Two French kings were killed by this game

October 2, 2021 9:11 AM

A history of and my first go at MEDIEVAL TENNIS

Real tennis, or court tennis, is currently played in the United Kingdom (which has over half of the world's active courts,) the United States, Australia, and France. (There is an effort in Ireland to revive a court.) At the World Championship level, the sport has been dominated since 1994 by Australian Rob Fahey. Rob's only Championship loss came in 2016 against the American Camden Riviere, highlights of which can be seen here.

Real tennis was mentioned previously w/r/t tennis scoring.

Nikolas Lloyd, better known as Lindybeige (the result of YouTube suggesting he use a hobby and favorite color for a channel name,) posts videos on a variety of topics with an emphasis on history (partially previously.)

posted by ChurchHatesTucker (23 comments total)

Thanks for posting this! I came across this once trawling Wikipedia looking at all the different variations of sports there are. It’s nice to see the game in action, which looks actually really fun. I had no idea there are championships but obviously ESPN needs to carry all of the matches.
posted by gc at 9:47 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I choose to believe that the clock thing is real and we’re just wrong about when minute hands were invented.
posted by theodolite at 9:56 AM on October 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Other faves of mine are his long (40 minutes plus) videos on river crossings and siege ladders.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 10:18 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Came for the discussion of tennis in Henry V, and was not disappointed, although I wish that he'd made it clearer that the Dauphin claimed that his gift was fair compensation for Henry giving up his claim to the French throne, and thus the implied insult. (My favorite scene in the play that doesn't have Henry in it is when Exeter, his uncle, pays a visit to the French court, and when the Dauphin, whom Exeter is all but ignoring, asks if Henry has anything to say to him; Exeter's response is "Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt, And any thing that may not misbecome The mighty sender, doth he prize you at," and then specifically references the bit with the tennis balls, and points out how badly that turned out for the French.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:49 AM on October 2, 2021 [8 favorites]

I went to the court in Oxford a couple of times when I was there as an exchange student to watch people play and soak up the lovable obscurity of the thing. I never picked up a racket myself but one thing this minimal exposure to the sport encouraged in me with was an openness to improvising games using roofs, walls, corners, tree trunks, or whatever along with a tennis ball or rubber ball when out and about in young adulthood with my brothers or cousins or friends. Make up the rules as you go along! Who cares!

And it's also nice to know about when teaching Henry V.
posted by sy at 11:17 AM on October 2, 2021

Tennis gets a reference in Shakespeare's Henry V, based largely on this passage from Holished's Chronicle (1587 edition):

Whilst in the Lent season the king lay at Killingworth, there came to him from Charles, Dauphin of France certain ambassadors that brought with them a barrel of Paris balls, which from their master they presented to him for a token that was taken in very ill part, as sent in scorn to signify that it was more meet for the king to pass the time with such childish exercise than to attempt any worthy exploit. Wherefore the king wrote to him, that ere ought long, he would toss him some London balls that perchance should shake the walls of the best court in France.

(Whether the French actually sent tennis balls or not is chased up by historians here.)

In any case, Shakespeare makes of this:

HENRY:

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us.
His present and your pains we thank you for.
When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturbed
With chases. [...]

Later in the same speech, we come to a passage where the repeated use of the word "mock" seems to evoke the sound of a ball being struck:

And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turned his balls to gun-stones, and his soul
Shall stand sore chargèd for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands,
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
And some are yet ungotten and unborn
That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.

(Whether the French actually sent tennis balls or not is chased up by historians here.)

Going back to the late 1400s, one of the best plays in medieval theatre, the Second Shepherds' Play in the Towneley mystery cycle, has the youngest of the shepherds present a ball as a gift to the infant Jesus:

Hail, darling dear, full of godhede!
I pray thee be near, when that I have need.
Hail! sweet is thy cheer: my heart would bleed
To see thee sit here, in so poor weed
With no pennies.
Hail! put forth thy dall.
I bring thee but a ball;
Have and play thee with all,
And go to the tennis.

posted by Pallas Athena at 11:23 AM on October 2, 2021 [11 favorites]

(I should really hit preview before hitting post, especially if I've taken a while to type..... alas, alas.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 11:25 AM on October 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Is this what they were playing in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?
posted by saturday_morning at 11:45 AM on October 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

I choose to believe that the clock thing is real and we’re just wrong about when minute hands were invented.

Well, they had the concept of minutes at any rate. You don't need a physical clock.

Is this what they were playing in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?

The marks on the floor look more like (anachronistic) lawn tennis markings to me.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:04 PM on October 2, 2021

Random note: At 20:37 he says "We span a racket to determine who would get choice of end", and I got super excited since it's the first time I've ever heard anyone use that past form for "spin", and more generally the first time I've ever heard a nonstandard past form that replaces a more standard "u" (as in "spun") with an "a", as opposed to the opposite direction. (Dictionary.com lists "span" but calls it archaic, which fits the theme nicely!)
posted by trig at 1:35 PM on October 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then a gentleman?

(My mother was strangely attached to a sexual interpretation of the first line, with miming, which I suspect is a generation-skipping bit of antique anticlericalism. )
posted by clew at 2:35 PM on October 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then a gentleman?

Thanks, I'd never heard of this! (or realized that "delve" originally meant "dig" and not "dive")
posted by trig at 2:55 PM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

"Charles died in 1498, two and a half years after his retreat from Italy, as the result of an accident. While on his way to watch a game of jeu de paume (real tennis) in Amboise he struck his head on the lintel of a door"

I have beaten
the batons
that were in
the yard box

and which
you were probably
saving
for The Tennis Court Oath

Forgive me
they were dangerous
such sweat
and so cold
posted by clavdivs at 4:00 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this--I had heard about the game over time from various Shakespearean and historical references, but I never actually thought to look up any video, so I had no actual referent in my head for it. It's really interesting to see!
posted by theatro at 4:23 PM on October 2, 2021

Henry V isn't the only Shakespeare play with tennis references. I saw a production of Pericles ages ago, and the director used lines about tennis as a repeated motif, and I think a couple of the inmates (it was set in an insane asylum) played at tennis briefly.

A man whom both the waters and the wind,
In that vast tennis-court, have made the ball
For them to play upon, entreats you pity him:
He asks of you, that never used to beg

Aha, found a review, though it doesn't mention the tennis.
posted by tavella at 5:04 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

There's also an interesting (and fairly fictionalized) scene of Charles VIII playing this jeu in the 'Borgia' miniseries (the one without the more famous actors). Don't have the clip.
posted by ovvl at 6:01 PM on October 2, 2021

There's a tennis scene in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973) (AKA the best one) and the court looks a lot like this one.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:50 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

Two French kings were killed by this game

A king of Scotland as well. James I of Scotland fled his assassins into a sewer under a tennis court, but the exit had been recently blocked on his own orders because he kept losing his tennis balls in it, somehow, and they stabbed him to death, in a sewer, under the tennis court.
posted by rodlymight at 9:38 PM on October 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

I found the bit about James I earlier, and apparently "the balls that he played with oft ran in at that fowle hole" was *not* actually a sly implication that he was having sex with men, I guess?
posted by tavella at 1:26 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

This was so interesting! I barely know anything about (lawn) tennis, and it was neat to see the original game explored. Thanks for posting.
posted by Liesl at 6:23 AM on October 3, 2021

I think a couple of the inmates (it was set in an insane asylum) played at tennis briefly

Interestingly, the game of Rackets was developed in a debtor's prison in the eighteenth century. Rackets is the predecessor to Squash, and like court tennis is still played by enthusiasts despite being largely eclipsed by its descendant.

I've never seen an explanation of how a debtor's prison came to have tennis rackets.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:34 AM on October 3, 2021

Not quite the tennis in the video, but no discussion of real tennis is complete without a mention of Álvaro Enrigue’s novel Sudden Death, which follows a 1599 pallacorda match between Michelangelo Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo.
posted by isnotchicago at 12:05 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

If you want to get into the details of the game, Ronaldson Publishing has a pair of videos (meant to accompany their book "Tennis - A Cut Above the Rest") that demonstrate techniques used in real tennis.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:33 PM on October 6, 2021