“Am I so round with you as you with me,
That like a football you do spurn me thus?
*******
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.”
In “King Lear” (i. 4), Kent calls Oswald “a base football player.”
According to Strutt,[793] it does not appear among the popular exercises before the reign of Edward III.; and then, in 1349, it was prohibited by a public edict because it impeded the progress of archery. The danger, however, attending this pastime occasioned James I. to say: “From this Court I debarre all rough and violent exercises, as the football, meeter for laming than making able the users thereof.”
Occasionally the rustic boys made use of a blown bladder, without the covering of leather, by way of a football, putting beans and horse-beans inside, which made a rattling noise as it was kicked about. Barclay, in his “Ship of Fools” (1508) thus graphically describes it:
“Howe in the winter, when men kill the fat swine,
They get the bladder and blow it great and thin,
With many beans or peason put within:
It ratleth, soundeth, and shineth clere and fayre,
While it is thrown and caste up in the ayre,
Eche one contendeth and hath a great delite
With foote and with hande the bladder for to smite;
If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne,
This wise to labour they count it for no payne.”
Shrovetide was the great season for football matches;[794] and at a comparatively recent period it was played in Derby, Nottingham, Kingston-upon-Thames, etc.
Gleek. According to Drake,[795] this game is alluded to twice by Shakespeare—in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1):
“Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.”
And in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5):
“1 Musician. What will you give us?