Editing Recorder (musical instrument) (section)

==== Cultural significance ====
The recorder was widely used in the sixteenth century, and was one of the most common instruments of the Renaissance. From the fifteenth century onwards, paintings show upper-class men and women playing recorder, and Virdung's didactic treatise {{Lang|de|Musica getutscht}} (1511), the first of its kind, was aimed at the amateur (see also Documentary evidence). [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]] was a recorder player; at his death in 1547 an [[Inventory of Henry VIII of England|inventory of his possessions]] included 76 recorders in consorts of various sizes and materials.<ref name=":14">''Oxford Companion to Music''. see section 2 of the article on "Recorder Family"</ref> Some Italian paintings from the sixteenth century show aristocracy of both sexes playing the recorder, however many gentlemen found it unbecoming to play because it uses the mouth, preferring the lute and later the viol.<ref name=":7" />

[[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] mentions the recorder in ''[[Hamlet]]'', written at the turn of the seventeenth century,<ref name=":15">''[[Hamlet]]'', [[s:Hamlet (1917) Yale/Text/Act III|Act 3, scene 2, lines 307–308]], Hamlet: "Ah, ha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!"</ref> as does [[John Milton|Milton]] in ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' published in 1667, in which fallen angels in Hell "move / in perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood / of flutes and soft recorders".<ref name=":16">''Paradise Lost, Book I'': "Anon they move/ in perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood/ flutes and soft recorders"</ref><ref name=":17">Nicholas S. Lander, "[http://www.recorderhomepage.net/literary-theatrical-references/ Literary References] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140620104307/http://www.recorderhomepage.net/literary-theatrical-references/ |date=2014-06-20 }}", Recorder Home Page (1996–2014), last accessed 30 June 2014.</ref>