Recreational Activity Popular, it Must Transcend Distinctions

¶ … recreational activity popular, it must transcend distinctions of wealth and class. As Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester states "games and sports of all kinds were common recreations for the people of Tudor and Stuart England." Peter Burke defines culture as a system of shared meanings, attitudes and values, and the symbolic forms in which they are expressed or embodied[1]; by popular culture it is possible Burke's definition refers to the culture of the ordinary people or the "subordinate classes" -- those below the level of the elite. However, this paper views social history by looking at the commonality of leisure, recreation, games and sports of all kinds as the basis to determine whether there was a popular culture in early modern England. For example, cards, archery and tennis included all classes (the lower and upper) and encompassed those who devoted time to leisurely activities as well as those who spend most of their time working.

Popular culture is not necessarily an official culture or that of the educated[2] as previous scholarship has assumed because there was more than two classes in the early modern era and no individual class had a culture that could describe it as a whole. Through an examination of these familiar and popular activities, sports and games it is possible to show the existence of a popular culture in early modern England.

Definition of leisure

To have an ideas of leisure in early modern England, one first has to be able ti define this concept of 'leisure' since it may have changed radically through the ages. Indeed, Cromwell forbade leisure activities, and this was soon repealed by his successor, James 1, but each of their ideas of leisure is quite different to that which we share today.

Foucault talks about a 'conceptual break' where we supply a definition based upon our conceptual understanding and familiarity of a certain notion. Yet, this notion may not have existed at a specific epoch in history. In the same way, 'leisure' may be a non-existent nomenclature when supplied to people of early modern England (I..e the 16th or 17th century), since no concept of leisure may have then existed. The games or activities (or at least some of them) may have been present then, but since the idea and notion of leisure was only created later, applying this concept to early modern England may be an anachronism since leisures as it is understood now did not exist in their contemporary mental framework.

Seeking a definition, to define leisure as 'absence of work' may be inapplicable since the higher class (namely, nobles, lords and so forth) were in a constant state of 'non-work', and some of the lower class or other classes may have been psychologically and mentally more relaxed than they .

One can alternately define leisure as "the state of having time at one's own disposal; time which one can spend as one pleases; free or unoccupied time." (Heffner, 5) and indeed this concept existed in England as early as the 14th century as witnessed by the instance of the popular skills of archery. Robin Hood is an instance of this. Leisure, therefore, existed on two grounds; it served as 'free or unoccupied time', but this time too was served to reinforce one's pragmatic skills.

Leisure in Early England

Recreation and leisure is an important and useful part of everyday life, it plays an integral part in the culture and ideology of English society. Many written sources of the time such as diaries, letters, ballads and guidebooks discuss the lifestyle of early modern England and also talk about the merits of recreational and leisurely activities. In some accounts as seen in the diary of Arthur Annesley, Earl of Anglesey he mentions recreation in terms of diversion, sport, entertainment, exercise, pastimes, play and leisure[3]. One can decipher from this that is these were the words used in diaries to describe early modern English habits then it must have been part of their developing popular culture.

Some of the most popular leisure activies were the follwoign:

Hunting

Hunting is an activity that is described as "a curious search or conquest of one Beast over another."[4] It was considered to be a manly recreation; because above all it contributes most to the health and strength of the body as well as to the clearness and vigour of the mind. Restrictions on hunting had existed since the medieval period and became increasingly draconian after the Game Law of 1604 making the distinction between hunting as a sport and hunting for a practical purpose. Gervase Markham's Country Contentments: Or the Husbandmans Recreations goes into detail explaining the best way to breed, raise, train and pick your hounds. It is obvious that is an activity that would require a good income therefore leaving out most of the lower class. This can also be seen with angling an activity that was restricted to the aristocracy by law, economics and by the amount of time required. However, despite the restrictions in angling and hunting, these activities were not limited to the wealthy and there is no doubt that it was practiced by the lower classes as well. Moreover, even if one were unable to participate in hunting because of economic reasons it does not mean that they did not know about it or were unfamiliar with the activity.

Fishing

In addition to hunting, fishing is another similar activity in that one goes in search of prey. Once again fishing as recreation and fishing to eat had different purposes, this also included the commercial side of fishing in which the primary purpose was business. Country Contentments describes fishing in a similar way to angling as it lists the best types of baits, waters and seasons for this activity.