Elaine Thut
The appearance of a football game in the hit reality television show about finding love, The Bachelorette, reveals how ingrained the sport has become in American culture.[1] In the show, as a way to compete for one woman’s love, ten men compete at a game of friendly football. The men, feeling insecure about their place in the unfolding drama, bring out their aggression to tackle each other for one woman’s attention. Meanwhile, sitting in their living rooms, the audience sees a reel of tackles, blunders, cheering women in the stands, and an excited bachelorette. The editors of the footage try to give the audience what they believe they want to see: the violence of powerful bodies hitting each other, and the subtly erotic reaction of the present spectators in response. Because football operates as an essential part in defining American culture, the renowned yet temporal title of football player carries celebrity status, whether playing professionally or for reality TV. However, this title of football player in early modern England carried a different weight then it does now. Historically, football existed only in the popular sphere, therefore, readers associated the pastime with unruliness. Shakespeare even reflects the class distinctions in leisure in his play King Lear by associating football with the lower class; A character, Kent, exploits this association to insult a haughty Oswald. These two references to popular culture capture football’s conversion from an insulting to a complementary affiliation.
The game portrayed on The Bachelorette introduces an important question about American’s favorite pastime: Why do people enjoy watching and engaging in violence in sport? For the early modern England, the answer lies in three aspects: the martial elements of the game, the lack of hierarchal structure and the erotic spectacle of football.
Major Similarities and Difference Between Then and Now
The shift from a negative to a positive connotation surrounding the game of football over the centuries can be partly explained by its gradual transformation from an illegitimate game for unruly hooligans to a legitimate game for superstar athletes. The football activities that spectators watch now, whether that be rugby, American football, or soccer, are highly rules-based and regulated. These rules and regulations didn’t exist until the integration of ball games in elementary and secondary schools in the 19th century.[2] In early modern England, no limits were placed on the number of players, therefore, games could escalate into whole villages pitted against one another each team numbering in the hundreds.[3] As Murray explains in History of the World Game “the object was to force the ball, by running with it, kicking it, or by any other means, to or through previously agreed upon goals” (my emphasis).[4] The simplicity of the contest and openness of the rules, as explained by Murray, allowed players to employ uninhibited force and violence, which formed the foundation of this leisure activity. Philip Stubbs, a puritan pamphleteer, better portrays this aggression in his scathing critique of the game describing a player who “lye in waite for his adversaire, seeking to overthrowe hym, and to picke hym on his nose, though it bee upon harde stones, in ditche or dale, in valley or hill, or what place so ever it be, he careth not, so he maie have him doune.”[5] The “playing field,” whether it be an actual field or through the center of a town, could extend for several miles across differing terrain making the game of the past much more like a mock battle, rather than the different variations of ball sports we see today.[6] The addition of numerous rules brought significant structure to the “play” in rugby, soccer, and American football, principally to decrease bodily harm. However, all three variants still allow some form of tackling, and for two of them, tackling is an essential aspect of the game. Recently, the accumulation of repeated concussions and less serious head impacts have been proven to cause a degenerative brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E.[7] The resistance to rule changes from players, coaches and spectators amidst the current concussion crisis suggests that the element of violence remains a fundamentally important appeal of these games. The popularity and excitement of tackle football will never be enjoyed by a nonviolent equivalent, such as flag football. The nature and pastime of football have evolved over the centuries, yet the violent basis of the game continues from the past to the present and has become as essential to this type of “play” as the ball.
In the past and the present violence remains a main attraction for the game of football, but the way people enjoy this physically rigorous pastime has changed considerably. In the early modern period, football was a highly inclusive sport involving many, if not most able-bodied men from each village, while women, children and elderly spectated. Today, football is principally a spectator sport, with a very small proportion of the male population engaged in each contest, while millions of fans watch the games, largely by television.
Although spectators hold much more influence today, in early modern England observers still existed and played an important role in the formation of the game. In fact, the integration of this pastime into religious holiday festivities ensured a large audience would be present on the sideline.[8] However, even the groups categorized as possibly sheltered from or opposed to this violence, such as women, children, and religious figures, participated in football matches at certain times. Philip Sidney, an English poet, describes groups of women occasionally partaking in this more active pastime with “skirts tuckt very hy” in a piece about unrequited love.[9] Despite societal norms constraining acceptable feminine behavior, like the requirement to wear dresses, women found ways to participate in this form of play. Furthermore, during religious festivities young boys participated on Ash Wednesday following the men on Shrove Tuesday.[10] Often times religious figures denounced football because people planned to play on Sabbath days. However, religious visitation records reveal a vicar requesting and participating in football matches with neighboring parishes.[11] These examples prove that even though early modern spectators cannot compare in number to today, they had a stronger bond to the game due to their likely experience playing it.
Live broadcasting technology has greatly expanded the number of spectators for today’s football matches, while simultaneously, channeling them to a smaller number of professional leagues and players. Violence may serve as the connecting link between football past and present, but the way we engage in and enjoy the game today has completely changed; spectators have greatly increased in quantity, but not participants.
Football as a Controlled Outlet for Violence
Through guide books, religious critiques, fictional references, and political decrees on Football, one can piece together the nature of the game, which resembles more of a battle than the ball games of today. Julius Ruff describes all types of stratagems that might have been employed to assault the defending team and conquer their land or goal. Attacks were thought out and premediated. Teammates worked together to undermine the other side much like the tactics of a battle with simply a different ultimate goal.[12] The pastime allowed players to engage in violence and spectators to enjoy the show of brutality in a simulation of war without the actual dire consequences. This introduces the question: what about war intrigues us that we would attempt to simulate it?
For the people of the early modern England, football became a way to spectate violence on a threshold between actual war and the performed violence in plays. Experiencing violence within a performance builds up the audience’s excitement about what will happen next, but they ultimately understand that the actors, or the bodies supposedly engaging in and receiving this violence, are safe. As Cynthia Marshall explains in her article “Wrestling as Play and Game in As You Like It” the violence of this performed wrestling spectacle was one of the many ways for Shakespeare to express conflict.[13] Although the scene contributes to the light-hearted entertainment, it also provides the audience with a way to understand the serious social codes of the play.[14] In addition, the scene helps to raise questions for the crowd: if violence can be played, can love and gender also be faked? [15] As a result, the possibility for discovering deeper meaning draws the spectators into the scene elevating the drama represented by the attack. The audience is more intrigued by what this victory means for Orlando’s position than by the physical abuse he receives.
On the other end of the spectrum lies the actual brutality of warfare. War proves impossible to spectate due to the lack of physical boundaries on violence. In the case of football, a shifting physical “play space” is established. Within this “play space” the rules permit violence to achieve the aim of putting the ball in the goal. However, in the environment of war these physical boundaries separating combatants and spectators do not exist. Consequently, there isn’t a way that women and children, often times filling the role of spectators, can be spared or separated from the brutality of war. For example, in Henry V, when parleying with the Governor of Harfleur, Henry threatens the people that are usually carefully separated from violence, women and children. He exclaims:
And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand, shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.[16]
The phrase “in liberty of bloody hand,” suggests that once immersed in this environment there are no limits for the soldiers. Henry’s threat to collapse the boundaries between honorable and dishonorable violence convinces the governor to surrender the French town to English control.
The pastime of Football, and its other variations, introduces a middle ground for the spectator which exceeds the predictability of the theater, but reduces the stakes of actual warfare. Spectator sports include the best of both worlds. Football involves all the real physicality, violence, and strategy of war, but introduces a play-space boundary to separate disorder from everyday life. Not only do early modern sports actually create an environment where spectating violence is physically possible (i.e., audience can watch without becoming involved), the environment allows it to be socially acceptable. With the addition of a ball, the ultimate aim of the battle changes from eliminating the enemy to scoring more goals than them. This modification is important because the shift reduces the feeling of guilt for the players and the spectators. In warfare, participants direct unleashed violence towards the opponent with the sole purpose of eradicating the threat. While in a football match players use violence as a tool to achieve a new, more playful goal. The battling takes on a lens of “play” which permits the enjoyment of resulting violence to be socially acceptable.
People may have also been drawn to watching the game of football because of what it represented: inter-village competitions enabling participants to exhibit prowess and win honor. In his critical book Stubbs also lists activities in popular culture that he believes the Christian God looks down upon. He briefly criticizes the playing of football describing it as more of a “freendly kinde of fight, then a plaie or recreation.”[17] Even in his criticism of the of the sport, Stubbs portrays the activity as a communal, group activity with the use of the adjective “freendly” or friendly in modern English. Ruff states that football games must be understood as “affirmations of communal, neighborhood and factional solidarity and honor.”[18] These games typically brought strong, lower class men, integral to town life, together under a common motivation: to win. In the case of the early modern period, a possible reason spectators are drawn to “mock warfare” is because of the communal power that it emphasizes. When a spectator’s team or village that represents them wins, perhaps they felt reassured that the men of their society could defend them in actual acts of war. In other words, spectators probably enjoyed watching this version of a pseudo battle in the midst of peacetime for a greater sense of security.
Spectators might enjoy football because it comforts their anxiety about the instability of wartime, but why are the players drawn to the martial aspect of the game? To answer this question, we must look into Shakespeare’s use of leisure within his plays. Shakespeare deliberately reduces the allusions to leisure and sport metaphors in his tragedies, that appear so frequently within his comedies and histories. Richard III contains Shakespeare’s most vocal character, Richard III himself, against wasting time with recreation. Without an outlet for his violence, Richard consumes himself with an aggressive strategy in pursuit of the crown. He exposes this side of his character within his introductory monologue:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.[19]
The last line where Richard III denounces, in general, all “idle pleasures of these days” becomes particularly interesting when using the lens of leisure to examine a healthy lifestyle. Shakespeare seems to suggest that without a game-like environment to express our more violent tendencies, these behaviors surface in other arenas of society, often with negative outcomes. Shakespeare parallels lack of leisure with tragedy. This conclusion helps one theorize that players are attracted to games such as football to provide a controlled outlet for their violent tendencies. Since Richard III doesn’t have a controlled outlet for his cruelty, it becomes unmanageable and is unleashed on those closest to him.
Plenty of violent pastimes permeated early modern English society, however, football stands out for its martial structure. Players had the added benefit of releasing tension, while continually being prepared for political instability in times of peace. During the piece Henry V, Henry talks to his ranks while in disguise. The general resentment of the lower ranked soldiers comes from the greatly uneven ratio of lower class fighters to higher class soldiers, the former greatly outnumbering the latter.[20] In early modern England, Shakespeare suggests lower class men are pulled into service to enact the will of the king, which they find themselves generally separated from in their everyday lives. Aware that war requires their service for the frontlines, lower class men may have used games like football to not only release their violent tendencies, but to develop solidarity and loyalty amongst themselves. During his histories, Shakespeare shows high class men preparing for battle through practiced swordplay. Football, potentially, mirrors this preparation for a different group of people in a more informal setting.
Emma Griffin states that “these games, in fine, were more than simple football matches: they were annual festival days, a holiday for both those who played them, and for the much larger number of pleasure-seekers who came to watch.”[21] Griffin correctly portrays football games as infrequent, upbeat entertainment. The game draws a crowd due to its real and unpredictable brutality within a confined space. However, the martial undertones within the pastime suggest a much more serious motivation behind continuing this tradition. Mock battles allowed each participant to assess his own athletic and martial skills and the spectators to assess how they, as a town, might fare in a less peaceful environment. The amount of war scenes incorporated in Shakespeare’s History genre proves that people are intrigued by the topic of warfare; therefore, not surprisingly, a more intense battle environment without the threat of dire consequences attracts quite a crowd.
Power Dynamics Define Social Rank of Sports
Within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ruling class attempted to ban football, in part because of its unruliness, but also because they wished to channel the activities of the lower classes into pastimes more directly related to martial training, such as archery.[22] A majority of references to football in early modern literature come from critics condemning the activity; they explicitly classify football as a popular pastime. Sir Thomas Elyot, a scholar in the early modern era, wrote a guide on how to act like a gentleman. When talking of leisure, Elyot claims football “is nothing but beastly fury, and extreme violence, whereof proceedeth hurt, and consequently rancor and malice do remain with them that be wounded.”[23] By describing the fury released as beastly, Elyot indirectly states that the players involved are beast-like. Furthermore, he suggests that the initial violence breeds additional brawls through the grudges players carry-on after the match. Elyot denounces football because it embraces unruliness and brutality, two characteristics he does not associate with the higher classes. Yet, sports such as public executions and jousting, provide entertainment for higher class individuals while containing these elements of cruelty. Higher class authors, like Elyot, denigrated football as a popular pastime because it involved what was deemed brutish behavior and lacked the overtones of class hierarchy inherent in other entertainment pastimes such as jousting and public executions.
The joust as a pastime involves two armed knights riding towards each other, attempting to knock their opponent off with the edge of a lance. In Richard II, Shakespeare portrays conflict between Bolingbroke and Mowbray, two noblemen, through a jousting duel. Before the fight Henry Bolingbroke says his goodbyes to his king and Lord Aurmerle. Within his speech, the phrase “if I be gored with Mowbray’s spear” shows that Bolingbroke acknowledges this duel ending with his death as a possibility.[24] Later, he prays to god that “with thy blessings steel my lance’s point/ That it may enter Mowbray’s waxen coat” which displays the violent outcome he desires.[25] Cleary, Bolingbroke cannot fathom any other possible conclusions; for him, there exists two possible endings to the battle, each one bloody. This form of entertainment undoubtedly involves the same unruly, disorderly base as football; the difference lies in the people participating, both the spectators and players.
Within this play two noblemen, with the titles of duke, actively participate in the cruel challenge, not lower class individuals. Even though Bolingbroke and Mowbray call this joust to settle a dispute not to provide entertainment, an audience is present. Readers know this because Lord Marshal, in a rehearsed way, declares that no one should interfere with the spectacle, except for himself and the officers appointed to help.[26] The audience, at least, includes King Richard II, and other nobles of the same rank as the two combatants. Initially, jousting tournaments “enabled young swordsmen of gentle birth to display their prowess, thereby giving them a chance to gain a place at court or in wealthier households.”[27] Higher class individuals passively watched lower class bodies brutally receive violence to compete for more prestigious positions; Both higher class and lower class people participated in this sport, yet, often just the lower class experienced the violence of the activity.[28] In the case of Bolingbroke and Mowbray, this duel will supposedly decide their future and the repute of their family name.[29] Although many of the audience members presumably exist in the same social strata as these two dukes, they have come to spectate the fall of a great reputation. The combatant that falls, clearly loses status since the duel is called to settle a dispute of manly or family honor. The person subjected to the violence becomes unworthy of his high class title and therefore is, relatively speaking, demoted to a lower class. This higher class pastime which includes the unleashing of beastly fury contains an added power structure unlike the activity of football.
Although jousting declined in popularity in the early modern period, public executions, another violent pastime, remained popular throughout the seventeenth century (i.e., the end of the early modern period). In England, officials placed public executions, such as beheadings and hangings, in public squares to draw a large audience.[30] People stayed for the spectacle, which involved the parading of the prisoner from the holdings to the public site, a possible speech, and an eventual execution.[31] Although historians generally label executions as a popular pastime, high class individuals did spectate, especially if the criminal held a high status.
Shakespeare’s plays of the early modern period occasionally hint at public executions, but mainly keep the actual act of the execution offstage. However, by analyzing two different works of his, one can conclude members of England’s higher classes played the role of spectator at the pre and post portions of public executions. Interpreting Shakespeare’s portrayal of Joan of Arc’s death reveals the truth of this statement. After her capture, Joan’s dialogue becomes increasingly frantic as she tries to find a way to convince the dukes of England to pardon her. Following her claim to be pregnant, which contradicted her earlier identification as a maid, the dukes begin to mock their powerless prisoner. They go along with Joan’s frantic negotiations in jest for a time by giving her a variety of reasons why each possible father of her child will not save her from death. Warwick even scathingly asks her “is all your strict preciseness come to this?” (5.4.68). York and Warwick’s cruel joking proves that these high class English men anticipate the spectacle of her demise. Furthermore, the dukes change the severity of her punishment from hanging to burning as she exits the stage. By doing this, the two characters assert their dominance over her condemned body and create an even more gruesome type of entertainment. The clear class separation between the dukes and Joan in this scene classifies this event as a high class pastime.
Alternatively, after the main crime occurs in Arden of Feversham, which Marina Tarlinskaja claims Shakespeare helped write, the state brings many guilty individuals to justice.[32] The mayor sentences Alice, Arden’s wife, to be burned at the stake, Mosbie and his sister to be executed, and Michael and Bradshaw to suffer death, which all will take place off stage. Act V Scene VI concludes the play with Franklin, the character of the highest social level within the piece, relating how the “ruffians” eventually meet their demise.[33] Selecting Franklin as the bearer of this news carries significance because he represents the higher classes who interest themselves in the fates of the lower-class transgressors. Sharing the news with other high class people acts as an alternative to witnessing the executions in person. The authors reinforce the importance of class hierarchy; that lower-class criminals will be caught and punished, and that all classes of people, including the higher classes, will know about it.
The lack of hierarchal structure between the spectator and the player makes the pastime of football a product of the lower classes, not its inclusion of “beastly fury.” The main distinction lies within the spectators motive for watching a specific type of entertainment. The audience at early modern English football matches watched not to see someone fall, rather, they watched to see their team win. Because these spectators belong to the same social class as the players, the class hierarchy seen in other pastimes does not exist. Not only is the power structure between players and spectators absent, it also doesn’t exist within teams. The lack of rules prevents set positions from being assigned for each side. Each group contains not one participant more important than the next; everyone involved theoretically works toward their shared goal an equal amount.
Both jousting and public executions decline in popularity in or just after the early modern period. On the other hand, football has maintained a strong presence within the field of leisure up to the present day, despite disapproval from the governing and ruling classes. Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning argue that “they [unruly pastimes such as football] were evidently in their eyes a waste of time as well as a threat to peace.” [34] This quote suggests the objection to football may have actually stemmed from that the lack of hierarchal structure in the sport. The ruling class feared the power of the lower class when assembled as equals in game. Football matches could act as a cover for more serious forms of violence meant to protest new political changes; the game brought together the class in a powerful way.[35] Despite the integration of cruelty in sports that include the higher class, authors labeled football as brutish out of fear of its mob-like formation. To maintain their power, “…they [the ruling class] wished to canalise the energies of the people into what they regarded as more useful channels.”[36] Useful channels constituted activities such as archery and long bow, two sports focused on individual training, which the higher classes found more beneficial for war preparation. Elias and Dunning point out the large quantity of laws passed against football during this period to show, despite their fear, how little control the authorities had over these festivities. Lower class English people continued to stage traditional football matches despite these added laws and restrictions.
Football has remained an important tradition of English and later, American, societies, because in part, it lacked the hierarchal nature of alternative pastimes. The spectacle surrounding jousting and public executions based itself heavily on the then prevailing class orthodoxy; the high classes and ruling classes subjecting the lower classes to punishment for transgressions to the social order. Over time, people became less interested in activities that inflicted cruel punishment on lower class people as a form of entertainment for higher and ruling class people. Football survives because without this power structure the activity can be labeled as “play” without holding malicious undertones. People enjoy football because they do not feel ashamed watching the violence exerted with a new playful lens. Of course, to continue to be a popular sport football had to add rules and adopt boundaries, yet the violent base of the game still remains.
Testing Athletic Bodies
Cheers and clapping at a college football game come directly at the end of a play, which most likely finishes with a tackle. Do spectators cheer because the play has been stopped or because the defense has physically dominated the offense? Both aspects, the skill and the physicality of the game, thrill the audience, therefore, they cheer for both these reasons. People, in the early modern period and the present-day, enjoy seeing athletic bodies tested to better understand the full extent of the power the human form holds. This display of power attracts spectators in both an aspirational and an erotic way.
In the twenty-first century, one pictures the ideal athlete’s body as rippling with muscles. Followers of football teams expect six pack abs, weighty biceps, and thick thighs from their athletes, however, this body doesn’t necessarily correlate with every-day functionality or healthiness. This concept of the “ideal” body shape ingrained into our modern day society, whether that be in terms of athletes or non-athletes, is not a new concept. Richard Mulcaster, in an early modern guide focused on the importance of exercise, states, “as for healthy and strong bodies, they are to be esteemed not by absolute perfitnesse in measure and rule, which will not be found, but by performing all natural functions, without any greife or painfull let.”[37] Mulcaster shows that, historically, English society understood the influence of a concept like the ideal body shape by the negative way he speaks of the unattainable “perfitnesse in measure and rule.” Centuries ago, scholars recognized a disconnect between the attaining the ideal body form and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. However, the populous must have continued imagining idealized male body shapes or else the concept would not still be so prevalent today.
Foucault sheds more light on the fetishizing of the body in the early modern period by describing the requirements of the perfect soldier form in French society. He begins by explaining the form of a soldier can be recognized at a distance from the signs of pride and strength he bore.[38] He then proceeds to cite a list of attributes required of a proud warrior body, such as a taunt stomach, long arms, broad shoulders, thick thighs, strong fingers, etc.[39] Foucault portrays a vague figure detached from the individual and possibly attributable to a wide range of early modern English men. This philosopher acknowledges that in the early modern period the body was an entity of study separated from the individual. The establishment that, historically, the English had an ideal body type and studied these bodies separated from the individual becomes important when looking at the topic of violent sports.
Subjects of Shakespeare’s England are enthralled with violent sports because they want to examine the limits of ideal athletic bodies. Spectators of sports wanted to witness real, albeit non-lethal, struggle and violence with the added drama of uncertain outcome. This can be seen through the examination of Shakespeare’s wrestling scene integral to the comedic plot of As You Like It. In this scene Orlando intends to challenge Charles, a professional wrestler, to elevate his social status much like the pastime of jousting. At first, the two female characters Rosalind and Celia try and dissuade Orlando from competing. However, through closely analyzing the dialogue between these three characters, one can read an anticipation in the two women for the fight. Shakespeare portrays Rosalind and Celia as excited not just for the unpredictability of the sport, but for the violent spectacle it provides.
At first it seems as though the women don’t want to attend the event of the wrestling match. After hearing they had missed the beginning of the wrestling, Celia exclaims that “it’s dead and buried.”[40] Celia forgets her previous dismissal when she and Rosalind hear the story of the father’s three injured sons. Instead of responding with concern, Rosalind asks, “But is there any else longs to see this broken/ music in his sides? Is there yet another dotes upon/ rib-breaking? Shall we see this wrestling, cousin?”[41] Not only does Rosalind decide to attend the wrestling match, she fetishizes about the injured body of the first son. Her first question expresses an enjoyment at being able to see the aftermath and injury of a match or hear the “broken/ music in his sides”. The next question she poses shifts to the excitement she might experience while watching the actual act of “rib-breaking.” Rosalind reveals her desire to see an athletic body test its limits and experience what happens when a body exceeds these physical limits.
Later in Act I Scene II, the two cousins convey their growing anticipation to witness the clashing of two powerful bodies by being quickly dissuaded from their assigned task. The Duke Frederick requested both women to try and prevent Orlando from entering the ring. However, Celia and Rosalind’s words of caution quickly turn to words of encouragement after Orlando states he will fight anyways. Before the sport commences, the two women say:
ROSALIND The little strength that I have, I would it
were with you.
CELIA And mine, to eke out hers.[42]
Celia and Rosalind want to see how the amateur body of Orlando will hold up against a trained professional. They have chosen a side, a team, to root for in the fight and have become invested in the unpredictable result. The quick shift in their dialogue and their choice of a side reveal the cousins’ excitement to see the power of Orlando’s physical body, while simultaneously fear for his life.
Using the details found in the wrestling scene in As You Like It, one can better understand the appeal of a sport like football, which lacks documentation due to the absence of the higher class. Spectators and players enjoyed watching or testing the limits of strong bodies in a physical sport like wrestling or football. Ruff points out that matches that were ingrained in holiday festivities usually lasted two days; men played on Shrove Tuesday, while boys played on Ash Wednesday.[43] The male audience might be attracted to this violence against athletic bodies because they are interested in becoming the ideal shape or remembering the ideal shape. Boys may see the power of the athletic bodies of the men, shown through sport, as an aspect of manhood to aspire. Older men may watch the youthful energy of the boys’ bodies displayed in the football match and remember the power of a younger form. One can hypothesize that male audience members anticipated and enjoyed the violence of football, like Rosalind; They longed to see the power of athletic bodies other than their own.
The erotic pleasure of watching the athletic bodies tested while at play could also be a draw for male and female early modern spectators. Nowadays, according to Allen Guttmann, “in reply to heated allegations of sensuality, ingenuous lovers of sports have offered cool denial.”[44] Participators and spectators of sports both deny the link between eros and exercise, claiming to love the activities for the skill involved. The denial of the interconnectedness between sensuality and sports was less strong in the early modern period. The occasional football matches which pitted married against unmarried men (i.e., sexually active vs. celibate men) proves there were erotic undertones present within the game.[45] Women spectators, perhaps, focused on the strength of available men’s bodies, lusting after a possible future husband. Watching athletic bodies test their power would be an erotic spectacle for Rosalind, in her unstable social role, and for the low class maids of early modern England. This lust mirrors itself in modern day society by the bachelorette’s dialogue as she exclaims, “this is hot” as a group of men tackle one another to the ground. This shows, though repressed, sexuality and sports have always been intermingled even if the way people discuss the varying subjects has changed.
Without the concept of the ideal body type permeating early modern English society, the violence incorporated in football would not be the most interesting aspect of the game. Football matches accumulated spectators because the audience wanted to see the ideal athletic bodies of the time in action. People wanted to observe, with an aspirational or erotic lens, the power behind this perfect form.
Through early modern literature one can investigate the appeal of different leisure activities to better understand England’s historical culture. Football acts as a lens through which one can explore the appeal of including brutality in forms of play. In the early modern era football could act as a way to enjoy battle, a type of equalizer for participants, or a method for spectators to study the power of athletic bodies. The acceptance of violence became natural and essential to feel the pleasure of the recreation.
Today the perpetual debate on where to draw the line with violence in sports remains complicated. Ben McGrath expands on this idea by calling attention to the contradictory responses of spectators to the current concussion crisis. McGrath explains that the national media villainizes players like James Harrison, who truthfully admit they try to hurt people on the field, while their mid-tackle photos are offered as souvenirs on the NFL website.[46] Spectators find themselves torn between condemning and rejoicing in this brutality. David Remnick describes the beauty of football as similar to the beauty of a car crash; without this violence the sport will surely decrease in popularity.[47] Therefore, despite the horrible consequences of its physicality, people continue to fight to protect the violent basis of football and sports in general.
If the question of “why do people enjoy violence in sports?” was posed today, how would the answers differ? This assessment of early modern football suggests that not much has changed. People of the early modern period were drawn to football for the same reasons they are today.
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Bibliography
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[1] The Bachelorette, episode 3, “S14 E03 Week 3,” produced by Elan Gale, aired June 11, 2018, on abc, https://abc.go.com/shows/the-bachelorette/episode-guide/season-14/3-week-3.
[2] Emma Griffin, England’s Revelry: A History of Popular Sports and Pastimes, 1660-1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 44.
[3] Julius Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 169.
[4] Bill Murray, Football: A History of the World Game (England: Scolar Press, 1994), 4.
[5] Philip Stubbs, The Anatomie of Abuses (London: R. Iones, 1583), 120 verso.
[7] Ben McGrath, “Does Football Have a Future: The N.F.L. and the concussion crisis,” The New Yorker, January 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/31/does-football-have-a-future.
[9] Philip Sidney “A Dialogue Between Two Shepherds” in The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney. v. 1. Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, ed. (London: Robson & Sons, 1873)
[11] The following information comes from a catalogue description of a visitation record dated 1606-1608. The record is held at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre or the information can be accessed here: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/6b41b19e-5807-4d4b-ac58-f88f86003a78.
[13] Cynthia Marshall, “Wrestling as Play and Game in As You Like It,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 33, no. 2 (1993): 265.
[16] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., Henry V (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 3.3.11-14.
[19] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., Richard III (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.1.28-31.
[20] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., Henry V (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018.
[22] Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, Quest for Excitement: Sports and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 116-117.
[23] Sir Thomas Elyot, Positions vvherin those primitiue circumstances be examined, which are necessarie for the training vp of children (London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1581), 92.
[24] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., Richard II (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.3.60.
[25] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., Richard II (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.3.74-75.
[26] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., Richard II (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.3.42-45.
[27] Jennifer Low, Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 15.
[32] Marina Tarlinskaja, “Shakespeare in Arden of Faversham and the Additions to The Spanish Tragedy: Versification Analysis,” Journal of Early Modern Studies, no. 5 (2016): 175-200.
[33] Anonymous, Arden of Feversham, ed. Rev. Roland Bayne (London: Aldine House, 1897), 5.6.2.
[34] Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, “Folk Football in Medieval and Early Modern Britain” in Quest for Excitement: Sports and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 117.
[38] Michel Foucault, “Docile Bodies.” In Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 179.
[40] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., As You Like It (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.2.113.
[41] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., As You Like It (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.2.135-137.
[42] Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles, eds., As You Like It (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed July 25, 2018, 1.2.189-191.
[44] Allen Guttmann, The Erotic in Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2.
[46] Ben McGrath, “Does Football Have a Future: The N.F.L. and the concussion crisis,” The New Yorker, January 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/31/does-football-have-a-future.
[47] David Remnick, “Football’s Long Eclipse,” The New Yorker, February 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/footballs-long-eclipse.
