Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/491

 10 s. vii. MAY 25, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

403

shews his hand, but throws his cards with their faces down on the table."

Drake (' Shakspeare and his Times,' ii. 217) says :

" The audience at the theatre would before the play commenced fall to cards, and, to gull the ragamuffins who stood aloof, throw the cards, having first torn four or five of them, round about the stage."

Halliwell observes that primero went rapidly out of fashion after the introduction of ombre.

Lady Morley on the death of her husband in July, 1476, would " not allow disguys- ings, nor lutyng, nor syngyn, nor lowde dysports ; but playing at the tables, chesse, and cards." See ' Paston Letters,' iii. 314.

Quintain is fully described by Strutt in ' Sports and Pastimes,' and in the Intro- duction he says that according to Fitz- Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II., young Londoners exercised themselves in archery, running at the quintain, &c. The quintain was a post fixed perpendicularly in the ground ; on the top there was a crossbar turning on a pivot, with a broad board nailed at one end, and a sandbag at the other. The player rode, or ran, against the board end with a lance, and passed it, if quick enough, before the sandbag, swinging round, struck him on the back. Sometimes, instead of a post, a resemblance to a human figure in wood, looking like a Turk, was substituted ; and to this Shakspeare alludes in ' As You Like It,' I. ii., where Orlando says :

My better parts Are all thrown down, and that which here stands

Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century quintain had become a rustic amusement at fairs and rural weddings. Drake writes at vol. i. p. 302 of ' Shakspeare and his Times ' that when Queen Elizabeth was entertained at Kenilworth Castle in 1575 " with an exact representation of a country bridale, a quintain of this kind formed a part of it." Minsheu in his die tionary, published in 1617, remarks that a quintain was " a game in request at mar riages, where Jack and Tom strive for the gay garland."

Kelly's 'Directory of Kent' for 1905 states of Offham that " on the green stand an ancient quintain, which the lord of th manor preserves." Offham is seven mile north-west of Maidstone.

Shovelboard. The mode of playing thi game is given in Strutt's ' Sports and Pas

imes.' At one end of the board there was line drawn across parallel with the edge, bout four inches from it. The object of the layers was to shove or propel from the palm f the hand smooth coins, or discs of metal,. >eyond the line as near the edge of the table s possible. The coin that fell off the table ?as lost ; if it hung on the edge, it counted 'n the line, 1. At Chartley Hall, Stafford- hire, the table was 31 ft. long ; and there vas one in London 39 ft. in length. Strutt,, n the Introduction mentions that Lord /Eountjoy, Regent of Ireland in 1599, ' delighted in playing at shovel-board " ;. and the game was so popular in England hat there was scarcely a gentleman's house n the country in which this piece of furniture was not a conspicuous object.
 * if between the line and the edge, 2 ; if

The game was known by various names : hovelboard, shovegroat, shoveboard, shuffle- 3oard. In ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' I. i., ?alstaff asks : " Pistol, did you pick Master Slender's purse ? " to which Slender replies : ' Ay .... of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovelboards, that cost me two shilling and two pence a piece." Slender refers to the broad shillings of Edward VT. commonly used in playing. In ' 2 Henry IV.,' II. iv., Falstaff says : " Quoit lim down, Bardolph, like a shovegroat shilling." Ben Jonson in ' Every Man in lis Humour,' III. ii. (acted in 1598), uses the expression, " And made it run as smooth off the tongue as a shovegroat shilling." John Taylor, the Water Poet (1630), caUs the game shoveboard, and makes one of these shillings complain of being so used :

You see my face is beardless, smooth, and plaine, Because my sovereigne was a child, 'tis known.

With me the unthrifts every day, With my face downward, do at shoveboard play.

In ' The Jonson Anthology,' p. 32, compiled by Prof. Arber, there is a song, ' An Old Courtier and a New,' of which the following is one of the verses :

With a new Hall, built where the old one stood ; And a new shuffleboard, where never meat stood, Hung round with pictures, which doth the poor little good,

Like a young courtier of the king's.

James I. in 1603 entrusted the education of his son Prince Henry, aged ten, to Adam Newton, and Strutt gives an interesting account of a conversation between the Prince and his tutor when playing at " shoffle board." In the ' Verney" Memoirs,' ii. 40, Sir Edmund Verney is told by his steward that he is blamed for " you keep showli- board playing on Sondaies." Pepys in his