The Chaucer Review

Among the aristocracy in the later Middle Ages, according to the authoritative H. J. R. Murray, "chess attained to a popularity in Western Europe which has never been excelled, and probably never equalled at any later date."¹ Judging by the extant literature, its "conquest of the leisured classes" was complete, "while a knowledge of chess had spread downwards from the inmates of castle and monastery to the wealthier burgesses and merchants of the towns. It was widely played by the Jews in the Ghettoes. It was an essential portion of the equipment of the . . . minstrel."² If the romances, chansons d'aventure, and occasional legal documents are any indication, aristocratic women also played chess and sometimes excelled: the board was regarded as one acceptable point of contact between sexes.³ Allusions to chess in medieval literature are numerous, from inclusions in lists of courtly pastimes, to accounts of chess masters, to legal briefs, to technical treatises, to a full-blown allegorical romance. On the technical side, medieval experimentation with the rules developed the slower Persian game into the seemingly perfected version played today.

Given the high interest in chess in Chaucer's day, it is worth exploring the extent of the poet's knowledge of chess for the light it sheds on him as homo ludens and on his references to the game, notably the famous passage in the Book of the Duchess. Despite two articles in the 1940s on Chaucer and chess and two more in the past decade, the question has never been fully addressed, and Chaucer's references remain problematic. Among the recent treatments, Margaret Connolly assumes that Chaucer's knowledge of chess came only through the Roman de la Rose and so his handling of it was confused and ineffective.⁴ Guillemette Bolens and Paul B. Taylor exonerate Chaucer by assigning the poor application of the chess metaphor to a deliberate rhetorical strategy.⁵ Both readings are somewhat labored and their accuracy compromised by a failure to directly consult Murray's authoritative reference, which dispels some of the difficulties inherent in their understandings.⁶ In this article I argue that Chaucer used the chess metaphor in the Book of the Duchess to express, in the conventional terms of the day, the depths of the Knight's love for his late wife, and also that the poet's knowledge of chess was adequate to this purpose. [End Page 299]

In Chaucer's works there are three references to chess that go beyond the metaphorical use of "mate" or "Chek mat!" (TC II, 754) for one who has been defeated.⁷ One passage in the Franklin's Tale merely includes the game as a typical aristocratic pastime (V 900) and does not warrant further consideration here. Of the other two references, both appear in the Book of the Duchess, and the more extensive one has attracted continued critical attention because of difficulties in its presentation, that is, how it may contribute to our understanding of the narrator and grieving Knight and how it reflects Chaucer's handling of loss as a theme. Using the metaphor of a chess game, the Knight blames his opponent Lady Fortune for the death of his beloved wife Blanche:

"At the ches with me she gan to pleye;With hir false draughtes dyversShe staal on me, and tok my fers.And whan I sawgh my fers awaye,Allas, I kouthe no lenger playe,But seyde, 'Farewel, swete, ywys,And farewel al that ever ther ys!'    "Therwith Fortune seyde, 'Chek her,'And mat in the myd poynt of the chekker,⁸With a poun errant. Allas,Ful craftier to pley she wasThan Athalus, that made the gameFirst of the ches, so was hys name.But God wolde I had oones or twyesYkoud and knowe the jeupardyesThat kowde the Grek Pictagores!I shulde have pleyd the bet at chesAnd kept my fers the bet therby.And thogh wherto? For trewelyI holde that wyssh nat worth a stree!Hyt had be never the bet for me,For Fortune kan so many a wyleTher be but fewe kan hir begile...