5 ms·
https://about-history.com/what-did-peasants-do-for-entertainment-in-the-middle-ages/ https://about-history.com/what-did-peasants-do-for-entertain... >Music and
by grawprog 5y ago
https://about-history.com/what-did-peasants-do-for-entertainment-in-the-middle-ages/ https://about-history.com/what-did-peasants-do-for-entertain...
>Music and dance
Music and dance is as old as humanity itself.
The peasantry could not afford to pay professional musicians but plenty of people knew how to dance and sing and enough people knew how to play instruments to have a jolly good time.
Occasionally, actors might come to town and put on plays and dramas.
>Decorative Arts
Decorative arts were applied to clothing, housing, religiously symbolic objects, etc.
Embroidery, pottery, basket weaving, carpentry, leatherwork and woodcarving were common skills, often with division of labor by sex.
>Sports
Sports, including martial arts were also practiced commonly.
There were many medieval tournaments allowing people to compete and demonstrate their physical skill in sports like running, log-tossing, or stick-fighting.
There were also team events such as kicking a stuffed leather ball.
- varjag 5y ago> Embroidery, pottery, basket weaving, carpentry, leatherwork and woodcarving were common skills, often with division of labor by sex. Sounds more like work tbh. Basket weaving may be a hobby now, but unlikely it was in 16th century.
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- grawprog 5y agoWhy would something people find fun enough to do as a hobby now not have been fun 500 years ago? Compare it to say a modern profession like software engineering. Despite it being work, there's plenty of programmers who also enjoy programming and do it for fun on their own time as well as work. Why would it have been any different back then?
- watwut 5y agoWe consider programming work. Overwhelming majority of it is pure work.
- notahacker 5y agoThere are plenty of people who don't enjoy programming. Now imagine they all have to do it too.
- burnafter184 5y agoToday's labor is different in that the individual is commoditized. You're indentured to your client, who then accrues a debt to be discharged in an agreed upon time with various contingencies appended, like showing up on time and regardless of completion of your given task (10 baskets/8h) you're nonetheless expected to put in your contracted time. Basket weaving done in your home, with performance left to your own scruples, and a personalized schedule is leagues different than slaving away for someone else.
- varjag 5y agoA remarkable attempt to redefine one out of work, but in both cases your activity is means to an end (of survival). Subsistence farming is not leisure.