The origin of leisure predates the 1400s; however, we find that England experienced an increase in the importance of recreational activities during the early modern period. According to early modern Englishmen, pastimes proved to be so central to the prevention of melancholia and madness that schools incorporated sports into their curricula. They also believed that schools should serve as a military training ground. Men participated in sport to prepare themselves for war and release violent tendencies during periods of peacetime. Many believed sports that catered toward a man’s stately and warlike manner portrayed more masculine traits, and English society often preferred them over “effeminate” leisure activities such as dance, dice, chess, and tennis. Additionally, gentlepeople possessed a greater degree of leisure time and engaged in genteel ventures such as hunting. Commoners lacked free time, and society scorned those that regularly made merriment instead of working; antitheatrical writers, for example, condemned afternoon plays because they enticed city apprentices away from their duties. Still, commoners found ways to relieve tension during scheduled holidays and festivals, when they could play, carouse, and enjoy a temporary suspension of social rules. An analysis of the early modern period through the lens of leisure’s involvement in one’s health, ability for martial engagement, social standing, and gender roles.
While Alessandro Arcangeli writes that “recreation does not consist in a given set of thoughts, speech acts and gestures, it is rather defined by the spirit or reason why someone performs them,” we suggest instead that leisure existed on the border between utility and enjoyment in early modern England.[1] Leisure as utility stressed the martial and economic spheres, emphasizing pastimes’ use for battle preparation or as a method of flaunting one’s class status. However, leisure as enjoyment suggested the social and ludic spheres, underscoring pastimes’ role in decompression for the sake of one’s mental wellbeing. In the advice manual The Governor, for example, Sir Thomas Elyot recommends that young men pass their spare time in “honest recreation,” since “in doing nothing, men learn to do evil.”[2] Likewise, artistic depictions of leisure moved from the foreground of artwork and society to the background when they became more commonplace. From this shift, we observe that the lines between the martial/economic and social/ludic spheres blurred. To some, leisure still acted as a required activity for those wishing to prove their physical strength. To others, leisure served no other purpose than as a space in which to interact with friends during a festival. While leisure in early modern England transitioned from living in the foreground to the background, its prevalence increased.
Fig. 1. Excerpt from The Book Named the Governour by Sir Thomas Elyot conveying the author’s opinion on the value of leisure in his period. It reads: “And undoubted, it were muche better to be occupied in honest recreation, than to do nothynge. For it is sayd of a noble auctour [actor], In doinge nothyng, men learne to do yuell [evil].”
[1] Alessandro Arcangeli, Recreation in the Renaissance: Attitudes towards Leisure and Pastimes in European Culture, c. 1425-1675 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 3.
[2] Sir Thomas Elyot, The Book Named the Governor (London: T. Berthelet, 1544), 78v-79r.
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