Shakespeare's World | Sports and Recreations
A consideration of how the Elizabethans enjoyed most of their leisure provides valuable clues about their society, and if the attempt is a reminder at times that little has changed in four centuries, it more often jolts us into realizing how distant Shakespeare's world is. Sports and recreations fulfilled many functions, but their obvious purpose then, as now, was to help people to cope with the pressures and routines of daily life by periodically escaping from them. We appreciate the point easily but fail perhaps to perceive how vital that need was for most of Shakespeare's contemporaries....
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