The Social Stakes of Gambling in Early Modern London

Abstract

Simmel’s concept of “play” positions sociable behaviors such as gambling and flirting as abstract enactments of society’s “serious relationships.” Flirting, Simmel suggests, is a strictly formal, or “play” version of sex; gambling, in turn, is a “play” version of the economy. Gambling’s structures of profit and loss, of risk and reward, echo and indeed depend upon the practices that compose the “real” economy, but the point of gambling itself is essentially social; that is to say, gambling is communicative, interactive, full of struggle and pleasure and sorrow, and its purpose is rooted in these qualities. For Simmel, the sociability of gambling far outweighs its financial elements: “the true sportsman” is never really in it for the money.