Fair play—the popular strand

Abstract

Abstract The suggestion that fair play was particularly associated with the lower orders of England, which we first meet in the work of Daniel Defoe in 1705, was expressed many times in the 18th century. We have occasional references to fair treatment of foreigners by the English populace, and there is much evidence that ideas of fairness were integral to the reactions of crowds to food shortages and to public executions. But the explicit evidence for a popular conception of fair play is strongest in the context of spontaneous fighting. Often when people called for fair play when a brawl broke out they were looking forward to the spectacle, but their commitment to the belief that the rules must be observed was genuine. We find confirmation of this in the cult of the outlaw. Between his emergence in the later Middle Ages and the work of Joseph Ritson at the end of the 18th century Robin Hood embodied a particular kind of fair play, one that encapsulated perfectly the more popular element in the tradition: not so much the righter of wrongs at this stage as the good-humoured and boisterous hero who was always up for a fair fight.