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There have been many attempts to explain why Chaucer should refer to the ferses twelve (BD, 723) when only eight ferses or nine with the queen can be made on the ordinary chessboard, eight squares by eight. Skeat arbitrarily counts eight pawns, one bishop, rook, knight and queen in order to make twelve ferses). Stevenson, despite Chaucer's extensive use of chess terms, maintains that the game is draughts, not chess). Cooley suggests that the article should be omitted and the line "thogh ye had lost the ferses twelve" be interpreted "had your loss been twelve times äs great)." Robinson, with reservation, follows the legitimate medieval practice of calling all the pieces ferses except the King), but in the "Bare King" ending which he cites, the defeated player loses fifteen ferses, not twelve. It is usually assumed that Chaucer's model for the chess game is the Roman de la Rose, lines 6653-6720, but a comparison of the two passages throws no light whatsoever on Chaucer's game. In the one, several players take part in a game which allegorizes a political struggle for power; in the other, Fortune and the Knight play for the life of the Knight's wife. Whereas Conradin, an inept and contemptible figure, loses la fierce "au jeu de la prumiere assise" (RR, 6711), the Knight, äs his reference to Fortune's "false draughtes dyvers" (653)

THE CHESS PROBLEM IN CHAUCER'S BOOK OF THE DUCHESS