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Did women play football in the seventeenth century?

by Victoria E. Burke

Probably not. Pulter imagines fleeing the confines of earth and playing football with the stars at line 12, but contemporary drama suggests that the idea of women playing football was either an occasion for smutty jokes (as in James Shirley’s play, extracted below) or for lamenting the manliness of women in the region of Savoy (as in Thomas Killigrew’s play, extracted below).

James Shirley, The bird in a cage
  • Morello.
  • Your Lordship may make one at Football,
  • ’Tis all the sport now a dayes.
  • What other is the world then a Ball,
  • Which we run after with whoope and with hollow,
  • He that doth catch it is sure of a fall,
  • His heeles tript up by him that doth follow.
  •  
  • Dondolo.
  • Doe not women play too?
  •  
  • Grutti.
  • They are too light, quickly downe.
  •  
  • Morello.
  • O yes, they are the best Gamesters of all,
  • For though they often lye on the ground,
  • Not one amongst a hundred will fall,
  • But under her coates the Ball will found.
Source: James Shirley, The Bird in a Cage. A comedie. As it hath beene presented at the Phoenix in Drury-Lane (London, 1633), sig. G2v, EEBO.
Thomas Killigrew,
The first part of Cicilia & Clorinda, Or, Love in arms. A tragi-comedy

Marius.

I find Orante has no great kindness for the Prince nor People; yet he cannot deny the Princess Clorinda is a strange example of Virtue and Courage; she fears no wounds nor dangers.

Orante.

She will play at foot-ball, thresh, and hew woods, as well as her Brother; Alass, Sir, ’tis not there as in Rome, and the Eastern World, where the Women are soft, bred nice, and full of tender thoughts; Here is no difference betwixt the Sexes, but that they esteem them less then Men: Their Cowes plow too, and their Mares bear burthens, and their Women fight. No beast of that Country has any priviledge; and I wonder at nothing so much as the Roman Curiosity, that has made Warr thus long against this waspes nest in a Rock. By all our Gods, we never thought their Country worth asking for, we onely banish’d Malefactors thither; and they have chosen rather to return and die here, then live and wither out their daies in that nest of Winter. Cold, Poverty, and Ignorance, are the onely commodities, I know, their Country affords.

Source: Thomas Killigrew, The First Part of Cicilia & Clorinda, Or, Love in Arms. A tragi-comedy. In Comedies and tragedies (London, 1664), p. 236 [263], EEBO. [original italics retained]