Early Modern Drama · Character Archetypes

BLACK BISHOP

in A Game at Chess — Middleton, Thomas

Metadata

PlayA Game at Chess
AuthorMiddleton, Thomas
Year (catalogued)1625
First performance1624
Decade1620s
GenreComedy
Play typeAdult Professional
CompanyKing's Men
TheaterGlobe;Outdoor Professional
Speech prefix(es)B. B. | B. B,
Words324
Characters1762
Typicality0.37 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP idA07498
BritDrama no.2130
ClusterCluster 17 — Intriguers & schemers

Important excerpts

No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).

Full speech

O you made noble work for the white house This act will fill the adversaries mouth, And blow the Luthrens cheeks, tilt crack again. All more cautelous. She has no witness then? There's Check again. Begone the dangers all in you. A note (sir) of State policy, And and exceeding safe one. Have they those shifts? Why, what's your mystery? O 'twere a Masterpiece of serpent subtlety To fetch him a this side again. I'll make him the baloom ball, Of the Churches. And both the sides shall toss him, he looks Like one, A thing swelled up with mingled drink and wine, And will bound well from one side to another. Come, you shall write our second bishops dead Which has yet no employment in the Game Perhaps nor ever shall, it may be won Without his motion, it rest in ours: He shall be flattered with Seed vacant, Make him believe he comes into his place, And that will fetch him with a vengeance to us, For I know powder is not more ambitious, When the match meet it, then his mind for mounting As Covetous and Lecherous. No more, now (Sir) both the sides fill. Here, more anger yet. Hah, mine, my pawn? the glory of his order, The prime and president zealot on the earth? Impudent pawn, for thy sake at this minute Modesty suffers, all that's virtuous blushes, And truths self Like the sun vexed with a missed, Looks read with anger. Sober sincerity nor you a cup, Spoke with Hypocrisy. Pish, the Galician brain can work out wonders. I to a twelve hours kneeling at one time. You have herd all then. Perfidious. Would that Bishop were in my Diocese, I'de soon change his whiteness. I have don't then, Away upon the wings of speed, take post horse, Cast thirty leagues of earth behind thee suddenly, Leave letters antedated at our house, Ten days at least from this.

Plot summary

Plot — A Game at Chess
Ignatius Loyola returns to Earth to find that the Jesuits do not yet rule the world — which serves them right for ===== PAGE 93 ===== 1624 having taken so long to canonize him. Error shows him a vision of a chess game between the forces of Catholicism (the Black house) and Protestantism (the White house). The White Queen’s Pawn has broken off her engagement to the White Bishop’s Pawn after the latter was castrated by the Black Knight’s Pawn. Now the Black Queen’s and Bishop’s Pawns attempt to seduce her, in both religious and sexual terms; the Black King also hopes to use her as a way of getting at the White Queen, both to satisfy his lust and as part of the Black house’s scheme for world domination. In the event, however, she rejects the advances of the Black Bishop’s Pawn and he attempts to rape her, but is interrupted. The discovery of his hypocrisy provides ammunition for the White cause. However, the victim loses credence when the Black Knight produces forged documents purporting to show that the Black Bishop’s Pawn was not in the country at the time of the incident. The White King allows the Black house to determine her punishment, but the Black Knight's stratagem is exposed and the pawn vindicated. The Black Knight takes the White King’s Pawn, who turns out to be an agent of Black anyway; he expects to be made a cardinal, but the Black Knight double-crosses him and he ends up in the bag. The Black Queen’s Pawn pretends sympathy for her White opposite number, and tries again to win her for Black by predicting her marriage to an up-and-coming Black gentleman. The White Queen’s Pawn shows interest, and is shown her future husband in a magic mirror; in fact it is a ruse, and the man she sees is the Black Bishop’s Pawn. When they are introduced, however, she refuses to have sex until they are married; but being a Jesuit, he cannot marry. The Black Queen’s Pawn persuades her White equivalent that a contract is enough, but substitutes herself when the sexual encounter takes place; she later reveals this when the Black Bishop’s Pawn is pressing himself on his supposed bedfellow, before both Black pawns are taken. The Black Knight’s Pawn is guilt-stricken at his crime against the White Bishop’s Pawn, but he cannot buy absolution because castration is not included in the Black Bishop’s book of indulgences. Murder, however, is: the penitent pawn must kill his victim if he is to be forgiven, but he is taken when he makes the attempt. The Black Bishop attacks…