The Role Of Sports In The Elizabethan Era

Sports, hunting and games were very well-liked in the Elizabethan Era. Although sports in the 1500’s were not baseball and basketball, like some our most popular, they did compete in many that we still do today. Some examples of these athletics are archery, hammer-throw, wrestling, and game ball, which is comparable to today's football or rugby. In addition, animal blood sports were played, which included bear baiting, bull baiting and more. The tournaments that the athletes participated in provided great entertainment for both upper-class and lower-class and typically lasted several days. One other common sporting activity in the Elizabethan Era was hunting. The nobles and upper-class naturally enjoyed hunting as a game or pastime. Multiple

Some games played by Elizabethan was archery,tag,battledore,bowls,culf, and gameball. Archery is very popular sport during her time and still is.Tag was a game played by kids just like it is today where one person is it and chases everyone and tries to tag them. Battledore is like the modern day badminton where a game with rackets in which a shuttlecock is played back and forth across a net.Bowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll biased balls so that they stop close to a smaller ball called a "jack".Gameball is just like the modern day game football.This rustic game, which is still extant in some parts of England, was sometimes called "the nine men's merrils," from merelles, or miereaux, an ancient French word for the jettons or counters with which it was played. The other term, morris, is

The limited means of production caused the games to be simple. Children in the medieval times had ring toss, tic tac toe and skittles. The toys they had were spinning tops, dolls and hoops. Some sports they played were tennis, hide n seek, and tag. More games they played were Marbles, hammer throwing, Queek, Shinty, king of beans, stoolball, mob football, pick up sticks, nim, tic tac toe and chess. A lot of the games/toys are

From the violence that was prevalent because of the Black Death, people turned to the theater for many reasons. Elizabethan theatre was popular for its time because Queen Elizabeth encouraged the arts, it was somewhere for every social class to go, and people could relate to the plays. One of the reasons that Elizabethan theatre was so popular was that it was enjoyed by Queen Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth loved learning new things. She would read and study for hours at a time. She also had a lot of knowledge when it came to history. She could read books in Latin and French. When she grew older, she could translate classic works into English. She also enjoyed writing and reading poetry, and a few of her poems still exist today. Elizabeth was also into arts and literature. She loved watching plays and dramatic performances. “She hired her own company of actors called “The Queen’s Players.” The art spread because of the queen. Her

Hunting is something we've done since we've been on this planet. We used to do it out of necessity, but in the modern world we do it for many other reasons. As technology has increased, we have developed different methods of hunting. These methods have carried over to today, but two have prevailed: bowhunting and rifle hunting. These methods are both hunting--obviously--but they're different in almost every other sense. Bowhunting and rifle hunting are different based on the weapon used, the way you hunt, and your connection with the animal and the land around it; however, the same in the way the respective methods bring people together.

Hunting allows a person to reconnect with nature. For many, hunting isn’t just about the chase and the thrill of catching their game. For many, hunting

In a hunt such as this, their prey was wild boar. The hunters and their dogs would chase the prey to exhaustion and at that point, go in for the kill. This target was rather dangerous, but nonetheless, the sport was enjoyed. The other form of hunting, Bow and Stable hunting, was considered less strenuous and both men and women participated in the activity. The main weapons used was a bow and arrow or a spear. Riding on horseback, the huntsmen and huntswomen accompanied by several dogs, would drive their prey into and enclosed area. Then, the hunters killed the prey in close range.

Population control is one of the biggest reasons for hunting. This reason draws both people who hunt for food and people who hunt for sport. This is the main reason that hunting for sport is actually not looked down on. It is believed that without hunting there would be too many animals roaming around. If you really think about it if there was no hunting the amount of road kill would just go up.

A lot of the games we play today, have ancestor games that were played in the Elizabethan

There were many sports that became popular with the citizens of Elizabethan England. Nobles often participated in archery, bowling, dice, hammer-throwing and most known tennis (“Alchin Elizabethan Sports”). Furthermore, nobles watched wrestling and the bloodiest sports including bear and bull baiting and dog and cock fighting. For example the queen often appeared at these events (Alchin “Elizabethan Bear & Bull Baiting”). Sports began to come from other countries and continents as people would travel to England, consequently making tennis the most popular sport of the upper classes as it originated in medieval France.

The Elizabethan Era took place from 1558 to 1603. The Elizabethan era is also known as the Golden age and was during Elizabeth I reign. This epoch in English history witnessed many threats and changes in the tide of social, political and artistic life in England. This epoch was during the time of the Renaissance and was an age of exploration and expansion abroad. This was the last period before England joined a union with Scotland.

Medieval sports of the middle ages were a source of public entertainment designed to increase the overall fitness and military experiences of men and woman. These games, called béhourds, were fought by rival knights and soldiers either on horses or the ground. This was in accordance with the feudal practice that required Lords to bring forth soldiers to protect the king in exchange for ownership of land. Knights that participated in these sports used weapons such as swords, lances, daggers, and battle axes, and thus men were often killed or brutally wounded (“Medieval Sports”). These sporting contests also made it possible for men to move up in the ranks of the Pyramid of Power. Those who performed heroically in battle or were triumphant in competition would become wealthy and considered a part of the nobility, whereas, the peasant class received as little as a purse for their excellence. Similar to the fame experienced by modern-day professional football players, medieval jousters were subject to the same treatment. However, different games were enjoyed by either class of men, therefore stardom was concentrated more toward the nobility. Despite this, many of the sports enjoyed during this time are still around today, some of which have been included in the world famous Olympic Games.

It involved activities such as mock battles and jousting competitions. Writing about the ‘Tournament at Saint-Inglevert’ Froissart claimed great occasion , where both French and English enjoyed themselves. He claimed that both sides stated that there were no injuries. Very typically on this occasion, it seems that Froissart's account was romanticised. The tournament was, according to Malcolm Vale baffling because of the how artificial it was. However, contemporaries such as Henry VII believed that the tournament gave men the chance to learn the ‘exercise of the deeds of arms’. The contemporary view of tournaments, in general, is one of praise. They were seen as entertainment and quite possibly useful too. Many contemporaries do seem to concur that the tournament was a useful exercise from a combat point of view and there must be some truth to this. The tournament certainly would not have prepared a knight for a full-scale battle, but it would have thought them essential skills such as how to joust and wield a sword. Either way, the tournament as described by Froissart was a part of the chivalric society, although we may question his claim that nobody was injured during the tournament he wrote about. It is fact that tournaments were great social occasions that were set up as methods of

2. The Elizabethan theater represented a great source of entertainment because it provided what people wanted: dancing, games and plays at an affordable price.

“In roughly built playhouses and cobblestone inn yards, an extraordinary development took place in England in the 1500s.” (Yancey, 8). At that time, an opportunity combined to produce literature achievement never before witnessed in the history of drama and theater. The renaissance, helped spark this movement by inspiring scientific and artistic creativity throughout the land. Models began writing dramas that portrayed life in both realistic and imaginative ways. This created work later captured the attention of the world that changed the English drama. The many aspects of Elizabethan theater helped to shape the acting and theater world forever.