Set at Maw, The

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Historical Records

Performance Records

Playlists in Philip Henslowe's diary

Fol. 10^v (Greg, I.20)

ye 14 of decembʒ 1594

. . . ne . . .

Res at the maw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxxxiiijs

Fol. 11 (Greg, I.21)

ye 2 of Jenewary 1594	. . . . . . . . .	Res at the seat at mawe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxiiijs
ye 17 of Jenewary 1594		Res at the mawe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxvs
ye 28 of Jenewary 1594		Res at the mawe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxvijs

Theatrical Provenance

"The Set at Maw" belonged to the Admiral's men in the winter of 1594-5, when the company was playing at the Rose. It appears nowhere else in extant theater records.

Probable Genre(s)

Harbage suggested that the play was a comedy.

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

See For What It's Worth, below.

References to the Play

None known.

Critical Commentary

Malone commented that "maw" was a game of cards, and he read the second entry of the play title as "seut, i.e., "suit" (p. 296, n.4). He also identified "The Mack" as a play entitled for a "game at cards" (p. 296, n.5).

Collier agreed about the title of "Set at Maw" as indicating a card game but rejected Malone's reading of the second entry in the manuscript as "seut" (p. 47, n.1). He agreed also that "The Mack" referred to a card game, and he conjectured that it "was perhaps written in consequence of the success of the Maw, already many times represented" (p. 49, n. 3).

Fleay, BCED [#61, 1.132-3) believed that Thomas Dekker's Match me in London (1630) belonged to 1611 and that it was "pretty clearly an alteration of The Set at Maw" because of its play on the language of card games (shuffling, dealing, cutting the cards, turning up a "Court card").

Greg II (#63, p. 172) took seriously Fleay's lumping of "The Set at Maw" with Thomas Dekker's Match me in London on the basis of its allusions to cards and "one specific reference to the game of maw." However, he couldn't find additional evidence to support the connection. He considered evidence of revision in the later play too slight to be persuasive, and he deemed the argument that the "Maw" play could have traveled with Dekker to Queen Anna's men more than a decade later to be irrelevant.

Gurr, crediting John Astington for the information, notes that "[t]he word 'mawe' inexplicably" appears in the description of a costume in Philip Henslowe's inventory of various suits" "'j mawe gowne of calleco...' (Greg, Papers, APX. I, art. 1, p. 115, l. 31)." Gurr does not link that costume to "The Set at Maw," however.

Wiggins, Catalogue (#977) likens the game of Maw to cribbage. He notes that a "set" at Maw was five tricks (which he impishly likens to "the traditional five acts of a play"). He suggests further that the action might have imitated in some ways the playing of the "maw" game "in which the knave could trump the king or queen, while in turn the five, sometimes associated with a hand's five fingers, could trump the knave."

For What It's Worth

Friend of the LPD, Cassidy Cash, volunteers that a ballad, The Groome-porter's Lawes, outlines the official rules of the game: (see EBBA #37082)::

The Groome-porters lawes

at Mawe, to be observed in fulfilling the

due orders of the Game.

If you change hands, it is the loose of the Set,

If you renounce, it is the loss of the Set,

If you leade when your Mate shoulde, it is the loss of that game and vied cardes.

If you lose Dealing, it is the loss of power cardes, but if the loser of the dealing dealt not again, you acquire the fower, and no gain to either of both parties.

If you look either on ye asked card, or the bottom cards, it is the loss of that game and vied cardes, in whom the fault is found.

If you roub (not having the Ice) you lose power, & al the vied cards although you lay down the same cards which you took up.

If you make out the carde when your Mate roub it is the loss of power, for the rubber must make out the carde himself.

If you turn up the

Works Cited

The Groome-porters lawes," EBBA #37082 (EBBA 37082 (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/37082/image)/

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