See the Introduction to this presentation of early poems by Edward de Vere. Click here to go to the next poem or the previous poem in the series. All the poems, and a printable pdf version of the entire presentation, may also be accessed from the Introduction. See also Note on Sources, Titles, and Presentation of Parallels, Key to Abbreviations, and Bibliography of Works Cited.
Poem No. 13: “Love Compared to a Tennis-Play”
1 Whereas the heart at tennis plays, and men to gaming fall,
2 Love is the court, hope is the house, and favour serves the ball.
3 The ball itself is true desert; the line, which measure shows,
4 Is reason, whereon judgment looks how players win or lose.
5 The jetty is deceitful guile, the stopper, jealousy,
6 Which hath Sir Argus’ hundred eyes wherewith to watch and pry.
7 The fault, wherewith fifteen is lost, is want of wit and sense,
8 And he that brings the racket in is double diligence.
9 And lo, the racket is freewill, which makes the ball rebound;
10 And noble beauty is the chase, of every game the ground.
11 But rashness strikes the ball awry, and where is oversight?
12 “A bandy ho,” the people cry, and so the ball takes flight.
13 Now in the end, good-liking proves content the game and gain.
14 Thus in a tennis knit I love, a pleasure mixed with pain.
Textual sources: Various manuscripts, including Harleian MS 7392(2) (British Library), Marsh’s Library (Dublin) MS 183, and Rawlinson MS 85 (Bodleian Library, Oxford University). See May (#13) (1980, 35, 75-77, 120; 1991, 279-80) (not in Hannah, Grosart, or Looney). The title appears in the Marsh MS (see May 1991, 279-80), but may not have been chosen by de Vere (see Note on Sources, Titles, and Presentation of Parallels).
As May observes (1980, 76), No. 13’s “date of composition cannot be very precisely determined,” though the relevant MSS were transcribed starting c. 1585, which we suggest as an approximate terminus ad quem. The poem itself (as May also notes, 1980, 76) has no obvious connection with (and thus need not postdate) the 1579 “tennis court quarrel” (discussed below). No. 13 could easily date to the 1570s or even de Vere’s teenage years in the 1560s.
Structure: Sonnet (though not in classically Shakespearean form). Each rhyming couplet is a “fourteener” (14 iambic beats), a form popularized (as Professor Stritmatter notes in his published study) by the “Arthur Golding” translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, universally accepted as an extremely important influence on “Shakespeare.” Golding was de Vere’s maternal uncle and de Vere lived in the same household with him as a teenager while the Ovid translation was prepared — a translation in which many Oxfordians suspect de Vere himself had a youthful hand.
Past commentaries on parallels: Sobran (254-55).
Clarifications of the text:
(6) Argus Panoptes is a multi-eyed giant in Greek mythology, according to which some of his eyes always remain watchfully awake while others sleep.
(7) The term wit as used here refers to intelligence or mental sharpness, not humor (OED 20: 432-34).
Shakespeare refers often and with seemingly spontaneous naturalism to the then-aristocratic sport of tennis and its terms of art. De Vere devoted all of No. 13 to an extended metaphor on the subject.
Shakespeare’s reference in Hamlet (2.1.59) to “falling out at tennis” has been seen by many scholars, including Chambers (1895, 142), as a possible topical reference to the 1579 “tennis court quarrel” between de Vere and Sir Philip Sidney (see Anderson 149-56) — which, of course, occurred many years before the orthodox view would allow Hamlet to have been written. May (1980, 76) references the quarrel but not the Hamlet connection.
William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon was a 15-year-old boy in 1579, still growing up in that provincial town. The incident was about a decade past by the time conventional wisdom holds he arrived in London (where it happened), and was a full generation past when he is conventionally said to have written Hamlet. Of course, any playwright might write about an incident in which he himself was not involved — but decades later, when it was old and stale news? Sidney died of battle wounds in 1586 at age 31 and was revered as an English national hero. Would a commoner, writing after that, dredge up an unsavory incident from many years before?
Strongest parallels to No. 13:
(1) Whereas the heart at tennis plays, and men to gaming fall
‘There [he] was ’a gaming … There falling out at tennis’ (Ham., 2.1.58-59).
As noted above, the Hamlet connection affirmatively undermines the Stratfordian authorship theory and suggests a significant linkage to de Vere.
See also: ‘to play at tennis’ (Kins., 5.2.56); cf. ‘The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings’ (Hen. VIII, 1.3.30).
Additional parallels to No. 13:
(2, 10) court … chase
‘That all the courts of France will be disturbed With chases’ (Hen. V, 1.2.266).
(6) Sir Argus’ hundred eyes wherewith to watch and pry
‘Watch thou and wake when others be asleep, To pry into the secrets of the state’ (2 Hen. VI, 1.1.247-48); ‘Watch me like Argus’ (Merch., 5.1.230); cf. ‘one that will do the deed, Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard’ (LLL, 3.1.187-88); ‘purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight’ (Troil., 1.2.29).
Argus Panoptes, as noted above, is a multi-eyed giant in Greek mythology, according to which some of his eyes always remain watchfully awake while others sleep. The three Shakespearean references to him are quoted above (Spevack 58).
(9) the racket is freewill, which makes the ball rebound
‘When we have matched our rackets to these balls’ (Hen. V, 1.2.261); cf. ‘tennis-balls, my liege’ (Hen. V, 1.2.258); ‘stuffed tennis-balls’ (Much, 3.2.46); ‘the tennis-court-keeper knows better than I, for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there’ (2 Hen. IV, 2.2.18).
(14) a pleasure mixed with pain
‘Having no other pleasure of his gain But torment that it cannot cure his pain’ (Lucrece, 860-61); ‘since you make your pleasure of your pains’ (Twelfth, 3.3.2); cf. ‘No pains, sir. I take pleasure in singing, sir’ (Twelfth, 2.4.67).
See also No. 2.8 (to whose most pain least pleasure doth befall) and No. 8.18 (What thing did please, and what did pain?).
Continue to Poem No. 14, return to Poem No. 12, or return to the Introduction.
[published June 22, 2018, updated 2021]
