THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM SHAKESPEARE WROTE

By Charles Dudley Warner

Queen Elizabeth being dead about ten o'clock in the morning, March 24, 1603, Sir Robert Cary posted away, unsent, to King James of Scotland toinform him of the "accident, " and got made a baron of the realm for hisride. On his way down to take possession of his new kingdom the kingdistributed the honor of knighthood right and left liberally; atTheobald's he created eight-and-twenty knights, of whom Sir RichardBaker, afterwards the author of "A Chronicle of the Kings of England, "was one. "God knows how many hundreds he made the first year, " says thechronicler, "but it was indeed fit to give vent to the passage of Honour, which during Queen Elizabeth's reign had been so stopped that scarce anycounty of England had knights enow to make a jury. "

Sir Richard Baker was born in 1568, and died in 1645; his "Chronicle"appeared in 1641. It was brought down to the death of James in 1625, when, he having written the introduction to the life of Charles I, thestorm of the season caused him to "break off in amazement, " for he hadthought the race of "Stewards" likely to continue to the "world's end";and he never resumed his pen. In the reign of James two things lost theirlustre--the exercise of tilting, which Elizabeth made a specialsolemnity, and the band of Yeomen of the Guard, choicest persons both forstature and other good parts, who graced the court of Elizabeth; James"was so intentive to Realities that he little regarded shows, " and in histime these came utterly to be neglected. The virgin queen was the lastruler who seriously regarded the pomps and splendors of feudalism. 

It was characteristic of the age that the death of James, which occurredin his fifty-ninth year, should have been by rumor attributed to"poyson"; but "being dead, and his body opened, there was no sign at allof poyson, his inward parts being all sound, but that his Spleen was alittle faulty, which might be cause enough to cast him into an Ague: theordinary high-way, especially in old bo'dies, to a natural death. "

The chronicler records among the men of note of James's time Sir FrancisVere, "who as another Hannibal, with his one eye, could see more in theMartial Discipline than common men can do with two"; Sir Edward Coke; SirFrancis Bacon, "who besides his profounder book, of Novum Organum, hathwritten the reign of King Henry the Seventh, in so sweet a style, thatlike Manna, it pleaseth the tast of all palats"; William Camden, whoseDescription of Britain "seems to keep Queen Elizabeth alive after death";"and to speak it in a word, the Trojan Horse was not fuller of HeroickGrecians, than King James his Reign was full of men excellent in allkindes of Learning. " Among these was an old university acquaintance ofBaker's, "Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, lived at the Innes ofCourt, not dissolute, but very neat; a great Visitor of Ladies, a greatfrequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses; until suchtimes as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit, was ameans that he betook him to the study of Divinity, and thereuponproceeding Doctor, was made Dean of Pauls; and became so rare a Preacher, that he was not only commended, but even admired by all who heard him. "

The times of Elizabeth and James were visited by some awful casualtiesand portents. From December, 1602, to the December following, the plaguedestroyed 30, 518 persons in London; the same disease that in the sixthyear of Elizabeth killed 20, 500, and in the thirty-sixth year 17, 890, besides the lord mayor and three aldermen. In January, 1606, a mightywhale came up the Thames within eight miles of London, whose body, seendivers times above water, was judged to be longer than the largest shipon the river; "but when she tasted the fresh water and scented the Land, she returned into the sea. " Not so fortunate was a vast whale cast uponthe Isle of Thanet, in Kent, in 1575, which was "twenty Ells long, andthirteen foot broad from the belly to the backbone, and eleven footbetween the eyes. One of his eyes being taken out of his head was morethan a cart with six horses could draw; the Oyl being boyled out of hishead was Parmacittee. " Nor the monstrous fish cast ashore in Lincolnshirein 1564, which measured six yards between the eyes and had a tail fifteenfeet broad; "twelve men stood upright in his mouth to get the Oyl. " In1612 a comet appeared, which in the opinion of Dr. Bainbridge, the greatmathematician of Oxford, was as far above the moon as the moon is abovethe earth, and the sequel of it was that infinite slaughters anddevastations followed it both in Germany and other countries. In 1613, inStandish, in Lancashire, a maiden child was born having four legs, fourarms, and one head with two faces--the one before, the other behind, likethe picture of Janus. (One thinks of the prodigies that presaged thebirth of Glendower. ) Also, the same year, in Hampshire, a carpenter, lying in bed with his wife and a young child, "was himself and the childeboth burned to death with a sudden lightning, no fire appearing outwardlyupon him, and yet lay burning for the space of almost three days till hewas quite consumed to ashes. " This year the Globe playhouse, on theBankside, was burned, and the year following the new playhouse, theFortune, in Golding Lane, "was by negligence of a candle, clean burneddown to the ground. " In this year also, 1614, the town ofStratford-on-Avon was burned. One of the strangest events, however, happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558), when "dyed Sir ThomasCheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, of whom it is reported for acertain, that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of an hourafter he was dead, as strongly as if he had been still alive. " In 1580 astrange apparition happened in Somersetshire--three score personages allclothed in black, a furlong in distance from those that beheld them; "andafter their appearing, and a little while tarrying, they vanished away, but immediately another strange company, in like manner, color, andnumber appeared in the same place, and they encountered one another andso vanished away. And the third time appeared that number again, all inbright armour, and encountered one another, and so vanished away. Thiswas examined before Sir George Norton, and sworn by four honest men thatsaw it, to be true. " Equally well substantiated, probably, was whathappened in Herefordshire in 1571: "A field of three acres, in Blackmore, with the Trees and Fences, moved from its place and passed over anotherfield, traveling in the highway that goeth to Herne, and there stayed. "Herefordshire was a favorite place for this sort of exercise of nature. In 1575 the little town of Kinnaston was visited by an earthquake: "Onthe seventeenth of February at six o'clock of the evening, the earthbegan to open and a Hill with a Rock under it (making at first a greatbellowing noise, which was heard a great way off) lifted itself up agreat height, and began to travel, bearing along with it the Trees thatgrew upon it, the Sheep-folds, and Flocks of Sheep abiding there at thesame time. In the place from whence it was first moved, it left a gapingdistance forty foot broad, and fourscore Ells long; the whole Field wasabout twenty Acres. Passing along, it overthrew a Chappell standing inthe way, removed an Ewe-Tree planted in the Churchyard, from the Westinto the East; with the like force it thrust before it High-wayes, Sheep-folds, Hedges, and Trees, made Tilled ground Pasture, and againturned Pasture into Tillage. Having walked in this sort from Saturday inthe evening, till Monday noon, it then stood still. " It seems notimprobable that Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane. 

It was for an age of faith, for a people whose credulity was fed on suchprodigies and whose imagination glowed at such wonderful portents, thatShakespeare wrote, weaving into the realities of sense those awfulmysteries of the supernatural which hovered not far away from everyEnglishman of his time. 

Shakespeare was born in 1564, when Elizabeth had been six years on thethrone, and he died in 1616, nine years before James I. , of the faultyspleen, was carried to the royal chapel in Westminster, "with greatsolemnity, but with greater lamentation. " Old Baker, who says of himselfthat he was the unworthiest of the knights made at Theobald's, condescends to mention William Shakespeare at the tail end of the men ofnote of Elizabeth's time. The ocean is not more boundless, he affirms, than the number of men of note of her time; and after he has finishedwith the statesmen ("an exquisite statesman for his own ends was RobertEarl of Leicester, and for his Countries good, Sir William Cecill, LordBurleigh"), the seamen, the great commanders, the learned gentlemen andwriters (among them Roger Askam, who had sometime been schoolmaster toQueen Elizabeth, but, taking too great delight in gaming andcock-fighting, lived and died in mean estate), the learned divines andpreachers, he concludes: "After such men, it might be thought ridiculousto speak of Stage-players; but seeing excellency in the meanest thingsdeserve remembring, and Roscius the Comedian is recorded in History withsuch commendation, it may be allowed us to do the like with some of ourNation. Richard Bourbidge and Edward Allen, two such actors as no agemust ever look to see the like; and to make their Comedies compleat, Richard Tarleton, who for the Part called the Clowns Part, never had hismatch, never will have. For Writers of Playes, and such as have beenplayers themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson haveespecially left their Names recommended to posterity. "

Richard Bourbidge (or Burbadge) was the first of the great English tragicactors, and was the original of the greater number of Shakespeare'sheroes--Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III. , Romeo, Brutus, etc. Dick Tarleton, one of the privileged scapegraces of sociallife, was regarded by his contemporaries as the most witty of clowns andcomedians. The clown was a permitted character in the old theatres, andintruded not only between the acts, but even into the play itself, withhis quips and antics. It is probable that he played the part of clown, grave-digger, etc. , in Shakespeare's comedies, and no doubt tookliberties with his parts. It is thought that part of Hamlet's advice tothe players--"and let those that play your clowns speak no more than isset down for them, " etc. --was leveled at Tarleton. 

The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whetherShakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now. That the age, was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, isprobable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangersthere is no doubt. To us he is inexhaustible. The more we study him, themore are we astonished at his multiform genius. In our complexcivilization, there is no development of passion, or character, or traitof human nature, no social evolution, that does not find expressionsomewhere in those marvelous plays; and yet it is impossible for us toenter into a full, sympathetic enjoyment of those plays unless we can insome measure recreate for ourselves the atmosphere in which they werewritten. To superficial observation great geniuses come into the world atrare intervals in history, in a manner independent of what we call theprogress of the race. It may be so; but the form the genius shall take isalways determined by the age in which it appears, and its expression isshaped by the environments. Acquaintance with the Bedouin desert life oftoday, which has changed little for three thousand years, illumines thebook of Job like an electric light. Modern research into Hellenic andAsiatic life has given a new meaning to the Iliad and the Odyssey, andgreatly enhanced our enjoyment of them. A fair comprehension of theDivina Commedia is impossible without some knowledge of the factions thatrent Florence; of the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline; of the spirit thatbanished Dante, and gave him an humble tomb in Ravenna instead of asepulchre in the pantheon of Santa Croce. Shakespeare was a child of hisage; it had long been preparing for him; its expression culminated inhim. It was essentially a dramatic age. He used the accumulated materialsof centuries. He was playwright as well as poet. His variety andmultiform genius cannot otherwise be accounted for. He called in thecoinage of many generations, and reissued it purified and unalloyed, stamped in his own mint. There was a Hamlet probably, there werecertainly Romeos and Juliets, on the stage before Shakespeare. In himwere received the imaginations, the inventions, the aspirations, thesuperstitions, the humors, the supernatural intimations; in him met theconverging rays of the genius of his age, as in a lens, to be sent onwardthenceforth in an ever-broadening stream of light. 

It was his fortune to live not only in a dramatic age, but in atransition age, when feudalism was passing away, but while its shows andsplendors could still be seriously comprehended. The dignity that dothhedge a king was so far abated that royalty could be put upon the stageas a player's spectacle; but the reality of kings and queens and courtpageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to theimaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings andqueens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in thelanguage and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evidentin the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They alldelighted in ingenuities of phrase, in neat turns and conceits; it was acompliment then to be called a "conceited" writer. 

Of all the guides to Shakespeare's time, there is none more profitable orentertaining than William Harrison, who wrote for Holinshed's chronicle"The Description of England, " as it fell under his eyes from 1577 to1587. Harrison's England is an unfailing mine of information for all thehistorians of the sixteenth century; and in the edition published by theNew Shakespeare Society, and edited, with a wealth of notes andcontemporary references, by Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, it is a newrevelation of Shakespeare's England to the general reader. 

Harrison himself is an interesting character, and trustworthy above thegeneral race of chroniclers. He was born in 1534, or, to use hisexactness of statement, "upon the 18th of April, hora ii, minut 4, Secunde 56, at London, in Cordwainer streete, otherwise calledbowe-lane. " This year was also remarkable as that in which "King Henry 8polleth his head; after whom his household and nobility, with the rest ofhis subjects do the like. " It was the year before Anne Boleyn, haled awayto the Tower, accused, condemned, and executed in the space of fourteendays, "with sigheing teares" said to the rough Duke of Norfolk, "Hither Icame once my lord, to fetch a crown imperial; but now to receive, I hope, a crown immortal. " In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul's school; the litanyin the English tongue, by the king's command, was that year sung openlyin St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison with the other children, enforced to buy those books, walking in general procession, as wasappointed, before the king went to Boulogne. Harrison was a student atboth Oxford and Cambridge, taking the degree of bachelor of divinity atthe latter in 1569, when he had been an Oxford M. A. Of seven years'standing. Before this he was household chaplain to Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham, who gave him, in 1588-89, the rectory of Radwinter, inEssex, which he held till his death, in 1593. In 1586 he was installedcanon of Windsor. Between 1559 and 1571 he married Marion Isebrande, --ofwhom he said in his will, referring to the sometime supposed unlawfulnessof priests' marriages, "by the laws of God I take and repute in allrespects for my true and lawful wife. " At Radwinter, the old parson, working in his garden, collected Roman coins, wrote his chronicles, andexpressed his mind about the rascally lawyers of Essex, to whom flowedall the wealth of the land. The lawyers in those days stirred upcontentions, and then reaped the profits. "Of all that ever I knew inEssex, " says Harrison, "Denis and Mainford excelled, till John of Ludlow, alias Mason, came in place, unto whom in comparison these two were butchildren. " This last did so harry a client for four years that thelatter, still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within fourdays made an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness. " Andafter his death the lawyer so handled his son "that there was never sheepshorn in May, so near clipped of his fleece present, as he was of many tocome. " The Welsh were the most litigious people. A Welshman would walk upto London bare-legged, carrying his hose on his neck, to save wear andbecause he had no change, importune his countrymen till he got half adozen writs, with which he would return to molest his neighbors, thoughno one of his quarrels was worth the money he paid for a single writ. 

The humblest mechanic of England today has comforts and convenienceswhich the richest nobles lacked in Harrison's day, but it wasnevertheless an age of great luxury and extravagance; of brave apparel, costly and showy beyond that of any Continental people, though wanting inrefined taste; and of mighty banquets, with service of massive plate, troops of attendants, and a surfeit of rich food and strong drink. 

In this luxury the clergy of Harrison's rank did not share. Harrison waspoor on forty pounds a year. He complains that the clergy were taxed morethan ever, the church having become "an ass whereon every man is to rideto market and cast his wallet. " They paid tenths and first-fruits andsubsidies, so that out of twenty pounds of a benefice the incumbent didnot reserve more than L 13 6s. 8d. For himself and his family. They hadto pay for both prince and laity, and both grumbled at and slanderedthem. Harrison gives a good account of the higher clergy; he says thebishops were loved for their painful diligence in their calling, and thatthe clergy of England were reputed on the Continent as learned divines, skillful in Greek and Hebrew and in the Latin tongue. 

There was, however, a scarcity of preachers and ministers in Elizabeth'stime, and their character was not generally high. What could be expectedwhen covetous patrons canceled their debts to their servants by bestowingadvowsons of benefices upon their bakers, butlers, cooks, grooms, pages, and lackeys--when even in the universities there was cheating atelections for scholarships and fellowships, and gifts were for sale! Themorals of the clergy were, however, improved by frequent conferences, atwhich the good were praised and the bad reproved; and these conferenceswere "a notable spur unto all the ministers, whereby to apply theirbooks, which otherwise (as in times past) would give themselves tohawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the ale house, shooting, and other like vanities. " The clergy held a social rank withtradespeople; their sons learned trades, and their daughters might go outto service. Jewell says many of them were the "basest sort of people"unlearned, fiddlers, pipers, and what not. "Not a few, " says Harrison, "find fault with our threadbare gowns, as if not our patrons but ourwives were the causes of our woe. " He thinks the ministers will be betterwhen the patrons are better, and he defends the right of the clergy tomarry and to leave their goods, if they have any, to their widows andchildren instead of to the church, or to some school or almshouse. Whatif their wives are fond, after the decease of their husbands, to bestowthemselves not so advisedly as their calling requireth; do not duchesses, countesses, and knights' wives offend in the like fully so often as they?And Eve, remarks the old philosopher of Radwinter--"Eve will be Eve, though Adam would say nay. "

The apparel of the clergy, at any rate, was more comely and decent thanit ever was in the popish church, when the priests "went either in diverscolors like players, or in garments of light hue, as yellow, red, green, etc. ; with their shoes piked, their hair crisped, their girdles armedwith silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc. , buckled with like metal;their apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their capslaced and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days, was to behold a peacock that spreadeth his tail when he danceth beforethe hen. "

Hospitality among the clergy was never better used, and it was increasedby their marriage; for the meat and drink were prepared more orderly andfrugally, the household was better looked to, and the poor oftener fed. There was perhaps less feasting of the rich in bishops' houses, and "itis thought much peradventure, that some bishops in our time do come shortof the ancient gluttony and prodigality of their predecessors;" but thisis owing to the curtailing of their livings, and the excessive priceswhereunto things are grown. 

Harrison spoke his mind about dignitaries. He makes a passing referenceto Thomas a Becket as "the old Cocke of Canturburie, " who did crow inbehalf of the see of Rome, and the "young cockerels of other sees didimitate his demeanour. " He is glad that images, shrines, and tabernaclesare removed out of churches. The stories in glass windows remain onlybecause of the cost of replacing them with white panes. He would like tostop the wakes, guilds, paternities, church-ales, and brides-ales, withall their rioting, and he thinks they could get on very well without thefeasts of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, the holy-days after Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and those of the Virgin Mary, with the rest. "Itis a world to see, " he wrote of 1552, "how ready the Catholicks are tocast the communion tables out of their churches, which in derision theycall Oysterboards, and to set up altars whereon to say mass. " And hetells with sinful gravity this tale of a sacrilegious sow: "Upon the 23rdof August, the high altar of Christ Church in Oxford was trimly decked upafter the popish manner and about the middest of evensong, a sow comethinto the quire, and pulled all to the ground; for which heinous fact, itis said she was afterwards beheaded; but to that I am not privy. " Thinkof the condition of Oxford when pigs went to mass! Four years after thisthere was a sickness in England, of which a third part of the people didtaste, and many clergymen, who had prayed not to live after the death ofQueen Mary, had their desire, the Lord hearing their prayer, saysHarrison, "and intending thereby to give his church a breathing time. "

There were four classes in England--gentlemen, citizens, yeomen, andartificers or laborers. Besides the nobles, any one can call himself agentleman who can live without work and buy a coat of arms--though someof them "bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain. " Thecomplaint of sending abroad youth to be educated is an old one; Harrisonsays the sons of gentlemen went into Italy, and brought nothing home butmere atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, and ambitious, proudbehavior, and retained neither religion nor patriotism. Among citizenswere the merchants, of whom Harrison thought there were too many; for, like the lawyers, they were no furtherance to the commonwealth, butraised the price of all commodities. In former, free-trade times, sugarwas sixpence a pound, now it is two shillings sixpence; raisins were onepenny, and now sixpence. Not content with the old European trade, theyhave sought out the East and West Indies, and likewise Cathay andTartary, whence they pretend, from their now and then suspicious voyages, they bring home great commodities. But Harrison cannot see that pricesare one whit abated by this enormity, and certainly they carry out ofEngland the best of its wares. 

The yeomen are the stable, free men, who for the most part stay in oneplace, working the farms of gentlemen, are diligent, sometimes buy theland of unthrifty gentlemen, educate their sons to the schools and thelaw courts, and leave them money to live without labor. These are the menthat made France afraid. Below these are the laborers and men who work attrades, who have no voice in the commonwealth, and crowds of youngserving-men who become old beggars, highway-robbers, idle fellows, andspreaders of all vices. There was a complaint then, as now, that in manytrades men scamped their work, but, on the whole, husbandmen andartificers had never been so good; only there were too many of them, toomany handicrafts of which the country had no need. It appears to be afault all along in history that there are too many of almost every sortof people. 

In Harrison's time the greater part of the building in cities and townswas of timber, only a few of the houses of the commonalty being of stone. In an old plate giving a view of the north side of Cheapside, London, in1638, we see little but quaint gable ends and rows of small windows setclose together. The houses are of wood and plaster, each storyoverhanging the other, terminating in sharp pediments; the roofsprojecting on cantilevers, and the windows occupying the whole front ofeach of the lower stories. They presented a lively and gay appearance onholidays, when the pentices of the shop fronts were hung with coloreddraperies, and the balconies were crowded with spectators, and every paneof glass showed a face. In the open country, where timber was scarce, thehouses were, between studs, impaneled with clay-red, white, or blue. Oneof the Spaniards who came over in the suite of Philip remarked the largediet in these homely cottages: "These English, " quoth he, "have theirhouses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as theking. " "Whereby it appeareth, " comments Harrison, "that he liked betterof our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet intheir prince-like habitations and palaces. " The timber houses werecovered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds. The fairesthouses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, thewhiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's admiration. The wallswere hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon weredivers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak. Stoves hadjust begun to be used, and only in some houses of the gentry, "who buildthem not to work and feed in, as in Germany and elsewhere, but now andthen to sweat in, as occasion and need shall require. " Glass in windows, which was then good and cheap, and made even in England, had generallytaken the place of the lattices and of the horn, and of the beryl whichnoblemen formerly used in windows. Gentlemen were beginning to buildtheir houses of brick and stone, in stately and magnificent fashion. Thefurniture of the houses had also grown in a manner "passing delicacy, "and not of the nobility and gentry only, but of the lowest sort. Innoblemen's houses there was abundance of arras, rich hangings oftapestry, and silver vessels, plate often to the value of one thousandand two thousand pounds. The knights, gentlemen, and merchants had greatprovision of tapestry, Turkie work, pewter, brass, fine linen, andcupboards of plate worth perhaps a thousand pounds. Even the inferiorartificers and many farmers had learned also to garnish their cupboardswith plate, their joined beds with silk hangings, and their tables withfine linen--evidences of wealth for which Harrison thanks God andreproaches no man, though he cannot see how it is brought about, when allthings are grown to such excessive prices. 

Old men of Radwinter noted three things marvelously altered in Englandwithin their remembrance. The first was the multitude of chimneys latelyerected; whereas in their young days there were not, always except thosein the religious and manor houses, above two or three chimneys in mostupland towns of the realm; each one made his fire against a reredos inthe hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. The second was theamendment in lodging. In their youth they lay upon hard straw palletscovered only with a sheet, and mayhap a dogswain coverlet over them, anda good round log for pillow. If in seven years after marriage a man couldbuy a mattress and a sack of chaff to rest his head on, he thoughthimself as well lodged as a lord. Pillows were thought meet only for sickwomen. As for servants, they were lucky if they had a sheet over them, for there was nothing under them to keep the straw from pricking theirhardened hides. The third notable thing was the exchange of treene(wooden) platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin. Wooden stuff was plenty, but a good farmer would not have above fourpieces of pewter in his house; with all his frugality, he was unable topay his rent of four pounds without selling a cow or horse. It was a timeof idleness, and if a farmer at an alehouse, in a bravery to show what hehad, slapped down his purse with six shillings in it, all the resttogether could not match it. But now, says Harrison, though the rent offour pounds has improved to forty, the farmer has six or seven years'rent, lying by him, to purchase a new term, garnish his cupboard withpewter, buy three or four feather-beds, coverlets, carpets of tapestry, asilver salt, a nest of bowls for wine, and a dozen spoons. All thesethings speak of the growing wealth and luxury of the age. Only a littlebefore this date, in 1568, Lord Buckhurst, who had been ordered toentertain the Cardinal de Chatillon in Queen Elizabeth's palace at Sheen, complains of the meanness of the furniture of his rooms. He showed theofficers who preceded the cardinal such furniture and stuff as he had, but it did not please them. They wanted plate, he had none; such glassvessels as he had they thought too base. They wanted damask for longtables, and he had only linen for a square table, and they refused hissquare table. He gave the cardinal his only unoccupied tester andbedstead, and assigned to the bishop the bedstead upon which his wife'swaiting-women did lie, and laid them on the ground. He lent the cardinalhis own basin and ewer, candlesticks from his own table, drinking-glasses, small cushions, and pots for the kitchen. My Lord ofLeicester sent down two pair of fine sheets for the cardinal and one pairfor the bishop. 

Harrison laments three things in his day: the enhancing of rents, thedaily oppression of poor tenants by the lords of manors, and the practiceof usury--a trade brought in by the Jews, but now practiced by almostevery Christian, so that he is accounted a fool that doth lend his moneyfor nothing. He prays the reader to help him, in a lawful manner, to hangup all those that take cent. Per cent. For money. Another grievance, andmost sorrowful of all, is that many gentlemen, men of good port andcountenance, to the injury of the farmers and commonalty, actually turnBraziers, butchers, tanners, sheep-masters, and woodmen. Harrison alsonotes the absorption of lands by the rich; the decay of houses in thecountry, which comes of the eating up of the poor by the rich; theincrease of poverty; the difficulty a poor man had to live on an acre ofground; his forced contentment with bread made of oats and barley, andthe divers places that formerly had good tenants and now were vacant, hop-yards and gardens. 

Harrison says it is not for him to describe the palaces of QueenElizabeth; he dare hardly peep in at her gates. Her houses are of brickand stone, neat and well situated, but in good masonry not to be comparedto those of Henry VIII's building; they are rather curious to the eye, like paper-works, than substantial for continuance. Her court is moremagnificent than any other in Europe, whether you regard the rich andinfinite furniture of the household, the number of officers, or thesumptuous entertainments. And the honest chronicler is so struck withadmiration of the virtuous beauty of the maids of honor that he cannottell whether to award preeminence to their amiable countenances or totheir costliness of attire, between which there is daily conflict andcontention. The courtiers of both sexes have the use of sundry languagesand an excellent vein of writing. Would to God the rest of their livesand conversation corresponded with these gifts! But the courtiers, themost learned, are the worst men when they come abroad that any man shallhear or read of. Many of the gentlewomen have sound knowledge of Greekand Latin, and are skillful in Spanish, Italian, and French; and thenoblemen even surpass them. The old ladies of the court avoid idleness byneedlework, spinning of silk, or continual reading of the Holy Scripturesor of histories, and writing diverse volumes of their own, or translatingforeign works into English or Latin; and the young ladies, when they arenot waiting on her majesty, "in the mean time apply their lutes, citherns, pricksong, and all kinds of music. " The elders are skillful insurgery and the distillation of waters, and sundry other artificialpractices pertaining to the ornature and commendation of their bodies;and when they are at home they go into the kitchen and supply a number ofdelicate dishes of their own devising, mostly after Portuguese receipts;and they prepare bills of fare (a trick lately taken up) to give a briefrehearsal of all the dishes of every course. I do not know whether thiswas called the "higher education of women" at the time. 

In every office of the palaces is a Bible, or book of acts of the church, or chronicle, for the use of whoever comes in, so that the court looksmore like a university than a palace. Would to God the houses of thenobles were ruled like the queen's! The nobility are followed by greattroops of serving-men in showy liveries; and it is a goodly sight to seethem muster at court, which, being filled with them, "is made like to theshow of a peacock's tail in the full beauty, or of some meadow garnishedwith infinite kinds and diversity of pleasant flowers. " Such was thediscipline of Elizabeth's court that any man who struck another within ithad his right hand chopped off by the executioner in a most horriblemanner. 

The English have always had a passion for gardens and orchards. In theRoman time grapes abounded and wine was plenty, but the culturedisappeared after the Conquest. From the time of Henry IV. To Henry VIII. Vegetables were little used, but in Harrison's day the use of melons, pompions, radishes, cucumbers, cabbages, turnips, and the like wasrevived. They had beautiful flower-gardens annexed to the houses, whereinwere grown also rare and medicinal herbs; it was a wonder to see how manystrange herbs, plants, and fruits were daily brought from the Indies, America and the Canaries. Every rich man had great store of flowers, andin one garden might be seen from three hundred to four hundred medicinalherbs. Men extol the foreign herbs to the neglect of the native, andespecially tobacco, "which is not found of so great efficacy as theywrite. " In the orchards were plums, apples, pears, walnuts, filberts; andin noblemen's orchards store of strange fruit-apricots, almonds, peaches, figs, and even in some oranges, lemons, and capers. Grafters also were atwork with their artificial mixtures, "dallying, as it were, with natureand her course, as if her whole trade were perfectly known unto them: ofhard fruits they will make soft, of sour sweet, of sweet yet moredelicate; bereaving also some of their kernels, others of their cores, and finally endowing them with the flavor of musk, amber, or sweet spicesat their pleasure. " Gardeners turn annual into perpetual herbs, and suchpains are they at that they even used dish-water for plants. The Gardensof Hesperides are surely not equal to these. Pliny tells of a rose thathad sixty leaves on one bud, but in 1585 there was a rose in Antwerp thathad one hundred and eighty leaves; and Harrison might have had a slip ofit for ten pounds, but he thought it a "tickle hazard. " In his own littlegarden, of not above three hundred square feet, he had near three hundredsamples, and not one of them of the common, or usually to be had. 

Our kin beyond sea have always been stout eaters of solid food, and inElizabeth's time their tables were more plentifully laden than those ofany other nation. Harrison scientifically accounts for their inordinateappetite. "The situation of our region, " he says, "lying near unto thenorth, does cause the heat of our stomachs to be of somewhat greaterforce; therefore our bodies do crave a little more ample nourishment thanthe inhabitants of the hotter regions are accustomed withal, whosedigestive force is not altogether so vehement, because their internalheat is not so strong as ours, which is kept in by the coldness of theair, that from time to time (specially in winter) doth environ ourbodies. " The north Britons in old times were accustomed often to greatabstinence, and lived when in the woods on roots and herbs. They usedsometimes a confection, "whereof so much as a bean would qualify theirhunger above common expectation"; but when they had nothing to qualify itwith, they crept into the marsh water up to their chins, and thereremained a long time, "only to qualify the heat of their stomachs byviolence. "

In Harrison's day the abstemious Welsh had learned to eat like theEnglish, and the Scotch exceeded the latter in "over much anddistemperate gormandize. " The English eat all they can buy, there beingno restraint of any meat for religion's sake or for public order. Thewhite meats--milk, butter, and cheese--though very dear, are reputed asgood for inferior people, but the more wealthy feed upon the flesh of allsorts of cattle and all kinds of fish. The nobility ("whose cooks are forthe most part musical-headed Frenchmen and strangers ") exceed in numberof dishes and change of meat. Every day at dinner there is beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, conie, capon, pig, or as many of these as theseason yielded, besides deer and wildfowl, and fish, and sundrydelicacies "wherein the sweet hand of the seafaring Portingale is notwanting. " The food was brought in commonly in silver vessels at tables ofthe degree of barons, bishops, and upwards, and referred first to theprincipal personage, from whom it passed to the lower end of the table, the guests not eating of all, but choosing what each liked; and nobodystuffed himself. The dishes were then sent to the servants, and theremains of the feast went to the poor, who lay waiting at the gates ingreat numbers. 

Drink was served in pots, goblets, jugs, and bowls of silver innoblemen's houses, and also in Venice glasses. It was not set upon thetable, but the cup was brought to each one who thirsted; he called forsuch a cup of drink as he wished, and delivered it again to one of theby-standers, who made it clean by pouring out what remained, and restoredit to the sideboard. This device was to prevent great drinking, whichmight ensue if the full pot stood always at the elbow. But this order wasnot used in noblemen's halls, nor in any order under the degree of knightor squire of great revenue. It was a world to see how the noblespreferred to gold and silver, which abounded, the new Venice glass, whence a great trade sprang up with Murano that made many rich. Thepoorest even would have glass, but home-made--a foolish expense, for theglass soon went to bits, and the pieces turned to no profit. Harrisonwanted the philosopher's stone to mix with this molten glass and toughenit. 

There were multitudes of dependents fed at the great houses, andeverywhere, according to means, a wide-open hospitality was maintained. Froude gives a notion of the style of living in earlier times by citingthe details of a feast given when George Neville, brother of Warwick theking-maker, was made archbishop of York. There were present, includingservants, thirty-five hundred persons. These are a few of the things usedat the banquet: three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tuns ofale, one hundred and four tuns of wine, eighty oxen, three thousandgeese, two thousand pigs, --four thousand conies, four thousandheronshaws, four thousand venison pasties cold and five hundred hot, fourthousand cold tarts, four thousand cold custards, eight seals, fourporpoises, and so on. 

The merchants and gentlemen kept much the same tables as the nobles, especially at feasts, but when alone were content with a few dishes. Theyalso desired the dearest food, and would have no meat from the butcher'sbut the most delicate, while their list of fruits, cakes, Gates, andoutlandish confections is as long as that at any modern banquet. Wine ranin excess. There were used fifty-six kinds of light wines, like theFrench, and thirty of the strong sorts, like the Italian and Eastern. Thestronger the wine, the better it was liked. The strongest and best was inold times called theologicum, because it was had from the clergy andreligious men, to whose houses the laity sent their bottles to be filled, sure that the religious would neither drink nor be served with the worst;for the merchant would have thought his soul should have gone straightwayto the devil if he had sent them any but the best. The beer served atnoblemen's tables was commonly a year old, and sometimes two, but thisage was not usual. In households generally it was not under a month old, for beer was liked stale if it were not sour, while bread was desired asnew as possible so that it was not hot. 

The husbandman and artificer ate such meat as they could easiest come byand have most quickly ready; yet the banquets of the trades in Londonwere not inferior to those of the nobility. The husbandmen, however, exceed in profusion, and it is incredible to tell what meat is consumedat bridals, purifications, and such like odd meetings; but each guestbrought his own provision, so that the master of the house had only toprovide bread, drink, houseroom, and fire. These lower classes Harrisonfound very friendly at their tables--merry without malice, plain withoutItalian or French subtlety--so that it would do a man good to be incompany among them; but if they happen to stumble upon a piece of venisonor a cup of wine or very strong beer, they do not stick to comparethemselves with the lord-mayor--and there is no public man in any city ofEurope that may compare with him in port and countenance during the termof his office. 

Harrison commends the great silence used at the tables of the wiser sort, and generally throughout the realm, and likewise the moderate eating anddrinking. But the poorer countrymen do babble somewhat at table, andmistake ribaldry and loquacity for wit and wisdom, and occasionally arecup-shotten; and what wonder, when they who have hard diet and smalldrink at home come to such opportunities at a banquet! The wealthier sortin the country entertain their visitors from afar, however long theystay, with as hearty a welcome the last day as the first; and thecountrymen contrast this hospitality with that of their London cousins, who joyfully receive them the first day, tolerate them the second, wearyof them the third, and wish 'em at the devil after four days. 

The gentry usually ate wheat bread, of which there were four kinds, andthe poor generally bread made of rye, barley, and even oats and acorns. Corn was getting so dear, owing to the forestallers and middlemen, that, says the historian, "if the world last a while after this rate, wheat andrye will be no grain for poor men to feed on; and some catterpillers[two-legged speculators] there are that can say so much already. "

The great drink of the realm was, of course, beer (and it is to be notedthat a great access of drunkenness came into England with the importationmuch later of Holland gin) made from barley, hops, and water, and uponthe brewing of it Harrison dwells lovingly, and devotes many pages to adescription of the process, especially as "once in a month practiced bymy wife and her maid servants. " They ground eight bushels of malt, addedhalf a bushel of wheat meal, half a bushel of oat meal, poured in eightygallons of water, then eighty gallons more, and a third eighty gallons, and boiled with a couple of pounds of hops. This, with a few spicesthrown in, made three hogsheads of good beer, meet for a poor man who hadonly forty pounds a year. This two hundred gallons of beer costaltogether twenty shillings; but although he says his wife brewed it"once in a month, " whether it lasted a whole month the parson does notsay. He was particular about the water used: the Thames is best, themarsh worst, and clear spring water next worst; "the fattest standingwater is always the best. " Cider and perry were made in some parts ofEngland, and a delicate sort of drink in Wales, called metheglin; butthere was a kind of "swish-swash" made in Essex from honey-combs andwater, called mead, which differed from the metheglin as chalk fromcheese. 

In Shakespeare's day much less time was spent in eating and drinking thanformerly, when, besides breakfast in the forenoon and dinners, there were"beverages" or "nuntion" after dinner, and supper before going to bed--"a toie brought in by hardie Canutus, " who was a gross feeder. Generally there were, except for the young who could not fast tilldinnertime, only two meals daily, dinner and supper. Yet the Normans hadbrought in the habit of sitting long at the table--a custom not yetaltogether abated, since the great people, especially at banquets, sittill two or three o'clock in the afternoon; so that it is a hard matterto rise and go to evening prayers and return in time for supper. 

Harrison does not make much account of the early meal called "breakfast";but Froude says that in Elizabeth's time the common hour of rising, inthe country, was four o'clock, summer and winter, and that breakfast wasat five, after which the laborers went to work and the gentlemen tobusiness. The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted togetherand alone at seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart ofwine, and a chine of beef; a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope(says Froude) it may be presumed. The gentry dined at eleven and suppedat five. The merchants took dinner at noon, and, in London, supped atsix. The university scholars out of term ate dinner at ten. Thehusbandmen dined at high noon, and took supper at seven or eight. As forthe poorer sort, it is needless to talk of their order of repast, forthey dined and supped when they could. The English usually began mealswith the grossest food and ended with the most delicate, taking first themild wines and ending with the hottest; but the prudent Scot didotherwise, making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave theworse to the menials. 

I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with anextract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, andsaw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwardswitnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. Thequeen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic, " as shewalked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of thegarter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet blackand pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teethblack (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use ofsugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she worefalse hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reportedto be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Herbosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry;and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air wasstately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she wasdressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, andover it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train wasvery long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chainshe had an oblong collar of gold and jewels. " As she swept on in thismagnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, andalways in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke toher kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along, everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to giveher hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels. The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed forthe most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fiftygentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where shegraciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of "Long live QueenElizabeth!" to which she answered, "I thank you, my good people. " Themusic in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over in halfan hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of her table:

"A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him anotherwho had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, hespread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired. Thencame two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, aplate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others had done, andplaced what was brought upon the table, they two retired with the sameceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (wewere told she was a countess) and along with her a married one, bearing atasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she hadprostrated herself three times, in the most graceful manner approachedthe table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe asif the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little whilethe Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with agolden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course oftwenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes werereceived by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placedupon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of the guard amouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of, anypoison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallestand stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefullyselected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and twokettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end ofall this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who withparticular solemnity lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it intothe Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosenfor herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the court. "

The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants. II

We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely, dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of theperiod more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study theorigin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking anduncomplementary colors. In Coryat's "Crudities, " 1611, we have anEnglishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English. TheVenetians adhered, without change, to their decent fashion, a thousandyears old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet made close to thebody, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkin alsoblack--but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish, satinand taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good tastecharacterized their apparel. "In both these things, " says Coryat, "theydiffer much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color, weuse many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish, andunseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fashion we are muchinferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions than any nationunder the sun doth, the French only excepted. " On festival days, inprocessions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps ofcrimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knightsdiffered from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns, with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and redpantofles. 

Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fashions of hiscountrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety andfickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in onehand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shapehis apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Eventhe gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewdpopish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void ofjudgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity, the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than todescribe it. So unstable is the fashion, he says, that today the Spanishguise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable;then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is bestliked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short Frenchbreeches; in a word, "except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall notsee any so disguised as are my countrymen in England. "

This fantastical folly was in all degrees, from the courtier down to thetarter. "It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, theexcess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and thevariety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees;insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy ofattire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suitsof apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other!" "Andhow men and women worry the poor tailors, with endless fittings andsending back of garments, and trying on!" "Then must the long seams ofour hose be set with a plumb line, then we puff, then we blow, andfinally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us. "

The barbers were as cunning in variety as the tailors. Sometimes the headwas polled; sometimes the hair was curled, and then suffered to grow longlike a woman's locks, and many times cut off, above or under the ears, round as by a wooden dish. And so with the beards: some shaved from thechin, like the Turks; some cut short, like the beard of the Marquis Otto;some made round, like a rubbing-brush; some peaked, others grown long. Ifa man have a lean face, the Marquis Otto's cut makes it broad; if it beplatterlike, the long, slender beard makes it seem narrow; "if he beweasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner lookbig like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose. " Some courageousgentlemen wore in their ears rings of gold and stones, to improve God'swork, which was otherwise set off by monstrous quilted and stuffeddoublets, that puffed out the figure like a barrel. 

There is some consolation, though I don't know why, in the knowledge thatwriters have always found fault with women's fashions, as they do today. Harrison says that the women do far exceed the lightness of the men;"such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for lighthousewives only is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons. " Andhe knows not what to say of their doublets, with pendant pieces on thebreast full of jags and cuts; their "galligascons, " to make their dressesstand out plumb round; their farthingales and divers colored stockings. "I have met, " he says, "with some of these trulls in London so disguisedthat it hath passed my skill to determine whether they were men orwomen. " Of all classes the merchants were most to be commended for richbut sober attire; "but the younger sort of their wives, both in attireand costly housekeeping, cannot tell when and how to make an end, asbeing women indeed in whom all kind of curiosity is to be found andseen. " Elizabeth's time, like our own, was distinguished by newfashionable colors, among which are mentioned a queer greenish-yellow, apease-porridge-tawny, a popinjay of blue, a lusty gallant, and the "devilin the hedge. " These may be favorites still, for aught I know. 

Mr. Furnivall quotes a description of a costume of the period, from themanuscript of Orazio Busino's "Anglipotrida. " Busino was the chaplain ofPiero Contarina, the Venetian ambassador to James I, in 1617. Thechaplain was one day stunned with grief over the death of the butler ofthe embassy; and as the Italians sleep away grief, the French sing, theGermans drink, and the English go to plays to be rid of it, theVenetians, by advice, sought consolation at the Fortune Theatre; andthere a trick was played upon old Busino, by placing him among a bevy ofyoung women, while the concealed ambassador and the secretary enjoyed thejoke. "These theatres, " says Busino, "are frequented by a number ofrespectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat themselvesamong the men without the slightest hesitation . . . . Scarcely was Iseated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came and placed herselfbeside me . . . . She asked me for my address both in French and English;and, on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honor me by showing mesome fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off no fewer thanthree gloves, which were worn one over the other . . . . This lady'sbodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered, her petticoat--[It is atrifle in human progress, perhaps scarcely worth noting, that the "roundgown, " that is, an entire skirt, not open in front and parting to showthe under petticoat, did not come into fashion till near the close of theeighteenth century. ]--of gold tissue with stripes, her robe of red velvetwith a raised pile, lined with yellow muslin with broad stripes of puregold. She wore an apron of point lace of various patterns; her headtirewas highly perfumed, and the collar of white satin beneath the delicatelywrought ruff struck me as exceedingly pretty. " It was quite in keepingwith the manners of the day for a lady of rank to have lent herself tothis hoax of the chaplain. 

Van Meteren, a Netherlander, 1575, speaks also of the astonishing changeor changeableness in English fashions, but says the women are welldressed and modest, and they go about the streets without any covering ofmantle, hood, or veil; only the married women wear a hat in the streetand in the house; the unmarried go without a hat; but ladies ofdistinction have lately learned to cover their faces with silken masks orvizards, and to wear feathers. The English, he notes, change theirfashions every year, and when they go abroad riding or traveling they dontheir best clothes, contrary to the practice of other nations. Anotherforeigner, Jacob Rathgeb, 1592, says the English go dressed in exceedingfine clothes, and some will even wear velvet in the street, when theyhave not at home perhaps a piece of dry bread. "The lords and pages ofthe royal court have a stately, noble air, but dress more after theFrench fashion, only they wear short cloaks and sometimes Spanish caps. "

Harrison's arraignment of the English fashions of his day may beconsidered as almost commendative beside the diatribes of the old PuritanPhilip Stubbes, in "The Anatomie of Abuses, " 1583. The English languageis strained for words hot and rude enough to express his indignation, contempt, and fearful expectation of speedy judgments. The men escape hishands with scarcely less damage than the women. First he wreaks hisindignation upon the divers kinds of hats, stuck full of feathers, ofvarious colors, "ensigns of vanity, " "fluttering sails and featheredflags of defiance to virtue"; then upon the monstrous ruffs that standout a quarter of a yard from the neck. "As the devil, in the fullness ofhis malice, first invented these ruffs, so has he found out two stays tobear up this his great kingdom of ruffs--one is a kind of liquid matterthey call starch; the other is a device made of wires, for anunder-propper. Then there are shirts of cambric, holland, and lawn, wrought with fine needle-work of silk and curiously stitched, costingsometimes as much as five pounds. Worse still are the monstrous doublets, reaching down to the middle of the thighs, so hard quilted, stuffed, bombasted, and sewed that the wearer can hardly stoop down in them. Belowthese are the gally-hose of silk, velvet, satin, and damask, reachingbelow the knees. So costly are these that now it is a small matter tobestow twenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea ahundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!)" Tothese gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams downthe leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimesinterlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Timehas been when a man could clothe his whole body for the price of thesenether-socks. Satan was further let loose in the land by reason of corkshoes and fine slippers, of all colors, carved, cut, and stitched withsilk, and laced on with gold and silver, which went flipping and flappingup and down in the dirt. The jerkins and cloaks are of all colors andfashions; some short, reaching to the knee; others dragging on theground; red, white, black, violet, yellow, guarded, laced, and faced;hanged with points and tassels of gold, silver, and silk. The hilts ofdaggers, rapiers, and swords are gilt thrice over, and have scabbards ofvelvet. And all this while the poor lie in London streets upon pallets ofstraw, or else in the mire and dirt, and die like dogs!"

Stubbes was a stout old Puritan, bent upon hewing his way to heaventhrough all the allurements of this world, and suspecting a devil inevery fair show. I fear that he looked upon woman as only a vain andtrifling image, a delusive toy, away from whom a man must set his face. Shakespeare, who was country-bred when he came up to London, and livedprobably on the roystering South Side, near the theatres andbear-gardens, seems to have been impressed with the painted faces of thewomen. It is probable that only town-bred women painted. Stubbes declaresthat the women of England color their faces with oils, liquors, unguents, and waters made to that end, thinking to make themselves fairer than Godmade them--a presumptuous audacity to make God untrue in his word; and heheaps vehement curses upon the immodest practice. To this follows thetrimming and tricking of their heads, the laying out their hair to show, which is curled, crisped, and laid out on wreaths and borders from ear toear. Lest it should fall down it is under-propped with forks, wires, andwhat not. On the edges of their bolstered hair (for it standeth crestedround about their frontiers, and hanging over their faces like pendiceswith glass windows on every side) is laid great wreaths of gold andsilver curiously wrought. But this is not the worst nor the tenth part, for no pen is able to describe the wickedness. "The women use great ruffsand neckerchers of holland, lawn, camerick, and such cloth, as thegreatest thread shall not be so big as the least hair that is: then, lestthey should fall down, they are smeared and starched in the Devil'sliquor, I mean Starch; after that dried with great diligence, streaked, patted and rubbed very nicely, and so applied to their goodly necks, and, withall, under-propped with supportasses, the stately arches of pride;beyond all this they have a further fetch, nothing inferior to the rest;as, namely, three or four degrees of minor ruffs, placed gradatim, stepby step, one beneath another, and all under the Master devil ruff. Theskirts, then, of these great ruffs are long and side every way, pletedand crested full curiously, God wot. "

Time will not serve us to follow old Stubbes into his particularinquisition of every article of woman's attire, and his hearty damnationof them all and several. He cannot even abide their carrying of nosegaysand posies of flowers to smell at, since the palpable odors and fumes ofthese do enter the brain to degenerate the spirit and allure to vice. They must needs carry looking-glasses with them; "and good reason, " saysStubbes, savagely, "for else how could they see the devil in them? for nodoubt they are the devil's spectacles [these women] to allure us to prideand consequently to destruction forever. " And, as if it were not enoughto be women, and the devil's aids, they do also have doublets andjerkins, buttoned up the breast, and made with wings, welts, and pinionson the shoulder points, as man's apparel is, for all the world. We takereluctant leave of this entertaining woman-hater, and only stay to quotefrom him a "fearful judgment of God, shewed upon a gentlewoman of Antwerpof late, even the 27th of May, 1582, " which may be as profitable to readnow as it was then: "This gentlewoman being a very rich Merchant man'sdaughter: upon a time was invited to a bridal, or wedding, which wassolemnized in that Toune, against which day she made great preparation, for the pluming herself in gorgeous array, that as her body was mostbeautiful, fair, and proper, so her attire in every respect might becorrespondent to the same. For the accomplishment whereof she curled herhair, she dyed her locks, and laid them out after the best manner, shecolored her face with waters and Ointments: But in no case could she getany (so curious and dainty she was) that could starch, and set her Ruffsand Neckerchers to her mind wherefore she sent for a couple ofLaundresses, who did the best they could to please her humors, but in anywise they could not. Then fell she to swear and tear, to curse and damn, casting the Ruffs under feet, and wishing that the Devil might take herwhen she wear any of those Neckerchers again. In the meantime (throughthe sufference of God) the Devil transforming himself into the form of ayoung man, as brave and proper as she in every point of outwardappearance, came in, feigning himself to be a wooer or suitor unto her. And seeing her thus agonized, and in such a pelting chase, he demanded ofher the cause thereof, who straightway told him (as women can concealnothing that lieth upon their stomachs) how she was abused in the settingof her Ruffs, which thing being heard of him, he promised to please hermind, and thereto took in hand the setting of her Ruffs, which heperformed to her great contentation and liking, in so much as she lookingherself in a glass (as the Devil bade her) became greatly enamoured ofhim. This done, the young man kissed her, in the doing whereof she writheher neck in, sunder, so she died miserably, her body being metamorphosedinto black and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face (whichbefore was so amorous) became most deformed, and fearful to look upon. This being known, preparence was made for her burial, a rich coffin wasprovided, and her fearful body was laid therein, and it covered verysumptuously. Four men immediately assayed to lift up the corpse, butcould not move it; then six attempted the like, but could not once stirit from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-by marveling, caused the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof. Where they foundthe body to be taken away, and a black Cat very lean and deformed sittingin the coffin, setting of great Ruffs, and frizzling of hair, to thegreat fear and wonder of all beholders. "

Better than this pride which forerunneth destruction, in the opinion ofStubbes, is the habit of the Brazilian women, who "esteem so little ofapparel" that they rather choose to go naked than be thought to be proud. 

As I read the times of Elizabeth, there was then greater prosperity andenjoyment of life among the common people than fifty or a hundred yearslater. Into the question of the prices of labor and of food, which Mr. Froude considers so fully in the first chapter of his history, I shallnot enter any further than to remark that the hardness of the laborer'slot, who got, mayhap, only twopence a day, is mitigated by the fact thatfor a penny he could buy a pound of meat which now costs a shilling. Intwo respects England has greatly changed for the traveler, from thesixteenth to the eighteenth century--in its inns and its roads. 

In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign travelers had no choice but to rideon horseback or to walk. Goods were transported on strings ofpack-horses. When Elizabeth rode into the city from her residence atGreenwich, she placed herself behind her lord chancellor, on a pillion. The first improvement made was in the construction of a rude wagon a cartwithout springs, the body resting solidly on the axles. In such a vehicleElizabeth rode to the opening of her fifth Parliament. In 1583, on acertain day, Sir Harry Sydney entered Shrewsbury in his wagon, "with histrompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and see. " Even suchconveyances fared hard on the execrable roads of the period. Down to theend of the seventeenth century most of the country roads were merelybroad ditches, water-worn and strewn with loose stones. In 1640 QueenHenrietta was four weary days dragging over the road from Dover toLondon, the best in England. Not till the close of the sixteenth centurywas the wagon used, and then rarely. Fifty years later stage-wagons ran, with some regularity, between London and Liverpool; and before the closeof the seventeenth century the stagecoach, a wonderful invention, whichhad been used in and about London since 1650, was placed on threeprincipal roads of the kingdom. It averaged two to three miles an hour. In the reign of Charles II. A Frenchman who landed at Dover was drawn upto London in a wagon with six horses in a line, one after the other. OurVenetian, Busino, who went to Oxford in the coach with the ambassador in1617, was six days in going one hundred and fifty miles, as the coachoften stuck in the mud, and once broke down. So bad were the mainthoroughfares, even, that markets were sometimes inaccessible for monthstogether, and the fruits of the earth rotted in one place, while therewas scarcity not many miles distant. 

But this difficulty of travel and liability to be detained long on theroad were cheered by good inns, such as did not exist in the worldelsewhere. All the literature of the period reflects lovingly thehomelike delights of these comfortable houses of entertainment. Everylittle village boasted an excellent inn, and in the towns on the greatthoroughfares were sumptuous houses that would accommodate from two tothree hundred guests with their horses. The landlords were not tyrants, as on the Continent, but servants of their guests; and it was, saysHarrison, a world to see how they did contend for the entertainment oftheir guests--as about fineness and change of linen, furniture ofbedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of drink, variety of wines, or well-using of horses. Thegorgeous signs at their doors sometimes cost forty pounds. The inns werecheap too, and the landlord let no one depart dissatisfied with his bill. The worst inns were in London, and the tradition has been handed down. But the ostlers, Harrison confesses, did sometimes cheat in the feed, andthey with the tapsters and chamberlains were in league (and the landlordwas not always above suspicion) with highwaymen outside, to ascertain ifthe traveler carried any valuables; so that when he left the hospitableinn he was quite likely to be stopped on the highway and relieved of hismoney. The highwayman was a conspicuous character. One of the mostromantic of these gentry at one time was a woman named Mary Frith, bornin 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed in male attire, was anadroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist; she once took twohundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on HounslowHeath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "RoaringGirl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket, highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she diedin peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, atraveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says of the inns as the bestand cheapest in the world, where the guest shall have his own pleasure. No sooner does he arrive than the servants run to him--one takes hishorse, another shows him his chamber and lights his fire, a third pullsoff his boots. Then come the host and hostess to inquire what meat hewill choose, and he may have their company if he like. He shall beoffered music while he eats, and if he be solitary the musicians willgive him good-day with music in the morning. In short, "a man cannot morefreely command at home, in his own house, than he may do in his inn. "

The amusements of the age were often rough, but certainly more moral thanthey were later; and although the theatres were denounced by suchreformers as Stubbes as seminaries of vice, and disapproved by Harrison;they were better than after the Restoration, when the plays ofShakespeare were out of fashion. The Londoners went for amusement to theBankside, or South Side of the Thames, where were the famous ParisGardens, much used as a rendezvous by gallants; and there were the placesfor bear and bull baiting; and there were the theatres--the ParisGardens, the Swan, the Rose, the Hope, and the Globe. Thepleasure-seekers went over usually in boats, of which there were said tobe four thousand plying between banks; for there was only one bridge, andthat was crowded with houses. All distinguished visitors were taken overto see the gardens and the bears baited by dogs; the queen herself went, and perhaps on Sunday, for Sunday was the great day, and Elizabeth issaid to have encouraged Sunday sports, she had been (we read) so muchhunted on account of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of;but there are amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, inwhich the beast who figures so nobly on the escutcheon nearly alwaysproved himself an arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he couldinto his den, with his tail between his legs. The spectators were oncemuch disgusted when a lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them, all ran into the den, and, like good friends, stood very peaceablytogether looking out at the people. 

The famous Globe Theatre, which was built in 1599, was burned in 1613, and in the fire it is supposed were consumed Shakespeare's manuscripts ofhis plays. It was of wood (for use in summer only), octagon shaped, witha thatched roof, open in the centre. The daily performance here, as inall theatres, was at three o'clock in the afternoon, and boys outsideheld the horses of the gentlemen who went in to the play. When theatreswere restrained, in 1600, only two were allowed, the Globe and theFortune, which was on the north side, on Golden Lane. The Fortune wasfifty feet square within, and three stories high, with galleries, builtof wood on a brick foundation, and with a roof of tiles. The stage wasforty-three feet wide, and projected into the middle of the yard (as thepit was called), where the groundlings stood. To one of the galleriesadmission was only twopence. The young gallants used to go into the yardsand spy about the galleries and boxes for their acquaintances. In thesetheatres there was a drop-curtain, but little or no scenery. Spectatorshad boxes looking on the stage behind the curtain, and they often satupon the stage with the actors; sometimes the actors all remained uponthe stage during the whole play. There seems to have been greatfamiliarity between the audience and the actors. Fruits in season, apples, pears, and nuts, with wine and beer, were carried about to besold, and pipes were smoked. There was neither any prudery in the playsor the players, and the audiences in behavior were no better than theplays. 

The actors were all men. The female parts were taken usually by boys, butfrequently by grown men, and when Juliet or Desdemona was announced, agiant would stride upon the stage. There is a story that Kynaston, ahandsome fellow, famous in female characters, and petted by ladies ofrank, once kept Charles I. Waiting while he was being shaved beforeappearing as Evadne in "The Maid's Tragedy. " The innovation of women onthe stage was first introduced by a French company in 1629, but theaudiences would not tolerate it, and hissed and pelted the actresses offthe stage. But thirty years later women took the place they have eversince held; when the populace had once experienced the charm of a femaleJuliet and Ophelia, they would have no other, and the rage for actressesran to such excess at one time that it was a fashion for women to takethe male parts as well. But that was in the abandoned days of Charles II. Pepys could not control his delight at the appearance of Nell Gwynne, especially "when she comes like a young gallant, and hath the motions andcarriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, Iconfess, admire her. " The acting of Shakespeare himself is only a fainttradition. He played the ghost in "Hamlet, " and Adam in "As You Like It. "William Oldys says (Oldys was an antiquarian who was pottering about inthe first part of the eighteenth century, picking up gossip incoffee-houses, and making memoranda on scraps of paper in book-shops)Shakespeare's brother Charles, who lived past the middle of theseventeenth century, was much inquired of by actors about thecircumstances of Shakespeare's playing. But Charles was so old and weakin mind that he could recall nothing except the faint impression that hehad once seen "Will" act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appearedso weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to besupported and carried by another person to a table, at which he wasseated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song. And that was Shakespeare!

The whole Bankside, with its taverns, play-houses, and worse, its bearpits and gardens, was the scene of roystering and coarse amusement. Andit is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness asShakespeare's should have been welcome. 

The more private amusements of the great may well be illustrated by anaccount given by Busino of a masque (it was Ben Jonson's "PleasureReconciled to Virtue") performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617. During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whomwas Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, untilthey got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, "who is naturallycholeric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, 'Why don't they dance? Whatdid you make me come here for? Devil take you all, dance!' On hearingthis, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty's most favored minion, immediately sprang forward, cutting a score of lofty and very minutecapers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ireof his angry sovereign, but moreover rendered himself the admiration anddelight of everybody. The other masquers, being thus encouraged, continued successively exhibiting their powers with various ladies, finishing in like manner with capers, and by lifting their goddesses fromthe ground . . . . The prince, however, excelled them all in bowing, being very exact in making his obeisance both to the king and hispartner; nor did we ever see him make one single step out of time--acompliment which can scarcely be paid to his companions. Owing to hisyouth, he has not much wind as yet, but he nevertheless cut a few capersvery gracefully. " The prince then went and kissed the hand of his sereneparent, who embraced and kissed him tenderly. When such capers were cutat Whitehall, we may imagine what the revelry was in the Banksidetaverns. 

The punishments of the age were not more tender than the amusements wererefined. Busino saw a lad of fifteen led to execution for stealing a bagof currants. At the end of every month, besides special executions, asmany as twenty-five people at a time rode through London streets inTyburn carts, singing ribald songs, and carrying sprigs of rosemary intheir hands. Everywhere in the streets the machines of justice werevisible-pillories for the neck and hands, stocks for the feet, and chainsto stretch across, in case of need, and stop a mob. In the suburbs wereoak cages for nocturnal offenders. At the church doors might now and thenbe seen women enveloped in sheets, doing penance for their evil deeds. Abridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in use for thecurbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than the cucking-stool, or ducking-stool. There is an old print of one of these machines standingon the Thames' bank: on a wheeled platform is an upright post with aswinging beam across the top, on one end of which the chair is suspendedover the river, while the other is worked up and down by a rope; in it isseated a light sister of the Bankside, being dipped into the unsavoryflood. But this was not so hated by the women as a similardiscipline--being dragged in the river by a rope after a boat. 

Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many otheroffenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; nobles who weretraitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only. Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death, yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds. And "this isone cause why our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths, for our nation is free, stout, hearty, and prodigal of life and blood, and cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves. " Felonycovered a wide range of petty crimes--breach of prison, hunting by nightwith painted or masked faces, stealing above forty shillings, stealinghawks' eggs, conjuring, prophesying upon arms and badges, stealing deerby night, cutting purses, counterfeiting coin, etc. Death was the penaltyfor all these offenses. For poisoning her husband a woman was burnedalive; a man poisoning another was boiled to death in water or oil;heretics were burned alive; some murderers were hanged in chains;perjurers were branded on the forehead with the letter P; rogues wereburned through the ears; suicides were buried in a field with a stakedriven through their bodies; witches were burned or hanged; in Halifaxthieves were beheaded by a machine almost exactly like the modernguillotine; scolds were ducked; pirates were hanged on the seashore atlow-water mark, and left till three tides overwashed them; those who letthe sea-walls decay were staked out in the breach of the banks, and leftthere as parcel of the foundation of the new wall. Of rogues-that is, tramps and petty thieves-the gallows devoured three to four hundredannually, in one place or another; and Henry VIII. In his time did hangup as many as seventy-two thousand rogues. Any parish which let a thiefescape was fined. Still the supply held out. 

The legislation against vagabonds, tramps, and sturdy beggars, and theirpunishment by whipping, branding, etc. , are too well known to needcomment. But considerable provision was made for the unfortunate anddeserving poor--poorhouses were built for them, and collections taken up. Only sixty years before Harrison wrote there were few beggars, but in hisday he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, whocounterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars onthe commonwealth. He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabondsknown by cant names, such as "ruffers, " "uprightmen, " "priggers, ""fraters, " "palliards, " "Abrams, " "dummerers "; and of women, "demandersfor glimmer or fire, " "mortes, " "walking mortes, " "doxes, " "kinchingcoves. "

London was esteemed by its inhabitants and by many foreigners as therichest and most magnificent city in Christendom. The cities of Londonand Westminster lay along the north bank in what seemed an endlessstretch; on the south side of the Thames the houses were more scattered. But the town was mostly of wood, and its rapid growth was a matter ofanxiety. Both Elizabeth and James again and again attempted to restrictit by forbidding the erection of any new buildings within the town, orfor a mile outside; and to this attempt was doubtless due the crowdedrookeries in the city. They especially forbade the use of wood inhouse-fronts and windows, both on account of the danger from fire, andbecause all the timber in the kingdom, which was needed for shipping andother purposes, was being used up in building. They even ordered thepulling down of new houses in London, Westminster, and for three milesaround. But all efforts to stop the growth of the city were vain. 

London, according to the Venetian Busino, was extremely dirty. He did notadmire the wooden architecture; the houses were damp and cold, thestaircases spiral and inconvenient, the apartments "sorry and illconnected. " The wretched windows, without shutters, he could neither openby day nor close by night. The streets were little better than gutters, and were never put in order except for some great parade. Hentzner, however, thought the streets handsome and clean. When it rained it musthave been otherwise. There was no provision for conducting away thewater; it poured off the roofs upon the people below, who had not as yetheard of the Oriental umbrella; and the countryman, staring at the sightsof the town, knocked about by the carts, and run over by the horsemen, was often surprised by a douche from a conduit down his back. And, besides, people had a habit of throwing water and slops out of thewindows, regardless of passers-by. 

The shops were small, open in front, when the shutters were down, muchlike those in a Cairo bazaar, and all the goods were in sight. Theshopkeepers stood in front and cried their wares, and besought customers. Until 1568 there were but few silk shops in London, and all those werekept by women. It was not till about that time that citizens' wivesceased to wear white knit woolen caps, and three-square Minever caps withpeaks. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the apprentices (aconspicuous class) wore blue cloaks in winter and blue gowns in summer;unless men were threescore years old, it was not lawful to wear gownslower than the calves of the legs, but the length of cloaks was notlimited. The journeymen and apprentices wore long daggers in the daytimeat their backs or sides. When the apprentices attended their masters andmistresses in the night they carried lanterns and candles, and a greatlong club on the neck. These apprentices were apt to lounge with theirclubs about the fronts of shops, ready to take a hand in any excitement--to run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down atavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse. The high-streets, especiallyin winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword and buckler-men;but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadly fight with rapierand dagger came in. The streets were entirely unlighted and dangerous atnight, and for this reason the plays at the theatres were given at threein the afternoon. 

About Shakespeare's time many new inventions and luxuries came in: masks, muffs, fans, periwigs, shoe-roses, love-handkerchiefs (tokens given bymaids and gentlewomen to their favorites), heath-brooms for hair-brushes, scarfs, garters, waistcoats, flat-caps; also hops, turkeys, apricots, Venice glass, tobacco. In 1524, and for years after, was used this rhyme

 "Turkeys, Carpes, Hops: Piccarel, and beers, Came into England: all in one year. "

There were no coffee-houses as yet, for neither tea nor coffee wasintroduced till about 1661. Tobacco was first made known in England bySir John Hawkins in 1565, though not commonly used by men and women tillsome years after. It was urged as a great medicine for many ills. Harrison says, 1573, "In these days the taking in of the smoke of theIndian herb called 'Tabaco, ' by an instrument formed like a little ladle, whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is greatlytaken up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseasesengendered in the lungs and inward parts, and not without effect. " It'suse spread rapidly, to the disgust of James I. And others, who doubtedthat it was good for cold, aches, humors, and rheums. In 1614 it was saidthat seven thousand houses lived by this trade, and that L 399, 375 a yearwas spent in smoke. Tobacco was even taken on the stage. Every base groommust have his pipe; it was sold in all inns and ale-houses, and the shopsof apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers were almost never, from morningtill night, without company still taking of tobacco. 

There was a saying on the Continent that "England is a paradise forwomen, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses. " Thesociety was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours, andyet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture ofdownrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech wentwith the utmost artificiality of dress and manner. It is curious to notethe insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even threecenturies ago. When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made orparticularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, "It is a pity he isnot an ENGLISHMAN. " It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certaincondescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says theEnglish are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing;the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collectin immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whosemind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of hiscountrymen. 

"As concerning the nature, propertie, and disposition of the people theybe desirous of new fangles, praising things past, contemning thingspresent, and coveting after things to come. Ambitious, proud, light, andunstable, ready to be carried away with every blast of wind. " The Frenchpaid back with scorn the traditional hatred of the English for theFrench. Perlin (1558) finds the people "proud and seditious, with badconsciences and unfaithful to their word in war unfortunate, in peaceunfaithful"; and there was a Spanish or Italian proverb: "England, goodland, bad people. " But even Perlin likes the appearance of the people:"The men are handsome, rosy, large, and dexterous, usually fair-skinned;the women are esteemed the most beautiful in the world, white asalabaster, and give place neither to Italian, Flemish, nor German; theyare joyous, courteous, and hospitable (de bon recueil). " He thinks theirmanners, however, little civilized: for one thing, they have anunpleasant habit of eructation at the table (car iceux routent a la tablesans honte & ignominie); which recalls Chaucer's description of theTrumpington miller's wife and daughter:

 "Men might her rowtyng hearen a forlong, The wenche routeth eek par companye. "

Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found inCoryat's "Crudities" (1611). He saw in Italy generally a curious customof using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out ofthe dish with his fingers--would give offense. And he accounts for thispeculiarity quite naturally: "The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touchedwith fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane. " Coryat foundthe use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom, and when he returned, and, oftentimes in England, imitated the Italian fashion, his exploit wasregarded in a humorous light. Busino says that fruits were seldom servedat dessert, but that the whole population were munching them in thestreets all day long, and in the places of amusement; and it was anamusement to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in asort of competition of gormandize between the city belles and theiradmirers. And he avers that one young woman devoured twenty pounds ofcherries, beating her opponent by two pounds and a half. 

All foreigners were struck with the English love of music and drink, ofbanqueting and good cheer. Perlin notes a pleasant custom at table:during the feast you hear more than a hundred times, "Drink iou" (heloves to air his English), that is to say, "Je m'en vois boyre a toy. "You respond, in their language, "Iplaigiu"; that is to say, "Je vousplege. " If you thank them, they say in their language, "God tanqueartelay"; that is, "Je vous remercie de bon coeur. " And then, says theartless Frenchman, still improving on his English, you should respondthus: "Bigod, sol drink iou agoud oin. " At the great and princelybanquets, when the pledge went round and the heart's desire of lastinghealth, says the chronicler, "the same was straight wayes knowne, bysound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon's loudest voyce. " It was soin Hamlet's day:

 "And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge. "

According to Hentzner (1598), the English are serious, like the Germans, and love show and to be followed by troops of servants wearing the armsof their masters; they excel in music and dancing, for they are livelyand active, though thicker of make than the French; they cut their hairclose in the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; "theyare good sailors, and better pyrates, cunning, treacherous, andthievish;" and, he adds, with a touch of satisfaction, "above threehundred are said to be hanged annually in London. " They put a good dealof sugar in their drink; they are vastly fond of great noises, firing ofcannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells, and when they have aglass in their heads they go up into some belfry, and ring the bells forhours together, for the sake of exercise. Perlin's comment is that menare hung for a trifle in England, and that you will not find many lordswhose parents have not had their heads chopped off. 

It is a pleasure to turn to the simple and hearty admiration excited inthe breasts of all susceptible foreigners by the English women of thetime. Van Meteren, as we said, calls the women beautiful, fair, welldressed, and modest. To be sure, the wives are, their lives onlyexcepted, entirely in the power of their husbands, yet they have greatliberty; go where they please; are shown the greatest honor at banquets, where they sit at the upper end of the table and are first served; arefond of dress and gossip and of taking it easy; and like to sit beforetheir doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen bythe passers-by. Rathgeb also agrees that the women have much more libertythan in any other place. When old Busino went to the Masque at Whitehall, his colleagues kept exclaiming, "Oh, do look at this one--oh, do seethat! Whose wife is this?--and that pretty one near her, whose daughteris she?" There was some chaff mixed in, he allows, some shriveled skinsand devotees of S. Carlo Borromeo, but the beauties greatly predominated. 

In the great street pageants, it was the beauty and winsomeness of theLondon ladies, looking on, that nearly drove the foreigners wild. In1606, upon the entry of the king of Denmark, the chronicler celebrates"the unimaginable number of gallant ladies, beauteous virgins, and otherdelicate dames, filling the windows of every house with kind aspect. " Andin 1638, when Cheapside was all alive with the pageant of the entry ofthe queen mother, "this miserable old queen, " as Lilly calls Marie de'Medicis (Mr. Furnivall reproduces an old cut of the scene), M. De laSerre does not try to restrain his admiration for the pretty women onview: only the most fecund imagination can represent the content one hasin admiring the infinite number of beautiful women, each different fromthe other, and each distinguished by some sweetness or grace to ravishthe heart and take captive one's liberty. No sooner has he determined toyield to one than a new object of admiration makes him repent theprecipitation of his judgment. 

And all the other foreigners were in the like case of "goneness. "Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, andby nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they donot falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;"yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they aresomewhat awkward in their style of dress. " His second "item" of gratitudeis a Netherland custom that pleased him--whenever a foreigner or aninhabitant went to a citizen's house on business, or as a guest, he wasreceived by the master, the lady, or the daughter, and "welcomed" (as itis termed in their language); "he has a right to take them by the arm andto kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any one does notdo so, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on hispart. " Even the grave Erasmus, when he visited England, fell easily intothis pretty practice, and wrote with untheological fervor of the "girlswith angel faces, " who were "so kind and obliging. " "Wherever you come, "he says, "you are received with a kiss by all; when you take your leaveyou are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses are repeated. They cometo visit you, kisses again; they leave you, you kiss them all round. Should they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance in fine, wherever youmove there is nothing but kisses"--a custom, says this reformer, who hasnot the fear of Stubbes before his eyes, "never to be sufficientlycommended. "

We shall find no more convenient opportunity to end this part of thesocial study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture ofthe sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; butgrave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuouspersons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, thebattles of theologies, fails signally to give us the real life of thepeople by which we judge the character of an age. 

III

When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenthand the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in anotheratmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is asvaried, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot beadequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and thehistory of the time which produced it. 

"Voltaire, " says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke ofShakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbariangenius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too muchin his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation toapply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crudeas they were coarse. "

Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in theright spirit--that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for anyenlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times, "he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literatureshould be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired intoEnglish civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought ofthe people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry intopopular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and itis now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object ofstudy is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of aperiod for the first time understood, but it is given its just place asan exponent of human life and a monument of human action. 

The student who takes up Shakespeare's plays for the purpose of eitheramusement or cultivation, I would recommend to throw aside the whole loadof commentary, and speculation, and disquisition, and devote himself totrying to find out first what was the London and the England ofShakespeare's day, what were the usages of all classes of society, whatwere the manners and the character of the people who crowded to hear hisplays, or who denounced them as the works of the devil and the allies ofsin. I say again to the student that by this means Shakespeare willbecome a new thing to him, his mind will be enlarged to the purpose andscope of the great dramatist, and more illumination will be cast upon theplays than is received from the whole race of inquisitors into hisphrases and critics of his genius. In the light of contemporary life, itsvisions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration, andwarlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at naturalphenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, itsvirility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury ofapparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society, these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admirationof the poet's knowledge of human life. 

The experiences of the poet began with the rude and rural life ofEngland, and when he passed into the presence of the court and into thebustle of great London in an age of amazing agitation, he felt still inhis veins the throb of the popular blood. There were classic affectationsin England, there were masks and mummeries and classic puerilities atcourt and in noble houses--Elizabeth's court would well have liked to beclassical, remarks Guizot--but Shakespeare was not fettered by classicconventionalities, nor did he obey the unities, nor attempt to separateon the stage the tragedy and comedy of life--"immense and living stage, "says the writer I like to quote because he is French, upon which allthings are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the placewhich they occupied in a stormy and complicated civilization. In thesedramas the comic element is introduced whenever its character of realitygives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportuneappearance. Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V. , and DollTear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, andthe soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, allthe phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with thenature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which theynaturally occupy. . . . 

"Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproducedby Shakespeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatreof life and truth. "

It is possible to make a brutal picture of the England of Shakespeare'sday by telling nothing that is not true, and by leaving out much that istrue. M. Taine, who has a theory to sustain, does it by a graphiccatalogue of details and traits that cannot be denied; only there is agreat deal in English society that he does not include, perhaps does notapprehend. Nature, he thinks, was never so completely acted out. Theserobust men give rein to all their passions, delight in the strength oftheir limbs like Carmen, indulge in coarse language, undisguisedsensuality, enjoy gross jests, brutal buffooneries. Humanity is as muchlacking as decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them. The courtfrequents bull and bear baitings; Elizabeth beats her maids, spits upon acourtier's fringed coat, boxes Essex's ears; great ladies beat theirchildren and their servants. "The sixteenth century, " he says, "is like aden of lions. Amid passions so strong as these there is not one lacking. Nature appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fullness. Ifnothing has been softened, nothing has been mutilated. It is the entireman who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest andfinest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites, without the preponderance of any dominant passion to cast him altogetherin one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid as hewill under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restoration. " He hasentered like a young man into all the lusty experiences of life, everyallurement is known, the sweetness and novelty of things are strong withhim. He plunges into all sensations. "Such were the men of this time, Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII himself, excessive and inconstant, ready for devotion and for crime, violent in good and evil, heroic withstrange weaknesses, humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile withpremeditation like the roisterers of the Restoration, never rigid onprinciple like the Puritans of the Revolution, capable of weeping likechildren, and of dying like men, often base courtiers, more than oncetrue knights, displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions ofbearing, only the overflowing of nature. Thus prepared, they could takein everything, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutalityof shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, acceptall the characters, wantons and virgins, princes and mountebanks, passquickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listenalternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The dramaeven, in order to satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must take alltongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by sidewith this vulgar prose; more than this, it must distort its natural styleand limits, put songs, poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers andthe speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera, as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their grovesand meadows; compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itselfto furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated, fornowhere else do we find men so complete. "

M. Taine heightens this picture in generalizations splashed withinnumerable blood-red details of English life and character. The Englishis the most warlike race in Europe, most redoubtable in battle, mostimpatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; andthe great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the forceand ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutionswork in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is asoldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercisehimself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army; punishmentsmust inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Such instincts, such a history, raises before them with tragic severity the idea of life;death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures. The fine purple cloaks, theholiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, are stained withblood and bordered with black. Throughout a stern discipline, the axeready for every suspicion of treason; "great men, bishops, a chancellor, princes, the king's relations, queens, a protector kneeling in the straw, sprinkled the Tower with their blood; one after the other they marchedpast, stretched out their necks; the Duke of Buckingham, Queen AnneBoleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, theDuke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, the Duke ofNorthumberland, the Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps ofthe throne, in the highest ranks of honor, beauty, youth, genius; of thebright procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by thetender mercies of the executioner. "

The gibbet stands by the highways, heads of traitors and criminals grinon the city gates. Mournful legends multiply, church-yard ghosts, walkingspirits. In the evening, before bedtime, in the vast country houses, inthe poor cottages, people talk of the coach which is seen drawn byheadless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen. All this, withunbounded luxury, unbridled debauchery, gloom, and revelry hand in hand. "A threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy, like the sun, pierces through it and upon them strongly and atintervals. " All this riot of passion and frenzy of vigorous life, thismadness and sorrow, in which life is a phantom and destiny drives soremorselessly, Taine finds on the stage and in the literature of theperiod. 

To do him justice, he finds something else, something that might give hima hint of the innate soundness of English life in its thousands of sweethomes, something of that great force of moral stability, in the midst ofall violence and excess of passion and performance, which makes a nationnoble. "Opposed to this band of tragic figures, " which M. Taine arraysfrom the dramas, "with their contorted features, brazen fronts, combativeattitudes, is a troop (he says) of timid figures, tender beforeeverything, the most graceful and love-worthy whom it has been given toman to depict. In Shakespeare you will meet them in Miranda, Juliet, Desdemona, Virginia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen; but they abound also inthe others; and it is a characteristic of the race to have furnishedthem, as it is of the drama to have represented them. By a singularcoincidence the women are more of women, the men more of men, here thanelsewhere. The two natures go to its extreme--in the one to boldness, thespirit of enterprise and resistance, the warlike, imperious, andunpolished character; in the other to sweetness, devotion, patience, inextinguishable affection (hence the happiness and strength of themarriage tie), a thing unknown in distant lands, and in France especiallya woman here gives herself without drawing back, and places her glory andduty in obedience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing, and pretending onlyto be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she hasfreely and forever chosen. " This is an old German instinct. The soul inthis race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to followthe noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence andconscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment, abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are notaffected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but arebinding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomesalmost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or tojest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the lovedones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion. "

Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses--the most fascinating and mostdangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for a mostsuggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishment of theGallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference in theliterature of the two races as an expression of their life. It wasnatural that he should somewhat exaggerate what he regards as the sourceof this expression, leaving out of view, as he does, certain great forcesand currents which an outside observer cannot feel as the race itselffeels. We look, indeed, for the local color of this English literature inthe manners and habits of the times, traits of which Taine has soskillfully made a mosaic from Harrison, Stubbes, Stowe, Holinshed, andthe pages of Reed and Drake; but we look for that which made it somethingmore than a mirror of contemporary manners, vices, and virtues, made itrepresentative of universal men, to other causes and forces-such as theReformation, the immense stir, energy, and ambition of the age (theresult of invention and discovery), newly awakened to the sense thatthere was a world to be won and made tributary; that England, and, aboveall places on the globe at that moment, London, was the centre of adisplay of energy and adventure such as has been scarcely paralleled inhistory. And underneath it all was the play of an uneasy, protestingdemocracy, eager to express itself in adventure, by changing itscondition, in the joy of living and overcoming, and in literature, withsmall regard for tradition or the unities. 

When Shakespeare came up to London with his first poems in his pocket, the town was so great and full of marvels, and luxury, and entertainment, as to excite the astonishment of continental visitors. It swarmed withsoldiers, adventurers, sailors who were familiar with all seas and everyport, men with projects, men with marvelous tales. It teemed with schemesof colonization, plans of amassing wealth by trade, by commerce, byplanting, mining, fishing, and by the quick eye and the strong hand. Swaggering in the coffee-houses and ruffling it in the streets were themen who had sailed with Frobisher and Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Hawkins, and Sir Richard Granville; had perhaps witnessed the heroicdeath of Sir Philip Sidney, at Zutphen; had served with Raleigh in Anjou, Picardy, Languedoc, in the Netherlands, in the Irish civil war; had takenpart in the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, and in the bombardment ofCadiz; had filled their cups to the union of Scotland with England; hadsuffered shipwreck on the Barbary Coast, or had, by the fortune of war, felt the grip of the Spanish Inquisition; who could tell tales of themarvels seen in new-found America and the Indies, and, perhaps, likeCaptain John Smith, could mingle stories of the naive simplicity of thenatives beyond the Atlantic, with charming narratives of the wars inHungary, the beauties of the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the barbaricpomp of the Khan of Tartary. There were those in the streets who wouldsee Raleigh go to the block on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, who wouldfight against King Charles on the fields of Newbury or Naseby, Kineton orMarston Moor, and perchance see the exit of Charles himself from anotherscaffold erected over against the Banqueting House. 

Although London at the accession of James I. (1603) had only about onehundred and fifty thousand inhabitants--the population of England thennumbering about five million--it was so full of life and activity thatFrederick, Duke of Wurtemberg, who saw it a few years before, in 1592, was impressed with it as a large, excellent, and mighty city of business, crowded with people buying and selling merchandise, and trading in almostevery corner of the world, a very populous city, so that one can scarcelypass along the streets on account of the throng; the inhabitants, hesays, are magnificently appareled, extremely proud and overbearing, whoscoff and laugh at foreigners, and no one dare oppose them lest thestreet boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and striketo right and left unmercifully without regard to persons. 

There prevailed an insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights andhearing strange adventures, with an eager desire for visiting foreigncountries, which Shakespeare and all the play-writers satirize. Conversation turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travelers, whosevoyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention. Theexaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, thepoets also take note of. There was also a universal taste for hazard inmoney as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitantinterest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess. The passionfor sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news ofwhich inflamed the imagination. Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, whowas in London in 1585, records that, "news arrived of a Spanish shipcaptured by Drake, in which it was said there were two millions ofuncoined gold and silver in ingots, fifty thousand crowns in coinedreals, seven thousand hides, four chests of pearls, each containing twobushels, and some sacks of cochineal--the whole valued at twenty-fivebarrels of gold; it was said to be one year and a half's tribute fromPeru. "

The passion for travel was at such a height that those who were unable toaccomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France andItaly, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieurtraveler, " says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits;disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with yournativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. " The Londoners dearlyloved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and high-flowncompliment. One gallant says to another: "O, signior, the star thatgoverns my life is contentment; give me leave to interre myself in yourarms. "--"Not so, sir, it is too unworthy an enclosure to contain suchpreciousness!"

Dancing was the daily occupation rather than the amusement at court andelsewhere, and the names of dances exceeded the list of the virtues--suchas the French brawl, the pavon, the measure, the canary, and many underthe general titles of corantees, jigs, galliards, and fancies. At thedinner and ball given by James I. To Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constableof Castile, in 1604, fifty ladies of honor, very elegantly dressed andextremely beautiful, danced with the noblemen and gentlemen. Prince Henrydanced a galliard with a lady, "with much sprightliness and modesty, cutting several capers in the course of the dance"; the Earl ofSouthampton led out the queen, and with three other couples danced abrando, and so on, the Spanish visitors looking on. When Elizabeth wasold and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discoveredpracticing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined tokeep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impressforeign ambassadors with her grace and youth. There was one custom, however, that may have made dancing a labor of love: it was consideredill manners for the gentleman not to kiss his partner. Indeed, in allhouseholds and in all ranks of society the guest was expected to salutethus all the ladies a custom which the grave Erasmus, who was in Englandin the reign of Henry VIII. , found not disagreeable. 

Magnificence of display went hand in hand with a taste for cruel andbarbarous amusements. At this same dinner to the Constable of Castile, the two buffets of the king and queen in the audience-chamber, where thebanquet was held, were loaded with plate of exquisite workmanship, richvessels of gold, agate, and other precious stones. The constable drank tothe king the health of the queen from the lid of a cup of agate ofextraordinary beauty and richness, set with diamonds and rubies, prayinghis majesty would condescend to drink the toast from the cup, which hedid accordingly, and then the constable directed that the cup shouldremain in his majesty's buffet. The constable also drank to the queen thehealth of the king from a very beautiful dragon-shaped cup of crystalgarnished with gold, drinking from the cover, and the queen, standing up, gave the pledge from the cup itself, and then the constable ordered thatthe cup should remain in the queen's buffet. 

The banquet lasted three hours, when the cloth was removed, the table wasplaced upon the ground--that is, removed from the dais--and theirmajesties, standing upon it, washed their hands in basins, as did theothers. After the dinner was the ball, and that ended, they took theirplaces at the windows of a roam that looked out upon a square, where aplatform was raised and a vast crowd was assembled to see the king'sbears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently abull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs. After thistumblers danced upon a rope and performed feats of agility on horseback. The constable and his attendants were lighted home by half an hundredhalberdiers with torches, and, after the fatigues of the day, supped inprivate. We are not surprised to read that on Monday, the 30th, theconstable awoke with a slight attack of lumbago. 

Like Elizabeth, all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bearand bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste forblood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swungthe cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matterof public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven inthe cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cartmoved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs inorder that he might be strangled the sooner. 

When Shakespeare was managing his theatres and writing his plays Londonwas full of foreigners, settled in the city, who no doubt formed part ofhis audience, for they thought that English players had attained greatperfection. In 1621 there were as many as ten thousand strangers inLondon, engaged in one hundred and twenty-one different trades. The poetneed not go far from Blackfriars to pick up scraps of German andfolk-lore, for the Hanse merchants were located in great numbers in theneighborhood of the steel-yard in Lower Thames Street. 

Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribesagainst luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society andthe variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display offine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above three thousanddresses when she was called to take that unseemly voyage down the stream, on which the clown's brogan jostles the queen's slipper. The plays ofShakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists, are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge ofthe fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays. We see thefine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thought it odd that velvetshould be worn in the street), or cloth of gold and silver tissue, herhair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a great hat with wavingfeathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or a muffler hiding allthe features except the eyes, with a muff, silk stockings, high-heeledshoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice, perfumed bracelets, necklaces, and gloves--"gloves sweet as damask roses"--apocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glasspendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over theshoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "Thesefashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weepwith one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry theycan both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping asof a goose going barefoot, " says old Burton. 

The men had even greater fondness for finery. Paul Hentzner, theBrandenburg jurist, in 1598, saw, at the Fair at St. Bartholomew, thelord mayor, attended by twelve gorgeous aldermen, walk in a neighboringfield, dressed in a scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, towhich hung a Golden Fleece. Men wore the hair long and flowing, with highhats and plumes of feathers, and carried muffs like the women; gallantssported gloves on their hats as tokens of ladies' favors, jewels androses in the ears, a long love-lock under the left ear, and gems in aribbon round the neck. This tall hat was called a "capatain. " Vincentio, in the "Taming of the Shrew, " exclaims: "O fine villain! A silkendoublet! A velvet hose! A scarlet cloak! And a capatain hat!" There wasno limit to the caprice and extravagance. Hose and breeches of silk, velvet, or other rich stuff, and fringed garters wrought of gold orsilver, worth five pounds apiece, are some of the items noted. Burtonsays, "'Tis ordinary for a gallant to put a thousand oaks and an hundredoxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back. " Evenserving-men and tailors wore jewels in their shoes. 

We should note also the magnificence in the furnishing of houses, thearras, tapestries, cloth of gold and silver, silk hangings of manycolors, the splendid plate on the tables and sideboards. Even in thehouses of the middle classes the furniture was rich and comfortable, andthere was an air of amenity in the chambers and parlors strewn with sweetherbs and daily decked with pretty nosegays and fragrant flowers. Lightswere placed on antique candelabra, or, wanting these at suppers, therewere living candleholders. "Give me a torch, " says Romeo; "I'll be acandle-holder, and look on. " Knowledge of the details of luxury of anEnglish home of the sixteenth century will make exceedingly vivid hostsof allusions in Shakespeare. 

Servants were numerous in great households, a large retinue being a markof gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor's termin London he kept open house, and every day any stranger or foreignercould dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat. Dinner, servedat eleven in the early years of James, attained a degree of epicureanismrivaling dinners of the present day, although the guests ate with theirfingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611. There was mightyeating and swigging at the banquets, and carousing was carried to anextravagant height, if we may judge by the account of an orgy at theking's palace in 1606, for the delectation of the King and Queen ofDenmark, when the company and even their majesties abandoned discretionand sobriety, and "the ladies are seen to roll about in intoxication. "

The manners of the male population of the period, says Nathan Drake, seemto have been compounded from the characters of the two sovereigns. LikeElizabeth, they are brave, magnanimous, and prudent; and sometimes, likeJames, they are credulous, curious, and dissipated. The credulity andsuperstition of the age, and its belief in the supernatural, and thesumptuousness of masques and pageants at the court and in the city, ofwhich we read so much in the old chronicles, are abundantly reflected inthe pages of Jonson, Shakespeare, and other writers. 

The town was full of public-houses and pleasure-gardens, but, curiouslyenough, the favorite place of public parading was the middle aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral--"Paul's Walk, " as it was called--which was dailyfrequented by nobles, gentry, perfumed gallants, and ladies, from ten totwelve and three to six o'clock, to talk on business, politics, orpleasure. Hither came, to acquire the fashions, make assignations, arrange for the night's gaming, or shun the bailiff, the gallant, thegamester, the ladies whose dresses were better than their manners, thestale knight, the captain out of service. Here Falstaff purchasedBardolph. "I bought him, " say's the knight, "at Paul's. " The tailors wentthere to get the fashions of dress, as the gallants did to display them, one suit before dinner and another after. What a study was this varied, mixed, flaunting life, this dance of pleasure and license before the veryaltar of the church, for the writers of satire, comedy, and tragedy!

But it is not alone town life and court life and the society of the finefolk that is reflected in the English drama and literature of theseventeenth century, and here is another wide difference between it andthe French literature of the same period; rural England and the popularlife of the country had quite as much to do in giving tone and color tothe writings of the time. It is necessary to know rural England to enterinto the spirit of this literature, and to appreciate how thoroughly ittook hold of life in every phase. Shakespeare knew it well. He drew fromlife the country gentleman, the squire, the parson, the pedanticschoolmaster who was regarded as half conjurer, the yeoman or farmer, thedairy maids, the sweet English girls, the country louts, shepherds, boors, and fools. How he loved a fool! He had talked with all thesepersons, and knew their speeches and humors. He had taken part in thecountry festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the MorrisDances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rusticmerrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward, thelove of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents, thenaive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages. Drake, inhis "Shakespeare and his Times, " gives a graphic and indeed charmingpicture of the rural life of this century, drawn from Harrison and othersources. 

In his spacious hall, floored with stones and lighted by large transomwindows, hung with coats of mail and helmets, and all militaryaccoutrements, long a prey to rust, the country squire, seated at araised table at one end, held a baronial state and dispensed prodigalhospitality. The long table was divided into upper and lower messes by ahuge salt-cellar; and the consequence of the guests was marked by theirseats above or below the salt. The distinction extended to the fare, forwine frequently circulated only above the salt, and below it the food wasof coarser quality. The literature of the time is full of allusions tothis distinction. But the luxury of the table and good cooking were wellunderstood in the time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eatingdone in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from thebanquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five orsix, which was often as substantial as the dinner. Gervase Markham in his"English Housewife, " after treating of the ordering of great feasts, gives directions for "a more humble feast of an ordinary proportion. "This "humble feast, " he says, should consist for the first course of"sixteen full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, andnot empty, or for shew--as thus, for example: first, a shield of brawnwith mustard; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef;fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted;sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly, chewets bak'd; eighthly, a gooserosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; the eleventh, ahaunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; thethirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, anolive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard ordowsets. Now to these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases, 'quelque choses, ' and devised paste; as many dishes more as will make noless than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can convenientlystand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you mayproportion both your second and third course, holding fullness on onehalf the dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in thesplendor, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to thebeholders. " After this frugal repast it needed an interval of prayersbefore supper. 

The country squire was a long-lived but not always an intellectualanimal. He kept hawks of all kinds, and all sorts of hounds that ranbuck, fox, hare, otter, and badger. His great hall was commonly strewnwith marrow-bones, and full of hawks' perches, of hounds, spaniels, andterriers. His oyster-table stood at one end of the room, and oysters heate at dinner and supper. At the upper end of the room stood a smalltable with a double desk, one side of which held a church Bible, theother Fox's "Book of Martyrs. " He drank a glass or two of wine at hismeals, put syrup of gilly-flower in his sack, and always had a tun-glassof small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about withrosemary. After dinner, with a glass of ale by his side he improved hismind by listening to the reading of a choice passage out of the "Book ofMartyrs. "

This is a portrait of one Henry Hastings, of Dorsetshire, in Gilpin's"Forest Scenery. " He lived to be a hundred, and never lost his sight norused spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the deathof the stag till he was past fourscore. 

The plain country fellow, plowman, or clown, is several pegs lower, anddescribed by Bishop Earle as one that manures his ground well, but letshimself lie fallow and untitled. His hand guides the plow, and the plowhis thoughts. His mind is not much disturbed by objects, but he can fix ahalf-hour's contemplation on a good fat cow. His habitation is under apoor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn only by loop-holes thatlet out the smoke. Dinner is serious work, for he sweats at it as much asat his labor, and he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef. Hisreligion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord andrefers it wholly to his discretion, but he is a good Christian in hisway, that is, he comes to church in his best clothes, where he is capableonly of two prayers--for rain and fair weather. 

The country clergymen, at least those of the lower orders, or readers, were distinguished in Shakespeare's time by the appellation "Sir, " as SirHugh, in the "Merry Wives, " Sir Topas, in "Twelfth Night, " Sir Oliver, in"As You Like It. " The distinction is marked between priesthood andknighthood when Vista says, "I am one that would rather go with SirPriest than Sir Knight. " The clergy were not models of conduct in thedays of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we readthat they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel. 

There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errantknights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches, goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on thehearth, as in Milton's allusion

 "---to the nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat"

A designation of winter in "Love's Labour's Lost" is

 "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl. "

To "turne a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throwit hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put atoast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wanton pranks:

 "And sometimes I lurk in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks against her lips I bob:"

I love no roast, says John Still, in "Gammer Gurton's Needle, "

 "I love no rost, but a nut-browne torte, And a crab layde in the fyre; A lytle bread shall do me stead, Much bread I not desire. "

In the bibulous days of Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species ofwassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrainintemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged todrink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man "a peglower, " or taking him "down a peg, " from this custom. 

In these details I am not attempting any complete picture of the rurallife at this time, but rather indicating by illustrations the sort ofstudy which illuminates its literature. We find, indeed, if we go belowthe surface of manners, sober, discreet, and sweet domestic life, and anappreciation of the virtues. Of the English housewife, says GervaseMarkham, was not only expected sanctity and holiness of life, but "greatmodesty and temperance, as well outwardly as inwardly. She must be ofchaste thoughts, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighborhood, wisein discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, butnot bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comportable in hercounsels, and generally skillful in the worthy knowledges which do belongto her vocation. " This was the mistress of the hospitable house of thecountry knight, whose chief traits were loyalty to church and state, alove of festivity, and an ardent attachment to field sports. Hiswell-educated daughter is charmingly described in an exquisite poem byDrayton:

He had, as antique stories tell, He had, as antique stories tell, A daughter cleaped Dawsabel, A maiden fair and free; And for she was her father's heir, Full well she ycond the leir Of mickle courtesy. 

 "The silk well couth she twist and twine, And make the fine march-pine, And with the needle work: And she couth help the priest to say His matins on a holy day, And sing a psalm in Kirk. 

 "She wore a frock of frolic green Might well become a maiden queen, Which seemly was to see; A hood to that so neat and fine, In color like the columbine, Ywrought full featously. 

 "Her features all as fresh above As is the grass that grows by Dove, And lythe as lass of Kent. Her skin as soft as Lemster wool, As white as snow on Peakish Hull, Or swan that swims in Trent. 

 "This maiden in a morn betime Went forth when May was in the prime To get sweet setywall, The honey-suckle, the harlock, The lily, and the lady-smock, To deck her summer hall. "

How late such a simple and pretty picture could have been drawn to lifeis uncertain, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the luxury ofthe town had penetrated the country, even into Scotland. The dress of arich farmer's wife is thus described by Dunbar. She had "a robe of finescarlet, with a white hood, a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at herside from a silken belt of silver tissue; on each finger she wore tworings, and round her waist was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richlyembroidered with silver. "

Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great. How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often beendiscussed. The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, heprobably knew by name. In the Duke of Manchester's "Court and Societyfrom Elizabeth to Anne" is a curious suggestion about Hamlet. Readingsome letters from Robert, Earl of Essex, to Lady Rich, his sister, thehandsome, fascinating, and disreputable Penelope Devereaux, he notes, intheir humorous melancholy and discontent with mankind, something in toneand even language which suggests the weak and fantastic side of Hamlet'smind, and asks if the poet may not have conceived his character of Hamletfrom Essex, and of Horatio from Southampton, his friend and patron. Andhe goes on to note some singular coincidences. Essex was supposed by manyto have a good title to the throne. In person he had his father's beautyand was all that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Denmark. Hismother had been tempted from her duty while her noble and generoushusband was alive, and this husband was supposed to have been poisoned byher and her paramour. After the father's murder the seducer had marriedthe guilty mother. The father had not perished without expressingsuspicion of foul play against himself, yet sending his forgiveness tohis faithless wife. There are many other agreements in the facts of thecase and the incidents of the play. The relation of Claudius to Hamlet isthe same as that of Leicester to Essex: under pretense of fatherlyfriendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions; kepthim much in the country and at college; let him see little of his mother, and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance of benignantfavor. Gertrude's relations with her son Hamlet were much like those ofLettice with Robert Devereaux. Again, it is suggested, in his moodiness, in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and the players, inhis desire for the fiery action for which his nature was most unfit, there are many kinds of hints calling up an image of the Danish Prince. 

This suggestion is interesting in the view that we find in the charactersof the Elizabethan drama not types and qualities, but individualsstrongly projected, with all their idiosyncrasies and contradictions. These dramas touch our sympathies at all points, and are representativeof human life today, because they reflected the human life of their time. This is supremely true of Shakespeare, and almost equally true of Jonsonand many of the other stars of that marvelous epoch. In England as wellas in France, as we have said, it was the period of the classic revival;but in England the energetic reality of the time was strong enough tobreak the classic fetters, and to use classic learning for modernpurposes. The English dramatists, like the French, used classic historiesand characters. But two things are to be noted in their use of them. First, that the characters and the play of mind and passion in them arethoroughly English and of the modern time. And second, and this seems atfirst a paradox, they are truer to the classic spirit than the charactersin the contemporary French drama. This results from the fact that theyare truer to the substance of things, to universal human nature, whilethe French seem to be in great part an imitation, having root neither inthe soil of France nor Attica. M. Guizot confesses that France, in orderto adopt the ancient models, was compelled to limit its field in somesort to one corner of human existence. He goes on to say that the present"demands of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer besupplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased toexist. The classic system had its origin in the life of the time; thattime has passed away; its image subsists in brilliant colors in itsworks, but can no more be reproduced. " Our own literary monuments mustrest on other ground. "This ground is not the ground of Corneille orRacine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare'ssystem, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to whichgenius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those socialconditions and those general and diverse feelings, the simultaneousconjuncture and activity of which constitute for us at the present daythe spectacle of human things. "

That is certainly all that any one can claim for Shakespeare and hisfellow-dramatists. They cannot be models in form any more than Sophoclesand Euripides; but they are to be followed in making the drama, or anyliterature, expressive of its own time, while it is faithful to theemotions and feeling of universal human nature. And herein, it seems tome, lies the broad distinction between most of the English and Frenchliterature of the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of theseventeenth centuries. Perhaps I may be indulged in another observationon this topic, touching a later time. Notwithstanding the prevalentnotion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classicculture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the trueclassic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notablyKeats and Shelley. 

Ben Jonson was a man of extensive and exact classical erudition; he was asolid scholar in the Greek and Roman literatures, in the works of thephilosophers, poets, and historians. He was also a man of uncommonattainments in all the literary knowledge of his time. In some of histragedies his classic learning was thought to be ostentatiouslydisplayed, but this was not true of his comedy, and on the whole he wastoo strong to be swamped in pseudo-classicism. For his experience of menand of life was deep and varied. Before he became a public actor anddramatist, and served the court and fashionable society with hisentertaining, if pedantic, masques, he had been student, tradesman, andsoldier; he had traveled in Flanders and seen Paris, and wandered on footthrough the length of England. London he knew as well as a man knows hisown house and club, the comforts of its taverns, the revels of lords andladies, the sports of Bartholomew Fair, and the humors of suburbanvillages; all the phases, language, crafts, professions of high and lowcity life were familiar to him. And in his comedies, as Mr. A. W. Wardpertinently says, his marvelously vivid reproduction of manners isunsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. "The age lives in his men andwomen, his country gulls and town gulls, his imposters and skelderingcaptains, his court ladies and would-be court ladies, his pulingpoetasters and whining Puritans, and, above all, in the whole ragamuffinrout of his Bartholomew Fair. Its pastimes, fashionable andunfashionable, its games and vapors and jeering, its high-politecourtships and its pulpit-shows, its degrading superstitions andconfounding hallucinations, its clubs of naughty ladies and its officesof lying news, its taverns and its tobacco shops, its giddy heights andits meanest depths--all are brought before us by our author. "

No, he was not swamped by classicism, but he was affected by it, and justhere, and in that self-consciousness which Shakespeare was free from, andwhich may have been more or less the result of his classic erudition, hefails of being one of the universal poets of mankind. The genius ofShakespeare lay in his power to so use the real and individual facts oflife as to raise in the minds of his readers a broader and noblerconception of human life than they had conceived before. This is creativegenius; this is the idealist dealing faithfully with realistic material;this is, as we should say in our day, the work of the artist asdistinguished from the work of the photographer. It may be an admirablebut it is not the highest work of the sculptor, the painter, or thewriter, that does not reveal to the mind--that comes into relation withit something before out of his experience and beyond the facts eitherbrought before him or with which he is acquainted. 

What influence Shakespeare had upon the culture and taste of his own timeand upon his immediate audience would be a most interesting inquiry. Weknow what his audiences were. He wrote for the people, and the theatre inhis day was a popular amusement for the multitude, probably more than itwas a recreation for those who enjoyed the culture of letters. A tastefor letters was prevalent among the upper class, and indeed wasfashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In this the court ofElizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duchess was taught notonly to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. When the queen wastranslating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient toaffect at least a taste for the classics. For the nobleman and thecourtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential to"good form. " But the taste for erudition was mainly confined to themetropolis or the families who frequented it, and to persons of rank, anddid not pervade the country or the middle classes. A few of the countrygentry had some pretension to learning, but the majority cared littleexcept for hawks and hounds, gaming and drinking; and if they read it wassome old chronicle, or story of knightly adventure, "Amadis de Gaul, " ora stray playbook, or something like the "History of Long Meg ofWestminster, " or perhaps a sheet of news. To read and write were stillrare accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a commonnotion when he said reading and writing come by nature. Sheets of newshad become common in the town in James's time, the first newspaper beingthe English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished foodfor Jonson's satire in his "Staple of News. " His accusation has afamiliar sound when he says that people had a "hunger and thirst afterpublished pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all athome, and no syllable of truth in them. "

Though Elizabeth and James were warm patrons of the theatre, the courthad no such influence over the plays and players as had the court inParis at the same period. The theatres were built for the people, and theaudiences included all classes. There was a distinction between what werecalled public and private theatres, but the public frequented both. TheShakespeare theatres, at which his plays were exclusively performed, werethe Globe, called public, on the Bankside, and the Blackfriars, calledprivate, on the City side, the one for summer, the other for winterperformances. The Blackfriars was smaller than the Globe, was roofedover, and needed to be lighted with candles, and was frequented more bythe better class than the more popular Globe. There is no evidence thatElizabeth ever attended the public theatres, but the companies were oftensummoned to play before her in Whitehall, where the appointments andscenery were much better than in the popular houses. 

The price of general admission to the Globe and Blackfriars was sixpence, at the Fashion Theatre twopence, and at some of the inferior theatres onepenny. The boxes at the Globe were a shilling, at the Blackfriarsone-and-six. The usual net receipts of a performance were from nine toten pounds, and this was about the sum that Elizabeth paid to companiesfor a performance at Whitehall, which was always in the evening and didnot interfere with regular hours. The theatres opened as early as oneo'clock and not later than three in the afternoon. The crowds that filledthe pit and galleries early, to secure places, amused themselvesvariously before the performance began: they drank ale, smoked, foughtfor apples, cracked nuts, chaffed the boxes, and a few read the cheappublications of the day that were hawked in the theatre. It was a roughand unsavory audience in pit and gallery, but it was a responsive one, and it enjoyed the acting with little help to illusion in the way ofscenery. In fact, scenery did not exist, as we understand it. A boardinscribed with the name of the country or city indicated the scene ofaction. Occasionally movable painted scenes were introduced. The interiorroof of the stage was painted sky-blue, or hung with drapery of thattint, to represent the heavens. But when the idea of a dark, starlessnight was to be imposed, or tragedy was to be acted, these heavens werehung with black stuffs, a custom illustrated in many allusions inShakespeare, like that in the line, "Hung be the heavens in black, yield day to night"

To hang the stage with black was to prepare it for tragedy. The costumesof the players were sometimes less niggardly than the furnishing of thestage, for it was an age of rich and picturesque apparel, and it was notdifficult to procure the cast-off clothes of fine gentlemen for stageuse. But there was no lavishing of expense. I am recalling these detailsto show that the amusement was popular and cheap. The ordinary actors, including the boys and men who took women's parts (for women did notappear on the stage till after the Restoration) received only about fiveor six shillings a week (for Sundays and all), and the first-class actor, who had a share in the net receipts, would not make more than ninetypounds a year. The ordinary price paid for a new play was less than sevenpounds; Oldys, on what authority is not known, says that Shakespearereceived only five pounds for "Hamlet. "

The influence of the theatre upon politics, contemporary questions thatinterested the public, and morals, was early recognized in the restraintsput upon representations by the censorship, and in the floods of attacksupon its licentious and demoralizing character. The plays of Shakespearedid not escape the most bitter animadversions of the moral reformers. Wehave seen how Shakespeare mirrored his age, but we have less means ofascertaining what effect he produced upon the life of his time. Untilafter his death his influence was mainly direct, upon the play-goers, andconfined to his auditors. He had been dead seven years before his playswere collected. However the people of his day regarded him, it is safe tosay that they could not have had any conception of the importance of thework he was doing. They were doubtless satisfied with him. It was a greatage for romances and story-telling, and he told stories, old in newdresses, but he was also careful to use contemporary life, which hishearers understood. 

It is not to his own age, but to those following, and especially to ourown time, that we are to look for the shaping and enormous influence uponhuman life of the genius of this poet. And it is measured not by thelibraries of comments that his works have called forth, but by theprevalence of the language and thought of his poetry in all subsequentliterature, and by its entrance into the current of common thought andspeech. It may be safely said that the English-speaking world and almostevery individual of it are different from what they would have been ifShakespeare had never lived. Of all the forces that have survived out ofhis creative time, he is one of the chief.