Definition of "recorder"

Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i]

[…] he beheldThe city fronted with bright fires, and heardPipes, and recorders, and the hum of war;

1791, Homer, W[illiam] Cowper, transl., “[The Iliad.] Book 10.”, in The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Translated into Blank Verse, […], volume I, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], page 242, lines 12-14

On his [Hamlet’s] taking the recorders—very like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia.

1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XII, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, page 201

And when they paused on a hilltop for lunch, he whipped out his battered recorder and commenced to tootling “Greensleeves,” scaring off all living creatures within a five-mile radius—which may have been his intention.

1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 5, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant‎, New York: Knopf, page 133

[…] he had huffed into his white plastic recorder while scowling at the sheets of music that lay open on the wobbly stainless-steel stand.

2017, Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic‎, New York: Penguin Random House