Morgan Library MS G.24, fols. 25vIn this final episode in our holiday chess series, we finish off the last pages in William Caxton’s The Game and Playe of the Chesse, looking at the pawn and the importance of the common people to the realm, and we consider the how to explain pawns becoming queens in a medieval context.

Today’s Texts:

  • Caxton, William. The Game and Playe of the Chesse. Edited by Jenny Adams, TEAMS Middle English Text Series, U of Rochester, 2009.
  • Axon, William E.A. Introduction. Caxton’s Game and Play of the Chesse, Elliot Stock, 1883, pp. ix-lxxii. Google Books.
  • Murray, H.J.R. A History of Chess. Clarendon Press, 1913.

References:

  • Crist, Walter, et al. “Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol. 35, no. 2, May 2016, pp. 179–196. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/ojoa.12084.
  • Eales, Richard. “Changing Cultures: The Reception of Chess into Western Europe in the Middle Ages.” Ancient Board Games in Perspective: Papers from the 1990 British Museum Colloquium, With Additional Contributions, edited by I.L. Finkel, British Museum Press, 2007, pp. 162-168.
  • Finkel, Irving L. “Board Games in Perspective: An Introduction,” Ancient Board Games in Perspective: Papers from the 1990 British Museum Colloquium, With Additional Contributions, edited by I.L. Finkel, British Museum Press, 2007, pp. 1-4.

Image: Detail from Vows of the Peacock, Morgan Library MS G.24, fols. 25v