The royal pastime of cupid: three early printed board games in the Bodleian Library's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera (original) (raw)

2018

Abstract

The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera contains three examples of the early printed board game The Royal Pastime of Cupid, Or Entertaining Game of the Snake. While this paper will discuss all three examples, which are dated to either the late eighteenth or the early nineteenth century, one of its main concerns will be to present evidence to provide a publication date for one particular example, the print published by William Dicey, which currently lacks a firm publication date in the John Johnson catalogue. The Bodleian's bibliographic record attributes a broad publication date of 1700–1750, although the Dicey imprint variant used makes it possible to establish a more precise publication date, c. 1736–1740. The article also identifies the three "types" of iconography used in the final square of Cupid games published in Britain. These are: Cupid honing his arrow in a formal garden; Cupid alone with his bow; and a peasant couple dancing in a hortus conclusus app...

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