The following are the accounts of this game given by the commentators on Shakespeare:— “In that part of Warwickshire where Shakespeare was educated, and the neighbouring parts of Northamptonshire, the shepherds and other boys dig up the turf with their knives to represent a sort of imperfect chess-board. It consists of a square, sometimes only a foot diameter, sometimes three or four yards. Within this is another square, every side of which is parallel to the external square; and these squares are joined by lines drawn from each corner of both squares, and the middle of each line. One party, or player, has wooden pegs, the other stones, which they move in such a manner as to take up each other’s men, as they are called, and the area of the inner square is called the pound, in which the men taken up are impounded. These figures are by the country people called _nine men’s morris_, or _merrils_; and are so called because each party has nine men. These figures are always cut upon the green turf, or leys as they are called, or upon the grass at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choked up with mud” (Farmer). “_Nine men’s morris_ is a game still played by the shepherds, cow-keepers, &c., in the midland counties, as follows:—A figure (of squares one within another) is made on the ground by cutting out the turf; and two persons take each nine stones, which they place by turns in the angles, and afterwards move alternately, as at chess or draughts. He who can play three in a straight line may then take off any one of his adversary’s, where he pleases, till one, having lost all his men, loses the game” (Alchorne).