Polemical Laughter in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624)

Abstract

Contemporary accounts note that audiences laughed heartily at Thomas Middleton’s scandalous play A Game at Chess. But do we really know what they were laughing at? Only partially. Drawing on recent research in early modern wit, I reconsider the place of laughter in the play and its polemical source texts by exploring significant late-Jacobean debates about religious laughter, mockery, personation, and theater. These debates enable a clearer understanding of how laughter works in the play, allowing us in turn to reassess A Game at Chess as a response to the political crisis of 1624 when war between Britain and Spain seemed imminent. [A.S.]