September 07, 2004
Chaucer and the Game of Kings
To begin, read Pejman's roundup of discussions about who, in a perfectly played game, has the advantage, white or black? I would take the conventional line that white has the advantage due to tempo, but the idea that a perfectly played game would put white into zugzwang is an attractively counter-intuitive one. The mere fact that these sorts of fun discussions are possible about the game is a point in its favor beyond the life-long joy it can give Caissa's devotees. Then there's the literary uses of chess, an example of which I just happen to have read recently in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess" that I thought I'd share. Here a forlorn knight discusses the vicissitudes of fortune by describing the death of his lady as having resulted from a chess game against Fortune:
At the ches with me she gan to pleye;
With hir false draughtes dyvers
She staal on me and tok my fers.
And whan I sawgh my fers awaye,
Allas, I kouthe no lenger playe,
But seyde, 'Farewel, swete, ywyws,
And farewel al that ever ther ys!'
Therewith Fortune sayd 'Chek her!
And mat in the myd poynt of the chekker,
With a poun errant!' Allas,
Ful craftier to pley she was
Than Athalus, that made the game
First of the ches, so was hys name.
But God wolde I had oones or twyes
Ykoud and knowe the jeupardyes
That kowde the Grek Pictagores!
I shulde have pleyd the bet at ches
And kept my fers the bet therby.
He goes on to lament the "fals, flaterynge beste" that is Fortune, but that's about all that deals directly with chess. I apologize that it's in Middle English, but I don't have a translation into Modern English, so you'll just have to struggle through. To help you, a "fers" was the piece that the evolved into today's queen, although at the time it was not nearly as powerful as it was able only to move one square at a time and only diagonally. The "jeupardyes" were chess problems that, had the knight studied them, might have let him "pleyd the bet" or "played better." The really interesting thing about this passage for me is, as Mark Taylor discusses in "Chaucer's Knowledge of Chess," an article in volume 38, issue 4 of the Chaucer Review, the way in which Fortune checkmates the knight "in the myd poynt of the chekker, / with a poun errant." In other words, Fortune deals the checkmate in the center of the board with a pawn, a truly humiliating and unexpected mate. Fortune so outclasses the knight in chess that she is able to force him into a king walk all the way into the center of the board and then deal checkmate with the lowliest of pieces. As any chess player knows, a pawn mate is one of the most satisfying you can inflict.
By the way, if anyone wants to play me sometime, I'm usually on freechess.org as mallarme and would love a match.