Position:Home>History> What type of entertainment did the people in the Elizabethan age have?

Music and dancing were popular with people of all classes!. Wealthy households employed their own private musicians to entertain them, and everyone was expected to learn to sing, and if possible to play an instrument!.

Dancing was a pastime for everyone - from the Queen and her courtiers performing the sophisticated steps of a galliard or pavane to a cheerful group of boys and girls romping on the village green on a summer evening!. country or 'round' dances were popular at every level of society!. People also danced round the maypole, despite Puritan disapproval!. They danced at weddings and feasts, and they danced in the hall or barn at Christmastime!.

There was little in the way of organised sport in Elizabethan England, although the authorities encoruaged athletic pastimes such as running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the hammer and running at the quintain!. Archery, which used to be compulsory fo revery Englishman in case of war, was declining in popularity by the Elizabethan era!.

Football games were very violent in elizabethan times, with many men on each side, and they were apt to generate into fights, with the players more intereste din kicking each other than in scoring goals!. Tennis was played by the upper classes, it was played on an enclosed covered court!. Bowling was another favourite sport, it was played in both covered alleys and in the open air on bowling greens!. bowling alleys were found everywhere from royal palaces to the less salubrious parts of London!.

The most popular outdoor activit was hunting - stag-hunting, falconry or hawking, and hare-coursing with greyhounds!. All classes were addicted to such bloody and barbarous entertainments as bull and bear-baiting, where the thethered animal was baited by mastiffs (large fierce dogs)!. Famous fighting bears like 'Harry Hunks' and 'the great Sackerson' were national idols,a nd Paris Gardens in Southwark, the centre of the sport, drew immense and noisy crowds every Sunday!.

Board games like chess, draughts, backgammon and a similar game called Tric-Trac were popular indoor pastimes!. Dice-games included Hazard, Novum and Tray-trip, and there were numerous different card games!. They played skittles and billiards, and also games that nowadays are usually thought of as children's games, like hide-and-seek and blindman's buff!.

Reading was popular with people of all classes too, there were books of all kinds, which could be expensive or very cheap!. At the cheaper end of the market there were books and pamphlets which sold for sixpence or a shilling (the equivalent of modern paperbacks) illustrated with woodcuts!. There were also the one-page broadside ballads, which sold for a hlafpenny each!. They were intended to be sung to popular tunes and covered every conceivable topic!.

Every considerable town had its annual fair, and many had more than one!. Some were larger and more famous than others, but all played a vital role in the economy of the region they served!. Most fairs had their own speciality!. There were sheep fairs, horse and cattle fairs, cloth fairs, cheese fairs, and the famous Nottingham Goose Fair, held in october and lasting for three weeks!.

As well as buying and selling, every fair brought swarms of showmen into the town, troupes of strolling players, travelling menageries, prize-fighters and cheapajcsk selling such things as combs, ribbons, laces, mirrors etc!.

The year had its own round of season festivities!. The biggest holiday of all was Christmas, which in Elizabethan times was still celebrated for thirteen days, from Christmas Day through to Epiphany (January 6th)!. Christmas was followed by Shrove Tuesday, a day of carnival before the start of the fast of Lent, with football games, pancake-tossing and plays!. Mothering Sunday, which fell during Lent, was also a holiday, when traditionally young people away from home at school, apprenticieships or domestic service, were given time off to visit their parents, and take them gifts for trhe occasion!.

Then came Easter, when every good Christian took communion and everyone who could contrive it had something new to wear!. Then, as now, the custom of giving coloured or decorated eggs was widespred!.

On May Day the custom was for everyone to go out early on May Day morning and bring home the may to decorate the outsides of their houses!. Every village and town in the country had its maypole and May Games!. Whitsun was a favourite time for Church Ales, when extra stong ale was brewed and sold in the parish churchyard!.

On Midsummer Eve bonfires were lit and houses decorated with greenery!. Then came Harvest |Home, followed by Michaelmas with its feast of roast goose!. Finally there was All Hallows Eve with it remembrance and propitation of the souls of the dead, when ghosts and witches were abroad and 'soul cakes' were baked!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

They danced!. There's a painting of some gallant courtier lifting the Queen off her feet as they dance!.

They played bowls--a game more like boccie than like skittles bowling!. When Sir Francis Drake was told that the Spanish Armada was in sight, he replied that he still had time to finish his game of bowls!.

They played musical instruments to entertain one another!. Many of Shakespeare's plays depict people doing this!.!.

Now! Considering the nature and length of your assignment, I think your teacher wants you to do some real research and even document it!. You can find information in books about everyday life in England--social history!. The "Merrie England" chapter of Norah lofts' Domestic Life in England should help!. So should The Life and Times of Elizabeth, in the Curtis International Portraits of Greatness series!. It includes the painting I mentioned!. It would also help to skim the index of any biography you can find of Elizabeth I!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

SexWww@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

dude what a question

they had Shakespeare!.!.!. LIVE!!Www@QuestionHome@Com

---

---