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In Shakespeare’s lifetime, the game we call soccer today, known as football in Europe, was a popular in Shakespeare’s lifetime. In fact, some sources say the game of football was invented in England during the Middle Ages. These original forms of football were called “mob football” and would be played in towns and villages, involving two opposing teams, that would struggle by any means possible to drag an inflated pig’s bladder to markers at each end of town. Shakespeare mentions this game twice in his plays. In Comedy of Errors, Dromio says “Am I so round with you as you with me, That like a football you do spurn me thus?” Then in King Lear, the Earl of Kent references football again saying, “Nor tripp’d neither, you base football player?” One of these inflated pig’s bladders was actually found, in tact, in the rafters of Stirling Castle. This surviving football dates to the 16th century, and could have belonged to Mary Queen of Scots. Here today to tell us more about 16th century football, the artifact discovered at Stirling Castle, and to share the results if his own scientific experiments comparing ancient football artifacts to modern soccer balls, is our guest, historian, and scientist, Henry Hanson.
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Henry Hanson wrote a PhD thesis in football (soccer) impact mechanics and dynamics in the mechanical engineering school of Loughborough University, and has bachelors degrees in German and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Portland in Oregon. HIs current work in the adidas Innovation team comprises aerodynamics, mechanics, test machine design, and human-product interaction to improve performance, accessibility and enjoyment of sport. Outside the office, he runs, cycles, lifts and always has a couple science-based art projects in progress.
I’ll be asking Henry Hanson about:
- Soccer and football here in America are very different sports. For Shakespeare’s lifetime, would the sport known to 16th century folk as “football” have been played like European soccer or like American football?
- I was able to find a few 16th century woodcuts and drawings that depict football being played, and in each image, there’s a group of men around a large ball. The ball has a seam clearly visible as if it is made of leather and the leather has been sewn together. Is this image consistent with what we know about early modern footballs?
- Henry has done extensive scientific research on early modern footballs, specifically the one thought to have belonged to Mary Queen of Scots which dates to the 16th century and was found, intact, in the rafters at Stirling Castle. Henry, tell us about your research, what you have discovered about early modern footballs, and what you learned from that work about how the early modern football compares in performance with the modern soccer ball?
- …and more!
Resources Recommended by Our Guest
Link to the paper Henry Hanson wrote for the International Sports Engineering Conference:
Watch Henry’s YouTube episode on the research he did into the 16th century football found at Stirling Castle:
Henry’s Website:
The Mary Rose Trust (they made part of the replica ball):
Art project from John O’Shea on Pigs bladder footballs (he has done work with the pig bladder concept in the past):
https://www.andfestival.org.uk/events/pigs-bladder/
Related Episode:
Did Shakespeare Play Football?
Shakespeare wrote one of the earliest known references to the game of football. So for this week’s episode of Did Shakespeare, we ask the question: Did Shakespeare play sports?
Watch the full episode here and keep scrolling to read a brief history of football in Shakespeare’s lifetime.
“…Am I so round with you as you with me, That like a football you do spurn me thus?”
— Dromio, Comedy of Errors (II.1)
Soccer vs Football
Soccer and football here in America are very different sports. For Shakespeare’s lifetime, the sport of football was likely a mix between the two disciplines, and, in practical terms, likely very close to rugby.
You can see 16th century images of the game in play here and here.
The game was played with a ball, but there was no fighting over whether it was hands that you used to propel the ball downfield like in American Football, or whether it was your feet that were used like in Soccer. Instead, the goal was simply to get the ball, by whatever means necessary, into the marked goal at the end of town. There were no real rules about how to go from one end to the other. Contemporary records of the game talk about the sport in terms of injuries sustained, a perspective supported by paintings of football from this period, which show men being taken off the field in wheelbarrows, much like an ambulance or medic’s litter.
Tudor Football Teams
The game of football was a town based sport. It was rather impromptu, as it seems there weren’t established teams backed by the town in any official capacity. Instead, men of the town would strike up a game, choose sides, and then play.
If you were a townsperson that was not playing the game, you were expected. to cheer and observe, but there was no formal organization. There were no limits to how many people could be on a team, and playing the game must have been popular because there are several instances where the government felt they needed to ban the game. Government proclamations indicate that men were playing football at such frequency that their duties to train as archers for the local militia groups was diminished, offering what was taken to be a threat to national security.
In 1424, Scotland’s Parliament passed a law called “the Football Act” which specifically regulated “Of playing at the fut ball” (James I. Parl. 1-1424 c.17 in the Duodecimo Edition). The act included a statute that stated the King forbade anyone playing football under the pain of fine. The cost was listed as four pence. (Source and more information: Craigie, William A; et al. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: from the Twelfth Century to the End of the Seventeenth. Aberdeen University Press, Oxford University Press.)
While the act was not strictly enforced, it remained a law for centuries, not being officially repealed until the 20th century.
Three further 15th century Acts (in 1457, 1470 and 1490) explicitly prohibit both football and golf. (Parliamentary Records for Scotland)
“Nor tripp’d neither, you base football player?”
— Earl of Kent, King Lear (I.4)
The Ball for 16th Century Football
I was able to find a few 16th century woodcuts and drawings that depict football being played, and in each image, there’s a group of men around a large ball. The ball has a seam clearly visible as if it is made of leather and the leather has been sewn together.
This image of a ball that is sewn together by a leather casing is consistent with the research Henry Hanson has done into footballs of this period. Henry indicates that the ball itself was made from a pig’s bladder that was filled with air, or sometimes something more substantial like straw or even wood chips. Once the pig’s bladder was full, it was encased in a leather covering to keep it from bursting while it was being used.
Henry Hanson’s Experiments with 16th Century Footballs
Henry has done extensive scientific research on early modern footballs, specifically the one thought to have belonged to Mary Queen of Scots which dates to the 16th century and was found, intact, in the rafters at Stirling Castle. Henry shares that he performed a series of tests to determine how the early modern football compares in performance with the modern soccer ball.
The original football found at Stirling Castle which launched this entire investigation, was found to be a pig’s bladder, inflated with air, and wrapped in a cow based leather sewn with cotton thread.
Henry suggests that the type of filling chosen for the pig’s bladder might indicate how violent the game was intended to be. For someone like Queen Mary, for example, who is presumed to have owned the Stirling Castle football, the implication is that she would have played a much milder form of the sport than the violent, riot-level, games played in the streets of local towns. Given that the air-filled ball was relatively delicate, someone playing in the streets could have chosen to fill the pig’s bladder with something more substantial, like straw. The entire idea that the ball may have been filled with air because it wasn’t intended to be played with roughly is complete conjecture, but Henry’s work did demonstrate that the ball itself could not have sustained violent levels of play and remained inflated, so there’s some evidence to make educated guesses here.
“…the 16thC ball, the technical properties of that are the entry point into the history, and it wasn’t suitable for a mob based game. It was good in a room, bouncy and playful, but not durable, not American Football, it would burst if you were tackled. It might be a split in football, and something more gentle in a castle.”
As far as we know the Stirling Castle football is the only surviving football from this period. You can see the “World’s Oldest Football” at Stirling Smith Art Museum in Scotland.
Other resources You Might Find Useful:
The book, Life in Elizabethan Days, calls the game of football “a violent scramble”, “a brawling game,” and “unacademic.” This book suggests the game was played primarily by young school boys, and that in observance of Shrove Tuesday as part of a general carnival full of all manner of games and festivities that was put on prior to the observation of Lent. Read this book on Internat Archive.
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That’s it for this week! Thank you for listening. I’m Cassidy Cash, and I hope you learn something new about the bard. I’ll see you next time!
