Amazon.com description: Product Description: This social history explores early-modern Venetian society through the lens of the festive combat which involved all classes, but especially the city's more marginal workers. It employs four different topical approaches: the social geography of Venetian factionalism; the structure of combat itself; the festive world which grew up around the encounters, providing workers with an alternative society of their own; and the response of the Venetian patriciate, government and police to this largely uncontrollable, plebeian entertainment.