HENRY VIII's TENNIS COURT

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 92, 12 January 1929, Page 24

HENRY VIII' s TENNIS COURT

The announcement that the old tennis court in Hampton Court Palace will next year celebrate the 400th anniversary of its erection by Henry VIII and that it is still in daily use, may well have sent a thrill through all players of ball games. Compared with this ancient building Lord’s and the Oval are infants indeed. Moreover, its history is as illustrious as it is long. Henry VIII himself, of course, played there; and we read in the letters of the Venetian Ambassador, Sebastian Guistiniani, how Henry loved the game: “It is the prettiest thing in the world to see- him play” (he wrote), “his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the» finest texture.” And of all our Kings and Princes who lived in the Palace up to the middle of the eighteenth century many, we may be sure, had their rackets borne before them along the corridor which still leads to the tennis court, and played a set there (says the “Daily Telegraph”). Even King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales is believed to have played there;' and his present Majesty, who was a fine player in. his youth, still takes a gracious interest in the old court and in the tennis club, of which it is the headquarters. Last, but surely not least, the greatest subject an English

Sovereign ever had knew the court well, and in all probability not only saw the game played there,' but played it himself. We know that Shakespeare acted at Hampton Court, and we have all read the description of the game which the King delivers in the first act of “Henry V.” The rest surely follows. It is indeed remarkable that through four centuries, and all their changes’, tennis should have been enjoyed in this court from day to day, and that the game which Shakespeare knew should still be flourishing and unchanged amid surroundings actually familiar to him. The “chases” and the “hazard” of which he wrote are still just as they were at Hampton Court, and the “dedans” still occupies the place it held when Queen Elizabeth sat there and watched the game. The net, the “tambour,” the “grille,” the “battery,” the “galleries,” and the “penthouse,” as they are today. would still probably set the poet’s shade thinking that the England of King George V is very little altered from that of Elizabeth. As to the game, its spell is undiminished, and it is certain that nothing but the cost of building new courts in these days prevents the true tennis from becoming once again as popular in England as it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.