Real tennis 1599. The game thrived among the 17th-century nobility in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Habsburg Empire, but suffered under English Puritanism, as it was heavily associated with gambling. By the Age of Napoleon, the royal families of Europe were besieged and real tennis, a court game, was largely abandoned. Real tennis played a role in the history of the French Revolution, through the Tennis Court Oath, a pledge signed by French deputies in a real tennis court, which formed a decisive early step in starting the revolution. During the 18th century and early 19th century, as real tennis
The World Tossed at Tennis is thin. The fashion for yellow bands lasted in Court circles until the mid-1620s. The World Tossed at Tennis The World Tossed at Tennis is a Jacobean era masque composed by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, first published in 1620. It was likely acted on 4 March 1620 (new style) at Denmark House. Middleton and Rowley conducted one of the most interesting collaborative efforts in English Renaissance drama; together they produced significant works, "The Changeling" and "A Fair Quarrel". Their only masque is one of the stranger and more original literary products of their generation. "A Courtly Masque; the Device