A Game At Chess - Thomas Middleton

A Game At Chess A New Mermaid - Thomas Middleton, J W HARPER

A Renaissance drama satirising relations between the English and the Spanish in the 1620s. Fun, in a surreal kind of way: the whole thing is presented literally as a chess-game, with the Spanish as the black side and the English as the white. Think Alice through the Looking-Glass but with actual contemporary political relevance. A good afternoon read if you don't mind wading through Middleton's occasionally turgid blank verse.