Elizabethan Popular Culture

Sports and Games

Sports and GaDles If on yottem!n youhghr The Ilrll dr~ught 1h~1I you rlayt Ifnot t!f mil\e byright At full to 1'3d the \"'~1 Printed at London for Roger lackson, and are to be fould at his shop neere Fleet Street Conduit 1614_ "In these islands sport is not a dissipation for idlers, it is a philosophy of life," wrote Price Collier. "They believe in it as a bulwark against effeminacy and decay." As the sport of archery in medieval times stood England in good stead in time of war and trained the bowmen who won some of the greatest battles abroad, so certain sports in Renaissance England were considered to build the national character as well as the individual's strength and agility. Wrestling matches were a popular event at country fairs. Shakespeare's England has a first-rate article on sports and games (to which we are indebted) and asserts thatno better epitome of the popular indoor and outdoor games and pastimes current in Shakespeare's time can be given than is contained in the following verses from The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine, by Samuel Rowlands (1600): Man, I dare challenge thee to throw the sledge, To jumpe or leape over a ditch or hedge; To wrastle, play at stooleball, or to runne, To pitch the barre, or to shoote off a gunne; To play at loggets, nineholes, or ten pinnes, To trie it out at foot-ball, by the shinnes; At Ticktacke, Irish, Noddie, Maw, and Ruffe: At hot-cockles, leape-frogge, or blindman-buffe. To drink halfe pots, or deale at the whole canne: To play at base, or pen-and-ynk-horne sir Ihan [John]: To daunce the Morris, play at barly-breake, At all exploytes a man can thinke or speake: At shove-groate, venter poynt, or crosse and pile, At 'beshrow him that's last at yonder style'; At leapynge ore a Midsommer bon-fier, Or at the drawing Dun out of the myer. ... Today football still is "a friendly kind of fight," with even amateurs chalking up some 600,000 injuries each year in the United States. It is perhaps not as rough as hockey (the comedians say, "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out") and some other contact sports. Here is Puritan Philip Stubbes numbering Elizabethan football among "abuses" (1583): 275 276 Elizabethan Popular Culture For as concerning football playing, I protest unto you it may rather be called a friendly kind of fight, than a play or recreation; a bloody and murdering practice, than a fellowly sport or pastime. For doth not everyone lie in wait for his adversary, seeking to overthrow him and to pick him on his nose, though it be upon hard stones, in ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or what place soever it be he careth not, so he have him down. And he that can serve the most of his fashion, he is counted the only fellow, and who but he? So that by this means, sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometime their arms, sometime one part thrust out of joint, sometime another, sometime their noses gush out with blood, sometime their eyes start out, and sometimes hurt in one place, sometimes in another. But whosoever scapeth away the best goeth not scot-free, but is either sore wounded, and bruised, so as he dieth of it, or else scapeth very hardly. And no marvel, for they have sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the heart with their elbows, to hit him under the short ribs with their gripped fists, and with their knees to catch him upon the hip, and to pick him on his neck, with an hundred such murdering devices. And hereof groweth envy, malice, rancour, choler, hatred, displeasure, enmity and what not else: and sometimes fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murder, homicide and great effusion of blood, as experience daily teacheth. John Stow's Survey of London translates Robert FitzStephen's account of 12th-century sport (still practised in Elizabeth's day, though the word skate would not be borrowed from the Dutch for almost a hundred years more): When the great fen or moor, which watereth the walls of the City on the north side, is frozen, many young men play upon the...