4 - “Now if the devil have bones,/ These dice are made of his”: Dice Games on the English Stage in the Seventeenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
Dice play was one of the most common, and also the most lamented, games in early modern England. While the game of dice was easy and inexpensive enough that almost anyone could play, moralists and preachers singled it out as particularly pernicious. Even cards, another game of chance, at least demanded a kind of skill (though too often a devious and dishonest skill), and might therefore at some time be permissible: “Dice be wholly evil, because they wholly depend on Chance […]. Tables and cards be somewhat evil, because they somewhat depend upon chance.” When one rolled the dice, he or she put the outcome beyond the scope of human causality, and many early moderns suspected this invoked the supernatural. Someone—or something—it seemed, surely had to decide the roll. In this period before the development of a mathematical theory of probability, this placed pure games of chance like dice firmly contiguous with the occult. In this chapter, I explore the staging of dice games on the seventeenth-century English stage and demonstrate the importance of demons and demonology for contemporary understanding of the allure of these games and interpretation of their results.
Keywords: Thomas Middleton, Thomas Heywood, dice, demonology, gambling
According to many moralists, dice-play was all but ubiquitous in early modern England. Avarice, pleasure, and superficial honor, claims one anonymous pamphleteer (perhaps somewhat hyperbolically), all ensured the universal popularity of the vice: “Behold the three-forked trident wherewith this domineering practice, like Neptune in the ocean, commands the waters of all nations, mastering, and subduing most powerfull, both rich and poore, both Court and Countrie, both Nobles and Commons.” Indeed, dice-play was one of the most common, and also one of the most frequently denounced, games in the period. While dice games were easy and inexpensive enough to allow everyone access, they appealed especially to the nobility, as young men eagerly gambled away their fortunes, and moralists and preachers singled out dice as particularly pernicious to social stability. And yet, while domestic and economic fears certainly influenced discussion of unlawful gaming, they never fully explain the dice-player, especially as seen on the stage and in pamphlets condemning the practice.
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- Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019