Recreation in the Renaissance

118 Recreation in the Renaissance
rians often use the language of ‘resistance’ (of popular culture, to its
suppression); but the model runs the risk of taking for granted an image
of the people which overestimates their degree of independence, unity
and planning. Such conflicts as the English Sabbatarian campaign were
not simply opposing neat counterparts in the fields of government (the
people versus the rulers, both at local and national level) or religion
(Catholic or Arminian versus evangelical Protestant): the request for law
and order and the suppression of abuse has been shown to have come
specifically from the middling sort, who pressured magistrates to intervene.
6 Notwithstanding all these caveats, we cannot leave the subject
without an attempt to outline the scenery against which the action told
thus far took place; since the comparison underestimates the level of
interaction that always exists between ideas and the social practice of
recreation, the stage metaphor is not entirely adequate (unless one
thinks of a kind of theatre that actively interacts with the audience). It
is precisely the relationship between ideas and practice that needs now
to be addressed. Without pretending to jump to social history in the
final pages of a book which has explored the cultural side of the story,
one cannot avoid asking whether perceptions of recreation reflected
trends in social customs, or significantly influenced them, or in what
other way interacted with them.
A general sketch of the social history of pastimes in Renaissance
Europe is far from both the expertise of the present writer and the
current state of historical knowledge; however, a glance at some recent
research will offer a useful starting-point. The twenty-third international
colloquium of humanist studies, held in Tours in 1980, was devoted to
an analysis of ‘Play and games in the Renaissance’ (Les jeux à la Renaissance).
In his conclusions to the rich two-week conference, its editor
Jean-Claude Margolin outlined an evolution throughout the period
under examination (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), which witnessed
a movement from relative spontaneity towards codification,
technical and social regulation, increasing professionalization and commercialization
of a range of leisure activities – an evolution which had
emerged from a variety of contributions, and more explicitly in Peter
Burke’s paper on the Venetian Carnival. 7
Over the subsequent two decades the field of study made significant
progress, some valuable research being the output of further work from
the contributors to the Tours conference. Michel Manson has recently
published a history of toys over the longue durée; Jean-Pierre Étienvre
has developed a distinctive specialization in the field of juego in the
Spanish Golden Age, when cards and the world of players acquired a