Popular recreations in Early Modern England

“Recreation” had a variety of potential meanings in early modern England – to refresh or enliven oneself through comfort or rest, to entertain, or to create again. Roger Ascham astutely advised that “Ernest studie must be recreated with honest pastime” while translator Philemon Holland took from Pliny that “Wine recreateth and refresheth the stomack”; physician William Bullein’s balm of choice was music: “Vpon my lute some time, to recreate my selfe, I ioyne with my simple [h]armonie, manie playne verses”.

Early modern English people of all sorts knew that the variety provided by pastimes, entertainments, and community had the power to literally re-create a person, offering renewal for both body and spirit. While there is substantial scholarly work on the recreational pastimes of the country’s nobility, Popular Recreations in Early Modern England will focus primarily, though not exclusively, upon recreations that were enjoyed across social strata.

• This event is free to attend. Please register using the link above.

Programme

• 9:45 - 10:00 Registration and welcome coffee
  
  
• 10:00 - 11:30 Concepts of Recreation (Chair: Peter Auger and Katie Bank)
  • Peter Radford, “They daunced till thire bones did ake,” Women’s Search for Fun and Games in England in the 16th and 17th-Centuries
  • Louisa Pickard, Music, Menstruation and the Moon: female virtue and menstrual resonances in early modern balladry
  • Mark Jones, ‘Keeping those feastes with idlenes, riot & gluttony’: Corpus Analysis and the Criticism of Recreation

•  11:00 - 11:30 Discussion

• 11:30 - 11:45 Coffee break
  
  
• 11:45 - 13:15 Time and Place (Chair: Alex McHugh)
  
  • Susie Johns, Recreation as a marker of time
  • Samuel Teague, "The most delightful facultie of musick': Musical Life in Civil War and Commonwealth Oxford
  • Mark Lewis, The Social Life of a Seventeenth Century Shop Keeper
• 12:45 - 13:15 Discussion
  
  
• 13:15 - 14:15 Lunch break (provided)
  
  
• 14:15 - 15:15 Keynote Lecture: Christopher Marsh: The matter of ballads (and why ballads matter)
   (Chair: Katie Bank)

• 15:15 - 15:30 Coffee break

• 15:30 - 17:00 Objects and Arenas of Play (Chair: Jacob Hyde)
  • Jacob Deacon, The Swordplay’s the Thing: Re-assessing Prize Fights as Recreation in Sixteenth-Century England
  • Samantha Arten, “To the vse of the godly Christians for recreatyng themselues”: Singing Psalm Harmonizations in Tudor England
  • Jennifer Reid, Competition, Improvisation, and Physical Contests in Early Robin Hood Festal Performance
    
    
• 16:30 - 17:00 Discussion
  
  
17:00 - 18:00 Book launch and Drinks (in-person only, Arts Foyer)
• Short remarks by Hugh Adlington
• Writing Early Modern Loneliness. Eds. Hannah Yip and Thomas Clifton (Palgrave, 2025)
• 18:30 Conference dinner – The Physician(self-pay)