GAMES AND PLAY

GAMES AND PLAY. The types of games and amusements played in early modern times ran the gamut from physical games of an athletic nature to sedentary games, like cards, which were enormously popular. Some amusements were pursued outdoors, in parks and gardens, while others were more properly confined to interior spaces. The standard edition of François Rabelais's Gargantua (1542) lists some 217 sports and parlor and table games, many of which were played at times of celebration and feasting. This popular aspect of play continued throughout the period, although the rise of domesticity and new concepts of the family constrained the universalizing tendencies of communal amusement, bringing games principally into the private sphere. While members of every social class played at times, play was of central importance to the noble lifestyle.

PLAY AND THE NOBILITY

The noble class of early modern Europe defined itself through warfare and leisure. Since the Middle Ages, male members of the nobility had used physical games to train for battle in times of peace. Cards and chess, often played between the sexes, additionally taught skills of strategy thought to be useful both on the battlefield and in affairs of the heart. Games and behavior at play reinforced the principles of courtly love.

From the sixteenth century onward, as the nobleman's role on the battlefield began to wane and more time was spent distinguishing oneself through codes of behavior, play became of central importance in the daily life of the elite. It was how members of the nobility spent a large portion of their day. Indeed, some scholars consider the persona of the courtier to have been invented within a framework of play.

Early modern games served an important pedagogical function, at least in terms of sociability. Conversational games—often called games of society—were a staple of noble culture, teaching many of the verbal and behavioral skills needed to survive at court. Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier (written between 1513 and 1524)—a book that was regarded as a handbook of behavior and a model for all future treatises on the topic throughout Europe—uses this type of game to structure a definition of the ideal attributes of a courtier. It is not only the qualities described that teach the reader, but also the example of the players who demonstrate how the games of court are played.

GAMBLING AND CARD GAMES

Dating back to medieval times, cards had long been a favorite evening occupation in court circles. This proclivity grew into a mania during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in France, but also in other parts of Europe. English gentlemen on the grand tour were warned not to play in Paris, because so many young men had been fleeced by both upper-class and lower-class players. Moreover, the social problem of the gaming house expanded dramatically at this time in spite of numerous regulations and penalties designed to eliminate its existence.

The vice of gambling increasingly became a point of concern, and was believed by many to be the chief cause of moral and physical degeneration among the nobility. Much was made of the damaging effects of the dark, cavernous spaces that gamblers occupied while playing, and the sedentary requirements of play were blamed for all sorts of ailments. As an alternative to this vice, philosophers, moralists, and physicians encouraged people to play outdoors at amusements designed to exercise the body and liberate the soul. Moderately active forms of play, like swinging, were recommended as appropriate for the delicate, noble disposition.

In their card games, the nobility greatly preferred games of chance to those involving skill. Many scholars attribute this preference to the courtly idea of disinterest—to practice and employ strategies at cards would suggest that the player was overly concerned with the consequences of play, which often involved the loss of considerable sums. During the eighteenth century, as more members of the bourgeoisie began to play alongside the nobility, the aim of being an expert player became more pronounced. Treatises on play became a virtual cottage industry throughout Europe. Games of luck increasingly gave way to games of skill, as books written by the Englishman Edmund Hoyle (1672–1769) taught players strategies by which the whims of chance could be overcome.

PLAY AND CHILDHOOD

There were few distinctions between the games of childhood and adulthood. Noble children were taught games of chance at an early age, particularly as they would be expected to take a seat at gaming tables later in life. Amusements that are now considered childish—swinging, for instance—were enjoyed by people of all ages. The game of blindman's buff, which had been played by the kings of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was made popular once again by Marie-Antoinette, queen of France in the final years of the Old Regime.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, new concepts of childhood caused moralists and philosophers to turn their attention to the safeguarding of children. Treatises on the subject of children's upbringing discussed the need to prohibit "evil" games (namely those related to gaming) and to encourage "good" games (often referring to simple, outdoor amusements or games that could be modified to teach useful lessons). Enlightenment notions of the child and work, in particular, changed the way that play was understood at the end of the period.

Children's play began to be conceptualized as something distinct and separate from that of adults. It also became an important part of the child's education, different from the behavioral pedagogy that play had traditionally taught. The English philosopher John Locke theorized in Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693) that children would be more inclined to learn their lessons when play was built into the curriculum. If the child preferred to play with tops, he proposed, then properties of physics could be taught through that amusement.

Such ideas revolutionized pedagogical thought across Europe. Games that had once been designed to convey the principles of courtly love, such as the French board game known as the jeu de l'oie (game of the goose), were transformed to teach lessons in history. Similarly, cards that had been used in games of chance, played as a social obligation and expectation of class, became tools for teaching mathematics and improving memory.

At the same time, the notion of free play—that is, play that stimulated the body without specific pedagogical purpose—developed in tandem with the "new" child created by the Enlightenment. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's educational tract Émile (1762) discusses numerous games and amusements appropriate for the child at different ages, and it also puts its emphasis on the physical benefits of play. Émile (the child created by Rousseau in his book) whips a top, but he learns nothing from the process. Instead Rousseau focuses on the exercise—the strengthened arm and eye—that results.

PLAY AND ART

Leisure pursuits are a recurring subject in the visual arts, yet the specific theme of play reached a height of popularity during the early modern era. Some scholars have explained this rise in terms of audience. As a middle class came into existence, a new interest in familiar subject matter—scenes of daily life, as opposed to grand and often obscure mythological or historical stories—developed. Other scholars situate this change of preference firmly within the outlook of the aristocracy. A new emphasis on sociability in court culture altered the taste of noble viewers, who desired images reflecting their class-defining behavior.

Favorite play subjects of the Renaissance and baroque were scenes of bawdy behavior caused by gaming disputes, like the tavern brawls of the Flemish painter David Teniers the younger (1610–1690), or card sharps, such as the gypsy cheats depicted by Caravaggio (1573–1610) and Georges de La Tour (1593–1652). In general, the characters in these scenes were members of the lower classes, rather than the middle-class or noble beholders who bought these works of art. Art historians attribute this difference to a focus on ignoble behavior, which served to distance the intended viewers from their base counterparts.

Rococo images of play, in contrast, tend to picture images of polite play by noble participants. Few images depict the real-life mania of gaming. Instead, images of swinging, blindman's buff, seesaws, and other outdoor amusements were preferred—Jean-Honoré Fragonard's Happy Hazards of the Swing (1767; Wallace Collection, London) is the paradigmatic example. The emblematics of these scenes are largely related to the pleasures and hazards of love, and art history has tended to judge such images as a reflection of aristocratic frivolity. Recent research, however, finds the style of the rococo to be inherently playful—employing serpentine forms and harmonies of color that keep the eye in continual motion. This emphasis on visual play coincides with the discernment of a "play impulse" in aesthetic philosophy, whereby writers such as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) conceptualized the ideal aesthetic experience as a free play of the mind, without motive or purpose.

See also Aristocracy and Gentry ; Childhood and Childrearing ; Court and Courtiers ; Festivals ; Gambling ; Locke, John ; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Translated by Robert Baldick. New York, 1962.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington, Ind., 1984.

Barolsky, Paul. Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art. Columbia, Mo., 1978.

Black, Jeremy. The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century. New York, 1992.

Isherwood, Robert M. Farce and Fantas: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris. New York and Oxford, 1986.

Lanham, Richard A. "The Self as Middle Style: Cortegiano." In The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance. New Haven and London, 1976.

Motley, Mark. Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715. Princeton, 1990.

Schalk, Ellery. From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Princeton, 1986.

Stafford, Barbara Maria. Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. London and Cambridge, Mass., 1994.

Jennifer D. Milam