What other kinds of entertainment were there in Shakespeares time?

Question: What other kinds of entertainment were there in Shakespeares time!?

Help cant find it ! I'd be really greatful for your answer!Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Music and dancing!. Music, at all levels of society, was more likely to involve singing or playing than just listening, except in church or at the theatre where the choir or the actors were paid to do the work!. The level of musical education was high; most people could at least sing and knock a tune out of a recorder or fiddle, and the best amateurs were very good - the music written for family entertainment taxes professionals today!.

Games!. For the rich, tournaments had not quite gone out of fashion, and (if you could not afford to compete, or simply were female) you could always watch!. Football - a rough, disorganised fight for the ball, not the modern version - was popular all over England!. Cricket had been invented among southern shepherds in the middle ages, but was still a local, rustic sport!. Tipcat (knocking a stick into the air, then seeing how far you could hit it with a club) was a sort of primitive golf!. Tennis existed, and was fashionable among the upper class!. Where there was an enclosed corner between buttresses of a church etc!. you had people playing fives!. In Ireland and Scotland, hockey (hurling) was popular, but had not yet been tamed or spread south!. Archery, as well as being training for war, was a popular sport (though the puritans hated it: it lured people from bible-reading on Sunday)!. also hated by the puritans were the dice and card games played, usually, in low places like alehouses and brothels!. Alehouses and brothels were also, of course, themselves places of recreation!.

Cruel sports: bear/bull-baiting, co ck/dog fights, hunting!.

Together with the above, viewing public executions, whippings and pilloryings!. These were popular spectacles, as was visiting Bedlam (a madhouse) to laugh at the strange antics of the confined lunatics!.

In London there was a primitive zoo - a few lions and other beasts were kept in the Tower (caged in the dry moat) and could be viewed there!. Going to see 'the beasts' was a popular Sunday walk!.

Church!. It seems odd to a modern reader, but many Elizabethans viewed the sermon as diversion as much as worship: they enjoyed the display of oratory almost as much from the pulpit as from the playhouse stage!.

For the educated, reading - poetry, prose fiction, history/biography!. Science and mathematics were still simple enough to be recreations for the intelligent who had some education!.

Telling stories in prose or verse was also popular, not merely among children and the illiterate!.

Hope this fills in the background a bit!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Bear baiting was very popular in Southwark near the location of The Globe Theatre - bear-gardens, consisting of a circular high fenced area, the "pit", and raised seating for spectators!. A post would be set in the ground towards the edge of the pit and the bear chained to it, either by the leg or neck!. A number of well-trained hunting dogs would then be set on it, being replaced as they tired or were wounded or killed!. For a long time, the main bear-garden in London was the Paris Garden at Southwark!. Cock fighting was also popular in this part of London!. Popular entertainment during the sixteenth century tended to be boisterous and often violent!. Many men, women, and children attended the public executions of criminals that took place on a regular basis!. In addition, persons of all social classes enjoyed attending theater performances and dances!.

Www@QuestionHome@Com