Recreation in the Renaissance

110 Recreation in the Renaissance
male interlocutors have differing views on the relation between the two
classes – whether one is a subgroup of the other (and which way round),
or how else they overlap. In the end they agree that neither category is
sufficient on its own. When dealing with the nature of delight in play,
the author shows awareness of a number of psychological factors that
play a significant role in different games. Victory is certainly sought in
contests. However, what really matters is the way in which it is gained
(it makes all the difference to obtain it by skill or mere fortune); and
the tension caused by the uncertainty of the result – for both participants
and audience – makes the game itself, rather than its outcome,
central. While everyone concentrates on these issues time passes, and
so the main, entertaining purpose of play is achieved: Tasso’s party have
successfully managed to kill their own time in the dispute (while Tasso
may hope he has done the same with his reader). 49
In their diversity and variation through time, systems of classification
may offer revealing insights into the elements which different authors
identified as key factors in this range of human activities. To classify
under one or another criterion means to regard it, for whatever reason,
as significant; and the hierarchical status of different criteria, that is,
whether it appears earlier or later in the ramification, will also be relevant.
50 The three predominant disciplines of medieval and early modern
university curricula – theology, law and to a lesser extent medicine –
will provide the core of my examples.
Within the medical discourse, classification could be proposed on the
basis of the type and amount of effort required, with consideration for
the consequently different effects on the human body. For instance,
Girolamo Cardano distinguished between types of exercise: heavy vs
light, quick vs slow, continuous vs intermittent; to each of these
oppositions he applied a scale of three levels: exercitatio magna,
parva and mediocris. 51 The more straightforward how-to-do literature,
which forms another significant group of early modern writing on
leisure, could of course include differentiation of games based on practical
factors. Antonio Scaino’s treatise, for instance, distinguishes
between games with a solid vs an inflated ball, with the open hand vs
clenched fist, with the fist holding or not holding an instrument, open
or with a cord. 52
Theatrica is the category – directly derived from Hugh of St Victor
(see above, Chapter 4) – under which ludi are examined in one of the
earliest sources I will consider, the encyclopedic work compiled by
the Franciscan friar John of Wales, who studied theology at Oxford in
the 1250s and subsequently taught in Oxford and Paris. The book is a