A Chess Mystery

I was in conversation this morning with the writer Joanna Trollope and chess grandmaster, Raymond Keene, at the official launch of outdoor chess in Holland Park. Amongst the topics was Shakespeare and the single reference to chess in The Tempest.

Act V Sc. 1:

Here Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda,

playing at chess

Ferdinand and Miranda by Angelica Kauffman

MIRANDA

Sweet lord, you play me false.

FERDINAND

No my dearest love,

I would not for the world.

MIRANDA

Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,

An I would call it fair play.

What are they arguing about? She is accusing him of cheating and he says not. Can one be right and the other wrong?

At about the time that the Tempest is set, there were two sets of rules for chess: the original Islamic ones and the more recently agreed European rules (that eventually replaced them circa 1475). One of the major changes affected the Queen. In the earlier game she could only move one square, but in the revised version became free to travel across the board as today.

Miranda and her father Prospero had been trapped on an island for twelve years before the tempest, devined by Prospero, that shipwrecked and brought Ferdinand and his father, Alonso, the King of Naples to their door (and the "comedie" that followed).

Raymond's theory is that in this game, Ferdinand moved his Queen as per the modern game, whereas Miranda was playing to the old rules. Thus - neither was cheating and indeed both were right! Mystery solved!

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