Free The Immortal Game by David Shenk Page B

phrase fits. In the same way that a near-death experience purports to give a taste of death without the victim actually dying, chess’s expanse skims close enough to infinity for players to peer over the ledge and envision the fall.
             
    W ITH THE new uniform rules, quicker pace, and near-infinite possibility, chess in the sixteenth century not only reclaimed much of its earlier intellectual character. It also gained an even wider social currency. On separate paths, the game and the metaphorical tool each became so entrenched in the culture that “chess” seemed to take on two distinct identities. Among an emerging class of fervent players, it was a supremely hard-fought contest that required intense study and that taxed and stretched minds as never before. For many others, it was an increasingly useful social and symbolic device, diverting idleness, brokering romance, settling feuds, and even aiding diplomacy.
    It came in handy, for example, in the tense atmosphere of the English throne room in the early months of 1565. The young Protestant queen, Elizabeth I, who had ruled for six years, was rightly worried about the ambition of her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. Indeed, Mary had already asserted her right to the English throne, and many agreed. Owing to the voiding of the marriage between Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, and her mother, Anne Boleyn, some considered Mary’s claim (through her mother, Henry’s older sister) the stronger one.
    The question of the day was who Mary would now choose for a husband, and whether that marriage would give her the leverage to capture the English crown. This was a life-and-death matter for Elizabeth, and she worried about it constantly. Her biggest concern was Mary’s suitor, the dashing nineteen-year-old Lord Henry Stewart Darnley, who was himself of considerable royal lineage. Knowing this union would be particularly threatening, Elizabeth maneuvered instead to pair Mary with the Earl of Leicester, one of Elizabeth’s closest confidants (and reportedly Elizabeth’s lover).
    On such highly sensitive matters, one had to be especially careful with one’s remarks. One useful way to address the monarch was to talk
around
things, to speak metaphorically. An indirect comment could safely be ignored, deflected, or redirected. There was much less of a chance of exposure and humiliation. And yet, while the risk was low, the potential benefits were high; a well-placed analogy could make precisely the point intended and help facilitate an intimate rapport.
    Enter chess, the popular game of political symbols. In a visit during this delicate period, the French ambassador Paul de Foix carefully relied on the game as an icebreaker. Conveniently, Elizabeth was playing chess as Foix was escorted into the chamber.
    “This game,” offered the ambassador, motioning toward the chess-board, “is an image of the works and deeds of men. If we lose a Pawn it seems a small matter; but the loss often brings with it that of the whole game.”
    “I understand you,” replied the queen. “Darnley is only a Pawn, but he may checkmate me if he is promoted.” *11
    Notion conveyed; rapport intact. Chess’s allegorical clout, its ability to symbolize a wide variety of social and political situations, was reaching a new summit. The game was now approaching the end of its first millennium. It had been an extension of sixth-century Indian warfare and mathematics, a seventh-century Persian cultural mainstay, a useful thought tool for the eighth-century Muslim warrior-philosophers, a favorite occupation of the ninth- and tenth-century Spanish Muslims, and a social mirror for the knights, kings, and clerics of medieval Europe in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries. Now, as society became more enlightened, the game’s metaphoric use mushroomed, moving in several directions at once. It became, says Oxford University’s William Poole, the “Renaissance symbol of courtly,