English Literature

English history and literature are full of references to tables and, later, backgammon. One fourteenth century English tract describes, in Latin, several different ludi ad tabulas. Here is one interesting variation, translated by Strutt:

There are many methods of playing at the tables with the dice. The first of these, and the longest, is called the English game, Ludus Anglicorum, which is thus performed: he who sits on the side of the board marked 1-12 has fifteen men in the part [point] marked 24, and he who sits on the side marked 13-24 has a like number of men in the part 1.

They play with three dice or else with two (allowing al- ways [a roll of] six for a third dice). Then he who is seated at 1-12 must bring all his men placed at 24 through the partitions from 24 to 19, from 18, into 13, and from 12 to 7, into the division 6-1, and then bear them off his opponent must do the same from 1 to 7, thence to 12, thence to 18, into the compartment 19-24; and he who bears off all his men is conqueror.

The same treatise goes on to describe other variations of tables, including Paume Cane, played with two dice and four players.

Chaucer alludes to the game in The Canterbury Tales: “They daucen, and they pleyen at ches and tables”. Spenser refers to it in The Faerie Queene, and in Love’s Labours Lost Shakespeare has Biron say:

“This is the ape of the form,
Monsieur the Nice,
that, when he plays at table,
chides the dice
in honourable terms”.

In 1579 John Northbrooke published a sober treatise reproving “idle pastimes” on the Sabbath Day “by the authoritie of the worde of God and ancient writers”. He has rather a good word to say for our game, or at least he condemns it with faint praise: “Playing at tables is far more tolerable (although in all respects not allowable) than Dice and Cards are, for that it leaneth partlie to chance, and partlie to industrie of the mind”.

At least Northbrooke recognised that tables was a game of skill, and perhaps his attitude was more liberal than it looks, since as recently as 1526 Cardinal Wolsey had decreed that all tables, dice, cards, and bowls were illegal and should be burnt.

However, since people are both stubborn and resourceful, some artisans disguised backgammon boards as books - inside were dice, men, and dice boxes.



<<Previous: Middle Ages | Next: Royal Courts>>