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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 in 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. (James, in Var. Shakespeare.) This, it must be confessed, is not very intelligible, and it is rather remarkable that Nares takes no notice of it. On the contrary, he says that Nine Men's Morris is
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for Nine-holes. In this he must be wrong, as the word _Morris_ shows; but Shakespeare may have confounded the two, and have meant Nine-holes, as would seem to be indicated by
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The picture of Nobody was a common sign. There is also a woodcut prefixed to an old play of Nobody and Somebody, which represents him
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Thersites, the glorious _noddy_
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Ere you came here poor I was somebody, The king delighted in me; now I am a _noddy_.