I saw The Gaming Table performed at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Friday. I went into the  Restoration comedy (which are usually bawdy, funny works) with high hopes that weren’t disappointed.

The Gaming Table is actually less dirty than other Restoration comedies you might have seen. Perhaps the filthiest remark was a woman talking about needing to examine a ‘worm’ while ‘on her back.’ And if you can’t figure out what the means, you should ask your parents if you’re old enough to be online yet.

When watching an older piece, it’s always interesting to see how the social restrictions of the time are incorporated – the Hayes Code of the early eighteenth century, if you will.

One of the leads was a widow, and while it was dropped in passing and never brought up again, in light of what I just referred to as that period’s ‘Hayes Code,’ it was an important item to drop. Not in terms of the plot, but in terms of keeping a PG-13 rating, so to speak. While very deliberately never explicitly said, one can’t help but feel that the female lead is sexually intimate with some of her admirers. By making her a widow, while the hint it scandalous, a widow will not suffer the same ostracization within society as a never married woman might for her flirtations. No one expects a widow to be a virgin. In fact, because women were actually considered more sexually voracious and libidinous than men, a widow, who, by definition, knows what she’s missing, is almost expected to be lusty. That’s why the lusty widow is such a common comic trope.

Leaving aside my historical observations, the play was funny and very well acted across the fairly large main cast and all the characters were pleasantly three dimensional. Four stars.