The fair game in Shakespeare's plays? You'd be surprised
Andrew Hughes
March 24, 2011
"Away, Romeo, and return thou not hence until thine average hath been fattened by a goodly two percentage points" Getty Images
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William Shakespeare is perhaps best known as a moderately successful Elizabethan playwright; indeed, one or two of his plays even survive to this day. But more importantly he was also a lower-order biffer and part-time googly merchant of some distinction. This extract from the Warwickshire parish records of 1609 reports perhaps his finest hour on the cricket field: 37 not out in a grudge match at the Stratford Bowl.
"Mister Shakespeare smote the bowling mightily to all parts and much destruction did he wreak by use of a most ungodly stratagem. For when the bowler flung at him, old Will bent him down upon one knee and waved his bat upward at great speed, thus directing the ball to all parts of the field.* Many cows did he strike, and many prayers and curses were offered at such an unholy act. Yet by his smiting, his team held the day and the Stratford Under-Thirteens were defeated by seven wickets."
It is therefore not surprising to find that cricket featured in almost all of his plays, though it was often removed at the request of his editor, who feared that the obsession with bat and ball was detracting from his work. For example, the original Hamlet featured a man tortured by his dilemma over whether to walk or not to walk, and King Lear concerned an elderly umpire racked with guilt over a dodgy lbw decision. Perhaps the finest example of Shakespeare's trademark fusion of cricket and tragedy was the first draft of Romeo and Juliet, a copy of which recently came to light. In this version, the Montagues and Capulets have decided to settle their differences with a game of cricket in a field just outside Verona. The wicket has a green tinge to it, but the Capulets choose to bat first, a mistake of tragic proportions:
Coach: Alas, Romeo, you are arrived too late, all is lost.
Romeo: How can this be? Talk quickly, for I have still to buckle my pads and I fear that rogue Tybalt hath hidden my groin protector.
Coach: It is Juliet!
Romeo: Can it be? Is she out already?
Coach: No, but so recklessly doth she dangle her bat outside the off, as though she were a fisherwoman and the ball a slippery trout. It cannot be long, oh Romeo, before she nicketh one.
Noises off. Enter two Gentlemen, wearing large foam fingers, facepaint and silly wigs
Gentleman 1: Verily, have I ne'er seen such prodigious movement.
Gentleman 2: Aye, twas jagging hither and thither from off the seam.
Gentleman 1: They say, do they not, that Mercutio is deceptively quick.
Gentleman 2: Aye, and none exceed him in the skill of putting it there or thereabouts.
Romeo: What news, gentlemen? Hath the fat lady sung? Are we victorious?
Gentleman 1: Alas, Romeo, our middle order crumbleth like a crumbly thing.
Gentleman 2: 'Twas said they all got starts, but, forsooth, they could not go on.
Gentleman 1: But brave Juliet is at the crease still, though she rideth her luck.
Cries off. Enter Shastri, a tall man in a nice suit.
Shastri: That wicket was just what the apothecary ordered!
Romeo: What trickery is this? A wicket? Tell us, oh well-dressed man!
Shastri: This match, I fear, Romeo, will go down to the wire.
Romeo: Oh stranger, even though thy words are loud like the braying of a donkey, still I cannot understand what it is thou art banging on about.
Shastri: Verily, the bowling change hath done the trick. Thou art in, Romeo.
Romeo: Farewell then, Coach. Parting is such sweet sorrow. I must to the crease now and hope to rotate the strike.
Exeunt Romeo. Noises off.
Gentleman 1: Oh alas, the day is lost.
Coach: What happened?
Gentleman 1: Poor Juliet, she ran the first with great speed, but verily, the second was not really on and she, stranded i' the pitch, did make a piteous sight as she called, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
Gentleman 2: Yet he was at the non-striker's end and heeded not her call.
Gentleman 1: And then Romeo, stricken with guilt, did charge at the next ball, swinging like a rusty gate and was most cruelly stumped. Oh what tragedy! Alas! Can not even Duckworth or Lewis save the day?
Coach: Never was an innings of more woe, than this Juliet and of her Romeo.
Shastri: It's goodnight Verona for the Capulets!
