P. 206. “‘A _chase_ at tennis is that spot where a ball falls, beyond
which the adversary must strike his ball to gain a point or chace. At
long tennis, it is the spot where the ball leaves off rolling.’ Douce’s
_Illust. of Shakespeare_, i. 485.”
In “Additional Notes and Corrections” to his ed. of _Shakespeare_ (vol.
i. cclxxxvii.) Mr. Collier observes: “Douce in his ‘Illustrations,’ from
not understanding the game of tennis, is mistaken in his definition of a
‘chase:’ a ‘chase’ is not ‘the spot where a ball falls,’ but the duration
of a contest in which the players _hunt_ or ‘chase’ the ball, bandying it
from one to the other. For the same reason, probably, the Rev. A. Dyce
in his Skelton’s Works, vol. ii. p. 206, commits a similar error, and
we think misunderstands the passage he quotes from the ‘Merry Jests of
the Widow Edith.’ To ‘mark a chase,’ the expression there employed, is
to have a chase scored or marked in favour of the successful player; and
such is the metaphorical meaning, as applied to the widow, who scored her
own chases as she walked along.”
Now, from Douce’s intimate acquaintance with the technicalities of
games, I cannot but think that he must have had some authority for his
explanation of ‘chase’—(I speak of it, without reference to Shakespeare’s
_Henry V._): and that the word _chase_ was not always used by early
writers in the sense to which Mr. Collier would limit it—“the duration of
a contest in which the players hunt or ‘chase’ the ball, bandying it from
one to the other,”—might be shewn by other passages besides the following;
“_Ric._ Reueng’d! and why, good childe?
Olde Faukenbridge hath had a worser basting.
_Fa._ I, they haue banded [me] from _chase to chase;_
I haue been their tennis ball since I did coort.”
_A pleasant Commodie called Looke about you_, 1600, sig. K 2.
R. Holme gives, among the “terms,” at tennis, “_Chase_, is to miss the
second striking of the Ball back;” and, among its “laws,” he informs us,
“6. You must observe that there is no changing sides without two _Chases_
or Forty one _Chase_, and then they may change sides, and the other
serves upon the Pent-house beyond the Blew, and then the other is bound
to play the Ball over the Line, between the _Chase_ and the end Wall;
and if the other side misses to return the Ball, he loses 15.” _Acad. of
Armory_, 1688, B. iii. p. 265. The passage of Skelton,
“She mutid [i. e. dunged] there _a chase_
Vpon my corporas face,”
taken together with that which I cited from _The Mery Jests of the Widow
Edith_, shews that the word was occasionally used as a sort of “mannerly”
term when certain uncleanly subjects were in question.