Recreation in the Renaissance

The Medical Discourse 39
So far we have explored the role played by physical exercise as a
component of preventive medicine. Its role within therapeutics was
much less prominent, although Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (which
we introduced above, Chapter 2) offers a good example of humoral
balances and medical conditions for which music and play could be
regarded as effective curative strategies. ‘Exercise Rectified of Body and
Minde’ appears within the author’s exposition of the cure of melancholy.
In the style of the whole volume, a good deal of the substantial
chapter (membrum 2.2.4) is descriptive, anecdotal and antiquarian;
nonetheless, it provides an interesting example of Renaissance writing
on the topic, and evidence of the longue durée of the humoral paradigm.
Rectification is required here because inconvenience had previously
been caused to the melancholic ‘on the one side by immoderate and
unseasonable exercise, too much solitarinesse and idlenesse on the
other’. The antidote will consist of ‘a moderate and seasonable use of
it’. Initial proof for the statement that ‘we should ever be in action’
comes from cosmology: heavens, stars, air and water are always in
motion. 40 Here Burton summarizes his previous grievance against the
idleness of nobility, this time defining it as a European problem, in contrast
with the patterns of behaviour characteristic of other cultures:
‘They knowe not how to spend their times (disports excepted, which
are all their businesse) what to doe or otherwise how to bestow themselves:
like our moderne Frenchmen, that had rather loose a pound of
blood in a single combate, then a drop of sweat in any honest labour.’ 41
Burton refers to the exhortations to correct these errors that come from
divines (among them, the Puritan William Perkins), physicians and
politicians. Thus far, our setting could be that of a work ideology censoring
all pastimes. The author’s discourse is naturally more articulated,
and contains indications for an appropriate use of exercise. Consistently
with the nature of his book, he cites some details of medical advice,
while not passing over in silence the fact that different physicians have
provided contradictory rules. ‘Of these labours, exercises, and recreations,
which are likewise included, some properly belong to the body,
some to the mind, some more easy, some hard, some with delight, some
without, some within doores, some naturall, some are artificiall.’ 42 The
series is opened by Galen’s ball game. In the subsequent section on
hunting and fishing, if it was not for some generic advice on moderation,
the reader tends to miss the reason why they have become curative,
after appearing in the previous partition as symptoms of the
disease. ‘Many other sports and recreations there be, much in use, as
Ringing, bowling, shooting [. . .]. But the most pleasant of all outward