Le Throsne Du Destin, Auquel Chacun Peut Voir Sa bonne ou mauuaise fortune en jettant un, ou deux, ou trois Dez.
Paris, C. Coturier 1632.
Oblong 8vo (152 x 212 mm.). Contemporary pagination: [13], 82, [1 blank]p. MANUSCRIPT GAME BOOK ON VELLUM, with three bone dice. In a single calligraphic hand. The title-page, double-column index and each text page — its heading, two pip counts and two quatrains — are in red and black ink.
Contemporary gilt-paneled red morocco (rubbed, minor spots), interlaced Cs in the spine compartments, in the panel corners and — enclosed in s fermés — in the center of each panel, board edges gilt (evidence of clasps and catches), marbled pastedowns, no free endleaves, all edges gilt.
ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-FOUR BAWDY, RISQUÉ AND IRREVERENT FORTUNES, half for women (on rectos, lettered b) and half for men (on versos, letter a). Often shaming or humiliating, the prospects for men include impotence, infidelity, cuckoldry, violence, homosexuality, disease and death.
Women’s futures are notably sunnier. The majority of their woes attributable to men — rape, pregnancy out of wedlock, forced prostitution, etc. The word-play is ripe with sexual innuendo. Signed CC, the To the Reader lays out the rules for casting the die and reading the fortunes aloud. The author may be the poet, who contributed a sonnet to a 1629 collection of airs (Guillo, Pierre I Ballard et Robert III Ballard Imprimeurs du roy pour la musique, 1599-1673 II: 246).
In very good condition, early signature of Mr. Cadets de Poissy on the front pastedown.
¶See Craveri’s The Age of Conversation passim and Lhôte’s Histoire des jeux de société 47-50, 231-299, 460-461 & 528 and O’Bryan’s “A Passion for Games” in Games and Game Playing in European Art and Literature, 16th-17th Centuries ed. O’Bryan 29 & 45 and Albistur & Armogathe’s Histoire du feminisme français 134-144.
Price: $32,000.00