“Hazard All He Hath”: Shakespeare's Gambling World

Elizabethan Gambling in Context

Shakespeare wrote at an interesting juncture in English gambling history. Though the English had borrowed many of their games, and even their cards, from the Continent, they had a history of gaming no shorter than that of Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. A chronicler of the twelfth century declared that clergy and bishops were fond of dicing, and the diplomat, author, and bishop John of Salisbury, writing in the same century, denounced “the damnable art of dice-playing.” Later, royal decrees criminalized dicing, and criminal records from the City of London dating as far back as 1311 show that those who were “wont to entice strangers … to a tavern, and there deceive them by using false dice,” or otherwise made their livings from playing at dice, were often imprisoned. ¹

Geoffrey Chaucer, whose fourteenth century writings mark the beginnings of a distinctly English literature, described gamblers and gambling in his Canterbury Tales. “The Cook's Tale” is a sketch of an apprentice who loves the tavern better than his master's shop and is renowned as the best dice-shooting apprentice in town. This fun-loving apprentice, named Perkin Reveller, energetically pursued dice, wine, song, dance, and girls of joy, to the unfortunate detriment of his victualing. After his master learned of his perfidy and discharged him from his apprenticeship, Perkin moved in with a fellow dicer whose wife supplemented his income by prostitution; surrounded by whores and thieves, this reveler was in his happy element. At that point, regrettably, the tale leaves off, but it does show that dicing was a common sport of laborers in medieval England, that one could shoot dice in the street or in a tavern, and that the game occupied the same margins as drinking, dancing, and whoring. ²

This was not Chaucer's only mention of gambling, which was apparently common, yet, in the words of his characters at least, morally reprehensible when carried to excess. In “The Pardoner's Tale,” Chaucer painted the three roisterers around whom the tale revolves as thoroughly debauched by their drinking and gambling. Two of the derelicts plot to murder their companion and split his share of a found treasure so that “Then may we both our lusts all fulfill, and play at dice right at our own will.” In an aside on the evils of swearing, he described “hazard” [gambling] as “the very mother of all lies.” The fruit of gambling included swearing, anger, deceit, and murder. If even a noble prince gambled, Chaucer wrote, his reputation would suffer, even more so because better was expected of him. ³ Throughout the Tales, gambling is depicted as a worthless obsession.

Yet gambling still remained popular in England. Fairs, festivals, and traveling carnivals, each of which likely had plenty of gambling, crossed and re-crossed the English countryside during medieval and Renaissance times. As was true earlier, archery and archery contests remained important because they contributed to the national defense. Archery was celebrated as an honest, wholesome sport, and an author in 1545 described the sport as a cure for “evil gaming.” Still, there is no reason that competitors or spectators might not have gambled on the outcome of archery contests, or on other sports of the time, such as the lost game of shin-kicking, in which participants literally kicked each other in the shins as a means of measuring athletic ability. ⁴

Card playing came into England after it had overspread Europe, and was received just as enthusiastically as on the Continent. The English, despite an early Spanish influence, ultimately adopted the French deck (specifically, the regional variation dominant in Rouen), which they would later export to their American colonies and would remain virtually unchanged after those colonies became the United States. The English named the court cards king, queen, and knave (a word which originally meant servant), a faithful copying of the French, but mixed Latin names into the suits. The French couers became hearts, and the carreaux became diamonds in literal translations, but the trefles were called clubs, recalling the Latin bastoni, and the piques, spades, after the Latin spados, or swords. ⁵

Gambling with cards received a mixed reception in England. Some writers, like Thomas Elyot (1531) and John Northbrooke (1577) fulminated against dice playing, arguing that it was a species of “plain idleness” that did nothing to exercise the mind or the body. ⁶ Northbrooke held out that card playing, which incorporated some mental dexterity, was not all bad, though in his Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes, With Other Idle Pastimes, he marshaled a fleet of antigambling statutes and writings from throughout history to prove that gambling was bad idleness. Citing the Bible, Suetonius's Lives of the Emperors, Chaucer, Elyot, and many others, he concluded that dice playing was “the mother of lies, of perjuries, of theft, of debate, of injuries, of manslaughter, of the very invention of the devils of hell; an art altogether infamous, and forbidden by the laws of all nations.” Yet, he realized, gaming still flaunted itself throughout the world, as it was embraced by the common people and was even “the most accustomed pastime that kings and nobles use.” ⁷

Though royalty and nobility enjoyed cards, they were uneasy about gambling's popularity among the laboring masses. This trepidation soon manifested itself in ambiguous legislation that sought to curtail gambling while encouraging the production of cards. The first parliament that met during the reign of Edward IV in 1461 prohibited both card playing and dicing, except during the 12-day Christmas holiday. ⁸ Two years later, the king issued an edict banning the importation of playing cards, not because cards were seen as a baleful influence, but rather to protect the domestic card-making industry. With French card makers flooding the markets with their inexpensive mass-printed wares, this was an understandable protectionist measure, and it served to boost the growing trade of English card makers. ⁹

Later monarchs continued Edward's policies of encouraging the development of the card-making industry while attempting to limit gambling. In 1496, Henry VII forbade members of the working class from playing cards for most of the year. Recalling perhaps the relaxation of antigambling statutes during Saturnalia enjoyed by the Romans, he declared that servants could only legally play at cards during the Christmas holiday, and then had to do so in their master's house, presumably under his supervision. Henry VIII outdid him, declaring in 1541 that, since the practice of archery was necessary for homeland security, several categories of gaming, including bowling, tennis, dicing, and carding, were prohibited. Able-bodied men were enjoined to instead own longbows and practice archery. Still, Henry VIII remained a resolute card player himself, and public gaming houses continued to flourish throughout the realm. ¹⁰ Moderate gambling was generally tolerated, except when it interfered with work or religious obligations, as exemplified by Chaucer's Perkin Reveller, whose sin wasn't in gambling, but in taking it too far. Throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, archdeacons regularly prosecuted their parishioners for gambling when they should have been at church and profaning the Sabbath by card play; two congregants, in 1575, were sentenced to highway labor as a punishment. ¹¹

Despite churchly disapproval, gambling was considered a kingly prerogative, which may explain the never-lonely office of the Groom Porter. It is not known when this royal official was first appointed; the earliest description appears in a book on royal offices written between 1526 and 1530. According to this account, the groom porter ensured that the king's chambers were properly outfitted with everyday furniture (tables, chairs, etc.) and gambling equipment, namely cards and dice. He also decided disputes arising from gambling at dice, cards, bowling, and other games. Those among the royal retinue who wished to gamble always found action in the groom porter's quarters, and his lodgings became notorious as a gathering point for gamblers. ¹²

The gambling impulse remained strong in Shakespeare's day. In his 1610 play, The Alchemist, Ben Jonson spoofed the “cony-catchers” or swindlers of Elizabethan England. One of his characters, trying to establish another as a man born under a lucky star, boasted that when gambling he would win within a fortnight enough “to buy a barony. They will set him Upmost, at the Groom Porter's, all the Christmas.” ¹³ The groom porter became notorious as a symbol of the unrestrained gambling of the Christmas season.

Yet gambling was present throughout the year, offering fun as well as menace. In The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine, Samuel Rowlands described the raffish Sir Revel, as asking:

Speak, gentlemen, what shall we do today?

Drink some brave health upon the Dutch carouse?

Or shall we go to the Globe and see a play?

Or visit Shoreditch, for a bawdy house?

Let's call for cards or dice, and have a game,

To sit thus idle is both sin and shame. ¹⁴

But Revel is out for more than a good time. The poet then describes him as playing at dice “to coney-catch,” and attending the theater looking for “some purse to nip.” ¹⁵ So gambling, while it could be enjoyed in fellowship, was also something to be wary of. Those offering dice might be looking for more than the thrill of a wager; caveat emptor.

More a diversion than an obsession, gambling was nevertheless omnipresent in English society. According to one contemporary chronicler, “from All Hallows eve to the following Candlemas day, there was, among other sports, playing at Card for counters, nails, and points, in every house, more for pastime than for gain.” ¹⁶ Shakespeare's audience would have been familiar with games, and understood the attractions of gambling, but it would not have been too controversial an activity. It was simply something that many people did. This would change as gambling's popularity rose.

Gambling became more central to English life after Shakespeare's time. On Christmas Day, 1661, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that Bishop Morley railed against the “mistaken jollity of the Court” that prevailed at the groom porter's, and enjoined his flock to forswear the “excess in plays and gaming” that had come to dominate the holiday season, when gaming was completely legal, and instead remember the true meaning of Christmas and celebrate joy and hospitality though, Pepys noted, one of his neighbors said that “the Bishopp himself do not spend one groat to the poor himself.” ¹⁷

Pepys was writing during the first great boom of English gambling, which commenced with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. In 1668, Pepys chronicled “deep and prodigious gaming at the groom porter's, vast heaps of gold squandered away in a vain and profuse manner.” Jonson felt this was a horrid vice “unsuitable to a Christian court,” but apparently few others shared his inhibitions, as the office—and the royal sanction of courtly gambling—continued until the reign of George III. The king abolished the office in 1772 because, according to that year's Annual Register, he was not accustomed to playing at hazard. He ordered the current groom porter pensioned off, and decreed that “there be no card playing amongst the servants.” ¹⁸

The slowly rising tide of Elizabethan days is indicative of broader social changes. Growing population and rising land and food costs shook up the social order, with lawyers, merchants, and large farmers moving upward into the gentry, circumstances permitting, while those of less means generally suffered. “These were very bad times,” notes a study of the era, “for the urban poor.” ¹⁹ With greater wealth and greater poverty and a “general, steady improvement” for those in the middle, Shakespeare inhabited a world where chance played a major role. ²⁰

Games Elizabethans Played

Hazard was the preeminent English gambling game for centuries, and it was at the peak of its popularity when Shakespeare wrote his plays. It was such a common game that “hazard” as a verb was synonymous with “gamble” and “risk.” Played with two dice, the game pitted the caster, or dice thrower, against an opponent. The caster picked a number between five and nine as his main. He then rolled the dice. If he rolled his main he won immediately; a two or three was an automatic loss. 11 and 12, depending on the main chosen, could result in a win or loss. Any other number than the main between four and ten, if rolled, became the caster's chance, which he had to roll to win. If he rolled his original main after rolling a chance, he lost. ²¹

Hazard moved the poet Charles Cotton, who in 1674 published The Compleat Gamester, a gambling guide, to lyricism. “Hazzard is a proper name for this game,” he wrote, “for it speedily makes a Man or undoes him; in the twinkling of an eye either a Man or a Mouse.” ²² He then went on to describe the game's play and relate a few personal anecdotes. Cotton ended his section on hazard by remarking on the game's broad appeal:

Certainly Hazzard is the most bewitching Game that is plaid on the Dice; for when a man begins to play he knows not when to leave off; and having once accustom'd himself to play at Hazzard, he hardly ever minds anything else . … To conclude, happy is he that having been much inclined to this time spending money-wasting Game, hath took up in time, and resolved for the future never to be concerned with it more; but happy is he that hath never heard the name therof. ²³

Writing when the Restoration gambling boom was on the ascent, Cotton's conclusion—that hazard is irredeemably addictive—might not have been shared in Shakespeare's day, but his description does give a sense of the fast-paced nature of hazard play. As he says, this was a game for men; an appetite for risk above all defined masculinity.

Dice were one way to play quick, almost rude games, to gamble quickly and decisively; play at cards was slower-paced, more nuanced, and often more cerebral. Further, cards traditionally skewed to a higher social bracket than dice. The first card games to gain prominence in England were the Spanish and Italian favorites of primero and ombre, each of which enjoyed wild popularity in sequence. Primero dominated the Elizabethan period, with ombre gradually overtaking it in the next century. Three-cornered ombre tables, found ubiquitously among the furniture of the period, bear silent witness to the popularity of the three-handed game in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Primero, according to playing card historian David Partlett, was “certainly” played at the court of Elizabeth I, and was broadly popular. ²⁴ It was played with a 40-card deck (8s, 9s, and 10s removed), with all other cards assigned the following values:

Four cards were dealt face down to the players, who, starting from the dealer's left, chose whether to stake, bid, or pass. Staking meant matching a previous bid. To bid, one staked and then announced a new bid, consisting of a point total, type of hand, and the amount pledged. The following hands were playable:

Numerus: two or three cards of the same suit

Primero: one card of each suit

Maximus: the Ace, Six, and Seven of one suit

Fluxus: all four cards of the same suit

Chorus: four of a kind

In the example given by mathematician Jeff Suzuki, “if a player had a 2 of clubs, 3 of diamonds, 4 of spades, and King of clubs, he would have a primero (one of each suit) and his point total would be 12 + 13 + 14 + 10 = 49; thus he could bid “primero 49.” Any player after him who bid would have to beat a primero 49, either by naming a higher rank (e.g., maximus) or a higher point total (e.g., “primero 59”).” ²⁵ A passing player did not have to wager money to stay in the hand, but was forced to discard one or two cards and select replacements.

When bidding, players were free to state a lesser hand and point total than they actually had; a player holding a chorus of 7 (point total 84), could declare “primero 42.” After an initial round of bids, stakes, and passing, players had the chance to stake or bid again. These betting rounds continued until no one matched a bid, triggering a final showdown in which all players showed their cards. The player holding the highest hand won, a chorus beating a fluxus, which beat a maximus, and so forth. If two players had the same hand type, the player with the higher point total won. ²⁶

Primero was a game that required a fair amount of quick calculating and deep strategy: with good cards, should one stake or raise? By how much should one understate his point total? It was a far cry from the quick decisions of the hazard table. There was a small element of strategy to hazard, as casters could choose their main, but chance predominated. Primero, like its eventual descendant poker, was a game where character mattered: the cards your opponent held were less important than your perception of the cards he held. There was a meritocratic component to the game—everyone got cards, but knowing how to do something with them could win money—that fit in with the growing commercial spirit of Elizabeth's reign.

Other games were popular as well. The game of gleek resembled the French piquet more than glic, as it was a game with several phases of betting, as players vied for the longest series of suited cards, played out tricks, and won stakes for gleeks (threes of a kind) and mournivals (fours of a kind). Noddy, tray-trip, bone-ace (better known as one-and-thirty, and a predecessor of blackjack), tick-tack, and trump were other card games found in Shakespeare's day.

Novum, a dice game, was more communal than hazard, being played by between five and nine at a time. Little survives of the game today outside of its references in Shakespeare, but it is known that five and nine were important numbers, making it clear that the game, like hazard, was played with two dice. ²⁷

There was no shortage, then, of card and dice games for Shakespeare to draw on in his plays.

Lotteries

There was another, relatively new, way to gamble that was emerging just as Shakespeare was writing his plays: lotteries. The earliest known lottery conducted under the auspices of the English crown took place in 1569, when Shakespeare was five years old. This draw lottery, inspired by earlier draws in Venice and the Low Countries, was organized directly on the order of Queen Elizabeth, and its promoters offered to the public 400,000 “lotts” (tickets), priced at ten shillings sterling each, which gave a chance at prizes of “ready money” and “certain sorts of merchandise.” The Queen had authorized this lottery for the express purpose of converting its excess revenues to “the reparations of the havens and strength of the realm, and towards other public good works.” In this regard, it, like most lotteries, blended opportunities for personal enrichment (a chance at “ready money” and valuable merchandise) with civic responsibility (maintaining the kingdom's harbors and defenses). As a further inducement, all those who bought tickets would be given clemency for all crimes short of outright felony. ²⁸

Still, the royal lottery was not an easy sell. Tickets were, at ten shillings, too expensive for the average subject to buy. Owing to slow sales and the logistical difficulties of selling tickets in 15 towns and cities throughout the realm, it took two years to “successfully” complete the process. Proclamations and advertisements urging public subscription to the lottery began appearing in 1567. Potential ticket buyers were urged to peruse the prizes at the sign of the Queen's Majesty's Arms, in the house of Mr. Dericke, the Queen's personal jeweler. The lottery's organizers promised that it would contain “no blanks,” and that each ticket buyer would win something. ²⁹

According to the original plan, the organizers would sell 400,000 tickets at ten shillings each, for a total of 200,000 pounds. The grand prize was to be worth a total of 5,000 pounds sterling: 2,000 pounds in cash, 600 pounds in plate, and the remainder in “good tapestry, etc.” After this lucky winner, smaller prizes would be paid to the next 29,999 holders of drawn lots. The remaining 370,000 speculators would get a half a crown for their troubles. Organizers hoped to have 100,000 pounds, after expenses, dedicated to the repair of the harbors and other good works. ³⁰

In this first English lottery, tickets were not numbered. Rather, in the Venetian style, purchasers wrote “posies and devises,” or epigrammatic mottos, on their tickets. Many of these “posies” implored God or Fortune to grant a lucky draw: “My pose is small/But a good lot may fall”; “We put in one lot, poor maidens we be ten/We pray God send us a good lot, and that all we may say Amen”; and this humorous couplet: “I was begotten in Calice and born in Kent/God send me a good lot to pay my rent.” ³¹

Despite a massive promotional blitz, the lottery was incredibly unsuccessful: only one-twelfth of the projected 200,000 pounds worth of tickets were actually sold, so the value of prizes was diminished accordingly. The lottery organizers decided to duplicate every entry twelve times and, similar to the Venetian style, simultaneously draw names from one wheel and winning tickets and blanks from another. The actual lottery drawing, held at the west door of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, was, as can be imagined, a logistical nightmare, and took nearly four months to complete even though it ran “day and night,” lasting from January 11 to May 6. ³²

Whether exhausted by the laborious lottery draw or underwhelmed by the lackluster prizes, the English appetite for public lotteries was apparently more than sated by this initial effort. Nearly twenty years passed before Elizabeth's administration launched another lottery; by this time Shakespeare was working in the theater and had likely begun writing. The new lottery was considerably less ambitious than Elizabeth's inaugural draw. Like its predecessor, it was to be drawn at the west gate of St. Paul's, but took “only” three days to complete. Organized by one John Calthorp, the chief prize in this draw was a suit of “marvelous rich and beautiful armor.” This lottery was successfully conducted in June 1586. There were no other major public lotteries for years, though it is likely that, as in Venice, merchants held small lotteries to dispose of otherwise slow-moving merchandise.

Kings James I and Charles I, who reigned from 1603 to 1649, moved England even further into the lottery business, granting a variety of charters for drawings. The earliest lotteries of this period were often run by foreigners, particularly Italians, who seem to have been diligent in exporting the lottery throughout Europe. In 1606, for example, James I granted the Italian merchant Julian Miccottie a license to auction some of his wares by means of a lottery; within four months, it has become so successful that municipal authorities complained that its “great clamor and tumult” was becoming a public nuisance. ³³

Early efforts at colonization were like a lottery: those who sailed knew that the journey would be risky, and investors shared the risk from home. If their “ship came in” laden with spices or gold, they might make fortunes, but it also might be lost at sea. Sir Walter Raleigh's first attempt to plant a bit of Britain in the New World in the 1580s ended in mysterious failure; a ship coming to supply the settlers at Roanoke found nothing more than a now-legendary “Lost Colony.”

By the time of the next major English venture, many investors considered the hazards of a colonial enterprise too risky. After James I chartered the Virginia Company of London to establish a New World colony in1606, the venture struggled for funds. It also suffered from poor decision making and plain bad luck. The first colonists, who arrived in America in 1607, were 105 soldiers of fortune who did little more than scheme, search for gold, and squabble. They found no gold, and made few attempts to grow food or build a permanent settlement. The entire enterprise almost ended in abject failure. In 1610, the colonists had just abandoned their settlement at Jamestown and were sailing to sea when they happened across the arriving new governor's ships; only his determination (and a stock of much-needed supplies) cajoled the settlers into giving frontier life another try. Still, the colony remained a money pit. The original investors had little prospect of seeing any return, and, with rumors of the desperate goings-on in America spreading through London, both new recruits and new investors were scarce. ³⁴

By 1612, the directors of the Virginia Company hoped for some sort of royal bailout. King James did not grant direct assistance, but gave the company the next best thing: a charter to run a public lottery. Even before the new charter granting them the lottery had been issued, those connected to the Company began to publicize this new phase of their enterprise. The lottery was duly organized, and directors even offered incentives to those who sold tickets: one spoon, worth twenty shillings, per three pounds of tickets. ³⁵

The spoons provided little incentive to sellers, and the lottery was delayed for lack of participation. Originally scheduled for May, the drawing finally began on June 29, using the cumbersome double-draw system common to lotteries at the time. Sixty thousand blanks were drawn before a single prize was announced, and by July 20, the excitement was over. A London tailor named Thomas Sharplisse took away the top prize, four thousand crowns in “fayre plate,” which was ceremoniously delivered to his home. Though honestly conducted, the lottery was held to be a failure. ³⁶ Despite this, the Company continued to promote lotteries, beginning a “running” or “ring” lottery that, unlike the standing lotteries conducted in London, would be held in various towns. Owing to the increasingly poor reputation of the Virginia Company as an outfit that paid prizes only grudgingly, public agitation against the lotteries began to mount. Finally, on March 8, 1621, the King issued a proclamation that ordered the Company to cease and desist from continuing in the lottery business. ³⁷

Lotteries were also used closer to home. A series of lotteries helped finance the construction of London's waterworks. The First Royal Fishing Lottery grew out of a royal initiative to build a British fishing fleet that would compete with the state-sponsored Dutch fisherman, who were then ascendant in the waters around the British Isles. Poorly managed and inadequately financed, the undersized British fishing fleet also suffered attacks by Dutch and Spanish raiders, who sank vessels and captured and imprisoned British fishermen, holding them until a sizeable ransom was paid. The Society of the Fishery of Great Britain and Ireland begged the king's permission to organize a relief lottery, similar to that of the Virginia Company's, and although the king gave his permission, there is no record of a fishing lottery during his reign, nor is it known if winners were paid in seafood. ³⁸

Although lotteries were scarce during the puritanical years of Oliver Cromwell's protectorate, they returned with renewed vigor following the restoration of the British monarchy in 1660. By that time, they were as old as living memory, having funded numerous projects under the Stuart kings' reign. Like other forms of gambling common in the Elizabethan years, they also had left a record in the writings of Shakespeare.

Gambling in Shakespeare

By the Elizabethan era, gambling was so engrained within the English consciousness that it naturally pops up throughout the works of William Shakespeare. Written and performed primarily for a mass market, his plays provide insight into the degree to which gambling had permeated the soul of his England.

Gambling references in Shakespeare's plays are pervasive. He uses the word hazard, for example, 34 times, usually in its then-understood sense of “gamble” or “risk.” When the forces of the conspirators Brutus and Cassius attack Octavian and Antony in the Battle of Phillipi as depicted in Act V, Scene I of Julius Caesar, Cassius declares that “the storm is up, and all is on the hazard.” ³⁹ Shakespeare likely had Cassius echo Caesar's famous dictum that “the die is cast,” knowing that his listeners would understand the allusion.

Shakespeare's English characters also speak of risky ventures as hazards, playing on the name of the well-known game. The hero Talbot, urging his son to flee and then avenge his father's inevitable death at the hands of the French, uses the language of a gamble. He declares that it is “too much folly” to “hazard all our lives in one small boat.” Since the elder Talbot will die tomorrow from old age if not killed in battle today, he is not a valuable stake, so there is little pay-off for him to retreat. But his son, in whom he has invested his family name and the instrument of revenge, is far more valuable:

In thee thy mother dies, our household's name,

My death's revenge, thy youth, and England's fame:

All these and more we hazard by thy stay;

All these are saved if thou wilt fly away. ⁴⁰

It is too great a “hazard” to risk all of this against a slim chance that one extra man will turn the tide of battle. In the end, it was a bad gamble, as the younger Talbot died valiantly and the elder perished of grief. Shakespeare frequently used the game of hazard to allude to the risks of battle, as when Hotspur asks in Henry IV whether it is prudent “to set so rich a main/On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?” ⁴¹

In Hamlet, Polonius agrees with Reynaldo that gaming (not gambling, which was not then used) is a companion “noted and most known to youth and liberty,” just like drinking, fencing, swearing, and quarrelling.” Hamlet himself muses that he should kill King Claudius, his father's murderer, when he is gambling, thus denying him a share in paradise. He ponders the pleasure of cutting down the pretender while drunk asleep, in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, at gaming, or swearing, all acts with “no relish of salvation” in them, thus tripping him so that his heels “kick at heaven” while his soul is damned to hell. ⁴²

Though gaming might have been a sin, Shakespeare incorporated specific games into his plays. The most popular card game of Elizabethan England, primero, for example, gets mentioned twice. The rakish Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's most vivid characters, declares in The Merry Wives of Windsor that “I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero,” ⁴³ while lamenting his humiliation at the hands of the eponymous merry wives. Shakespeare's Henry VIII was fond of cards; Gardiner, when asked if he has just come from the king, announces that has just left him at primero with the Duke of Suffolk. ⁴⁴ That the monarch would have been playing cards is no wild stab of artistic license; records of the real Henry VIII's expenses reveal frequent losses at cards. ⁴⁵

Shakespeare makes even more prominent mention of dice, as his characters play dice and use the language of dicing. The Prologue of Act IV of King Henry V spoke of “the confident and over-lusty French” playing the “low-rated English” at dice. ⁴⁶ Antony and Octavian of Julius Caesar gamble at dice, lots, and bet on fighting cocks, and Octavian's regular victories foreshadow his divine favor. ⁴⁷ Shakespeare names specific dice games like novum (Love's Labor Lost) and tray-trip (Twelfth Night) in other plays, regardless, it seems, of their setting.

Gambling is a central theme of The Merchant of Venice, fitting for a city then mad with the gambling bug. Everyone speculates: ship owners whose fleets may or may not return, money lenders betting that their customers will default, and even a father who transforms his daughter's courtship into a lottery. The play hinges on the dilemma of Portia, a wealthy heiress who, according to the terms of her father's will, can only marry the man who correctly chooses one of three caskets. She speaks with resignation of “the lottery of my destiny,” when talking about her father's conditions; clearly Shakespeare's listeners understood the idea of a lottery. In Act III, Scene II, Portia implores Bassiano not to gamble rashly:

I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two

Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,

I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile. ⁴⁸

In other words, Portia wants Bassiano to think before possibly choosing the wrong casket. Luckily, he chooses the right casket, which is made of lead and inscribed with the legend, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” For a people familiar with high stakes, this was an instantly understandable message.

The gamester was a common figure in Shakespeare's drama. The protean Edgar of King Lear, while disguised as the madman Tom O'Bedlam, includes gambling in the catalogue of the dissolute life he supposedly once led:

Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly: and in woman

out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of

ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth,

wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. ⁴⁹

Dicing was a central part of his debauchery. The stealthy, conniving gambler was no doubt a figure that audiences would know. Yet the term embraced those who played at more than cards. Anne calls the flirtatious Sands a “merry gamester” in Henry VIII, suggesting that it might also be applied to a lothario. ⁵⁰ Labeling a woman a gamester, though, was hardly complementary: in All's Well That Ends Well, Bertram declares that Diana has been both impudent and “a common gamester to the camp,” a charge that Diana refuted by producing Bertram's ring. ⁵¹

But gamesters weren't always tawdry. In Henry V the king himself lectures that his armies are to avoid despoiling the countryside as they march across France, “for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.” ⁵² Nor did gamblers always consider the sobriquet an insult. The “fantastical Spaniard” Don Armado of Love's Labor Lost admits to being “a gentleman and gamester,” adding that “they are both the varnish of a complete man.” ⁵³

Whether gambling was the mark of a well-rounded gentleman or a sign of duplicity and eternal perdition, it is clear that Shakespeare and his audiences were awash in dice, cards, and gaming of all sorts. That the greatest English writer so frequently had recourse to gambling allusions reveals that the English had already discovered a passion for games of chance. In the following centuries, they would prove more than capable of gambling a distinctly British stamp.

Conclusion

Gambling was omnipresent in Shakespeare's day. As fortunes were lost and gained during these years of great flux, gambling was also a language that permeated audiences' understandings of everyday life. For this reason, the numerous gambling references in Shakespeare's plays were a natural way for him to build character and set scenes. Reading Shakespeare gives a sense of how ever-present gambling was during his time, and understanding the games themselves makes possible an even better appreciation of the dramas and comedies they enliven.