A Study On The Leisure Entertainments In Stuart England

The Stuart era(1603-1714)is the time of England’s social reform,the period for the continuous expansion of overseas colonial trade and the important time for the shift from the agricultural community to the industrial revolution and society.The England’s transformation was shown not only in frequent civil wars and revolutions,but also in Englanders’ daily leisure and entertainment activities—traditional ones went along with those with sharply early modern characteristics.From the perspective of social life history,this paper studies the leisure and entertainment featuring England’s society to explore the development and changes of England’s society in the transformational period.The paper consists of four major parts.The first chapter discusses the foundation for the development of leisure and entertainment in the England’s society in the Stuart era.The mainly steady social circumstances established not merely favorable conditions for the England’s economic development,but basic premise for England’s common people to take leisure and entertainment.The progress of the trade between the East and the West and the overseas colonization brought more global products and added new factors for the public’s leisure and entertainment activities.Although there were poor people at the ground level,the majority of the peasant and wealthy levels enjoyed material basis and conditions for leisure and entertainment.The second chapter describes traditional leisure and entertainment activities in Stuart England.The third chapter presents such activities newly risen in this country at that time.The two chapters reveal these activities in the Stuart era adopted and inherited traditions and increased many new factors as well.The Englanders came into contact with new alien things— tea,coffee and chocolate,etc.,with even more various leisure and entertainment activities.Thus,such activities in the Stuart era were distinctive with inheritance and continuity as well as mixed up with multiple sorts as a whole.The fourth chapter summarizes the characteristics of leisure and entertainment activities in England during the Stuart Dynasty.Those activities were extremely popular owing to the bourgeois devotion and advocation.The social structure and power of different social classes of the hierarchical society were inequal,which consequently divided those activities clearly into different levels in different classes.Moreover,those activities were characteristic with prevalent gambling and pursuit of bloodiness and violence in this time.To sum up,those activities were traditional as well as rich with early modern aspects.The social changes are reflected as the transitional features of leisure and entertainment in this period.The fifth chapter expounds the impacts of those activities carried on in the era upon the contemporary and later world,and demonstrates the important role of the activities in maintaining the stable society from the positive and negative aspects.The conclusion part makes the systematic summary of leisure and entertainment activities in the Stuart time,expounds development of some such activities in the later time and discusses referential significance of the history of leisure and entertainment activities in the Stuart time to developing countries just in the period of social transition.