Shakespeare and tennis

Shakespeare mentions tennis in seven of his plays. But would he recognize the game we enjoy today?

In Tudor England, tennis looked a little different. The balls were made of wood or sometimes leather stuffed with grain. Games were played indoors on a court with high walls—the ball could be hit off these walls, like squash—viewing galleries, lots of lines on the floor marking where the ball can land, and a net across the middle. Early players—tennis originated in medieval Italy as a leisure activity for monks—hit the ball with their hands. Later, French aristocrats, who popularized the game across Europe, added leather gloves and then attached a stick to the gloves creating the first tennis racquet.

Points in early modern tennis were scored by where the ball travelled, what it bounced off, and how many times it bounced. Scoring was derived from betting on the game. Each point was called a denier d’or (15 sous). The first player to reach 60 sous won the final point, which was called “couronne” or “crown.”

Henry VIII was an avid tennis player as a young man. In 1519, the Venetian ambassador wrote “it was the prettiest thing in the world to see him play; his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture.” Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn was watching a tennis match when she was summoned to the Privy Council and arrested.

Cardinal Wolsey built England’s first tennis court at Hampton Court Palace between 1526 and 1529. Charles I rebuilt it in 1625 after a fire. Players still play “real” tennis—as the game is known after the meteoric growth of “lawn” tennis in the 19^th-century —on the Royal Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace today.

Shakespeare quotes about tennis

Shakespeare’s familiarity with tennis and its terminology shows up in several plays. Juliet hopes her nurse will deliver a message to Romeo as swiftly “as a ball..” King Henry V threatens to “play a set” against France. Lear, in reply to Goneril’s insolent servant, Oswald, says “Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?” —a bandy in Elizabethan times being what we call a rally between two players today.

Here are seven quotes from Shakespeare that mention tennis:

“There was he gaming, there in ’s rouse, There falling out at tennis”
—Polonius, Hamlet, Act 2, scene 1

“But that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I”
—Prince Hal, Henry IV, Part 2, Act II, scene 2

EXETER
“Tennis balls, my liege.”

KING 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.”
—Exeter and King Henry, Henry V, Act I, scene 2

“They must either—
For so run the conditions—leave those remnants
Of fool and feather that they got in France,
With all their honorable points of ignorance
Pertaining thereunto, as fights and fireworks,
Abusing better men than they can be
Out of a foreign wisdom, renouncing clean
The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings,
Short blistered breeches, and those types of travel,
And understand again like honest men,
Or pack to their old playfellows.”
—Lovell, Henry VIII, Act I, scene 3

“No, but the barber’s man hath been seen
with him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath
already stuffed tennis balls.”
—Claudio, Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, scene 2

“A man whom both the waters and the wind
In that vast tennis court hath made the ball
For them to play upon entreats you pity him.”
—Pericles, Pericles, Act II, scene 1

“Having these virtues,
I think he might be brought to play at tennis.”
—Jailer, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act V, scene 2