What’s the greatest box-office hit in Renaissance England? By now you’ll gauge from the title it isn’t Hamlet, Lear, Much Ado, Doctor Faustus or The Duchess of Malfi.
Director of Globe Studies Dr Will Tosh introduced the literal nine-day wonder: Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess,the most popular play of the early modern era. Think Spitting Image.
The draw was an unheard-of satire on living persons, and not just any: but Spanish court dignitaries negotiating marriage with the English royal family. The past is a different audience. They cheer things differently there.
It’s a play that uniquely ran for nine consecutive days bar Sunday from 5-14thAugust 1624, and probably enjoyed two performances on some of them. Yet celebrating this work’s 400th the first thing to note is that this wildly popular, deeply-discussed play has enjoyed virtually no revival. This was a phenomenon that when finally shut down forcibly ended the career of one of England’s greatest dramatists. He died three years later.
Before introducing the four actors, Tosh (afterwards WT) introduced Dr José A. Pérez Díez (afterwards JPD). Pérez Díez is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Leeds University’s School of English. His specialisms include editing the works of John Marston and the use of ‘Spanish literary sources by the dramatists of the Jacobean period, particularly John Fletcher and his circle of frequent collaborators (Francis Beaumont, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger).’
Prince Charles in Peril
The scale of that audience first. It’s estimated that 25,000-27,000 saw it, 10% of London’s population. A huge draw was undoubtedly satire and word-of-mouth; certainly some sense the production itself might have poured oil on an incendiary set of papers and set it off with a cannon the like of which burned the first Globe down.
The 1623 negotiations – Prince Charles’s marriage to the Infanta proved fruitless after eight months – was premised on a horrible Spanish misunderstanding: Charles would convert! The English merely wanted a trade agreement which succeeded.
Meanwhile the English were worried Charles was abroad. Not just that he might convert, but the heir to the throne was literally all at sea coming and going. His elder brother, the original Prince of Wales Henry had died in 1612: there was no spare. His sister was already the exiled Winter Queen.
The Play
WT: This satire really is nearest to Spitting Image for several reasons: the way Middleton framed his characters in terms of chess pieces; the way the play developed after it was licensed; and the production itself taking it way beyond caricature.
God knows how this play got through the censor. Intriguingly, by June 1624 it was approved. But its first performance on August 5th is a long lapse for the time: 55 days. In the course of those months the play was surreptitiously enlarged.
First the game itself is one of clear metaphor and everyone got it: Chess is high politics. Chess furnishes a visual conceit. Players enacting chess pieces of Black and White House (Spain and England) move across and as the Black House pieces try seducing and worse, the White pieces resist and martial their forces.
Professor Gary Taylor, famous for his work on proving Middleton wrote or revised some of Shakespeare (beyond their collaboration in Timon), tried to prove these are chess characters, that they move in relation to chess: but it doesn’t work. What we have are latent chess characters or a catch-all symbolism. Still, it’s very unusual for the period for anyone to develop such a conceit.
Scenes not seen include the whole cast: being chess it involves 32 bodies on stage but not that number speaking. Mostly they’re reduced to smaller scenes, and we’re focusing on four chamber scenes.
JPD: Think comparing a big Bruckner symphony with a string quartet.
WT: And that’s how chamber works from the Wanamaker. And of course you the audience. Tempted to use all of you here!
WT: So. Who are these people playing tonight?
Simon Scardifield (Black Knight)
Anna Crichlow (White Queen’s Pawn)
Emma Pallant (Black Queen’s Pawn)
Michael Fenner (The Fat Bishop)
JPD: Now we know the Black Knight was Count Gondomar. Or to give him his full name Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar (1567-1626). Twice Ambassador to England, and with a painful medical condition (more anon).
A popular bogeyman, he was an extremely crafty politician and huge bibliophile – he possessed the largest library in Spain, bigger than the king’s. And he had an interesting friendship with King James.
Here as Black Knight, he’s trying to convert the White Queen’s Pawn. We’re not sure whom she might be. The King’s wife Anne had died in 1619. His daughter, the Winter Queen was out of the country: indeed, in exile. But we’ve also got to take on board not just the xenophobia being 36 years after the Armada, but the fact that we’re not always in 1623-24. It’s a more fluid time-zone in which the White Queen might well be the Winter Queen a few years earlier. Or Queen Anne and her daughter might be portrayed. Or the White Queen’s Pawn might be a lady-in-waiting or no-one specific.
Nevertheless, the Black Knight’s more subtle than the Jesuit opportunist who tries a far more venal approach to the hapless Pawn. As we’ll see.
Scene. Seduction
An aside where Black Knight (Simon or SS) is looking scornfully on Michael ( MF, The Fat Bishop) trying to seduce White Queen’s Pawn (Anna) in his most rotund voice, and with an aside “I didn’t write this stuff” cracking up the audience. Michael relishes his role and rolls his Rs.
WT: What do you think of stage movement: to Simon
Simon: what confused me was the opposition is slightly baffled. He disagrees with the Black or Fat Bishop’s move as far too clumsy impersonating a Black Pawn (seducing with White Pawn with a book FB then sexually advances; and later oversteps and attempts rape). He’s a Jesuit and thus different.
WT: Here’s the first point. Gondomar is secular. He’s answerable to the Spanish King. Whilst Jesuits like the Bishop report to Pope Gregory, he reports to the “universal monarchy”. There’s conflict in the Black House.
Question from the audience about slaves. It’s not developed here.
Then another asked what proportion of population played chess? WT/JPD: Quite high, apparently. We see the scene between the revealed lovers playing chess in The Tempest for example. It represents Harmony.
WT: Can we play the scene again?
The Scene’s replayed. This is a novelty in Research in Action. There’s more vehemence, more at stake.
JPD: How does the Black Knight enjoy reminiscing how much he does for the monarchy?
Simon: Far more than he should! He’s very theatrical, like “I’m a shit but you love me.”
WT: The Black House very happily acknowledges it.
Q: Shakespeare does this, does Middleton?
JPD: Yes. De Flores in The Changeling and Lucia in Women Beware Women plays at chess.
WT: Now we’ve heard about racialising discourse. So –
JPD: The Spanish lived 800 years under and with the Moors, so they were racialised: both by themselves and from outside as having dark skins. The Ambassador complains King of Spain being called King of the Blacks.
Q: Is there something of racialising in the White Queen Pawn image of Infanta? Is she partly English?
WT: The White Queen’s daughter was the exiled Queen of Bohemia.
Q: It reads like a terrible opera programme! Is Gondomar slowed to move in sharp curved diagonals though?
WT: Yes, was struck by that
Simon: Yes and he’s his own man.
Q: There’s a racialisation with women? Are accents involved here?
WT: It’s not clear but possible. Croatian.
Q older regular: The Spanish were obsessed with blood purity, and expelled Moors.
Q: So in1613-14 the actual marriage negotiations began, 10 years earlier.
WT: Yes.
Q: About 1588 being so recent, but it’s 36 years.
WT: Yes there’s still massive prejudice.
JPD: 1588 is mentioned twice in the play.
Extract 2 Act 2.Sc 2, a late addition:
WT: 2.2. is a scene added late on. It’s thought that William Rowley was cast as the clown role. Caricature of de Dominoes. He was a double convert. He converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism and then decamped to return to the Faith but was not believed, or just punished. He died later in 1624 in prison.
Scene: MF as FB emerges and sees SS as BK and his fistula with some quiet derision. BK is bent on Revenge.
JPD: Gives the Fistula story. Gondomar in his 50s was afflicted with a large anal fistula. He was conveyed with as little pain as possible in a sedan with a seat and large hole in it. This was the problem. It was unmistakable. The portrayal of it on stage, when there was no particular direction, was what alerted the Spanish Ambassador to complain by the second day, August 6th.
Q from WT to Mike (MF) about his FP character.
MF: I play him as a glutton!
JPD: talks of de Dominoes, his both-sides journalism
SS: Yes, he’s glutton too and a Lib Dem type.
Q re the importance of the treaty – isn’t it essentially one of food and wine? Canary Islands and sherry?
JPD: Not so much food but drink certainly, trying to bribe English. It didn’t work
JPD: it does take for granted religious institutions are rich and corrupt and the English not.
Except the Bishop of Winchester, someone wags.
MF: I find the fat in the voice, I do audio books!
Q re the recognizability of the caricature – as most were well versed?
Q Individual bishops were not rich but establishing funds and security for their children. Very different financial model but just as bad.
Q Dead Ringers etc no knowing what exactly was portaye dthere but FB or man with Forums no power over their own arse. One gag then within you can do anything
Q turncoat how much brought out?
WT: Well observed can see in performance
Q now wholly ironic as diplomats delight but whole game is undermined. The pieces move themselves.
Q student on movement chess
Q point about the Fat Bishop is fascinating just a bladder to -!!!
My Q about the spitting image amping up the whole crisis. That the text, even amended as it was, might have got away with it in performance, had not the players with their ruthless mimetic brio reproduced Gondomar’s carriage onstage and his anal fistula.
WT: Yes and it’s particularly unusual as the King’s Mem were not known for risk taking.
JPD: It ended up really serious for Middleton. He was not allowed to write again, and his son was imprisoned… But it made much money – a huge profit. And the text was reproduced, and printed.
Q I’m not able to access texts I and others responded.
I answered by flourishing my copy, it’s available as one of four Oxford texts in one of two editions comprising eight plays: or was in 2009.
The original 2010 Oxford edition of the complete works presided over by Gary Taylor is still available. There’s a United Cambridge edition that came out last year (2023).
WT: As for modern performances, 1971 saw two university productions, one each at Oxford and Cambridge. And that’s it!
I wanted to add that there was a scheduled December 2019 performance of A Game at Chess in this very space with Read Not Dead, that was cancelled: no-one at the time could give a reason. One assumes a clash of some major kind. This would have been filmed and furnished our only film resource – as well as for those who would have attended on the day. A real loss since RND seems to have been superseded by this new (and in itself doubly welcome), in-depth Research. A full performance would have been wroth drawing on.
Q How much work is being done here for us? Why might the King’s Men take on play.
WT: Good question. The Fat Bishop is a bit Falstaff.
Q Is there any significance in moving backwards and forward but pawns only moving forward – metaphor for conversion?
WT: Good point!
Q of 36 food and numerology. Was middleton at all taken up with this, and should we red into any numerical significance, or coded messages?
WT: No!
Part 2
Following on directly from the last, the Conversion Scene
Michael and Simon
MF (scatological dialogue, much laughter “I didn’t write it”)
SS enters – a letter flatters him into changing sides.
SS though lays into him. And then SS declares as Gondomar/Black Knight that he’ll conquer him then the world. SS reaches the verge of the stage and jump triumphantly into the air.
WT talks to SS a bit about his role. SS says he now finally reveals himself and quotes passages.
WT: The text is like a treaty that would be made
SS thinking of all the stuff done here in the last part – and this is quite weird.
JPD: There’s the politics of slaves like “keep your distance” as FB said and the chess bag everyone is frightened of. The politics of slavery is interesting.
WT: It’s seeing and not seeing chess moves. I’m asking Simon and Michael to try the scene terms diagonal as l V SS straight hen of course unpredictably. Almost from the top.
Shall we play it with the possible chess moves by those pieces built in? So Simon can advance and retreat onto any square as a Knight, but Mike can only move on diagonals?
The two actors take the scene now enacting diagonals and straight lines respectively. It’s very funny, as SS hems MF in, who finds on the Wanamaker stage less room to manoeuvre diagonally and gets cornered.
WT: It’s quite difficult to act and move – it’s a kind of drama school exercise.
There followed a quickfire series of interjections and questions, all around the theme of movement.
Q Movement means they seem to have less control over themselves
WT: Good point
Student Q because of Gondomar not being able to sit down Simon can’t sit either.
Q About Webster. Are there similar things going on with him?
Q Wouldn’t it have made sense that black and white would be left sinister and White would be right?
WT/JPS/SS/MF et al: Damnit!!!! they all say. We should have thought of that.
Q It’s unlikely the movement was used all over the board like that. Middleton’s fluid games were a theatrical and dynamic thing.
But with a fistula he might walk with a limp
WT: Glad we’re all gone there in our minds!
SS And no jumping about!
Q It made sense to walk and talk quietly in asides
SS The Wanamaker’s ideal for asides, though I’ve not worked before but at the Globe.
Q No pillars in the Globe? Two are cantilevered.
Q I liked the movement – the flinch or cornering seemed natural
Michael: Yes that was a natural response
WT: We can crack it open with a lounge lizard look
Michael: Even the bones experience remaining
Q again re movement: It was though controlled
Q Bishops can’t and knight can travel to every square?
WT: Yes
Q Weren’t the actors necessarily fidgety and in chess that’s not so.
WT: That’s stasis and tension
Q follows on: the Bishop’s move is clear and goes at speed, a good index of confidence. When trapped little diagonals make it very hard to hide. It’s a State of mind, we can read them through their actual movement. So the Black Knight is much more difficult to read his minds and moves are far easier to disguise.
Overall it was felt that though fascinating, these ridged choreographies aren’t as compelling as one would wish in a performance. So ultimately, a fascinating experiment that’s been abandoned.
WT introduces final extract no Q’s sadly
Anna and Emma
About the Black Queen’s Pawn, or BQP JPD: is not certain what they mean, quite who they might be
There’s a peculiar BQP agency: one woman wanted to be a martyr setting out to be one in England, but never succeeded
We’re doing the end of Act 3 – there’s no acts 4 and 5.
There’s a stand-off with Anna and Emma circling a different kind of seduction.
WQP is nearly raped – a Jesuit overreach
BQP still trying to seduce WQP
A plucked string music played offstage – a remarkable seduction scene
WT: WQP has pledged herself to virginity as the man she was in love with, was castrated by the Black King’s Pawn, BKP. There’s an erotic and magical element. So she’s celibate through trauma, not choice.
JPD says it’s really a derided kind of magic. Playing on that prejudice.
Anna: About attitudes Anna points out how much has changed. WQP’s not a virgin through dedication to God, it’s trauma. She still has desire even if she’s committed to God.
With the BQP the game in room to seduce a woman to sexual fantasy is just part of it. To enlist her is the prize the Black Knight is interested in. But there’s of course the Fat Bishop’s lust to deal with.
Asked by a theatre director (someone I know by sight). This grooming is all very modern but it’s written to ride a sectarian wave and some accommodation must be made. Protestantism is being crushed in Europe. Serious thought should be given to an incendiary play.
WT: Yes, serious thought to what plays are not performed and now these change. For instance plays deemed unplayable in the mid 19th century are perfectly acceptable now, but visa versa that’s also true.
The director talks of how this is framed: a Catholic seduction and numbers game only: nothing of heaven or salvation. It appealed to deep ingrained prejudice.
For instance, if this were staged in Spain, or with Catholics now? Staging there are moments whose power even on short acquaintance is vastly enjoyable but in any preparation time one would definitely ask the police first!
Q magical Egyptian glass? Racialising?
WT: Yes absolutely right, there’s a very similar othering
Q Last scene – isn’t it modern and accessible?
WT: Yes, pure grooming – quite disturbing
Q Weren’t major converts to Catholicism high profile people? So it’s hard not to think it happened
Q This has been so intense. We get sexual violence, a cast nearly raped? Then groomed? Then beaten again? Metaphor’s freaking!
WT: Yes an excellent observation.
And that’s it, the actors are not allowed to work here more than eight hours and have been since noon, so we cut off at 20.15.
A Game at Chess
Shakespeare’s Globe Stages
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