ABSTRACT
The West Indian writer C.L.R. James who was an authority on cricket noted wryly: ‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know.’ Upper-class romantics might imagine it was only a game with the thwack of leather on willow but James who was poor, black and a Marxist could see that its rules, rituals and commentaries were profoundly affected by social and political events. Play is not different; it cannot be viewed in a vacuum. As long as there have been writers and artists to observe them, children seem to have played and to have mimicked adult behaviour. But what commentators have made of this has varied widely. In this chapter, I do not attempt to give either a history of play or a comprehensive history of play research. Rather, I want to pick out certain themes and periods which seem interesting because they show how research into play has been influenced by very different factors. Today, influenced by the playschools movement and slightly nervous about what too much work stress will do to us, we glorify play. Plato in The Republic described a comprehensive system of education for his philosopherkings without ever mentioning play. That was something women did with infants and it didn’t matter a jot.
