrey 18, 179-200 Galileo, Galilei 168-169 Game at Chess, A See Middleton, Thomas Game at Chesse, The See Cartwright, William game design 125-126, 162 game levels 100-102, 125-128, 130-132 gambling / gaming 108, 119, 139-158, 161-162 Gazzard, Alison 124 Geertz, Clifford 31-32 gender 13, 33, 117-133, 139-158 Gentleman’s Magazine 111 George I 18, 188 Gerhardt, C.I. 168 Gibbs, Martin 125 Girard, René 42, 44, 46, 50-51 Globe Theatre (the ‘wooden O’) 15, 25 Glorious Revolution 179 God 17, 28, 30, 35, 56, 64, 66, 68, 73, 76, 83-86, 88-90, 180, 191

203

Index 

Godwin, Francis 101 Goldie, Mark 188-189 Goodey, C.F. 111-112 Gordon, Robert C. 172 Gorges, Sir Ferdinando 58-59, 65 Granville, A.B. 11 Greeks 45-49, 52, 60, 165, 167 Gregory, Tobias 76 guessing 49, 105, 117-118, 147 Gulliver’s Travels See Swift, Jonathan Gunpowder Plot 27 Gurr, Andrew 31 Hall, Joseph 29 Halliday, Paul D. 180 Hamill, Thomas A. 32 Hamilton, John T. 87 Hanoverian succession 179, 188 Hanson, Christopher 124 Hardie, Philip 82 Harding, Timothy David 110 Harrigan, Pat 12, 13 Harrison, Stephen 82, 90 hawking 32 Heath, William 61 Heidel, Ernst 100 Henry V See Shakespeare, William Henry VIII 32, 187 Henry, Prince (son of James VI/I) 15 Hercules 60 Herodotus 80, 96 Heywood, John 26 hierarchy 40, 41, 63-66 Hoadly, Benjamin 193 Hobbes, Thomas 19, 164, 168 Hock, Jessie 82, 86, 87 Holmes, Geoffrey 192 Holquist, Michael 40-41 Holy Days 55 Homer 75-78, 80, 84, 87, 88 Iliad 51, 75-78, 83-85, 89 Odyssey 80-81 Hooke, Robert 104 Hopper, Andrew 182 hospitality 62 hostile reprints 18, 179, 182, 193-197 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey 19 Huizinga, Johan 19, 39, 42-43, 47, 49 Autumn of the Middle Ages, The 47 Homo Ludens 39, 43, 47 Hulme, Edward F. 112 Hundred Years’ War 24, 25, 29-30, 32, 34, 35 identity 18, 69, 125-128, 146, 150, 155-157, 165, 181-184, 188, 193-194 Iliad See Homer imagination 11, 14, 25, 74, 120, 123, 125, 132, 133, 179 Indigenous peoples 58-59, 61-68

Jacobites 14, 188-190, 195 James VI/I 15, 18, 20 James VII/II 185, 188-191, 195 Jenson, Jennifer 126 jester 40 jest, the (genre) 139, 148-158 Jevon, Thomas 142 Jonson, Ben 15, 60 jousts 14-15, 28, 30, 31, 36, 76, 78, 79 Kavey, Allison B. 120 Keay, Anna 149 Kennett, White, Bishop of Peterborough 194-197 Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. 12, 13, 83 Kircher, Athanasius 104 knights 14-15, 31, 32, 40, 48, 49, 50, 78, 79, 82, 150 Knights, Mark 180, 182-183 Kołakowski, Leszek 40 Kott, Jan 39-41 Koyré, Alexandre 29 Laidlaw, Marc 131 land 65-68, 149, 154 language machine 161, 167-174. See also machines and engines Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury 56, 58, 62-63 Lawrence, Sean 16, 25, 39-53 leadership, military or political 41, 162, 171, 174-176, 180 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 83, 161, 167-170, 173 Leonard, John 75, 82, 88 L’Estrange, Sir Roger 185-186, 190 Letter from a Minister to his Friend, Concerning the Game of Chesse, A 109-110 Libertinism 19, 141 Liddy, Brenda Josephine 121, 122 Lieb, Michael 88 Lipking, Lawrence 108, 169 Lord, George deForest 86 Louden, Bruce 83 Lovatt, Helen 11, 76, 85 love, game of 14, 16-17, 19, 40, 44, 47, 49-51, 98, 127-128, 139-158 Lovelace, Richard 16-17 Loveman, Kate 180-181 Lowood, Henry 118, 132 Lucan 74 Lucian 45 Lucretius 73, 74, 81-82, 84, 86-90, 173 Ludus Scacchiae: Chesse-play (by G.B.) 108-109 MacCallum-Stewart, Esther 132 ‘MacFlecknoe’ (Dryden) 18 Machacek, Gregory 75 machines or engines 104, 118, 160, 166-167, 169-170, 173-176 Madan, F.F. 192 Manly, John Matthews 107

204 

Games and War in Early Modern English Liter ature

Marcus, Leah 56 Ma-re Mount 18, 55, 57-63, 65-66, 68-69 Markham, Gervase 26-27, 30 Marlowe, Christopher 45 Massachusetts Bay colony 58, 65 mathematics 112-113, 163, 166-167, 169, 171. See also calculation May Game 55, 59, 68 Maypole 18, 55, 57-60, 62-69 ‘May-poles Motto, The’ 67 McKeon, Michael 194-195 Meier, Sid 126 Mensch, James R. 45 mental exercise 108, 111, 112 Metz, Rachel 125 Middleton, Thomas 15-16 military heroism 31, 34, 35, 75, 84, 88, 120, 122, 125-126 history 83, 97, 102 intelligence 96, 98, 101, 126, 130 men (soldiers) 23, 25, 33, 42, 48, 49, 105, 121, 127-128, 132, 153, 155-156, 186 signs and symbols 35, 55, 57, 59, 67, 144, 162-167, 174 strategy 12, 59, 77, 85, 96, 98, 109, 121, 124-125 training 23, 165, 172 Milton, John 17-18, 73-90, 164 Areopagitica 17, 164 ‘Of Education’ 17 Paradise Lost 17, 73-90 mock-heroic 69, 74-76 mock or pseudo combat 14, 15, 17, 30-31, 36, 77, 162, 164, 165 monarchy 131, 182, 187, 191 Monmouth Rebellion 14, 153 Montrose, Louis 124 Morland, Samuel 95, 103-105, 107-108, 111 Morphew, John 194, 196 Morton, Thomas 18, 55-69 Murphy, Edith 65, 66 Murray, Harold James Ruthven 109, 110 Nakamura, Lisa 127 Nash, Thomas 27, 28, 29, 30 natural philosophy 117, 121, 129, 130, 164 Nayar, Sheila J. 14 Nazarian, Cynthia N. 14 Nelson, Holly Faith 11-22, 117-137 New England 57, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69. See also Massachusetts and Plymouth New English Canaan See Morton, Thomas ‘Newly Invented Great King’s Game’ 130, 171 Nine Years’ War 14 Norbrook, David 74, 82, 90 Nutt, John 195 oath of loyalty 188-189, 191 Observator 185 Odyssey See Homer Orgel, Stephen 102

pacifism 42, 43, 48, 51, 52 Pallas Armata. The Gentlemans Armorie (by G.A.) 33 Palmer, Samuel 183 Pandarus 46, 48, 49, 50 paper wars 18, 69, 179-197 papistry or popery 56, 187, 193 Paradise Lost See Milton, John Parliamentarians 119 parody 41, 75, 88, 166, 171, 174 Parsons, Robert 27 pastimes See recreation Pastoureau, Michel 26, 33 Pasupathi, Vimala C. 121, 132 Peacock, Alan 124 Peltonen, Markku 156 Pepys, Samuel 104, 152 Pequot War 57, 60, 62, 69 Perkins, William 28 Perry, L. Davis 18, 161-177 Peterson, John 118 Petrarchanism 19 Phiddian, Robert 174 Philip IV of Spain 15 Philips, Heather F. 29 Picard, Martin 131 Plato 39, 173 play-fights 84, 179. See also mock or pseudo combat Pliny the Younger 194-196 Plutarch 34 Plymouth Company 18, 58, 62, 65, 68 political gameplay 18, 191 Politick Whore, The [Robert Davenport] 145 Poole, William 82, 101 Pope, Alexander 18, 75 Dunciad in Four Books 18, 75 Rape of the Lock, The 75 Powell, J.A. 107 print wars 182 prostitution 141, 150, 154 Protectorate 101, 103 proverbs 151 Pugh, Tison 14 Puritanism 60 Puritans, the 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69 Quint, David 79, 81, 82, 84 Rabelais and His World See Bakhtin, Mikhail rake 140 Ramsay, Richard 165 Rarities: or the Incomparable Curiosities in Secret Writing (by G.B.) 97, 107 Ravenscroft, Edward 145 Rawson, Claude 75 recreation 20, 31, 57, 76, 80, 88, 109, 110, 112, 119, 120, 130, 149 Reeds, Jim 99, 100 Reeve, Edmund 61

Index 

Religious Turncoat, The (ballad) 188, 189 ‘Religious Turncoat, The’ (poem) 189 repetition 79, 124 Restoration England 19, 186 Revard, Stella Purce 76 ‘Rise Oedipus’ 65-66 Roberts, Huw 67-68 role play 123, 125, 132 Romans 59, 165 Root and Branch Petition (1640) 56 Rosenbaum, Ron 42 Roundheads 179. See also Parliamentarians Rouse, Richard 88, 126 Rovang, Paul 76 Roy, Sydnor 88 Royal Society 95, 104, 167, 169 Royalists83, 101, 119, 179, 195, 196. See also Cavaliers Ruggiero, Guido 14 rules of the game 50, 51, 127 Rumrich, John P. 88 Rupp, Susanne 76 Sabbath 56 Sacheverell Controversy 180-181, 193-196 Sacheverell, Henry 183, 192 Sarasohn, Lisa T. 118 Sartre, Jean-Paul 40 satire 41, 45, 161-166, 169-176, 183-184 Schattner, Angela 32-33 Schmitt, Carl 44-45, 48 Schwartz, Regina M. 88, 89 Scudé, Abbe 192 secrecy 50, 51, 98 Selenus, Gustavus (Augustus of BrunswickLüneburg; August, Duke of BraunschweigLüneburg) 95-96, 98-100, 108, 110-111 Semenza, Gregory M. Colón 23, 56, 60 semiotics 167 Separatists of New England 57-59, 61-65, 69 sex intrigue comedy 19 sexual games 142 Shakespeare, William 23, 152 Antony and Cleopatra 34 Cymbeline 29 Hamlet 43 Henry IV, Part 1 42 Henry V 11, 14, 15, 23-37 Henry VI, Part 2 32 Romeo and Juliet 50 Troilus and Cressida 16, 39-53 Shapiro, Barbara J. 101 Shea, Daniel B. 58, 61, 69 Sherlock, William 191-192 Sidney, Sir Philip 14, 15 Siege of Namur 20 sieges 48, 49, 88, 97, 101 sign and signified, relation between 162, 168, 170, 175 Siitonen, Marko 125

205 simulation 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 28, 31, 64, 77, 98, 100, 101, 102, 118, 123-125, 132, 144, 181, 182 single combat 14-15, 17, 30, 31, 36, 77 Slotkin, Richard 64 Smyth, Maura 118 Snyder, Susan 46 soldiers See military men Solemn League and Covenant (1643) 101 Spanish Armada 29 Speck, W.A. 192 Spedding, James, et al. 168 Spenser, Edmund 14-15, 17, 80 The Faerie Queene 17 sports 18, 20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 34-36, 55-61, 67- 68, 80, 110, 111, 162, 164 standing army 172 St. Clair, William 194 Stamma, Phillip 110 Statius 85 Stein, Arnold 74 Stern, Tiffany 24 Sterne, Laurence 20 Stewart, Ann Marie 156 stoicism 74, 87, 123 Stow, John 32 strategy 12, 16, 59, 77, 85, 96, 98, 101, 103, 108, 109, 119, 121, 124, 125, 133 Stratford, John 60 Strong, Roy 14 Stubbes, Philip 30 Sugimura, N.K. 73, 80 Survay of London See Stow, John Suzuki, Mihoko 127 Swift, Jonathan 18, 161-177 Full and True Account of the Battel Fought last Friday, A (The Battle of the Books) 162-164, 169, 174 Gulliver’s Travels 161-162, 166, 169-170, 172, 174-176 tabletop games 119, 122 Tatler 180, 192, 193 telegraph (hypothetical) 101 Temple, Sir William 163-165, 171 tennis 30, 33, 119 Thebaid See Statius Thell, Anne M. 118 Thirty Years’ War 14, 15 thought experiments 118, 122, 125, 132 Tilley, Morris Palmer 187 time-server 181-185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 197 ‘Time Server, The’ (poem) 192 Tindemans, Klaas 19 Tinkler, John F. 164 Tories 172, 183, 185, 191 Tosney, Nicholas 149 tournaments 28, 40, 49, 163 trade 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 108, 149, 172, 194, 195, 196 transhumanism 129 treason 104, 186, 190-191, 192, 197

206 

Games and War in Early Modern English Liter ature

Tribble, Evelyn 31 trimmer 180, 185, 190 Trimmer’s Confession of Faith, A (ballad) 190 Trithemius, Johannes (Johann Heidenberg) 99100, 108, 111 Troilus and Cressida See Shakespeare, William True Character of a Churchman, The 180 turncoat, religious or political 182, 184, 186, 187, 189, 190-191, 194 Turncoats, The (broadsheet) 188, 189 Turner, David M. 145 Utopia 129 Van Creveld, Martin 12-13, 16, 19-20, 28, 39, 42-44, 48, 49, 59, 77, 83, 98, 100, 118, 131, 132, 144, 164, 165, 181 Venet, Gisèle 31 Vicar of Bray 182, 184, 186-194 video war games 19, 127, 132 Viète, François 167 Vigarello, Georges 28 Vindication of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, A 180 violence 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 27-29, 40, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51-52, 84, 88, 89, 122, 141, 143, 150, 152, 156, 161, 165, 172, 181 Virgil Aeneid 84, 85, 173 virtual reality 128-129 Von Clausewitz, Carl 44 Von Hilgers, Philipp 12-13, 16, 59, 83, 98, 104, 112, 130, 144, 163, 167, 170-171

Von Mallinckrodt 45 Von Maltzahn, Nicholas 74 Walbancke, Matthew 60 Walden, Daniel 61, 63, 64, 66, 68-69 Wallis, John 95-96, 98, 109, 110, 111-112 Wallraven, Miriam 128, 129 War of the Spanish Succession 14 Wars of the Three Kingdoms See civil wars (British) Weickmann, Christoph 130, 171, 172 Welch, Anthony 74, 76 West, Richard 180 Wetters, Kirk 181 Whig and Tory, or, Wit on Both Sides 192, 193 Whigs 183, 185, 191, 192, 195 Wickham, Glynne 124 Wilkins, John (Selenus) 95, 96, 97, 101-103, 106, 107-108, 111 William III and Mary II 185, 188, 189, 190, 191 Wilson, George 26-28, 30-35 Wimsatt, W.K. 108 wit 109, 112, 140, 141 Wolf, Mark J.P. 118, 128 Wolfe, Jessica 83 world-building 119, 124, 128 World War I 96 Wotton, William 163 Wright, Joanne H. 121-122 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 19 Zotz, Thomas 28 Zuckerman, Michael 69